The Lost Cavern

by H. F. Heard

  The few people who tried to get through this great wall and belt came back with hair-raising stories; most never returned. The survivors said they had pushed on where the only way was to creep, where direction was almost impossible to tell, where the whole place was alive with a crawling, craving life—leeches that festooned you as soon as you touched a tendril, stinging vines that wrapped round you, and, when you thought you had hold of a clean strong rope of a vine to hold you, it twisted in your hand and you were in the grip of some giant hamadryad or boa. And, if you did get through, the Northerners gave you no welcome—you were an utterly different people already. With no news of each other you already were regarded—and you felt toward them—as another species. Besides, you had to be driven out. If you had come through the Belt it was pretty certain that you were carrying in your blood one or another of its deadly fevers—the hosts of varieties of malarias and sleeping sicknesses, or molds and fungus pests that gorged upon the skin, under the skin, and through the vesicles and lymphatics until the man when he died appeared like a shapeless balloon. The Belt, then, quite naturally filled both sides—men of the North and of the South—with horror. Finally morality confirmed opinion and said it was evil and wrong to go there, and that thither, after death, went the souls of those who behaved wrongly.

  IV. AILUCK’S ADVENTURE

  There was one last story of a man who went through and came back. It was called the Saga of Ailuck and was told as a moral tale, learned by heart by all children when they were twelve years old and might feel that dangerous urge, the ancestral wanderlust.

  Ailuck was one of the fisher clan. All the other clans clung to the mainland. The fishers, though, had an exemption. Of course they went to the great Temple called The Place. There, with the whole of mankind—for the Northerners, it was now taught in the schools, were sub-human degenerates—he and the fisher clan worshiped with the rest before the great figure of the Pilgrim President, the deified man who had called this continent out of the ice and made it the new world. The actual skeleton was encased in the vast white granite figure before which everyone bowed at the ritual services. Once a year the monolith was swung open, it gaped like the Iron Maiden, and as the two carved blocks were spun out on their pivots the faithful saw within the very bones of the Place of all Places, the Perpetual President. You were supposed to exclaim, “Never again, never again such a man and such a vision, such a leader and such a pilgrimage”—and then the great blocks swung back and there was the image guarding, as a giant reliquary, the holy bones. But as the chorus rose Ailuck was always more interested in looking, trying to see whether this deified man was really quite different from himself.

  People had become smaller. There was something stunting in the Austral atmosphere or perhaps the diet. The fisherfolk were the tallest; they were called in consequence the clumsiest, though they were skillful enough in their trade and calling. The face-type of Austral man had tended to become that hawk-nose, high-forehead, high-cheekbones, sharp-chin profile associated with one strain of the American Indian. This was most marked in the fisher clan. Ailuck was secretly proud of his height, but the sharp noses, chins, and cheekbones of the women of his people pleased him not at all. He thought they looked like wizened men—woman, he thought to himself, should be round and smooth. Altogether he was more than a little a rebel, a critic, a skeptic. He thought that the Place bones showed that the holy leader had been big but showed nothing to support the tales about his superhuman carriage that was said to have matched his superhuman powers of leadership, judgment, and discernment.

  And when the Thirty-nine Commands were intoned and recited by the national congregation and they came to the last, “Thou shalt not touch the barrier forest for the man that goest therein shall be cut off from the people,” though he repeated it, it always made him ask himself, “What about us fishers?” Everyone knew that they went right up to the trailing shores of the Central Belt. Indeed there was a trade which led them not merely in sight of the forbidden frontier but actually onto it. The Austral epicures delighted in a kind of truffle—it was really a species of seaweed that grew only in particular brackish waters. An inferior sort could be found floating on wracks of sud that had dragged its moorings. But not only was this supply small and sporadic, it was of poor quality. There was no doubt, the nearer the Belt itself the better the truffle. There it grew in many varieties, of an incomparable succulence and in adequate quantities. The epicures were sufficiently well placed in the social hierarchy to see that unpleasant questions were not asked as to why the supplies were so constant and plentiful. The truth was pretty generally known, but taste was stronger than truth. Another truth was that once you contracted a taste for this food it became something of an addiction—you would give very large sums for it—and some of the price you paid to get your supply was, of course, priestly hush-money; many of the priests themselves were said to have acquired the taste and to be on the racket.

