He wished sleepily that he could have spoken to Anna, so near him in the darkness and yet so far away in her own shrunken universe of suffering. He wished very much that he could have spoken to her.
Yet what was there to say?
I’m sorry, my love, he thought desperately. I’m sorry I got you into…
And then there was no thinking left.
Only an icy, timeless limbo…
Abruptly, the heavens cracked, the miracle happened, the world—or was it yet another world?—was shrieking with colour and warmth and scents and sound. The return to consciousness, the dizzy riot of sensation, exploded upon him like a bomb.
He opened his eyes, screamed with pain, closed them again and opened them again. He saw Anna’s face above him; and beyond, the blue backcloth of the sky. Experimentally, he tried to move his fingers. They moved. He tried to move his arm. It also moved, but with a strange and immense stiffness.
He sat up and began to laugh. Then he realized that the laughter was hysterical, and fought it down.
“We’re alive,” he said wonderingly.
“Yes, Russell, we are alive. Now just rest a little while I see what I can do for Farn. He came out of it worse than either of us, I fear.”
Presently, Farn zem Marur was sitting up, no doubt experiencing the same fantastic sensations of returning consciousness that had afflicted Russell.
Russell gazed around him. He was leaning against one of the benches. Anna, remarkable woman that she was, must have dragged both him and Farn out of the cabin. He was amazed at her stamina and endurance.
The boat had drifted—or had been guided—into the bank. Upstream, about two hundred metres away, the mist barrier rose, curving away in a uniform arc across the land on either side of the river. It seemed even more formidable now that they had passed through it and lived. Russell shuddered at the thought that, according to the original plan, they would eventually have to trundle the boat, disguised as a wagon, round the great perimeter of mist and re-enter their prison where the river entered it in the North.
Spluttering, and mouthing gratitude and incantations to the robe, the white queen and the black and other Gren Li solemnities of which Russell had not previously heard, Farn zem Marur had returned noisily to the land of the living.
Russell was still puzzled by Anna’s ability to recover faster than either he or Farn had done.
“If you are representative of Soviet womanhood,” he said with a grin, “Russia is destined to dominate the Earth. Perhaps it’s as well I shan’t be there to see it… How did you recover so quickly, Anna? Did you have a secret weapon?”
She nodded. “Chivalry, my love. I was chivalrously squashed between two men who felt it was their duty to protect the weaker sex. You were both very good insulators.” She smiled impishly. “Also, though you may not have noticed it, I am more richly endowed with fat than either of you.”
“Praise be to St. Lenin and Mother Russia for favours gratefully received,” he retorted piously.
“Lord,” said Farn zem Marur. “We who were as dead are now living. Truly there is much wonder in this thing. Our children’s children may yet hear the story with some interest.”
“Amen to that,” said Russell. “And now that we have escaped from our prison we had better try to find out what kind of world we have entered. One thing seems sure: there must be many strange things on this side of the mist barrier that are not on the other side. Otherwise there can be little reason for its existence.”
It was at that moment, as he glanced casually at the surrounding countryside—which, superficially, seemed similar to the land on the other side of the barrier—that Russell noticed the column. It was in the distance, perhaps ten kilometres away; and he noticed it chiefly because late sunlight, reflected from its surface, made it seem like a slender, shimmering finger of flame.
The column was obviously very high. On top of it there was something that looked like a great green translucent bubble.
Russell gazed at it for a moment, spellbound. Then, rubbing his eyes, he groped for the binoculars.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IT WAS NOW very late in the afternoon; and it would not be long before the sun sank over the western plain and left the world of Erewhon to twilight and then darkness. After their recent traumatic experience in passing through the wall of mist, and also because the day was nearly over, Russell judged it unwise to attempt to explore further until the three of them had rested properly. In any case, to travel across unknown country in darkness would be to invite trouble. So, during what was left of daylight, they hauled the boat ashore, took all their equipment out of it and fitted two sets of wheels and the harness so that they would be ready for an early start on the following morning.
When darkness fell, Russell proposed that two people should sleep in the boat that was now a wagon, while the third remained on watch. If no one turned in until fairly late—and there was still a meal to prepare and dispose of, as well as other small tasks—a two-hour watch from each person should see them through until daybreak.
Before he engaged in setting up camp, Russell made what use he could of the remaining light to inspect their immediate environment and to look at the enigmatic column through his binoculars. The land nearby was smooth, almost featureless, and offered little concealment to wild animals or to any other beings. Indeed, no wild life was visible on either bank of the river; and as far as that aspect was concerned, it looked as if they had been fortunate enough to find an ideal camping ground.
Through the binoculars, the column and its translucent bubble were even more tantalizing and inscrutable than to the naked eye. The binoculars had a magnification factor of twelve, so they made the column look as it might appear if it were, perhaps, only a kilometre away.
Russell estimated its height at about seven hundred or eight hundred metres—then he dismissed the thought as plainly ridiculous. On that basis, the green translucent bubble would be at least a hundred and fifty metres in diameter. Surely such a tremendous construction was beyond the bounds of reason?
But, then, was not everything they had experienced so far on this nonsensical world of Erewhon beyond the bounds of reason? So why should there not be an entire forest of one-hundred-and-fifty-metre diameter bubbles poised on top of eight-hundred-metre stalks?
So far as he could discern, the column was metallic, circular and featureless. But at that distance, the binoculars could not resolve any surface decoration or markings unless they were very large. Around the base of the column there seemed to be a cluster of buildings; but they could easily be large rock formations, and it was impossible to make them out clearly in the fading light.
The bubble itself was the most baffling part of the whole ensemble. It was perfectly spherical in shape; and Russell saw—or thought that he saw—right through it, discerning the vague shapes of cloud formations apparently on the far side. But whether it was transparent or not, it was certainly translucent, being penetrated by shafts of light from the setting sun. It seemed, above all, curiously light and insubstantial—as if a sudden gust of wind might carry it away, or as if it might pop and be gone for ever with the abrupt transience of a soap bubble.
By the time darkness came, the air had turned cool; and the three explorers had to put on again some of the extra clothing they had worn to penetrate the mist barrier. There was also the question of a meal, since none of them had eaten for several hours. Besides the supply of canned food, the boat had been stocked with several bundles of small pieces of wood, primarily intended for kindling. But as there were no trees nearby from which wood could be obtained to sustain a large fire, Russell decided to use two or three bundles of kindling to heat the evening meal and to cheer them up.