"It is an engine like the one that took you prisoner before. There is a danger to you, Thorinn."
"So I see."
With grim haste, Thorinn was dipping the brush in the pitch-pot, dabbing a spot the size of his fingernail onto the sole of each shoe. He unfastened the cord from about his waist, then slung the box over his shoulder, leaped out again and drifted toward the floor. "Where do those doorways go?" he demanded.
"One of them goes to a shaft where rising clouds carry things upward. The other goes to a shaft where falling water carries things down."
Thorinn's good foot touched the floor, clung. He strained forward, tugging the bladder after him. Another step, then another. The great awkward bulk of the bladder was in motion now, but it prevented him from looking back to see how close the engine was.
Lurching from good foot to bad, Thorinn tugged the bladder onward. Now he could see that there were spidery arms on the tracks, shaped to grip the metal eggs. While he watched, another dripping egg emerged from one of the doorways, traveled rapidly away, and was gone. It was no good asking the box which doorway was which, for he knew it would lie. Then he saw that was the answer.
"Box," he said, "which is the shaft that goes up?"
"It is the one on the left, Thorinn."
With a humorless grin, Thorinn leaped for the metal track on the right. The bladder bobbed up beside him. Clinging like a fly to the metal, Thorinn drew the bladder in. The red dot, now a disk, was shockingly near. He settled the bladder on the track between two spidery arms, saw them close to hold it, and tumbled into the basket as the track began to move, first slowly, then with such speed that the air whistled past his cheeks. Ahead, the doorway was blocked by a silvery pink film; it broke as the bladder entered it, and the air was suddenly full of flying droplets of spray. Bladder, basket, Thorinn and all were whirled out and downward into a chaos of roaring water.
Go down, said the voice triumphantly in his head.
13
“ ^”
How Thorinn died and was brought to life again, but resented it.
...it was therefore decided to put the Monitor on command mode with instructions to takewhatever action may be necessary to promote the welfare of any remnant of humanity that maysurvive. No sono reports from the upper regions have come through since the fighting began.Nearly the whole of Lozed is flamed out and uninhabitable. If any of us live through the next fewdays, we will return and again put the Monitor on slave mode. If not, the destiny of mankind is inits—I had almost said hands. May God have mercy on us.
In the first instant the battering force of the water had collapsed the bladder around him. Suspended helplessly in the dark torrent, he had fought until he could hold his breath no longer; then as the water filled his lungs the crumpled bladder had turned somehow into the coils of a serpent that wound around his chest, constricting it with a pain beyond pain. The serpent was still there, although he could not see it when he opened his eyes. He struggled uselessly. He was falling, but the curved wall of the room hung steady around him. Some crystal thing was withdrawing over his head. Metal tubes, arms, were moving away. The yellowish light came from panels in the wall. A white engine drifted into view from above; he could hear its faint hissing in the silence. White spidery arms came out of it, turned, dipped, closed around him gently at arms and thigh. He was too weak to resist. The arms retracted, turned as the room wheeled around him, placed him with his back against the long shaft of the engine that ended in a curved tube over his head. Soft coils snaked around him. The hiss came again, and he was moving upward through a round hole in the ceiling. He came out into a room that was like a quarter of a cheese, with one wall curved like the one below, the other two straight; ceiling and floor were flat. The coils withdrew; the arms gripped him again, turned him, gently pressed him against a flattened pole that stood in the corner. Other coils moved around him. The engine backed away with a hiss, descended through the hole in the floor and was gone. He was still falling, while the room fell around him. In a net bulging from the wall beside him he saw his possessions, the bundles, the talking box, his shoes and clothing. He looked down at himself, saw that he was naked.
"Box," he said. His voice was thin and hoarse.
"Here am I."
"What is this place? What happened?"
"This is a place at the bottom of the world. You went into the falling water and died. Engines brought you here."
"I'm alive," Thorinn muttered. "I didn't die."
"Engines made you alive again." The box said something more, but already Thorinn's eyes had closed and he was drifting away into another dream of serpents.
When he awoke the second time he was still in pain, but he was stronger. The unfamiliar room was just the same. "Box, I'm thirsty," he said.
"There is water in the engine on the wall."
Thorinn looked, and saw two segmented yellow ropes that hung outward like snakes from the white wall.
"One is for food, the other for water. The one on the right is for water." Thorinn reached, pulled the tube toward him, doubtfully put the gray end of it between his lips. Cool sweet water spurted into his mouth; he choked with surprise, then swallowed. When he let go, the tube went back partway into the wall and was still. A few droplets of water, perfect little balls, drifted in the air.
There were glowing panels in the curved wall facing him, like the ones in the room below, and under them were six crystals like the one in the box, but much larger. Two were twice the size of the others; each of these had a smaller one on either side. In the middle of the room were two yellow poles, about an ell and a half apart, with large blue beads on them at intervals. To his left there was an upright box taller than a man, and beside it, in the corner, a half partition. Otherwise the room was empty. The air was pleasantly warm, but had an odd scent.