  So Ailuck had his doubts, his curiosities, yes, and his contempts, for the wise moralists who gave out the law and secretly took in supplies that came from breaking it. The intervening sea was easy to cross. The huge winds that used to pump round the old open, well-ventilated world had tended to disappear, for the great mountain ranges had gone; their great icefields, glaciers, and so-called eternal snows had all gone to swell the ocean. There were now no snowfields, and the great contrasts of heat and cold, damp and dry, had been flattened out. The small fleets of the fisher clan used to sail away at regular intervals and finish up their course outward by fishing the banks in sight of the great Central Belt. Then, when they had the permitted foods all caught and salted, and, for the rich, enough of the catch in water tanks—then they drew near the actual swamp jungle and from the shore itself drew up and dug out the tendrils, rhyzomes, bracts, and roots of the prized succulent.

  The best sites of this plant were well marked by searchers, and the harvest was well gleaned. It was not a quick grower and not very widely distributed. Everyone suspected that the beds were being over-gathered, and, further, that these beds were mere outliers; farther up the lagoons that wound their way into the green glow of the Belt it was pretty clear—indeed, no one doubted—there were ample supplies and probably of better quality. But even the fisher clan was conventional. At home they would have their own jokes at the expense of the strictly conventional and law-abiding. But out on the seas and especially when—as of course they did now and then, though none told on the other—they actually set foot on the accursed pseudo-land and felt it quake and quiver and heave under them as a net moves as it begins to close on a fish—then they would warn each other, “Come off, quick; don’t look into those glades. Pray to Place: he sees. He knows that we have just to touch this shore but that we’d never break the spirit of his Law by going actually into the Belt.”

  But even this conventional morality of his own kind, liberal as it was, began to chafe on Ailuck. When he was bending down and pretending to be wrestling with an uncommonly tough root, he used to scan the great wall of vegetation that marked where the Belt proper must begin. It didn’t look evil, but very interesting, far more interesting than those tiringly healthy, boringly open and elegant uplands of the South.

  And one day fortune favored him, or opportunity showed how great can be its guilt. He was actually told to stay behind with his kayak in a small fern-fringed baylet and finish clearing up a small plantation of the precious weed. After he had loaded it all on, he was to follow round a small cape of wrack crowned with some giant ferns. He worked in silence and found more than had been suspected. This was to the good. He would get an extra share for himself. Then he saw that the extra rhyzomes he had dragged up were linked with others, and, in a few moments, he was in among plentiful beds. Tracking these and picking the best kept him so busy that when he looked up he found he had been following a creek that led out of the small bay in which he had been left. He was in fact now quite some distance from the open sea. The ocean, when he looked back, was only vis
ible in a small gap. All the rest of his surroundings was the forest of the Belt, the forbidden Belt.

  He sat still for a moment. He was tired, anyhow. The silence was great. The lapping of the ocean swell and its occasional surge, grunt, and sigh could just be heard, but only just. He listened to see if he could catch any tone of voice coming from the party who should be in the next cove. But no, not a sound. They must have moved still farther, thinking he was just behind them. Well, it would be safe to look ahead. The small creek or lagoon shaft in which he was ran straight into the forest, a smooth waterway for his boat.

