The World and Thorinn

13 How Thorinn died and was brought to life again, but resented it.

...it was therefore decided to put the Monitor on command mode with instructions to take whatever action may be necessary to promote the welfare of any remnant of humanity that may survive. No sono reports from the upper regions have come through since the fighting began. Nearly the whole of Lozed is flamed out and uninhabitable. If any of us live through the next few days, we will return and again put the Monitor on slave mode. If not, the destiny of mankind is in its—I had almost said hands. May God have mercy on us.

In the first instant the battering force of the water had collapsed the bladder around him. Suspended helplessly in the dark torrent, he had fought until he could hold his breath no longer; then as the water filled his lungs the crumpled bladder had turned somehow into the coils of a serpent that wound around his chest, constricting it with a pain beyond pain. The serpent was still there, although he could not see it when he opened his eyes. He struggled uselessly. He was falling, but the curved wall of the room hung steady around him. Some crystal thing was withdrawing over his head. Metal tubes, arms, were moving away. The yellowish light came from panels in the wall. A white engine drifted into view from above; he could hear its faint hissing in the silence. White spidery arms came out of it, turned, dipped, closed around him gently at arms and thigh. He was too weak to resist. The arms retracted, turned as the room wheeled around him, placed him with his back against the long shaft of the engine that ended in a curved tube over his head. Soft coils snaked around him. The hiss came again, and he was moving upward through a round hole in the ceiling. He came out into a room that was like a quarter of a cheese, with one wall curved like the one below, the other two straight; ceiling and floor were flat. The coils withdrew; the arms gripped him again, turned him, gently pressed him against a flattened pole that stood in the corner. Other coils moved around him. The engine backed away with a hiss, descended through the hole in the floor and was gone. He was still falling, while the room fell around him. In a net bulging from the wall beside him he saw his possessions, the bundles, the talking box, his shoes and clothing. He looked down at himself, saw that he was naked.

"Box," he said. His voice was thin and hoarse.

"Here am I."

"What is this place? What happened?"

"This is a place at the bottom of the world. You went into the falling water and died. Engines brought you here."

"I'm alive," Thorinn muttered. "I didn't die."

"Engines made you alive again." The box said something more, but already Thorinn's eyes had closed and he was drifting away into another dream of serpents.

When he awoke the second time he was still in pain, but he was stronger. The unfamiliar room was just the same. "Box, I'm thirsty," he said.

"There is water in the engine on the wall."

Thorinn looked, and saw two segmented yellow ropes that hung outward like snakes from the white wall.

"One is for food, the other for water. The one on the right is for water." Thorinn reached, pulled the tube toward him, doubtfully put the gray end of it between his lips. Cool sweet water spurted into his mouth; he choked with surprise, then swallowed. When he let go, the tube went back partway into the wall and was still. A few droplets of water, perfect little balls, drifted in the air.

There were glowing panels in the curved wall facing him, like the ones in the room below, and under them were six crystals like the one in the box, but much larger. Two were twice the size of the others; each of these had a smaller one on either side. In the middle of the room were two yellow poles, about an ell and a half apart, with large blue beads on them at intervals. To his left there was an upright box taller than a man, and beside it, in the corner, a half partition. Otherwise the room was empty. The air was pleasantly warm, but had an odd scent.

He examined the coils that were holding him, found that they were two fat white bands of some unfamiliar material, one under his armpits and the other across his thighs. He tried to pull them loose without success, until he discovered that they were clasped together on one side. He tugged at the ends and they came free. He was drifting away from the pole; the room was massively and slowly turning. He managed to seize the pole as it came around and drew himself to it, but his legs floated upward.

"Box," he said, "where are we going?"

"We are not going anywhere."

Thorinn clung to the pole with arms and legs; the room steadied a little. "I mean," he said with strained patience, "how long must we go on falling?"

"We are not falling. This place is at the bottom of the world." The crystal lighted, and he saw a dark circle with a dot of light at the center. Yellow lines appeared, radiating from the center. "Here the weight of the world pulls us toward it from all directions at the same time, and so we cannot fall." Thorinn's head was beginning to ache. His face felt sweaty and cold. "Box, I'm going to be sick."

