The Genocides

An hour later they had come up against a dead end, and they knew they were thoroughly lost. It was no longer possible to shatter the capillaries with a wave of one’s arm. They were swollen with sap and resilient. It would have been no more difficult to crawl through a honeycomb than through the unopened hollows. They were compelled therefore to stay strictly within the bounds of paths already blazed. Thanks to Anderson’s explorations, there were quite enough of these. Quite too many.

Orville summed up their situation. “It’s back to the subbasement, my dears. We’ll have to take another elevator to get to the ground floor.”

“Wha’d you say?” Neil asked.

“I said—”

“I heard what you said! And I don’t want you to use that word again, understand? You remember who’s leader here, huh?”

“What word, Neil?” Blossom asked.

“My dears!” Neil screamed. Neil had always been able to scream when he felt the occasion called for it. He was not overcivilized, and the primordial was very close to the surface of his mind. It seemed to grow closer all the time.

FOURTEEN The Way Up

The quiet, which for months had been absolute, was broken by the trickling of the sap. It was a sound like the sound of water in early spring, flowing through the town gutters underneath unmelted banks of snow.

While they rested they did not speak, for the most innocuous statements could throw Neil into a state of hysterical excitement. Naturally, they knew better than mention Anderson or Alice, but why, when Buddy began to worry out loud about his wife and son, should Neil complain that he was “selfish,” that all he thought about was sex? When Orville spoke of their predicament and speculated (with more good cheer than he felt) on their chances of reaching the surface, Neil thought they were blaming him. Silence seemed altogether the best policy, but Neil could not endure more than a few moments of silence either. Then he would start to complain: “If only we’d brought down the lamp, we wouldn’t be having any trouble now.” Or, remembering one of his father’s favorite themes: “Why do I have to do the thinking for everybody? Why is that?”

Or he would whistle. His favorite tunes were the Beer-Barrel Polka, Red River Valley, Donkey Serenade (which he accompanied percussively with the popping of his cheeks), and the theme from Exodus. Once he had started any of these, he could go on perpetuum mobile for the duration of the time they rested. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been able to stay in the same key for eight bars running.

It was hardest for Buddy. Blossom and Orville had each other. In the darkness they would hold each other’s hands, while Neil ground out the tune one more time around, like a diligent monkey; they could even kiss, quietly.

Here there was neither north nor south, east nor west; there was only up and down. There were no measurable units of distance, only rough estimates of temperature and depth, and their only measure of elapsed time was the time it took their bodies to drop, too exhausted to continue without another rest.

They never knew whether they were at the periphery or near the heart of labyrinth. They might ascend, through channels already opened, to within a few hundred feet—or even ten—of the surface only to find themselves at a dead end. It was necessary not simply to find a way up but to find the way up. It was hard to make Neil understand why this was so. When Blossom had explained it to him, he had seemed to agree, but later when Orville brought up the subject again, the argument started all over.

They were soaked through with their own sweat and with the sap, which in the least steep roots reached levels of four and five inches. After hours of climbing they were at a height where the heat was not so overwhelming (the lower depths felt like a sauna), and the air seemed to be gas again. Orville estimated the temperature as seventy-five, which placed them a probable fifteen hundred feet from the surface. Ordinarily, over a known route, they could have climbed that height in little more than three hours. Now it might very well take days.

Orville had hoped that the flow of sap would abate as they reached higher levels; instead it was worsening. Where did it all come from? The logistics of the Plant’s water supply was something he had never stopped to consider. Well, he couldn’t stop now either.