The White Mountains (The Tripods)

by Christopher, John

  I said, “It’s stupid!”

  Henry said, “You don’t need to come, if you don’t want to. You can stay here and rest.”

  He said it indifferently, already rummaging in his pack for the candles. They would have to be lit, and I was the only one with a tinderbox. But they were determined, I realized, and I might as well give in with as good a grace as I could manage. I said:

  “I’ll come with you. I still think it’s pointless, though.”

  The stairs descended first into a cavern, which we explored as well as the meager light of the candles permitted. Being less subject to the elements, things had deteriorated less here than in the world above. There were queer machines, showing patches of rust but otherwise undamaged, and a kind of hut with glass in the windows, intact.

  And there were tunnels leading off the cavern; some, like the one by which we had entered, with stairs going up, others leading still farther down. Beanpole was all for exploring one of these, and got his way for want of opposition. The steps went a very long way, and at the bottom there was another small tunnel going to the right. Whatever slight interest I had had was gone by now—all I wanted was to get back up into the daylight. But I was not going to suggest this. I had an idea, from the increasing lack of enthusiasm in his replies to Beanpole’s comments, that Henry was no more keen than I was on going farther—perhaps less. I reckoned I could leave it to him to call a halt before Beanpole went too far.

  Beanpole led the way along the small tunnel, which twisted and ended in a gate of heavy iron bars. It creaked as he pushed it open. We followed him through, and stared at what we could now see.

  It was yet another tunnel, but far bigger than the others. We stood on level stone and the tunnel curved up over our heads and went on, beyond the limits of our light. What amazed us, though, was the thing that stood there. I thought at first it was a house, a long low narrow house of glass and metal, and wondered who would have chosen to live here, deep in the earth. Then I saw that it stood in a wide ditch running alongside our level, that there were wheels under it, and that the wheels rested on long metal bars. It was a kind of Shmand-Fair.

  But to travel where? Could this tunnel run for a hundred miles, as the track of the Shmand-Fair had done—but underground? To a buried city, perhaps, whose wonders were even greater than those of the city above us? And how? We walked along, and found that carriage was joined to long carriage: four, five, six, we counted, and a little way past the last carriage was the mouth of a smaller tunnel, and the empty lines ran into it and were lost.

  The last carriage ended with windows looking ahead. Inside, there was a seat, levers, instruments. I said, “No place to attach the horses. And who would have horses pulling underground?”

  Henry said, “They must have used your steam-kettle.”

  Beanpole was staring greedily at the strange instruments.

  “Or a thing more wonderful,” he said.

  On the way back, we looked inside the carriages; parts of their sides were open, so that one could step into them. There were seats, but a clutter of other things, as well, including heaps of tins of food, such as we had found in the shops, but unrusted—the air down here was cool and dry, as it must be all the time. Other things we could not understand—a rack full of wooden things ending in iron cylinders, for instance. They had small half-hoops of iron on one side with a little iron finger inside. The finger moved when you pressed it; but nothing happened.

  “So they carried goods,” Beanpole said. “And people, since there are seats.”

  Henry said, “What are these?”

  It was a wooden box, full of what looked like large metal eggs—as big as goose eggs. He picked one out, and showed it to Beanpole. It was made of iron, its surface grooved into squares, and there was a ring at one end. Henry pulled it, and it came away.

  Beanpole said, “Can I look?”

  Henry handed the egg to him, but clumsily. It fell before Beanpole could grasp it, dropped to the floor, and rolled. It went over the edge of the floor and dropped into the ditch beneath. Henry was going after it, but Beanpole caught his arm.

  “Leave it. There are others.”

  He was bending down toward the box when it happened. There was a tremendous bang under our feet, and the great steel carriage shuddered with the violence of it. I had to clutch an upright pillar to prevent myself being thrown to the ground. Echoes of the bang reverberated along the tunnel, like diminishing hammer blows. Henry said shakily, “What was that?”

