E.C Tubb - Eloise

"You were fortunate," he said. "If you had handled things differently, made a threatening gesture even; well, you wouldn't be here now."

"Luck," said Arbush. "Earl is loaded with it. I read it in his palm." He dipped again into his bowl of stew, swallowing, chewing a fragment of meat. "Luck," he mused. "Sometimes I wonder if, of all the things a man could wish to be given, that is not the most important. Is there more stew?"

"Help yourself." Juskan gestured to the pot which hung on a tripod over the fire. "How about you?"

Dumarest shook his head. "Later, maybe."

"And you?"

Eloise put aside her bowl, shaking her head. Her face was hollowed, thin with privation, her eyes enormous beneath the level brows. A week, she thought, or had it been longer. Days in which they had crossed the rugged ground, staying always on the skyline; burning garments at night to make a clearly visible flame. And then had come the Krim.

They had arrived like ghosts, furred balls with peaked, suspicious faces; talking only in monosyllables, armed with knives and primitive guns.

And now, incredibly, they were safe. She leaned back in the low chair, looking at the expanse of the underground cavern to which they had been taken; the walls thick with luminous fungus, the roof crusted with mineral deposits. Such places were to be expected, the Krim had to live somewhere; once explained, it all seemed so obvious.

"They're a primitive people," said Juskan. "They live by hunting and farming the fungus. There is coal in certain regions and they do a little mining. They have a legend that, one day, they will all move to a paradise somewhere in the north."

To the city and, one day, they might take it. Dumarest wondered what would happen then. What would become of the people it now contained?

He said, "Aren't you curious as to what it could be like?"

"No." Juskan shrugged. "I've heard so many legends, one way and another. Every tribe has them and none of them are more than wishful thinking. You crashed, you say?"

"Our flyer got caught in a storm."

"It happens. You chose the wrong time; winter is hard. Not that summer is much better, but there's more chance then. In the air, anyway, not on the ground. When it gets a little warmer, animals come out of hibernation and some of them can be trouble." Juskan leaned forward to examine the pot. "If you don't want any more of this stew, I'll hand it over to the women. They have a taste for what's in it."

Spices and soft meat, dehydrated foods which the man had brought with him. Dumarest watched as a lumpish girl carried the pot over to where a huddle of children sat around a mass of glowing fungus.

"You said you were a trader. After furs?"

"Furs, gems, anything that's going; but mostly I'm after doltchel. The only way to get the Krim to work is to stay with them. My partner and I take it in turns. It isn't so bad, really. The caves are snug and I've got a few comforts." He glanced at the woman. "Treat them right and they play along. And they need what we can bring; knives, guns, ammunition, needles, stuff like that."

Eloise said, "Where do they come from?"

"The Krim?" Juskan shrugged. "Maybe they're the survivors of an early settlement. They could even be true natives. I've never bothered about it."

A man devoid of curiosity, or one who had decided that curiosity didn't pay.

Dumarest said, "Can you get us to Breen? We can pay."

"That helps," admitted the trader. "At least it'll get you a ride, but not for a month at least. My partner will be coming on a raft then. If you can compensate me for the lost load and trouble, I'll take you in." He looked at Eloise. "Is that your woman?"

"Yes," she said quickly.

"There's a small cave you can share. The minstrel can stay with me."

Arbush said, shrewdly, "With comforts?"

"Something can be arranged." Juskan glanced at the gilyre. "Are you any good with that thing?"

"I'm an expert."

"Then you'll have no trouble. The Krim like music. How about a tune now?"

The music rose as a woman guided Dumarest to a cave. A thick covering closed the opening; massed fungus giving light to show a table, chairs, a mass of furs piled for sleeping.

Eloise looked at them. "Earl?"

"Yes?"

"Did you mind me telling Juskan that I was your woman?"

"No."

"Then does that mean-" She stepped closer to him, lifting her hands to his shoulders. "Adara is dead now, Earl; we can't hurt him no matter what we do. And I love you. I want you."

He said, flatly, "When we reach Breen, I leave you."

Perhaps; but, woman-like, she was confident of her power. And she had at least a month to make him change his mind. As the thrum of strings rose from behind the curtain she closed her arms around him, holding him tightly, tighter, her lips a demanding flame.

* * * * *

Breen was a slum, a huddle of shacks interspersed with stone buildings, warehouses, limited repair facilities; the usual conglomeration to be found on any primitive world. Eloise crinkled her nose at the odors; acrid, harsh when compared to the natural smells she had grown accustomed to while living with the Krim. Juskan had gone, dropping them at the field and going about his business. As Dumarest was going about his.

She looked at the field, the ships it contained; a small trader plying among local worlds, a vessel from Prel, another from somewhere beyond the Elmirha Dust. He had been fortunate, the port was unusually busy.

"He won't go," she said. "Earl won't leave me."

"You think that?" Arbush was at her side; a small, somehow shrunken figure, his gilyre nursed in his hands. Absently he plucked a string. "You are being unkind to yourself, Eloise. Earl will do as he said."

As be had stated from the first, as he would do despite their time of passion, of hours spent in love. The time when she had used all her skills to bind him to her; yet, she remembered, never once during that time had he wavered, promised more than he could accomplish. An interlude, she thought bleakly. An episode on his journey. An event which was now over-for her own hope of future happiness she had to accept that.

And, if nothing else, she had memories.

"He will leave us," said Arbush. "He will move on." The movement of his hand on the fret made the note he plucked rise to the thin wail of an empty cry. "Do you think you are alone in your desire to want him to stay? I was nothing when we met; on the lowest rung of the ladder, one step from the mud of the gutter, bound to a swine by debts I couldn't pay. Chains which Earl broke. He saved my life-do you think I can forget that? Do you think that love must always be from a woman to a man?"

"Love?"

"Something deeper than friendship. The feeling a man has for his son. Not love as you know it, perhaps; but the thing which makes a man stand by his comrade, to kill for him, to die for him." Again the plucked string made its empty cry. "We have much in common, you and I."

The stink of taverns, bad food, poor clothing, the edge of poverty. Tunes played for bread and dances given for the sake of thrown coins. Avid faces and reaching hands, the demands on her flesh as much as her talent; the life she had once known and had almost forgotten. The stench had brought it back. The dirt of the settlement, the remembered faces, the need for money-always the need for money.

Five years in the city had made her soft. She said, bleakly, "There was a world I knew once; a small place with farms and animals and happy children. A dull place, I once thought, a world without excitement. I used to watch the ships land and long to ride with them. And then, one day, I did."

"An old tale," said Arbush. "I could tell one much the same."

"Would you go back if you could?"

To the world I left? No. A man has his pride. But there are other worlds on which a man could settle to end his days."