The Days of Peleg (52 page)

As they became aware of Shem, the voices faded swiftly except for one woman who was passionately oblivious to her surroundings. She stopped as she abruptly realized she was the only one shouting. The resulting silence echoed out into the corridor until each pair of eyes was fastened (with fear?) on Shem’s face.

Shem spoke a short soft sentence, and the men and women relaxed with a smattering of awkward laughter. Shem then entered the room, and addressed them for a few moments while Peleg watched their faces.

They seemed to be filled with a tremendous amount of respect for Shem, but their expressions indicated a severe disagreement with what he was saying. Slowly their heads dropped slightly in what appeared to be reluctant acquiescence, and eventually Peleg sensed a grudging acceptance of whatever Shem was requesting. He also got the impression that their acceptance would not last much longer.

Shem finished with what appeared to be a demand that everyone express his or her understanding, then he bowed slightly to the man who was apparently in charge, and turned to leave. Peleg spun around to exit the doorway and almost ran into the two guards who still constantly shadowed him. Shem went past them, and the two continued down the corridor.

“What was that all about?” asked Peleg.

“Nothing that needs to concern you,” said Shem, but his voice had a layer of worry that Peleg had not heard before. “In fact, please forget you even saw anything.”

Peleg opened his mouth to ask if there was any danger, but Shem interrupted.

“It is time to eat,” he said. “Turn this way.”

Shem steered him to the left and up a steep incline. The air began to smell moist, and Peleg felt the ground soften beneath him. Something brushed his face, and he pushed it aside with his hands when he suddenly realized he was walking through moist leaves and small branches.

A cool breeze ruffled his hair (the first wind he had felt in months), and he recoiled slightly. Suddenly his eyes were pierced with a thousand bright lights, and as Shem prodded him forward, he found himself standing on the surface under a blazing star-filled sky, shimmering with more luminosity than anything he had experienced since he had first been taken underground into Haganah.

He shaded his eyes and continued walking. He now smelled the wonderful aroma of cooking meat, and looked around, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

His two guards were still ever-present, but Shem had run to greet someone who was standing some distance away. Peleg turned to find the direction of the smell, and realized they were standing at the extreme edge of a small clearing. The ramp they had just exited was covered by a small clump of trees and bushes, but the food was obviously behind him just beyond the edge of a thick forest.

Shem was nowhere to be seen, so Peleg moved slowly (so as not to alarm his ‘shadows’) and proceeded towards the food. After all, