The World and Thorinn

6 How Thorinn fell five hundred leagues in a day and a night.

3215 a. d.

... For these and other weighty reasons, as, to permit an equal and governable expansion of the matter at the centre of our globe, which, being confin'd, must else burst forth in earth quake and volcano when as the burden above it shall be abated; to advantage ourselves of the aforesaid pressure and heat for the driving of our engines; as well as to increase fourfold the extent of our lands upon the surface by the removal of the oceans to the chamber below: it is our intention to drill three shafts to the centre of the Earth, taking matter for conversion from these shafts alone, until what time they shall be complete and the central chamber hollow'd out. The energy soobtain'd, by all our calculations, will satisfy our wants during the next twenty centuries...

Thorinn was falling. The lighted ledges flashed by as swift as eyeblinks, flick, flick, an ell out of reach. The wind of his passage had grown so strong that he could open his eyes only an instant before they filled with tears. As he turned, it whipped his back, his legs, then belly and face again. The sound of it filled his skull, like a gale sweeping across the bowl of Hovenskar. It had been steady, but now it began to buffet him, turning him this way and that, so that he spun now head down, now flat in the air like a falling leaf. The ledges of the great shaft around him blurred steadily upward.

The buffeting died away, and an instant later he felt a slight jar, as if he had passed through some flimsy barrier; then the buffeting came back. A short time later the same thing happened again, and, after an equal interval, still again. His mind took up the rhythm and he knew to the instant when the next check would come. After each one he felt a dull pain in his ears. His stomach knotted and he began to vomit. Long after his stomach was empty, he continued to retch feebly.

Time passed. The wind burned his face, and whipped his garments against his body until he was sore. Weariness overcame him. He had been falling for hours, and still there was no end. His eyes were streaming tears, the lids now so swollen that he could hardly open them. He held up one arm to shield his eyes; then, that failing, fumbled at the shoulder loops of his pack. He managed to slip one arm out, then the other. The wind fought him for the pack, but he pulled it around in front of his body, picked at it with numb fingers. When he had loosened the last knot, the wind instantly unrolled the cloth, scattering the contents, and turned it into a frantically flapping rag. He clutched it with knees and elbows; little by little he succeeded in drawing it tighter from head to crotch, and at last tied the ends together. The cloth shielded his face somewhat from the wind. At intervals, looking sideward, he could catch glimpses of the streaming wall of the shaft. Closer at hand, other things were falling. He recognized the talking box, and another box with its lid burst open and a cloud of little figurines around it. They were tumbling, shifting like midges; then they streamed upward and were gone, though the box continued to fall beside him. Under the constant buffeting of the wind Thorinn grew dizzy and numb. His eyes closed more and more frequently. He roused once, with a start, to realize that he had been asleep. Nothing had changed. His eyes closed again, and presently he dreamed that he was falling down the long slope of the hillside in Hovenskar, under the half-dark, half-bright sky; the horses stood gazing in wonder as he drifted above the grass-tops toward the little hut which remained as distant as ever, no matter how long he fell. Then his dreams grew confused, and he thought he was wandering under the earth, in a tunnel that opened from the bottom of the dry well in Hovenskar; he discovered a treasure house, and robbed it of jewels, and marvelous engines, and a magic box that spoke to him in a human voice; but the box spoke nonsense. Then he had fallen down the well again, and the well had no bottom, but went down endlessly into the center of the earth.

He awoke to the buffeting of the wind. His head ached, his eyes were gummy, his mouth dry. The cloth he had wrapped around him was flapping ceaselessly against his body: through its folds he could see the wall of the shaft spinning by. He knew he had been asleep a long time; yet he was still falling, and nothing had changed. Remembering his dream, he thought: what if there is no bottom?

He stretched and groaned. He was bruised in every limb, he needed to empty his bladder, and he felt both hunger and thirst. He found the water jug in his wallet and loosened the wrappings around it. While he waited for it to fill, he munched on a piece of cheese he found in the wallet; then he carefully took out the jug, put the spout to his lips and tried to drink. Water splashed over his mouth and nose, along with gemstones that pelted his face. Thorinn hastily covered the mouth of the jug with his palm, leaving only the spout free, and tried again. This time he was more successful; a trickle of water entered his mouth, ceased, then came again as he turned. His thirst was not satisfied, but he wrapped the jug again and put it away.

