The Lotus Caves Page 8

  Steve had gone past him in the direction of the trees. He stood under one of them, and called: “Marty . . .”

  The leaves were a darker green than the grass, the trunk gray-brown, rugose, branches twisted as though by the slow stresses of long years of growth and weather. Among the leaves there were pink and white blossoms, and round green fruit flushed with red.

  Steve said in a dazed voice: “It’s an apple tree.”

  Marty joined him. He said: “I know. One of the first things I remember in kindergarten was that apple in the picture book.”

  “But apple trees don’t have flower and fruit on at the same time.”

  “Not on Earth. These are Moon-apples.”

  “It’s an illusion,” Steve said. “It has to be.”

  One of the branches hung down, with half a dozen fruit seeming to bow it low. Steve lifted one, weighing it in his open palm.

  “It seems real enough.” He plucked it off. “And smells good.”

  He lifted it to his mouth. Marty said: “Do you think you should?”

  “Why not?”

  “I was thinking of what you said about the moss: that even if one could eat it it would probably be poisonous. Isn’t that true of these? We don’t know anything about their chemical structure.”

  Steve turned the apple over in his hand. It was not quite round; flattened at the stem end, slightly pointed at the other. Apple shape, in fact. Marty could smell it, distinct and individual like the grass.

  “It looks all right,” he said.

  Marty could feel his own half-abated hunger pangs stirring. He said, trying to convince himself as much as Steve: “It’s taking a big chance.”

  Steve said: “What difference does it make? We’ve got provisions in the crawler for six weeks maybe, if we ration ourselves tightly. After that, we starve. We have to take a chance on it sometime.”

  “We might learn more during the month,” Marty said. “Maybe . . .”

  His words trailed off. He had been intending to say they could use the time in trying to escape, but even as he framed the proposition he saw how futile it was. They were trapped inside a mountain which in turn was surrounded by the lifeless vacuum of the Moon. There was no hope at all of getting the crawler out. There was almost as little prospect of finding a way out on foot, which in any case would mean using spacesuits. They could carry a couple of cylinders of air at a pinch and a little food concentrate. Somebody had once spent eight hours in a spacesuit and survived, but he had been in a hospital for weeks afterward. And in eight hours on foot you would be doing well to cover twenty-five miles. The range of the suit radios was well under a mile.

  Steve said: “Well, here goes,” and bit into the fruit.

  “What’s it like?” Marty asked.

  “Sensational.”

  He went on eating. Marty picked one himself and bit into it. Juice spurted against his chin. At home he had eaten apple-flavor puddings, of the same mushy consistency as most food in the Bubble. That taste had done nothing to prepare him for this—the sweetness, tartness, indefinable something. And the texture, of juiciness combined with firmness.

  He finished it and, after hesitating, dropped the core in the grass. From earliest childhood he had been trained in the lunar discipline of no-waste, no-mess, but here there was neither a recovery nor a garbage receptacle. He wondered what the organic cycle was in the caves. Were there bacteria to break things down so that they could be reabsorbed? He shook his head. It was like worrying about a footnote in a book written entirely in gibberish.

  Steve was eating his second apple. Marty was about to do the same thing when he saw something else. It was a little way down from the apple tree, and not a tree so much as a large plant. The overlapping bases of big glossy leaves formed a false trunk from which a head emerged; and the head in turn carried perhaps a dozen clusters of long, slightly curving yellow fruits.

  He went to look, and Steve came after him.

  “Apples,” Steve said, “and now bananas. It gets crazier and crazier, doesn’t it? As though things had been laid on for us, prepared in advance.”

  Marty stretched up and took two bananas off one of the clusters. He threw one to Steve.

  “Catch. Or do you want to wait and see how the apples go down?”

  He broke the skin and peeled it and bit off an end. Here again the real thing was vastly different from the artificial flavorings he was used to. Steve, eating the other one, said: “You can almost live off bananas, can’t you? They have protein, don’t they? In that book I was trying to write I had one of my pirates marooned on a Pacific island and living on bananas and coconuts, and what fish he could get out of the lagoon. Do you think we could be living inside someone’s book?” He looked around. “If so, he fills in a pretty solid background.”

  They moved on. They were in an orchard, but one made up of many and diverse trees. There were pears, the fruit a deep golden color, the skin seeming on the point of bursting with juice. They saw peaches, pomegranates and, scenting the air for a great distance, half a dozen trees with oranges nestling among dark green leaves. In an open patch pineapples grew side by side with strawberries, and farther on they found a thicket of raspberry canes. There were yet other trees with fruits they did not recognize at all. They ate as they went, until they were full.

  Marty said: “I don’t think I can manage any more.”

  “There’s always tomorrow.”

  “Unless the Moon-men run us in for trespass and theft. I’ve been thinking—have you seen any insects?”

  “No.”

  “Ought there not to be some?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, these are plants and they have flowers and fruit. I was thinking of pollination.”

  “Plants on Earth have to have insects because they’re all fixed in the ground. This organism has moving parts: remember the leaves and the fuzz-balls.”

  “Not in this cave.”

