Eden (16 page)

He bent down and began feeling around for his flashlight, but the air along the ground smelled so bad it made him sick, so he quickly got back to his feet. Then he heard a distant shout, a man's voice.

"Doctor! Over here!" the Chemist called. Another shout, closer now, and a tongue of light appealed between the black walls. The Doctor was heading toward him, but not in a straight line; it was as though he were drunk…

"Ah," he said, "you're here. Good…" And he grabbed the Chemist by the arm. "They had me for a while, but I managed to move aside… Did you lose your flashlight?"

"Yes."

The Doctor still held his arm. "Dizziness," he explained, trying to catch his breath. "It's nothing… It'll pass…"

"What was that?" the Chemist asked in a whisper.

The Doctor said nothing.

Together they listened to the darkness, to distant footsteps, to an occasional moan. The sky lit up a second time above them, showing horizontal ledges, and the glow drifted downward, yellowing, like a brief sunrise and sunset.

"Let's go," they said together.

Without the flares they probably would not have made it back before daybreak. The summoning bursts of light, which twice more filled the ravines of the streets, kept them in the right direction. Along the way they encountered several creatures, who fled in panic, and once they came across a body lying at the bottom of a steep flight of steps, already cold. They passed it without a word. A few minutes before eleven, they found themselves back in the open square with the column and the well. No sooner did the beam of the Doctor's flashlight hit it than the triple headlights of the jeep began shining from above.

The Captain was standing at the top of the steps as the Doctor and the Chemist ran up. At the jeep, when they sat, panting, on one of the running boards, he turned off the lights and paced in the darkness, waiting for them to speak.

When they had told him everything, he said, "Interesting. A good thing it ended like that. There's one of them here, by the way…"

They did not understand, but when he put a light back on and aimed it at the rear, they jumped to their feet. About thirty feet from the jeep lay a doubler.

The Doctor went to look at it. The thing was naked, half reclining, the upper part of its huge torso not on the ground. A pale-blue eye gazed at them from between heaving pectoral muscles. The men could see only the edge of a flattened little face, as though they were looking at someone through a door open just a crack.

"How did it get here?" the Doctor asked softly.

"It came from below, not long before you. When I lit the last flare, it ran away, but then it came back."

"It came back?!"

"Yes."

They stood over it, not knowing what to do. The creature was breathing heavily, as if after a long race. The Doctor bent down to stroke the hulk, but it started quivering, and large drops of liquid appeared on its pale flesh.

"He's … afraid of us," the Doctor murmured.

"Let's leave him, let's go. It's late," the Chemist said.

The Doctor hesitated. "No, wait, listen… Let's sit down."

The doubler did not move.

The Captain and the Chemist followed the Doctor's example and sat down on the flat, stony ground near the creature. In the distance they heard the sound of the geyser, and then the wind moving in unseen thickets. The settlement was invisible in the night. Threads of mist floated by. Sharply outlined in the glare of the headlight, the jeep stood motionless, like a flat on an abandoned stage. After more than ten minutes of this sitting, they began to grow impatient, but suddenly the little head looked out at them. A clumsy movement on the Chemist's part made it retreat back into its pouch of muscle.

Finally, after almost half an hour of waiting, the huge creature got up. It was six feet tall, but would have been taller if it weren't bent forward. When it moved, the lower half of its body seemed to extend or retract legs at will from a shapeless base, but this was only muscle swelling and contracting around its limbs as it walked.

No one knew how the Doctor did it—and he himself admitted later that he had no idea—but, after a variety of gentle gestures and coaxing pats, the doubler, which by now had emerged completely from its nest of flesh, allowed the Doctor to lead it by its tiny hand to the jeep. The head drooped forward and stared at them as though incredulous as they assembled in front of the headlight.

"What now?" asked the Chemist. "You're not going to start a dialogue here."

"We'll take him with us," said the Doctor.

"Are you in your right mind?"

"A good idea," said the Captain. "But he must weigh half a ton!"

"So? The jeep can handle more than that."

"Add the three of us, and the torsion bars might break."

