‘If we’re going to walk, we’ll need better shoes,’ observed Anthea. ‘These sandals won’t last two days.’
In our haste to leave, no one had paid attention to the rooms we’d rushed through, but I thought I recalled seeing boots rather like the ones the guards wore.
‘The thing is there are forty of us!’ exclaimed Greta. ‘When you go barefoot, the soles of your feet harden, so perhaps we should …’
But she didn’t finish her sentence and nobody started on the usual speculation. We were getting nearer, and a certain foreboding made us silent. We unwittingly slowed our pace.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ said Annabel, as we reached the cabin.
There was a light wind. If we stopped talking and kept still, it whispered the same song in our ears. That day, the clouds were back, the sky was high and white. I saw that my companions were shivering.
‘Let’s go,’ I urged.
We’d been in the open air, and I recoiled in disgust: when we were two-thirds of the way down, the smell hit me. Anthea explained:
‘That’s our own smell that has lingered. You’ve already forgotten it. The ventilation system provides air that is breathable, but that’s about all.’
Then I heard it: it was the same buzzing noise that I’d heard all my life, and I realised that, since I’d been outside, I’d been vaguely perturbed by its absence.
‘And the lights have stayed on,’ I noted. ‘That’s odd. Shouldn’t everything have been switched off, stopped?’
‘In this world, how can we tell what’s normal? Just as well, anyway! We hadn’t thought of that.’
The lights never did go out.
Neither of us wanted to enter the big room that housed the cage. But we forced ourselves to, before we did anything else, so as not to spoil the pleasure of exploring. The last traces of apprehension vanished when we saw that everything was exactly as we’d left it. We hoped to take the mattresses, because we’d slept on the ground, levelled with the shovel, joking that we’d lost the only comfort the prison had had to offer.
‘They’re too heavy,’ I protested. ‘I don’t see how we could carry them if we move on. We can take them up, but we can only use them if we decide to stay put.’
‘And that would be ridiculous. We must look for civilisation.’
‘What civilisation?’
Anthea looked at me.
‘What do you mean?’
I shrugged.
‘Just think about it. This planet belongs to them, so what would we find other than the people who held us captive? I have no wish to meet them.’
‘You think we’re on another planet.’
It wasn’t a question, but a statement. I wasn’t entirely convinced of what I was saying. I never found out for certain either.
Then we went into the room off to the right, the one that contained a table and a few chairs. Along the wall were six tall, narrow cupboards which Anthea told me were called lockers and were always found in workplaces for people to keep their things in. They were open. In each one, we found two pairs of boots, and I couldn’t remember if these were the ones I’d seen. Anthea took them out and placed them on the table. There were also two shirts, two pairs of underpants and two pairs of trousers.
‘These could come in very useful. But there aren’t enough.’
A drawer contained needles and thread, as well as other objects that I was unable to identify.
‘Scissors, buttons and zips – for repairing their uniforms,’ said Anthea.
That was all, which she found puzzling.
‘No photos, or letters, no personal belongings, but it’s true, they didn’t live here. They probably kept all that somewhere else. They left in such a hurry, they didn’t have time to gather their things.’
She broke off, frowning.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘But if they didn’t live here, why the shirts and the boots?’
She shrugged.
We crossed the room where the cans of food were kept to get to the cold store on the other side. Anthea stopped to check the thermometer on the door.
‘Minus fifty! This food was meant to last for a very long time. Maybe fresh supplies didn’t arrive all that often.’
We quickly took what we needed. I was very cold – a sensation that was completely new to me and which I found painful. Seeing me shiver, Anthea went to fetch a blanket and wrapped me in it.
‘You must take care not to fall ill. I don’t know what I’d do to make you better, I haven’t seen anything that looks like medicines yet. Even though they were always giving us pills! Sit down and rest, I’m going to heat up some water.’
In the other room, we’d seen a small stove and saucepan much smaller than the ones we used. Anthea looked for something to flavour the drink she was making for me and was surprised to find only a few tea leaves in the bottom of a packet. I didn’t like this new taste much, but I drank it obediently and it warmed me up.
Then we went back to the first room. Anthea started looking for some coffee, or more packets of tea, but found nothing. I wasn’t much help because I couldn’t read, and the labels told me nothing. There were a lot of tools: in that department we never lacked for anything, but we had no idea why they were stored there. I have already mentioned the hammer and nails, but there were also saws, planes, all sorts of pliers, picks, shovels and several can-openers. Anthea identified other objects whose names and uses escape me, since I never had occasion to use them.
We took the saws and the shovels. We discovered a huge store of blankets similar to the ones we’d been given, but new. They were probably being kept until they were needed.
‘At the rate we got through them, there are enough to last two hundred years!’ exclaimed Anthea.
We used them to bundle up the things we were going to take up to the top.
‘We won’t be able to carry all that, there’s too much and we’re too weak after all these years doing almost nothing.’
The hundred stairs were daunting enough, but how would we climb them with such a load?
‘We could use the trolley,’ I suggested, ‘if we can get it up the stairs.’
The trolley was heavy and wide. The staircase was straight, so we wouldn’t get stuck, but the weight made us dubious.
‘Let’s try.’
After ten steps, we were out of breath. We had to lift the trolley completely off the grounds so as not to damage the wheels, which would have defeated the object.
‘Greta’s brave and strong. If she came down and helped, we could manage it.’
We called up, because we were certain the women were waiting for us beside the entrance. Greta willingly joined us. Our progress was slow and we had to stop frequently so as not to exhaust ourselves. When Frances and Annabel saw how tired we were, they overcame their qualms and went down to fetch the bundles we’d prepared. We took enough meat for just two days, since we simply had to come back to get fresh supplies, and we left the mattresses behind because they were too heavy. I carefully shut the door of the cold store behind me and, at the last minute, I picked up a chair for Dorothy.
The return was very slow. We had to clear a path for the trolley and found we were making a little road. Annabel went on ahead to request extra help.
‘But this road will tell them where we are!’ complained one of the women.
Anthea and Greta shrugged. Gradually, all the women who dared go down concluded that the guards would never come back. There was something so final, such a total absence of any trace of them in the abandoned rooms, that it was impossible to imagine anyone coming and claiming: ‘This is mine.’
We quickly organised ourselves into teams: some women went on ahead and removed the stones while others followed, scraping the ground with a shovel. At the slightest obstruction, we halted the trolley to clear the way. Because it was heavily laden, it took several of us to get it moving again. When we arrived, the fires were burning and grilled meat awaited us. Dorothy ate sitting on her chair, and we gathered around her.