Eden Page 12

  "I'll be here," he said.

  "How much time do we have?" asked the Chemist.

  "It's nine. Be back in an hour. You may have trouble getting your bearings, so forty minutes from now I'll light a flare, and ten minutes after that, another, and five minutes after that, a third. Try to get to some sort of elevation by then, though you should see the light from below. Now let's set our watches."

  They did so in silence, listening to the wind. The air was growing colder.

  "Don't take the thrower—there's too little space to use it here anyway," said the Captain, unconsciously lowering his voice. "The jectors ought to be enough. Besides, we want to make contact—but not at any price. Agreed?" This to the Doctor, who nodded. The Captain went on: "Night is not the best time. Perhaps you should only reconnoiter. That would be the most sensible thing. After all, we can come here again. Make sure you keep together. Guard your rear, and avoid dead ends."

  "How long will you wait?" asked the Chemist.

  The Captain's face, in the reflection of the headlights, looked ashen. He smiled.

  "As long as I have to. And now on your way."

  The Chemist slung the jector strap over his shoulder, to have both hands free. He turned on his flashlight and made for the stairs. The Doctor was already on his way down. Suddenly a bright light came from above—the Captain was lighting the way for them—and they followed the beam along the wall until they came to a large entrance flanked on either side by columns that emerged halfway up, as though growing from the, wall. The lintel was covered with stone buds in high relief. The jeep's headlights here produced only a semicircular glow against the black of the doorway, the threshold of which was worn, as if by an endless procession of feet. They entered slowly. The doorway was enormous, built for giants, and on the inside walls and ceiling there were no signs of joints, as if the entire structure had been carved out of solid rock. The hall terminated in a blind, concave wall. On either side was a row of niches, each containing a depression at the bottom, like a place to kneel, and above that a triangular, glazed vent in the wall.

  They went back outside. Several dozen feet farther on was a passageway in the wall surrounded by regular but mysterious multifaceted shapes. As they turned and entered it, the half-light behind them went out. The Chemist looked around—they were in total darkness. The Captain had turned off the headlights.

  The Chemist looked up. He could not see the sky, but thought he could feel its distant, cold presence.

  Their footsteps reverberated. The stone walls echoed. Without saying a word, both men put out their left hands and touched the wall near them. It was almost as smooth as glass.

  The Doctor turned on his flashlight, and they found themselves in a small open space like the bottom of a well. The walls, parting narrowly for street entrances, had double rows of windows all tilted skyward and therefore difficult to see from below. In the narrowest street were steps going steeply up and, before them, a horizontal stone beam flush between the walls. A dark cask shaped like an hourglass hung from it. The men chose the widest street. Soon the air around them seemed to change. Their flashlights showed, above them, vaulting riddled like a sieve, as if someone had punched a thousand triangular holes in the stone.

  They walked on, past roofed side streets like high galleries. They walked beneath domes hung with misshapen bells or casks, and gossamer strips blew in the wind from lintels covered with ornamentation in the shape of plants. They peered into spacious but empty halls that had barrel-vaulted ceilings with large round openings at the top, which were plugged with boulders. Strange corrugated gutters angled upward from the streets like dough-covered ladders. A warm gust of air sometimes hit them in the face.

  Several hundred feet from the square, the street divided; they went right and began to descend. Massive buttresses filled the street, and at each was a niche containing dead leaves. The dust they raised, walking, swirled in the beams of their flashlights. Crypts gaped on either side, exuding stale air, and inside them were meaningless shapes, seemingly abandoned. The street bottomed, then rose, and the air grew fresher.

  The men passed more side streets, galleries, squares. As their flashlights moved, shadows appeared to take wing or scurry away in dark packs, or crouch at entrances guarded by columns that grew out of the wall and leaned toward one another. Everywhere, the men were accompanied by the barking echo of their footsteps.

