The world below
that it was probable that this was the last we should meet, the fourth
quarter of the curving path returning us to the point from which we had
started. Faced by this probability, we rested awhile, and then, hand in
hand, that my companion’s vitality might give me the physical strength I
needed, so that my will should be free for the nervous conflict before
us, we went resolutely into the dark mouth of the cavity.
In the course of a few steps, taken with difficulty, as though our feet
dragged in a heavy sand, and our limbs and bodies were pressed against a
trammelling and resisting garment, we found that we were in an absolute
blackness, so that we could not see our steps, and it is doubtful,
indeed, whether we should not have retired at once from so menacing a
prospect, had not my inferior power of progression caused us to bend our
course somewhat to the right, on which side I was, and as we drew nearer
to the wall we discovered that it was of a quality which I may best
describe as having an interior luminosity. It gave no light to the
passage at all, but standing closely to it we could look into it, as
into a glass, yet seeing no reflection of ourselves, but a vision that
held us absorbed and silent. At first we saw a dark pool, or it might be
the shadowed space of a river, but it showed no current, nor any motion
of wind. Strange, fronded trees grew beside it. At some distance, there
was a touch of moonlight on the water, but it did not waver. We watched
for some time, as though expecting something to happen, and yet I
thought it to be nothing more than a picture of some primeval creation.
Then it seemed that the dark surface of the water broke, and a long
snout, as of an alligator, moved into the lighted space, and sank again
very quietly. Nothing else. We watched a long time further, but nothing
changed, unless, perhaps, the light on the water was slightly fainter.
“Is it real?” I wondered. “No, surely,” she thought, “I suppose it to be
a picture of things long past. I do not think it to be of the earth of
this time. Shall we look at the other wall?”
I agreed, though I was reluctant to withdraw my gaze from that primeval
night, where I might see I knew not what of mystery or of wonder if I
should wait till its morning came. The pressure was more tolerable while
we made no effort to move directly forward, and we crossed the interval
of blackness quite easily, to find, as my companion had thought, that
the opposite wall held a corresponding wonder. But it was not of any
strange or terrible or momentous scene.
There was a faint light, as of the late evening, or the very early dawn
of a winter day, and snow was falling thickly. Bare trees showed dimly,
and one ivied trunk was close, as though we might have reached to touch
it, and on the dark berries a pair of hawfinches were feeding. They were
so real and close that it seemed strange that no sound came as they
changed footing with a flutter of wings, or pulled the sprays apart.
That was all. It might have been a scene from winter of my own day, or
of millenniums before or after.
And while we gazed, we became aware that something with a heavy tread
had entered the passage. We thought it (and rightly) to be one of the
Dwellers. The steps passed us, and went forward. We were of one mind to
follow.
Returning to the centre of the tunnel, we were again in darkness, but
the footsteps led us, and we found that the resistance against which we
had fought had ceased to trouble us while we followed the unseen feet.
Realising this, we increased our pace to a run, lest the dividing space
should widen, so that we were but ten or fifteen yards behind--our feet
making no sounds on the soft flooring--when our unseen guide turned
sideways into a chamber on the right-hand side of the passage.
CHAPTER VII
THE LIVING BOOK
We stood at the entrance of a room of (to us) enormous proportions. It
was filled with an equally-diffused light, of which I saw no origin.
Neither, when I considered it later, could I observe any appliances for
the regulation of temperature or ventilation. Yet the warmth was such
that I did not suffer from my lack of clothing; the air was fresh and
exhilarating. The arched entrance to the room had no door, but the light
stayed at the threshold. Standing on the outer side of the entrance, we
supposed ourselves to be unobservable in the darkness.
The Dweller that we had followed was a woman, like the one that we had
last seen, but her colouring was different. The hair on her head was
short, curling, and glossy black. It extended down the spine in the same
way. The body-colour varied from a dark bluish-black to the softest,
palest greys. The effect was beautiful beyond describing.
Her form was as straight and graceful as had been that of the other, nor
did it give an impression of great size in a room which was proportioned
to it. It was not she that was large, but we that were small. Her body
was slim and perfect in its proportions, and her face was flawless, yet
where the other had given an impression of youth, there was here an
atmosphere of age incalculable. I cannot say from what it came, unless
from one thing only. Her eyes were intolerably tired.
As she entered the room she had an object about the size of a football
perched on her left shoulder. There was a table in the centre, of a
transparent blue substance. It had three legs which joined in a twisted
knot, and then spread out. I noticed that these legs moved so that the
table adjusted itself to her as she approached it, but whether this
movement were sentient or mechanical I could not tell. She extended her
left arm to the surface of the table, and the object on her shoulder
rolled slowly down.
