The Secret People

by John Wyndham

  Mark, confronted for the first time with one of Gordon’s theories, felt that while it was extremely plausible, it was also extremely unconvincing. He avoided expressing his opinion by temporizing.

  ‘Then you think no one has escaped for a long time – perhaps several centuries?’

  Gordon shrugged his shoulders. ‘Impossible to say. They may have done. But if so, there ought at least to have been rumours – tales among the Arabs. There may be, of course, but it is strange that we’ve never heard any. The most I can say is that I am convinced that there have been escapes in the past.’

  ‘And if then, why not now?’

  ‘Any of a dozen reasons. They may have found the loophole and blocked it. These may not be the same prison caves. I must confess that the thing which puzzles me most is why they don’t kill us as they find us, and have done with it – but then, different races always have their own funny ideas on the subject of killing …’

  2

  It was with Gordon as guide that Mark made his first trip into the larger caves. The former had seen that further forced inaction would do Mark little good. Gradually returning strength had found its outlet in fretting and worrying. He asked continually and fruitlessly for news of Margaret, and the fact that all three of the men assured him that they had made every possible inquiry without success did not tend to ease his mind. Even Gordon could make no suggestion.

  ‘I never heard of such a thing before,’ he admitted. ‘Quite invariably every member of a captured party has been brought here and left to make the best of it, but I assure you she is not in any of our caves – it couldn’t be kept quiet. Every newcomer is a centre of interest.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Smith agreed. ‘If it hadn’t been that you got treated so rough, we couldn’t have kept them off questioning you. Nobody’s got her hid away; that’s certain.’

  ‘You don’t think they – killed her?’

  ‘No, why should they?’ Smith spoke heartily; the other two said nothing.

  Mark was without any means of telling how long he had lain ill. Night and day were not recognizable divisions in the caves; and with them went all other measures of time. One fed when hungry, slept when tired. Time flowed smoothly by in one long monotony. Days, months, years even, passed unrecorded save when a new arrival like himself reminded the prisoners that there was still an outside world where dates were kept. Each one was eagerly questioned for the current year and month, estimates were made of the length of time since capture, and then forgotten until another news-bearer should arrive. The blue-white globes were never darkened, and their continual light had come to be accepted by the majority without wonder or interest.

  Gordon admitted that his curiosity had led him to break one which he filched from a little-used corner soon after his arrival. It had required a great deal of pounding with a heavy stone:

  ‘Just curiosity, but it didn’t get me anywhere. There was a splash of some kind of liquid on the floor. It shone for a while and then evaporated. The outside was pretty much like glass, only far tougher.’

  ‘But doesn’t that show that they had a pretty high development at one time, even if they haven’t got it now?’ Mark suggested.

  Gordon was inclined to think that it didn’t mean a great deal. There was no doubt that the pygmies were on the downward grade now, but it didn’t seem likely that their level of civilization could ever have been high. They had shown immense determination in constructing their labyrinths, enlarging and altering, until it was difficult to tell how much was natural and how much artificial, but in the matter of the light:

  ‘It may have been just a fluke – one of those discoveries which are made and then forgotten. Think of Hero’s steam engine at Alexandria, everybody forgot that for two thousand years. And those perpetual motion wheels which obviously weren’t perpetual motion, but certainly worked somehow – they managed to get forgotten, unexplained. It happens again and again. Anyhow, there’s nothing miraculous about these lamps. They wear out in time. You’ll see some perceptibly duller than others.’

  ‘All the same, I’ll bet they’d astonish our physicists,’ said Mark.

  He became aware that he thought mostly as if he were a visitor to this place, a tourist; it was still impossible to realize that he might never come out, and he dreaded the moment when that realization should be driven home. Perhaps it never would. Smith, after six years of it, was at bottom still unconvinced that he would die in this warren.

