It is notoriously hard to keep track of time in caves, but when our watches showed several hours had passed, we rested, taking turns to sleep. We dined on pills, soup to nuts in a mouthful. The stream was still flowing somewhere in the background. We should have kept watch, but I knew so little in those days, and we slept.
For years I had thought that to hold Dimity sleeping in my arms, on the edge of sleep myself, would be perfect contentment, which showed how wrong it was possible to be. The idea of sex then would have been a joke—I associated it with calm, relaxation, and good spirits. Sick with fear for both of us, and for what might be happening on the surface, several times I heard sounds far off that were not like the noise of water on stone. I fiddled with the alien weapon, trying various settings without pulling the trigger, and tried not to think about what I might need to use it for.
We pushed on. There was a sort of moss slide which took us, easily enough in that gravity, down a long passage to a ledge above another ballroom cavity filled with tunnels and rock-holes. I flashed a light briefly around it, then doused it quickly and we forced our way back up the slope. The place was another natural morlock “town,” and it stank of them. They were alive this time. Behind us as we climbed I heard morlock barking and scrabbling sounds.
I turned and saw the dim shapes closing upon us. I discovered the alien weapon's trigger needed two pressures, but the first blast from it cut down the first of the morlocks.
The second time I fired at a set of formations in the roof. It dispersed the rest of the Morlocks and more importantly brought down some of the roof behind us in a shower of glittering spears, but anyway we had no inclination to linger. When we paused at the top of the slope, bruised and scraped by sharp and sliding stone, I found I had lost the ration packs.
Two mornings later, by our timepieces, we were hungry enough to try the meat, cooking it with our light. It tasted foul, rank and gamy, but if one did not think about its origins it was possible to choke it down. I remembered C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, where children had had to eat cold, and as I remembered, raw, bear-meat, and pretending I was one of them helped. Dimity, I think, could use her mind to override her nerves.
But whether it was the meat of the morlock or the alien or both, we were sick and weak the next day.
I tried to count our mercies, and could think of four: there were plenty of pools and streams of clear drinkable water, our lights, unlike those available to cavers of previous days, would last virtually forever (a less cheerful thought: they would still be burning long after we were skeletons), with Dimity's memory and sense of direction we stood little chance of getting any more lost than necessary, and none of the creatures we feared came near us, though several times we found cave insectoids and vermiforms on our bodies. They have much the same position in the caves' ecology as vultures on Earth, and their increasing friendliness was an omen I did not like.
Two days later a swarm of mynocks flew past us. I had a hard time holding the alien weapon steady in my hands by then, but by waving it about I brought a few down in flames. We ate them ready cooked, but they also tasted vile. Time went on. We played Dimity's little music box, and I think that helped keep me sane.
Once, I was sure, I saw in my light a dim, strange creature of some size disappearing rapidly into a dark hole. I glimpsed it only momentarily, but its odd gait reminded me of the story of tripedal footprints. Once it would have excited me. Now I was only concerned that it was neither morlock nor alien and did not seem to either threaten us or provide food. I followed it cautiously but the passage ended in a blank wall of rock, so smooth it could have been artificial. A hallucination, perhaps.
A few days after that we found ourselves back at our starting place. The dead morlock and the dead alien were still there, the cave insectoids and vermiforms swarming over them. They had just about finished the job of baring the Alien's bones lying in a bed of orange hair. I was thinking a lot about food by that time, and crushed up a paste of them. We were past objecting to the taste.
Dimity tried hypnotizing me to see if I could remember any passages more accurately. No good.
“The air's fresher than it might be,” she said at last. “Is it daylight outside?”
“I think so. Unless our clocks have gone wrong somewhere.” She scrambled up the rockfall. I tried to follow but my chest and arms were very stiff now.
“I think I can see light!” she called. “There's a way through!”
There had been none before. We had searched thoroughly the first day. I got to the top of the rockfall with her somehow. Indeed there were now a few distant chinks and shards of dim light. Perhaps it had settled over time, or perhaps something had interfered with it.
“We can't move any more now.”
“What about the gun? That brought it down originally.”
I didn't know how much charge was left, but there seemed no harm in doing my best with it. I think I would have got us clear eventually but before I had got very far a jarring impact shook the cave. I thought at first of earthquake, and saw myself and Dimity buried under a rockfall. But it was something else. I got clear, dragging Dimity with me, as the glittering crystal boulders spilled and settled further. More rocks fell around us, but there was little we could do about that except press against the wall. Dust hung in the air a long time, but when it settled we saw a gap above the rockfall.
“That was an explosion,” said Dimity.
“Someone after us.”
“No. A long way away.”
“It must have been a big one.”
“Let's go!”
Chapter 10
“Do you know how many entrances these caves have? This whole system, I mean?”
“Lots. A dozen within a few kilometers. But why haven't they just come barreling in? Why did they hole up in these caves at all?” We were splashing through the stream now, back to whatever temporary safety the modules offered.
“I can think of several reasons”, she said. “Watch a kitten with a ball of wool. Cats enjoy stalking until they are ready to leap. They may have found the caves with radar. Maybe their radar is better than ours. Also, they want to spy out the land. Remember the monastery. They don't give themselves away until they're ready. If they are like terrestrial felines, won't silent stalking until the pouncing strike be instinctual? They enjoy lurking, stalking, pouncing. Also, we don't know what's been happening in space. Maybe they are barreling in up there.”
We were back at the modules, fed and rested. We had slept for the better part of two days, and done nothing for a few days more. But their walls now gave little feeling of security. We would have to flee farther, I thought. But where? Just how do you flee from an alien invasion of your world?
Perhaps one of the city political factions had succeeded in making contact with the aliens. The first-aid foam on my chest had now been hardened for a long time, but I guessed further treatment was needed. I placed my hands in the autodoc and it began to click and blink. Probably, I realized, too late to release my hands, it was putting a sedative into my system. It left me feeling as a sedative would: better but lethargic. I sat down heavily and watched Dimity at the desk as some time passed.
“This is no good,” I told her. “I thought this was a refuge. It isn't.”
She was flicking across the channels on the desk. Nothing from space at all now, nothing from München but a brief flicker of a talking head mouthing without sound.
“Our lasers could burn through this wall. So could theirs.”
“I know.”
We had, in a curious way, been happy here in the last few days following our escape from the rockfalclass="underline" perhaps what the abbot had called a retreat. Irresponsibly or not, I had kept the desk and the television turned off.