He examined the coils that were holding him, found that they were two fat white bands of some unfamiliar material, one under his armpits and the other across his thighs. He tried to pull them loose without success, until he discovered that they were clasped together on one side. He tugged at the ends and they came free. He was drifting away from the pole; the room was massively and slowly turning. He managed to seize the pole as it came around and drew himself to it, but his legs floated upward.
"Box," he said, "where are we going?"
"We are not going anywhere."
Thorinn clung to the pole with arms and legs; the room steadied a little. "I mean," he said with strained patience, "how long must we go on falling?"
"We are not falling. This place is at the bottom of the world." The crystal lighted, and he saw a dark circle with a dot of light at the center. Yellow lines appeared, radiating from the center. "Here the weight of the world pulls us toward it from all directions at the same time, and so we cannot fall." Thorinn's head was beginning to ache. His face felt sweaty and cold. "Box, I'm going to be sick."
"It will be best if you go into the big box in the corner and put your feet on the floor." That was easier said than done, but Thorinn pushed himself away from the pole he was clinging to and succeeded in grasping one of the soft blue beads on the next pole. From there he could reach the tall box, which had two yellow handles. Clinging to one, he tugged at the other; the door opened. Inside were other handles.
"The door must be shut," said the box outside. Thorinn closed it, got himself upright, and pressed his feet against the perforated floor. At once jets of water spurted from the walls, wetting him all over below the chin, while a strong suction held his feet down. Thorinn's stomach knotted. He bent forward, vomited into the stream.
When it was over he felt a little better. He rinsed his face, then drew his feet up. The jets stopped; the water swirled away past him into the floor, and warm air began to play over his body. In a few moments he was dry; he opened the door and came out.
The light in the room was steady and even. He looked at his body, felt himself. Here was the puckered scar on h
is shoulder where he had been injured in falling into the dark cavern; here the pink, shiny wounds where the demons had pierced his hands. He was the same, he was himself, and yet he felt that he was not. Had he really died?
Beside the washing-box, behind the half partition, he found a thing shaped like a curved flower growing up out of the wall, with an egg-shaped hole in the seat that formed its top. He pulled himself out into the room again, but there was little there that he had not noticed before. In front of the center crystal there was a circular platform, raised less than a finger's breadth from the floor. There was a hole in the ceiling, and there were two closed doors, one in each of the flat walls. He tried them in turn; they had handles but he could not open them. "Box, where do these doors go?"
"They go to other rooms."
Thorinn pulled himself to the opening in the floor, put his head down it, and saw a circular room four times bigger than the one he was in; it was like the whole cheese of which this one was a quarter., The room was partly divided by short partitions to which man-sized boxes with crystal covers were attached. A few ells away, the spidery shape of the engine that had carried him hung motionless against the wall. The sight of it disturbed him, and he turned away to investigate the hole in the ceiling. He found himself looking into another circular room of the same size, but this one was empty except for a pole in the center that ran from floor to ceiling. In the ceiling, a few ells away, were three other circular openings. Drawn by curiosity, Thorinn pulled himself through, grasped the central pole, drew himself along it, rose to the ceiling. He tried one of the holes at random, and found himself in a room identical to the quarter-cheese one he had left, except that the doorways in the walls were open. He pulled himself to them in turn, and found that one led to still another quarter-cheese room, the other to a half-cheese, with more poles and more crystals in the curved wall. It had no washing-box or dunghole. There was one piece of furniture that might have been meant for a table, but no benches. From this room he rose through another hole into still another circular room. It was the same as the one below, and it also had an engine sleeping against the wall. As far as he could see, there was no exit in the ceiling.
Descending again, Thorinn went through the half-cheese room, then the empty whole-cheese; then a half-cheese room which he had not seen before, but it was exactly like the other. It had two doorways, one closed, the other open: the latter led him into another quarter-cheese room with a closed door. Counting in his head, Thorinn found that there were five circular sections, first a whole cheese with partitions in it, then a like space divided into a half-cheese and two quarters, then the empty whole cheese, then another half-and-two-quarters section, and finally a whole cheese with partitions. This door, then, if it were open, would let him into the room where he had started. He went down headfirst into the circular room with the partitions, found a yellow hand-grip in the ceiling, pulled himself over and up through the other hole, and found that it was so: he was back in the room with his bundles. He went to examine these, and found that the mouth of the net was against the wall, so that in order to take anything out he had to put his feet on either side of it, then bend over and reach around behind the net. He got the bundles out, and the box, and his clothing; all his weapons were missing, even his sword.
"Box, where is the sword?"
Drifting in the air behind him, the box said, "The engines kept it." Surrounded by drifting bundles, Thorinn put on his breeks. The room began to revolve slowly around him. The shirt and belt, which he had left hanging in the air, were drifting away, each in a different direction.
When he had caught them and put them on, he opened a bundle, took out some cheese, and began to eat. The contents of the bundle were slowly dispersing about the room.
"Box," he said, "tell me again what happened and where we are."