"It will be best if you go into the big box in the corner and put your feet on the floor." That was easier said than done, but Thorinn pushed himself away from the pole he was clinging to and succeeded in grasping one of the soft blue beads on the next pole. From there he could reach the tall box, which had two yellow handles. Clinging to one, he tugged at the other; the door opened. Inside were other handles.

"The door must be shut," said the box outside. Thorinn closed it, got himself upright, and pressed his feet against the perforated floor. At once jets of water spurted from the walls, wetting him all over below the chin, while a strong suction held his feet down. Thorinn's stomach knotted. He bent forward, vomited into the stream.

When it was over he felt a little better. He rinsed his face, then drew his feet up. The jets stopped; the water swirled away past him into the floor, and warm air began to play over his body. In a few moments he was dry; he opened the door and came out.

The light in the room was steady and even. He looked at his body, felt himself. Here was the puckered scar on his shoulder where he had been injured in falling into the dark cavern; here the pink, shiny wounds where the demons had pierced his hands. He was the same, he was himself, and yet he felt that he was not. Had he really died?

Beside the washing-box, behind the half partition, he found a thing shaped like a curved flower growing up out of the wall, with an egg-shaped hole in the seat that formed its top. He pulled himself out into the room again, but there was little there that he had not noticed before. In front of the center crystal there was a circular platform, raised less than a finger's breadth from the floor. There was a hole in the ceiling, and there were two closed doors, one in each of the flat walls. He tried them in turn; they had handles but he could not open them. "Box, where do these doors go?"

"They go to other rooms."

Thorinn pulled himself to the opening in the floor, put his head down it, and saw a circular room four times bigger than the one he was in; it was like the whole cheese of which this one was a quarter. The room was partly divided by short partitions to which man-sized boxes with crystal covers were attached. A few ells away, the spidery shape of the engine that had carried him hung motionless against the wall. The sight of it disturbed him, and he turned away to investigate the hole in the ceiling. He found himself looking into another circular room of the same size, but this one was empty except for a pole in the center that ran from floor to ceiling. In the ceiling, a few ells away, were three other circular openings. Drawn by curiosity, Thorinn pulled himself through, grasped the central pole, drew himself along it, rose to the ceiling. He tried one of the holes at random, and found himself in a room identical to the quarter-cheese one he had left, except that the doorways in the walls were open. He pulled himself to them in turn, and found that one led to still another quarter-cheese room, the other to a half-cheese, with more poles and more crystals in the curved wall. It had no washing-box or dunghole. There was one piece of furniture that might have been meant for a table, but no benches. From this room he rose through another hole into still another circular room. It was the same as the one below, and it also had an engine sleeping against the wall. As far as he could see, there was no exit in the ceiling.

Descending again, Thorinn went through the half-cheese room, then the empty whole-cheese; then a half-cheese room which he had not seen before, but it was exactly like the other. It had two doorways, one closed, the other open: the latter led him into another quarter-cheese room with a closed door. Counting in his head, Thorinn found that there were five circular sections, first a whole cheese with partitions in it, then a like space divided into a half-cheese and two quarters, then the empty whole cheese, then another half-and-two-quarters section, and finally a whole cheese with partitions. This door, then, if it were open, would let him into the room where he had started. He went down headfirst into the circular room with the partitions, found a yellow hand-grip in the ceiling, pulled himself over and up through the other hole, and found that it was so: he was back in the room with his bundles. He went to examine these, and found that the mouth of the net was against the wall, so that in order to take anything out he had to put his feet on either side of it, then bend over and reach around behind the net. He got the bundles out, and the box, and his clothing; all his weapons were missing, even his sword.

"Box, where is the sword?"

Drifting in the air behind him, the box said, "The engines kept it." Surrounded by drifting bundles, Thorinn put on his breeks. The room began to revolve slowly around him. The shirt and belt, which he had left hanging in the air, were drifting away, each in a different direction.

When he had caught them and put them on, he opened a bundle, took out some cheese, and began to eat. The contents of the bundle were slowly dispersing about the room.

"Box," he said, "tell me again what happened and where we are."

