Wonders of a Godless World (9 page)

It’s called a lava tube.

Lava. The orphan did not know the word, but it made her think of something slow and heavy and hot. Yes, she saw it now. The melted, mushed-up stone that churned deep underground—that was lava.

But lava
tube
…what did that mean?

Some time, probably many thousands of years ago, this volcano was in eruption. In the process, a flow of lava spilled from a rift higher up the mountain, and flowed down into this gully. It cooled as it went, and the outer crust hardened into rock. Under that exterior, however, the lava kept flowing until it drained away completely and left the crust standing behind in the shape of this hollow tube.

The orphan was still staring in under the arch, her eyes adjusting to the dark. The tunnel was not as smooth as it had first appeared. In fact the walls and the floor were only crudely fashioned, widening and then narrowing again, irregular. Yes. The foreigner’s explanation made sense. She could imagine the lava surging and slowing through here, and hardening unevenly, before draining away.

But could she go in?

Well…

How odd—was it reluctance she sensed in him? A wariness? Was something wrong? Was it unsafe to enter?

No, it’s safe…

What then?

It’s just that, even now, I still don’t like going underground.

Of course! The orphan felt terrible for not realising it sooner. After everything he had been through beneath the landslide…

It’s a fear I have to live with. Go in, if you want.

Was he certain?

I’ve been down far worse holes than this, I assure you.

She ventured inwards, stepping carefully because the floor was pitted with holes. Tree roots dangled down from the ceiling and brushed her face. When she looked up she saw that they grew through cracks in the roof, and here and there beams of sunlight stabbed down from the surface. But soon she was beyond the roots and the sunbeams, and only blackness waited ahead.

So why had the foreigner gone into holes, if he was afraid?

His reply was subdued.
There was no choice. I realised it even all those years ago, at the beginning of my new life. If I wanted to understand the workings of the earth, then at some point I would have to go beneath it.

The orphan advanced. Despite the dark, some part of her mind remained aware of all the edges and pits in the ground, and she did not stumble.

The foreigner’s voice dropped lower still.
To have escaped the earth once and then willingly go below its surface again, that was a dreadful thing. My first descent was into a coalmine. The terror I felt! Understand, mines in those days were little better than the landslide itself. Men died below ground by the hundreds. Poisoned by gases, or drowned by floods, or burnt by fires, or obliterated by explosions. But it wasn’t those deaths I feared. I feared the collapse. The cave-in.
I feared that I might be crushed again under a fall, or even worse, trapped on the wrong side of one, buried alive. I knew I could never go through that experience again.

For a moment the tube seemed to grow suffocating and hot around the orphan. It became an airless, lightless prison that she could never escape. Then the foreigner shrugged off the memory, and the heaviness lifted.

How I hated those places. And it turned out they had relatively little to tell me about the earth, anyway. What are mines, after all, but scratches on the surface, two or three kilometres deep? I needed to look much deeper.

This tube, for instance. How far down do you think it goes?

The orphan considered, letting her mind roam forward into the shadows. She could feel the bulk of the volcano rising away to the unreachable peak. And she could imagine the tube burrowing beneath it, all the way to the core, to join with the other fissures, leading downwards together in the twisting throat of the volcano, but descending ultimately to where the lava reserves lay sleeping.

Magma, actually. It’s only called lava when it reaches the surface.

The orphan rolled another new word around her silent tongue, thinking that yes, it too sounded right, and
felt
right.

And below the magma chamber? What then?

She frowned. In none of her visions of the under-earth had she thought to go any deeper than those molten pools.

But you should. You’ve seen that the earth is shaped like a ball—but what’s inside the ball? Is there anything at all in there? Or is it hollow?

Which stopped her short. It was true, a ball could be empty, she had seen that herself. The patients sometimes kicked a white ball around the hospital grounds, and it was only plastic, pumped
up with air. Oh, but the scale of it! To think that the world might be just a thin shell around a vast empty nothingness.

Who says the space must be empty? Why could there not be an inner sun glowing at the centre of it? And why couldn’t the interior side of the shell be populated with lands and buildings and people, all of it upside down?

Which stopped her short again. An
inside
world. The orphan felt an immediate attraction to the idea. Perhaps if she followed this very tunnel she would emerge, wrong way up, into an enormous space within the planet. And in the middle of the cavity, floating, would be another bright sun, illuminating oceans and mountains and plains as great as those outside. It would be a reverse world, the opposite of everything above, where there was no night, where the dumb could speak, where the slow would be quick, and where the mad would be the sane.

