"Radioactivity," Will corrected him.
"Sure, if you want to call it that. It's in the rock in this place." Cal waved his hand expansively. "That's why none of my people hang around for long."
"Oh, this just gets better and better," Chester complained. "So we can't go back to the Colony, and now we can't stay here, either. Radioactivity! Your dad was right, Will, and we're going to fry in this forsaken place."
"I'm sure we'll be OK for a while," Will said, trying to allay his friend's fears, but without much confidence.
"Great, great, and freakin' great," Chester growled, then stomped over to where they'd left the rucksacks, still grumbling to himself.
"Something wasn't right back there," Cal said confidentially to Will, now that they were alone.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you saw the way that last Coprolite was watching us?" Cal said, shaking his head with a confused expression.
"I did, yes," Will said. "And you just told us they don't take any notice of outsiders."
"I'm telling you… they don't. I've seen them a thousand times back in the South Cavern and they never do that. They never, ever look straight at you. And he was moving strangely… too fast for a Coprolite. He didn't act normal." Cal paused to scratch his forehead. "Maybe it's different down here, because it's their land. But it's weird, all the same."
"I guess it is," Will said thoughtfully, little knowing how close he'd just come to his father.
15
Dr. Burrows stirred, thinking he'd heard the soft chiming sound, the wake-call that rang without fail every morning in the Coprolite settlement. He listened intently for a while, then frowned. There was nothing but silence.
"Must have overslept," he decided, rubbing his chin with a look of some surprise as he encountered the stubble on it. He'd grown fond of the straggling beard he'd sported for so long, and found he missed it now that he'd shaved it off. Something within his psyche had been very comfortable with the image it presented. He'd promised himself that he would regrow it for his glorious return, his eventual emergence back out on the surface again — whenever that was going to be. He'd cut an impressive figure on the front pages of all the newspapers. The imagined headlines loomed before him: "The Robinson Crusoe of the Underworld"; "The Wild Man of the Deeps"; "Dr. Hades…"
"That's quite enough," he said out loud, putting a stop to his self-indulgence.
He pulled aside his coarse blanket and sat up on the straw-stuffed mattress. It was too short for an average-sized man, as he was, and his legs hung over the edge by nearly two feet.
He put on his spectacles, scratched his head. He'd attempted to cut his hair himself and hadn't made a terribly good job of it; in some places it was almost down to the scalp, while in others there were tufts about an inch long. He scratched even more vigorously, working his way around his head and then across his chest and armpits. Scowling with displeasure, he gazed in an unfocused way at his fingertips.
"Journal!" he said suddenly. "I didn't make an entry yesterday." He'd arrived back so late that he'd completely forgotten to record the day's events. Clicking his tongue against his teeth as he retrieved his book from under his bed, he opened it at a page that was blank except for the heading:
Under this he began to write, whistling a random and disjointed tune all the while:
Scratched myself half to death during the night.
He paused and thoughtfully licked the end of his pencil stub, then continued:
The lice are simply unbearable, and they're getting worse.
He glanced around the small, almost circular room, some twelve feet from side to side, and up to the concave ceiling.
The texture of the walls was irregular, as if the drying plaster or mud or whatever it was constructed from had been applied by hand. As for the shape, it gave him the impression that he was inside a large jar, and it amused him that he knew now how a genie trapped in a bottle might feel. This impression was heightened by the fact that the only way in or out was below him, in the center of the floor. It was covered by a piece of beaten metal that resembled an old trash can lid.
He glanced at his dust suit, hanging from a wooden peg on the wall like the shucked-off skin of a lizard but with a light coming from the eye holes where the luminous orbs were inserted. He should be putting on the suit, but he felt duty-bound to complete the entry for the previous day first. So he continued with his journaclass="underline"
I sense the moment has arrived for me to move on. The Coprolites…
He hesitated, debating whether to use the name he had devised for these people, assuming they were a distinct species from Homo Sapiens, something he hadn't been able to ascertain yet. "Homo Caves," he said, then shook his head, deciding against it. He didn't want to confuse matters before he had his facts straight. He began to write again.
The Coprolites are, I believe, trying to communicate to me that I should leave, although I know not why. I don't think it has anything to do with me or, more specifically, with anything I've done. I might be mistaken, but I am certain the mood has changed in the encampment. During the last twenty-four hours, there has been more activity than I've seen in the past two months. What with the additional food stores I saw them laying down, and the restrictions on the womenfolk and children from venturing outside, they are almost acting as if they are under siege. Of course, these could merely be precautionary measures that they put into practice every so often — but I do believe something is about to happen.
And so it seems it is time for me to rйsumй my travels. I shall miss the Coprolites in no small measure. They have accepted me into their gentle society, one in which they seem perfectly at ease with each other, and, strangely enough, with me. Maybe it's because I'm not a Colonist or a Styx, and they recognize that I pose no risk to them or their progeny.
In particular, their offspring are a constant source of fascination, almost adventuresome and playful. I have to keep reminding myself the young are not a completely different species from the adults.
He stopped whistling to allow himself a chuckle, reminiscing how at first the adults wouldn't even hold his stare when he tried, fruitlessly, to communicate with them. They would avert their rather small gray eyes, their body language one of awkward submission. Such was the difference in temperament between him and these unassuming people that at times he pictured himself as the hero from a Western, the lone gunslinger who had trekked across the prairies to a town of cowed farmers or miners or what have you. To them, Dr. Burrows was a powerful, all-conquering, he-man hero. Hah! Him!
"Get on with it, will you," he told himself, and resumed his writing:
All in all the Coprolites are such a gentle and chronically reticent people, and I can't claim that I have gotten to know them. Perhaps the meek have inherited the earth, after all.
I shall never forget their act of mercy in rescuing me. I have written of it before, but now that I am to leave, I have been thinking much about it again.
Dr. Burrows stopped and looked up, staring into the middle distance for several moments, with the air of someone who is trying to remember something but has forgotten why he is trying to remember it in the first place.
Then he flicked back through the pages of his journal until he found his first entry on arriving in the Deeps and read it to himself.