"You went into the falling water and were killed. Engines took you from the water." As the box turned, Thorinn saw a glint of light in the crystal. He planted his feet against a pole, sprang, caught the box, and came to rest against another pole. In the crystal he saw spidery shapes looming, caught a glimpse of a pale body tangled in their arms. "Is that me?"

"Yes, Thorinn. The engines put you in a skin like the ones around the children in the cavern, to keep you just as you were. They gathered up all your things and put them in the skin also." The crystal had gone dark. "They took you to this place and brought you to life."

"Why?"

"They want to ask you questions."

"When will they ask?"

"Now."

Another voice spoke from across the room. It was thin, without resonance; he could not tell whether it was a man's voice or a woman's. "What is your name?"

"Thorinn Goryatson. Who are you?"

"This is an engine. Where were you born?"

"I don't know."

"Who were your father and your mother?"

"I don't know. Goryat Temuson kept me, but he was not my father."

"Where did you live?"

"In Hovenskar."

"Who else lived there?"

"Only Goryat and his two sons, Withinga and Untha."

"How did you come to be in the Underworld?"

"They sent me into the well, and Goryat put a geas on me to go down."

"What is a geas?"

"A geas is—well, it's something that makes you do whatever the geas tells you, whether you want to or not."

"Is a geas a kind of magic?"

"Yes. Are you inside the wall, or what?"

"This engine is in another part of this place. Is that Hovenskar?" On the curved wall, one of the crystals lighted; Thorinn saw, as if from a vantage point high in the air, the great yellow bowl of Hovenskar. He could see the stone-roofed hut, and the thread of smoke rising aslant. Two horses lumbered up the hillside; he thought he could even make out which ones they were—Alder and her foal, the one that had died four summers ago.

The pain had returned to his chest; he swallowed hard and blinked. Suddenly he felt the weight of the world hanging over his head. The voice was speaking again, but he said, "I don't want to hear any more," and turned away. The voice fell silent. Thorinn kicked himself away from the nearest pole, caught the next, and so to the pole in the corner. He squirmed in past the white bands, and after a moment they closed around him. The lights dimmed to a faint glow, and he shut his eyes. When he awoke the lights were bright again and the things he had left floating in the air were back in the net; otherwise everything was the same. He got the cheese out again and ate, drank water from the tube, used the dunghole.

Presently the crystal in the wall lighted up and he saw again the yellow bowl, the house, the horses on the hill. "Is that Hovenskar?" asked the voice.

"Yes," said Thorinn unsteadily. "Why am I here? What are you going to do with me?" The picture vanished. "You are here to answer questions. You will be kept here until you have answered them, and then you will be taken to another place. What did you find when you went down the well?"

"Mud and rocks. What other place?"

"It will be a place like the other places where you have been before. What did you find besides mud and rocks?"

After a moment Thorinn said, "The well was broken. I went down through a cavern and into a tunnel. Show me the place where you mean to send me."

The crystal lighted again and he was looking from a little height into a wooded valley where a brook ran. There was something odd about the trees and the brook; they were not quite real. The picture vanished. Now he was looking down a tunnel lined with rings of light.

"Was it a tunnel like this?"

"No. Show me that place again—where does the stream come from?" The valley reappeared; the brook came toward him, turned; now he was drifting upstream; now he saw the gray wall of the cavern, where the brook sprang out of an opening so narrow that he knew a man could never get into it.

The valley was gone and he was looking down another tunnel, smaller than the other, dark, with strips of corroded metal hanging from above. "Was it a tunnel like this?"

"Yes. Is there any way for a man to get out of that valley?"

"No. Where did you go from the tunnel?"

"I fell through a hole into a river. Tell me, why do you want to hold me prisoner?"

"You are to be held prisoner to keep you from harming others. How did you come to fall into the river?"

"The geas made me fall in... Where is this place, where we are now? Show me what's outside." In the crystal, he was looking at a circular doorway in a wall; inside was a room lit by a diffuse yellow glow. It receded; a door slid across the opening. As it dwindled, he saw that the doorway was in a vast curved surface covered with growths like deformed water-weeds. Something with fins and a tail darted by, disappeared. "What happened after you fell into the river?" the voice asked.

"Is there water around this place?" Thorinn cried. His body was shaking, his lips cold.

