Harry Harrison by Captive Universe

Author:Captive Universe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2011-04-06T22:54:48+00:00

When he could finally see again it was nighttime. They went forward once more into the large chamber, now illuminated by the lights above and in the walls. The night sky of stars was visible through the opening, and Chimal and the girl walked slowly up the ramp toward it, until the ramp leveled off at ground level. The star? above came closer and closer, swooping down brighter and brighter until, when they emerged from the tunnel, they found themselves standing among them. Chimal looked down, with a fear that went beyond understanding, as a glowing star, a disk as big as a tortilla, crawled down his leg and across his foot and vanished. With a slow dignity, born of fear and the effort needed to control it, he turned and led the girl slowly back down the ramp into the welcoming shelter of the cavern.

“Do you understand what has happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know, I have heard about these things but I have never seen them before. Dealing with these matters is not my work.”

“I know. You’re a watchman and that is all you know, and you won’t tell me about that either.”

She shook her head no, her lips clamped shut in a tight line. He sat, pulling her down next to him, with his back to that opening and the inexplicable mystery of the stars.

“I am thirsty,” she said. “There is supposed to be emergency rations at these places so far distant. Those must be cupboards, over there.”

“We’ll look together.”

Behind a thick metal door were packages of rations and transparent containers of water. She showed him how to open a container and he drank his fill before handing it to her. The food was just as tasteless, and just as filling, as before. While he ate he was conscious of a great and overwhelming tiredness. In his mind as well as his body, because the thought of the sun passing close to him and the stars crawling at his feet was so inconceivable that it did not bear thinking about. He wanted to ask the girl more questions but now, for the first time, he was afraid to hear the answers.

“I am going to sleep,” he told her, “and I want to find you and the car here when I wake up.” He thought for a moment and then, ignoring her feeble bleatings and resistance, he took the box, on its chain of metal beads from around her neck, and weighed it in his hand. “What do you call this?” he asked.

“It is my deus. Please give it back to me.”

“I don’t want the thing, but I do want you here. Give me your hand.” He wrapped the chain around her wrist, and then about his own hand with the deus held inside against his palm. The stone looked hard but he did not care: almost as soon as he closed his eyes he was asleep.

When he awoke the girl was asleep next to him, her arm outstretched

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