  At times they sensed the presence of someone else. Then they would stop by a wall, their flashlights turned off, their hearts pounding, and hear rustling, shuffling noise, a clumsy echo, a murmur like an underground stream. Or, from a well opening in an alcove, a moan might come, accompanied by a musty smell, but it was impossible to say whether it was a creature's voice or only the sound of the air in a hollow place. They had the impression that shapes were moving around them. Then they saw a small face peering out of an alley. It was pale and furrowed. But when they went to the place, all they found was a shred of paper-thin gold foil.

  The Doctor said nothing. He knew that this excursion—dangerous, mad under such conditions, at night—was being undertaken because of him, that the Captain was risking it because, though time was pressing, the Doctor, alone of the crew, had insisted that an attempt at communication be made. He told himself that as soon as they reached the next corner, the next street, they would turn back—but they went on. In a high gallery framed by circular plates of opaque glass, which also formed the ceiling, with curious underslung, gondolalike balconies, a plant pod dropped in front of them. They picked it up: it was warm, as though a hand had held it.

  What most perplexed them was the darkness. Surely the inhabitants of the planet had eyes and had observed their arrival. One would have expected to encounter guards, activity of some sort, not this emptiness. The lights that the men had observed from above were evidence that the area was inhabited…

  This reconnaissance became more and more like a bad dream. They longed for light—their flashlights only seemed to intensify the surrounding gloom, and all they saw were fragments, incomprehensible parts of things.

  There was a shuffling, so distinct that they rushed toward it. The rhythm of flight and pursuit filled the narrow street, the echoes broken between the close walls. As they ran, their flashlights in front of them, gray reflections moved along the vaulting overhead, which lowered until it was quite near. The shuffling noise stopped—then started again. The ceiling went up and down in waves as dark side-street entrances flew past. The men came to a halt, exhausted.

  "Listen … do you think they … are drawing us into a trap?" the Chemist panted.

  "Don't be silly!" the Doctor said, angry.

  They were standing near a well whose walls were perforated with black openings. A pale, flattened face showed in one of them, but when they pointed their flashlights there, the opening was empty.

  They went on. The presence of others was no longer a matter of conjecture, they could feel it everywhere, and the Doctor found himself thinking that even an attack or a struggle in the dark would be preferable to this pointless search that led nowhere. He looked at his watch. Almost half an hour had passed; they would have to head back soon.

  Several feet ahead, at a bend in the wall, was a doorway crowned by a sharply pointed arch, with bulbous stone trunks rising on either side of the threshold. The Chemist swept the dark interior with his flashlight. The beam moved across a row of niches and fell upon a cluster of naked bodies crouching and motionless.

  "They're there!" he gasped, shrinking back. The Doctor entered, while the Chemist shone his light from behind. The naked group clung to the wall, huddled, frozen in place. At first he thought they were dead. Drops of water glistened, trickling down their backs.

  "Hey!" the Doctor called weakly, feeling the absurdity of the situation. From outside and above came a long, penetrating whistle; then a groan of many voices resounded in the stone room. None of the creatures moved, they only groaned. But there was movement in the street; the men could hea
r steps, the sound of running, and several dark forms went past in great bounds. When the echoes died, the Doctor peered out—there was nothing in the street. His bewilderment turned to anger. Standing in the doorway, he switched off his flashlight and listened.

  More steps in the darkness.

  "They're coming!"

  The Doctor felt rather than saw the Chemist clutch his weapon. "Don't shoot!" he cried.

  The street was suddenly filled, humps leaped up and sideways in the beam of the Chemist's flashlight, there were soft thuds of bodies hitting bodies, and huge shadows shot out and flapped like wings. A rattling cough broke into a wail of several hoarse voices, and something heavy fell at the Chemist's feet, knocking him down. For a second he glimpsed a small face with white eyes staring at him; his flashlight hit the ground, and the darkness was total. He groped for the flashlight desperately, like a blind man running his hands over the stone of the street.

  He called to the Doctor, but his voice didn't carry. Dozens of bodies passed, bumping into one another.

