Traveling Companion Wanted by Richard Wilson (reading cloud ebooks txt) ๐
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- Author: Richard Wilson
Read book online ยซTraveling Companion Wanted by Richard Wilson (reading cloud ebooks txt) ๐ยป. Author - Richard Wilson
"Please get me out of this suit," Regan said.
The man's face lit up with pleasure. He nodded and patted the chest of the suit. Then he spoke.
The language was a guttural, fast-paced one. Regan had never heard anything like it.
"Please," he said. "Please get me out."
The man continued to smile. He beckoned and two other men appeared. They took turns listening to Regan plead to be released. They smiled, too, though obviously none of them understood a word. Without gestures, it was impossible for Regan to convey his plight.
They stood around him, chattering in their outlandish tongue. Others joined them. They all had the same look about them. Friendly, smiling faces and hands that patted him on the chest. It became a confused nightmare as still others streamed in, as if he were the main attraction in a fifty-cent tour.
But apparently there was method in their milling around. They measured him from top to toe, from side to side, in circumference and in depth. They used steel tapes and calipers and jotted down their findings in little books or punched them out on button-studded chessboards. They wheeled in a huge contraption which must have been a camera and clicked it at him from every angle. They lifted his arms and legs and chattered with excitement to see how peculiarly he bent at the joints.
It was as if Regan were a new kind of animal that had swum into their ken and which they were classifying, or which they would classify at their leisure after they had measured it in all possible ways.
They kept it up for an eternity and a half. Regan's vision got hazy, his throat burned and his stomach ached in irregular spasms.
He was barely conscious when the two bearers came back in, loaded him on the plank and took him out into the rotunda. The throng of scientists followed. The floor-wide elevator sank to the main level and they all went out into the street.
A big, rectangular, doorless, bus-like vehicle was standing there. The bearers, with a great deal of effort, propped Regan up in the front seat. His head lolled back inside the suit. The shift in position blacked him out temporarily. He came out of a period of nausea to hear himself saying over and over:
"You open it at the back of the neck. I'd do it myself if I could move my arms. You open it at the back of the neck."
The bus was in motion. It rumbled through the streets among the pastel beehives. In Regan's state, they were so many bouncing balloons being pointed out by madmen in white smocks in a caricature of a vehicle under an impossible sky.
They eventually reached a kind of park or estate. Shrubs and trees were neatly set out and a big golden beehive stood at the end of a long drive. They took him inside, half fainting, sweating, gibbering to himself.
Through half a dozen anterooms they went, to what could only have been a throne room. It was sumptuously hung with tapestries. There were guards standing at post and a thick carpet led to a dais on which were two huge chairs. A tall, slender, dark-haired man sat in one of them. The other was empty.
There was a confused kind of ceremony in which everyone got down on one knee before the man on the throne, and a ridiculous struggle began, to get Regan into a semblance of the same position.
The king, or whatever he was, gestured, and Regan found himself being dragged up on the dais and sat on the other throne.
Then the nightmare took a turn for the worse. From an anteroom came a procession of women bearing gifts. They were the first women Regan had seen in this underground world, but he was less interested in them than in what they carried.
Food.
Baskets of fruit.
Platters of meat.
Cups of liquids.
The smiling creatures curtsied before the thrones and set out the feast in front of Regan. One of them, dressed in a single pale blue garment belted at the waist, laid a basket of fruit in his lap.
Regan began to quiver in a fever of frustration.
It got worse when, at a sign from the king, everyone helped himself to some of this or that, raised it to Regan in a kind of toast and began to eat.
If any of them noticed that Regan didn't join them, they were polite enough not to take offense.
The feast over, everyone went for an after-dinner ride. The king went, too, riding in a richly draped palanquin on wheels, ahead of the squared-off bus.
This was the royal tour. Points of interest were visited. Regan's bleary eyes and uncomprehending brain half observed gardens, factories, schools, a sporting event, a parade, a farm and dozens of examples of the culture of the world of people who were kindly starving him to death.
In his semi-delirium, he once reproached himself for being such an unappreciative guest and wondered what they must think of this emissary from outside who was such a cumbersome clod. He had come to them in the strange trappings he apparently preferred, so how could he blame them for respecting his costume and leaving it to him to wear it or remove it as he chose? In his own world, he wouldn't strip a visitor or skin a stray dog.
A bump in the road and the shudder it gave the bus jolted his eyes fully open. Ahead was the hydroelectric plant spanning the river. They were going to show the king where Regan had come from.
The procession pulled over to the bank next to the mesh fence which screened debris from the water flowing into the plant. On the bank lay his mobility unit, which apparently had been detached before they trucked him into the city originally. The king got out of his palanquin and examined it curiously. Then he got back in and they drove along the bank to the other side of the hydroelectric plant. The river continued its swift passage, apparently unslowed by the drain on it.
Regan thought the river looked tremendously inviting. In its depths, he could be free of the well-meaning crowd of sightseeing guides. The river represented peace, an end to being shown around, measured, observed, exhibited and tantalized. In it, he could die calmly, without any frustrating diplomacy.
