"Box," he said presently, "how is it that the engine can speak, but doesn't know what porridge is?"
"I taught the engine to speak, but I could not tell it what porridge is, because you had never told me." Irritably, Thorinn sprang from one pole to another, then back again. "You talked to it while I was asleep?
What else did you tell it?"
"I told it all that I knew."
"Why, in Snorri's name?"
"Because it asked."
"Even though I told you not to do anything that would harm me?"
"If I had not taught the engine to speak, it could not have talked to you, and that would have harmed you."
Thorinn was silent a moment. He saw that the box was right, but that only made him angrier. "Box, from now on, if you can do something that will help me escape, you must do it."
"Yes, Thorinn."
But what could the box or anyone do? It seemed to him that without weapons, locked in this cage, he had only one hope, and that was to bargain. If they wanted his information enough, they would release him; if not, not.
"Box," he said, "who is the Monitor?"
"The Monitor is an engine."
"You mean the world is ruled by an engine? How did that come about?"
"I don't know, Thorinn."
"Then how do you know the king is an engine?"
"The engine that spoke to you is not used to speaking to men. It calls itself 'this engine,' not 'I.' If the Monitor were a man, the engine would be used to speaking to men. Therefore the Monitor is an engine."
"But it was not like that when you were made?"
"No."
"Who was the king then?"
"There were many kings, chosen by the people, and the Monitor was their servant."
"I don't think an engine should be king," Thorinn said.
"Thorinn, I must ask you a question. Would it be better if a man were king, even if he harmed the people more than an engine would?"
Thorinn scowled. "No, I suppose not, but—" He paused for thought. "How old is the Monitor, box?"
"It is thirty-five hundreds of thousands of days and sixty thousands of days old." Thorinn whistled in amazement. "Well, then, it would be better to have kings who were men, because at least a bad king would die and then you might get a better one." Thorinn ate some cheese and sucked water from the jug. Restless, he explored the other rooms again, but there was little of interest there. He found no cupboards or presses anywhere, nothing but the empty rooms. He ran again in the running room, then went back to his starting point. For lack of any other occupation, he opened his wallet and removed its contents one by one: fire stick, light-box, pebbles, a bit of crystal, the scrap of cloth woven with bright figures. He replaced each object carefully after he was done with it.
Then for a while he shook globes of water out of the magic jug and watched them drift slowly about the room. By passing his hand between two of them, he found that he could make them collide and merge into a larger ball. Whenever a floating globe touched one of the poles or handles, it rebounded and went on, but when a globe touched the wall, floor, or ceiling, it clung and then disappeared, leaving a dark spot that slowly faded.
It was hard to credit what the box had told him about the world; yet it must be so, for in this place, where there was no weight at all, water formed perfect globes; above, in the wingmen's cavern, where there was little weight, the waves in the river were taller than his head; and so upward to the Midworld, where things behaved normally and had their proper weight. All this had a logic and symmetry which he could grasp and which in a curious way pleased him.
Now that he knew he had to do with an engine, his problem was clearer. Engines knew a great deal, but they were bound by many geases. If it was true that an engine could not kill a man, then it had been idle for the engine to threaten him with thirst and starvation.
But how badly did they want his answers—what did they want them for? If he had misjudged, he might go to sleep tonight and wake up fifty summers later in that sealed cavern they were making for him. Eventually weariness overcame him, and he slept between one thought and another, floating where he was, without trying to reach the sleeping pole.
14
How Thorinn was offered dominion over the world at a price, and learned his true name.
He came up out of darkness with a gasp and a shudder: then he saw that he was still in the same room. It was a moment longer before he realized that the net on the wall was empty. All his possessions, including the box and the magic jug, were gone.
When thirst began to fret him, he took off his clothes and went into the washing box, but as he had more than half expected, nothing happened when he put his feet on the floor. He did not bother to dress again. Without the box to talk to or anything to occupy his hands, he had nothing to do but to wander through the empty rooms, around and around. Presently he was hungry as well as thirsty; he thought with longing of the fruit he had eaten in the cavern of the flower people and again in the demons' cavern; of the crisp dry taste of cheese; of dried meat, tough and full of flavor. That passed, and the thirst remained. When he was younger he had had a mouse, kept in a cage he had carved out of an oak gall; he had fed it grain and oatmeal, and a bit of cheese now and then; he remembered how the mouse had sat up and nibbled the cheese, turning it around and around with its dainty paws. He slept and awoke again. Nothing in the rooms had changed. His thirst was a torment; his throat and tongue were dry, his lips cracking; his very eyeballs were dry. Each time he passed the crystals in the wall, he felt the engine watching, silent, waiting for him to speak first. He vowed to himself that he would not, if he died for it.
When he slept again, he dreamed that he was drinking long, delicious drafts from the spring above Hovenskar, and that the sky was blue and the grass yellow. Then the water turned to dry leaves in his mouth, and he awoke. He was very feeble, and it was too much effort even to pull his weightless body from one pole to another. Toward the end of that day, he began to see figures moving in the room: he saw Goryat, and Untha, and a tree demon, but they were transparent.
He awoke and knew that something had changed. Over his face a crystal shell drew away. His thirst was gone; he licked his lips and they were moist. Now the engine with its spidery arms was drifting toward him: the arms reached out, plucked him up gently from the box he was in. He had an impulse to free himself, but forbore. They were rising through the circular hole in the ceiling; now they were in the sleeping room. The engine put him with his back against the pole, just as it had done before; the coils came around him. The engine withdrew and disappeared into the room below.
"Are you ready to answer questions now?" asked the voice.
"No," he said. "Bring my things back."
"Your things will be brought."
Thorinn released himself from the coils, tried the water tube, although he felt no thirst. He drank, swallowed a little, spat the rest out. Next he tried the food tube, and this time, in place of the sticky mass that had come before, a bolus of something firmer came into his mouth. It was like a soft cheese. He did not like the texture, but the taste was not bad; he chewed and swallowed it, and then took another. The engine reappeared with his bundles clutched in its arms. It floated to the net on the wall and dexterously tucked all the bundles inside. All the things he had had before were there, but not his sword or bow.