  Then a second temptation hit him, just as he was at pause. The water of the stream was clear, light brown but otherwise like glass. And as he looked down into it he saw large molluscs adhering to the tendrils of the submarine vines. He put down his hand and picked a couple off, prized them open with his knife, and began gulping the oysters. He was hungry; he had been working hard and had forgotten his midday munch. As he chewed them something struck against his teeth. He picked from his mouth a large and well-shaped pearl. There was a market for these, too. Of course it was forbidden and was on a very small scale. People said when they gave their wives a fine necklace that they had been putting it together for years, and there were some oysters and other pearl-making molluscs on the Austral coast. But most people knew that the rich had them smuggled in from the outer waters of the Belt. Still no one suspected that, up these water-lanes, the bivalves increased so much, both in numbers and in size. Ailuck pushed on, only picking up now and then one of unusual size. It seemed to him that the farther he went the larger was the breed. Nor did his luring luck let him go then. Time and again as he opened a shell he saw the gleam of a fine pearl. After some hours of this he had the small skin pouch round his neck swelling with pearls—why, he would have enough to live all his life never doing a stroke of work again, even if the black market took 80 per cent from him in commission!

  Then, as he peered down to see if the oysters were still larger up here, he found he could not see quite so well. He looked up around him. True enough, he had reached so far in and up this natural canal that drained out of the Belt that the trees and creepers had begun to lace and mat overhead. But that was not all. The sky that he could see was changing tint. The blue had turned into violet, and there were streaks of pink here and there—there was a glow in the air. Of course, he had forgotten—sunset up here came on and then night. He was used to a world where there was a season of light when everyone worked and slept little, little more than dozing, and then a season of dark when the whole place was wrapped in a warm, damp mist. It was then so dark that, save for routine business that had to be done and the long drowsy services in the shrines and especially in the Place, people idled indoors, took naps, and lay abed half hibernating. But sunset here and now was of course swift.

  Even while he watched the glow sank to violet, purple, indigo. He was benighted. He was far from being a nervous man, but this was high adventure. He thought with some misgiving but with clearness what he could do. He decided that he was in danger but that he had a good chance of getting out and back if he kept his head. To move in the dark would be fatal, he felt. He took his thin mooring rope with its little grapnel-anchor at the end, sank it from the prow, let the slight current pull his bark, played his line, and had the satisfaction of feeling the grapnel scrape and then hold. The boat stopped. In the stillness he could just hear the glug-glug of the water passing the anchored prow, and far away he thought he could catch now and then a sigh of the distant ocean. He squirmed his way down in the kayak through the small space out of which his body rose when he was rowing: He got hold of his skin cloak stowed down there and wrapped himself in it. He drew out some dried fish which had been stored in the thwarts and took a drink of a juice the fishers found a warming draught. Slowly chewing the tough fish, he fell asleep.

  He was wakened by the swift dawn. As he put his head out of the manhole, the sky was still violet. But by the time he had loosed and stored his grapnel-anchor, re-stored his cloak, taken a few mouthfuls of the dried fish and a drink, the day was already in full possession. He felt fresh. He looked back and could just see, down the long lane of gleaming water, where the stream opened out and met the sea. Well, his route back was clear; he had anyhow been away a whole night. Either the others would come back to this bay in a couple of days—which was most likely—or they would take him off in the large vessels at the next visit. He waited a moment, thinking what he would do. Then he decided that he would go at least as far as this open canal led—it did not look as though it would take more than a couple of hours of sculling. But distances in that strange, green-tinted gloom were deceptive, and perspectives on a lane of gleaming water misleading. He was a strong rower. Hour by hour he drove his light skiff along a current that offered at first little resistance and then none. In fact, he finally noticed that the flow was with him. But, though he knew he was now quite a considerable distance into the Belt itself, he did not check. He did pause for a space after some hours, but only to take hold of some clusters of tawny fruits that hung down like the fingers of a swollen hand. The fruit under the rind was succulent and filling. He tasted the water of the stream: it was now practically fresh. He struck his paddle into the stream and pushed farther inland.

