The Secret People Read online

  Through the gap poured a continuous double stream of men, entering with burdens, and emerging empty handed to fetch more. Such fungi as were not required for actual building material were being hurried within, partly for use as food, and partly in pursuance of the plan to clear the ground. Only the lowest trailing growths were left; they would be useless for purposes of concealment, and might serve the secondary purpose of slowing up the attackers.

  Smith waited anxiously while the last marrow-like object and the last giant puff-balls were carefully trundled away. The men had worked willingly and fast. It was so long since he had thought in terms of time that he was at a loss to estimate the number of hours which had passed since he had heard Mahmud’s story, but it could scarcely be more than five, nor less than four. There was no telling when the pygmies would show up. Mentally he went through the steps which would be necessary.

  Miguel, if indeed it was he who had been in the cave, must first get back to the pygmy prisoners; then word would be passed on to the outside pygmies via the guards at the only exit from the prison caves. There must be mobilization – or were they already waiting? Then descent into this system, and finally the march throughout its length … For the hundredth time he gave up the attempt to calculate how long all this would take. There were too many variables for the answer to be of the slightest use. The only certain thing was that they might arrive at any moment now …

  He recalled Mahmud and the other scouts from the passages, and gave orders for the gap to be closed. A row of guards was posted, each with a supply of throwing stones, along the wall top. The more exhausted of the builders lay down to snatch some sleep, a few of the fresher were sent up to relieve the workers in the tunnel. Whatever happened, the tunnelling must continue. Ultimately, it was their only hope. The food they had could be made to last a long time, but it was more than doubtful whether they would be able to grow fresh at anything like the rate of consumption. A hundred and fifty men at work would get through a staggering amount of pulped mushrooms. The tunnel must be finished before the food gave out …

  Such men as were not under orders nor tired out joined the group of weapon makers. Production was not only speeded up, but varied. The bulky Ed, having contrived for himself a kind of mace worthy of Goliath, turned his attention to primitive ballistics and produced a kind of bolas consisting of two stones linked by a double-plaited cord. Mark had some doubts whether this early ancestor of chain shot would prove of any worth in battle, but Ed had none. He gleefully practised whirling it round his head and letting fly with a fair accuracy. The supply of weapons was not complete when a shortage of cord became critical. Slow fires were started, and the manufacture of more begun. As this was a skilled job, Mark found himself without occupation. He sought a comfortable spot, and lay down, watching the rest.

  It was hard to believe that the industrious men about him were the same who had been so apathetic a few hours ago. Strange how easily the zest for life could be diminished or revived. Those other prisoners back in the living caves were completely demoralized, and these had been little better. The need for action had worked in them like some miraculous tonic. They were laughing again, chatting as they plaited the cords. The weight of depression had been lifted, and the true men released.

  Mark’s head dropped lower. The chatter and laughter became a murmurously pleasant confusion. His eyelids drooped wearily, and he slid from half sleep into true sleep.

  6

  He awoke and sat up simultaneously, with a sudden, severe pain in the shin.

  ‘What the hell – ?’ he began, putting a hand to the injured part.

  The man who had tripped over him was struggling to his feet again. He spoke wheezily, for he was part winded:

  ‘They’re coming. Get to it.’

  The sense of being hardly done by vanished. Mark jumped up, snatched the corded club which lay beside him and ran for the wall. Scrambling up the protruding trunk ends, he flung himself flat on the top.

  Only then did he come fully awake and realize that no battle was in progress. He raised his head cautiously to peer over the edge. The cleared space was as empty as were the cave mouths behind it. He began to grow indignant at being thus stampeded to no purpose, but a glance about served to reassure him. There was a bustling activity among the defenders; the wall was being manned in a businesslike way. He turned to the next man:

  ‘Where are they?’

  His neighbour did not understand. He shook a dark complexioned, Italian-looking head, and muttered an unintelligibility. The man beyond him spoke up.

  ‘They’re coming, all right. They were so long on the way that Smith got worried. He sent out Mahmud to see what was up, and they nearly got him. He’s just back.’

  ‘Many of them?’ Mark inquired.

  ‘Can’t tell. He just saw the leaders coming along the passage, and ran for it.’

  The hubbub of the defenders was quieting. Smith’s voice still rose occasionally in sharp orders, but by now most of the men were at their stations. With the passing of the first flurry of excitement an expectant tenseness grew. Word came down the line. No one was to act till Smith gave the word. It went the length and the last whispering echoes of repeating voices died away into a silence broken only by deep-drawn breaths. All ears were strained to catch the first faint sounds of approach.

  Mark’s attention wandered. It came to him in a flash that by joining the ‘workers’ he had cut himself farther off from Margaret than ever. He had managed on the slenderest evidence to convince himself that she was still alive and prisoner in the outer caves. Until now he had been merely one of the inhabitants of the prison caves, but by joining Smith he had put himself into a prison within a prison. Suppose he had joined Miguel’s band? He might have got the run of the outer caves, and some chance of finding her. But wasn’t it possible that the pygmies were double-crossing Miguel? It seemed more than likely. After all, once they had destroyed the weak spot which the tunnel made in the prison system, why should they trouble themselves about Miguel any longer?

