Eden (15 page)

Below them were dark ramparts reminiscent of old forts on Earth. The tops of the ramparts were level with where the men were standing, and they could see into the interiors, into narrow, crooked streets. The walls along the streets contained rows of rectangular openings that had rounded corners and were tilted back, as though aimed at the sky. Farther, behind the next series of walls, something they couldn't see gave off a faint light that bathed the stones in a golden haze.

The Captain pointed a headlight down into the nearest passageway. The beam revealed, a hundred feet away, a solitary spindle-shaped column standing among arched walls. Water flowed silently down its sides, sparkling. Around the column, on triangular tiles, was river sand, and at the edge of the light a container lay overturned and open on one side. They could feel the night breeze and heard, in the streets below, the sound of dead leaves drifting over stone.

"A settlement…" the Captain said slowly, moving the headlight farther. From the small square with the well, small streets radiated, gorges framed by vertical walls that curved outward at the top like the prows of ships. One wall, curved back to the horizontal, had openings from which ran black streaks, like marks from a past fire. The beam wandered over pointed corners, passed a gaping black cellar entrance, followed turning alleys.

"Turn it off!" the Doctor said.

The Captain did so, and only now noticed, in the darkness, the change taking place in the scene before them.

The spectral light that had touched the tops of the more distant walls, outlining the silhouettes of pipes or vents of some kind, was growing fainter, breaking up into separate islands of light, which in turn were extinguished as a wave of darkness advanced from the center outward, engulfing one sector after another, until the night was without a single spark or glimmer.

"They know we're here…" said the Chemist.

"Maybe," said the Doctor. "But, then, why were the lights only over there? And … did you notice how they went out? From the center."

The Captain took his seat in the jeep and turned off the other two lights. The darkness covered them like a black lid. "We can't drive down there. And if we go on foot, someone will have to stay here with the jeep."

They could not see one another's faces, and all they could hear was the wind. Then, behind them, from the direction of the columns, came a faint sound, as though someone were stepping carefully. The Captain barely caught it; he turned the headlight around slowly, aimed it, and turned it on.

There was nothing there.

"Who will it be?" he asked.

Nobody spoke.

"It'll have to be me, then," he decided. He started the jeep and drove along the edge of the wall. After a few hundred feet they saw, in the rock, stairs leading down. Each step was small and shallow.

"I'll be here," he said.

"How much time do we have?" asked the Chemist.

"It's nine. Be back in an hour. You may have trouble getting your bearings, so forty minutes from now I'll light a flare, and ten minutes after that, another, and five minutes after that, a third. Try to get to some sort of elevation by then, though you should see the light from below. Now let's set our watches."

They did so in silence, listening to the wind. The air was growing colder.

"Don't take the thrower—there's too little space to use it here anyway," said the Captain, unconsciously lowering his voice. "The jectors ought to be enough. Besides, we want to make contact—but not at any price. Agreed?" This to the Doctor, who nodded. The Captain went on: "Night is not the best time. Perhaps you should only reconnoiter. That would be the most sensible thing. After all, we can come here again. Make sure you keep together. Guard your rear, and avoid dead ends."

"How long will you wait?" asked the Chemist.

The Captain's face, in the reflection of the headlights, looked ashen. He smiled.

"As long as I have to. And now on your way."

The Chemist slung the jector strap over his shoulder, to have both hands free. He turned on his flashlight and made for the stairs. The Doctor was already on his way down. Suddenly a bright light came from above—the Captain was lighting the way for them—and they followed the beam along the wall until they came to a large entrance flanked on either side by columns that emerged halfway up, as though growing from the, wall. The lintel was covered with stone buds in high relief. The jeep's headlights here produced only a semicircular glow against the black of the doorway, the threshold of which was worn, as if by an endless procession of feet. They entered slowly. The doorway was enormous, built for giants, and on the inside walls and ceiling there were no signs of joints, as if the entire structure had been carved out of solid rock. The hall terminated in a blind, concave wall. On either side was a row of niches, each containing a depression at the bottom, like a place to kneel, and above that a triangular, glazed vent in the wall.

