The Star Below

II

When he awoke, he had forgotten all that had happened and at first did not know where he was. Then joy filled him when he saw his treasures. He pottered about among them for a while, examining this and that, drank from the magical jug, then crawled through the hole in the wall to relieve himself outside, came back, opened one of the boxes of cheese for His breakfast and began to plan what he should do next.

He would take only a few of the choicest things, and a supply of food, for his intention now was to try to come up into the Midworld as near as possible to the Highlands and to walk the rest of the distance, carrying his pack. Once there, he would sell some of his treasures to buy land and horses; later, he would come back to the cavern, taking care he was not followed; he would bring a pack train, and this time carry home enough treasure to keep him for the rest of his life. Thinking of this, he began to worry about brigands and to think that he would certainly have to be accompanied by some armed men. They would have to be trusted men, so that they would not rob him themselves; yet, even so, he would have to conceal from them the place where he went underground, so that they should net follow him. These thoughts gave him a headache and made Kim feel out of sorts, and he concluded that it was not easy to be rich.

The box had said nothing since he awakened, and he was glad of that for it had tired him with its chatter the day before. It was a clever box in its way, for it pronounced everything perfectly and never had to be told anything more than once, but in other ways it was very stupid and seemed never to have heard of the commonest things.

He had another drink from the jug and set off straight down the aisle, meaning to follow it to the end. The tall columns marched past him with their heads buried in the darkness. There was no sound but his own footsteps. Here and there small parcels had been knocked to the floor, and he conjectured that an earth-shock must have done that; probably that was the cause, too, of the gap in the wall through which he had entered. Before that, the cavern must have been sealed up … for how long?

He stopped, listened. The quality of the silence in the cavern was the same, a feeling of vast space. When he scraped his foot on the floor, no sharp echo came back from ahead, where the wall of the cavern ought to be. When he had gone another hundred paces, he stopped again, and it was just the same. He had supposed this must be a small cavern, like those outside; but what if it were huge?

The thought of so much treasure, endless, uncountable rows of it, oppressed him instead of raising his spirits. After a moment he turned and started back.

In no time at all, it seemed, he was back at his heap of treasure.

“Box,” he said.

There was no answer, and the box did not light up.

Alarmed, he took a step nearer. “Box, are you there?”

“I am here,” said the box.

“Well, why didn’t you answer before?”

“You did not ask.”

“Oh.” Thorinn thought about this a moment. “Well, how big is this cave?”

“What is this cave?”

“This cave,” Thorinn said, waving his arms. “This place here, where we are.”

“What is how big?”

“How big,” Thorinn said, waving his arms again by way of explanation. “How many ells?”

“What are ells?”

Thorinn sat down on the floor and stared at the box in exasperation. “Ells are — well, anybody knows that. Ells are how long something is.” He spread his hands apart. “This is an ell.”

The box said, “How long are you?”

“You mean how tall. Two ells. I’m two ells tall.”

In the crystal, two yellow marks appeared. “How many?”

“Two.”

One of the marks vanished. “How many?”

“One.”

Two more appeared. “How many?”

“Three.”

The box, Thorinn realized, did not even know how to count. So they went on until they got to twenty-one, and then the box said, “Two tens are twenty?”

“Yes, that’s right, and three tens are thirty.”

“And four tens?”

“Four tens are forty. Five tens are fifty, six tens are sixty.” At a hundred and ten, the box stopped him again.

“Ten tens are a hundred?”

“Yes.”

“This cave is eight hundred fifty ells long, fifteen ells tall.” In the crystal, a brightly lighted little hollow shape appeared. It was like a very long, narrow box. At “eight hundred fifty ells long,” a yellow line appeared from one end to the other. At “fifteen ells tall,” a short yellow line appeared, standing erect, crosswise to the other. Then a third line appeared, across the width of the box. “Three hundred nineteen ells.”

“Three hundred nineteen ells wide?”

“Yes, three hundred nineteen ells wide.”

“And eight hundred ells long?”

“Eight hundred fifty ells long.”

