The Lotus Caves

  Then Thurgood remembered they had not yet breakfasted. He led the way, still talking, up to the orchard, and the boys followed. Again they ate as sparingly as possible. Thurgood tackled the fruit with his usual appetite, which inhibited conversation from his side. There was more to it than that, though. Marty noticed the silence, the noncommunication, falling on him again. When they returned to sit by the lake, the lethargy and reluctance were plain. Once more Marty’s remarks were getting ­little or no response. All Thurgood seemed to want to do was sit and look brooding across the water.

  Marty persisted, and gradually felt he was getting somewhere, starting to win him back to human memories and human feelings. The second setback was the more shattering because of this. Thurgood, almost in mid-sentence, stood up and walked to where the plant-raft floated by the shore. He made no farewell but jumped on board, and the raft took him out into the far shimmer, the haze of moss-glow and water.

  The boys swam and idled while he was away. One of the tree’s branches was broad and strong enough now for them to walk on. It reached out over the pool and they could dive from it. The floor of the pool was brighter than the rest of the lake and they dived down, against the buoyancy, and ran their fingers through the short silky strands that carpeted it, scattering luminosity in the water as they did so.

  When Thurgood returned, the aloofness was complete. He made no attempt to discourage them from sitting by him or talking to him, but ignored them completely. Steve drifted away after a time. Marty kept on, trying to ignore the hunger pangs which were beginning to bite. He felt he was going over and over the same ground, and wondered if he were boring Thurgood as much as he was boring himself. There was no indication, though, of even that much reaction. His body was here, but his mind was still with the Plant.

  A new fear began to emerge: that the Plant would summon them again to the island. If that happened they could not refuse, and Marty remembered the overwhelming effect of their last visit. It was probable that each encounter with the Plant sapped willpower that much more. It was taking all his effort to hammer away at Thurgood: Steve had given up. To stand in that dazzling light and feel that calm, all-knowing voice echoing deep inside his mind . . . the very thought of it made him weak. Apart from that there was the possibility that the deepening of the Plant’s probing and understanding of their thoughts could reveal their plan to escape. If the Plant were to ask direct questions, it might be impossible not to answer truthfully.

  Against this fear, and the growing hunger for the fruits which hung from the trees only a few yards away, Marty set determination, a refusal to give in. He slogged away, battering against Thurgood’s adamant silence, trying one thing after another. His grandmother was a promising subject, the younger brother another. It was the latter that, on perhaps the tenth attempt, turned the key again. Marty was saying how he went fishing with his father at the reservoir in the Bubble, and asked Thurgood if he had fished in the same way.

  Thurgood said: “No.” There was a pause. “My father didn’t like fishing. He was an impatient man. I used to go with one of the hands. And later I took David. There was a place just across the hill where the river widened at the edge of the wood . . .”

  Marty had got him going. The channel was open and he had to keep it that way. Hunger was disregarded; there was only fear that something would happen to break the continuity. As time wore by the possibility of their being called to the island lessened, but the possibility of Thurgood deciding he wanted to eat increased. There seemed to be a pattern of two trips to the orchard, after waking and not long before nightfall. He had an idea that this second one had been delayed by their talking—that Thurgood had become so engrossed in memories that he had forgotten to be hungry. But he might still choose to go, and if he did the delay would mean a much shorter time after that in which to reawaken him to humanity. He pressed on, putting up fresh questions almost before Thurgood had answered the previous ones, feverishly laying new trails for him to follow. He got him onto a long involved account of a hunting trip. Steve had caught the urgency, and was prompting with him. Then Thurgood checked, faltered, and said: “I think . . . aren’t we missing supper?”

  Both boys started talking at once. Watching Thurgood, Marty saw him start to say something, then hesitate. The look in his eyes . . . Was the light a fraction less bright, or was that an illusion? He grabbed the flashlight which he had kept by him, switched it on, and flashed it in Thurgood’s face.

  Thurgood said: “What’s the idea?”

  Intermittent flashes might be best. He switched the light on and off, directing it at Thurgood’s eyes. Thurgood put his hand up, but the motion was one of normal reflexes and the light of the moss was now unmistakably darkening. Thurgood was protesting. Bearing him down, Marty cried: “Stay awake! Don’t let go . . . You must stay awake!”

  “I don’t understand,” Thurgood said. “What’s all this about?” He looked around in bewilderment. “It’s dark. I’m awake, though. I ought to be asleep. The Plant . . .”

  Marty kept the light flashing. He said urgently: “We’ve got to talk to you. You’ve been conditioned to sleep as soon as darkness falls, but you mustn’t. We want your help.”

  Thurgood said slowly: “Help? What sort of help?”

  “To get out of the caves.”

  “Why?” Marty kept the light steady on him now; the expression on his face was one of puzzlement. “Aren’t you happy here? Don’t you have everything you want?”

  “It’s not that,” Marty said. “We want to get back to our homes, our folks.”

  There was no point, he realized, in talking of the horror of having to submit to the Plant. Thurgood could not be expected to see that, to understand what had happened to himself. He spoke instead of how much they were missing their friends and ­families, and Steve rallied to him, backing him up. He watched Thurgood’s face in the flashlight’s beam, and saw a kind of understanding, a grudging assent.

