“Lies, lies, lies! Maybe! So long, brother!”
Howling like a wolf, he ran from the mouth of the tunnel across the heaving desert. But he did not get far. Abruptly, a crack opened beside him, a crack that zigzagged like lightning across the field of vision, that widened as it ran and sent out branches to every side. One of these opened beneath the demon’s feet. He threw up his arms, whirled to run away, could not go swiftly enough, and fell backwards, his mouth open in a scream they would have heard except for the thunder. His body flopped, his feet were the last thing of him that they saw.
Immediately thereafter, the tunnel lurched forward, apparently rising on the crest of a wave passing across the land, an earthwave.
Around and around, the broken segment of tunnel, no longer a tunnel but a pipe, spun. Not so swiftly that the three occupants could not keep from tumbling by running with it, by moving their feet and staying upright, squirrels in a stone wheel.
But they could not keep up the pace. Their legs became too heavy, and they slowed down. Then, the rotation caught up with them, swept them upward until they fell off the sides and back onto the part below them. Only to be carried upward and dropped again. They crashed to a stop.
For several moments, they could only lie flat, whimpering or moaning. But Cull sprang up and said, gasping, “We’ve got to get rid of these statues! So far, we’ve been lucky. But if this starts rolling again, and it sure as hell will, we might not be so lucky next time.”
Phyllis lay sobbing, but Fyodor struggled up. His skin was bruised and bloody, and his face was a red mass. Cull knew he did not look any better; he appreciated the effort the little Slav was going through just to get up because his own muscles seemed to be caked with the beating they had taken. Yet he forced himself to move, to grip the statues and roll them out toward the mouth of the cylinder. Heavy as these were, and angular, they did not yield easily. Only by combined pushing and straining could the two roll the first statue to the lip of the pipe. It was a gross-bodied thing with the head of a crocodile and long jaws, which, at right angles to the body, presented a problem. Each time the jaws came into contact with the floor, its upper part had to be raised, with the jaws as a lever. Then, the upper part would fall with a crash. Fortunately, they only had to roll it completely three times before it was out of the tunnel.
Panting, quivering with fatigue, they stood facing each other. Neither wanted to make the first move to renew the work.
“Two more to go,” said Cull. He looked out of the cylinder, hoping that he would see some other refuge, one that would not require moving masses of stone. One not open at both ends and rolling along at the slightest force. One in which he could curl up snugly, secure, safe…
He was appalled at what he saw outside. The same force that had sent their cylinder whirling over and over had also ripped up great blocks of sand and stone and piled them in heaps. Their cylinder had come to rest near the top of one of the now motionless waves of land. Beyond them were rows on rows of earth, sand, and crumbled rocks, all mixed with torn-off and twisted metal tubes, huge blocks of granite, basalt, and diorite that had once been piled in orderly rows to form tremendous buildings. Also, those buildings that had been carved out of Brobdingnagian boulders lay at all angles; some straight up; some on their sides; some upside down; some half-buried, their tops showing above the cracks into which the larger part had fallen or their sides projecting above the crevasses or their bottoms showing.
Everywhere were bodies of human beings and demons, or parts of them, lying where falling rocks had smashed them or hurtling stones had sheared them. Rocktrees, torn from the soil or from the sides of buildings, were scattered everywhere. So strong’ were the forces some of the almost-indestructible trees had met, they had been cracked or even shattered.
“What’s doing it?” whimpered Fyodor behind Cull. “What’s making the world come to an end?”
“Something’s slowing the rotation of the shell that forms the peripheral foundation of this world,” said Cull. “And every time the shell slows, the rock and the sand on the shell’s inner surface slides over it. And the stuff tends to pile up here and there. The friction of unimaginable tons of rock and sand sliding is causing heat, too. Have you noticed how hot it is?”
Sweat matted his hair and beaded his body. And for the first time, he noticed that he, or one of them, maybe all three, had fouled the interior of the cylinder with their excrement. Sheer terror had forced its expulsion.