  It was in such moods that he would revert to useless, frightening speculation upon Margaret’s fate until increasingly frequent periods of restless irritation decided Gordon that even though incompletely recovered, he must be taken out of himself. He led him, still bandaged of head and weak in body, to the big cave which he had glimpsed before. He stared silently at the scene for some minutes.

  In addition to the figures which crossed between the various tunnel mouths, there were some sixty or seventy persons in the place. They stood or sat for the most part in groups, conversing in a desultory, uninterested fashion. An air of listlessness seemed to hang over them all, a lethargy which suggested that nothing need be done until tomorrow – and here there was no tomorrow. Their eyes, utterly lacking in spirit, looked as if they scarcely saw. The discouragement in their bearing was their most common possession; beyond that, variation was infinite.

  Arabs predominated slightly, but whites of all types were numerous. A number of Negroes was scattered here and there, and even a few Indians could be seen, but there were some whom he could fit into no known category.

  ‘What on earth is he?’ he asked Gordon, pointing to one of these.

  The man he indicated was as tall as himself and wore a minimum of clothing upon his grey body.

  ‘Oh, he’s a “native”.’

  ‘A “native”? I thought they were all small – you called them pygmies.’

  ‘I don’t mean a pygmy. By a “native” we mean one who was born here, in the prison caves.’

  ‘Good God, you don’t mean to say – ?’

  ‘Of course I do. There’s quite a fair sprinkling of women down here, as you see. And you can’t stop men and women being men and women, even in caves.’

  ‘But to bear a child here –’

  ‘I know. It seems pretty rough on the kid to us, but they don’t think of it that way. The kid’s an unavoidable accident from their point of view. Besides, the “natives” quite rightly say, why should they be condemned to perpetual chastity? – aren’t things bad enough for them anyhow?’

  ‘You mean that a “native” may have “native” parents?’

  ‘That’s it. By the look of that one, I should say he has.’

  Mark watched the man out of sight. He felt shocked. A man who had never seen sun or stars; never heard waves breaking or trees rustling; never seen a bird, never – oh, it was endless. And Gordon made the statement so calmly.

  Had he forgotten what the outside world was like? Had he stifled his memories all these seven years? It seemed more likely that a man would dwell upon them until he remembered the surface as a paradise. What was it Smith had said the other day – no, there were no days here – what was it he had said a little while ago? He had been more abstracted than Mark had previously known him. There had been a dreamy longing in his manner of speaking.

  ‘Bored! My God, to think that I could ever have been bored up there. Why, right now I could look at one flower for a week, and still find it marvellous. I used to reckon old man Wordsworth was kind of soft; I guess I was out there. Daffodils! Just think of ’em; a bank of ’em, blowin’ in the wind!’

  To him the world had become a flower garden, and the sky was for ever breaking into sunset. Sentimental? Of course it was sentimental, but it seemed a more natural state than the insensitiveness Gordon displayed. He was talking now about the ‘natives’ coldly, dispassionately, as though they were museum exhibits:

  ‘It’s one of the drawbacks man suffers for his adaptability. Many another kind of creatu
re shut up like this would die, pine away from sheer discouragement, but not man. Given time, these “natives” would evolve into a race perfectly adapted for this environment.’ He paused, and glanced at Mark. ‘You think that that man we saw a moment ago suffers a sense of loss. You imagine him deprived of his birthright – well, perhaps he is, perhaps we all are, but does he know it? Do we know it? What are these rights of man? That man never knew the open air, and he doesn’t want to. He can’t understand anything but life in caves. How should he?’

  ‘But he must know. He must have heard from you and the rest of them here.’

  ‘Of course he has, but it doesn’t touch him. Doubtless your parents told you plenty about Heaven – how beautiful it was, and all the rest of it, but how does that strike you now? Pretty thin, pretty much of a fairy-tale? Well, that’s the way he feels when he hears of the world outside – a pleasant, rather childish fancy with little or no real significance. He hears about sky and fields and clouds and mountains just like you heard about harps and angels and streets paved with gold – and he takes about the same amount of notice.’

