Can and Can'tankerous (13 page)

Finally Sarna understood. She smiled. “Quota, yes, I understand. You made your quota every day. Go on, go ahead.”

The little Yellow rubbed his wide hands together, as though emotion was pouring from his fingertips. “I work s’good, much hard, they say me, ‘Ayto,’—s’me name, Ayto—say, ’come. We got new jobs do you.’ It job in Tummeleyes…Tullmize…Tulla—” He so mangled the Earthie name for the Telemites, the ebony mountains, that for a moment Sarna felt compelled to chuckle. But the expression of utter terror on his face stopped her.

“What sort of job, Ayto?”

He pursed his thin lips, and his antennae quivered with suppressed emotions. “It be burying Six alive.”

Sarna’s blue eyes widened. The way he had been saying Six had indicated a proper noun. Now he said it as though it meant something human.

“The Six?” Sarna asked. “What are they?”

Ayto’s deep yellow face crumbled. He buried his moon-shaped head in his wide hands, and from the cup of his hands he murmured, “Can’t say. Musn’ say. Tay kill me, kill me now, follow me. Benin’ someth’ng back.”

“You mean someone’s been following you, trying to murder you?” Sarna asked, sitting up in bed. The covers fell from her body, and she felt strangely embarrassed before the Yellow; she clutched them back to herself once more.

Ayto’s head came up. The antennae were rigid, the face deep yellow, the ears erect and quivering. His face was a mask of despair. “Men fool Ayto. Tell go lich pick in Telemites. Go place, thing, no ’splain right, place can’t see, no. Nothin’. Go there pick lich, they give Ayto shovel, make bury Six. Big sound, bang, go place part ex-ex-ex- word they say, go bang…”

Sarna was having difficulty keeping up with the Terra-pidge. “You went someplace that you couldn’t see? A place that was invisible?”

Ayto shrugged; he did not know the word. “Place no see.” He whipped his hands flat between his legs, and then to his eyes, to indicate not even his secondary sight perceptors buried in his thighs had been able to see the place. It was invisible.

“It exploded?” Sarna asked.

He nodded again,

“What happened?”

“Six go out, run, gone gone. No! Thought he Six go, but he just Five runned. One buried still…me thinkings mix up, sorries. I find one sick in lich, take, run far. They know Ayto gone. Know got one of Six. Follow. I me hide here. Mayb’ don’t fine go away, leave Ayto good, take one of Six, leave in street. Me go.”

He was babbling with complete hysterical abandon. He had stolen one of those mysterious Six from the invisible stronghold of the Telemites, where he had been taken—presumably with the other Yellows—to bury them for some unnamed reason. Somehow, the stronghold had exploded in one section, not completely destroying the place, but freeing the Six. Ayto had found one of the Six—which he could not describe—unconscious nearby, and had compulsively scooped up the thing, and fled. Ever since, he had been followed, and he had escaped death several times.

Sarna listened carefully, not understanding
why
she was so caught up in the little martie’s tale, but feeling compassion for him. Had the Yellows not been the minority race on Mars, had the upper marties not treated them like scum, there would be no such lichen fields, no cause for this little Yellow to work there, and what had happened would not have happened. She listened, and wondered what she could do for him.

“Now me out, go, gone. Me take one of Six an’ t’row in street. They leave ’lone Ayto. Go. Gone.”

Sarna caught his pipe-slim wrist with her own warm hand and asked him, “Ayto, you have the thing with you, on you, here? One of the Six?”

Ayto nodded quickly, his little elf ears flapping, his antennae swirling in loops.

“May I see it, Ayto?”

Ayto looked at her, and the little deep yellow fork that was his tongue slipped between his thin lips. He reached into his pouch slowly, trust and hesitation in his eyes, and brought something out in his clenched fist.

He handed it to Sarna.

She looked for a moment, and her scream was loud enough to bring the four men from the alley—the four men who had been following Ayto for days.

