Malina's first thought was to find a descending path that would be hidden from the yawning cavern. They walked along the cliff in the opposite direction, occasionally venturing to the edge and looking down, but the canyon deepened rapidly and the walls became increasingly steeper.
Finally they turned back, and as they approached the head of the canyon Malina thought she saw a precarious descent near the former waterfall. She led the way to it and stood at the edge of the cliff studying the tenuous hand - and footholds.
She said to Darzek, "I think you and I can make it, but what will we do with Arluklo? He's much too heavy to be carried."
"What do we do when we get down?" Darzek asked. "Go immediately into the cavern?"
"We'll hide somewhere and look the situation over and rest a little. But first we'll have to get down."
"I'd hate to leave Arluklo," Darzek said. "I respect his fortitude, and I especially admire his built-in compass. We'll need both when we get underground."
Malina turned to Arluklo. She said, in large-talk, "We're trying to figure out how to get you down. There doesn't seem to be any way."
"I can climb down," Arluklo said.
And he did. While they watched, openmouthed, he went straight down the side of the canyon wall, finding holds for his numerous limbs where none seemed to exist. Soon he stood at the bottom, a squat little brown figure looking up at them.
Watching Arluklo's startling performance, Malina thought - but did not speak - a question: How would they ever get them out? They might climb down that wall, but could they climb up again with Brian and Maia? Of course there were other exits. Perhaps they could find the cavern that led to the park near the mart. Perhaps -
Darzek was unrolling the rope that he'd carried coiled about an arm.
"Is it long enough to reach to the bottom?" she asked, as he began to tie one end about her.
He shook his head. "Halfway, maybe."
"Then let's not arrange things so that if one of us falls the other will be pulled down." She detached the rope. "We'll go separately. Promise me one thing. If something happens to me, now or later, you'll go on and do what you can."
"Of course," he said.
She turned again to study the descent, and before she was aware of it he had started down. She watched breathlessly as he felt his way from protruding rock to hollow to protruding rock. He moved slowly, but he did not hesitate, and his movements were confident. She decided, finally, that it was easier than she had thought and followed him.
When she reached the bottom, he stood waiting for her with Arluklo. They hurried behind a large rock that lay near the cliff, where she caught her breath and looked about her.
On each side of the stream a narrow road led from the cavern to the canyon wall and then followed the wall as far as they could see. All the land between the roads and the stream was cultivated.
Malina said, "Let's see if we can find a hiding place where we can look into the cavern."
Obediently Darzek moved off along the road, and Arluklo followed him. Malina turned in the opposite direction and cautiously made her way to the cavern opening.
A blast of cold air struck her as she reached it. The roads that converged there continued inside the cavern, one on either side of the river. Otherwise, for the short distance she could see into the gloomy interior, she saw nothing but the river rushing between steep banks.
She turned away and hurried to catch up with the others. Darzek had found a small cave opening a short distance up the wall and was' climbing up to it. He disappeared inside, and a moment later he called to them guardedly, "Come on up!"
Arluklo went up the wall as easily as he had climbed down the other. Malina sought footholds and accepted the help of the hand Darzek reached down to her. The cave was shallow but dry and deep enough for the three of them to lie down comfortably.
"Perfect," Malina said. "We're here, and the entrance isn't guarded. The next important thing is to get some rest. We may not find many safe places once we're inside."
Obediently Darzek unrolled a blanket, made himself comfortable and fell asleep. Arluklo crept to the back of the cave and got himself settled in the upright position he seemed to prefer.
Malina lay quietly, resisting her own desire for sleep, and studied her surroundings. The verdant canyon seemed exquisitely peaceful. A lovely park could have been made there, for children to play in. For Brian and Maia to play in. She thought of her children, for a time, and then she forced her attention back to the canyon and its sinister cavern opening. From their walk along the cliff, she knew that the cultivation extended for an enormous distance and there were at least a dozen machines in use. This was no kitchen garden, but a major agricultural project.
Finally she dozed off.
Again she slept longer than she had intended and so soundly that Darzek's recurrent nightmares, if he had any, did not awaken her. When she awoke, darkness lay about them, overlaid with the rich scent of freshly cultivated land. Occasionally, over the murmur of the rushing river, she could hear the purring of the nearest cultivating machine.
Darzek was already awake. He said, "I've been wondering if this cavern is a lower level they don't use except for access to the farm. It probably fills with water during the rainy season. The question is whether it'll take us in the right direction, but we can't find that out without following it."
"We'll have to study the map carefully before we start," Malina said. "We may not have many chances to use a light inside."
She got the map from her pack and unfolded it. Darzek called, "Arluklo. "
The klo did not answer.
Malina nudged him gently with her foot and got no response. Both of them turned to the back of the cave and bent over Arluklo in alarm. The klo sat motionless in his sleeping position.