  But he did not really need telling. Beanpole had dropped his candle, and it had gone out. He put it to Henry’s, to relight it. I said:

  “If it had not rolled down below the carriage …”

  There was no need to fill in details. Beanpole said,

  “Like fireworks, but more powerful. What would the ancients use such things for?”

  He picked up another egg. Henry said,

  “I shouldn’t mess about with them.”

  I agreed, though I said nothing. Beanpole handed Henry his candle, so that he could look at the egg more carefully.

  Henry said, “If it goes off …”

  “They did not go off before,” Beanpole said. “They were brought here. I do not think touching will do anything. The ring …” He put his finger into it. “You pulled it out, and it fell, and then, a little later …”

  Before I properly understood what he was doing, he wrenched the ring from the egg. We both cried out, but he ignored us, walked to the opening, and threw the egg under the carriage.

  This time, together with the explosion, there was a shattering of glass, and a gust of air blew out my candle. I said angrily, “That was a stupid thing to do!”

  “The floor protects us,” Beanpole said. “It is not much risk, I think.”

  “We could have been cut by flying glass.”

  “I do not think so.”

  The point was, as I ought to have realized earlier, Beanpole was only sensible as long as his curiosity was not deeply aroused; when something interested him, he had no thought for hazards. Henry said, “I wouldn’t do it again, all the same.”

  He obviously shared my feelings about the experiment. Beanpole said, “It is not necessary. We know how it works. I counted seven after the ring came out.”

  It was nice to feel I was part of the majority again, even though the other part was Henry. I said, “All right—so you know how it works. What good does that do?”

  Beanpole did not reply. He had found himself a pack in one of the shops—the leather was green and moldy but cleaned up fairly well—and he was now taking eggs from the box and putting them inside. I said:

  “You’re not taking those with you, are you?”

  He nodded. “They will be useful, perhaps.”

  “For what?”

  “I do not know. But something.”

  I said flatly, “You can’t. It’s not safe for us, either.”

  “There is no danger unless the ring is pulled.”

  He had put four in his pack. I looked toward Henry, to back me up. But he said, “I suppose they might come in handy.” He picked one up, and hefted it in his hand. “They’re heavy. I think I’ll take a couple, though.”

  I did not know whether he was saying this because he really meant it, or to spite me. It did not make much difference, I thought bitterly. I was back in the minority.

  We made our way up through the tunnels, and I was very glad to see the sky, even though it was a still darker gray, with clouds lower and more menacing. Not long afterward, our way was barred by a river, running clear and swift between high banks. There had been many great bridges spanning it, but those we could see had been partly or altogether destroyed; the one directly before us was marked only by half a dozen piles of rubble with the water boiling around them. With nothing to choose between the alternatives, we followed the river to the east.

  Four bridges proved hopeless, and then the river forked. It seemed to me that this meant that, if we continued towar
d the east, we should have to find bridges intact over both branches, doubling the difficulty; and that our best course was to go back and try in the opposite direction. But Henry was opposed to turning back, and Beanpole supported him. There was nothing I could do but tag along resentfully.

  My resentment was not diminished by the fact that the very next bridge was intact enough to cross, though the parapet had completely gone at one side, and in the middle the bridge itself had a hole bitten out of the edge which we had to skirt warily. On the far side there were relatively few trees, and the buildings were massive. Then we came to an open space and saw at the end of it a building which, even in ruins, had a magnificence that compelled the eye.

  There had been twin towers in front, but one of these had been sliced down the side. On them, and on the whole facade, were carvings in stone, and from roofs and angles stone figures of monstrous animals probed the quiet air. It was a cathedral, I guessed, and it looked bigger even than the great cathedral in Winchester, which I had always believed was the biggest building in the world. The huge wooden door stood open, tilted on its hinges and rotting. Part of the roof of the nave had fallen in, and one could see up past the pillars and buttresses to the sky. We did not go inside: I think none of us wanted to disturb its crumbling silence.

