Free HARM by Brian W. Aldiss Page B

of hammering at her door to rouse her. She opened the door only a crack, to show them she had a cudgel in her hand, and to swear at them.
    “You’ve already got me into trouble, you devil,” she told Fremant, who had dismounted. “Some brutes from the Center was round here asking all about you. Said I should not have lodged you. I’m in fear of my life, I am.”
    “Look, Bellamia, we’re in great haste. Here’s the money I owe you.”
    He held the money out to her.
    “Money’s no good to me if my throat’s cut, is it now?” She pulled her door wide open. “Here, take me with you, wherever you’re going. I’ll cook for the lot of you.”
    “It means trouble to take a woman with us,” said Ragundy, the bald youth.
    “I’ll give you trouble if you trouble me,” she told him.
    Bellamia had been sleeping in her clothes and now appeared ready to leave immediately.
    “What about the parrot?” Fremant asked.
    “To hell with the parrot,” she replied. “I’ll let it go free.”
    After a short argument, Essanits ordered her to mount his horse behind him and to hold tight. He hauled her into position. Then they were off.
             
    T HE CONTINENT ON THE EDGE of which Stygia City perched had long ago tipped toward the ocean. Thus, leaving Stygia City to travel inland entailed a steady climb upward—not exactly steep at first, but unremitting: unremitting until the horsemen came, on the second day, to a veritable hill, which marked the beginning of more broken terrain, and a different kind of land.
    “Everyone dismount,” Essanits ordered. He helped Bellamia down from his horse.
    The others also dismounted, looking about them rather uncertainly.
    “We must offer thanks to God for keeping us in safety so far.”
    “God?” exclaimed Ragundy. “We left God behind long since.”
    “Jesus Christ visited this planet only for a short while, leaving never to return. From that absence stem many of our problems,” Essanits declared. He lifted his eyes. “We offer thanks to God, if he is listening, for our safety so far, and for our arrival in a territory where we are free of the pollutions of Stygia City. Keep us steadfast and may we enter more fully into your mind. Amen.”
    Embarrassed, Fremant and Ragundy muttered their own amens in response.
    Ragundy asked if God’s mind included women. To which Essanits replied patiently, “You will always try to vex me, Ragundy. You voice your own troubled character. When you tire of doing so, you will move nearer to God and feel happier. I pray for that day.”
    Bellamia was more strident. “Just supposing there was a god, he’d be more likely to include me than a little dottle like you!”
    “Ah, shut up, the pair of you,” said Oniversin.
    “We must all hold our tongues,” said Essanits, “in the hope that good sense may thereby govern our lips.”
    Fremant asked what they were going to do now.
    Wordlessly, Essanits flung up an arm and pointed into the hills.
    They mounted their horses, which had been grazing, and headed onward again.
    Now there was a faint trail, leading among boulders. Some boulders were the size of houses. Many had streaks of colored clay in them, yellow zigzags through the rock. At the feet of these boulders grew various plants. Some were in bloom, bearing modest black-and-white petals. Bellamia wanted to dismount to pick some but Essanits would not stop.
    As the horses picked their way along, small wingless birdlike insects flitted among the boulders, clucking their disgust at human intrusion.
    On the following day, they came on a more open space, where the ground was level. Ahead of them lay a small hill. On the hill, and below it, stood a scatter of houses.
    “Yonder is Haven,” said Essanits, “where we shall be favorably received.”
    It was as he said. Nearer the houses, they dismounted so as not to appear formidable to a small group of people who were coming to greet them.
    The greetings were serious and unsmiling but