"I'm afraid he's dead," Malina said finally. "I've been worrying about his physical endurance. We must have overtaxed him. Would you hold a blanket up to the opening? We've got to risk a light."
Darzek arranged the blanket and held it, and she turned on her handlight and positioned it on a ledge. Before she tried to shift the k1o's body, she decided to remove his pack. She loosened the straps and pulled them free, but the pack seemed to be caught on a trailing wire. With an effort she pulled the wire free. Then, setting the pack aside, she scowled at the end of the wire.
After a moment she felt Arluklo's back with searching fingers. A panel snapped open. She exclaimed incredulously, "He's - why, he's - "
"A robot," Darzek agreed. "Very interesting. In fact, fascinating." "The pack has an extra battery," Malina said.
"Interesting that it lasted just long enough to get us here. Did they plan it that way? I think not. They'd know how long a battery would last. He could have suffered a malfunction. Perhaps that cliff climbing - what's the matter?"
"The kloa are slaves of the kloatraz," Malina said. "The kloa are robots. Does that mean the kloatraz is alive?"
18
Again the sky was overcast, and as they entered the cavern their infragoggles detected no noticeable distinction between the night without and the total darkness within. The surfaces of the roadways that ran on either side of the river were so smooth that they seemed artificial. The river rushed in a deep stone trough between steep banks, and its incessant, swirling murmur relieved them of any necessity to walk quietly. The air already seemed uncomfortably cold.
They strode along boldly, stopping at regular intervals for Darzek to take navigational sightings. He had warned Malina that the margin of error might be one hundred per cent, but he felt that they should attempt to keep track of their direction however much the cavern meandered, and she gladly gave him the job. He was attempting to record the deviation of each curve on a gadget he had manufactured for that purpose, and he was counting strides and recording the total in hundred-pace units with kernels of grain that he passed from one pocket to another.
Except for these halts, they maintained a steady, brisk pace. E
ventually they would have to enter populated areas and sneak along walls and hurry from hiding place to hiding place; but until they did, Malina was determined to make the best time possible, whatever the risk of accidental encounters.
But they did not have to proceed recklessly. When they approached a curve, they slowed their pace until they could see what lay beyond it. Darzek called distances to her above the murmur of water. They were two kilometers from the entrance, three, four, eight. The cavern was beginning an almost indistinguishable large-radius curve, and he thought it was taking them in the direction they must go. One of the heavy lines on Arluklo's map roughly coincided with the route they were following. It might represent this cavern or one that paralleled it on a higher level.
"But that's only a guess," he cautioned her. "We're going to miss Arluklo's compass."
Malina missed more than the compass. Robot or not, there had been an engaging quality about the little klo, and his polite, matter - of - fact confidence had been the one solid factor in an otherwise absurdly fanciful enterprise. Darzek's calculated guesses and her own aching uncertainties were poor substitutes.
Suddenly, above the regular noise of the rushing water, her ear caught a different sound. She stopped and gripped Darzek's arm, and the two of them stood listening. Far up ahead of them, the river's murmur was acquiring a faint veneer of gurgling, pouring, and splashing. As they moved forward, the new sound became louder. Then they saw the source: a waterfall that leaped from somewhere near the cavern roof.
As they approached it, they halted again and stared. The water was carried over the roadway on a short aqueduct, from which it fell into the river, and the roadway passed under the aqueduct through the strangest archway Malina had ever seen. A massive block of rock had been carved into a delicate, three-dimensional filigree that looked like shimmering lace. She wondered how the natives preserved it intact when the rainy season filled the cavern with a roaring torrent that raged against this artistic masterpiece and brought rocks and boulders crashing in its wake.
She studied the arch thoughtfully, trying to see it as a clue to the mentality of those who had seized her children. Then, while Darzek was admiringly running his fingers over the meticulous carving, she moved through the arch and found a narrow, ascending passageway just beyond it. At the distant top of the slope, a soft glow could be seen. Motioning to Darzek to remain at the bottom, she cautiously made her way upward.
At the top, the narrow passageway opened into an enormous, vaulted room. A small stream ran swiftly and noisily through its center and vanished into an opening, from which it emerged on the other side to pass over the aqueduct and fall into the river below. On either side of the stream were large, irregularly shaped pools, fed by curtains of water that fell at the sides of the room, collected in the pools, and finally overflowed into the stream.
One of the pools was in use. Natives were bathing and disporting in and around it. Malina shrank back down the passageway and then sank to the floor, from which position she could peer into the room and remain almost completely concealed.
Natives. Here, finally, were those enigmatic individuals known at Montura Mart only by their bulky protective clothing and light shields. In her infragoggles they were shimmering halos of light.
When she slipped the goggles off, she saw the pool enveloped in a softly phosphorescent glow, and in it the natives were performing a stately ballet of flowing movement. They mounted rocks, they dived, they came to the surface and wove complicated patterns as they passed to and fro through the pool, and when they left the water it was with consummate grace of movement and a spattering of luminescent drops that produced the illusion of their bathing in light. Probably they continued these elaborate formations under the water, but from her position she could not see them there.