  “I suppose they could come in here when they were wanted. The leaves moved from one cave to another.”

  “Do you think it is all part of one organism, using the flower for energy?”

  “I don’t know. It could be.”

  “And the Moon-men?”

  “We still haven’t found them.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Marty said. “If we could get news of this place back to our folks. We could all abandon the Bubble. People could live here.”

  “Yes,” Steve said. “Bring everyone in. Blast a hole in the side of the mountain and put in an airlock so crawlers can go in and out. Smash another gap in the roof of the top cave for an observation ceiling. Build houses and laboratories and a school, not forgetting a Recreation Center. And string wires all over the place, so no one has to walk more than five yards. I should think the plants and trees are going to look a bit sick by the time you’ve done a tenth of all that.”

  “I suppose so,” Marty said. “And we can’t get news out anyway. That music’s a lot nearer. It must be coming from just past the next bunch of trees.”

  They walked through and stared up at it in silence. This also was a tree, Marty supposed—at least it grew out of the ground and had what could possibly be described as branches. But the branches were in the shapes of long straight pipes in one place, taut wire-like tendrils in another. Still other branches plucked at the tendrils or sawed across them. The music changed into a syrupy waltz, which involved quite a lot of activity in that direction.

  “An orchestra-tree,” Steve said. “And one that plays itself. I wouldn’t say I admire its taste all that much, but it’s quite an achievement for a tree.”

  “We are dreaming,” Marty said. “We must be. But whose dream is it? Yours or mine—or someone else’s?”

  “The one who’s writing the book, maybe.” Steve felt with thumb and forefinger for a strand of hair at his temples,
grimaced, and tugged a hair out. “I’m not dreaming.”

  If you looked carefully, you could see that there were holes in the pipe-like branches, through which air was presumably sucked or blown. What would be the mechanism of that, Marty wondered? It would be interesting to climb the tree and examine it. He looked again and decided he was not sufficiently interested to try. The thought of going up among those blowing pipes and sawing strings was more than a little scarifying.

  He turned away and, as he did so, had a glimpse of something farther on. It was just a blue flatness, seen through a gap between fruit trees. He went that way and called to Steve. They stood looking at it together. The trees ended, giving way to a lawn, the grass short and velvety green. And the lawn ran down to the still, blue, gleaming waters of a lake.

  Steve said at last: “There had to be a reservoir of some kind. Plants can’t grow without water. How did it get here in the first place, though?”

  How did any of it get here, Marty thought? There were too many questions—or the same question repeated from a hundred different angles—and there had to be answers somewhere. He went across the lawn to the water’s edge. At that point the grass ended and the familiar moss took over again, running out under the lake and lighting it from below. He looked automatically for fish but could see nothing. The waters were clear and empty. He dipped his fingers in. The temperature was only a degree or two less than that of the air. One could swim in it comfortably. He looked along the lake. It occupied the full width of the cave, under the arching moss-covered roof. At the end . . . he could not be sure but it looked as though cave and lake twisted away to the right.

  He said: “I wonder how far these caves go. For miles, maybe.”

  “Yes.” Steve’s voice was abstracted. Marty turned from the water and saw that he was looking up at the roof of the cave. He said in a slightly ­puzzled voice: “Marty . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you notice anything about the light?”

  “From the moss? I don’t think . . . Wait a minute. Is it dimmer than it was?”

  It was happening very gradually. At first he could not be sure whether the light really was a shade less bright, or whether he had been influenced by Steve’s question. But soon the darkening was unmistakable. The glow was fading from the moss-covered ceiling and walls, and the blue of the lake was deeper as its radiance drained away. The fading became more and more rapid.

  Shaken, Marty said: “What do you think this is?”

  It was very dark, and even as he spoke blackness came down on them. Steve said: “I don’t know. Could be temporary, I suppose. I hope so.”

  They waited, but there was no change in the darkness. After the first surprise, they had taken for granted the fact of being able to see their way, of being surrounded by light and color. It was frightening to be forced to realize again where they were: trapped in the bowels of this alien world. If they had stayed in the first cave they would at least have had the crawler, with lighting as long as the batteries held out. They had not even brought flashlights with them. They had not seemed necessary, but it had been careless not to take the precaution. It would be a difficult and perilous job to find their way back there now.

  Steve beside him said: “I’m going to lie down. Might as well be comfortable while we wait for the lights to go up again.”

  It was reassuring to hear his voice. Two were better than one. Marty said: “How long do you think?”

  “There’s no knowing, is there? An hour, perhaps. Or a day. Or a century.”

  That last thought was chilling. Marty argued: “It can’t be too long a time. The trees must have had regular days.”

  “That would be true on Earth, but we don’t know about Moon-trees. We don’t even know if they are still there. The orchestra-tree has stopped.”

  The music had faded with the light. There was only silence and blackness and their own small echoing voices. What if the caves had days a century long, and they had chanced on them as evening was merging into night? It did not seem likely, but probability had gone by the board from the moment of finding themselves in the first cave.

