The Seed of Earth

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After that, there was a strange realignment of the tense relationships between the four prisoners in the cave. The incident of the beating was a sort of dividing-point, separating what had been from what now was.

Dawes suffered the most; he had acted foolishly, rashly, in deliberately inviting Noonan to trounce him, and he had lost status in Carol's eyes. That was clear. The only sort of respect she could have for him would be based on his intelligence - and he hadn't acted intelligently toward Noonan. Further, Carol really wanted a man who could take care of her, who could protect her from the tensions and rigors of existence in a frightening world - and Dawes had not at all proved himself that kind of person.

But sympathy came from an unexpected quarter from Cherry, who glared at the invincibly self-sufficient Noonan, and offered soothing words to Dawes. Noonan glared back at her angrily. His possessiveness was obviously beginning to irritate Cherry. Dawes wondered when the open split between them would come.

The swirl of conflicting emotions tightened. Both women half-loved and half-pitied Dawes. Cherry was physically drawn to Noonan, but was repelled by his dominating ways, his assertion of ownership. Noonan claimed Cherry as his own property, but quite clearly he was interested in Carol as well. Around and around it went, while the aliens gathered outside, and the hours slid toward sundown and the moonless darkness of Osiris' night.

Dawes sat bitterly by himself, feeling that he had fallen into total disgrace. Cherry softly sang her old nightclub songs, muffling their stridencies to avoid touching off some new dispute in the cave. Carol did nothing. As for Noonan, he bathed, slept for a while, woke, and went to the front of the cave, flattening himself strangely at the mouth, poking his head out and staring down for a long time as if measuring some distance.

After a time he came back and spoke with Cherry for a few moments. Then, moving on, he went to Carol as she sat quietly against the cave wall, and nudged her.

Dawes glanced up from his brooding. Noonan was saying something to her. He strained his ears to catch their words; but the expression on Noonan's face told him all he really needed to know.

Cherry crossed the cave, taking a seat at Dawes' side and putting her hand on his wrist as he began to clench his fists.

'Don't pay any attention to it,' she murmured. 'It was bound to happen sooner or later. Don't make him have to hit you again.'

'Is she going to listen to him?'

Cherry shrugged. 'I don't know. But she may. You never can tell.'

'I hate him,' Dawes said darkly. 'I hate both of them.

If he wasn't twice my size—'

'Well, he is,' Cherry said. 'So you might as well just relax.'

She shook out her long blonde hair. It was getting stringy from lack of combing, and it seemed to Dawes that it was darkening at the roots. It didn't surprise him much to find that Cherry's blondeness was synthetic.

He tried to relax, to ignore the fact that elsewhere in the cave Noonan was successfully taking Carol away from him.

After a long silence Cherry said, 'You know, Noonan thinks he knows a way out of here.'

'What?'

'Shh. He told me about it just a while ago. He says there's a little ledge down the side of the cliff a way.

Thinks we could manage to reach it with a rope ladder made out of our clothes. But he won't say anything about it to you because he doesn't want to help you.'

Dawes scowled. 'He's got no right to keep something like that to himself—'

'Noonan never worries about rights. Besides, he doesn't really think his idea could work. We might be able to get down, all right, but then the aliens would just bring us right back up here.'

Dawes had to acknowledge the truth of that. He slumped back, the momentary spark of hope dying. The waiting jailers below would never let them escape so openly, he thought.

Shadows deepened in the cave as the angle of sunlight sharpened. Four days, Dawes thought leadenly. Four days of just Noonan and Carol and Cherry, and the captivity might well go on forever. Forever. Was this why he had been selected and flung out into space, to sit in a cave with three other people, guarded by aliens for some unfathomable alien reason? He thought of all the vast and cumbersome machinery of selection, the computer and the local boards and the blue letter from District Chairman Mulholland, whoever he might be, damn his politicking hide! District Chairman Mulholland, Dawes thought, was probably some boot-licking nonentity who took a sinister delight in packing people off to the other planets. And for what? So they could be captured by apethings and stuffed into a cave?

A few more days with Noonan and Carol and Cherry and he might easily go out of his mind. Dawes remembered a line from some play he had once seen performed at State: Hell is other people.