  It became clear that not only the fate of all of them, but of Margaret as well, depended upon the success of the tunnel. If they could only hold out until the surface was reached, it would mean the end of the pygmies. Once they were in touch with civilization there would be no difficulty in collecting an expedition to rescue the remaining prisoners and to round up the whole unsuspected nation of troglodytes. Perhaps he had taken the wiser course after all. Rescue for Margaret could only come from the outside. Even if he had the luck to get into the outer cave system and to find her, what then? They could scarcely hope to make the upper world unassisted.

  And what were they doing to Margaret? Why were they keeping her there? They’d never kept anyone before. It must be that damned cat – why else?

  A stir ran through the line of men on the wall. Were they coming at last? Mark strained to hear. Yes, the whisper of a shuffle. The frouing of naked feet on the stone floor. Thoughts of Margaret vanished. His hand, like those of the men to left and right of him, went out to grasp a throwing stone. He kept his eyes to the crack between the trunks forming the topmost rampart; it gave him a view of the main opening and one of the subsidiaries. Simultaneously, white, monkey-like forms became visible in both.

  One of the reasons for delay became apparent. The intention had been to trap them in this cave. The two companies (and probably a third, out of his sight) had been timed to arrive together. There was to be no dodging out through one hole while the pygmies came in by another. The complexion of the affair became slightly altered. The move showed that the pygmy programme comprised not only destruction of the tunnel, but the punishment of those who had made it.

  But now it was the pygmies own turn to be surprised. He saw them halt and gesticulate in amazement towards the barrier. Those behind thrust forward, crowding the leaders into the cavern. A chatter of high-pitched voices became audible.

  It came to Mark with surprise that this was only his second meeting with the
little people. He had heard so much of them, and thought of them so frequently, that he had come to think of them as a familiar sight, though he had seen none since his original encounter in the outer caverns. The odd feeling that he had seen the type before struck him again. He had meant to tell Gordon of this half recognition, but it had slipped his memory.

  Evidently the pygmy plans, whatever they might be, suffered a severe upset at the sight of the wall. The medley of consultation became louder. A tall figure came pushing through the crowd, and emerged from the main entrance. Mark recognized him for a European, and grinned at his expression of consternation. A quantity of animated explanation ensued, followed by a council of war.

  Still Smith made no move. Mark wondered. A volley of sharp stones flung into the mob might have done considerable damage, although the range was long.

  The pygmies came to a decision at last, and made the first of their mistakes. Possibly they believed that only a few men held the wall, but their tactics were crudely incautious. They consisted merely in stringing out to the full breadth of the cavern, and making a headlong charge. Smith let them cover fully half the distance before he gave a shout.

  The defenders rose to their feet, and a volley of stones crashed into the foremost rank of runners. A number fell or stumbled. Those behind, unable to stop, pitched headlong over the fallen. Before they could rise a second volley descended on them – sharp-edged stones which seldom killed, but could cut and wound painfully. The line of attack was broken in several places by tangled heaps of dwarfs struggling to recover their feet, but the attack itself did not waver. The uninjured came charging on where the way was clear, with undiminished speed. The hail of stones was now continuous, but in spite of it many won through to the foot of the wall. There for the most part they stopped, dismayed, only a few attempted the futility of climbing. The rest stood at a loss, marks for the stone-throwers. Their only weapons were stone knives, and they bore no shields for protection. Their bewilderment was pathetic; the brave assault had become a tragic farce. Those who could did the only possible thing; they turned and scuttled back the way they had come.

  Ed’s voice rang out in a Gargantuan bellow of laughter. This fight, after all their preparation, had turned out to be nothing but a huge joke. The whole army of the pygmies routed by a few showers of stones; the improvised clubs had not even been put to the test. Others joined in his laughter; it became a great, roaring gust sweeping backwards and forwards through the echoing cavern. Of the pygmies only a few lay still, the rest were limping alone or in mutually assisting couples back to the passage mouths whence the rolling rumble of laughter followed them.

  Mark could not join in the laughter. It was too cruel, too contemptuous of the little men. He was as relieved as the rest to find that the fight was no fight, but he saw what the others seemed to miss. These pygmies, these sorrowful-eyed little men, were fighting to preserve their race. They knew, as well as he knew, that once the outside world should learn of their existence, the end would not be long in coming. They were primitives, as Gordon had said. Their only hope of continued existence was to remain segregated. Time and time again it had been shown that the primitive cannot co-exist with the modern. Not only is there decimation by disease, but there seems to grow within them a lethal discouragement. They cannot adapt. The capacity for mutation has been outgrown. They are fitted for no other world nor society but their own, and the unfit may not survive.