He dozed again and awoke, tormented by the aching of his head. The need to empty his bladder grew unbearable, and at last he pulled down his breeks and made shift to direct the stream out through the opening in his cover, where the wind dashed it into spray. He wrapped himself up and drifted off again into numb, uneasy sleep.

He awoke with a pang of alarm. Something had changed: the wind was like a great hand that smote him on the breast and back as he turned. The wall of the shaft was moving past him more slowly, still more slowly, flick, flick... flick... flick... It slowed almost to a crawl; the wind belabored him. Past the fluttering edge of the cloth, he glimpsed a dark band between the rings of the shaft. It tipped nearer; he had only time to realize that he was falling toward it, and then the wind abruptly was gone, and he lay sprawled, dizzy and too numb to cry out his surprise, on a smooth floor that slipped away under him.

He clawed for purchase. Silence rang in his ears like a shout, and his skin tingled to the absence of the wind. The slope under him turned abruptly deeper; he was sliding, falling again. Now he did cry out, and struggled to right himself. The feeling of great space was gone; the air felt close. He struck something hard and was at rest in the heaving blackness. There was a tinkling somewhere below, then silence. After several attempts, he managed to sit upright. He was in absolute darkness. The surface under him seemed to be composed of thin metal ribs that ran crosswise to each other, leaving square holes half a span wide between them. His fingers slipped down into these apertures, and touched nothing. The ribs were hard, but not uncomfortable to sit upon; a puzzle—they felt harder to his fingers than to his buttocks.

He listened intently, heard nothing. Balancing himself with care, he opened his wallet and got out his light-box. The moss glowed dimly in the lighted end. He carefully transferred a pinch of sky-moss from each compartment to the other. The lighted compartment went dark, and the dark one flared up brightly. He turned the box upward, saw a glimmering Crosshatch of metal over his head. This was a floor like the one he sat on, but the ribs were much more widely spaced, leaving squares two ells across. Through one of these, evidently, he had fallen.

He turned the light-box downward, with caution because the lighted end was the one from which he had lost the mica. He thought he could make out a dark floor below, but did not dare turn the box straight downward.

A few ells away lay his sword, beside a square object which he recognized as the talking box. All the rest of his looted treasures had vanished; except for the cloth, box and sword, they had all been small enough to drop through the holes in the floor, and although he swept the beam of the light-box in every direction, he could not find them.

He opened his wallet, drew out the magic jug, unwrapped it, and set it down. Most of the jewels were still in it. While he waited for the jug to fill with water, he identified by touch the rest of the things in the wallet: his fire stick, some pebbles from Hovenskar, a strip of horse-meat, a half-empty box of cheese. He ate a little of the cheese, but his thirst was so great that he could not swallow much. He tipped the jug to his lips, drank the trickle of water that came out, set the jug down again. He was dizzy, but he managed to crawl a few ells away, where he took down his breeks and relieved himself, squatting over one of the holes in the floor.

He crawled back to the talking box. It lay face up, and he could see a flicker of color in the dark crystal.

"Box," he said.

"I am here."

"Box, tell me, what is this place?"

"This is a place where things fall."

Thorinn said, "Why?"

"Why do things fall?"

"Yes."

"All things fall to other things." The crystal lighted up, and he could see some sort of complicated shape moving across it. "I don't mean that," he said impatiently. "I mean, why here? What is this place for?" The crystal went dark. "This place is to take things that fall here. This place not, then things fall to the bottom, on heads of people."

Thorinn considered this. "Are there people at the bottom?"

"Yes."

"How far is it to the bottom?"

"It is two hundred hundreds of hundreds and sixty hundreds of hundreds of ells." Thorinn frowned. "You mean thousands?" he ventured.

"What is a thousand?"

