Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  She smiled briefly.

  “I know; but even you need to talk with other people sometimes—not just for this, but years ago when you first left this place to visit Rome. We wouldn’t have met, had you been completely satisfied with solitude.”

  “Well, it is good to talk to people who think of something besides boats, nets, and planting. I’m quite glad I went to the city; I’d have stayed there if you had insisted, even with its noise and smells. I still think the silence here is better, though, and I loved the garden up in the pit even before you came. I guess I’m just a hermit at heart.”

  “Not in all ways. Tell me tomorrow how you will fight, and I’ll help. We should sleep now; you walked far today.”

  But Marc did not sleep for a long time. After his wife went, he stood for a long time staring into the fireplace, while the blaze sank to coals and the coals faded. He had not told all about his trip, nor all about his plans—Judith would not have been so emphatic about promising to help, even for Kyros, if he had.

  Abruptly, he turned toward the passage leading to the sinkhole. Out in the starlight, he found the ladder which Elitha used to go up to the plateau for fuel, and made his way up this to the broken surface of the Karst. It extended beyond eyeshot to his left as he faced south, dotted with sinkholes and weak spots in the water-rotted stone where a new hole might be an unwary traveler’s grave. Few people went that way; there was little to attract them. The water vanished from the surface too quickly to do crops much good; the garden in his own sinkhole survived because of water brought by hand from an underground stream to supplement the rain accumulated in the clay catch-basins he had made long before.

  To his right the plateau fell off toward the sea, some two miles away. He went in that direction, rapidly. Much had to be done before morning.

  Judith was awakened by Kyros’ voice echoing from the main cave. She rose, cast a fond glance at her soundly sleeping husband, took the lamp from its niche at the entrance of their sleeping cavern, and made her way two hundred yards down a steep passage to the underground stream. Washed and refreshed, she was back in a few minutes, finding the man still asleep. She finished dressing and went out to greet Kyros and Elitha.

  “Where’s Father?” cried the boy. “Breakfast is ready.”

  “He is still asleep. Remember, he has traveled a long, long way, and could not sleep as quietly or as safely among all those people outside as he can here. He is very tired. We will eat now, but save something for him.”

  “Then I suppose you have to carry water.”

  “Not today, son. There is enough in the basin from the last rain. We will take care of the garden, of course, but there will be time to play.”

  Marc slept until after Elitha and the child had finished eating and gone to the garden. Judith was cleaning the living cavern when he finally appeared. She stopped when she saw him, set out some fruit, and seated herself beside him while he ate. She was silent until he finished, but watched his face closely; and hard as it would have been for most people to read those features, she seemed to see something encouraging in his expression. When he finally stopped eating, she leaned forward and sought confirmation of the hope.

  “You’ve thought of something, Marc. What can I do to help?”

  “The hardest part may be in agreeing with me,” he answered. “In a way, you thought of the same thing; but you didn’t carry the thought to its end, and I’m sure you won’t like it when I do.”

  “Explain, anyway.”

  “You said last night that anyone could see what was the sensible thing to do if a bone were broken. It seems to me that there is something equally sensible to do for someone whose bleeding won’t stop.”

  “We tried. The gods know we tried. Sometimes we stopped it, but sooner or later, for each of them—”

  “I know. I wasn’t thinking of stopping the bleeding with bandages and cords and such things. That’s all right on limbs, but it’s harder on the body and nearly impossible inside the mouth. We don’t know where the curse will strike Kyros.”

  “Not inside the mouth. Remember the teeth!”

  “I remember. I wish I understood that; I keep thinking the gods must have made it happen to tell me something, but I can’t think what it might be. Anyway, that wasn’t what I started to say. If a water jug leaks, and you must keep the jug because you have no other, and you can’t mend it, what is the only thing left?”

  “You let it leak, and refill it whenever—oh, I see. But how can that be done? You or I or Elitha could give blood, but how could we get it into Kyros’ body? Would it be enough for him to drink it?”

  “I—don’t—know. It has been tried, the Roman said, after battles; but the patients sometimes lived and sometimes died anyway, and he wasn’t sure whether it did any good.”

  Judith grimaced. “I don’t like the idea of drinking blood, or of making Kyros do it.”

  “One can do almost anything, if it is for life.” The man frowned thoughtfully as he spoke. “In any case, something else would have to be done before such a test would mean anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There would have to be a person who was suffering from lack of blood, before we could tell whether more blood would help.”

  “I see. And if we wait until Kyros—no, Marc! I see what you mean, but you couldn’t do such a thing. You could not do it on yourself, because of the danger; if you die, Kyros’ last hope is gone. I would gladly let you take blood from me until I was sick from it, but I am sure I couldn’t drink any for the test—not even for Kyros. The thought just—” Her face twisted again, and Marc nodded.

  “Likely enough. And Elitha would be the same, no doubt, though we could ask. We would have to find someone who could be made—forced—to do it.”

