Chapter 19

For Cadnan, the time passed slowly.

Consciousness came back, along with a thudding ache in the head and a growing hunger: but there were no leaves on the smooth metal of the floor, and the demands of his body had to be ignored. His mind began to drift: once he heard a voice, but when he told himself that the voice was not real, it went away. He found his hands moving as if he were pushing the buttons of his job. He stopped them and in a second they were moving again.

Then the room itself began to shake.

Cadnan had no doubts of his sanity: this was different from the imaginary voice. The room shook again and he wondered whether this were some new sort of punishment. But it did not hurt him.

The rumbling sound of the bombardment came to him only dimly, and for brief seconds. To Cadnan, it sounded like a great machine, and he wondered about that, too, but he could find no answers.

The rumbling came again, and sounded nearer. Cadnan thought of machines shaking his small room, perhaps making it hot as the machines made metal hot. If that happened, he knew, he would die.

He called: "Dara." It was hard to hear his own voice. There was no answer, and he had expected none: but he had had to call.

The rumbling came again. Surely, he told himself, this was a new punishment, and it was death.

There was only one thing for him to do. He sat crosslegged on the smooth floor as the rumble and the other sounds continued, and in opposition to them he made his song, chanting in a loud and even voice. He had learned that a song was to be made when facing death: he had learned that in the birth huts, and he did not question it.

The song was necessary, and his voice, carrying over the sounds that filtered through to him, was clear and strong.
"I am Cadnan,
I am Cadnan of Bent Line Tree,
I work for the masters,
I push buttons and the machine obeys me,
I push buttons when the masters say to do it.
My song is short. I am near the dead.
I have broken the chain, the chain of obedience.
I do not want to break this chain.
I must break it. Dara says I go.
If I do not go then Dara does not go.
Dara must go. I break the chain.
For this I am near the dead and the room shakes.
It is my death and my song.
I am Cadnan and Bent Line Tree and I work."

After the song was over, he remained sitting, waiting for what had to come. The rumbling continued, and the room shook more strongly. For some seconds he waited, and then he was standing erect, because he could see.

The door, sprung from its lock by the shaking of the building, had fallen a little open. As Cadnan watched, it opened a bit more, and he went and pushed at it. Under a very light shove, it swung fully open, and the corridor, lights flickering down its length, stood visible. As Cadnan peered out, the lights blinked off, and then came on again.

The rumbling was very loud now, but he saw no machines. He went into the corridor in a kind of curious daze: there were no masters anywhere, none to watch or hurt him. He called once more for Dara, but now he could not hear himself at all: the rumbling was only one of the sounds that battered at him dizzily. There were bells and buzzes, shrieks and cascades of brutal, grinding sounds more powerful than could be made by any machine Cadnan could imagine.

He started down the corridor: the masters had taken Dara in that direction, opposite to his own. Suddenly, one of his own kind stood before him, and he recognized a female, Hortat, through the dusty air. Hortat was staring at him with a frozen expression in her eye.

"What is it?" she asked. "What happens?"

Cadnan, without brutality, brushed her aside. "I do not know. The masters know. Wait and they tell you." He did not consider whether the statement were true, or false, or perhaps (under these new circumstances) entirely meaningless: it was a noise he had to make in order to get Hortat out of his way. She stood against the corridor wall as he passed, watching him.

He went on past her, moving faster now, into the central room from which corridors radiated. The lights went off again and then came on: he peered round but there were no masters. Besides, he thought, if the masters found him the worst they could do would be to kill him, and that was unimportant now: he already had his song.

In a corridor at the opposite side of the central room he saw a knot of Alberts, among whom he recognized only Puna. The elder was speaking with some others, apparently trying to calm them. Cadnan pushed his way to Puna's side and heard the talk die down, while all stared at the audacious newcomer.

"I am looking for Dara," Cadnan said loudly, to be heard over the continuous noise from elsewhere.

Puna said: "I do not know Dara," and turned away. Another shouted:

"Where are the masters? Where is work?"

Cadnan shouted: "Wait for the masters," and went on, pushing his way through the noise, through the babbling crowd of Alberts. There were no masters visible anywhere: that was a new thing and a strange one, but too many new things were happening. Cadnan barely noticed one more.

At the front of his mind now was only the thought of Dara. Behind that was a vague, nagging fear that he was the cause of all the rumbling and shaking of the building, and all else, by his breaking of the chain of obedience. Now, he told himself, the buildings even did not obey.

