Edmund Cooper - Seahorse in the Sky

The first level of the keep seemed to be a combined butchery, bakery, armoury and general workshop. From this area, wooden steps led up to the door of the women’s apartments, then to the merchants’ and warriors’ quarters, and finally to the sept lord’s own apartment directly below the battlement.

It was here, after Absu had ceremonially shown his guests to the remainder of his ‘children’—guest-showing being a ritual of practical value in a society where the appearance of strangers was itself sufficient to provoke violence—that Anna and Russell were entertained.

During his stay with the terrestrials, Absu had been forced to come to terms with canned milk and strange preserved foods. Now it was the turn of the terrestrials to accustom their stomachs to strange foods. They were served with what looked and tasted rather like chopped avocado pear but which, in fact, turned out to be raw pulpul brains—one of the greatest delicacies that could be offered. This was followed by braised pulpul heart, some not unpleasant vegetables and the red spice of which Russell had already heard.

He had imagined, from Absu’s description, that red spice would be something similar to pepper. He was right—and wrong. It was much hotter than any pepper he had ever known, causing beads of sweat to form on his forehead. Also, it was terribly intoxicating, but not until one drank water.

Surprisingly, Anna was able to take the red spice fairly well. It was, as they discovered by watching Absu, eaten in tiny spoonfuls (pulpul horn spoons) from a central dish, alternately with mouthfuls of tough, bitter pulpul heart. Russell drank freely from the water that was offered him by a small brown, almost naked, woman who squatted next to him and laid her hands on his shoulders in a somewhat familiar fashion. Apart from the woman, who was strikingly beautiful even by terrestrial standards, and who was called Yasal, no one else from Absu’s sept was present.

By the end of the meal, Russell was drunk. He knew he was drunk and felt very foolish.

Absu mes Marur regarded him solemnly. “I had hoped this evening that we should speak again of many things which trouble us both, Russell.” He glanced at the bowl of red spice. “But I fear the journey has fatigued each of us in different ways. Let us then preserve our serious thoughts until we rise refreshed with the sun. Meanwhile, as is our custom, my woman shall warm your skins and your woman shall warm mine.”

Through the fog of drunkenness, Russell dimly perceived that the hospitality of this medieval sept lord carried with it some rather startling implications. He looked at Anna, who was gazing at Absu mes Marur, stony-faced.

Then he turned to his host. “Absu, old sport. We have a problem.” He paused, groping for the right words. “In my country, we do not exchange women… Well, not much.”

Absu smiled. “Nor do we, Russell, my friend—except during the first night of the first visit only. It is the custom of the keeps and a bond token. So it has always been. So, doubtless, it will always be… As for myself, I have little enthusiasm for one who is tall and ghostly and knows not how to respect her lord.

But the custom of the keeps is sacred, and I fear you have the best of it.”

Anna Markova, however, was not to be discountenanced by a retrogressive, uncouth, alien, medieval autocrat. To give herself time to think of an adequately crushing retort, she took a deep draught of water after her final spoonful of red spice.

It was her undoing. The mysterious vapours of the red spice, in immediate reaction, seemed to rise from her stomach directly to her brain, there becoming incandescent and cauterizing all rational thought.

“Know this, Absu mes Marur,” she said thickly. “A free Russian woman is worth any ten of the unemancipated sluts who pass for females in your little entourage. Personally, I have no inclination to lie with bloodthirsty pigmies, but in the interests of international—correction—interplanetary relations, I will warm your skins in such a fashion that you will remember it with wonder for the rest of your days.”

Russell was appalled, Yasal’s eyes widened with amazement, and Absu laughed so much he almost did himself an injury.

“By the robe, by the white queen and the black, this ghost woman has a remarkable spirit,” he said to Russell. “But know, my friend, that she does herself too much honour. The heat of her blood is surely no match for the heat of her words.”

Anna stood up—with difficulty—and gazed down scornfully at the Gren Li sept lord. “Barbarian,”

she said, groping for the right insults. “Savage. Imperialist. Fascist. I will teach you to respect your intellectual and moral superiors if it is the last thing—”

Her eyes clouded. She tried to keep them open, but the eyelids appeared to be obeying some higher authority. She swayed soundlessly, then collapsed in a heap.

Absu mes Marur grinned. “It is as I said. You, Russell, will have the best of it.” He grabbed Anna by an arm and a handful of hair and dragged her with some difficulty to a pile of skins. “Certainly, like this she will be less of a nuisance.”

But as he turned back to the food mat, Russell himself slumped in a heap.

Absu mes Marur gave Yasal, his chief night woman, a despairing glance. “These, though friends, are not familiar with our ways. You know your duty, child. Go to it.”

LATE ON THE following afternoon Russell and Anna, their heads still aching a little, were escorted back towards home— strange how they had suddenly begun to think of the Erewhon Hilton as home—by two of Absu’s warriors. All four of them rode pulpuls, and the journey was accomplished quickly and without incident.

As they jogged along, holding tightly on to the ridiculous horn handlebars and flanked by the Gren Li warriors, Russell’s mind turned to the conversation that had passed between him and Absu mes Marur during the morning— after he and Anna had disposed of their post-binge shakes with long draughts of water and a few flakes of what passed for unleavened bread.

Among the people who had been abducted from the red spice caravan there was a man whom Absu had referred to as the pathfinder. In the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, where trade depended upon the efficient routing of caravans over difficult, changing and sometimes featureless terrain, the art of pathfinding was an ancient and honoured profession, jealously confined to a few families.

Absu’s pathfinder was also something of a map-maker and an explorer. Shortly after their arrival at Keep Marur, he had been despatched to explore the country to the north which, being hilly, might be more attractive than the lowlands. Absu mes Marur and his people normally preferred hill country; and if the high land did not have any serious drawbacks, he was prepared to abandon Keep Marur and build a new one in a place more to his liking.

The pathfinder went alone on his expedition and was away nearly three days. He returned with some curious information. Wild animals abounded to the north, therefore the land was good for hunting.

Though, he added, some of the beasts he had seen might prey upon the pulpuls. This was a serious limitation, since any threat to the pulpuls constituted a threat to the group’s entire way of life.”

The pathfinder also maintained that he had seen savages and what he described as a swarm of winged demons whose faces seemed to be covered by long golden hair. He had not had any opportunity to study them closely or for more than a few moments since, though the demons were flying low, they travelled very quickly and were soon lost to sight.

The pathfinder must have been a very courageous man because this experience did not deter him from making his way across the range of hills that he had reached. On the other side he discovered a fairly even plain where, in contrast to the side he had left, the grass and vegetation was poor and sparse.