“Let’s get the other two statues out of the way,” Cull said. “The rotation may slow down again any minute now. Or begin speeding up. God knows what’s going to happen.”
“What’s the use,” said Fyodor dully. “We’ll be ground to bits, just like those… those…”
He pointed at several bodies nearby. They looked as if a steamroller had passed over them and, then, a harrow.
“Maybe we don’t have a chance,” said Cull. “But we have to act as if we did. While there’s life…”
“Why should we be spared?” said Fyodor. “We’re sinners. We ought…”
“Sinners,” whimpered Phyllis. “Oh, God, we’ve sinned, and now we have to pay. Oh, God, truly I’m sorry, sorry…”
“Shut up!” said Cull. “Both of you! If you don’t quit blubbering like two hysterical old women, and help me get these idols out of the way, I’ll kick your asses right out of this tunnel. And you can take your chances, which’ll be nil, nothing, nada, zero, kaput, out in the open. What in hell’s the matter with you? You want to commit suicide? You know what a sin that is. Well, if you just sit down, quit trying, you’ll be doing the same as killing yourself. Quitting is suicide, you know that. Fyodor, what’s got into you? You’re the guy that kept me going. Now, all of a sudden, you haven’t got any guts.”
“It’s Apocalypse,” he muttered, his rubbery lips writhing, his little eyes rolling. “The Judgment Day. Who can stand before the wrath of God?”
“You know nothing about the wrath of God,” Cull said. “Help me move these idols, or you’ll feel the wrath of God, right on your butt from the end of my foot.”
“All I have to do is walk away,” Fyodor said. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Good,” replied Cull. “Now, will you help? Help me? Your brother human being? “
Silently, he bent over and began shoving. Fyodor, still sobbing, came to his aid. The second idol was not as large as the first and it did not have any oversized projections. With much grunting and panting, they managed to drag it, feet-first, to the mouth of the cylinder.
But the third statue was the largest, the furthest from the entrance, and its hand extended out from the body and downward, as if it clutched the metal and did not want to let loose. The two men moved it slowly and had to rest between each effort. Then, Cull cursed Phyllis and told her to get up and help. She moaned and raised her head to look at him; the tangled and dirty blonde hair fell over her face so that she stared at him through the strands. The skin below was dirty and bloody; her lips were swollen from a blow; one of her breasts was half-covered by a dark red blotch.
“I’m so tired,” she moaned. “I can’t help you. Anyway, why struggle? Fyodor’s right. We’re doomed.”
Cull placed his foot against her shoulder, raised the foot and her body with it and, at the same time, kicked. She rolled over on her back and stared up at him.
“Get off your back, you dirty whore,” Cull said. “You may have gotten all you wanted in life so far by taking that position. But those days are over! Get up. Or I’ll kick you where you’re missing your balls!”
She tried to spit at him, but all that came out of her mouth was a stringy darkbrown spittle that flopped, like a rope tied at one end, onto her chin. “You and your miserable skin,” she said croakingly. “That’s all you think about. Why don’t you die and end your miserable existence?”
“Because I don’t want to,” he said. “Now, get up.”
He leaned forward and grabbed her under the armpits and heaved
her up and onto her feet. She swayed and would have fallen if he had not held her. Her body was slippery and cold with sweat; she trembled; she stank of terror.
“I didn’t mean it!” she sobbed. “It’s just that I’ve gone through more than I can stand. I just wish it’d be over!”
“I didn’t mean it, either,” Cull said. “I had to say something to get you going. Now, help us. Every little bit helps.”
Phyllis was not much aid. The first time they tried to roll the idol, her hands slipped and she fell onto the stone.
“I hurt my breast again,” she said, whimpering.
Cull lifted her again and said, “Just this once.”
They heaved simultaneously, and the statue turned on its side. Cull was panting, and he could hear the others breathing heavily. But he swore at them and shouted with as much strength as he could muster, “We may not have much time before another quake comes! If we start rolling again, we may be crushed this time. Now! Once more!”