They went back outside. Several dozen feet farther on was a passageway in the wall surrounded by regular but mysterious multifaceted shapes. As they turned and entered it, the half-light behind them went out. The Chemist looked around—they were in total darkness. The Captain had turned off the headlights.

The Chemist looked up. He could not see the sky, but thought he could feel its distant, cold presence.

Their footsteps reverberated. The stone walls echoed. Without saying a word, both men put out their left hands and touched the wall near them. It was almost as smooth as glass.

The Doctor turned on his flashlight, and they found themselves in a small open space like the bottom of a well. The walls, parting narrowly for street entrances, had double rows of windows all tilted skyward and therefore difficult to see from below. In the narrowest street were steps going steeply up and, before them, a horizontal stone beam flush between the walls. A dark cask shaped like an hourglass hung from it. The men chose the widest street. Soon the air around them seemed to change. Their flashlights showed, above them, vaulting riddled like a sieve, as if someone had punched a thousand triangular holes in the stone.

They walked on, past roofed side streets like high galleries. They walked beneath domes hung with misshapen bells or casks, and gossamer strips blew in the wind from lintels covered with ornamentation in the shape of plants. They peered into spacious but empty halls that had barrel-vaulted ceilings with large round openings at the top, which were plugged with boulders. Strange corrugated gutters angled upward from the streets like dough-covered ladders. A warm gust of air sometimes hit them in the face.

Several hundred feet from the square, the street divided; they went right and began to descend. Massive buttresses filled the street, and at each was a niche containing dead leaves. The dust they raised, walking, swirled in the beams of their flashlights. Crypts gaped on either side, exuding stale air, and inside them were meaningless shapes, seemingly abandoned. The street bottomed, then rose, and the air grew fresher.

The men passed more side streets, galleries, squares. As their flashlights moved, shadows appeared to take wing or scurry away in dark packs, or crouch at entrances guarded by columns that grew out of the wall and leaned toward one another. Everywhere, the men were accompanied by the barking echo of their footsteps.

At times they sensed the presence of someone else. Then they would stop by a wall, their flashlights turned off, their hearts pounding, and hear rustling, shuffling noise, a clumsy echo, a murmur like an underground stream. Or, from a well opening in an alcove, a moan might come, accompanied by a musty smell, but it was impossible to say whether it was a creature's voice or only the sound of the air in a hollow place. They had the impression that shapes were moving around them. Then they saw a small face peering out of an alley. It was pale and furrowed. But when they went to the place, all they found was a shred of paper-thin gold foil.

The Doctor said nothing. He knew that this excursion—dangerous, mad under such conditions, at night—was being undertaken because of him, that the Captain was risking it because, though time was pressing, the Doctor, alone of the crew, had insisted that an attempt at communication be made. He told himself that as soon as they reached the next corner, the next street, they would turn back—but they went on. In a high gallery framed by circular plates of opaque glass, which also formed the ceiling, with curious underslung, gondolalike balconies, a plant pod dropped in front of them. They picked it up: it was warm, as though a hand had held it.

What most perplexed them was the darkness. Surely the inhabitants of the planet had eyes and had observed their arrival. One would have expected to encounter guards, activity of some sort, not this emptiness. The lights that the men had observed from above were evidence that the area was inhabited…

This reconnaissance became more and more like a bad dream. They longed for light—their flashlights only seemed to intensify the surrounding gloom, and all they saw were fragments, incomprehensible parts of things.

There was a shuffling, so distinct that they rushed toward it. The rhythm of flight and pursuit filled the narrow street, the echoes broken between the close walls. As they ran, their flashlights in front of them, gray reflections moved along the vaulting overhead, which lowered until it was quite near. The shuffling noise stopped—then started again. The ceiling went up and down in waves as dark side-street entrances flew past. The men came to a halt, exhausted.

"Listen … do you think they … are drawing us into a trap?" the Chemist panted.

"Don't be silly!" the Doctor said, angry.

They were standing near a well whose walls were perforated with black openings. A pale, flattened face showed in one of them, but when they pointed their flashlights there, the opening was empty.