  They had much of that complacency which primitive races frequently display, but their energy was not entirely sapped; they could still fight for existence, though they might not change. They had not admitted, or had not allowed themselves to admit, that their hopes were forlorn, their doom certain. If they could prevent the success of the tunnel, they must still contend with the water. They might block break after break as it occurred, but sooner or later it would get them. The New Sea would come pouring in through the airshafts to submerge their whole cave world as it had already flooded the lower levels. In the end they must be driven into the open, or trapped to drown down here.

  Mark became unpleasantly reminded that he also was trapped. There were times when he could scarcely believe that the tunnel through the hundreds of feet of rock would ever be finished. It was an all but impossible task for men as ill equipped as they. Smith said ‘any time now’, but for how long – he asked himself again – had the prisoners been saying ‘any time now’? And how could they tell? Who among them had any idea of their depth? The phrase was no more than an empty expression of hope, an article of faith to ward off apathy.

  He found he had been gazing without sight upon one of the prone figures. It had not stirred; it never would stir. One side of its head had been broken in by a stone. Perhaps he had flung that stone … He remembered Margaret’s words:

  ‘So horribly suddenly … A minute ago they were running … Oh, Mark, what have you done …?’

  Why had he? He hadn’t wanted to kill that little man. He’d never seen him before. He’d only wanted to stop him and his fellows – not to break them. That was how it always was – wasteful, senseless smashing of men … His eyes wandered from the abandon of one sprawling form to the futility of another. There were ten altogether. Ed would think that funnier still – a battle with only ten casualties. Well, let him laugh. It was funny in a way: this human race which slaughtered members of itself. No one seemed to see it that way, even though they used a proverb about cutting one’s nose to spite one’s face. ‘Queer lot we are,’ he murmured to himself.

  He shifted his gaze back to the passage-mouths. Most of the retreat had poured into the right-hand opening. He recalled that it was the one through which he had entered with Gordon, the link between this and the other fungus cave.

  The defenders held to their posts, waiting for the next move. It was not likely that the pygmies would give up after one reverse. There was evidently a consultation in progress, for an occasional sound of high-pitched chatter floated in to them.

  Smith decided that there was no immediate danger. The pygmy preparations might take some time. He detailed a party to relieve the tunnellers, and gave permission for the cord smokers to descend and continue their work. The rest sprawled at ease upon the wall top, some falling asleep, others talking. Ed sat down cross-legged and began to improve his mace by a further binding of cord which he had somehow acquired; he accompanied the task by a sotte voce cowboy song of startling obscenity. Gordon came wandering along the rampart, and sat down by Mark.

  ‘Silly, isn’t it?’ he said, glancing at the bodies on the loam.

  Mark nodded. ‘Damn silly. I suppose it’s the way we’re made. Ten of the little chaps dead – and none of us a penny the worse or the better. Has Smith any idea of the next move?’ he added.

  ‘No.’ Gordon shook his head. ‘It’s a case of wait and see.’

  They chatted for some time in a desultory manner before Mark bethought him of the question he had meant to put.

  ‘I can’t get it out of my mind that I’ve seen people like these before. It’s absurd, of course, because they can’t have been photographed, but the type isn’t altogether strange. What is it they’re like?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve noticed it, too, have you? They’re pygmies.’

  ‘No, I mean what race are they? I know they are pygmy-sized.’

  ‘They are pygmies – not a doubt of it. There’s not only the size, but the shape of the head, odd proportions of their spindly limbs and that curiously sad, solemn look characteristic of them. They’re not so mournful really, it’s a way pygmy faces have.’

  Mark had a sudden memory of a travel film. Pygmies, diminutive against the exploring party, looking at the camera with large, bewildered eyes; every face, male or female, adult or child, stamped with the same die of permanent melancholy. That was it, of course; the half memory of that film had been lurking just out of reach. Queer that it had not occurred to him before: the selfsame expression – or was it lack of expression? – had stared from the faces of these
troglodytes, but until Gordon had told him he could not place it. He had used the word ‘pygmy’ as he might have said ‘dwarf’, with no understanding of its significance. Yet it was not so odd that he should have missed the connection – these cave dwellers were a pale, dirty white.

  ‘But pygmies are black,’ he objected.

  ‘The surface ones, but why should they be black down here? No sun; no need of pigmentation. These chaps were probably black enough when they came in. It’d work out through the generations. Look what one generation has done for the prisoners’ children, the “natives”: no sign of ruddy complexion there.’

  ‘But hang it, there aren’t any pygmies for hundreds of miles to the south of here.’

  ‘Not now, but there were once – I’ve got a theory about these chaps and how they got here, if it’s of any interest to you.’

  Mark encouraged him to go on talking. If nothing more, it served to relieve the monotony of waiting for an attack which might never come.

  ‘The most troublesome thing is,’ Gordon began, ‘that ever since I knew of their existence, I’ve not been able to verify any of my facts. If we do get out of this, I’m going to dig myself into the BM reading-room, and make certain either one way or the other. However, here’s their history roughly, as I think it must be.