  The next thing we discovered was that we had not, in fact, crossed to the opposite bank of the river, but were on an island. The waters which had divided to the west came together again in the east. We had to trail back across the bridge. I was not sorry to see Henry discomfited, but I was too tired to think it worth the extra effort.

  It was at this time that Beanpole said to me, “What is it on your arm?”

  The Watch had slipped down, without my noticing it, to my wrist. I had to show it to them. Henry looked at it with envy, though he said nothing. Beanpole showed a more dispassionate interest. He said, “I have seen clocks, of course, but not one of these. How is it made to go?”

  “You turn the button on the side,” I said. “But I did not bother to do that, since it must be so old.”

  “But it is going.”

  Disbelievingly, I looked myself. Above the hour and minute hands, a third, more slender pointer was going around, sweeping the dial. I held the Watch to my ear: it was ticking. I noticed a word on the face: Automatique. It seemed like magic, but could not be. It was another wonder of the ancients.

  We all stared at it. Beanpole said, “These trees—some are a hundred years old, I think. And yet it works. What craftsmen they were.”

  We got across the river at last, half a mile farther up. There was no sign of the city coming to an end; its vastness, which had first awed, and then aroused wonder and curiosity, was now exhausting. We passed many large buildings, including one larger than the cathedral—a side had fallen in and one could see that it was a shop, or a series of shops, right up to the roof—but none of us felt like bothering to investigate them. We saw other tunnels, too, with METRO on them. Beanpole decided they were most likely places where people had got on and off the underground Shmand-Fair, and I imagine he was right.

  We slogged on. The day was declining, and we were all weary. By the time we had our evening meal—a limited one, because food was beginning to run short and there was no way here of getting more—it was plain that we would have to spend the night in the city. I do not think any of us was keen on going into one of the buildings to sleep, but a distant howling changed our minds for us. If there were a pack of wild dogs near, it would be safer to get off the streets. They did not usually attack people unless they were hungry; but we had no means of knowing the state of their stomachs.

  We picked a substantial-looking edifice and went up to the first floor, stamping warily on the stairs to see if they were likely to collapse. Nothing happened, except that dust rose, choking us. We found a room with glass still in its windows. The curtains and the upholstery of the furniture were faded and eaten in holes by moths, but it was still comfortable. I found a big earthenware jar, with a heavy lid, and roses painted on it. When I took the lid off it was full of withered rose petals, their perfume a ghost of summers long ago. There was a piano, larger and differently shaped from any I had seen, and a frame on it with a picture, in black and white, of a lady. I wondered if it was she who had lived here. She was very beautiful, though her hair was different from the way women wear their hair today, with wide dark eyes and a gently smiling mouth. In the night I awoke, and there was the scent still in the air, and moonlight from the window fell across the top of the piano, and I almost thought I could glimpse her there, her slender white fingers moving across the keys—that I could hear phantom music.

  It was nonsense, of course, and when I fell asleep again I did not dream of her but of being back in the village, in the den with Jack, in the time when I had not learned to worry over Caps and the Tripods, and when I had thought never to travel farther from Wherton than Winchester; and that no more than once a year.

  The moonlight was misleading; in the morning, not only were the clouds back, chasing each other in an endless pursuit of monotonous gray, but a dreary deluge of rain was sheeting down out of the sky. Even though we were anxious to get clear of the city, we did not feel like tackling these conditions. All that was left by way of food was a hunk of cheese, a piece of dried beef, and some of the ship’s biscuits. We divided the cheese. There was enough for one more modest meal; after that we would have to go hungry.

  Henry found a chess set, and he played a couple of games with Beanpole, who won easily. I then challenged him, and was also beaten. Finally I played against Henry. I expected to beat him, because I thought I had done better against Beanpole, but I lost in about twenty moves. I felt fed up, by this and the weather and being still hungry, and refused his offer to play again. I went and stood by one of the windows, and was glad to note that the sky was clearing, the gray turning in patches into a luminous yellow. Within a quarter of an hour, the rain had stopped and we could go on.