A bridge spanned the river below the plant. By the gestures of the scientists, he gathered that they were going to cross over to see interesting things which lay across the river. The bridge was a narrow wooden one. Parallel to it was the stone framework of an unfinished replacement. They proceeded slowly over the rickety, railless bridge.
The approach to it was banked, so that Regan was tilted in his seat, toward the outside. The bus leveled off as it reached the wooden planking and Regan tilted the other way. A loose plank under a wheel sent him swaying back again. With all his remaining strength, he leaned with the tilt. It was just enough to send him off balance.
They reached out to pull him back, but it was too late. He was out of the bus and dropping the short distance to the water.
The current was so swift that he went only a little way under, then bobbed up and was rushed along, turning over and over. As he revolved, he caught glimpses of consternation on the bridge. He saw the bus back off and race along the road on the bank, hands waving out of it. But it couldn't catch up with him. He was moving too fast.
The even motion of the river was soothing. Regan took a swallow from his tube and relaxed. There was a dull ache in his stomach, but no more stabbing spasms. Maybe he was dying. He didn't care.
Regan knew he was in a hospital even before he opened his eyes. The ether-and-disinfectant smell told him that.
It was taking an effort to thrust his eyelids up. He moved his arms and felt them close to his body. He raised one hand to his face and rubbed his closed eyes. Of course they'd have got him out of the spacesuit.
He opened his eyes.
A brown-faced man was leaning over the bed. He was wearing a white smock and had a fountain pen in the breast pocket. Beyond the manโthe doctorโthere was a window. A perfectly ordinary window, through which Regan could see the sky. A blue sky with white clouds in it.
The doctor smiled at Regan and said in English: "How do you feel, son?"
Regan tried to speak but couldn't.
"This is Bombay," the doctor said. "Bombay, in India. It must be quite a surprise to you, but I'm glad to say you'll be all right."
"What?" Regan asked vaguely.
"It's strange, of course," said the doctor. "You should be on the other side of the world, by all that's natural. We communicated with the American authorities when we saw your identification. It is extremely odd. Still, here you are, and you will be well. Quite soon, too."
"Butโ" Regan began. Then he gave up. He said nothing more until after he'd eaten and slept and the doctor asked him if he felt strong enough now to see the reporters.
"Two more, sir?" the bartender at the Palmer House asked.
I nodded.
"Naturally they thought I was delirious," Regan said, "or had been. They had to accept the fact that I'd been through the Earth. Not through the center of it, or anywhere near itโthey tell me that's practically solid nickel, or molten, or whatever. But there was no disputing that I'd gone down in the Atlantic and come up in the Indian Ocean. They'd seen me go down and they'd seen me come up and obviously I'd been somewhere in the interval. I hadn't walked, that was for sure.
"They credited my story of the underground river. The Greeks had a word for it, they tell me. The Greeks thought the Alpheus River wandered down under the Adriatic and came up in Sicily. I don't know much about their river, but mine apparently follows the Earth's curve maybe a dozen miles below the surface.
"But nobody wanted any part of my story of the city and the king and the beehive houses and the rectangular bus. Delirium, they said. Oh, they were kind about it, but they said it. So did the geophysical boys upstairs, in their eight-syllabled way."
The bartender brought fresh highballs, but Regan still held the glass the old drink had been in. He put it on its side on the bar and stared at the open end. I got the imageโa tunnel filled with rushing water, a tunnel under the world.
Regan almost echoed my thoughts.
"Tunnel under the Antarctic," he said half to himself. "That's where it must have been, that city. Down there, deep under the ice. Used to be tropics, you know."
"The Antarctic?" I said.
"Before the ice came, before the Earth's axis shifted. Those peopleโthey didn't evacuate, I guess. They went underground. Funny they should have built themselves houses the same shape as those of the Eskimos who stayed above-ground in the Northโlike igloos. But probably that's just coincidence. You don't find igloos in the tropics. I'd guess their beehive houses are naturally influenced by the cavern they live inโtheir little universe."
Regan looked up. He grinned and set the empty glass upright on the bar. "I've had a lot of time to think about it. They're awfully nice people, all of them. I could have had a wonderful time if I'd been able to climb out of that damn spacesuit. In time, I could even have communicated with them passably well. Good-looking women, too."
He looked at me speculatively. He opened his mouth as if to speak again, then smiled and shook his head.
I said it for him: "You're going back."
"Yes," he answered. "Yes, I'm going back. I know the coordinates of the entrance to the passageway and its dimensions and the kind of equipment I'll need. Nothing elaborate. In another year or so, I'll have enough saved up, I think. Get myself a little space launch; one of the smaller ones, lifeboat size. Fit it out with food and waterโand some picture books, of course, to show them what it's like where I come from. I'd take somebody along with me if I could find anyone who wanted to goโand who believed me."
"I believe you," I said. "Butโ"
"Sure. You'd be crazy to go. Wife and kids. I've got none of that. Mostly
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