  The Chemist grabbed the metal cylinder of his flashlight and jumped to his feet, but a powerful blow threw him against a wall. A whistle sounded from high up, and the bodies stopped. He felt the heat coming from them. He was shoved, he staggered and cried out, feeling slippery flesh and breaths on him from all sides. He pressed the contact, and there was light again.

  A row of enormous humps, and dazed eyes in miniature faces. Then, from behind, naked creatures pushing toward him. Wedged between hot, wet bodies, he made no attempt to defend himself, but let himself be pushed and pulled along. The stink of flesh was asphyxiating. The creatures near him looked at him with apprehension and tried to back away, but there was no room. The hoarse howling went on and on. Small torsos drenched in a liquid like sweat nestled in bulges of pectoral muscle.

  Suddenly the group surrounding him was pushed toward the doorway. Through a jungle of intertwined limbs he could make out, for a second, a glimmer of light and the Doctor's face, the mouth wide open in a shout. The Chemist's flashlight bobbed up and down, clutched to his chest, and it showed tiny faces, eyeless, noseless, mouthless, all drooping and drenched. For a moment the pressure slackened; then another push, and his shoulders were slammed against the wall, against a column, which he caught hold of and tried to cling to, resisting with all his might the wave of shoving creatures. He had to stay on his feet; if he fell, he would be trampled to death. He felt, in the stone, a step—no, a ledge. He climbed up on it and shone his flashlight outward.

  It was a terrifying sight: a river of heads surging from wall to wall. They stared at him wide-eyed as he stood in a niche and watched their desperate, convulsive efforts to avoid him. But they could not move away, helpless in the crowd that pushed down the street, that squeezed the outermost creatures into the walls. The Chemist saw the Doctor—he was caught in the crowd, like a floating chip, surrounded by huge bodies. The Chemist's flashlight fell again, went out. In the darkness, the noise continued, the thuds and groaning. He propped his back against the cold stone and tried to catch his breath. But now he could hear individual footsteps, individual leaps, which meant that the hellish crowd was thinning. Weak in the knees, he wanted to call to the Doctor but was unable to utter a sound. Suddenly a burst of white revealed the top of the opposite wall, and the Chemist realized, after a few moments, that it must be the Captain showing them the way back with a magnesium flare.

  He bent down and began feeling around for his flashlight, but the air along the ground smelled so bad it made him sick, so he quickly got back to his feet. Then he heard a distant shout, a man's voice.

  "Doctor! Over here!" the Chemist called. Another shout, closer now, and a tongue of light appealed between the black walls. The Doctor was heading toward him, but not in a straight line; it was as though he were drunk…

  "Ah," he said, "you're here. Good…" And he grabbed the Chemist by the arm. "They had me for a while, but I managed to move aside… Did you lose your flashlight?"

  "Yes."

  The Doctor still held his arm. "Dizziness," he explained, trying to catch his breath. "It's nothing… It'll pass…"

  "What was that?" the Chemist asked in a whisper.

  The Doctor said nothing.

  Together they listened to the darkness, to distant footsteps, to an occasional moan. The sky lit up a second time above them, showing horizontal ledges, and the glow drifted downward, yellowing, like a brief sunrise and sunset.

  "Let's go," they said together.

  Without the flares they probably would not have made it back before daybreak. The summoning bursts of light, which twice more filled the ravines of the streets, kept them in the right direction. Along the way they encountered several creatures, who fled in panic, and once they came across a body lying at the bottom of a steep flight of steps, already cold. They passed it without a word. A few minutes before eleven, they found themselves back in the open square with the column and the well. No sooner did the beam of the Doctor's flashlight hit it than the triple headlights of the jeep began shining from above.

  The Captain was standing at the top of the steps as the Doctor and the Chemist ran up. At the jeep, when they sat, panting, on one of the running boards, he turned off the lights and paced in the darkness, waiting for them to speak.

