The world below
she agreed thus to our parting? Had she not herself urged, and did she
not again suggest, that Brett was beyond my rescue? Was it not her own
plan that I should return to the surface? Two passions, grief and fear,
rose in an alliance of opposition. She was my one friend in a world in
which I was worse than outcast,--was I to part from her for ever? She
was the actual physical strength, as she was the moral confidence, by
which I hoped to have overcome the dangers and difficulties of the
descent,--having feared to adventure it in her company, was I now to go
lonely?
She realised my mind with a sympathy which was without comprehension, as
one might sympathise with pain who had never felt it. Perceiving it, she
met it with all her strength of will and reason, as she had fought the
mind of our recent opponent.
“Did you not say yourself that it was a needful thing that you should go
downward? Had I not agreed that we should part, I should have lost all
that I have won for both of us. If our meeting has been a pleasure (as
it has to me), shall we spoil it with foolish protest now that it is
completing? It will not cease to be, because the event is over. Will it
not be actual in our minds as long as we desire to recall it?... Do you
not think too much of your body, and of the risks which it must take for
your service? If you heed it thus it is of less use than even so poor a
tool might be under a control more confident.... You think of the period
of time which will divide us, should you succeed in that which you have
attempted, and return to your own people. But is not your presence here
a proof that you are vexed by illusions only? When we consider time or
space, we know that they are, and yet we know that they are both
impossible.... Were it otherwise, would it not be true that if two
companions were to turn apart for a moment, though they were both
immortal, and were to continue forward on their different ways, seeking
each other for a million million of eons, they would be eternally
separate, with a separation which would increase through all eternity?
That is evident; but it is also incredible.... Can you not learn to
become fearless of circumstance, so that you may find the freedom of
living, and learn the joy of that liberty?”
So her mind struck, thought for thought, against the confusion of the
thoughts I showed her.
Then she added, “I will do that which I can to secure the safety of the
body which you value so greatly. I will ask my Leaders for their help
when I rejoin them. If we should still be allied in the war which is
coming, it will be a slight thing to require it. But does it matter so
greatly? Is it not true that life is only good while we regard it
lightly?”
At this she closed her mind, and rose, and left me. She gave no sign of
regret, or of farewell, nor did she hasten nor loiter.
She left me with no further hope of her vitality to give me strength, or
spirit to give me confidence, with a feeling of loneliness and despair
such as I had not felt before, even in this strange and hostile world.
CHAPTER XIV
LOVE AND WAR
So we parted. Of the months that followed I do not write in detail for
sufficient reason. I did not go straight down, as I had hoped to do.
Time after time I was driven aside to avoid detection. Under the stress
of war the spiral which had been comparatively little used, except at
certain seasons, had become an artery of traffic. For many weeks I lived
a furtive life of lurking peril. I fed at instant risk of detection, and
slept without assurance of safety. On one Level, I went not only in fear
of the Dwellers, but of other vermin, larger and better-armed than
myself, that maintained a tolerated existence in a place that was given
over to the incineration of garbage.
Once I spent a period which I cannot estimate, without food or water, in
the interior of a machine of which I did not know the purpose, nor how
or when it might become active to my destruction. There I lay, watching
with sleepless vigilance for a moment when I might hope to escape
unnoticed.
Concerning much I am silent, because it could be nothing more than a
confused narrative of inexplicable things.
During the whole time I was conscious that the war continued, and that
it was maintained at an increasing cost of life and effort.
In the end, when I had passed the Division, (at which point the
gravitation changes, being about four hundred and fifty miles below the
surface), and, after many delays and deflections, had reached the place
I sought in the Lower Levels, when I was at the very threshold of the
domain of the Seekers of Wisdom, a moment’s incautious boldness betrayed
me, and I was seen and captured. I found myself held in pincers such as
those in which I had seen the writhing body of Templeton, and was
carried thus into the great laboratory, and laid aside as my captor was
called to a more urgent occupation.
The pincers were not uncomfortable. Their jaws were of a rubber-like
substance, ductile to the shape of the body they held,--firmly as in a
vice, and yet with an almost cushion-like softness.
I was laid so that I hung a few feet over the edge of a table, suspended
sideways in the gripping jaws.
Expecting that death or mutilation were only delayed for a moment, I
found myself roused to a vivid consciousness of the moving drama around
me. I can see it still, in every detail, as, for several hours, I
surveyed it.
War had invaded the laboratory, and it had become a theatre of
operations, the most seriously injured bodies in which life still
lingered being brought down this great distance for the facilities which
it provided.