They went on. The presence of others was no longer a matter of conjecture, they could feel it everywhere, and the Doctor found himself thinking that even an attack or a struggle in the dark would be preferable to this pointless search that led nowhere. He looked at his watch. Almost half an hour had passed; they would have to head back soon.

Several feet ahead, at a bend in the wall, was a doorway crowned by a sharply pointed arch, with bulbous stone trunks rising on either side of the threshold. The Chemist swept the dark interior with his flashlight. The beam moved across a row of niches and fell upon a cluster of naked bodies crouching and motionless.

"They're there!" he gasped, shrinking back. The Doctor entered, while the Chemist shone his light from behind. The naked group clung to the wall, huddled, frozen in place. At first he thought they were dead. Drops of water glistened, trickling down their backs.

"Hey!" the Doctor called weakly, feeling the absurdity of the situation. From outside and above came a long, penetrating whistle; then a groan of many voices resounded in the stone room. None of the creatures moved, they only groaned. But there was movement in the street; the men could hear steps, the sound of running, and several dark forms went past in great bounds. When the echoes died, the Doctor peered out—there was nothing in the street. His bewilderment turned to anger. Standing in the doorway, he switched off his flashlight and listened.

More steps in the darkness.

"They're coming!"

The Doctor felt rather than saw the Chemist clutch his weapon. "Don't shoot!" he cried.

The street was suddenly filled, humps leaped up and sideways in the beam of the Chemist's flashlight, there were soft thuds of bodies hitting bodies, and huge shadows shot out and flapped like wings. A rattling cough broke into a wail of several hoarse voices, and something heavy fell at the Chemist's feet, knocking him down. For a second he glimpsed a small face with white eyes staring at him; his flashlight hit the ground, and the darkness was total. He groped for the flashlight desperately, like a blind man running his hands over the stone of the street.

He called to the Doctor, but his voice didn't carry. Dozens of bodies passed, bumping into one another.

The Chemist grabbed the metal cylinder of his flashlight and jumped to his feet, but a powerful blow threw him against a wall. A whistle sounded from high up, and the bodies stopped. He felt the heat coming from them. He was shoved, he staggered and cried out, feeling slippery flesh and breaths on him from all sides. He pressed the contact, and there was light again.

A row of enormous humps, and dazed eyes in miniature faces. Then, from behind, naked creatures pushing toward him. Wedged between hot, wet bodies, he made no attempt to defend himself, but let himself be pushed and pulled along. The stink of flesh was asphyxiating. The creatures near him looked at him with apprehension and tried to back away, but there was no room. The hoarse howling went on and on. Small torsos drenched in a liquid like sweat nestled in bulges of pectoral muscle.

Suddenly the group surrounding him was pushed toward the doorway. Through a jungle of intertwined limbs he could make out, for a second, a glimmer of light and the Doctor's face, the mouth wide open in a shout. The Chemist's flashlight bobbed up and down, clutched to his chest, and it showed tiny faces, eyeless, noseless, mouthless, all drooping and drenched. For a moment the pressure slackened; then another push, and his shoulders were slammed against the wall, against a column, which he caught hold of and tried to cling to, resisting with all his might the wave of shoving creatures. He had to stay on his feet; if he fell, he would be trampled to death. He felt, in the stone, a step—no, a ledge. He climbed up on it and shone his flashlight outward.

It was a terrifying sight: a river of heads surging from wall to wall. They stared at him wide-eyed as he stood in a niche and watched their desperate, convulsive efforts to avoid him. But they could not move away, helpless in the crowd that pushed down the street, that squeezed the outermost creatures into the walls. The Chemist saw the Doctor—he was caught in the crowd, like a floating chip, surrounded by huge bodies. The Chemist's flashlight fell again, went out. In the darkness, the noise continued, the thuds and groaning. He propped his back against the cold stone and tried to catch his breath. But now he could hear individual footsteps, individual leaps, which meant that the hellish crowd was thinning. Weak in the knees, he wanted to call to the Doctor but was unable to utter a sound. Suddenly a burst of white revealed the top of the opposite wall, and the Chemist realized, after a few moments, that it must be the Captain showing them the way back with a magnesium flare.