  Thurgood said at last: “I don’t see how you could get out, anyway.”

  Steve said: “When we first met you, you said there were other places besides the top cave where the rock cover was incomplete. You can tell us where they are.”

  Thurgood did not answer. In his face the understanding was replaced by a blankness all too similar to the blankness he showed on returning from the island. Marty said quickly: “In the main cave—all the tunnels are on one side. Does that mean the other side is the inside of the mountain face?”

  Thurgood hesitated. “Yes. That’s so.”

  “And there are faults in it?”

  “A couple. Small and high up.”

  “What about the cave below that? That’s the lowest level of all, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it have faults?”

  “No, not faults.”

  Thurgood’s tone was awkward and reluctant. Marty kept at him: “You said three or four places where the rock cover was not complete. Where are the others?”

  “At the beginning . . . when the Plant was growing and developing from its seed it needed an exit channel to get rid of unwanted minerals and rocks. That was before it reached ecological balance.”

  “In the bottom cave?”

  Thurgood nodded. Steve said: “How big?” Marty asked at the same time: “Could a crawler get through?”

  “I . . . think so. Yes, it could.”

  Tensely Steve said: “Will you show us? We couldn’t find it without you. Not in time.”

  “I don’t know.” His face gleamed in the light. He was sweating. “The Plant would not like it.”

  They argued with him, in turns or together. He kept stubbornly to the same point: it was not something of which the Plant would approve. That was what mattered essentially. He understood their wanting to leave but he could not go against the Plant’s wishes.

  Instead of softening he seemed to become more obdura
te as time went on. In the end he said, with an air of finality: “I’ll talk to the Plant tomorrow. Tell it you want to leave and ask it to help. The Plant will do what’s best. It only wants you to be happy.”

  If Thurgood did that, Marty realized, they were finished. There were a hundred different ways the Plant could stop them—ways which probably would not need to be used because each day saw them a little less able to stand out against its influence. Steve started to say something like this but Marty knew it was no good. Thurgood could not be budged by anything which might seem to be an attack on the Plant and its benevolence. It was his inner core of humanity which was important. They had reached it and they must use it. His young brother David, whom he thought Marty resembled a little . . . his trick, which Thurgood had mentioned, of swinging on his arm when he wanted something . . .

  Marty passed the flashlight to Steve. He reached for Thurgood’s arm, grabbed it, let his own body fall against his. He said, looking up into his face: “Help us, Andy! Help me. I’m in a jam. Get me out of here.”

  Thurgood stared at him. His face showed that he had seen the stratagem for what it was. He shook his head slightly. He was going to refuse, Marty thought despairingly. Then the expression softened. He said: “O.K. If it’s what you really want.”

  • • •

  They made a quick check of the crawler. It was not really adequate, but the important thing was to get moving before Thurgood had a chance to change his mind. He had been silent and preoccupied during the journey up through the caves, though the boys had kept up a running fire of talk to distract him. Now he stood awkwardly inside the crawler with a strange blank look on his face.

  Steve said: “Seems O.K. You going to drive?”

  “No,” Marty said decisively. “You’re the better driver. Set her rolling as soon as you like.”

  Steve got into the driving seat. Marty said to Thurgood: “She may bump on that steep slope below the tunnel. Better hang on to one of the grips.”

  The crawler was moving slowly forward, the cave ahead brightly outlined in its headlight beams. Thurgood had not moved, and Marty went to him and put his hand on the grip. He let it rest, but he was not holding tightly. As they lurched down the first slope into the tunnel he staggered and Marty had to help him keep his balance.

  Steve held the crawler for a moment on the lip of the second descent. The beams cut a swath of brilliance through the air and lit up the roof of the cave at the far side. Marty felt uneasy. Their progress was neither visible nor audible from the island on the lake and all this part of the Plant was asleep, but he still wondered. There must be reflex action of some sort—to cope, for instance, with anything breaking through the top cave—and some level of stimulus to trigger it off. Walking through the caves at night had not done so, but two boys and a man walking was not the same as a crawler battering its way along.

  He was relieved when Steve engaged the climbing spikes and the crawler tipped for the steeper descent. The lights now showed the drooping trees below, nearer and nearer as they reached the bottom. To the right there was a place where they were more thinly spread, with room to get between them. They thinned still more, and the flat expanse of fuzz was in front. They roared across it and under the arch. Avoiding a clump of the spherical bushes, Steve had to cut across the edge of the thicket of cactus-things. They loomed up, spiked and angular, and the right-hand track crunched over them. Ahead, at the bottom of this cave, was the opening to the one which Thurgood had said was the lowest in the system, the one through which, in the earliest stage of its existence, the Plant had excreted the materials for which it had no use.

  The way was clear and Steve increased speed. Something occurred to Marty as he did so, for the first time. Even if they forced a way out, there was no telling where they would be. The break could be halfway up the mountain, with a drop of hundreds of yards below. He shuddered and put the thought away. There was no point in dwelling on it.