Whoever wrote that line had been right, he thought.

Carol and Noonan were laughing, there at the back of the cave. Dawes forced himself to sit still. It was hopeless to try to interfere. If Noonan had developed a craving for Carol, there would be no peace in the cave until Noonan had satisfied that craving, and nothing Dawes would do could alter that. He listened numbly to their gay laughter. Carol had never laughed like that in his arms, Dawes thought bitterly.

He knew Cherry was laughing at him, too, inside, laughing because he didn't have the strength to knock Noonan sprawling as he deserved. On the outside, Cherry was pitying him. Inside, laughing.

The sun dropped almost out of sight; no more remained to the day but a few dim red flickers. The eternal wind howled wildly. Dawes looked out into the gathering night, moonless as ever.

'I wonder how the colony's doing,' he said abstractedly.

'Whether they're still there or not. And whether they ever ask themselves what happened to us.'

'You're always thinking,' Cherry said. 'Asking yourself questions. Well, the people in the colony don't have time to wonder about us - if they're alive. They're too busy surviving.'

The light went completely. In the dark, Dawes heard Carol's laugh. It sounded strange, harsh, ugly to him.

Topping it came the deep chuckle of Noonan.

'The light's out,' Noonan said, loud enough to be heard all over the cave. 'Time to go to bed.'

'Yeah,' said Dawes. 'Time to go to bed.'

He hunched into himself, cradling his head on his arms, and clenched his eyes tight. Sleep was a long time in coming, and it seemed to him he had hardly fallen off when the first rays of morning were streaming through the narrow mouth of the cave.

Morning. The fifth day.

And the invisible threads of hatred coiled a little tighter around the four in the cave.

Carol was unaccountably red-eyed and sullen. She bathed alone, early. Dawes watched her, from the distance, without getting up. She was like a little child in so many ways - helpless, frightened, selfish.

When Carol was through washing, Noonan bathed, and after him Dawes made his slow way to the rear of the cavern and plunged into the little stream enjoying the sharp pain of the ice-cold water against his skin.

At noon, the food bundle was hurled into the cave right on schedule. They ate silently, Noonan dividing the food as usual and doing a reasonably fair job of it. Not a word had been spoken in the cave since dawn. Dawes looked out and saw the aliens massed below, in greater numbers than ever before. After the meal, he settled into a corner of the cave. Cherry and Carol and Noonan each took up positions far from each other.

Carol. Noonan. Dawes. Cherry. Scattered over the cave like particles which innately repelled each other. No one spoke.

It was Cherry who split the silence finally. 'How long are we supposed to stay like this?' she asked, her voice hard. 'We sit here staring like mortal enemies at each other 1 Christ, what did we ever do to each other that makes us hate this way?'

'Shut up,' Noonan growled.

Carol chuckled hysterically. 'What did we do? I'll tell you. We were born, that's what we did to each other.

We came into this world and we were picked together and we ended up in this damned cave, making each other miserable.'

'We grate on each other,' Dawes said.

He found himself hating Carol for having gone to Noonan, hating Cherry for her noisy banter, hating Noonan for simply being Noonan. Flimsy reasons, all.

But powerful enough to spark the currents of hate in the cave.

'Why can't we get along with each other?' Cherry demanded of no one particular.

'We don't like each other,' Dawes said. 'You'd almost think the aliens picked us that way, to see what would happen when we were penned together. You'd—'

He stopped, suddenly, pushed himself to his feet, walked to the cave mouth, and looked down. As always the height made him a little dizzy, and he gripped the side of the rock for reassurance.

'Yeah, look at them,' he said. They sit down there as if they know everything that's happening in this cave. As if they're drinking in all the hatred that's rising between us. As if—''

'Stop that crazy babble,' Noonan ordered brusquely.

'You hurt my ears.'

Dawes knelt and peered down the face of the cliff, trying to see Noonan's ridge. Yes, there it was, a narrow, precipitous shelf of rock projecting no more than a few inches from the cliffside. Turning, Dawes said to Noonan, 'I understand you know how to get us out of here. Why the hell haven't you spoken up about it?'

'Who in blazes told you that? It's not true!'

