Mark was without any means of telling how long he had lain ill. Night and day were not recognisable divisions in the caves; and with them went all other measures of time. One fed when hungry, slept when tired. Time flowed smoothly by in one long monotony. Days, months, years even, passed unrecorded save when a new arrival like himself reminded the prisoners that there was still an outside world where dates were kept. Each one was eagerly questioned for the current year and month, estimates were made of the length of time since capture, and then forgotten until another news bearer should arrive. The blue-white globes were never darkened, and their continual light had come to be accepted by the majority without wonder or interest.
Gordon admitted that his curiosity had led him to break one which he filched from a little used corner soon after his arrival. It had required a great deal of pounding with a heavy stone:
'Just curiosity, but it didn't geclass="underline" me anywhere. There was a splash of some kind of liquid on the floor, It shone for a while and then evaporated. The outside was pretty much like glass, only far tougher.'
'But doesn't that show that they had a pretty high development at one time, even if they haven't got it now?' Mark suggested.
Gordon was inclined to think that it didn't mean a great deal. There was no doubt that the pygmies were on the downward grade now, but it didn't seem likely that their level of civilisation could ever have been high. They had shown immense determination in constructing their labyrinths, enlarging and altering, until it was difficult to tell how much was natural and how much artificial, but in the matter of the light:
'It may have been just a fluke—one of those discoveries which are made and then forgotten. Think of Hero's steam engine at Alexandria, everybody forgot that for two thousand years. And those perpetual motion wheels which obviously weren't perpetual motion, but certainly worked somehow—they managed to get forgotten, unexplained. It happens again and again. Anyhow, there's nothing miraculous about these lamps. They wear out in time. You'll see some perceptibly duller than others.'
'All the same, I'll bet they'd astonish our physicists/ said Mark.
He became aware that he thought mostly as if he were a visitor to this place, a tourist; it was still impossible to realise that he might never come out, and he dreaded the moment when that realisation should be driven home. Perhaps it never would. Smith, after six years of it, was at bottom still unconvinced that he would die in this warren.
It was in such moods that he would revert to useless, frightening speculation upon Margaret's fate until increasingly frequent periods of restless irritation decided Gordon that even though incompletely recovered, he must be taken out of himself. He led him, still bandaged of head, and weakly in body to the big cave which he had glimpsed before. He stared silently at the scene for some minutes.
In addition to the figures which crossed between the various tunnel mouths, there were some sixty or seventy persons in the place. They stood or sat for the most part in groups, conversing in a desultory, uninterested fashion. An air of listlessness seemed to hang over them all; a lethargy which suggested that nothing need be done until tomorrow—and here there was no tomorrow. Their eyes, utterly lacking in spirit, looked as if they scarcely saw. The discouragement in their bearing was their most common possession; beyond that, variation was infinite.
Arabs predominated slightly, but whites of all types were numerous. A number of Negroes was scattered here and there, and even a few Indians could be seen, but there were some whom he could fit into no known category.
'What on earth is he?' he asked Gordon, pointing to one of these.
The man he indicated was as tall as himself and wore a minimum of clothing upon his grey body.
'Oh, he's a "native".'
'A native? I thought they were all small—you called them pygmies.'
'I don't mean a pygmy. By a "native" we mean one who was born here, in the prison caves.'
'Good God, you don't mean to say-?'
'Of course I do. There's quite a fair sprinkling of women down here, as you see. And you can't stop men and women being men and women, even in caves.'
'But to bear a child here-'
'I know. It seems pretty rough on the kid to us, but they don't think of it that way. The kid's an unavoidable accident from their point of view. Besides, the "natives" quite rightly say, why should they be condemned to perpetual chastity?—aren't things bad enough for them anyhow?'
'You mean that a "native" may have "native" parents?'
'That's it. By the look of that one, I should say he has.'
Mark watched the man out of sight. He felt shocked. A man who had never seen sun or stars; never heard waves breaking or trees rustling; never seen a bird, never—oh, it was endless. And Gordon made the statement so calmly. Had he forgotten what the outside world was like? Had he stifled his memories all these seven years? It seemed more likely that a man would dwell upon them until he remembered the surface as a paradise. What was it Smith had said the other day—no, there were no days here— what was it he had said a little while ago? He had been more abstracted than Mark had previously known him. There had been a dreamy longing in his manner of speaking.
'Bored! My God, to think that I could ever have been bored up there. Why, right now I could look at one flower for a week, and still find it marvellous. I used to reckon old man Wordsworth was kind of soft; I guess I was out there. Daffodils! Just think of 'em; a bank of 'em, blowin' in the wind!'
To him the world had become a flower garden, and the sky was for ever breaking into sunset. Sentimental? Of course it was sentimental, but it seemed a more natural state than the insensitiveness Gordon displayed. He was talking now about the natives coldly, dispassionately, as though they were museum exhibits:
'It's one of the drawbacks man suffers for his adaptability. Many another kind of creature shut up like this would die, pine away from sheer discouragement, but not man. Given time, these "natives" would evolve into a race perfectly adapted for this environment.' He paused, and glanced at Mark. 'You think that that man we saw a moment ago suffers a sense of loss. You imagine him deprived of his birthright—well, perhaps he is, perhaps we all are, but does he know it? Do we know it? What are these rights of man? That man never knew the open air, and he doesn't want to. He can't understand anything but life in caves. How should he?'
'But he must know. He must have heard from you and the rest of them here.'
'Of course he has, but it doesn't touch him. Doubtless your parents told you plenty about heaven—how beautiful it was, and all the rest of it, but how does that strike you now? Pretty thin, pretty much of a fairy-tale? Well, that's the way he feels when he hears of the world outside—a pleasant, rather childish fancy with little or no real significance. He hears about sky and fields and clouds and mountains just like you heard about harps and angels and streets paved with gold—and he takes about the same amount of notice.'
Mark frowned. He saw what Gordon was intending: the philosophy of 'what you've never had, you never miss'. But that, to his mind, was a shallow view. Carried to a logical extreme it would mean that man was a static creation, whereas he was the most dynamic. Indubitably man could, and did, miss what he had never had, the whole history of invention was a record of his attempts to overcome recognised deficiencies. He had never flown, but he missed the power of flight; the aeroplane was evolved. He lacked the ability to live for days on end in the water; the ship was built.-'His own unaided voice could only carry a short distance; intricate systems of communication were brought into being. It was nonsense. One could be aware of a restraint from within it. But the arguments bounced off Gordon. Mark's instances, he claimed, were superficial.