The world below
It was just then that I really got him. My earlier blows had only thrown
him from side to side, buffeted but not broken, while he retaliated more
than once with a thrown javelin, not without result, as was shown by a
foot that limped, even in the midst of this urgency. But this time the
stroke caught his left leg with the wall behind it, and cut it cleanly
through. He fell on the floor, in a place where the moon still lighted
it. As he did so, I struck again, and the soft toughness of the elastic
body, which gave way so easily in a free space, burst when the blow came
with the hard floor beneath it. The contents ran out over the floor like
an over-ripe tomato, or so it seemed in the moonlight. It was an uglier
sight when the day found it.
The door was moved swiftly, and my companion was beside me.
CHAPTER XX
THE BOW
The next moment a rush of the Killers broke upon the door through which
she had slipped, but it did not yield. With far better sight than mine
in the darkness, and with a cool detachment of mind, which did not seem
to be affected by her ecstatic delight at the swift movement of the
adventure, she had noticed instantly that, though the door had no
fastening, there were slots in the wall--three each side--and heavy bars
propped against it to fit them.
Lightly lifted, the first bar fell into place as the rush of the Killers
reached the entrance.
As she placed the other bars she told me, “There is one of the great
bows, and a bundle of shafts on the wall behind you--You don’t see at
night as I do?--They’re about the only things that _are_ left on the
wall.” (Her mind smiled as she thought of it.) “Do you always make so
much commotion when you kill anything? The archer shot me as I ran. He
shot straight. I heard the shaft coming behind me. My mind became like
yours. I was uncertain what to do, and had no time to think thoroughly.
I did not know whether I had will-power enough to turn the shaft. I
leapt up. It passed between my thighs as I did so. It cut the fur of
one, but without breaking the skin.” “That isn’t serious,” my mind
interjected, with a thought on my own wounded foot. “It may be,” she
answered. “I should have bent aside. It’s absurd to be caught in such a
way, because my thought failed me. I never understood so clearly before
how you live and think. It must be all chance and guessing. The shaft
went on into the crowd of the Killers that were running from the
sleeping-places. They all whistled with fear. They are great cowards. I
could not see that it struck any of them.”
As our thoughts crossed, I had felt along the wall, and found the bow.
It was five feet in length or more, bent for use, and of such strength
that I doubted whether I could handle it. I found the shafts, and fixing
one on the cord, I stepped to the left-hand window, risking any missile
they might throw, but protected somewhat by the darkness behind me. It
was about four feet from the ground, and about four feet broad, but not
more than a foot high, and with two horizontal bars crossing it, about
four inches apart.
As the ordinary Killers were about three feet high, they were below its
level as they crowded round the door. There was an excited hubbub of
whistling and whining noises, their suckers waggling in every direction
as they all talked at once and found no listeners--or so I thought.
Then they were silenced by the higher note of the archer behind them.
Evidently he gave them an order to move aside, for they quickly cleared
on either hand, till the space was bare before him. With his five
supporters beside him, their javelins in readiness, he advanced, bow in
hand, toward the window.
I thought that I had better get my shot in first, if I wished to have
any further interest in the adventure. I noticed with a flicker of
amusement that my companion’s mind was of the same opinion. I thought
she was learning fast--or was she coming down to my level?
It was a very bow of Ulysses. I pulled it back with difficulty, and the
arrow leapt from the cord with little aiming. It rose high over the
heads of the advancing line, and--amazing fluke!--it struck the other
archer--(there were only two of these monsters who were adult and
vigorous)--who was coming up behind them, and whom I had not seen at all
till the shaft hit him.
He was not seriously hurt, as we learnt afterwards, but had that one
arrow ended half the pack the immediate result could not have been more
decisive. Right and left they scattered, with a discordant clamour of
whistling signals, till the whole space was empty before us.
I was feeling the relief natural to a timid nature at the withdrawal of
an instant danger, and an illogical satisfaction at the result of my
clumsy shot, when my mood was changed by the realisation of the laughing
gaiety of my companion’s mind.
If I were in a world of strange sights and chances, it was in many ways
more native to me than to her, and a condition of existence in which you
directed your body to do something within its capacity and it did quite
differently, had a weirdness beyond her experience or imagination.
“It seems to me,” she thought, still mirthfully, “that your life in any
world must be a succession of unexpected happenings, and I begin to
understand why you seem to me both so brave and so cowardly. I would
gladly give a hundred years of my life for a day in your company. But we
may give more than either of us wish, if we disregard what the Killers
are doing. You should judge their ways better than I, being more nearly
of their kind; do you think they will attack us again, and how?”
I answered, “They are not of my kind at all, but very loathsome vermin.