"Really?" said the Doctor. "Then we should let him go." And he pushed the doubler in the direction of the steps.

At that point the big creature curled up, its skin covered with opalescent drops.

"What? I … No, I was only joking," the Doctor stammered. They were amazed by the thing's reaction. The Doctor managed to calm the creature.

Finding room for the new passenger was not going to be easy. The Captain let almost all the air out of the tires, so that the jeep was practically touching the rocks. He removed the two back seats and strapped them to the luggage rack, and the thrower was tied to the top of the pile. But the doubler was reluctant to get into the vehicle. The Doctor patted it on the back, talked to it, got in himself, and sat down. This would have made an amusing scene if it hadn't been so late, way past eleven, and if they hadn't had more than sixty miles to cover—in the darkness, over difficult terrain, and most of it uphill—to get back to the ship. Finally the Doctor lost patience. He grabbed one of the arms dangling from the small torso and cried, "Push him from behind!"

The Chemist hesitated, but the Captain shoved hard against the doubler's bulging back. The doubler made a whimpering sound and, losing its balance, found itself in the jeep. Everything moved quickly now. The Captain inflated the tires, and the jeep had no problem moving, though it listed a bit. The Doctor occupied the seat in front of the new passenger, while the Chemist, not comfortable in its proximity, chose to stand behind the Captain instead.

They drove past rows of columns, then entered the avenue of the club-shaped structures. The jeep gathered speed on the flat terrain, but slowed when they climbed the slope of magma at the pass. About ten minutes later they reached the clay mounds and the square wells with their terrible contents.

They drove through thick, loose mud for a long time, then came to the tracks that their own tires had made going the other way, and followed them back to the valley.

Throwing up fountains of mud from beneath its wheels, the jeep picked its way between the clay mounds. A blurred light flared up in the darkness and came toward them, growing larger, until they could distinguish three separate lights. But the Captain maintained speed, knowing it was a reflection. The doubler began to show signs of uneasiness; it moved, it grunted, it even shifted its weight dangerously, making the jeep tilt more to the left. The Doctor tried to calm the creature with his voice, though without much success. Glancing back, he saw that it now resembled a rounded sugarloaf on top—the doubler had pulled in its small torso and appeared to be holding its breath. It was only when the momentary ripple of heat and the disappearance of their reflection announced that they had crossed the mysterious line that the huge passenger relaxed, stopped fidgeting, and even seemed to enjoy the night ride.

The jeep was now climbing a steep slope. It pitched and reeled as its bulging tires lumbered over large rocks. The engine, straining, whined. Once or twice they began rolling backward, the wheels spinning in a spray of loose soil. The Captain turned the steering wheel sharply, and they stopped. Cautiously, he turned the jeep around, and they went back down the slope along a diagonal, into the valley.

"Where are we going?" asked the Chemist nervously. Gusts of night air carried tiny droplets of water, almost like rain.

"We'll try somewhere else," said the Captain.

They halted and looked uphill, using one of the headlights, but there was not much to see, so they tried again at random. The slope soon became as steep as it had been before, but here the ground was dry, and the jeep could proceed. Every time the Captain steered to keep to compass north, however, the jeep fell back on its rear tires, forcing him westward, which meant that they would run into the thicket. As far as he could remember, the thicket covered most of the edge of the plateau toward which they were climbing. But there was nothing to be done. The headlights struck a row of white figures swaying in the gloom—no, it was only mist. Drops of condensation formed and ran down the windshield and the metal tubing of the seat frames. The cold mist thickened, then thinned, and they had no idea where they were going. The Captain tried only to go uphill.

Suddenly the mist dispersed, and the headlights, now bright, revealed the top of the slope. The black sky above was filled with stars. Everyone began to feel better.

"How's our passenger?" asked the Captain, not turning around.

"All right. He appears to be sleeping," said the Doctor.

The slope became steeper, and the jeep's center of gravity, shifting to the rear, made it impossible to steer with the front wheels. They skidded several feet to the side. Then the Doctor suggested, "Maybe I should sit up front, between the headlights, on the bumper."