  The last cave twisted slightly to the right. They were through the opening, and Marty said urgently to Thurgood: “The weak spot—where is it?”

  He hung on his arm as he did so, repeating the gesture which had worked before. Thurgood said: “Down there.” He sounded dazed. “Where the cave wall recesses to the right of that outcropping.”

  Steve said: “I have it.”

  In a different voice, Thurgood said: “Wait!”

  Steve stopped the crawler. “What is it?”

  Marty saw what was happening. The moss was starting to glow outside the circle of the headlight beams, above and all around them.

  “It’s coming awake!” he said. “Push on fast.”

  “No,” Thurgood said. He looked like a man listening to something at once far away and very close. “The Plant does not want this. The Plant wants you to stay.”

  Steve had set the crawler moving again. Thurgood moved toward him, hands reaching to grab. He was stronger than they were, and there were a number of ways in which he could immobilize the crawler. Marty realized that he still held the flashlight in his right hand. He was not sure whether it was heavy enough but there was nothing else to use. As Thurgood caught hold of Steve’s arm, he swung the flashlight in an arc and crashed it against the back of Thurgood’s head. He tottered and Marty hit him again, a more glancing blow. This time he dropped.

  Steve did not look back to see what had happened. He was occupied with the controls, increasing the speed of the crawler and pointing it at the slight recess at the end of the cave.

  Something else was happening: things were growing in their path. A thicket of plant tendrils was springing up from the moss, plucking at the treads which crushed through them. Could it stop them? He thought they were slowing. Then Steve hit full power and the resistance was overcome. The wall was closer and closer. It looked solid, the glowing moss that covered it no different from that anywhere around. A few yards, a yard . . .

  They hit. The dazzle turned into blackness, and there was the feeling of the crawler checking against a new resistance, but one which was dragging, not solid. It lasted only an instant, and they had burst through. There was light again, but the light of the beams illuminating the weathered, arid rocks of the Moon’s surface.

  Steve had brakes and spikes on. The crawler slid through stone dust for maybe sixty feet before it came to a halt. They were at the top of an alley leading steeply down to a small plateau.

  They were in shadow, the sun invisible behind the western peaks. Marty did not know how long they had been in the caves, but the lunar day was near its end. He looked back up the slope, and thought he saw two or three specks float and drop. He could imagine the storm of leaves inside as the Plant repaired itself.

  Steve said: “We made it.”

  Marty nodded. “We made it.”

  Thurgood groaned and stirred. Marty watched him recover consciousness, clutching the flashlight. Which would it be—relief at being free of the Plant’s domination or anger that they had prevented his attempt to stop them? Rejoicing, or violence? Thurgood opened his eyes and climbed unsteadily to his feet.

  It was neither of those. The look on his face was one which Marty had never seen before and did not want to see again. It was a look of utter desolation and loss, the expression of someone who has only one reason for living and is watching it die. He said, in a whisper: “Let me go back.”

  “You’re all right now,” Marty said. “They’ll look after you in the Bubble. They’ll do things for you.”

  Thurgood said: “You don’t understand. You can’t begin to imagine what it was like. The wisdom, the splendor of the Plant. I could not begin to tell you.”

  Steve switched on the reverse beam. It lit up the powdery slope down which they had slid; above that the rock face. There was a concavity in it which might have been the spot they had broken through, but it looked no different from anywhere else on the side of the mountain.

 
Steve said: “It’s sealed itself. You can’t go back.”

  Thurgood did not answer. His face had the air of attention, of listening, which Marty had noticed when the moss started to glow. Could the Plant reach his mind out here, or was this the last flickering of an old compulsion? Thurgood unhooked one of the spacesuits, and started to climb into it.

  Steve said: “No!” He looked at Marty. “We must stop him.”

  If the Plant could still reach him, he could be dangerous. It would not be so easy to knock him out a second time. And there was a long journey ahead, back to the Bubble. Marty said: “Let him go if he wants to.”

  It was a sign, Marty supposed, of the ascendancy he had acquired over Steve that he did not argue; but how little that mattered now. Thurgood zipped up the suit, and went through into the airlock. He said nothing to the boys. Marty wanted to thank him for helping them, but there was nothing he could say which had any meaning against the grief and longing in the man’s face. There was the hiss of air, and Thurgood appeared outside, slipping and sliding as he toiled upward.

  “What’s the good?” Steve asked. “He can’t get in.”

  “We couldn’t have stopped him.”

  “When he finds it’s hopeless . . . he might open the valves.”

  And if he did, Marty thought, would it be so much more terrible than carrying that misery through a world in which every soul he had known was dead and gone? Splendor, Thurgood had said. Something they could never understand, that he could not begin to explain. It might be so. When the grain of sand entered the oyster, the oyster smothered it to protect itself; but what resulted was a pearl.

  He watched as Thurgood reached the rock face, and leaned against it. He did not want to witness the man’s agony and turned away. It was Steve’s cry of astonishment which pulled him back.

  In time to see that which looked like rock incredibly splitting, to see Thurgood forcing his way through against the outward rush of air, and to see the way closing behind him as he re-entered his ­paradise.