  Mark frowned. He saw what Gordon was intending: the philosophy of ‘what you’ve never had, you never miss’. But that, to his mind, was a shallow view. Carried to a logical extreme it would mean that man was a static creation, whereas he was the most dynamic. Indubitably man could, and did, miss what he had never had; the whole history of invention was a record of his attempts to overcome recognized deficiencies. He had never flown, but he missed the power of flight; the aeroplane was evolved. He lacked the ability to live for days on end in the water; the ship was built. His own unaided voice could only carry a short distance; intricate systems of communication were brought into being. It was nonsense. One could be aware of a restraint from within it. But the arguments bounced off Gordon. Mark’s instances, he claimed, were superficial.

  ‘For the most part they are imitative and cumbrous. Look at the complications needed to broadcast a message, and compare it with the simplicity by which a flock of migratory birds knows of its meeting-place, and the time of its flight.’

  ‘But the very fact that we can broadcast shows that we have recognized our limitation.’

  ‘Does it? I doubt it. I should say that we recognized it as a limitation of the system we have evolved, not of ourselves. We put up an inferior substitute called telegraph and radio, and forget our limitations – but they are still there. How many men, do you suppose, realize the limitations of using words to convey our meanings? They may find that there are inconvenient misunderstandings, and blame language, but how many admit that the words are just a substitute for the thing they really lack – mental communication? Precious few. My point is that they do not realize the lack of direct mental communication, because they’ve never had it. They look on spoken or written language as a natural method of expression, whereas it is really a mechanical process more complicated than radio.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t get over the fact that they have evolved a process to fulfil a need. And if that isn’t a sign of recognizing limitation, what is?’

  ‘In some degree, but it is not fully recognized. There is a kind of mental myopia. Look at what happened. First there was the very arduous invention of the spoken language. Then it was seen that this only had a limited use – it could travel no great distance in either space or time – so there grew up a written language. This failed to reach enough persons in a short time; printing became necessary. In an effort to decrease the time-lag still further, electric communications followed. And all this process had to be gone through (and will be further elaborated) because the limitation was not clearly perceived in the beginning. The thing we really lacked was direct mental communication.’

  ‘But that’s impossible.’ Mark was growing irritated.

  Gordon’s serious face relaxed into a sudden grin.

  ‘Splendid. In effect, that’s the power we’ve never had, and because we’ve never had it, you think we never will – practically “what you’ve never had, you never miss”. Why should it be any more impossible than the vast array of substitutes we’ve managed to produce? Further, let me point out that your word “impossible” doesn’t mean impossible at all – it merely means that the thing hasn’t happened yet.’

  Mark let the argument drop. He felt that it contained a sufficient number of weak links for him to split later. At present he was more interested in the sights about him. He required more information on the ‘natives’.

  ‘We don’t see a lot of them,’ Gordon admitted. ‘They get sick of us and our continual surface reminiscences, and tend to keep to themselves.’

  ‘They don’t even want to know about surface life?’

  ‘Not much. Apart from their scarcely believing the tales, they find that they have no bearing whatever on their life down here, and don’t help them at all. A lot of the prisoners go half crazy after a few years, and live in a permanent state of melancholia which both puzzles and frightens the “natives”. They’re happier on the whole when they’re not mixing with us. Just as well.’

  ‘And they don’t want to escape?’

  ‘Not a bit. And it would be a poor day for most of them if they did – more than likely they’d have agoraphobia pretty badly if they couldn’t look up and see rock all round them.’

  By now they had reached the far end of the cavern. Its occupants, for the most part, paid little more attention to Mark than a stare as he passed. His surprise that they did not come flocking round to ask questions grew less when he remembered that Smith, Gordon and Mahmud must have circulated all his news of any interest. Turning and looking back on the listless crowd, he asked:

  ‘Is this all they do? Just hang about?’