Those who had sought to postpone the desire of death by searching for
curious knowledge in the bodies of other creatures, were now working
with a recovered energy to repair those of their younger fellows. Those
who had boasted that their youth was of an invincible immortality, were
now being carried in, broken or maimed or in divided parts, to be
repaired or rejected. And those who were past repair were not cast aside
for fire or corruption to feed upon them, but the portions of their
bodies which were still sound were used for the repair of their more
lightly-injured companions, and for this purpose, (if not immediately
required), they were hurried into a freezing-chamber, if possible before
life had entirely left them.
I saw a surgeon stoop over a body which had been bitten through at the
waist, so that it was almost entirely severed, and give a gesture of
negation, on which it disappeared at once in the direction from which
bodies, or parts of bodies were being brought and thawed as they were
required for the repairing of others; muscles, or bones, or missing
organs being grafted upon those who retained sufficient life to connect
them.
On the distant surface of the world the fighting must have been of a
desperate character, for while I was laid aside and forgotten a
succession of wounded, most of them with ghastly injuries, were brought
in, till it seemed that the ample floor of the laboratory would be too
small to contain them.
One of the last was a woman.
I had only known her before in a moment’s vision, but I could not forget
or mistake that flame of life as I had seen it assert defiant youth
against the deepest laws of the Universe which conceived it. And the
flame of life was still there, and still unconquered, though the body
was torn and opened, soiled with filth from the upper surface of the
earth which had been the place of its conflict, and discoloured in
places to a sulphurous yellow from the action of its antagonist.
It was in tribute to that dominating vitality that the attendants paused
in their work, the consciousness of my own peril left my mind, and the
dying turned to regard her, as she gave her thought to the surgeon who
was bending to observe her injuries.
“The tide is turned,” (and the thought was less a speech than a song of
victory), “the tide is turned, and we have found the way that will
triumph. Eight of them we have brought down in the place of fighting, on
the Grey Beaches of the Amphibians,--eight we have brought down, and the
rest are scattered.... Tell the women from me that every one who is
above the Youth of Motherhood is to go upward. It is the last order I
give them. There are better things than the delights of the Five
Approaches. Tell them that I have found death, and I do not fear it.”
Her eyes met those of the surgeon who was considering her injuries, and
her thought was derisive. “Can you not see that I am spoiled beyond your
mending? Am I one who would walk crutched who have been the Centre of
Circles? You will pass me very quickly into the Place of Freezing. There
are two women that follow whom you may repair from that which is
uninjured, if you lose no time in the doing. You will not wait till I
die...?” I was aware of a note of protest in the mind of the surgeon
that met her own, and was swept aside, weak as a bird’s wing in the
tempest. It was not his protest alone, but that of all, the injured and
the attendants, who heard her. There was one thought that broke through
like a cry of agony, and called my attention to a wounded form from
which it came, which had been carried in behind her. With a surprise of
recognition, I knew my captor of the first night,--he who had called in
sleep for that which he would never gain.
But their thoughts were beaten down by the indignation with which she
perceived them. “Do you think to thwart my will because I am fallen?” It
seemed that her thought swept the other protests aside to reach the form
that was behind her. “_You_ who would have come a thousand miles had I
called you? Who would have waited to know my pleasure like a crouching
dog. You have followed well where the stings were striking. Will you
follow now where I lead you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I will follow.”
There was no further protest. I heard the gates withdrawn, and the two
litters, with their living burdens, passed into the Place of Freezing.
I saw that eons pass, but Love and War will continue.
CHAPTER XV
RELEASE
I remained for several hours gripped in that soft inflexible pressure,
knowing not what of death or torture or mutilation I must undergo when
they had leisure for my insignificance, and watching with an
extraordinary mental clarity and aloofness the operations by which they
built up the bodies of some of the less hopelessly injured with the
limbs or organs of those who were themselves beyond saving.
But the time came when the pincers were lifted once again, and I was
aware of the hatefully impartial eyes which considered my destiny. At
this extremity of peril I recalled the methods of the Amphibians.
Desperately I fought for the self-control which I could not gain:
desperately I fought to reach some contact with the mind on which my
fate depended. But I failed utterly. It was natural for the creatures he
examined to protest and struggle, and the fact did not interest his
mind. My thoughts were nothing to him, and he did not heed them.
But I was more fortunate than Templeton. Instead of being immersed in
the successive jars, I was plunged immediately into the white light
which had condemned him. The sensation was not unpleasant,--might,
indeed, be described as ecstatic for a mind untroubled. My body tingled
with life. Looking down, I was conscious of a new nakedness. I could see
everything which my body held, and yet through them. The activities in
every vein were transparent.
I was held there for some time, and then lifted out, examined, and
plunged back for a further period. When I expected to be thrown aside, I