Could it be?

Ah…but no. Even as she delighted in the vision, she knew that it wasn’t right. When she had beheld the planet spinning in the void, she had felt its weight, and the ponderous inertia that kept it revolving. It was not a thin-skinned bauble that could be punctured like a toy. The earth was solid, right through, she was sure of it.

The foreigner projected satisfaction.
Look then. Go as deep as you can.

She did. She went searching downwards with her mind. But not in one hurried plunge, as she had before, but more deliberately this time, in great descending circles, careful to observe everything around her. Down through the base of the volcano she went, with its familiar rents and cracks, and then down through the base of the entire island, which was nothing but the remains of a larger and older volcano. She was spiralling outwards all the while, until,
far down, she was beyond the island’s foundation, and searching beneath the ocean floor.

Yes, but you are still only in the crust of the earth’s surface, and the crust is at best only twenty or thirty kilometres thick. It holds the entire human realm, true, but on a planetary scale it’s no more really than the skin that forms on soup.

And yet already she had found surprises, buried deep. Layers of brightly coloured stone that no sun would ever illuminate. Arched caverns where the air would never stir. Secret lakes of water, so motionless and clear they might have been glass, and rivers that roared and raged beyond hearing. And then there were dry places of a crystal hardness so sharp that even in thought they set the orphan’s teeth on edge.

But in other places things
bubbled
down there. Liquids oozed and plopped amid the rock, sometimes in great masses trapped in domes, sometimes in a kind of oily sweat that permeated sheets of stone, black and slick and redolent with decay. There were gases too, greasy and invisible, squeezed into uneasy levels that rumbled with indigestion. Indeed, so much did the underworld squelch with sound and smell, it seemed to the orphan that the crust was not solid at all, but rather a layer of rotting mulch, like the compost heaps in the hospital gardens.

Deeper, girl, you must go deeper.

She went deeper, sinking still in slow spirals. Now she was into rock that was barren and parched, all cracked and folded back on itself in ways too tangled to unravel. Here and there she came across pockets of magma, similar to the chambers under her own volcano. They were like balloons that had ascended from below and were squashed now against the ceiling, trying to squeeze beyond it. From one such balloon, she found a thread of magma descending.
She followed the thread, twisting and turning through the rock, down, and then down further still.

You are entering what scientists call the mantle. And what you see here, far more than anything above, is the true substance of which the world is made.

It was getting very hot, and the rock was now soft and glowing. But more than heat, the orphan was becoming aware of
pressure
. Even as a disembodied mind she could feel the weight from above mounting and mounting. And eventually she was no longer following an isolated stream of magma, it was everywhere around her, mixing inextricably with the stone, until the entire under-level was a congealed, melting, swirling mass of rock that was not a liquid or a solid in any way that she knew.

The mantle goes down to a depth of thousands of kilometres, and the pressure becomes so intolerable that it changes all the rules. The rock here is not liquid, and yet it flows like liquid, it has currents and tides. Above us, the crust floats on those currents, and moves in great slabs, crashing slowly together. And if a crack should open between those slabs, this tortured stone will boil to the surface to explode.

But the orphan was diving deeper. More rapidly now, a plunge not a spiral, because she knew she would not be able to stand the pressure or the heat for long. Faster and faster, and there were no distinct layers anymore, nothing to see, there was only the uniform mush, growing hotter and hotter, and glowing brighter. And then abruptly she
was
in liquid, an ocean of it, infinitely wider and deeper than the seas of the surface above. But not an ocean of water, it was an ocean of
metal
.

This is the outer core. It’s made of liquid iron, heated to incredible temperatures. But only a little further down, the pressure grows so indescribable that no matter what the temperature, the iron cannot stay in liquid form.

There! The orphan was at her utmost limit, but at the very centre of the planet she saw something that was indeed like a hidden sun after all, an inner sphere of agonised iron that was hard and huge and white hot, blazing.

And at the centre of that? At the centre of that?

She reached—

But could hold no longer. Her thoughts fled from the heat and pressure, and went tumbling away back to the surface.

The orphan opened her eyes and found that she was standing in the tunnel as before, but breathless now, a sheen of sweat on her skin, her legs quivering. She had been so close! Just a little further down, she was sure…

No, it was amazing you got as far as you did.