"A thousand is ten hundreds."

"It is two thousands of thousands and six hundreds of thousands of ells." Thorinn tried to imagine such a number, and gave it up. "Well then, how far is it to the top again?"

"It is four thousands of thousands and four hundreds of thousands of ells." Thorinn put his head in his hands. He remembered the fall, the wind buffeting him, such a wind as he had never felt even riding Stonebreaker into the teeth of a gale in Hovenskar. He must have been falling ten times as fast as a horse could gallop, at least... and it had gone on for hours. He remembered the rings of the shaft wall whipping by him till they blurred together. He thought of that going on hour after hour, while he slept, still falling...

"Box, are there people living near here?"

"Yes."

"Which is the best way to get to them?"

"Engines will come to take things from this place. Engines will take you to the people." Thorinn disliked the sound of this. "Show me these engines," he said. Colors began to appear in the crystal. "Wait a minute," Thorinn said, and hitched himself across the ribbed floor until he could reach the box and turn it upright. The crystal had gone dark. He moved back a little, to see better. "All right."

In the crystal, two spiderlike things of metal appeared. They had metal eyes and waving metal arms with claws at the end, and they moved in a way that made Thorinn ill to watch.

"That's enough," he said hastily. "Box, I don't want to wait for the engines—how can I get out of here by myself?"

"At the back of this place there are—" The crystal lighted; it showed a wall of metal with three panels that opened and shut as he watched.

"Doors?"

"Yes, doors."

"All right, then." Thorinn leaned over far enough to reach the piece of stuff, pulled, it to him, and wrapped the box in it. The strips he had tied it with earlier were gone; he cut new ones off the end of the cloth to make shoulder loops, as before, and slung the pack on his back. There was still something disturbing and odd about all his movements; his arms seemed unnaturally light, and when he moved them they went farther than he meant them to. It was like what had happened when Snorri's Pipe began to roar; then all things had lost somewhat of their weight, but this was much worse. Leaning forward cautiously and pressing with one hand on the floor, he straightened his legs and managed to stand up. The floor above was an ell or so over his head. Shining the light between the ribs, he saw a dim reflected gleam from the ceiling, then another, nearer, from a wall that sloped gently up into darkness. It seemed that he was in a kind of midden-hole, into which things fell and sorted themselves out by their sizes. His first step took him high in the air; he clutched at the nearest rib of the floor above, overbalanced, and drifted down kicking helplessly to land on his back. He sat astonished, then got up and tried again. This time, using only his toes, he was able to keep his balance, though he floated as high as an ordinary stride would have taken him. He tried again, with still better results. He turned and began to follow the dancing beam of the light-box. After a stride or two he realized that the floor sloped gently downward toward the rear of the chamber; probably that accounted for part of his trouble in learning to stand up and walk. Ahead, something gleamed out of the darkness: it was an upright surface, formed of metal ribs set crosswise to each other like the floor he walked on. Beyond it the floor continued, but now it was solid metal.

Approaching the barrier, he discovered that it was made in sections that stood close together; each section was about four ells wide. There was no door to be seen, although he turned left and followed the barrier until it met the wall of the chamber, then right to the opposite wall. As he turned back to the middle again, his eye was caught by a spark of red fire below; then two more, of a greenish hue, a little distance away. He turned his light beam on them as well as he could through the ribs of the floor, and thought they were his lost jewels, but could not be sure; nor could he see any means of getting them.

He turned to the barrier and this time examined the nearest section, to see how it was made fast to the floor. He found it was held only by three metal contrivances that curved over the bottom rib and were fixed to the floor on the other side. Putting his hand between the ribs, he fumbled at one of these, and finding a handle pressed it, whereupon the contrivance sprang back and released the rib. He did the same with the other two, and now felt the barrier loose in his hands at the bottom, though it was still fixed at the top. He pressed against it, and it swung up easily.

