Mother Aegypt and Other Stories Part 4

"So you're a skeptic," said Spoke, as though the word had a bad taste.

"I'm a sane man," said Mallet. "And proud of it, brother."

"I did see something I couldn't explain, once, though," said Smith thoughtfully.

"I've seen-" began Mallet.

Spoke made a strangling noise and jumped to his feet. He pointed at the statue.

"It turned its head!" he cried.

"No, it didn't," said Mallet wearily, tasting his soup. Smith turned to look, and went a little pale.

"It is facing the other way now," he said.

"It's just your imagination," said Mallet.

"No, I'm sure-"

"I saw it move!" said Spoke. "Are you both crazy? Look at it!"

"It looks the same to me," said Mallet. "But if it did move-well, it's sitting on an uneven surface, right? And we're outdoors. The wind could have s.h.i.+fted it."

"It's too heavy for the wind to s.h.i.+ft," said Smith.

"Then, it didn't move," said Mallet with finality. "And if you think you saw it move, then your eyes were playing tricks on you, because statues don't move."

"Look at it," said Smith. "I'm not joking, Mallet."

Mallet turned and looked. "I didn't notice which way it was facing before. It might have been facing that way, for all I know. We're dead-tired, we haven't eaten in hours, and we breathed in a lot of smoke.

How can we trust what we see?"

Smith looked from Mallet to the statue, shook his head, and leaned forward to stir his soup. Spoke backed away a few paces, watching the statue in silence. After a long moment he sat down again, and without taking his eyes off the statue reached for his helmet. It was hot, and he drew back his hand with a cry of pain.

"Uh-oh! Another bad omen," said Mallet.

"Just shut up," said Spoke.

Smith slipped out of his jacket and used it to lift his helmet from the fire, gingerly, and propped the helmet between his boots as he dug in his pack for a tin cup. He dipped out some of the soup and blew on it to cool it. Mallet followed his example. Spoke did not. The statue watched them all without comment, as the light danced on its golden face.

"Aren't you going to eat?" Smith inquired of Spoke.

"Not yet," said Spoke.

"Can we have your soup, then?" asked Mallet.

"Go ahead," said Spoke.

"Oh, come on!" said Smith. "You can't be so scared of that thing you don't eat. That's stupid."

"Let him suit himself," said Mallet, slurping his portion.

"I'll have it later, then," said Spoke. Mallet looked sidelong at Smith.

"So," he said, "How'll we divide watches?"

"I'll take first watch," said Spoke.

"All right," said Mallet slyly. "That all right with you, Smith?"

"Fine," said Smith. He glanced over at the statue.

They finished their soup, tilting the helmets to get out the bits that hadn't dissolved, and pulled blankets out of their packs.

"I'm dead tired," said Mallet. "Aren't you, Smith?"

"Too b.l.o.o.d.y right I am," Smith replied. He felt about on the rock with his hands, trying to find a place where its b.u.mps and hollows roughly corresponded with his own. Giving up at last, he wrapped himself in his blanket and settled down. Mallet spread his blanket out, and opened Spoke's pack.

"I'll just borrow your blanket, then, Spoke, since you'll be sitting up," he said. "You won't mind, eh?"

"No, I won't mind," said Spoke.

Mallet fed a couple of sticks into the fire. He stretched out beside it. Smith s.h.i.+fted to make room for him, glancing one more time at the statue. It did not seem to have moved, but he couldn't be sure.

An hour went by. Tired as he was, Smith couldn't drop off. The stone on which he lay seemed to suck all the heat from his body As he was debating whether to get up and move closer to the fire, he felt Mallet sit up abruptly.

"Drop that right now," said Mallet. Smith rolled over and saw Spoke, backing away from the fire, clutching the statue in his arms.

"I'm saving all our lives," said Spoke. "I'm taking this back."

"Are you crazy?" Smith said. "The Briscians will cut you to pieces!"

"You idiot, that's our retirement pay," said Mallet, who had thrown the blanket aside and scrambled to his feet. He was holding a spike-axe in his hand. "I knew you were going to do something stupid. Give it here!"

"I-" said Spoke, but Mallet lunged forward and grabbed the statue by one raised arm, the one bearing a tiny dagger.

"Give it here!"

"No!"

And it seemed to Smith, as he stared at them, that the golden figure writhed like a living thing between them, turned its s.h.i.+ning body, and Spoke must have seen it too because he gasped and let go.

Mallet pulled it away from him.

"I'll tell you what," he said, "I'll fix your holy saint right now. I'll pound the d.a.m.n thing into pieces right here. The goldsmiths won't care-"

He knelt and set the statue on the rock, preparing to hit it with his spike- axe, but Spoke leaped forward.

"You mustn't-"

Mallet turned and swung at him in exasperation, hitting him squarely between the eves with the spike end of the weapon. Spoke halted where he was, staring, and Smith sat bolt upright.

"Holy G.o.ds, what've you done?"

"s.h.i.+t," said Mallet. He pushed at Spoke, who toppled backward on his heels and fell, smacking his head on the rock, carrying with him Mallet's spike-axe that was firmly stuck in his skull.

"I didn't mean to do that," said Mallet, breathing hard.

"You killed him," said Smith in horror.

"I didn't even hit him that hard," said Mallet. "Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d! If he hadn't been so superst.i.tious-"

"Spoke!" Smith crawled to his side. He pulled the axe free; slow blood rose from the neat squared hole, ran down into Spoke's left eye.