But she had wanted to see!

Never mind. No one else knows what lies at the very core, either. And for our purposes, it doesn’t matter anyway.

The orphan was sucking in disappointed air. The gloom in the tunnel had dissipated—as if, having delved so deep, her eyes had no trouble at all piercing ordinary darkness. She saw now that only a few dozen yards ahead the tube came to an end. It wasn’t blocked by some collapse or upheaval, it simply stopped there, and always had. There was no tunnel through to the heart of the volcano, or beyond it to some hollowed interior of the earth. It wasn’t a tunnel at all, just a cavity that led nowhere.

Exactly. And what does that tell you?

But she felt too tired now for his riddles. She didn’t know what it told her. It was time, she thought, to go home.

It is indeed. But think—if all this was truly a product of your madness, then a hollow earth is precisely the sort of thing you would have found today. Something dramatic, something fantastic. And this tunnel would have taken you there. Indeed, there are thousands of
people around the world who believe in exactly such tunnels, and don’t even know how mad they are. But you didn’t find any such fantasy. You found what’s really there—as confusing and complicated as it is. That isn’t madness.

No. It wasn’t. He was right about that…

And if none of that satisfies you, my orphan, then remember the simple fact of this tube’s existence. Remember that no one else knows about it. That it’s an undiscovered secret—and yet I led you right here.

Isn’t that proof enough, finally, that I’m real?

And for the weary orphan, finally, it was.

It was a different orphan who arrived back at the hospital. She felt lighter. Cleansed somehow, despite being filthy with ash and sweat. It was relief, she knew. Her doubts had been settled. Now she could trust in the foreigner wholeheartedly; now she could accept, without all the misgivings, the happiness he brought her.

Good. Then we’ll continue tonight
.

She was standing at the hole in the back fence of the hospital grounds, and the sun was low in the afternoon sky. He had been with her all the way down the mountain, guiding her from the lava tube back to the path, and then home.

But what was it they had to continue?

Your education, of course.

Did he mean that there was still more of the underworld to explore?

Not for now. I have other things to show you first.

What things?

You’ll see. Rest now, then come to me later, when everyone else is asleep.

And with that he was gone from the orphan’s mind. For a moment she smiled up at the fading sky, as if to watch after him fondly. Then she slipped through the wire and made her way, unobserved, to her little hut. Throwing off her dirty clothes, she put on her bathrobe, went to the washroom and showered.

Then she got back to work.

She was exhausted, yes, but there was no question of her resting. She was too happy for one thing, but more importantly, she had missed an entire day of chores. Already it was time to help serve dinner. And her absence had been noticed. When she hurried into the kitchen, the cooks snapped grumpily at her and shook their ladles. She couldn’t understand what they said, but she didn’t need to. Where had she been all day?—that’s what they meant. What did she think she was up to?

It was the same in the wards. There were certain inmates with whom she usually spent a little time in the afternoons, playing simple games or merely listening to their mad ramblings, but today there had been no chance. In fact, she had to admit that it had been several days since she had really sat with any of them. Now those patients were sulky and withdrawn with her. And the nurses, too, gave her some hard and wondering glances. It was as if she had never been away for a day before.

Well, actually, she hadn’t. Never for a whole day. But the orphan found she didn’t care. In a way, their puzzled expressions were almost funny. If people only knew what they looked like sometimes, the way their lips and eyes moved. The truth was, nothing could spoil her good mood. It was more than just relief, she realised—it was anticipation. She was looking forward to later in the night, when she could go and be with the foreigner again. Not just mentally, but in person, in his room, by his side.

In the meantime she ducked her head and hid her smile, and once dinner was over and the kitchen clean, she was free to take her mop and venture off into the more remote parts of the hospital, away from everyone else.

Normally she was happiest this way, working quietly by herself into the night—but for once the evening dragged. It was very hot, and the familiar chores were strangely frustrating. As always, she strove to perform them well, but tonight her mop felt stiffer than usual, the grime on the tiles seemed more deeply ingrained, and the sting of the cleaning solution in her nostrils was more galling. What was the point of mopping anyway? The floors would only be dirty again tomorrow.