  ‘A few of the melancholics, but most of them take an occasional turn in the fungus caves. Does them good to work, cheers them up a bit – trouble is that not enough work’s needed, so for the most part they just sit and brood, or sleep. About the only excitement they get is a fight now and then over one of the women.’

  ‘But can’t they be put on to making something?’

  ‘What? Oh, you mean furniture or stuff like that. I should think they could, but you see there’s no wood. Some of them do a bit of carving in stone. I’ll show you.’

  He led the way into a tunnel ten feet or so in height. After fifty yards of it he paused at a side turning and called:

  ‘Zickle!’

  A tall, well-built Negro came out of the smaller passage. He grinned at them both in a friendly fashion.

  ‘Hullo, Zickle! I’ve brought Mr Sunnet to have a look at your work.’ The Negro grinned even more broadly, and beckoned them in. ‘Zickle was brought up at a mission school,’ Gordon explained. ‘Hence his choice of a name, but the training seems to have been a bit superficial, as you’ll see.’

  They entered a rock chamber of about the same size as Mark’s sick-room. But the walls of it, instead of being painted, were elaborately carved. Mark at first sight felt bewildered. Zickle continued to grin.

  ‘Here is the pièce de resistance,’ Gordon said, turning to the left-hand wall. ‘What do you make of that?’

  Mark examined it carefully. In the centre was an oddly conventionalized figure of a man, hanging upon an undoubted cross. But it was not the plain cross of tradition; curious symbolism and alien conceptions had been carved into it until it bore more resemblance to a totem pole. Above the head of the crucified man leered a face of most horrifying hideousness.

  The Negro saw Mark recoil as he looked at it.

  ‘Him scare devils,’ he explained.

  ‘It ought to scare anything,’ agreed Gordon cheerfully. ‘Come closer, Mark, and have a look at the detail.’

  He obeyed, and began to examine the workmanship with a manifest admiration which delighted Zickle. He turned back to stare at the tall, black figure.

  ‘You did all this?’ He waved a comprehensive hand.

  ‘Yes, sir. I done him all.’

  Mark turned back. The
Negro might have few words to express himself, but the carving came from the brain of a man of unlimited ideas. He began to feel a little awed. The ingenuity with which Christianity and paganism had been welded together – he felt that a study of the work might give a new conception of both. Nor was the technique itself a mere following of tradition. There was a single mode of thought running through the whole bas-relief, but it was the product of an experimenting mind, unafraid to attempt effects which sometimes failed, but more often succeeded brilliantly.

  ‘It’s genius,’ Mark said.

  ‘You’re right,’ Gordon agreed. ‘I’ve seen a lot of African sculpture, wood and stone, but nothing to touch this. It is genius – and the world will never see it …’

  ‘How long did it take to do all this?’

  ‘Don’t know. Zickle hasn’t the slightest idea how long he has been in here. All I can tell you is that it was about a quarter done seven years ago, and has been complete for the last three. He carves most of the time when he isn’t doing other work. Reckons it keeps him sane.’ Gordon stared for a moment at the horrific head above the cross. ‘I should say he’s right – it must be better to get ideas like that out of the system.’

  The Negro had been busy in another corner of the room. Presently he returned holding out a cup of polished stone to each of them. As they took them he pointed to some low stools carved carefully from stone, though in a fashion intended for wood. Gordon sat down and drank half his cupful at a gulp. Mark attempted the same, but the coarseness of the spirit set him coughing.

  ‘My God, what is it?’ he managed, at last.

  ‘Stuff made from some of the fungi – it’s an acquired taste.’

  ‘So I should think.’ Mark took a more careful sip.

  Again he let his eyes wander over the carved walls, noticing and renoticing details. Below the cross, and separated from it by a broad horizontal band, he observed a panel which he had hitherto overlooked. It represented a number of squat, recognizable figures worked into a design among giant fungi.