It was of the colour of a boiled lobster, with many bluish-white
appendages hanging from its surface. They were about an inch in length,
and of the shape to a dachshund’s ear. As it rolled forward they spread
out like hands, to balance and control its motion, and when it rested
those that were close to the ground would support it steadily.
It was evidently alive, but it had no other features that I could
observe, and it appeared equally comfortable whatever part of its
surface were uppermost.
The table was relatively higher than those to which we are accustomed,
and there was no chair or other seat in the room.
The Dweller remained standing, as though her attention were fixed upon
the red globule before her. I turned to my companion to convey my
wonder, but she gave me a quick thought that she was trying to follow
what was happening, and did not wish for distraction, so I looked
quietly round the room while I waited.
The wall on the side on which we stood, and those to right and left,
were blank of all but colour, which was blue, of a very
delicately-beautiful tint, which I had not seen previously, evidently
designed to harmonise with the colouring of its occupant.
The farther wall was of the same nature as those we had passed in the
passage, having a living picture within it--if living it could be
called, much was an epitome of desolation.
It showed far more plainly, or at least to a far greater distance, than
did those into which we had looked before. It was a scene of a frozen
river, which itself must have been half-a-mile in width, and of an
endless solitary frozen plain beyond it. The sky was frosty blue and
cloudless. There were no trees,--nothing but the frozen river, and the
frozen snow.
I had a perception that it had lain thus for many centuries, lifeless,
windless, and unchanging, and that it was in some inexplicable way akin
to the one who appeared to have selected it to companion her, and that
within it lay the explanation of the weariness in her eyes.
But its desolation was less than hers, for it must have ended at some
time in the earth’s history. Though it might have endured for
millenniums, yet the time had come when the earth again swung sunward,
and the warmth found it. But for the weariness from which she suffered
there was no hope at all.
Following this impression, it occurred to me as a natural thing that, if
reflections of the earth’s changing past were used as mural decorations,
such scenes and periods would be preferred as would show little or very
gradual differences, or their suitability might be lost.
The articles in the room were few. There was a wide shelf at the centre
of the left-hand wall, on which were stacked a number of flat boards
which were probably pictures, or material for them, for, to the right of
the table, there was an easel, such as would have looked natural enough,
apart from its size, in a studio of our own day, with a similar board
upon it, on which a picture of the frozen desolation was half completed.
There were various smaller articles ranged beneath the shelf, of which I
could not understand the nature or utility.
I returned my attention to my companion, to find her ready for
conversing. She said “I cannot learn much, as the thoughts which are
passing are not meant for us, but it seems that there is something here
similar to your own device, of which you have told me. I know that you
have a method of recording ideas and facts by means of marks on
retentive substances, so that the knowledge of them may remain, though
the brain in which they originated be ended, and that, by this means,
you have partly overcome one of the defects of your individual
mortality. It seems to me that this method must be subject to great
disadvantages, as it must be even easier for such as you are to make
marks which will be false, or the record of foolish imaginations, than
to be accurate in fact, and wise in deduction; and, as you have no
authority to distinguish between them, your children must often be
induced to foolishness, or misled to disaster. Possibly the confusion
may be so great that they are distracted from any continuing path, and
the result is the inconsequent and abortive activities of mind and body
to which you are so largely accustomed.
“However that may be, it appears that the Dwellers have devised a
somewhat similar method of recording the facts they accumulate, or the
theories which they formulate, such as is more suited to their greater
longevity, and their superior intelligence.
“This which we see is one of their books--a living creature of a kind,
designed to store the thoughts that are given to it, and to convey them
at later periods to any inquiring mind. She whom we now see is both the
custodian and the compiler of these volumes, and I gather that she is
now placing on record the events in which we have so lately
participated.”
While I received this explanation, the Dweller had crossed the room, and
picked up a metal article of a brass colour, and of the shape of a
figure eight, which she laid flatly on the ground, and within one of the
loops of which she placed the living ball, with which she had now
apparently finished, and then stood for some time gazing at the
half-painted picture, and at the scene from which it was taken. Her
method of painting was different from our own in this particular, that
one part of the picture was entirely finished, but ended abruptly at a
blank which was not touched at all.
After a time, she resumed her work, and the reason of this became
evident. She painted with a long pencil terminating in a small flat pad,
of a surface of two or three square inches, and this she dipped into
saucers of various semi-liquid colours which were arranged upon a wide
ledge of the easel below the picture. There could only have been black
and white and shades of blue and grey that were needed, but the pad was
dipped many times, and touched lightly with a finely pointed instrument