  When they had told him everything, he said, "Interesting. A good thing it ended like that. There's one of them here, by the way…"

  They did not understand, but when he put a light back on and aimed it at the rear, they jumped to their feet. About thirty feet from the jeep lay a doubler.

  The Doctor went to look at it. The thing was naked, half reclining, the upper part of its huge torso not on the ground. A pale-blue eye gazed at them from between heaving pectoral muscles. The men could see only the edge of a flattened little face, as though they were looking at someone through a door open just a crack.

  "How did it get here?" the Doctor asked softly.

  "It came from below, not long before you. When I lit the last flare, it ran away, but then it came back."

  "It came back?!"

  "Yes."

  They stood over it, not knowing what to do. The creature was breathing heavily, as if after a long race. The Doctor bent down to stroke the hulk, but it started quivering, and large drops of liquid appeared on its pale flesh.

  "He's … afraid of us," the Doctor murmured.

  "Let's leave him, let's go. It's late," the Chemist said.

  The Doctor hesitated. "No, wait, listen… Let's sit down."

  The doubler did not move.

  The Captain and the Chemist followed the Doctor's example and sat down on the flat, stony ground near the creature. In the distance they heard the sound of the geyser, and then the wind moving in unseen thickets. The settlement was invisible in the night. Threads of mist floated by. Sharply outlined in the glare of the headlight, the jeep stood motionless, like a flat on an abandoned stage. After more than ten minutes of this sitting, they began to grow impatient, but suddenly the little head looked out at them. A clumsy movement on the Chemist's part made it retreat back into its pouch of muscle.

  Finally, after almost half an hour of waiting, the huge creature got up. It was six feet tall, but would have been taller if it weren't bent forward. When it moved, the lower half of its body seemed to extend or retract legs at will from a shapeless base, but this was only muscle swelling and contracting around its limbs as it walked.

  No one knew how the Doctor did it—and he himself admitted later that he had no idea—but, after a variety of gentle gestures and coaxing pats, the doubler, which by now had emerged completely from its nest of flesh, allowed the Doctor to lead it by its tiny hand to the jeep. The head drooped forward and stared at them as though incredulous as they assembled in front of the headlight.

  "What now?" asked the Chemist. "You're not going to start a dialogue here."

  "We'll take him with us," said the Doctor.

  "Are you in your right mind?"

 
; "A good idea," said the Captain. "But he must weigh half a ton!"

  "So? The jeep can handle more than that."

  "Add the three of us, and the torsion bars might break."

  "Really?" said the Doctor. "Then we should let him go." And he pushed the doubler in the direction of the steps.

  At that point the big creature curled up, its skin covered with opalescent drops.

  "What? I … No, I was only joking," the Doctor stammered. They were amazed by the thing's reaction. The Doctor managed to calm the creature.

  Finding room for the new passenger was not going to be easy. The Captain let almost all the air out of the tires, so that the jeep was practically touching the rocks. He removed the two back seats and strapped them to the luggage rack, and the thrower was tied to the top of the pile. But the doubler was reluctant to get into the vehicle. The Doctor patted it on the back, talked to it, got in himself, and sat down. This would have made an amusing scene if it hadn't been so late, way past eleven, and if they hadn't had more than sixty miles to cover—in the darkness, over difficult terrain, and most of it uphill—to get back to the ship. Finally the Doctor lost patience. He grabbed one of the arms dangling from the small torso and cried, "Push him from behind!"

  The Chemist hesitated, but the Captain shoved hard against the doubler's bulging back. The doubler made a whimpering sound and, losing its balance, found itself in the jeep. Everything moved quickly now. The Captain inflated the tires, and the jeep had no problem moving, though it listed a bit. The Doctor occupied the seat in front of the new passenger, while the Chemist, not comfortable in its proximity, chose to stand behind the Captain instead.

  They drove past rows of columns, then entered the avenue of the club-shaped structures. The jeep gathered speed on the flat terrain, but slowed when they climbed the slope of magma at the pass. About ten minutes later they reached the clay mounds and the square wells with their terrible contents.