"You went into the falling water and were killed. Engines took you from the water." As the box turned, Thorinn saw a glint of light in the crystal. He planted his feet against a pole, sprang, caught the box, and came to rest against another pole. In the crystal he saw spidery shapes looming, caught a glimpse of a pale body tangled in their arms. "Is that me?"
"Yes, Thorinn. The engines put you in a skin like the ones around the children in the cavern, to keep you just as you were. They gathered up all your things and put them in the skin also." The crystal had gone dark. "They took you to this place and brought you to life."
"Why?"
"They want to ask you questions."
"When will they ask?"
"Now."
Another voice spoke from across the room. It was thin, without resonance; he could not tell whether it was a man's voice or a woman's. "What is your name?"
"Thorinn Goryatson. Who are you?"
"This is an engine. Where were you born?"
"I don't know."
"Who were your father and your mother?"
"I don't know. Goryat Temuson kept me, but he was not my father."
"Where did you live?"
"In Hovenskar."
"Who else lived there?"
"Only Goryat and his two sons, Withinga and Untha."
"How did you come to be in the Underworld?"
"They sent me into the well, and Goryat put a geas on me to go down."
"What is a geas?"
"A geas is—well, it's something that makes you do whatever the geas tells you, whether you want to or not."
"Is a geas a kind of magic?"
"Yes. Are you inside the wall, or what?"
"This engine is in another part of this place. Is that Hovenskar?" On the curved wall, one of the crystals lighted; Thorinn saw, as if from a vantage point high in the air, the great yellow bowl of Hovenskar. He could see the stone-roofed hut, and the thread of smoke rising aslant. Two horses lumbered up the hillside; he thought he could even make out which ones they were—Alder and her foal, the one that had died four summers ago.
The pain had returned to his chest; he swallowed hard and blinked. Suddenly he felt the weight of the world hanging over his head. The voice was speaking again, but he said, "I don't want to hear any more," and turned away. The voice fell silent. Thorinn kicked himself away from the nearest pole, caught the next, and so to the pole in the corner. He squirmed in past the white bands, and after a moment they closed around him. The lights dimmed to a faint glow, and he shut his eyes. When he awoke the lights were bright again and the things he had left floating in the air were back in the net; otherwise everything was the same. He got the cheese out again and ate, drank water from the tube, used the dunghole.
Presently the crystal in the wall lighted up and he saw again the yellow bowl, the house, the horses on the hill. "Is that Hovenskar?" asked the voice.
"Yes," said Thorinn unsteadily. "Why am I here? What are you going to do with me?" The picture vanished. "You are here to answer questions. You will be kept here until you have answered them, and then you will be taken to another place. What did you find when you went down the well?"
"Mud and rocks. What other place?"
"It will be a place like the other places where you have been before. What did you find besides mud and rocks?"
After a moment Thorinn said, "The well was broken. I went down through a cavern and into a tunnel. Show me the place where you mean to send me."
The crystal lighted again and he was looking from a little height into a wooded valley where a brook ran. There was something odd about the trees and the brook; they were not quite real. The picture vanished. Now he was looking down a tunnel lined with rings of light.
"Was it a tunnel like this?"
"No. Show me that place again—where does the stream come from?" The valley reappeared; the brook came toward him, turned; now he was drifting upstream; now he saw the gray wall of the cavern, where the brook sprang out of an opening so narrow that he knew a man could never get into it.
The valley was gone and he was looking down another tunnel, smaller than th
e other, dark, with strips of corroded metal hanging from above. "Was it a tunnel like this?"
"Yes. Is there any way for a man to get out of that valley?"
"No. Where did you go from the tunnel?"
"I fell through a hole into a river. Tell me, why do you want to hold me prisoner?"
"You are to be held prisoner to keep you from harming others. How did you come to fall into the river?"
"The geas made me fall in... Where is this place, where we are now? Show me what's outside." In the crystal, he was looking at a circular doorway in a wall; inside was a room lit by a diffuse yellow glow. It receded; a door slid across the opening. As it dwindled, he saw that the doorway was in a vast curved surface covered with growths like deformed water-weeds. Something with fins and a tail darted by, disappeared. "What happened after you fell into the river?" the voice asked.
"Is there water around this place?" Thorinn cried. His body was shaking, his lips cold.
"Yes. What happened after you fell into the river?"
"I was in a dark cave, with a lake. How deep is that water?"
"It is four hundred and forty thousands of ells deep." The voice went on speaking, but Thorinn, crushed by despair, could not hear the words. Four hundred thousand ells of water! Then all his toil and pain had been for nothing: he would never see the Midworld again.
"... was in the cave?" asked the voice.
"Enough," said Thorinn miserably. "Leave me alone, I have to think." The voice fell silent. After a time Thorinn kicked off from his pole, floated to the opening in the floor and looked down. The engine was against the wall with its spidery arms folded, unmoving. Because of the partitions, he could not tell for certain whether there was any opening in the floor or not. He pulled himself cautiously into the room, then by hand-holds across the ceiling, and down the wall. In the floor on the far side he found a large circular hatchway, closed by a white panel. It had no handle, and he could not move it.
World and Thorinn Page 18