The idol rolled, slowly, raised upon one of its hands, then fell with a bang against the grey material. It was halfway out of the mouth of the cylinder.
“Once more,” said Cull, but he did not sound enthusiastic. He realized that he had very little strength left. And with his strength, his will had almost gone.
Nevertheless, he could not quit now. To do so would be to waste all his efforts so far. He had wasted too much of them in his lifetime, given up too many times when he could have striven just a little more and won what he wanted. Or had he really wanted? Had he always quit because he was afraid of winning?
He stepped over the statue and out into the sand. The dust was thicker here; he began to cough. His lungs felt as if a hot hand were squeezing them. He managed to quit coughing, to swallow back the convulsions inside him.
He bent down and grabbed hold of the idol’s head and said, “Push. I’ll pull. We’ll drag him out easily.”
“All right, brother,” said Fyodor. “If you want so desperately to live, I won’t be an obstacle. Maybe God has sent you to help me. So, I will help you.”
“— you and your God,” said Cull.
Fyodor gasped, but the idol began to slide out of the mouth and onto the sand. Cull grinned weakly and thought that his remark may have angered Fyodor so much it gave him strength. Certainly, the idol was moving more swiftly than he had thought possible. This despite the fact that the sand impeded the progress of the statue. Also, certainly, he had not planned to make that remark just to stimulate the outpour of Fyodor’s adrenalin. He had meant it.
He rose and said, with a weak triumph, “There! She’s out. I told you we…”
He stopped, for he could feel through the soles of his feet the tiniest of vibrations, the forerunner of the big ones to come. He leaped over the statue and into the entrance of the cylinder and ran past Fyodor and Phyllis to the center. He turned and shouted, “Come here! Hurry!”
He lay down on the floor and, when the two were near him, he said, “Lie down! You, Fyodor, so you’re sitting halfway up the side and so I can grab your ankles! Phyllis, you lie down on the other side of me. Grab my ankles.”
He did not need again to tell them to hurry. They could feel the shaking of the cylinder.
“When we start rolling,” he said, “stiffen yourselves. Maybe we can form a kind of rigid support, keep from sliding and falling all over the place. Brace yourselves good. This is going to be the big granddaddy of them all; I feel it!”
He had no sooner spoken than the cylinder lurched and began rolling. It made a half-turn slowly, so slowly that he realized they would not be able to keep themselves rigid. When they reached the top, and the floor became ceiling, they must fall in a heap.
But, before the cylinder had completed a half-turn, there was a rumble and then a roar that deafened them, and dust blew in through the cylinder and blinded them. The cylinder snapped on over so swiftly he was not aware of what had happened until it had spun two or three more times. Now, it was spinning so rapidly that he must be passing the same point within a second, doing one rpm per second. Or so it seemed. He really had no reference point, no accurate conception of the passage of time. All he could know was that they were rotating so quickly that the centrifugal force was gluing them to the sides of the cylinder. They could not have moved even if they had wanted to.
What would happen if they struck something going at this speed? They would be crushed. Bones broken in a hundred places; flesh squeezed beyond endurance; blood forced out through broken veins and arteries.
It was then that he realized that the bumping and lurching that had first accompanied the whirling had ceased. The spinning was smooth as if the cylinder were moving through air.
He turned his head and opened his eyes to look along the tunnel and out its mouth. At first, he could see nothing but dust; his eyes stung and watered. Then, for a few seconds, the dust disappeared, blown by a wind from somewhere. And he could see for some distance past greyish-brown clouds that seemed to go around and around.
It was difficult to grasp what he was seeing, for it was so unexpected, so alien.
Then, he reorientated. And he knew that their progress was so smooth, as if on air, because they were in the air.
Through the avenue momentarily cut by the parting of the clouds of dust, he saw the ground. Rather, the surface of the sphere that formed the walls of their world, the boundaries between them and interstellar space. The walls of the sphere had been stripped clean of the sand, the rock, the tunnels that had coated them. Now, a greyish opaque substance was revealed.