They burst through the rear window of Sarna’s room, while her terrible scream rattled the walls; and they used their knives on Ayto while the yellow blood poured across the sheets, and Sarna ripped at her blonde hair and opened her mouth wide and could not scream again, for even the awful death was less horrible than what Ayto had given her.

The four men slashed Ayto’s throat, and ripped away half his left ear, and buried one knife in his chest. Then, as Sarna’s scream brought people running from other parts of the Red Dog House, the men looked about hurriedly, wildly, and swarmed back out through the shattered window.

In a moment they were gone, and Sarna sat up in the bed, covered with the martie Yellow’s blood, her body naked above the covers, her flesh sticky with gore, and she stared at the strange thing Ayto had held in his hand.

It had rolled away, at the edge of the covers, and instinctively she slapped it under the sheets. Somehow she knew no one could see it; in a moment of clarity amidst the madness, she knew what she had done and knew it was right.

Then she realized what it was under the sheets with her, and her screams rose again to the ceiling. Ayto sank to the floor, one bloody hand dragging the top blanket with him, and he lay there silently. The door was broken open, and the bouncer of the Red Dog House barreled in. But by then it was too late. The killers were gone, and Sarna was screaming over and over and over at the death of a worthless lower-caste Yellow…

And under the covers, one of the Six moved sluggishly, waking.

Chapter Two

She kept it in a small jewel box with lead insets around the sides. She had a sturdy lock put on the box, and three small holes drilled in the top for air and light. She kept the box with her as much of the time as was feasible, or beside her on the nightstand, when she was working.

She took a week’s rest. She thought about what had happened, and concluded a few things. Then she went back to work. She had to eat, and she had to live, no matter how she felt about what had occurred. When she entered the room for the first time after the incident, her face drained white, and for an instant she thought she might faint. But it passed, and she chided herself for being silly.

After all, the yellow stains were gone.

She closed the rebuilt door behind her and sat down in the chair, staring at the bed.

She had worried for a time that the four men might suspect Ayto had given her the Six thing (as she had come to think of it), but as the days passed, and she realized she was not being followed, and as nothing untoward happened, she came to feel safe. The four men, whoever they had been, had apparently assumed that Ayto had merely been after fun and games, while hiding out, and had told the imp prostitute nothing.

Yet she was keeping the box with her.

Was she going to do something about what had happened?

Perhaps, but what could she do?

Could she tell the Mars Central authorities? Hardly, if the invisible stronghold in the Telemites was real. For Central had set up the lichen farms, and more than likely had a hand in what was going on there. She was hardly naive enough to think that the Mars government was free of graft and corruption, but she knew when to mind her own business. It didn’t seem smart to run and tell Mars Central about its own troubles.

And any group affiliated with Mars Central that had killed the Yellow so callously would unerringly find her and wipe her out as quickly. What could she do? Did she want to do anything? Actually, to whom did she owe any allegiance? Why should she risk her life for a scummy Yellow?

If she was in trouble, would anyone help
her?
She knew the answer, but still she could not wipe the sight of Ayto’s wide, helpless eyes from her mind. And the way he had lain there, clutching the blanket, his blood all over everything—

She resolved, hesitantly, to do
something.

She did not know what.

But she was in a bind, and she knew it. The Six thing was in the box, and
she
had the box.

Sarna sat on the chair and stared at the bed—with its new darker-colored blankets—and her mind was a maelstrom of weariness and confusion. Something was happening out there in the Telemites, and she could not help wondering what it might be.

Whatever it was, it had done Ayto no good, and would probably do her as much. She wanted to stay out of this, but every time she fingered the little jewel box, and thought of what squirmed inside, she knew she could not escape the mystery of the Yellow’s death.

She had little time to worry about it, or to do anything about the Six thing. The next hour passed in deep moody speculation; all joy and serenity that had pulsed through her, despite her life and job, were now sand-bagged by the events of the past week. She sat in the chair for one hour, and during that hour the most frightening upheaval of Man on Mars was instigated, continued, and concluded.

In one hour, while Sarna sat and brooded, Terrans were being hauled from their lofty perch of assumed rulership over both classes of Martians, and were being thrust into bondage across the face of the red planet.

