“I like you.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t want me to steal for you. Everyone I knew, except my father, thought that the only point of my existence was to be their artist. You make no such demands on me. So I like you.”
“Um.” It still wasn’t quite satisfactory. He said: “I like you, too, Mara. Good-night.” And turned over to go to sleep. But he couldn’t sleep for a long while. He kept thinking about how he liked Mara.
In the morning they reached a point on the glacier from which they could see Fami. Rather, could have seen it had it been there to see. George, through his telescope, searched the region indicated by Mara, and could discern no trace of the ledge. The outflanking arm of the glacier had swept over it and now hung, like a huge, torn, white lace drape, for a kilo or more down the sheer precipice.
“Leep said that would happen soon,” said Mara, unperturbed.
“Then more of a fool he is for staying there,” said George, feeling vindictive through frustration. “He and his ragbooks will have to stay there for ever now. One small pick isn’t enough to shift that weight of ice. I guess the war will just have to remain a mystery.”
He was furious at the waste of time and effort, dismayed by the prospect of a long, cold, slow climb down the glacier so soon—to go where? Where was the white circle G.H.Q.? How could he get a line on it now?
While he wasted still more time, in a clouded fury, kicking childishly at the side of an ice-step and swearing aloud, Mara accepted and handled the situation in her calm, mature way. She made a wide, flat cushion of the parachute. Then she seized the heavy provision box and shoved it off down the glacier. George grabbed at it and missed. It gathered momentum down that fearsome slope, and soon vanished with the speed of a bullet.
He switched his anger to her.
“Why in hell did you do that?”
She sat deliberately on the silken cushion, clinging to the step with one hand and patting the space beside her with the other, motioning him to join her. Then, smiling faintly, she pointed the way the box had gone. He got it, together with a tremor of apprehension. It hadn’t crossed her mind to waste time in climbing down the glacier. She’d go the way she went before and she expected him to ride with her. For a moment he contemplated talking her out of it. Then his fear was killed by the greater fear of her surprise and contempt. Carefully, he crawled to her side.
“Sure, let’s go. I always had a yen to shoot Niagara.”
They slid together, flat on their backs on the cushion, for a short way. Then it felt as though they were no longer sliding, but falling. He glimpsed high ramparts on either side sawing rapidly, actively, at the clouds. His stomach seemed to be climbing up into his chest. The airflow chilled his cheeks. He realized there was no way of applying the brakes, and felt rather sick. He found himself clinging more tightly to Mara than to the cushion material. He shut his eyes and waited for it to end.
After a kind of lifetime, it ended—abruptly.
A wall of freezing cold water came rumbling down over his feet and buried him. He choked and spluttered and thrashed around. He’d lost all sense of direction, and the water seemed to be poking icicles into his eyes, ears, and nostrils. Then, somehow, he discovered himself standing breast-deep, in the lake gasping like a landed fish.
Mara, neck-deep, was near-by, pushing her wet hair back. The cap of her Teleo had been washed off. Her solemn face split suddenly into a grin when she saw him. He tried to speak but could only continue to gasp—the water was paralyzingly cold. He beckoned her to follow, and floundered to the shore. When he looked back, she was still out there, walking slowly around, seeming to feel about with her feet.
Then suddenly she did a little duck-dive and disappeared. He waited over half a minute and she didn’t reappear. Half frightened, half angry, he started sloshing out towards the spot. Then she bobbed up, metres nearer the shore, bending, and dragging something out of the shallows. It was the provision box. He went to help her.
“You c-cold-blooded little f-fish.” His teeth were chattering. She didn’t understand. When they were ashore, he fixed her a new cap from the waterproof satchel. But before she dried off, she wanted to go back in the water and recover the parachute.
“Leave it there, darn you,” he said. “The friction will have worn it full of holes. Anyhow, it’s saturated—it’ll weigh a ton now. I’ll give you a brand-new one when we reach the ship.”
The promise made her so happy that her face became radiant. The wet frock clung to the curves of her form. A sudden hunger came upon him. He caught hold of her, pressed her to him, kissed her roughly, almost brutally. She responded fiercely.
Between kisses he babbled more promises, mostly foolish. “You shall have the best Paris can offer… Dresses of silk and coats of fur… Jewels and such things as you have never dreamed of…”
She giggled like a child and caressed him like a woman. The shells of her ancestors lay all around them, long past love, or memory, or the promises of life.
In the afternoon, they struck off in a new direction. Instead of returning down the valleys to the known emptiness of the plain, they toiled over the hills to the west, seeking a viewpoint. They found it on one crest, and for a space they stood hand in hand surveying the panorama. Then George’s grip tightened. He pointed.
In a place of rocks and cliffs there stood an isolated pinnacle. Unlike the other stone spikes, vegetation clung to its nearly perpendicular sides. It dominated an apparently artificially leveled area, in which the traces of a pattern showed through the undergrowth. And in which, also, there was a long box of a house, dun-brown, flat-roofed, many-windowed, with a beetling portico of disproportionate size.
“Beneath the verdant tower… The house of bricks, a box of tricks,” said George, slowly. Was it mere chance they’d stumbled on the house described in Leep’s verse? Or had Leep really glimpsed a future event?
“Come on, Mara,” he said. “Let’s see if Senilde is at home today.”
She nodded, smiling, and plunged gaily down the hill with him.
“This,” said George, when they reached it, “was once a cultivated garden.”
She said, “Yes,” and let her gaze rove over the mold-encrusted stone seats, the weed-grown paths, the stagnant ornamental ponds, and the wilderness which was choking them all. At the far end, the house stood as silent as the towering rock-pinnacle behind it. She saw that the greenness of the latter was due to a wide-leafed creeper swarming over it. But the house and its ridiculous portico were free from any such green parasites.
George noticed that Mara was getting two steps ahead of him up the main driveway to the house. But she hadn’t quickened her pace: he’d slowed his through caution. His pride made him catch up.
They reached a big, wrought-metal fountain. It was covered with verdigris and its basin was empty and bone-dry. He was surprised by the similarity of terrestrial and Venusian ideas of landscape gardening. He thought: this could be a corner of Versailles after centuries of neglect.
Then, without warning, the fountain squirted a wavering umbrella of dirty water. It spread well beyond the circumference of the basin and soaked them from head to foot.
George thought he heard a thin, high laugh from the direction of the house. He glowered as he wiped his face. He loathed being made a fool of. Mara just giggled.
“There’s a practical joker around,” George growled. “When I’m through with him, he won’t be quite so practical.”
The water was sour and evil-smelling. His feet squelched in his shoes. There was a solid stone seat just off the driveway. George sat on it with the intention of removing his shoes. The seat sank silently and smoothly into the earth and he was flat on his back with his feet in the air.