"Box, how long have we been traveling?"
"We have been traveling for half a day and the sixth part of a day." Thorinn tried to puzzle this out and gave up. "How far have we come?"
"We have come two thousands of thousands of ells and eight hundreds of thousands of ells." Thorinn whistled. "How much farther are we going, then?"
"I don't know."
"What do you know?"
"I know this animal and this, and this plant"—pictures appeared in the crystal as it spoke—"and this, and this, and this engine"—a tangle of metal rods—"and this plant, and—"
"Peace," said Thorinn wearily. "When I ask you a question like that, don't answer." The box fell silent. Presently Thorinn felt something pulling him forward, and the light-rings began to move more slowly past the windows. The rings widened and receded, and he had just time to realize that they had come to a junction where the tunnel met a shaft, when there was a lurch and the rings tilted in a dizzying fashion. Thorinn sat down abruptly, feeling heavier than he had since he had left the Midworld, then heavier still. When he was able to lift his head again, the light-rings outside were flickering downward past the window. After a minute or so, he felt himself growing lighter again, but the wall of the shaft remained blurred. He became as light as he had been before, then even lighter. He felt himself drifting away from the floor, and clutched vainly for something to hold onto. The box and his other belongings were floating into the air, as if they were all falling together—but the evidence of his eyes told him the engine was rising.
"Box," he cried, "what's happening?"
"We have stopped moving faster. The engine and everything in it are falling with the same quickness, therefore there is nothing to hold them together."
The room was slowly drifting around Thorinn in a lopsided circle, while the box and his bundles pursued different directions. Thorinn reached for one of the bundles as it floated by and caught it by the cord, but when he pulled, all that happened was that the bundle came to him, bounced off his chest, and began drifting lazily away again, while the room took on a different rotation.
"Box, I don't understand," said Thorinn. "How can we be falling up?"
"We are not falling up, we are falling down."
With a retort on his lips, Thorinn glanced out the window and saw that it was true—the light-rings of the shaft were blurring upward, while the room and all in it, upside down, fell toward the bottom of the Underworld. He made a wild grab at the bundle, which struck him a light blow on the forehead. When he looked again, the shaft wall had soundlessly reversed itself and was flowing downward. He shut his eyes in helpless misery. When he opened them, nothing had changed except that the box had drifted closer and the bundles farther away. "Box," he said.
"Yes, Thorinn."
"What will happen when we hit the bottom?"
"We will not hit the bottom."
"Why not?"
"We will slow down and go into one of the tunnels."
And afterward? The metal arms would unfold, the pincers would seize him... The two crystals in the front wall, Thorinn realized suddenly, must be the eyes of the engine. If he could blind it somehow, then get the door open... He thought of smearing the eyes with rotten fruit, and wished he had not thrown it down the hole. He could break the eyes perhaps, with his sword, if he could get near enough. The bundle he had had before had drifted out of reach. He closed his eyes again. At length he roused—something was happening. The floor, which had somehow swung under him, drifted nearer. He touched, got his balance, stood erect. The box and the bundles lay on the floor nearby.
"Have we stopped?" Thorinn asked, but in the next moment he saw it was not so: the light-rings in the shaft outside were flickering past as swiftly as before.
"No," said the box.
"Then why do we have weight again?"
"Because the engine is no longer moving as the earth pulls it—it is moving at one speed and no faster, although the earth pulls it to move faster."
"And that makes us have weight?"
"It makes us have the feeling of weight."
"Weight is weight," said Thorinn after a moment.
"No, because when you put some small thing on your open hand and then turn, swinging your arm very fast—" the crystal lighted as it spoke, and there was a very small Thorinn whirling with his arm extended—"the thing presses against your hand and does not fall. That is not weight, but it is the feeling of weight."
Thorinn, to his surprise, began to feel that he understood this. He talked idly with the box awhile longer, then lay down on the pallet with his hands under his head. He must have slept, for when he opened his eyes he sensed a change. He stood up. The light-rings of the shaft outside were moving more and more slowly, another proof that the box was right. There was a lurch, the shaft wall swung toward them, and Thorinn sat down involuntarily on the floor, while the box and his bundles slid toward the back of the room. Thorinn got his sword as it went by and waited for the pull to stop. When it did, a few minutes later, he was caught off guard but scrambled upright anyway.
He would have to strike quickly twice, and break both the eyes of the engine. He leaped, and remembered nothing more.
9
How Thorinn tried to cross a river, and found it unlike other rivers.
3892 a.d.:
Having been advised to undertake some unnecessary and intricate study, I chose languages, and for my first attempt selected Lower Southwest Emmish, since my business requires me to visit that sector frequently. At first I found the subject tiring in the extreme, but persevered, and after several months began to acquire some facility. The chief difficulty I found was not in learning the words themselves or their manner of pronunciation, although this included mastering several unaccustomed sounds, but— and this was wholly unexpected— in learning the order in which the words are made into sentences and the ways in which they influence one another. The translator had no rules governing these things in its memory, but at my order was able to deduce and formulate them; this aided me considerably, but many difficulties remained unresolved. To give an example of the simplest kind, where we say, "I intend to take some rest now," the Loswem says (literally translated), "Being at repose this one is to call." At first I believed that there must be some malfunction in the translator, but a second machine gave me identical results,and later I was able to observe that when a Loswem expressed a desire translated as "I intend to take some rest now," this in fact was what he actually said. I commented to a professional acquaintance of mine that I wondered how he could express himself in so illogical and arbitrary a language; he at first pretended not to know what I meant, and when at length I made him understand, by showing how much more clearly and simply we convey the same meaning, he expressed the opinion that it was our language which was illogical and unwieldy. From this I began to suspect that all languages may be almost equally arbitrary and illogical, although some,such as Loswem, are certainly more so than others. In the course of my discussion with my acquaintance, before he tired of the subject, I found that it was impossible to translate the word "intend" into his language at all; when I asked the translator to do it, it replied that it could not do so without the context.