'The ledge down there,' Cherry said. 'Yesterday you told me—'

Noonan slapped her viciously. Glaring at Dawes, he said, 'Okay, so there's a ledge down there. But my idea won't work, anyway. Even if we got out, the aliens would just grab us and put us right back in the cave. Well, won't they?'

'Maybe not,' Dawes said.

'Maybe not I Maybe not!' Norman roared with laughter. 'You can bet your life they will! You think they'll just sit down there and let us traipse past them?'

'Maybe. I know how to beat the aliens,' Dawes said in a level voice.

Suddenly Carol started to laugh - a high, keening, mad shriek of a laugh, repeated over and over. It wasn't hysteria, but the nearest approach to hysteria. Moments later Cherry was giggling, calmly, cynically.

'Keep quiet!' Dawes shouted. 'Let me talk 1'

'We don't want to hear any crazy nonsense out of you,' Noonan snapped. 'Shut your mouth.'

Dawes grinned oddly and took two unhesitant steps forward. There was only one way he could make Noonan listen to him. With careful aim he jabbed the big man sharply in the ribs.

Noonan was astonished by the assault. He glared at Dawes in amazement for an instant, and rumbled into action. His fists shot out blindingly crashing into Dawes' stomach, pounding him under the heart. Dawes fought back grimly. He landed a solid blow on Noonan's lip; then Noonan snarled angrily and cracked him backward with two fast punches in the midsection.

Dawes landed hard, feeling pain lance through his body. He gasped for breath. Noonan stood over him, dispassionately kicked him. Each blow was a new agony.

Finally it was over. Dawes lay crumpled on the ground, shielding his face. Noonan stood over him, and a strange expression of guilt was beginning to cross his features. His lower lip was swelling.

Sitting up, Dawes put his hands to his ribs; nothing was broken. He said hoarsely to Noonan. 'Okay. You were spoiling to kick me around again, and now you did it. You got it all out of your system. I hope you did, anyway.'

Noonan looked completely drained of fight. He didn't speak. Dawes mopped a trickle of blood away from his lips and went on.

'Noonan, you're a strong man, and in some ways you're a clever man. But you couldn't figure a way out of here, and you were damned if you'd let me have a go at it without beating me up first. Okay, I got beat up.'

'Listen—' Noonan began unsteadily.

Dawes cut him off. Despite the pain of the beating, he felt a kind of exhilaration. 'You listen to me. We can get out of here, if we only cooperate. All four of us.

'I don't know what kind of things those aliens are but they aren't as primitive as they look. We've been writing them off as ugly ape-things, but they're a lot subtler and smarter than that. I think they grabbed us out of the colony and stuck us up here so they could listen in on our emotions, soak them up, feed on them. They took four of us. Four people who hardly knew one another.

They threw us here and left us alone. They knew damned well what would happen. They knew we'd start hating each other, that we'd fight and quarrel and build walls around ourselves. That's what they wanted us to do. It would be a sort of circus for them - a purge, maybe. A kind of entertainment. Okay. They were right. We put on a good show for them. And I'll bet they've been out there drinking up every bit of friction and hate and fighting that's gone on in this cave since we got here.'

Dawes paused. The words were flowing smoothly, now that he had been granted the floor, but he wanted to allow time for his ideas to sink into the other three minds.

'Go on,' Noonan said quietly. 'Finish telling us what you have to say.'

'We don't have to hate each other, that's what I'm trying to get across. Sure, we get on each others' nerves. Four saints in a cage like this would drive each other batty.

But we can turn the hate outward. Hate them. And the best way we can show our hate for them is by loving each other instead of fighting. We're playing into their hands by bickering and brawling. Let's work together and try to understand each other. I'll admit up to now I've been as selfish as any of you. We're all equally to blame. But if we start cooperating now - hell, we'll be of no more use to them than fighting cocks without any fight. And we can build that rope ladder and they'll let us go.'

No one spoke when Dawes had finished. He let them think it over, and finally Cherry said, They're like parasites, then. Getting their kicks from our hate?'

'You've got the idea.' Dawes looked at the big man.

'Noonan, what do you say? You think what I said is worth anything?'

Slowly, Noonan began to smile despite the swollen lip. 'Yeah. Maybe you've got something. I guess we could try it.'