"In that case," Roland said, "I'm for picking one at random."
"You never know, Roland," I answered. "Rumors always have some basis in truth. Legends, too."
"I agree," John said.
"But the Ahgirr haven't settled their maze long enough to have developed a road mythology," Roland countered, turning to Ragna. "Have you?"
Ragna touched his headband. "I am not sure… Ah, yes. A mythology. Yes, I can be answering that in the affirmative, which is truth. We are having those stories and legends."
"Then again," Roland said, smiling thinly, "I could be wrong."
Ahgirr tradespeople helped us fit Sam with the new rollers. I offered to pay them but they wouldn't hear of it. No one had brought up the issue of compensation up to that point, and no one broached the subject after that.
The newbies fit fine, and Sam and I went back to the road and picked up the trailer. Doing so eased my mind a little. The trailer was a dead giveaway just sitting there. I thought it improbable that Moore would follow us through a potluck portal, but you never know. He just might be crazy enough. I'd also been worried shout looters and salvagers, even though this ingress spur was seldom used.
With the trailer now at the mouth of the cave complex, we began the repair job in earnest. There was more damage than we had thought. The small motor that raised and lowered the door was completely useless, and the airtight silicone bushing around the door itself was in tatters. Where would we find replacements? Carl and Roland were willing to go out and search for a junked trailer, and I was ready to say go ahead, but the Ahgirr craftspeople said don't bother. They could manufacture most of the mechanical parts we needed in their shops. For the electronics we'd probably have to make a trip to a faln complex. They could breadboard same stuff for us, but it would be easier just to buy modular components off the shelf. They would send a technician, a female named Tivi, along to advise us. I felt I had to make the trip myself; the craftspeople knew the local technology, but I knew my rig, and I didn't want them making trips back and forth should I be dissatisfied with the goods they bought. Besides, I wanted to see what these fate things were all about.
But a big block of Ahgirr religious holidays came up and everybody knocked off for a week. There were strict laws―no work, no shopping, no nothing on high holy days, and these, called the Time of Finding Deeper Levels (rough translation), were the highest and holiest.
"No sex, I bet," Susan ventured. "Pity the way same religions are."
"I'm not even sure what they have is a religion." I thought a moment, then said, "I'm not at all sure that what you have is a religion."
"Teleological Pantheism isn't a religion… It's just a way of looking at the universe and its processes."
"Uh-huh. Tell me more."
"Later. Let's mess around."
Besides doing the above, Susan and I took advantage of the slack time to explore some of the vast system of caves in which the Ahgfrr had made their home. It was a marvelous place. There is something of the claustrophile in me. I love eaves, and I found a fellow spelunker in Susan. So we set out into the restful silences of the unoccupied regions. We toured vast smooth-walled chambers, many-leveled galleries, huge caverns with floors populated by fantastic rock monuments standing like sentinels in the dark. We walked along lava flows that had hardened millions of years ago, traversed vaginalike tunnels through which one had to push and squeeze in a psyche-stirring imitation of birth. Once, we followed a sinuous side passage that coiled endlessly through the rock, finally dead-ending in a delightful little grotto, walls sparkling in the light of our torches with millions of tiny multicolored points. An underground stream flowed through it, cascading down a small waterfall. We spent the "night" there, discovering more delights in the darkness.
There were other marvels. We found spherical chambers, hundreds of them, which had probably been formed by pockets of gas trapped within the magma. We dubbed them the "Pleasure Domes." And in the regions that had not been disturbed by vulcanism, strange geological formations presented themselves at every turn. The processes at work here were, for the most part, totally unEarthlike. There were chambers with walls glazed with a ten-centimeter-thick coating of frosted glass ('Twas a miracle of rare device!), rooms that looked as if they had been designed by Bauhaus architects under the influence of hallucinogens, caverns that looked like the interiors of great cathedrals, alcoves with intimate seating in the shape of contoured folds of rock like a couch, passageways with corbelled walls, vaults with grained ceilings, porticos with fluted columns, elaborate suites of adjoining rooms, and all were unmistakably natural formations. There were no right angles; slabs of rack were sheared, not cut; no chisels marks, no debris about that would be evidence of stonecutting; nothing. There was an undeniable randomness to it all.
And not one goddamn stalactite in the whole place.
"I always forget," Susan said. "Is it stalactites that hang down and stalagmites that stick up, or vicey versy?"
"No, that's right. I think."
"Always get it confused."
"Well, there aren't any here to befuddle you."
"Doesn't take much, for me."
In the womblike darkness, Susan snuggled closer.
"I wonder why," she said.
"Why what?"
"Why aren't there any?"
"Any what?"
She nipped my ear. "Stalactites, silly."
"Oh. No limestone, I guess."
"Limestone?"
"Yup. Makes sense. This is practically a lifeless planet, from what Ragna told us. Mostly microscopic organisms. Life never really got going here. Limestone comes from sediments containing coral, polyps, stuff like that. Back on Earth, that is. Here, who knows what they have going, if anything. You need water that's high in carbonate of lime to make stalactites."
"And stalagmites."
"And stalagmites,"
"Interesting."
"Hardly."
"No, I mean it. It always amazes me how much you know, for a truckdriver."
"Duh."
She giggled. "Sorry, didn't mean it quite like that." She kissed me on the cheek. "You're strange. So very strange."
"How so?"
"Well…" She lay on her back. "You obviously have some education. Quite a lot, it seems. True?"
"Oh, here and there."
"Right. U. of Tsiolkovskygrad, I bet."
"Right," I admitted.
"I knew it. Graduate work?"
"Some. A year, if I can remember back that far."
"Doing what?"
"I was going for a doctorate in government administration."
She was surprised. "How in the world did you wrangle your way into that program? Pretty restricted."
"Didn't wrangle at all. Actually, I was asked to sign up. Someone apparently thought I was bureaucrat material. They like to recruit from the provinces now and then. Or they did." I shifted to my side. "You have to remember, this was almost thirty years ago. U. of T. was a podunk school then, a bunch of pop-up domes and Durafoam shacks. It was the only university in the Colonies."
"The entrance requirements must have been stiff."
"They were. I'll admit to a certain native intelligence. I was young, in love with learning, tired of the farm. It seemed a good idea at the time."
"And you quit."
"Yeah."
"To drive a truck."
"No, I went back to the farm. By that time, my eyes had been opened."
She turned over on her side to face me. "You gave up a lot. By now, you could have been a high-level Authority functionary with a six-figure income and a dacha on the resort planet of your choice."
"Instead, I have the freedom of the road, very few responsibilities, and a clear conscience. No punking money, no dacha, but I have what I need."