Thorn was silent in amazement. “Is it all full of things?”

“What is full?”

“I mean is part of it empty, or is it all full of stacks of things like this?”

“It is all full of stacks of things.”

Thorn tried to imagine it and could not. Where could such an incredible accumulation of treasures have come from?

“Who made this cave?” he asked.

“What is made?”

Thorn tried to explain and grew hot-faced from exasperation. “Well, look here,” he said finally and picked up his light-box. “I made this box. I cut these pieces of wood and glued them together, and I fitted the pieces of mica in here at the ends — well, one of them is gone now, I lost it in the river. Then I made the lid and put it on here, and then the box was made, you see. I made it.”

In the crystal, an image of Thorn appeared, fitting little pieces of wood together. It was ever in a moment, and the figure held a light-box in its hand.

“You made this box?”

“That’s right. Now who made all this? Who made you?”

“A box made me.”

“You mean you made yourself?”

“I mean I made me?”

“Well, did you?”

“A box made this box.” In the crystal appeared a huge black engine, out of the end of which, one after another, were dropping little gray boxes, each with’ a glint of crystal inside it. They floated away out of sight; it made Thorn dizzy to watch them.

“You mean an engine. An engine made you — and all these other things?”

“Engines made me and all these other things.”

“Well, but who made the engines?”

“Engines made the engines.”

Thorn gave it up. He made the box show him the picture of the cave again, then what was around it. In the new picture, the cave was a tiny bright shape at the center, while all around it other transparent passages ran off in every direction, some twisting, some straight. His idea had been to find out the best way back to the MacWorld, but as he asked the box to show him more and still more, he grew fascinated by the maze of passages, caverns and shafts crisscrossing each other; there seemed to be no end to it. New lines kept floating into the picture, while the old ones grew smaller and closer together. “How did it ever come to be like that?” he asked. “The whole world?”

In the crystal, the network of lines vanished and a man’s face appeared, brown and smiling; at least Thorn supposed he was a man, though’ he was beardless. His black hair was cut short and combed back, exposing his ears and forehead. His lips moved. After a moment the box said, “This is the world.” Behind the brownfaced man a big green and blue mottled ball was floating, against a background of darkness. The man’s lips went on moving, but no sound came. The ball receded, grew very small.

“What is he saying?” Thorinn asked. “Let me hear what he says.”

Now the man himself began speaking, but it was gibberish; Thorinn could not understand a word. The ball was tiny now, and to one side of it, over the man’s head, a dot of yellow light appeared. It grew slowly; suddenly it was very big and bright, and Thorinn could see flames leaping from its surface.

Then it all vanished, and instead he was looking at a green landscape dotted with men and women who were all standing looking up at something huge and flat and silvery that was receding slowly overhead, as if somehow they had brought the sky down and now were raising it again. The man’s voice was still speaking, but Thorinn could not see where he was. Now the sky was high overhead where it belonged, and little dark engines were moving across it.

Then it changed again, and they were underground, watching a huge engine that ate its way into the solid rock, leaving a bright round tunnel behind it. Then there were scenes of great caverns full of engines and people, and floating egg-shaped things that crossed the caverns and darted along tunnels, up and down shafts, all brightly lit, shining. Then the brown man again, and behind him a picture like the drawing of the Underworld the box had shown him before, only it was circular, with many rings one inside the other and four straight lines radiating from the smallest circle of all, in the center. Then the circle changed into a ball again; this time it was white. Watching these pictures made Thorinn uneasy in a way he could not understand; it was like being afraid, and because there was nothing to be afraid of, this made him angry. The brown man was still speaking; the yellow point of light had appeared, and the silvery ball, itself shrunken to a dot, was crawling away from it toward a cloud of other bright dots. Now the other dots swung, came closer, darting forward like frost-flakes in a storm until only one hung in the center of the crystal, growing larger and brighter.

“That’s enough,” Thorinn said. The crystal went dark.

“I haven’t all day to sit watching such stuff,” he said. “It’s all nonsense anyhow,” and he began turning over his heap of treasures, trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind.