The girl stood motionless. Reith suspected that the sudden convulsion of events had put her into a state of shock. The tight hat constricted his head; he pulled it off. The girl shrank back against the wall. "Why do you take off the hat?"
"It hurts my head," said Reith.
The girl flicked her glance past him and away into the darkness. She asked in a soft muffled voice, "What do you want me to do?"
"Take me to the surface, as fast as you can."
The girl made no answer. Reith wondered if she had heard him. He tried to look into her face; she turned away. Reith twitched off her hat. A strange eerie face looked at him, the bloodless mouth quivering in panic. She was older than her underdeveloped figure suggested, though Reith could not accurately have estimated her age. Her features were wan and dreary, so regular as to be nondescript; her hair, a short black mat, clung to her scalp like a cap of felt.
Reith thought that she seemed anemic and neurasthenic, at once human and non-human, female and sexless.
"Why do you do that?" she asked in a hushed murmur,
"For no particular reason. Curiosity, perhaps."
"It is intimate," she muttered, and put her hands up to her thin cheeks. Reith shrugged, uninterested in her modesty. "I want you to take me to the surface."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
She made no answer.
"Aren't you afraid of me?" Reith asked gently.
"Not as much as the pit."
"The pit is yonder, and convenient."
She gave him a startled glance. "Would you throw me into the pit?"
Reith spoke in what he hoped to be a menacing voice. "I am a fugitive; I intend to reach the surface."
"I don't dare help you." Her voice was soft and matter-of-fact. "The zuzhma kastchai would punish me." She looked at the derrick. "The dark is terrible; we are afraid of the dark. Sometimes the rope is cut and the person is never heard again."
Reith stood baffled. The girl, reading a dire meaning into his silence, said in a meek voice: "Even if I wished to help you, how could I? I know only the way to the Blue Rise pop-out, where I would not be allowed, unless," she added as an afterthought, "I declared myself a Gzhindra. You of course would be taken."
Reith's scheme began to topple around his head. "Then take me to some other exit."
"I know of none. Those are secrets not taught at my level."
"Come over here, under the light," said Reith. "Look at this."
He brought forth the portfolio, opened it and set it before her. "Show me where we are now."
The girl looked. She made a choking sound and began to tremble. "What is this?"
"Something I took from a Pnume."
"These are the Master Charts! My life is done. I will be thrown into the pit!"
"Please don't complicate such a simple matter," said Reith. "Look at the charts, find a route to the surface, take me there. Then do as you like. No one will know the difference."
The girl stared with a wild, unreasoning gaze. Reith gave her thin shoulder a shake. "What's wrong with you?"
Her voice came in a toneless mutter. "I have seen secrets."
Reith was in no mood to commiserate with troubles so abstract and unreal. "Very well; you've seen the charts. The damage is done. Now look again and find a way to the surface!"
A strange expression came over the thin face. Reith wondered if she had gone mad for a fact. Of all the Pnumekin walking the corridors, what wry providence had directed him to an emotionally unstable girl? ... She was looking at him, for the first time directly and searchingly. "You are a ghian."
"I live on the surface, certainly."
"What is it like? Is it terrible?"
"The surface of Tschai? It has its deficiencies."
"I now must be a Gzhindra."
"It's better than living down here in the dark."
The girl said in her dull voice, "I must go to the ghaun."
"The sooner the better," said Reith. "Look at this map again. Show me where we are."
"I can't look!" moaned the girl. "I dare not look!"
"Come now!" snapped Reith. "It's only paper."
"Only paper! It crawls with secrets, Class Twenty secrets. My mind is too small!"
Reith suspected incipient hysteria, although her voice had remained a soft monotone. "To become a Gzhindra you must reach the surface. To reach the surface we must find an exit, the more secret the better. Here we have secret charts. We are in luck."
She became quiet and even glanced from the corner of her eyes toward the portfolio. "How did you get this?"
"I took it from a Pnume." He pushed the portfolio toward her. "Can you read the symbols?"
"I am trained to read." Gingerly she leaned over the portfolio, to jerk instantly back in fear and revulsion.
Reith forced himself to patience. "You have never seen a map before?"
"I have a level of Four; I know Class Four secrets; I have seen Class Four maps.
This is Class Twenty."
"But you can read this map."
"Yes." The word came with sour distaste. "But I dare not. Only a ghian would think to examine such a powerful document ..." Her voice trailed away to a murmur. "Let alone steal it..."
"What will the Pnume do when they find it is gone?"
The girl looked off over the gulf. "Dark, dark, dark. I will fall forever through the dark."
Reith began to grow restive. The girl seemed able to concentrate only on those ideas rising from her own mind. He directed her attention to the map. "What do the colors signify?"
"The levels and stages."
"And these symbols?"
"Doors, portals, secret ways. Touch-plates. Communication stations. Rises, pop-outs, observation posts."
"Show me where we are now."
Reluctantly she focused her eyes. "Not this sheet. Turn back ... Back ... Back
... Here."' She pointed, her finger a cautious two inches from the paper.
"There. The black mark is the pit. The pink line is the ledge."
"Show me the nearest route to the surface."
"That would be-let me look."
Reith managed a distant and reflective smile: once diverted from her woes, which were real enough, Reith admitted, the girl became instantly intense, and even forgot the exposure of her face.
"Blue-Rise pop-out is here. To get there one would go by this lateral, then up this pale orange ramp. But it is a crowded area, with administrative wickets.
You would be taken and I likewise, now that I have seen the secrets."
The question of responsibility and guilt flickered through Reith's mind, but he put it aside. Cataclysm had come to his life; like the plague it had infected her as well. Perhaps similar ideas circulated in her mind.
She darted a quick sidelong glance again. "How did you come in from the ghaun?"
"The Gzhindra let me down in a sack. I cut my way out before the Pnumekin came.
I hope they decide that the Gzhindra lowered an empty sack."
"With one of the Great Charts missing? No person of the Shelters would touch it.
The zuzhma kastchai will never rest until both you and I are dead."
"I become ever more anxious to escape," said Reith.
"I also," remarked the girl with ingenuous simplicity. "I do not wish to fall."
Reith watched her a moment or two, wondering that she appeared to bear him no rancor; it was as if he had come to her as an elemental calamity-a storm, a lightning-bolt, a flood-against which resentment, argument, entreaty would have been equally useless. Already, he thought, a subtle change had come over her attitude; she bent to inspect the chart somewhat less gingerly than before. She pointed to a pale brown Y. "There's the Palisades exit, where trading is done with the ghian. I have never been so far."