Her mind wanted to be elsewhere. It wasn’t even so much that she longed to be soaring again through the heights, or plunging into the fiery core of the planet, it was just that, after the visions she’d seen, the dreary rooms and hallways around her felt altogether too small. There wasn’t an inch of them she didn’t know and hadn’t cleaned countless times before. How had she never noticed it previously? That for day after day, year after year, she had restricted herself to such tiny confines?

Madness, really. Another kind. But then no one had been able to show her what lay beyond. Not the doctors or the nurses, anyway. They weren’t capable of it. It needed a special talent, which only the foreigner possessed.
He
was the real reason she couldn’t focus on her work tonight. She was too distracted, waiting until she could go to him. She didn’t think she’d ever experienced such an impatience before. Such a dissatisfaction with the present. Wanting time to move faster.

It didn’t, of course. It moved slower. But eventually it was long past lights-out and all the day staff had gone home. That only left the night nurse. Normally he would stay in the front wards all
night, no bother to her at all. But the orphan decided she should check on him. It wouldn’t do if he came wandering.

On any other evening, she would have gone by the covered walkway to the front wards and then clumped noisily through the halls to find him. Most likely he would be in the office. But tonight she didn’t want the night nurse to see her; he might assign her some menial task out of sheer mischief. So instead, after exiting the back wards, she left the walkway and circled around to the side of the front building.

In doing so, she became aware that this was another new experience—creeping about in the dark, trying not to be seen. Usually, no one really saw her anyway. But this was different. For once it was her choice to be invisible. The thought made her smile. She felt conscious of everything; the darkness around her, the warm air, the murky stars, the smell of the grass and the jungle, the noises of insects.

The front wards were mostly blacked out, but light shone from the office, and the sounds of a radio drifted through the open window. The orphan edged carefully across a dusty flowerbed and peered over the window sill. The night nurse was there, on the far side of the room, sitting side-on to her, his feet on the desk, his shirt open to catch the breeze from the old electric fan. He appeared to be reading a magazine.

The orphan shook her head. He was so lazy! At best he might rouse himself to stroll through the back wards around dawn, to make sure that all was in order before the day staff returned. Useless. Why did the old doctor even put up with him? The previous night nurse had been a cheerful old man who not only kept a proper eye on the inmates, he had sometimes even helped the orphan with the cleaning. But when he had retired, this sneering, superior youth had taken his place.

She found herself studying his bare arms and chest. He had an ugly face, no doubt, but as much as she squirmed now to remember it, for a few weeks after his arrival she had actually considered him attractive. His body was slim and smooth, after all, and there was a certain languid grace about him. Indeed, she had briefly, alone in her bed at night, fingers between her legs, imagined him there with her.

But all too soon she’d realised that what she’d mistaken for languid grace was actually more a stubborn stupidity, and that there was nothing else to him. He was just a spoilt, selfish, half-grown boy. And how inferior that made him, compared to a
man
like the foreigner. Even helpless and passive as he was, the foreigner radiated such assurance, such maturity. His experiences had honed and strengthened him.
He
wasn’t lazy, or selfish.
He
was an adult. And his body was adult too.

The night nurse stirred, glanced around the room quickly, then turned the page of his magazine. The orphan noted that the paper seemed to have no writing on it. It was only colours and shapes. And yet the night nurse studied it intently. Then, after another glance around, he moved his hand down into his pants.

Oh! He was going to do
that?
The orphan couldn’t help it—she was too buoyant: she laughed. Right out loud.

The nurse surged from his chair, magazine flying, hands yanking his pants up, his face red as he stared about. The orphan couldn’t stop laughing, it was just too funny, she was nearly doubled over, stumbling backwards through the garden. But by then he’d spotted her and was at the window, yelling furiously. In fact, he was climbing
through
the window, his fists clenched like he meant to murder her.

She ran, still laughing. It didn’t even matter that he was chasing her. What could a boy like him do anyway? She was tougher than
him. In fact, that was part of the fun, running in the darkness, darting under trees and around corners, his angry yells falling further behind. He would never catch her. She was outside herself, floating slightly above, so that the hospital was laid out below. She could weave about the buildings effortlessly. And she could see the night nurse circling blindly in her wake.

She paused in a cranny behind the laundry to catch her breath, and to try to still the gasps of laughter. From the other side completely of the back wards she heard a last frustrated shout from him and, by some fluke, for the first time in days she understood his words exactly. He was calling her nosy and retarded and stupid and a bitch and she better watch out next time—which only elicited a final smile from her.

