“Do you want a refund?” Tompkins asked.
“No. The experience was quite satisfactory.”
“They always are,” Tompkins said, winking lewdly at the parrot. “Well, what was yours?”
“A world of the recent past,” Mr. Wayne said.
“A lot of them are. Did you find out about your secret desire? Was it murder? Or a South Sea island?”
“I'd rather not discuss it,” Mr. Wayne said pleasantly but firmly.
“A lot of people won't discuss it with me,” Tompkins said sulkily. “I'll be damned if I know why.”
“Because—well, I think the world of one's secret desire seems sacred, somehow. No offense…. Do you think you'll ever be able to make it permanent? The world of one's choice, I mean?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “I'm trying. If I succeed, you'll hear about it. Everyone will.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Mr. Wayne undid his parcel and laid its contents on the table. The parcel contained a pair of army boots, a knife, two coils of copper wire, and three small cans of corned beef.
Tompkins's eyes glittered for a moment. “Quite satisfactory,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Good-bye,” said Mr. Wayne. “And thank you.”
Mr. Wayne left the shop and hurried down to the end of the lane of gray rubble. Beyond it, as far as he could see, lay flat fields of rubble, brown and gray and black. Those fields, stretching to every horizon, were made of the twisted corpses of buildings, the shattered remnants of trees and the fine white ash that once was human flesh and bone.
“Well,” Mr. Wayne said to himself, “at least we gave as good as we got.”
His year in the past had cost him everything he owned and ten years of life thrown in for good measure. Had it been a dream? It was still worth it. But now he had to put away all thought of Janet and the children. That was finished, unless Tompkins perfected his process. Now he had to think about his own survival.
He picked his way carefully through the rubble, determined to get back to the shelter before dark, before the rats came out. If he didn't hurry, he'd miss the evening potato ration.
DARK, DARK WERE THE
TUNNELS
George R. R. Martin
GREEL WAS AFRAID.
He lay in the warm, rich darkness beyond the place where the tunnel curved, his thin body pressed against the strange metal bar that ran along the floor. His eyes were closed. He strained to remain perfectly still.
He was armed. A short barbed spear was clenched tightly in his right fist. But that did not lessen his fear.
He had come far, far. He had climbed higher and ranged further than any other scout of the. People in long generations. He had fought his way through the Bad Levels, where the worm-things still hunted the People relentlessly. He had stalked and slain the glowing killer mole in the crumbling Middle Tunnels. He had wiggled through dozens of unmapped and unnamed passages that hardly looked big enough for a man to pass.
And now he had penetrated to the Oldest Tunnels, the great tunnels and halls of legend, where the taletellers said the People had come from a million years ago.
He was no coward. He was a scout of the People, who dared to walk in tunnels where men had not trod in centuries.
But he was afraid, and was not ashamed for his fear. A good scout knows when to be afraid. And Greel was a very good scout. So he lay silent in the darkness, and clutched his spear, and thought.
Slowly the fear began to wane. Greel steeled himself, and opened his eyes. Quickly he shut them again.
The tunnel ahead was on fire.
He had never seen fire. But the taletellers had sung of it many times. Hot it was. And bright, so bright it hurt the eyes. Blindness was the lot of those who looked too long.
So Greel kept his eyes shut. A scout needed his eyes. He could not allow the fire ahead to blind him.
Back here, in the darkness beyond the bend of the tunnel, the fire was not so bad. It still hurt the eyes to look at it, as it hung upon the curving tunnel wall. But the pain was one that could be borne.
But earlier, when he had first seen the fire, Greel had been unwise. He had crept forward, squinting, to where the wall curved away. He had touched the fire that hung upon the stone. And then, foolishly, he had peered beyond the curve.
His eyes still ached. He had gotten only one quick glimpse before whirling and scrambling silently back to where he lay. But it was enough. Beyond the bend the fire had been brighter, much brighter, brighter than ever he could have imagined. Even with his eyes closed he could still see it, two dancing, aching spots of hor rible intense brightness. They would not go away. The fire had burned part of his eyes, he thought.