  “But how—no, Marc! Not even for Kyros! I wouldn’t let you do such a thing to anyone. You must not fight that way!”

  “I was sure you would feel so. I do myself, a little. I have thought of one other thing, but there is a bad point about that, too.”

  “What is it?”

  “I could go back to Rome. The healer I knew there would be more than willing to have me go with the emperor’s army; he’s supposed to himself, but doesn’t seem very eager to leave the city. There would be plenty of chance to see and work on men who needed blood.”

  “But you’d be gone from here! What would we do if Kyros—”

  “Precisely.” He nodded agreement with her point. She looked at him, started to speak, bit her lower lip, got to her feet, and took two or three steps toward the garden passage. Then she turned to face him again.

  “There must be some other way.”

  “I would like to believe it. The gods have not seen fit to show me one.”

  “If you killed other people in trying to find a cure for what Kyros has, we would deserve the curse.”

  “Would Kyros?” he countered. She was silent again for several minutes, pacing nervously back and forth the width of the cave. Then she turned suddenly and shifted the line of attack.

  “What if just drinking blood is not enough? What else have you thought of to try? You once said that eating an enemy’s heart to give courage, as some barbarians do, is superstition; why is it any more likely that drinking blood would restore blood?”

  He smiled grimly. It was tempting to point out the glaring flaw in that argument, but seemed unwise.

  “I have thought of other things; but all of them would have to be tried out before I could be sure they were good. All of them.”

  His point was clear. Judith said no more, and walked slowly out of the chamber toward the garden. Marc sat where he was for several more minutes. Then he, too, got to his feet and entered still another small cavern opening from the main one.

  He had not been in this room since returning from his long journey, but took for granted that it would be ready for use—tools clean, writing materials at hand, lamps full. He had come to expect this over the years, and had very seldom been disapp
ointed. Sometimes, but rarely, he was surprised; usually it was his own fault.

  So it was this time. The lamp was full, the few tools ready, the workbench neat—everything which was Elitha’s duty was properly taken care of. The charcoal bin, however, was nearly empty; and charcoal came from the village. It was Marc himself who made the trips there for meat, and oil, and other things the cavern and garden could not supply. Neither of the women ever went far from their home; Kyros had never even been up to the plateau. The cave was home—the finest of homes—to all of them.

  Marc had known it longest. He had found it during his boyhood. Had he been born and raised in any of the nearby villages he would probably have stayed away from the dangerous caverns; but at the time he had not even spoken the local language well. He had been born in a Balkan village, spent much of his childhood in Galati as personal slave to a Roman official of literary inclination, and had survived the wreck of the ship carrying the Roman back to the city. He had come ashore near the village at the edge of the Karst, and by the time he was twenty years old was a well-established citizen of the place. His acquaintance with Roman civilization and literature had fired an imagination which might never otherwise have awakened. Exploring the caverns, which the villagers feared with ample reason, and construction of the garden in the sinkhole had been outlets for a mind which once awakened could not lie idle.

  Twice during the years he had left the village, determined to live in the Rome he had learned about from his former master. Each time he had been back, disillusioned, within a year. The third time he had met Judith and stayed longer; when he finally returned to the village on the Adriatic, she and the child who had been her personal slave had come with him—and he had never again felt the urge to leave. With his caves, his garden, and his family he had been happy.

  That was when he had had four sons.

  He jerked his attention back from the thoughts which had softened his expression for a moment. He had meant to work, but charcoal was needed for what he had in mind. Should he go to the village for it today, or stay and think? Judith’s words, though they had not come as a surprise, had left him much to think about.

  He was spared the choice. Kyros came running in, wondering loudly what was keeping his father in the cave when it was so much better in the garden. That took care of the rest of the day, and the night took care of itself; Marc was not long past the prime of life, but he did need some sleep. It was not until the following morning that he resumed attack on the real problem.

  “I need fuel for the forge,” he announced after Kyros and Elitha had gone to the garden. “I’ll start now, and should be back before evening. Will you come as far as the valley with me?”

  She was surprised, but picked up one of the lamps in answer. An hour and a half later, after a walk through the dimly lit splendors of their “garden of stone,” they reached the entrance Marc usually employed. It was barely noticeable from inside—a lost traveler could have been twenty yards from safety without knowing it. They had to work their way through a narrow space behind a wall of flowstone for perhaps ten yards before daylight was visible; a few more steps brought them, not entirely into the open, but the bottom of a small gully whose walls could easily be climbed. Marc helped the woman to clamber out of this, and as her head rose above the bushes flanking the declivity she found herself able to see farther than she had wanted to for many years. She shrank back against her husband, but made no sound at first as she looked over the landscape.

  The gully was at the edge of a broader valley, which lay between the cliff at their backs and a similar one a quarter of a mile away. To their left it narrowed rapidly; in the other direction it sloped gently downward and grew broader. Its floor was covered with heavy brush, punctuated by an occasional tree. The latter growths, far apart as they were, took on the aspect of a scrubby forest as the eye followed them down the slope. Above them in this direction the eye could just detect a blue-gray line which might have been the sea. Judith turned her eyes from it.