"Yes. What happened after you fell into the river?"

"I was in a dark cave, with a lake. How deep is that water?"

"It is four hundred and forty thousands of ells deep." The voice went on speaking, but Thorinn, crushed by despair, could not hear the words. Four hundred thousand ells of water! Then all his toil and pain had been for nothing: he would never see the Midworld again.

"... was in the cave?" asked the voice.

"Enough," said Thorinn miserably. "Leave me alone, I have to think." The voice fell silent. After a time Thorinn kicked off from his pole, floated to the opening in the floor and looked down. The engine was against the wall with its spidery arms folded, unmoving. Because of the partitions, he could not tell for certain whether there was any opening in the floor or not. He pulled himself cautiously into the room, then by hand-holds across the ceiling, and down the wall. In the floor on the far side he found a large circular hatchway, closed by a white panel. It had no handle, and he could not move it.

He went back the way he had come. Clinging to a pole, he stared at the box in the net across the room.

"Box, when they finish asking me questions, how will they take me to the other place?"

"They will put you in a skin again and keep you until the other place is ready. Then they will put you in an engine that travels through the water. Another engine will take you from the top of the water to the other place."

"How long will it take to get the other place ready?"

"It will take fifty summers."

"... Why not kill me and be done with it?"

"An engine can't kill a man."

"So you said before. Box, have you ever lied to me?"

"No, Thorinn."

"Even when you told me the engines in that cavern wouldn't harm me?"

"They did not harm you."

"They broke the bladder, and kept me from going up the shaft!" The box said, "Thorinn, I must ask you a question. Is it harmful to you to be hindered in your coming and going?"

"Yes."

"You can come and go from one room to another in this place."

"What's the use of that?"

"In the room above this one, you can run around the wall."

This was so absurd that Thorinn did not answer; but after a moment curiosity got the better of him and he floated up through the hole to look at the empty room. He touched the wall with his hand: it was soft and yielding. Cautiously he pulled himself up, set one foot against the wall, pressed. The spongy material gave him unexpected purchase: he kicked out, soared; the curved wall came up to meet him. He was off balance, but caught himself with his hands, kicked again. In a few moments he had the feel of it, and he discovered that the faster he moved, the more weight he had and the easier it was to run. The exercise was grateful to his muscles, but he tired quickly. When the hole in the floor came by again, he caught it, pulled himself through. Sweating and hot, he went to the water tube in the wall and drank. Then he tried the food tube, but a warm, sweetish paste came into his mouth and he spat it out.

"Don't you like the food?" asked the voice from the wall abruptly.

"No, it tastes like spoiled porridge."

"You will be given other food. What is porridge?"

"It's something to eat—you boil grain until it's soft and then you eat it."

"What is grain?"

"It's food—it grows in the ground—" Exasperated, Thorinn cried, "What difference does it make, anyhow? Why are you asking these questions?"

"This engine was told by the Monitor to ask questions."

"The Monitor? Who is he?"

"The Monitor is the king of the world. When you were in the dark cave with the lake, who else was there?"

"No one. I was there by myself."

"Where did you go from that cave?"

"If I answer," Thorinn said, "what will you give me in return?"

"This engine will answer your questions."

"That's not enough. I want my freedom."

"What is your freedom?"

"... The right to go wherever I please, and do what I like."

"This engine can't give you your freedom. Where did you go from the dark cave?"

"Tell the Monitor to come here, then. If he wants to ask questions, let him ask them himself."

"The Monitor will not come. If you do not answer now, no more water or food will be given until you answer."

Thorinn kept a stubborn silence. After a moment he went to the wall and tried the drinking tube; it was dry. He did not bother to test the food tube, but opened one of his bundles and unwrapped it until he found the magic jug. The transparent stuff he had covered it with was gone, and the fabric around it was sopping wet. Peering into the jug, he saw only a few bright half-globes of water clinging to the sides. As he had half expected, the jewels were gone.

He set the jug adrift in the room and watched it awhile, then recaptured it and looked inside again. The globules of water had joined into a larger ball clinging to one side; it broke loose when he moved the jug, wavering and changing shape, then clung to the wall again. How was he to get it out?