"It was his own fault," said Mallet. "You saw."

"Well, he's dead, whoever's fault it was," said Smith. He dropped the weapon in disgust. "What do we do now?"

"Pitch him over the edge," said Mallet, nodding at the falls. "I'm not sleeping by a corpse."

"That, without even saving a prayer?" demanded Smith. "You can't be afraid his ghost is going to come make faces at you!"

"Of course I don't believe in ghosts!" said Mallet. "But it's stupid to camp by dead meat in a forest.

The smell will attract wolves. Lions. Who knows?"

Smith swore at him. He dragged the body to the edge of the rock and arranged its limbs in a less undignified way. After searching through the pockets, he crossed the hands on its chest and stood with head bowed, murmuring a prayer under his breath.

"As though that'll help him," muttered Mallet. "That's what got him killed, you know. That kind of thinking. And he'd have died anyway, if he'd gone back to the city. The Briscians would have liked him, and not quickly either. As it was, he died in a split-second. Didn't he?"

Smith glared at him but did not miss a word of his prayer. When he had finished, he nudged the body forward with his boot, over the edge, and it rolled from the firelight and dropped, vanished into the shadow. A moment later, from far below, he heard a smack and winced, hoping the body had landed in the water at least.

He walked back to the fire and sat down across from Mallet. The statue lay still where Mallet had dropped it, smiling up at the forest canopy and the few stars.

"Well, that's done it for me sleeping here tonight," Smith said. "TU keep watch and you can sleep, or we can both push on."

"Maybe it'd be wisest to go," Mallet agreed. He looked at the statue again and cleared his throat.

"But it would still be a good idea to break the d.a.m.n thing up, don't you agree? That way we can split the weight. You'll get your share, I'll get mine, and if we decide to go our separate ways, well, the loot's already divided. You can have one of the eyes. I'll take the other."

"Whatever you say," Smith replied curtly "I think they must be aquamarines," said Mallet, reaching for his spike- axe. "The Tyrant at Deliantiba buys them for his mistress, did you know? Has a standing offer out for good ones. Maybe TU go there."

He put his hand down to steady the image before he struck.

There was a flash of gold, a glint in the firelight, and Mallet howled and drew his hand back. Smith jumped to his feet.

"It stabbed you!"

"No, it didn't," said Mallet, clutching his hand. "A coal popped in the fire, that's all. A spark jumped."

"I saw its arm move! It stabbed you with that little dagger!"

"Don't be stupid," said Mallet, lifting his hand to his mouth. He sucked the flesh at the base of his thumb. Smith stared at him a moment, and then grabbed for Mallet's hand. Mallet ducked away, rolling over.

"Let it alone!" he said, putting his hand inside his s.h.i.+rt, but Smith glimpsed the bright blood-bead.

"That's not a burn, that's a wound," he said. "It could be poisoned! What's the matter with you?"

"There's nothing the matter with me," said Mallet, evening his breath. "But I'll tell you what's wrong with you. It's the power of suggestion, isn't it? You and Spoke, the pair of you, you were raised to buy into everything the priests said. So all that, that superst.i.tious horses.h.i.+t preys on your minds. See? Even though you know better now. Here we are in the dark in the woods, and we've been seeing death all day, and-wouldn't you think Spoke'd have had more sense than to start scaring himself? And you?"

"Look, I know what I saw," said Smith.

"No; you know what you think you saw," said Mallet doggedly. "It's all in your mind. You're so worked up, after what happened, that your brain's making ghosts out of everything. The mind does that.

It's not reliable."

"Well, your burn is bleeding through your s.h.i.+rt," said Smith.

"No," said Mallet, with elaborate patience, "You only think you see blood."

"Oh, you jacka.s.s," said Smith, and went back to his side of the fire, but he gave the statue a wide berth.

There was a long moment of silence. Mallet stared into the fire.

"Or I'll tell you what else it might be," he said at last. "There was an earthquake today, right? And we're still getting aftershocks. Well, that could be affecting our minds too. Making us hallucinate.

Something in the rocks maybe, quartz veins clas.h.i.+ng together and all. I've heard it makes animals go crazy h.e.l.l, aren't we sitting on a big rock? So there you are."

He was sweating, and his face had gone pale under the soot and dust of the day.

Smith spoke in as reasonable a voice as he could.

"I'm not arguing with you," he said. "I don't believe in omens any more than you do, and I don't think the saint in Spoke's village worked miracles. I'm just saying there might be something going on we don't understand."

"No!" said Mallet. "Don't you see that the minute you believe in craziness like this, you open the door and let in the monsters? Give in this much and you'll believe anything. What you can see with your own eyes is all there is, man."

"But you just got through telling me I couldn't trust my eyes," said Smith. "Or my mind. And if we can't believe our senses, then how can we perceive anything? There might really be fairies in the flowers.

How would we know?"

"The point is," said Mallet, with some difficulty, "the point is, everything can be explained. All right?

Real things can be measured with calipers. We live in a rational world."

Smith stared at him. "You're a soldier" he said. "How the h.e.l.l can you think we live in a rational world?"

Mallet just gazed at the fire. He sighed, and his hand dropped down on his lap. Smith saw clearly the dried blood, the livid swelling that had spread up his arm.