  They talked together, in companionship against the darkness, discussing what they had found in the caves and trying yet again to find a meaning in them. They did not progress very far, over and over coming around to the same contradictions and baffle­ment. Gradually conversation lapsed, the gaps between talk lengthening. After one such gap, Marty said: “If there are Moon-men, how do they manage in the darkness? And there must be some sort of inhabitants. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. Anyway, I’m sure those were footmarks on the ladder trees.”

  There was no answer from Steve. After a pause, he said: “Don’t you agree? I mean, the orchard has to be for people. Hasn’t it?”

  Steve still did not reply. His breathing was deep and even. Marty realized he had fallen asleep. He lay back, stretching himself on the grass. It was softer than the lawn back in the Bubble. He tried to answer his own question about the Moon-men. How did they manage in the dark? But perhaps they were nocturnal, and could see, like cats. In which case . . .

  He sat bolt upright, and then relaxed. That was nonsense: there were no cat-men advancing on them through the blackness. One would hear them coming. Except that another thing he knew about cats, even though he had never seen one, was that they trod lightly, noiselessly stalking their prey. He started to lean over, to shake Steve and wake him, and checked himself. It would be stupid to do that. His imaginings were stupid, anyway.

  All the same, his nerve endings quivered. He tried lying down, but could not rest. He found himself cramped, whatever position he adopted. It was not the fault of the ground, he knew—Steve was sleeping peacefully—but of his own tension. He checked his finger-watch again and again as the slow minutes dragged by. The darkness had lasted nearly two hours. It seemed a lot longer.

  • • •

  At last he slept, and had a nightmarish dream in which the caves and the Bubble were all mixed up, and Mr. Sherrin was lecturing him for having sent up a mass of balloons which turned into leaves and suddenly came down, whirling around their ears. He drifted back to consciousness as he was trying to tell Mr. Sherrin that it was all right—they would go away again—and saw that the light had returned: the moss was glowing all around as it had done before. Sleep and the dream still pressed on him and confused him, but he realized that someone was standing near, a face looking down.

  “Steve!” he said. “What do you think . . . ?”

  That was when he came properly awake, and sat up in shock and fear. For the face was not Steve’s, but that of a bearded stranger.

  8

  The Fruit of the Lotus

  THE BEARD WAS LONG AND BLOND, ungroomed. Like the hair which fell to shoulder level it was slightly curly. Where it was not bearded or moustached, the face was white, pallid in the moss’s glow. Their own skins showed pale in this light, but the stranger’s was paler. Emerging from his first instinctive fear, Marty tried to read expression in the face looking down into his. It was difficult to make anything of it. The look was neither friendly nor hostile, but detached.

  Marty scrambled to his feet. He felt a little less vulnerable standing up. He said to the man: “Who are you? How did you get here?”

  He realized as he spoke that if this were an inhabitant of the Moon he could scarcely be expected to understand English. On the other hand there was the orchestra-tree which was playing again, just switching from a familiar march to something which sounded like Johann Strauss. The man did not reply and they stared at each other in silence, wary on Marty’s part, enigmatic on the man’s. He was wearing shorts made out of what looked like large leaves sewn together; his body also was very white, lacking pigmentation.

  Steve was still asleep. Marty reached down and shook him, and he opened his eyes.

  “What . . . ?” He looked past Marty at the ma
n, and jumped into life. He said sharply: “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” Marty said. “I asked him but he didn’t answer. He probably didn’t understand.”

  “My name . . .” The stranger had a deep voice which spoke slowly and trailed off. “It’s so long . . .”

  Steve said: “I think . . . But it can’t be, can it?” He shook his head, bewildered. “It is, though.” He stared at the man. “You’re Andrew Thurgood. Aren’t you?”

  The man nodded, a small inclination of his head. Marty saw it too, now. Take away the beard and moustache and the face was familiar from that picture gallery of lunar pioneers, the men of First Station. Andrew Thurgood—the man who had not returned, whose crawler they had found in the first cave, scarcely recognizable beneath its covering of moss. How long was it? Seventy years. But this was quite a young man, not someone who, even if he had managed to survive, would have been a century old. Yet it was Thurgood.

  They looked at him in awe, and Marty felt his fear returning. A ghost, maybe? The ghost of the man who had come here before them, and died here, warning them of what their own fate must be. But a ghost with a beard, wearing shorts made out of leaves? The absurdity of the notion was reassuring.

  There had been a silence which Steve broke, asking: “Is there anyone here in the caves with you?”

  Thurgood shook his head. Steve persisted: “I don’t just mean men. Aliens, maybe. Moon-men?”

  “Only the Plant.”

  “The Plant? What’s that?”

  Thurgood shrugged. It was the most human gesture he had made so far, an expression of inadequacy. Steve waved his arm toward the cave and the things growing in it.

  “Are you saying all these are parts of a single plant, even though they’re so different? But how can they be?”

  Thurgood was silent. Steve pointed to the orchestra-tree. “That, as well?”

  Thurgood spoke again. “Yes.” He paused. “I’m sorry if I’m slow. At one time I used to talk a lot. To myself, you understand. Lately I haven’t done that.”