Rhiow looked at that with some concern. So did Saash, but she simply switched her tail and said, “Power conservation measure. If we didn’t shut it now, it might collapse between now and the time we get back up.”
Whenever that may be, Rhiow thought. If ever at all.
And do I really care?
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get on with it; and Iau walk with us … for we need Her now, if we ever did.”
They wound their way back into the caverns of the Downside by the same route they originally had taken to service the catenary. The sounds around them were different this time, even to the dripping of water, and all of them walked more quietly. The Downside had a listening quality about it that it had not had before … but not the kind of listening that can be described as “brooding.” It was charged: a silence following action … or before action begins again.
Their order of march was reversed this time. It was Arhu who led the way, having learned from “looking” inside Urruah how to make the tiny dim light that helped them find their way. Rhiow had shown him how to tie this small wizardry into the map in her mind so that the light led them through the turns and twists of the caverns, and left them free to keep alert and watch for any sign of the saurians. Behind Arhu, Saash was walking, and behind her, Urruah; Rhiow brought up the rear.
Their vigilance might have been for nothing: they heard no one, saw no one, and caught not a whiff of lizard except for what was stale, left over from the previous time … or so Rhiow thought. It was almost an hour later when they came to the catenary cavern and were almost surprised by it, for they had expected to smell it from some distance. When they came to the catenary cavern, though, it was empty, and almost perfectly clean. Even the bloodstains appeared to have been washed off the rock. Or rather, licked, Rhiow thought, her whiskers quirking with disgust.
Of the catenary nothing could be seen but a faint wavering in the air, like weed in water: only the barest maintenance-trickle of power was running up it, not nearly enough to produce any light. Saash went to it and looked it over while Arhu gazed around him in confusion. “Who cleaned everything up in here?”
“Who do you think?” Rhiow said.
Arhu stared at her, completely bemused.
“They eat each other,” said Urruah.
Arhu’s jaw actually dropped. Then he laid his ears flat back and scratched the floor several times with one huge paw, the gesture of revulsion that many People make when presented with something too foul to ingest, either a meal or a concept. “They deserve what we did to them, then!” Arhu said. “They would have done that to us—”
“Almost certainly,” Saash said. “But as to whether they deserve to be killed, I wouldn’t care to judge: the Oath doesn’t encourage us to make such assessments.”
“Why not? They’re just animals! They come running and screaming out in big herds, and try to kill you—”
“We have responsibilities to animals too,” Saash said, “the lower ones as well as the higher ones who can think or even have emotional lives. But leaving that aside, you haven’t been in their minds enough to make that assessment.” Saash wrinkled her nose. “It’s not an enjoyable experience, listening to them think and feel. But they’re sentient, Arhu, never doubt it. They have a language, but not much culture, I think—not since their people were tricked by the Lone One. There are memories.” She looked thoughtful. “Anyone can be delusional or believe lies that are told. But almost all the minds of theirs you might touch will have heard stories of how things were before the Lone One came—how their people really had a right to be called what we still call them as a courtesy-name, the Wise Ones; how they were great thinkers, though the thoughts would seem strange to us now … maybe even then. All very long ago, of course … but nonetheless, the Whispering seems to confirm the rumors. Now they have nothing left but a life in the dark … nothing to eat except each other, except at times when so many of them die off that they’re forced to go up into the sun to try to hunt; and not being adapted to the present conditions here, those who try that mostly die, too. If the saurians hate us, they may have reason.”
“I don’t want to know about that,” Arhu said. “We’re going to have to kill a lot more of them if we’re supposed to do whatever it is you have in mind. Knowing stuff like that will only make it harder.” He stalked ahead of them, the epitome of the hunter: head down for the scent, padding slowly and heavily, eyes up, wide and dark in the darkness.
The other three went silently along behind him as they continued downward through the caverns, now slipping through unfamiliar territory and moving a little more slowly. Rhiow was still thinking of how she had seen the saurians eating one another, down there in the dark, with a ready appetite that suggested this kind of diet was nothing new at all. They would be seeing much more of that kind of thing, she was sure. I should be grateful, maybe, she thought, that my emotions are so dulled at the moment, that everything seems so remote…
“So where are all the lizards that came out of the gates the other day?” Urruah said softly, behind Rhiow now.
“Maybe they all came out,” Saash said, in an oh-yes-I-believe-this voice, “and they all died.”
“I doubt that very much,” Rhiow said. “Never mind. How was the catenary itself?”
“Structurally sound. But something is starving it of power, from underneath.”
“Could it be reactivated later?”
“Probably,” Saash said, “but I’ve got no idea whether the rules for reactivating it will be the same as they were yesterday.”
Arhu had gone down and around a corner, ahead of them, out of sight, and Urruah paused for a moment, looking up. “Interesting,” he said, coming over to Rhiow. “Look at the ceiling here.”
Rhiow and Saash gazed up. “Very round, isn’t it?” Saash said.
“One of those bubble structures you get down here,” Rhiow said. “The water comes in through a little aperture and then rolls loose stones around and around inside the larger one. It hollows the chamber right out, as if someone blew a bubble in the stone. There are a few chains of them down here; they show on old Ffairh’s map. He seemed to be interested in them.”
They walked on down through the spherical chamber, up and out the other side, and went after Arhu. There was indeed another such chamber on the far side, and they went through it as well, down into the depression at the center and up again to the exit. Past this was a long, high-ceilinged corridor devoid of the usual stalactites and stalagmites, trending very steeply downward so that they all had to slow and pick their way as if they were coming down one side of a peaked roof.
At the bottom of the corridor, the tiny point of greenish light that they had been following vanished; then their vision caught its glow, diminished, coming from off to the left, and reflecting on the shadowy shape of Arhu heading around the corner and leftward as well. The sound of water could be heard again, soft at first, then getting somewhat louder: an insistent tink, tink, tink sound, almost metallic in the silence. “Are we still going to be following that catenary down the tree,” Urruah said, “or is it another one?”
“Another. We pick it up”— Saash looked at her own mental “copy” of Rhiow’s map— “another five or six caverns down, and a little to the east. Maybe a hundred feet below where we are now.”
“I hate this,” Urruah muttered, as ahead of them the light got dimmer, and they followed it doggedly. “All this stone on top of us—”