Crouching there with one hand holding the barrier over his head, he swung the light-beam back and forth over the floor. The 'floor ended a few ells in front of him; beyond was blackness. The feel of the air on his face, the timbre of the few sounds he made, spoke of a vast empty space. He let the barrier down softly and fell to examining the floor around him. It was really a sort of platform, and above him there was another, of the same dull brownish metal, which seemed to extend farther out than this one. There was a light coating of dust on the floor; under it he could see scuff-marks, as if something had been dragged toward the edge of the platform. He thought of the spidery engines the box had shown him. By the look of the floor, he thought the engines had not been here in a long time; but perhaps they only came when something fell into the chamber.

He held his breath and listened, staring at the blackness that filled the space between the platform he stood on and the one above. He began to be uneasy about his light, and capped the end of the box, but that was worse: now the blackness swelled forward to touch his face.

With the light-box uncapped again, but shielding it with his fingers, he followed the barrier until he reached the wall. This was of solid brownish metal, not a grillwork like the others, but there was a door in it. It was not quite like the doors the box had shown him. He fumbled with the handle until he discovered how it worked, and slid the door open. Inside was more blackness, in which his light-beam picked out a few ambiguous shapes, a wall, a ceiling.

He closed the door. He was in a room, about the size of the platform outside. The ceiling was broken; dust and rubble covered the floor. He examined some of the metal devices that stood here and there, but could make nothing of them. One or two were like melted chairs; they would be ill to sit in, and he could imagine no other use for them.

The damage was worst at the far end of the chamber. Here the walls were blackened, and a great hole gaped in the ceiling; tongues of corroded metal hung down; broken stones were piled high in the corner. A faint breath came from the opening above. Thorinn climbed the slope, peered upward past the beam of his light. The way was partially blocked at the opening by fallen slabs of stone; beyond, it seemed to be clear. He tested the slabs cautiously, then began to wriggle past them. The passage widened perceptibly as he went on, until he was able to crawl on hands and knees. It sloped gradually upward, twisting and turning. After a hundred ells or so it turned sharply to the right and forked into two ascending passages, both deep but narrow. The breath of air from the right-hand passage seemed a little stronger than the other, and he chose that one. For a while the passage was deep enough to let him scramble half-erect; then it twisted again and began to grow shallower. In another ell or two he found himself in difficulty. The passage had grown so narrow that he could not get through it with the bundle on his shoulders. He retreated until he could crouch far enough to work the pack free. Pushing it ahead of him, he was able to advance another ten ells, the passage growing steadily narrower as he went. Then the passage took an abrupt downward turn. He thrust the pack down ahead of him, wriggled after it. It checked, then jammed tight. He tugged to free it, and it came back a finger's-breadth or two, then held fast again; it felt as if some loop or projecting fold of the stuff had caught. He probed with his fingers at the end of the bundle, all around. At one point he felt a faint touch of cool air. He squirmed forward, forcing his arm between the bundle and the smooth stone. Halfway down, he felt the bulge of the talking box inside. He got a precarious grip and tugged. Sweat ran into his eyes. He tugged with one hand, pushed with the other. The bundle turned slightly. He braced himself and pushed hard. The bundle ground forward, stopped, moved again, and suddenly dropped out of reach. A freshet of cool air played against his face. The light-box, sliding down after the pack, dropped and disappeared. He heard it fall, and saw its beam not far below.

A squirm and a heave, and he was out, falling, twisting slowly to land without a sound. He sat up, bruised and gasping. He was in a level passage, blocked at one end by a fall of stones; in the other direction, it ran off straight into darkness. He had gone no more than a hundred ells when he saw the circular opening of a shaft in the ceiling. He bent his knee slightly, leaped into the shaft, twisting to brace himself with foot and elbow.

As he had thought, the shaft was closed by a shield of brown metal, but there was no opening in it and it would not turn. He pushed against it and thought he felt it give a little. He braced himself more firmly, pushed again. The shield gave way, as if hinged at one side. Dim light washed down into the shaft, and he smelled fresh air. He lunged upward, pulled himself through, and sprawled in a tangle of stiff brown canes. The shield clapped shut behind him. Leaf shadows trembled on his face, and he smelled the scent of green trees.