Mars Central now belonged to the marties, and Sarna was an alien on the planet.

It had been brewing for years. The marties didn’t like the Terrans. It was natural, and logical. Why should they? The Terrans, the imps, had come in boldly, constructed a hundred Domes over fruitful farmland, shoved the natives into lichen farms and stuffy, ill-heated, ill-lighted factories; they had forced the flower of young martie manhood into the fields and the factories, and done even worse by young Martian women. They had gone to work in canning and plasting factories, or in duplicates of the Red Dog House, all over the planet.

There had been no premeditation in any of this, merely the normal, natural instinct of the Earthman. A street, litter it; a population, employ it; a field, plow it under. It was normal, natural, and resulted in the overthrow.

While Sarna sat there, what had been gestating for years, silently, feelingly, holed up in the ancient labyrinths and in the lich fields, came to pass.

The overthrow.

The first Sarna realized that all was changed outside was when she heard the sound of staccato burp fire in the streets. Actually, it was the mopping-up details, but she was not to know that till later. With the marties working side-by-elbow with Earthmen (who were too stupid to realize their “native” friends despised them), it was with little difficulty that the overthrow was accomplished. In offices and factories across the planet, marties drew stilettos from their pouches and calmly buried them in the nearest Terran.

With the six-to-one ratio of marties to Terrans on the planet, there were stilettos to spare.

But for those who put up a fight, or got away, or had been out of reach of a blade, the marties broke forth concealed burp guns and acid-sprayers, and combed the city from one end to the other. Each Dome had its fifth column, each Dome its saboteurs—its mortality rate.

In the matter of one hour, the overthrow of the Earthmen had been completed. While Sarna sat brooding…

She heard the burp gun fire in the street, and went to the boarded-up window. Through a chink in the boards, she saw three plastic-armored marties carrying burp guns, stalking methodically through the street, firing into windows and doorways.

There was no sound from the Red Dog House. She went to the door and opened it a crack, the special way, back on its hinges.

It was all that saved her.

Three girls of the house, marties, had been waiting with blades drawn—waiting for her to come out, so they could add her to the other Terran dead heaped in the square. They had liked her, respected her, lived and worked with her—but she was an imp.

The knives flashed down…where Sarna should have been. But the door had opened in the opposite direction, and the knives thrust into wood instead of flesh. Sarna pulled the door closed quickly. What was happening? Why had the girls tried to kill her? Who were these upper marties in the street, firing into buildings? Was the Dome going mad?

She had no time to worry about it. A burst of burp fire splintered the wooden boards behind her, and she threw herself to the floor. Outside the door she heard the three martie whores yelling things at one another in Upper Mart, and then one of them was running down the corridor.

Sarna lay there quivering, feeling the lump of the jewel box in her crotch-bag, and wondering what madness was afoot now. Was this tied up with the Six? The lump at her groin was too prominent. She withdrew the tiny box and secreted it in the waistband of her skirt.

She heard one of the girls talking to the marties in the alley who had fired through her window. It was apparent what was happening. The martie prostitute was telling them there was someone inside they should kill. She heard raucous martie laughter, and it was followed by the crack of a burp gun butt against the boards of the window. She saw a crack appear in the boards, and they shivered. Another crack, and one of the boards splintered at the end. Still another, and one board flew free of the window, crashed to the floor. Through the slit where the board had been she could see the yellow face of a martie, wearing battle armor. The face was flowing with lust. She pulled herself out of the line of sight from the crack in the boards and reached up to her dressing table. Her hand closed around a long nail file.

The marties outside were still shouting and laughing and smashing at the window boards. Then Sarna heard a sharp crack as one of the soldiers threw his entire weight against the boards. Two slabs of wood shattered completely in the middle, and the martie came through without direction or control. He fell to the floor a few feet from her, and Sarna leaped on him.

She was trapped—two whores with knives outside one door, and soldiers outside the window. She did not know what had happened out there, but whatever it was, they wanted to kill her.

She defended herself.