But still, when he had touched the fire that hung upon the wall, it had not been like the fire of which the taletellers sing. The stone had felt like all other stone, cool and a little damp. Fire was hot, the taletellers said. But the fire on the stone had not been hot to the touch.
It was not fire, then, Greel decided after thought. What it was, he did not know. But it could not be fire if it was not hot.
He stirred slightly from where he lay. Barely moving, he reached out and touched H'ssig in the darkness.
His mind-brother was several yards distant, near one of the other metal bars. Greel stroked him with his mind, and could feel H'ssig quiver in response. Thoughts and sensations mingled wordlessly.
H'ssig was afraid, too. The great hunting rat had no eyes. But his scent was keener than Greel's, and there was a strange smell in the tunnel. His ears were better, too. Through them, Greel could pick up more of the odd noises that came from within the fire that was not a fire.
Greel opened his eyes again. Slowly this time, not all at once. Squinting.
The holes the fire had burned in his vision were still there. But they were fading. And the dimmer fire that moved on the curving tunnel wall could be endured, if he did not look directly at it.
Still. He could not go forward. And he must not creep back. He was a scout. He had a duty.
He reached out to H'ssig again. The hunting rat had run with him since birth. He had never failed him. He would not fail him now. The rat had no eyes that could be burned, but his ears and his nose would tell Greel what he must know about the thing beyond the curve.
H'ssig felt the command more than he heard it. He crept forward slowly toward the fire.
“A treasurehouse!”
Ciffonetto's voice was thick with admiration. The layer of protective grease smeared onto his face could hardly hide the grin.
Von der Stadt looked doubtful. Not just his face, but his whole body radiated doubt. Both men were dressed alike, in featureless gray coveralls woven of a heavy metallic cloth. But they could never be mistaken. Von der Stadt was unique in his ability to express doubt while remaining absolutely still.
When he moved, or spoke, he underlined the impression. As he did now. “Some treasurehouse,” he said simply.
It was enough to annoy Ciffonetto. He frowned slightly at his larger companion. “No, I mean it,” he said. The beam from his heavy flashlight sliced through the thick darkness and played up and down one of the rust-eaten steel pillars that stretched from the platform to the roof. “Look at that,” Ciffonetto said.
Von der Stadt looked at it. Doubtfully. “I see it,” he said. “So where's the trea sure?”
Ciffonetto continued to move his beam up and down. “That's the treasure,” he said. “This whole place is a major historical find. I knew this was the place to search. I told them so.”
“What's so great about a steel beam, anyway?” Von der Stadt asked, letting his own flash brush against the pillar.
“The state of preservation,” Ciffonetto said, moving closer. “Most everything above ground is radioactive slag, even now. But down here we've got some beau tiful artifacts. It will give us a much better picture about what the old civilization was like, before the disaster.”
“We know what the old civilization was like,” Von der Sta
dt protested. “We've got tapes, books, films, everything. All sorts of things. The war didn't even touch Luna.”
“Yes, yes, but this is different,” Ciffonetto, said. “This is reality.” He ran his gloved hand lovingly along the pillar. “Look here,” he said.
Von der Stadt moved closer.
There was writing carved into the metal. Scratched in, rather. It didn't go very deep, but it could still be read, if but faintly.
Ciffonetto was grinning again. Von der Stadt looked doubtful. “Rodney loves Wanda,” he said.
He shook his head. “Shit, Cliff,” he said, “you can find the same thing in every public john in Luna City.”
Ciffonetto rolled his eyes. “Von der Stadt,” he said, “if we found the oldest cave painting in the world, you'd probably say it was a lousy picture of a buffalo.” He jabbed at the writing with his free hand. “Don't you understand? This is old. It's history. It's the remains of a civilization and a nation and a planet that perished almost half a millennium ago.”
