Another voice said: “Human keep cave law in dark. No cave law in light. Human kill come light.”
“Human no kill come light,” said Webb.
“All human kill,” said one of the things. “Human kill for fur. Human kill for food. We fur. We food.”
“This human never kill,” said Webb. “This human friend.”
“Friend?” one of them asked. “We not know friend. Explain friend.”
Webb didn’t try. There was no use, he knew. They could not understand the word. It was foreign to this wilderness.
At last he asked: “Rocks here?”
One of the voices answered: “Rocks in cave. Human want rocks?”
“Pile in cave mouth,” said Webb. “No killer get in.”
They digested that for a while. Finally one of them spoke up: “Rock good.”
They brought rocks and stones and, with Webb helping them, wedged the cave mouth tight.
It was too dark to see the things, but they brushed against him as they worked and some of them were soft and furry and others had hides like crocodiles, that tore his skin as he brushed against them. And there was one that was soft and pulpy and gave him the creeps.
He settled down in one corner of the cave with his sleeping bag between his body and the wall. He would have liked to crawl into it, but that would have meant unpacking and if he unpacked his supplies, he knew, there’d be none come morning.
Perhaps, he reasoned, the body heat of all the things in here will keep the cave from getting too cold. Cold, yes, but not too cold for human life. It was, he knew, a gamble at best.
Sleep at night in friendship, kill one another and flee from one another with the coming of the dawn. Law, they called it. Cave law. Here was one for the books, here was something that was not even hinted at in all the archaeological tomes that he had ever read.
And he had read them all. There was something here on Mars that fascinated him. A mystery and a loneliness, an emptiness and a retrogression that haunted him and finally sent him out to try to pierce some of that mystery, to try to hunt for the reason for that retrogression, to essay to measure the greatness of the culture that in some far dim period had come tumbling down.
There had been some great work done along that line. Axelson with his scholarly investigation of the symbolic water jugs and Mason’s sometimes fumbling attempt to trace the great migrations. Then there was Smith, who had traveled the barren world for years jotting down the windblown stories whispered by the little degenerating things about an ancient greatness and a golden past. Myths, most of them, of course, but some place, somewhere lay the answer to the origin of the myths. Folklore does not leap full-blown from the mind; it starts with a fact and that fact is added to and the two facts are distorted and you have a myth. But at the bottom, back of all of it, is the starting point of fact.
So it was, so it must be with the myth that told about the great and glowing city that had stood above all other things of Mars…a city that was known to the far ends of the planet.
A place of culture, Webb told himself, a place where all the achievements and all the dreams and every aspiration of the once-great planet would have come together.
And yet, in more than a hundred years of hunting and of digging, Earth’s archaeologists had found no trace of any city, let alone that city of all cities. Kitchen middens and burial places and wretched huddling places where broken remnants of the great people had lived for a time…there were plenty of these. But no great city.
It must be somewhere, Webb was convinced. That myth could not lie, for it was told too often at too many different places by too many different animals that had once been people.
Mars fascinated me, he thought, and it still fascinates me, but now it will be the death of me…for there’s death in its fascination. Death in the lonely stretches and death waiting on the buttes. Death in this cave, too, for they may kill me come the morning to prevent me killing them; they may keep their truce of the night just long enough to make an end of me.
The law of the cave? Some holdover from the ancient day, some memory of a now forgotten brotherhood? Or a device necessitated by the evil days that had come when the brotherhood had broken?
He laid his head back against the rock and closed his eyes and thought…if they kill me, they kill me, but I will not kill them. For there has been too much human killing on the planet Mars. I will repay part of the debt at least. I will not kill the ones who took me in.
He remembered himself creeping along the ledge outside the cave, debating whether he should have a look first or stick in the muzzle of his gun and sweep the cave as a simple way of being sure there would be nothing there to harm him.
I did not know, he said. I did not know.
A soft furry body brushed against him and a voice spoke to him.
“Friend means no hurt? Friend means no kill?”
“No hurt,” said Webb. “No kill.”
“You saw six?” the voice asked.
Webb jerked from the wall and sat very still.
“You saw six?” the voice was insistent.
“I saw six,” said Webb.
“When?”
“One sun.”
“Where six?”
“Canyon mouth,” said Webb. “Wait at canyon mouth.”
“You hunt Seven?”
“No,” said Webb. “I go home.”
“Other humans?”
“They north,” said Webb. “They hunt Seven north.”
“They kill Seven?”
“Catch Seven,” said Webb. “Take Seven to six. See city.”
“Six promise?”
“Six promise,” said Webb.
“You good human. You friend human. You no kill Seven.”
“No kill,” insisted Webb.
“All humans kill. Kill Seven sure. Seven good fur. Much pay. Many Sevens die for human.”
“Law says no kill,” declared Webb. “Human law says Seven friend. No kill friend.”
“Law? Like cave law?”
“Like cave law,” said Webb.
“You good friend of Seven?”
“Good friend of all,” said Webb.
“I Seven,” said the voice.
Webb sat quietly and let the numbness clear out of his brain.
“Seven,” he finally said. “You go canyon mouth. Find six. They wait. Human friend glad.”
“Human friend want city,” said the creature. “Seven friend to human. Human find Seven. Human see city. Six promise.”
Webb almost laughed aloud in bitterness. Here, at last, the chance that he had hoped might come. Here, at last, the thing that he had wanted, the thing he had come to Mars to do. And he couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t do it.
“Human no go,” he said. “Human die. No food. No water. Human die.”
“We care for human,” Seven told him. “No friend human before. All kill humans. Friend human come. We care for it.”
Webb was silent for a while, thinking.
Then he asked: “You give human food? You find human water?”
“Take care,” said Seven.
“How Seven know I saw six?”
“Human tell. Human think. Seven know.”
So that was it…telepathy. Some vestige of a former power, some attribute of a magnificent culture, not quite forgotten yet. How many of the other creatures in this cave would have it, too?
“Human go with Seven?” Seven asked.
“Human go,” said Webb.
He might as well, he told himself. Going east, back toward the settlements, was no solution to his problem. He knew he’d never reach the settlements. His food would run out. His water would run out. Some beast would catch him and make a meal of him. He didn’t have a chance.
Going with the little creature that stood beside him in the darkness of the cave, he might have a chance. Not too good a chance, perhaps, but at least a chance. There would be food and water…or at least a chance of food and water. There would be another helping him to watch for the sudden death that roamed the wilderness. Another one to warn him, to help him recognize the danger.