Then he heard a voice say: "Cadnan," and all other thought fled. The voice was hers, Dara's. He saw her, ahead, and went to her quickly.

She had not been hurt.

That fact sent a wave of relief through him, a wave so strong that for a second he could barely stand.

"The door opens," she said when he had reached her, in a small and frightened voice. "The masters are not here."

"They return," Cadnan said, but without complete assurance. In this barrage of novelty, who could make any statement certain?

Dara nodded. "Then we must go," she said. "If they are not here, then maybe they do not hear the noise when we open the door: and there is much noise already to hide it. Maybe they do not see us."

"And if they do?"

Dara looked away. "I have my song," she said.

"And I have mine." It was settled.

As they headed toward the big front doors others followed, but there was no use bothering about that. When Cadnan opened the door, in fact, the others fell back and remained, staring, until it had shut behind them. There was the great noise of bells and buzzers—but that had been going on, Cadnan realized, even before they had begun. Outside, the spot-lights seemed weaker. There was smoke everywhere, and ahead the forest was a black and frightening mass.

He looked at Dara, who showed her fear for one instant.

"I am also afraid," he told her, and was rewarded by a look of gratitude. "But we must go on." He took her hand.

They walked slowly into the smoke and the noise. As they reached the edge of the forest, the sound began to diminish, very slowly; and, ahead of them, through the haze and beyond the twisted trees, the sun began to rise.

They walked for a long while, and by the time they had finally stopped the noise was gone. There was a haze over everything, but through the haze a morning sun shone, and a heavy peace hung over the world.

There were trees, but these were neither like Bent Line Tree, for mating, nor for food. Perhaps, Cadnan thought, they were for building, but he did not know, and had no way to know until an elder showed him.

And there were no elders any more. There were neither elders nor masters: there was only Cadnan, and Dara—and, somewhere, Marvor and the group he had spoken of. Cadnan peered round, but he saw no one. There were small new sounds, and those were frightening, but they were so tiny—rustles, squeaks, no more—that Cadnan could not feel greatly frightened by them.

The green-gray light that filtered through the trees and haze bathed both Alberts in a glow that enhanced their own bright skin-color. They stood for a few seconds, listening, and then Dara turned.

"I know these sounds," she said. "I talk to others in our room, and some of these work outside. They tell me of these sounds and this place: it is called a jungle."

Cadnan made a guess. "The trees make the sound."

"Small beings make it," Dara corrected him. "There are such small beings, not slaves and not masters. They have no speech but they make sound."

Cadnan meditated on this new fact for a short time. Then Dara spoke again.

"Where is Marvor? The time of mating is near."

Cadnan saw her meaning. It was necessary to find Bent Line Tree, or some like it, and advising elders, all before the time of mating. Yet he did not know how. "Maybe masters come," he suggested hopefully, "and tell us what to do."

Dara shook her head. "No. The masters kill us. They do not lead us any more. Only we lead ourselves."

Cadnan thought privately that such an idea was silly, almost too silly for words: how could a person lead himself? But he said nothing to Dara, not wanting to hurt her. Instead, he pretended, helplessly, to agree with her: "You are right. We lead ourselves now."

"But we must know where Marvor stays."

That sounded more reasonable. Cadnan considered it for a minute. Wherever Marvor was hiding, it had to be somewhere in the jungle. And so, in order to find him, they had only to walk through it.

And so they set out—on a walk long enough to serve as an aboriginal Odyssey for the planet. The night-beasts, soft glowing circles of eyes and mouths which none of their race had ever seen before: the giant flesh-eating plants: the herd of bovine monsters which, confused, stampeded at them, shaking the ground with their tread and making the feathery trees shake as if there were a hurricane: all this might have made an epic, had there been anyone to record it. But Cadnan expected no more and no less: the world was strange. Any piece of it was as strange as any other.

Once they came across a grove of food-trees, and ate their fill, but they saved little to take with them, being unused to doing their own planning. So they went on, hungry and in the midst of dangers scarcely recognized, sleeping at night however they could, travelling aimlessly by day. And after a time that measured about three days they stopped in a small clearing and heard a voice.

"Who is there?"

Cadnan, frightened by the sudden noise, managed to says "I am Cadnan and there is one with me called Dara. We look for Marvor."

The strange voice hesitated a second, but its words, when it did speak, were in a tone that was peaceful enough.

"I know of Marvor and will take you to him. It is not far to where he stays."