Von der Stadt didn't reply, but he still looked doubtful. His flash-light wandered. “There's some more if that's what you're after,” he said, holding his beam steady on another pillar a few feet distant.
This time it was Ciffonetto who read the inscription. “Repent or ye are doomed,” he said, smiling, after his flash melted into Von der Stadt's.
He chuckled slightly. “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls,” he said softly.
Von der Stadt frowned. “Some prophet,” he said. “They must have had one hell of a weird religion.”
“Oh, Christ,” Ciffonetto groaned. “I didn't mean it literally. I was quoting. A mid-twentieth-century poet named Simon. He wrote that only fifty years or so before the great disaster.”
Von der Stadt wasn't interested. He wandered away impatiently, his flash darting here and there amid the pitch-black ruins of the ancient subway station. “It's hot down here,” he complained.
“Hotter up there,” Ciffonetto said, already lost in a new inscription.
“Not the same kind of hot,” Von der Stadt replied.
Ciffonetto didn't bother to answer. “This is the biggest find of the expedition,” he said when he looked up at last. “We've got to get pictures. And get the others down here. We're wasting our time on the surface.”
“We'll do better down here?” Von der Stadt said. Doubtfully, of course.
Ciffonetto nodded. “That's what I've said all along. The surface was plastered. It's still a radioactive hell up there, even after all these centuries. If anything survived, it was underground. That's where we should look. We should branch out and explore this whole system of tunnels.” His hands swept out expansively.
“You and Nagel have been arguing about that the whole trip,” Von der Stadt said. “All the way from Luna City. I don't see that it's done you much good.”
“Doctor Nagel is a fool,” Ciffonetto said carefully.
“I don't think so,” Von der Stadt said. “I'm a soldier, not a scientist. But I've heard his side of the argument, and it makes sense. All this stuff down here is great, but it's not what Nagel wants. It's not what the expedition was sent to Earth to look for.”
“I know, I know,” Ciffonetto said. “Nagel wants life. Human life, especially. So every day he sends the flyers out further and further. And so far all he's come up with is a few species of insects and a handful of mutated birds.”
Von der Stadt shrugged.
“If he'd look down here, he'd find what he's after,” Ciffonetto continued. “He doesn't realize how deep the cities had dug before the war. There are miles of tunnels under our feet. Level after level. That's where the survivors would be, if there are any survivors.”
“How do you figure?” Von der Stadt asked.
“Look, when war hit, the only ones to live through it would be those down in deep shelters. Or in the tunnels beneath the cities. The radioactivity would have prevented them from coming up for years. Hell, the surface still isn't very attrac tive. They'd be trapped down there. They'd adjust. After a few generations they wouldn't want to come up.”
But Von der Stadt's attention had wandered, and he was hardly listening any more. He had walked to the edge of the platform and was staring down onto the tracks.
He stood there silently for a moment, then reached a decision. He stuffed his flashlight into his belt and began to climb down. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go look for some of these survivors of yours.”
H'ssig stayed close to the metal bar as he edged forward. It helped to hide him, and it kept away the fire, so he moved in a little band of almost darkness. Hugging it as best he could, he crept silently around the curve, and halted.
Through him, Greel watched:—watched with the rat's ears and with his nose. The fire was talking.
There were two scents, alike but not the same. And there were two voices. Just as there had been two fires. The bright things that had burned Greel's eyes were living creatures of some sort.
Greel listened. The sounds H'ssig heard so clearly were words. A language of some sort. Greel was sure of that. He knew the difference between the roars and grunts of animals and the patterns of speech.
But the fire things were talking in a language he did not know. The sounds meant no more to him than to H'ssig who relayed them.
He concentrated on the scent. It was strange, unlike anything he had encountered before. But somehow it felt like a man-scent, though it could not be that.
Greel thought. An almost man-scent. And words. Could it be that the fire things were men? They would be strange men, much unlike the People. But the taletellers sung of men in ancient times that had strange powers and forms. Might not these be such men? Here, in the Oldest Tunnels, where the legends said the Old Ones had created the People—might not such men still dwell here?