And the coating of sand and rock that had once formed the ground? Gone. Whirled up into the atmosphere, just as they had been whirled.
The sphere must have been speeded up, through some means, through some incredibly titanic force. Just as quickly and just as incredibly, the sphere had been slowed, perhaps stopped completely. And the silicon coating on the interior of the sphere and all the beings on that coating and the buildings in which they dwelt, these had been peeled, too.
Ripped away from the surface and sent flying. Nor would they fall back if what he suspected was true. For, if the sphere had quit rotating, and if the centrifugal force he had once thought of as gravity had ceased, then he and the millions of other objects now in the atmosphere would not fall back.
They would keep going in the direction they were now taking until they collided with another object. And, obeying Newton’s second principle, they would be diverted into another direction and their speed would be slowed up or increased, the resultant vector depending on the original vectors of the two (or more) objects.
They would slow down some, because they were not in the near-vacuum of space but in a thick atmosphere. The friction of air would cause the cylinder to decelerate. He doubted if it would be enough. Given a straight path, the cylinder would eventually crash into the inner wall of the sphere. And they’d be smashed.
It was then his fading mind realized that, long before the big stop, they would be dead. Even now, the whirling was driving the blood from the forepart of his brain and front part of his body. The blood was draining toward the posterior of his body. He was fainting, fading away. Soon, he’d pass out; then, his oxygen-deprived brain would die; he’d quit breathing; he’d…
Jack Cull awoke and knew that they were, for the moment at least, saved. The cylinder was not rotating. He was sprawled on the floor with Phyllis half on him and Fyodor’s feet touching his head. He saw Phyllis’ eyelids flutter; her blue eyes were staring at him.
“What happened?” she said faintly and thickly. Her throat, like his, was dry and hot with dust.
“Something stopped us whirling,” he said.
The interior of the cylinder was dimly lit, but it was not dust that was cutting off the light. Brownish semi-gelatinous filaments of some material were crawling toward them from both ends. He did not recognize it. But, when the stuff was close enough for him to reach out and touch it, and he had cautiously tasted it, he knew what it w
as.
“We’re inside a cloud of manna,” he said. “We must’ve collided with one just beginning to form. It’s soft enough so we stopped slowly.”
He laughed shortly and brittlely, “Now, all we have to worry about is being choked to death.”
Fyodor said, “Maybe we can eat our way out.”
Jack Cull began laughing. Suddenly, he could not stop laughing.
Phyllis sat up and slapped him hard. The results were unexpected and frightening. Her palm connected with his face, but she rose into the air, turning over as she did so, and collided with the opposite side of the wall. She bounced a few inches off at an angle. There, she struggled frantically but succeeded only in turning herself upside down and in setting herself drifting down toward the manna at the other end.
Cull had been equally surprised, though he should not have been. The force of the blow had driven him a few inches off the floor in the opposite direction from Phyllis. He slid slowly above the floor until he drove into the manna at the other end and was spreadeagled, facing toward the center of the pipe, against the mass.
“We’re in no-gravity now,” he said. “Fyodor, move very slowly! Phyllis, quit fighting against it! You’ll just get in a worse mess. And, by the way, thanks. You stopped my hysteria.”
He grimaced at the pain from stiffened muscles and the burning knot in the back of his neck. He also had a headache; his skull felt as if it had been stepped on by an elephant.
By then, the manna had built up so that both ends of the cylinder were completely blocked. The growth was pushing Cull and Phyllis toward the center, bearing them on its face. His hands plunged into the warm jelly-like substance, and the filaments began to climb over his shoulders and face. There was nothing for him to do but kick against the soggy stuff and propel himself down the tunnel.
Fyodor, disobeying Cull’s order to move cautiously, leaped up to catch him. As a result, Fyodor shot up and banged his head against the ceiling, and he yelped with surprise and pain. But Cull’s progress was slowed by his collision immediately thereafter with Fyodor, and they floated toward Phyllis.
Inside Outside Page 9