I don’t think they will attack us again very quickly. I suppose we have
most of their weapons here. Also, this place seems to be designed for
defence--though against what we have no means of knowing. The bars on
the inside show its intention. I suppose they kept their arms here
because they would retire here in any emergency. Then, we are in a world
which is not used to action in the night. They may feel the cold more
than we do. The fact that we have wounded or killed one of their leaders
at the first attempt will dispirit them. Unless there be another
entrance, which is our greatest danger, I think we shall be safe till
the light comes.”
She replied, “But shall we wait till dawn without action? How will that
help us? At least, if you are right, we shall have time for clearer
thinking. Let us go to the farther end.”
She led the way, for it seemed that her sight was little less in the
dark than in the daytime, telling me, as she did so, that she saw no
sign of any entrance, and we rested at the farther end.
Even if we decided to wait till dawn, the prospect was not pleasant. It
could not be a less space away than three nights of my familiar time. I
became aware that my left foot was very painful, and that the boot was
full of blood. I was hungry also, tired, and very thirsty. The night,
even in this shelter, was very cold. Outside, it was fine again, and the
moon still shone through the windows.
I knew that my companion felt no need of food or drink, and the thin
striped body seemed indifferent to heat or cold, and while I had held
her hand, and shared her vitality, the call for food had been dormant in
myself also. But I had fought out this last struggle unaided, and it was
long since I had eaten, though I had drunk deeply at a spring on the
hillside as the dusk was falling.
“Your foot is hurt,” she thought, “can we mend it?” I took off the
boot--what was left of it--and pulled away the remains of a clotted
sock, but it was too dark for me to see the wound. With a feeling of
relief unspeakable, I knew that the small webbed fingers were on it,
with a vitality that thudded through the whole of my exhausted body. She
said, “The javelin must have struck aslant, across the front of the
foot, and entered where the string held the boot together. It did not
cut deeply enough to keep its place, and must have fallen as the foot
moved. I think it will heal quite easily. I suppose you are of a kind
that grows again without difficulty. I know among the sea-creatures that
the lower the form of the body the more easily it unites or grows, if it
be torn or shredded. May I clean and close it?”
I know it was done very delicately, and the wound was trivial. A small
furred finger cleaned and searched it, so that it began to bleed
freshly. “I am going to tear a little skin from its sides, because it is
so unclean. Do you mind?” she asked. Of course, I assented. It felt to
me that it was more than a little. I think the vitality that her hand
gave made the pain greater.
“If you slept,” she suggested, “and I kept my hand here, I think it
would be well in a short time, and your body would be fit for use. It is
no good to us now.”
I have noticed among my kind, that there is nothing that draws us
together so intimately as the common sharing of any physical danger;
perhaps it was from this cause in part, perhaps in part that the method
of our communication established an intimacy of a kind of which--however
commonplace to her--I had no previous experience, perhaps, also, that
the very difference of our minds attracted me, but, from whatever cause,
I was aware of an attachment to this creature, who, I told myself, was
less like a man than a seal, and had no sex as we understand it, such as
I had never felt for any earthly woman.
As I lay there, at the gate of sleep, the slim webbed hand that pressed
my foot was the dearest thing that any world contained, and
half-a-million years had no power to divide us.
And then--for one incautious instant--she let me see her mind, and I
knew how she regarded me.
I remember once, at a call of urgency, I volunteered to assist a
shepherd who was ministering to some neglected sheep, which had been
bitten by blow-flies. The grubs had hatched in the wounds, and had
burrowed inward. The sores had festered, and some had become cavities
several inches deep, laying bare bone and flesh, or going down to the
vital organs themselves, and in them were a mass of grubs that burrowed
and fed.
Some of the sheep lay dying, others might be saved if prompt attention
were paid to the wounds.
I still remember acutely the repulsion with which I touched and
cleansed, and dressed them. Others might have felt it less, but from
such things I am constitutionally averse.
But the feeling was mild to the repulsion with which she regarded the
foot on which her fingers rested. It was different in quality, because
she had a mind which saw clearly what should be done, and a body that
did not dream of rebellion; but it remained that she regarded the foot
she touched as something more grotesque and repulsive than her familiar
fishes, which swam in the clean flood, and that she felt as I might have
done, had duty called me to minister to one of the Killers--to touch the
worm-pink sliminess of the loathsome body while it waved its sucker in a
whistling gratitude for my attentions.
She knew her error instantly. “I should not have shown you. All is well.
Sleep. I will think of it thoroughly. Besides, I must communicate with
our Leader.”
Then her mind closed entirely; and after a time I slept.
CHAPTER XXI
THE BAT-WINGS
When I waked, the long night was far spent, and the moonlight had left
the window. My companion’s hand was still laid closely upon the injured
foot, and as I stirred, her thought met me.
“I have much to tell. Lie still, and listen.
“First, of ourselves. It is true that your body is, to me, a thing both