Darzek joined her. He'd had the good judgment to remove his monstrosity of a hat, and he edged up beside her to peer over the top of the slope. They could have conversed in safety because of the noise of rushing water, but speechlessness was the only possible reaction to the amazing scene before them.
The natives lacked only wings to make them seem angelic. Their skin had a golden iridescence that gave it a radiant, breath-taking beauty. Their proportions were startlingly human, and so were their features. Only with careful scrutiny could the flowing hair be seen as a crest formed of folds of skin that ran down the front of their faces to form an illusory nose. The eye hollows were oval in shape, as were the enormous, widest eyes that gave them, Malina thought, acutely effective peripheral vision, a point to remember when trying to keep out of their sight. The eyes had a long horizontal slit for a pupil. There was no body hair. The limbs, both arms and legs, seemed to be multiply jointed, which possibly accounted for their flowing movements. The bodies, too, were gracefully curved and devoid of angularity. The hands and feet looked exceedingly strange, but for the moment she could not make out the shapes.
The most prosaic scientific details - the optical principles of the strangely shaped eyes, the anatomical structure of the head crests, the mechanics of the joints in those curving limbs - such details would have fascinated, but for the moment, even to the scientifically trained mind, they seemed irrelevant. These creatures were beautiful, and the setting beautified them. They were superbly proportioned, and their golden skin appeared almost translucent in the gently glowing light. When, occasionally, several of them extended their ballet to one of the unlighted pools, it was like watching permanently glowing fireflies weave their way through the dark. Occasionally their shouts or calls echoed through the enormous room, but whether these were cries of joy or instruction or complaint Malina could not have said.
Suddenly they were gone. They filed out into a passageway at the opposite end of the room, and each one, in passing, scooped a hand into a trough that surrounded the pool they were using and withdrew it glowing with the soft light. Several of them flung handfuls of light at each other in an obvious outburst of horseplay, splashing gleaming silver drops off the gleaming golden skin. They made no sounds approximating laughter. By the time the last of them scooped up the liquid light and disappeared into the passageway, the room's glow of illumination was noticeably diminished.
They were gone. For a moment Malina gazed after them disbelievingly, and then, the spell broken, she turned to Darzek.
He spoke into her ear. "What do you make of that?" "They're iridophores," Malina answered absently. "How was that again?"
"The cells that produce our skin pigment are called melanophores. The natives don't have any. Instead they have iridophores or something like them."
"Is that significant?" Darzek asked.
"It's fascinating. Probably it's why Supreme said they needed a dermatologist, though there's nothing a dermatologist could do for them and nothing they'd be likely to want done in any case."
"They wear no clothing," Darzek observed.
"They wear no clothing when swimming," she corrected.
"True enough, but it's rather cold for swimming. The temperature in these caverns is probably uniform throughout the year, so they must be acclimated to a cool temperature that varies very little. That would explain the protective clothing worn on the surface, wouldn't it? It would insulate them against heat. But why the light shield? They use light here, so light doesn't bother them."
"They use a special kind of light - a cold light," Malina said.
"Regular light might be blinding to them. Sunlight certainly would be deadly. Without melanophores a few minutes of exposure to the sun would cause serious illness or death."
"The fact that they do use light could be helpful," Darzek said. "It means that with our goggles we may see as well in the dark as they do. If we can avoid their lights, we might have an advantage."
"It won't be much of an advantage. Those large eyes may mean they once got along without any light."
“If there's any advantage at all, we ought to accept it gratefully. Have we learned anything else that's use
ful?"
"I don't know how useful it is, but they may be amphibious. Did you notice their strangely shaped hands and feet? They looked webbed."
Darzek turned quickly. "Not webbed. Have you forgotten our many-legged lion? Its feet were oval discs, just like the natives' hands and feet, but probably nothing like as well controlled. The natives' hoofs - that's what they really are - seem flexible enough to serve as hands and fingers for many purposes. Anything else?"
"They may be telepathic. They have a spoken language, or at least sounds of expression, but they do things in unison without any verbal communication."
"Point well taken," Darzek said. "Useful to know, but not helpful in the sense that we can do anything about it. The first native to see us may be able to warn the entire native population, and we won't even hear the alarm. Did you make note of any other cheerful potentialities?"
"No, except that you probably guessed right about their living on the upper levels. That passageway leads upward. We could follow them, but I'm for sticking to the lower cavern as long as it seems to be going in the right direction. We can't assume that they never go down there - obviously they do - but I'd rather travel that river road than tippy toe through their bathing chambers and bedrooms." She backed down the passageway until she could stand without being visible from the room beyond. "Shall we go?"
[Jan Darzek 03] - This Darkening Universe Page 20