He jerked the jug suddenly away from him; the ball of water spun out, surging into improbable shapes, and hung in midair, gradually settling into a perfect globe: but when he put his lips to it, it ran all over his face and chest.

Some smaller globules were left drifting slowly in all directions; Thorinn pursued these and succeeded in capturing some in his mouth, where they instantly became like ordinary water again and he was able to swallow them; but there must be a better way.

He tore off a piece of the fabric of one of his bundles and wadded it into the mouth of the jug, then went on another restless circuit. As an afterthought, he tried the water tubes in the other sleeping rooms, but they were dry too. When he returned to his own room, he saw by the darkness of the cloth in the jug that it was wet, and sucked a little water out of it. Later it became still wetter, and he saw that he could get all the moisture he needed in that way.

"Box," he said presently, "how is it that the engine can speak, but doesn't know what porridge is?"

"I taught the engine to speak, but I could not tell it what porridge is, because you had never told me." Irritably, Thorinn sprang from one pole to another, then back again. "You talked to it while I was asleep?

What else did you tell it?"

"I told it all that I knew."

"Why, in Snorri's name?"

"Because it asked."

"Even though I told you not to do anything that would harm me?"

"If I had not taught the engine to speak, it could not have talked to you, and that would have harmed you."

Thorinn was silent a moment. He saw that the box was right, but that only made him angrier. "Box, from now on, if you can do something that will help me escape, you must do it."

"Yes, Thorinn."

But what could the box or anyone do? It seemed to him that without weapons, locked in this cage, he had only one hope, and that was to bargain. If they wanted his information enough, they would release him; if not, not.

"Box," he said, "who is the Monitor?"

"The Monitor is an engine."

"You mean the world is ruled by an engine? How did that come about?"

"I don't know, Thorinn."

"Then how do you know the king is an engine?"

"The engine that spoke to you is not used to speaking to men. It calls itself 'this engine,' not 'I.' If the Monitor were a man, the engine would be used to speaking to men. Therefore the Monitor is an engine."

"But it was not like that when you were made?"

"No."

"Who was the king then?"

"There were many kings, chosen by the people, and the Monitor was their servant."

"I don't think an engine should be king," Thorinn said.

"Thorinn, I must ask you a question. Would it be better if a man were king, even if he harmed the people more than an engine would?"

Thorinn scowled. "No, I suppose not, but—" He paused for thought. "How old is the Monitor, box?"

"It is thirty-five hundreds of thousands of days and sixty thousands of days old." Thorinn whistled in amazement. "Well, then, it would be better to have kings who were men, because at least a bad king would die and then you might get a better one." Thorinn ate some cheese and sucked water from the jug. Restless, he explored the other rooms again, but there was little of interest there. He found no cupboards or presses anywhere, nothing but the empty rooms. He ran again in the running room, then went back to his starting point. For lack of any other occupation, he opened his wallet and removed its contents one by one: fire stick, light-box, pebbles, a bit of crystal, the scrap of cloth woven with bright figures. He replaced each object carefully after he was done with it.

Then for a while he shook globes of water out of the magic jug and watched them drift slowly about the room. By passing his hand between two of them, he found that he could make them collide and merge into a larger ball. Whenever a floating globe touched one of the poles or handles, it rebounded and went on, but when a globe touched the wall, floor, or ceiling, it clung and then disappeared, leaving a dark spot that slowly faded.

It was hard to credit what the box had told him about the world; yet it must be so, for in this place, where there was no weight at all, water formed perfect globes; above, in the wingmen's cavern, where there was little weight, the waves in the river were taller than his head; and so upward to the Midworld, where things behaved normally and had their proper weight. All this had a logic and symmetry which he could grasp and which in a curious way pleased him.

Now that he knew he had to do with an engine, his problem was clearer. Engines knew a great deal, but they were bound by many geases. If it was true that an engine could not kill a man, then it had been idle for the engine to threaten him with thirst and starvation.

But how badly did they want his answers—what did they want them for? If he had misjudged, he might go to sleep tonight and wake up fifty summers later in that sealed cavern they were making for him. Eventually weariness overcame him, and he slept between one thought and another, floating where he was, without trying to reach the sleeping pole.