Silly boy, playing with himself. Ha!

She watched from her mind’s vantage point as he gave up and plodded back towards the office. But then suddenly all the laughter was gone, and instead the foreigner was there inside her head, cool and controlled.

It’s time
, he said.

At last! She hurried off towards the crematorium, wondering at the excitement in her. Was she…? Yes, she was; the chase, the laughing, even the idiot night nurse reaching into his pants—it had all put her in a mood, there was no denying it. She thought of the foreigner’s body again, lying there under the single sheet. But that was crazy. He couldn’t move, and anyway, something was surely wrong about even thinking—

You seem disturbed.

Mortified, she covered her thoughts as best she could.

Has someone upset you this evening?

No, no…

And thankfully, he did not press. She was already inside, and coming down the hallway to the crematorium. All was silent and dark. In the little dayroom, the television was switched off. Good. They would not be disturbed.

Except—

She paused, listening. There was a sound from one of the bedrooms. She was so eager to get to the foreigner that she almost chose to ignore it. But then it came again. A stifled sob, from the men’s bedroom. The orphan went to the door and looked in. A pale light came through the window, illuminating the two beds. In one, the archangel slept, stretched out like a fallen tree, stomach down, his book tucked under his chin. The other bed was empty. And in the corner, staring up at the window, was the duke, his mouth a cut of misery, his face glistening with tears.

The orphan stared. What was wrong with the old man? Was he in pain? She approached him, cautious despite her concern. She had not forgotten how enraged he’d been during their last encounter, the day after the eruption. Yet there didn’t seem to be any rage in him now. His head was thrown back abjectly and his shoulders shook as he cried.

The foreigner was in her head.
What are you doing?

Couldn’t he see? The duke was distraught about something.

So? He’s mad.

Was that all he had to say? The old man needed help!

There’s nothing you can do for him.

But a flush of guilt had come over the orphan. In her preoccupation, she had been neglecting people like the duke. Why, she couldn’t remember the last time she had walked with him in the yard, and she knew how much he liked her company.

Ah. Well, you must be prepared for that. You’ll have less time for him now. Him, and all the other inmates.

But they were her friends. They needed her.

It’s hard, I know, but our own business is more urgent.

It was? But why?

You’ll understand eventually. Hurry now.

Her eagerness flared again—that voice, so close, so strong, wanting her—but she resisted. She was not going to leave the old man until she had comforted him. In fact, wasn’t there something the foreigner could do?

I’m no doctor. Or psychiatrist.

But he could enter people’s thoughts! If he would just look in the old man’s head, maybe he could see what the problem was.

There came a sigh.
Very well.

The orphan felt his presence withdraw from her, and she waited. The duke fell silent, his eyes widening in the darkness. Then—

Bring him to my room.

He would help the old man?

If I can
. The foreigner sounded oddly moved.
And as it happens, his madness may be instructive to you and me
.

In what way?

Just bring him.

She did as she was told. The duke was still silent and staring, but it was only a matter of pulling gently on his hand to lead him out of the bedroom, through the dayroom, and then down the short hall to the furnace room.

The foreigner lay motionless in his bed, his blank eyes wide open.

Good. Sit him in the chair.

She did so, and the old man sat obediently. He seemed dazed. She wasn’t sure he even knew where he was.

She turned to the foreigner. Well?

It’s curious, you know. The more I look into the minds in this hospital, the more diverting I find it. You, of course, are the miracle. But even this old man…He’s mad, no doubt, but what strange truths lie beneath his madness.

Now the duke’s eyes were moving about the room, as if he could hear voices, but couldn’t see where they came from.

Truths? What truths?

For one thing, did you know he really was a duke?

The orphan creased her brow. A duke?

Effectively. He was a very rich man. A great landowner. Or the son of one, anyway. It’s all there in his memory. His family used to own half this island. In fact, they lived in this very hospital, years ago, back when it was a private residence.

The orphan stared at the old man. So he really
did
own the hospital, just as he always claimed?

His family did, yes. I suppose hardly anyone else remembers it. Poor old fool. Who would credit it, to look at him now?

But the foreigner could see it, in the duke’s head?

Oh yes. It’s like a waking dream for him. When he walks around this place, he doesn’t see a rotting old hospital. He doesn’t see the dark hallways and the little cells. He sees big rooms and polished wood and fine furniture.