Mara and Dann. Doris Lessing

      Next morning they each had a mouthful of water. The others had taken to staring at the two water cans hanging there on the pole, and Dann put all the water they had left into one can, which they hung on the pole, and the other can went into Mara’s sack. As they walked, the water slopped around in the can, and the people ahead kept glancing around to look at the enticing can. Both knew they would soon be attacked for the water, but at midday there appeared a skimmer on the crest of a rise, and around it were a group of ten youths, armed with knives and sharpened staves. The travellers moved off the road to keep well clear, but Dann signalled to her to hang back until the others had gone out of sight over the rise. Then he went up to the group, and the youth who seemed to be the leader let out a shout, and in a moment Dann and he were hugging each other, talking and hugging again. Of course: Dann had said he had worked with skimmers. Now the two men went off a little way and conferred. Dann came back to take the bag of coins from her. He counted out coins into this new – or old – friend’s hand. Dann motioned to her: Get in. This little machine was smaller than the one they had seen crash and burn. It had four seats. It was like a grasshopper or a cricket. Dann got into the pilot’s seat. Ahead the road dipped down in a long but steep slope to a string of pits that had once been waterholes, and rose up again to the next crest. At the bottom the group of walkers, who probably had not even noticed that Dann and Mara had not kept up, were plodding heavily on. The youths pushed the machine, which did not attempt to fly but only rolled down the slope, getting up a considerable speed. The youths pushed until they could not keep up, then went back to their station on the crest of the rise. Dann’s friend waved at the two, and then the others did too. Because the machine was making no noise, with its engines silent, it was only at the last moment the travellers knew it was there, and they jumped off the road, cursing and shaking their fists; and when they saw Mara and Dann in it, they ran forward to grab it, but the skimmer was going too fast by then. The impetus from the long run down got them to the top of the next rise, where another group of youths stopped it. Mara and Dann got out; Dann conferred with these youths, saying that he had paid for eight skimmers. It was clear they were not altogether happy with this, but they allowed the two to transfer to the next waiting machine. The one they had come this far on, would return with one of these youths as pilot.

      Again, this group pushed them off, down another and this time steeper decline, and again the skimmer reached the top of the next rise, and was brought to a stop by another gang of youths. This was a relay service, using skimmers whose engines no longer worked, for travellers who still had the means to pay. How did they live, then, these bands of young men, each with their skimmer? – but Mara knew the answer. They lived by robbing travellers – how else? They took food, and water, and anything else they fancied – and Mara wondered for how many stages of this shuttle the authority of that first youth, Dann’s friend, would command respect. Soon, she knew. When this skimmer reached the third rise, the youths there demanded more payment. Dann still had a little clutch of the coins as a reserve, and he wasn’t going to part with them. And the gold coins were each many times too much. For the ride from the third stop to the fourth Dann paid one of the brown garments, which had the young men exclaiming and marvelling so much they took little notice when Dann and Mara got into the skimmer, and had to be summoned by a shout from Dann. Down they went, and up they went. All this part of the landscape was a system of valleys between crests, each ride from ridge to ridge about two miles. At the fifth stop they parted with another brown tunic. There were now four left. Dann said that the youths were getting far more than they deserved, for these garments earned in the markets to the east a small fortune each. What markets, what do you mean, the East? – Mara wanted to ask, but they were in the noisy machine. At the sixth stop the youths wanted the two to turn out everything they had in their sacks. They were not impressed with the name of Dann’s friend, nor that he had once been one of them. In the end they did not insist on their opening the sacks, but accepted the water can, which, again, they found such a wonder that it was only after some time Mara and Dann were pushed off from the ridge. This was a long, deep descent, and the machine rocked because of the speed, and Mara held on while the landscape rushed past on either side: the same old brownish grass, the same dead or dying trees. At the seventh stop the atmosphere was more friendly, for no reason they could see, and the youths were satisfied with a couple of the food fruits – the last. And now the last long dip down and then up, and at the top the youths were truculent and surrounded the couple with a circle of staves and knives and angry, threatening faces. There had been no travellers through that day, nor the day before, they said. The stations farther back grabbed all the good things – and now what were they going to be given? To say that the two had paid for this last stage would be asking for more trouble. These youths wanted food. There was no food. Then they said they would take the can and its water. They actually had taken it off the pole when Mara piped up, ‘There isn’t enough there to give you even a sip each, but it’s life and death to us.’ At this they forgot Dann and turned on her, jeering and laughing. ‘Listen to the kid.’ ‘What a pipsqueak.’ ‘He’s got a loud voice for such a little squit.’ And so on. They began jostling and shoving her – and pushed Dann aside when he tried to protect her. Then one said, ‘Oh leave him,’ and they all stood back. And then, just at the right moment, when the youths were wondering what to try next, Dann said, ‘I’ve got an axe.’ Now, axes were rare and precious. ‘Show us,’ cried the youths, and when Dann produced the axe were silent because of it. It was very old: the man Dann had got it off had said it was the usual ‘thousands of years old,’ made of a dark, gleaming stone, and with an edge that left blood on the thumb of the youth who tried it. It was, like the gold pieces when they were allowed to see the light of day, made with a craft and a care and a knowledge that no one knew how to match. It was worth – well, it was worth Mara and Dann’s lives.

      The young men no longer cared about the two, and hardly noticed when they set off down the long descent. They were handling the axe, silent with awe of it.

      The laborious walking down, with ahead of them a long ascent, told the two just how much the skimmers had saved them every day. The distance covered in the skimmers amounted to two or three days of the slow walking that was all the travellers could manage now, being so exhausted. Mara and Dann were in better shape than most of the others because they had had more water and a little food, but they were learning today that they were reaching the end of their strength. Then Dann said, ‘Wait, wait, we’re going to see something soon – I think. It was still running when I came down to get you.’ And as he spoke there appeared in the sky ahead a machine that Mara remembered: it was a sky skimmer, an old machine, and as it settled on the road it was rattling and shaking and roaring as if it might collapse there and then. Out stepped the pilot, a person in bright blue clothes, not a tunic or a robe but close fitting trousers and top, a vision of cleanness and neatness. It was a woman, Mara decided after her eyes had cleared from the surprise and shock of seeing this being from another kind of world. Her yellow hair was smooth and glossy, her skin shone, and she smiled at them.

      Dann walked straight up to her holding out the gold coin, as he did before, keeping an edge tight between his fingers. ‘How far?’ he asked.

      Before examining it she said, ‘I am Felice. Who are you?’

      Dann did not reply, intent on the transaction; but Mara said, ‘Dann and Maro, from the Rock Village.’

      ‘You must be the last, then.’

      And then she bent, bit the coin, while Dann still held tight, straightened and said, ‘It’s genuine, all right. I don’t see one of these very often.’ She waited, but Dann said nothing, and she said, ‘Well, ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies.’

      ‘I found it,’ said Dann.

      ‘Of course you did.’ And she showed she was waiting for some tale by leaning there against her machine, all her very white teeth on show, and her eyes hard, but amused.

      ‘I didn’t kill anyone for it,’ said Dann, angry.

      ‘I know he didn’t,’ Mara came in, and this bright, shining creature transferred her attention to Mara. ‘He’s my brother,’ she said.

      ‘So I can see.’

      ‘That money was given to me by the woman who took us in when we were little