  “It’s ugly!” she exclaimed. “Dry, and brown, and not like the garden at all. Do you want me to go all the way to the village?”

  He looked at her with some surprise.

  “It’s not that bad. The bushes aren’t as green as the ones you take care of, but they’re not really brown. The village is several thousand paces from here; I didn’t want you to come with me, and maybe it would be better if you didn’t. You can wait here; I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “But I don’t want to wait out here; I don’t like it. I’ll go back inside.”

  “What’s wrong with staying out in the light? You always want Kyros to do it.”

  “I don’t like the idea. What would I do? I can’t just sit and wait for you. I should be taking care of Kyros, and the garden—”

  “Elitha is there. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “But I’m not happy about it.”

  “Don’t you trust Elitha?”

  “Yes, of course. I just don’t—don’t like being away, even now when you’re home again. Will I be able to help you if I wait, or is it all right if I go back by myself?”

  “Can you? Are you sure of the way?”

  “Oh, yes. I watched, and you’ve marked it very well. I have a light, so there’ll be one left for you.”

  He hesitated. “Do you realize—” He cut the question short, and thought for several more heartbeats. Then he changed his line of attack. “You really don’t trust Elitha, do you?”

  “I do. I trust her more than I trust myself, when it comes to taking care of Kyros. That’s not it.”

  “What is the trouble, then? What’s wrong with your waiting here? We didn’t bring food, but there’s water in the stream a few hundred paces down—”

  “No! I couldn’t go there! No, Marc, let me go back. I can find the way. I’ll see you there tonight.” She turned back toward the cave entrance, then faced him again with an expression which he had never seen before and which mystified him completely. Poor as he was at seeing into the minds of others, at least he knew this time that something strange was going on.

  “I’d better go back with you,” he said abruptly.

  “No.” She spoke barely above a whisper. “You need those things from the village. Even when I can’t help, I mustn’t hinder. Go on. I can find my way—but you must let me go.” He stared at her in silence for fully another minute; then, slowly, he nodded his head. Her expression was replaced by a smile.

  She started down the side of the gully; then she suddenly turned, climbed back to where he was standing, and kissed him. A moment later she had disappeared into the cave.

  His own face took on the unreadable quality it had borne so often in recent months, as he looked silently at the spot where she had vanished. Then he blew out the lamp he was still holding, started to put it down, changed his mind, and with the pottery bowl still in his hand slipped into the entrance after his wife.

  His sandals scuffed the rock; he stopped and removed them. Then, carefully, he looked from behind the flowstone barrier which veiled the inner end of the entryway.

  Judith was fifty yards ahead, walking slowly. Her lamp was held in front of her and he could not see the flame, but its light outlined her figure even to eyes which had just come in from full sunlight. Silently he followed.

  It was high noon when he reappeared at the cave mouth, blew out the lamp, set it on the ground at the entrance, and started rapidly toward the village. It was almost sunset when he got back to the spot laden with more than sixty pounds of material—a skin bottle of oil, a leaf-wrapped package of meat, a basket of charcoal, and other things. He had some trouble getting these through the narrow entrance—in fact, he had to carry the bulkier items through one by one. With these inside he returned to the tunnel mouth, lighted the lamp with flint and tinder, carried it into the darkness, resumed the load he had already borne for six miles, and started along the marked route to his home.

  He had to rest several times along the
way, and took it for granted that everyone would be asleep by the time he reached the living cavern. As he lowered his burden to the floor and straightened up, however, he saw the two women by the fireplace.

  The fire itself was low, and even Marc’s dark-adapted eyes could not make out their expressions; but the very fact that they were still up at this hour meant that something was out of order.

  “What is it? Has something gone wrong?” he asked tensely.

  Both women answered together, a startling action on Elitha’s part.

  “I told you! It’s my fault—I told you I was cursed. As soon as I got back here!”

  “The skin is broken only a little, and the bleeding has stopped. He is asleep now.”

  It took the man several seconds to disentangle their words.

  “You’re sure it has stopped, Elitha?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “Perhaps half the afternoon—much like the last time.”

  “Did it hurt him much?”

  “No. He gave it no thought after the first surprise and pain. He wanted to play again after we had comforted him.”

  “Good. You go back to his cave now, and sleep if you wish; there is no need to watch him.” The girl obediently rose and departed, and Marc turned to his wife, who had been sobbing almost inaudibly during the exchange. He knelt beside her and gently turned her face toward his.

  “It is no worse than last time; you heard Elitha, and you saw it all yourself. Has something else happened? There’s still no reason to blame you rather than me.”

  “But there is!” Judith’s words, emphatic as they were, were almost inaudible. “There’s all the reason in the world. He fell this time just because of me. He had missed me, and was worried, and when he saw me he came running and tripped—”