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16th Side: A Robbery

From out of the surrounding hills came a ringing silence that was only deepened by the plodding of the pack ponies’ hooves on the turf and the flirting of their tails against their sides. Above, the sky was a clear pale blue, but the breeze was strong.

There were four members of the Geological Survey Team: Malc, Tim, Dave and Caro. They’d left the 21st that morning at eight, coming through the Tube to the 16th, where the plan was to spend four days. None of them had ever been so far from home before, and they often looked back at the Tube, their only way back.

It was when they lost sight of the Tube among the folds of the hills that trouble arrived.

Three horses, with riders, picked their way down the hillside toward them. The horses were all black and thickset and shaggy, with manes and tails hanging almost to the ground. The riders’ helmets had been blackened with soot and grease, to keep them from rust, or covered with sheepskin so they looked like hats. Their other clothes were all buffs and browns, blending into the buffs, browns and greens all around them. Long leather riding boots rose over their knees. On they came with a clumping of hooves and a jangling of harness, carrying eight-foot-long lances with ease.

“It’s all right,” Malc said. “Don’t worry. They’re just coming to check us out.”

“There’s others,” Caro said. There were men on foot, about eight of them, running behind the riders.

The riders reached them first, and circled them, making the geologists crowd closer together, while still clinging to the halters of the pack ponies. The riders’ lances remained in the upright, carrying position, but this wasn’t reassuring.

Up came the men on foot, and the riders reined in to let them through. The footmen were all bearded and longhaired, and had long knives and clubs in their hands. A couple had pikes. Without any preamble, they laid hands on the ponies’ halters and tugged them out of the geologists’ hands.

“Don’t argue,” Malc said. “Dave, let it go. Let them have whatever they want.”

Two of the riders reached down from their saddles and placed their lances on the turf before dismounting and handing their reins to the third—a boy of about fourteen—who remained on his horse. They had a look of each other, the riders, like brothers. The first to dismount was probably the eldest. He was bearded, but no older than about twenty. He went straight up to Malc and began to pull the backpack from his shoulders.

“I thought they’d agreed not to rob us anymore,” Caro said, taking off her own backpack as the other dismounted rider came toward her.

“Just don’t annoy them,” Malc said.

As Dave and Tim shrugged out of their backpacks, one of the bearded footmen called out something—in a speech that sounded like coughing and snarling. His companions all laughed.

The geologists looked anxiously at each other. They didn’t understand the joke, and were afraid of how far it might be taken.

The second dismounted rider suddenly caught Tim’s hand and pulled his arm out straight. For a moment Tim looked into an almost beardless and strikingly pretty face—and then the young man was dragging at his wristwatch, pulling the expandable bracelet off over his hand. He stared Tim in the face for a moment, and then snatched off the geologist’s spectacles before moving on to Dave and grabbing at his hands too. Dave took his wristwatch off and gave it to him.

Malc and Caro, catching on, quickly took off their wristwatches and handed them over.

The first rider, the bearded one, seemed not to like the pretty one having all the watches, and a coughing, snarling argument started between them. While it went on, Malc caught sight of Caro’s face, set in a grimace of fright. The other two looked much the same, and he supposed that his own face also reflected his painful uncertainty and fear.

The argument ended with the pretty thief handing two of the wristwatches to the bearded one, who immediately turned to Malc, grabbed his waterproof and pulled at it, snarling something.

Malc pulled his waterproof off over his head. The others hurried to do the same.

The pretty rider gestured at their other clothes. Take them all off, he seemed to mean. Certainly, when they hesitated, there were more peremptory gestures and snarled words.

Caro saw the way the footmen gathered closer as she pulled off her sweater, and she stopped, only to be shoved, and staggered on her feet, by the horseman with the lance. When she still hesitated, he grabbed at her shirt, pulling the buttons undone and exposing her bra.

“Caro, do as they want,” Tim said. “It’ll be all right. We’re here.”

Malc, Tim and Dave all edged closer to her, trying to shield her, but she knew perfectly well that there was nothing they could do to protect her, outnumbered and unarmed as they were. She took off her shirt, shaking with fear. There was nothing remotely exhilarating about the feeling. She felt sick and desperate, and wished she’d never left the humdrum safety of the 21st side.

They took off all their upper clothing, but still weren’t undressing quickly enough for the liking of their attackers, who dragged at their arms, and pushed them, to hurry them up. One of the footmen, by pointing, made it clear that he wanted their boots—and then, when they were seen to be wearing thick socks, the socks were pulled off their feet and their trousers tugged at.

They stripped down to their underpants, which caused hilarity, and the pointing and jeering was as threatening as the shoves.

Despite being so funny, their underpants were taken too, leaving the survey team standing naked in the breeze. As their skin roughened with goose pimples, their attackers walked around them, examining them from all sides, pointing, making remarks and laughing.

Caro closed her eyes and held her breath, feeling her heart thumping heavily under her breastbone.

But then the riders mounted again, took up their lances, and the whole party left with their loot, the footmen leading the pack ponies.

The survey team were left, shaking but still alive, to walk over rough country, naked and barefoot, all the way back to the Tube and the 21st.