"Not yet," the Captain said. He released air from the tires, and the jeep, sinking, held the ground better.

They crossed a large loamy area, and the ragged line of scrub above them came closer and closer, like an over-hanging black brush. Going through it was out of the question, but they couldn't turn to look for a better place to enter, so they continued upward—and came to an abrupt halt about forty feet from a wall six feet high. The headlights showed yellow clay filled with threadlike roots.

The Chemist cursed.

The Captain got out, took a shovel, and dug at the clay, which he then put under the jeep's rear tires. Digging, he moved higher. The Chemist hurried after him. The Doctor could hear them working their way into the thicket, could hear the snap and crackle of dry branches. The Captain's flashlight flickered, went out, went on again in another place.

"What awful stuff!" growled the Chemist. "This is risky."

"We are hardly strangers to risk," responded the Captain. Raising his voice, he called to the Doctor, "We're going to start a little landslide. It should clear a path for us. Try to keep our passenger from getting frightened!"

"All right!" the Doctor shouted back. He turned around in his seat to face the doubler, who was curled up and still.

Then came the sound of moving clay, and a stream of clods rolled down the slope. Lumps thudded against the jeep. The landslide stopped, though bits of soil kept trickling from the wall. The Doctor checked the creature; it showed no reaction. In front of the jeep there was now a wide, funnel-shaped breach in the overhanging lip of clay. The Captain was standing in it, working energetically with his shovel.

It was past twelve by the time they took the towline, the reel, and the grappling hook from the luggage carrier, fastened one end of the line to the jeep, and pulled the other through the breach and up into the thicket, where it was anchored. The Doctor and the Chemist got out, and the Captain turned on all the wheel motors and the front winch, which drew the vehicle forward bit by bit. Further widening of the passage was required, but half an hour later the jeep was on the plateau, plowing noisily through the dry and brittle thicket. For another hour their progress was very slow; only when the vegetation came to an end were they able to pick up speed.

"Halfway!" the Chemist shouted to the Doctor after looking over the Captain's shoulder at the odometer. The Captain didn't think that they were halfway, considering the detour they had been forced to take on the slope. He was bent forward, his face close to the windshield, his eyes on the terrain. He was trying to avoid the larger boulders and ruts and take the smaller ones between the wheels. The jeep shook and lunged until the fuel can clattered, and sometimes the jeep even bounced into the air and fell, making the shock absorbers hiss. But the visibility was not bad, and so far there were no surprises. Where the headlight beams ended in a gray haze, something flashed by—a mast, then another, then another, and the men passed through the line of them. Craning his neck, the Doctor tried to see if there were columns of vibrating air at the tops of the masts, but it was too dark. The stars twinkled peacefully. Behind him, the huge creature was still. Only once did it shift slightly, as if, tired of sitting in the same position, it was making itself more comfortable, and this very human movement strangely touched the Doctor.

They were going downhill now, crossing grooves on a plateau with a lengthwise ridge. The Captain slowed when more grooves showed in the headlights, beyond a tongue-like projection of limestone; he heard a whizzing noise to the left that rose terribly to a hollow roar. A mass crossed their path, flashed in their headlights, a glittering colossus, and disappeared. The brakes squealed, and as the men pitched forward, they felt a blast of hot, bitter air on their faces. Another whizzing approached, and the Captain turned off the headlights. In the darkness, several feet ahead of them, phosphorescent gondolas flew by, one after another, enveloped by the blur of its gyrating disk. Each turned, performing the same banking maneuver, and the men began to count them: eight, nine, ten… The fifteenth seemed to be the last, so the men started moving again.

"Well,
that
we haven't seen before," the Doctor said.

But then came a different noise, much slower and closer to the ground, and the Captain quickly put the jeep in reverse and backed away, the tires crunching the limestone debris, and they waited. A shape passed before them in the darkness, making a deep rumble, and the stars above the trees were blotted out. The ground shook. Another phantom went by like a heavy top, and another. There was no gondola visible, only the silhouette of a thing radial, jagged, glowing red and rotating slowly in the direction opposite to its motion.