  The shores did not invite a landing. You could not be sure they were true land at all. They looked as if they were far more likely to be just floating sud. The growth was such as he had never seen before, and it fascinated him. He saw practically no distance out at either side. The thicket hung like a close-woven arras. Sometimes he saw a sizable trunk, but mostly the walls of the canal—for it was now walled—were unbroken, a fencing of fibers, tendrils, aerial roots, bracts, rhyzomes, and sprays, all enriched with leaves of every shape, flowers of every color, and tassels and bosses of fruit clusters and seed pods. But still the canal went on, clear as a road driven into the wilderness. Just under the water there was the same density of life, and there were places where the kayak seemed to be moving over a floor of leaves and not of water. But he could still travel swiftly.

  “I will go to where this stops,” he said, “and then I will turn back.” But it didn’t stop—at least in the way that he had expected when bargaining with himself. The stream began not to narrow but to broaden, and then, in the space of some fifty fathoms, it had widened into a large lagoon. His craft shot out into the midst of this, moving more swiftly as the slight drag of the water-lily pads ceased on its keel. He took five or six strong strokes, then paused and looked about him. The lake was perhaps five hundred fathoms across—but, again, distance, with no scale to help, was hard to judge. The ramp of foliage that walled it right around and stood, in fact, straight out of the water was unbroken and unrelieved. He could not tell one part of it from another, and when his eye had ranged around he couldn’t say when he had actually finished the circuit. The boat, left without drive, lost its headway and began to curve aimlessly, rocked a little, and was still. It was then he noticed something that gave him his first serious alarm. Where was the entrance whereby he had entered this pool? He looked back in what he took to be the direction he had come, but the wall of creeper seemed dense. He struck out with his paddle and soon reached the spot. His first glance had been right—there was no way through here.

  He was a ready man. Without delay he set himself to skirt the whole circumference. At last he found the opening—at least he felt it must be that; he knew that when you come back to a place it always looks different than when you come from it. He had a general feeling that this must be the opening. Certainly, there was the lane of water leading him away from the pool. He began to feel he would very much wish to get back—even if he did get something of a rating from the head mate of their crew. He struck then quickly down the lane, and soon the pool was far behind; he was once more in the close-walled lane with a polished floor and that woven green arras on either side and, above, the loops and awnings made by creepers that had spanned across and begun to m
ake a roof.

  It was this that caused his next misgiving. He began to be sure that the roofing had been nothing like so dense when he had been looking up to it before he came to the pool. At last he was sure that this was so. He stopped and drew from a special inner pouch, sewn into the fold of the bigger one, his stone.

  A fisherman’s stone was his talisman—very much so. For not only was it given to him when he came of initiation age and was made one of the adults of the clan, but it was necessary to him and was given to no one outside that clan. The geologists and petrologists, as they had explored the newly uncovered continent of Antarctica, had discovered a number of new crystalline rocks—just as Labradorite, with its curious fluorescent capacity, had been discovered in Labrador, and Iceland spar in Iceland. One of these rocks had in it every now and then pure crystals of fine size. The best were parallelogramic and, when in perfect condition and properly polished, had in them a feature which looked like the refraction phenomenon to which the crystalline construction of the star sapphire gives rise and which gives that stone its name. When you looked into the stone, which was pale green, you could see at the center such a star. If you held the stone flat in your hand you could see it was a four-beamed star. Two of these beams were longer than the other two, and were set at right angles to them. But the odd thing was that these longer beams, it was discovered, always pointed north and south. So you had only to swing your stone until along it the long beams lay straight, until the axis of this ray was the same as the axis of the crystal, and then you knew you were pointing to the Pole. What was more—since the fishermen were of course very near the Pole and sometimes on it, this star appeared tilted, and when you were on the Pole itself the star in the crystal stood right on end, pointing downward. The stone was a natural and very efficient compass. The landsmen did not need it, but it was of great use to the fisher clan, and so each boy as he came to man’s estate was given one.