  The avenues through which we traveled were gloomy at first, the surface puddled with water or, where trees had split it, of sodden earth, the general wetness continually augmented by drips from the branches above. It was like walking through rain in slow motion, and just as dampening; it was not long before we were all thoroughly soaked. Later, brightness filtered down as the cloud lifted, and the birds seemed to make a second wakening and filled the air with their chatter and song. Drops still fell, but more rarely, and in bare patches where the trees had not got a footing, the sun laid strokes of heat across us. Beanpole and Henry talked more, and more cheerfully. My own spirits did not revive as thoroughly. I felt tired, and a bit shivery, and my mind seemed thick and dull. I hoped I was not getting a cold.

  We ate the last of the food in a place where the trees were dense in front of us, without any buildings. The reason lay in the slabs of stone, some upright but more leaning or fallen, which stretched away into the darkness of the wood. The words carved on the nearest one were:

  CI-GÎT

  MARIANNE LOUISE VAUDRICOURT

  13 ANS

  DÉCÉDÉE FEVRIER 15 1966

  The first two words, Beanpole explained, meant “Here Lies,” “ans” was years and “décédée” was died. She had died, at my own age, and been buried here at a time when the city was still throbbing with life. One day at the end of winter. So many people. The wood stretched out, laced with the stones of the dead, across an area in which my village could have been set down several times over.

  It was late afternoon when we came at last to the southern edge of the city. The transformation was sudden. We pushed for about a hundred yards through a stretch where the trees were thick, the buildings few and completely in ruins, and emerged into a cornfield, waving green spears in the slanting sunlight. It was a relief to be in the open again, and in cultivated land. With that came awareness that we needed to resume habits of caution: there was a horse plowing several fields away, and in the distance two Tripods stalked the horizon.

 
; Clouds came up again as we traveled south. We found a field of early potatoes, but could find no wood dry enough to start a fire to cook them. Henry and Beanpole ate them raw, but I could not. I had little appetite, anyway, and my head was aching. At night we slept in a ruin well away from any other houses. The roof had fallen at one end, but was still supported at the other; it was wavy, and made of a gray material that looked like stone but was much lighter. I spent the night in a series of heavy sleeps, from which I was wakened by nightmarish dreams, and in the morning I felt more tired than I had been the night before. I suppose I must have looked funny, because Henry asked me if I were feeling ill. I snapped something back at him, and he shrugged and turned his attention to other things. Beanpole said nothing, I think because he noticed nothing. He was much less interested in people than in ideas.

  It was a weary day for me. I felt worse as the hours went by. I was determined not to show this, though. At the beginning I had not wanted sympathy from the others because I resented the fact that they appeared to be getting on with each other better than I was with either. After I had rebuffed Henry, my resentment was because neither he nor Beanpole took the matter any farther. I am afraid I got some satisfaction out of feeling ill and carrying on without admitting it. It was a childish way to behave.

  At any rate, my lack of appetite did not make much impression because we were all on short commons. I was not bothering anyway, but Henry and Beanpole found nothing. We had reached the wide river, flowing southeast, which the map told us we should follow, and Henry spent half an hour at one place trying, without success, to tickle trout up from under the bank. While he did so, I lay gazing stupefied at the cloudy sky, grateful for the rest.

  Toward evening, after endless fields of young wheat and rye, we came in sight of an orchard. There were rows of cherry, plum, and apple. The apples would be small and unripe still, but even from a distance we could see golden and purple plums and cherries black or red-and-white against the green of leaves. The trouble was that the farmhouse was right by the orchard and would have a good view of anyone moving among the long straight ranks of trees. Later, of course, with the onset of darkness, it would be different.