Yes.
Greel stirred. He moved slowly from where he lay, raising himself to a crouching position to squint at the curve ahead. A silent snap brought H'ssig back to safety from the fiery tunnel beyond the curve.
There was one way to make sure, Greel thought. Trembling, he reached out cautiously with his mind.
Von der Stadt had adapted to Earth's gravity a lot more successfully than Cif fonetto. He reached the floor of the tunnel quickly, and waited impatiently while his companion climbed down from the platform.
Ciffonetto let himself drop the last foot or so, and landed with a thud. He looked up at the platform apprehensively. “I just hope I can make it back up,” he said.
Von der Stadt shrugged. “You were the one who wanted to explore all the tun nels.”
“Yes,” said Ciffonetto, shifting his gaze from the platform to look around him. “And I still do. Down here, in these tunnels, are the answers we're seeking.”
“That's your theory, anyway,” Von der Stadt said. He looked in both directions, chose one at random, and moved forward, his flashlight beam spearing out before him. Ciffonetto followed a half-step behind.
The tunnel they entered was long, straight, and empty.
“Tell me,” Von der Stadt said in an offhand manner as they walked, “even if your survivors did make it through the war in shelters, wouldn't they have been forced to surface eventually to survive? I mean—how could anyone actually live down here?” He looked around the tunnel with obvious distaste.
“Have you been taking lessons from Nagel or something?” Ciffonetto replied. “I've heard that so often I'm sick of it. I admit it would be difficult. But not impos sible. At first, there would be access to large stores of canned goods. A lot of that stuff was kept in basements. You could get to it by tunneling. Later, you could raise food. There are plants that will grow without light. And there would be insects and boring animals too, I imagine.”
“A diet of bugs and mushrooms. It doesn't sound too healthy to me.” Ciffonetto stopped suddenly, not bothering to reply. “Look there,” he said, point ing with his flashlight.
The beam played over a jagged break in the
tunnel wall. It looked as though someone had smashed through the stone a long time ago.
Von der Stadt's flash joined Ciffonetto's to light the area better. There was a pas sage descending from the break. Ciffonetto moved toward it with a start.
“What the hell do you say to this, Von der Stadt?” he asked, grinning. He stuck head and flashlight into the crude tunnel, but re-emerged quickly.
“Not much there,” he said. “The passage is caved in after a few feet. But still, it confirms what I've been saying.”
Von der Stadt looked vaguely uneasy. His free hand drifted to the holstered pistol at his side. “I don't know,” he said.
“No, you don't,” said Ciffonetto, triumphantly. “Neither does Nagel. Men have lived down here. They may still live here. We've got to organize a more efficient search of the whole underground system.”
He paused, his mind flickering back to Von der Stadt's argument of a few seconds earlier. “As for your bugs and mushrooms, men can learn to live on a lot of things. Men adapt. If men survived the war—and this says they did—then they survived the aftermath, I'll wager.”
“Maybe,” Von der Stadt said. “I can't see what you are so hot on discovering sur vivors for anyway, though. I mean, the expedition is important and all that. We've got to re-establish spaceflight, and this is a good test for our new hardware. And I guess you scientists can pick up some good stuff for the museums. But humans? What did Earth ever get us besides the Great Famine?”
Ciffonetto smiled tolerantly. “It's because of the Great Famine that we want to find humans,” he said. He paused. “We've got enough to entice even Nagel now. Let's head back.”
He started walking back in the direction they had come, and resumed talking. “The Great Famine was an unavoidable result of the war on Earth,” he said. “When supplies stopped coming, there was absolutely no way to keep all the people in the lunar colony alive. Ninety percent starved.
“Luna could be made self-sufficient, but only with a very small population. That's what happened. The population adjusted itself. But we recycled our air and our water, grew foods in hydroponic tanks. We struggled, but we survived. And began to rebuild.
The End Of The World Page 27
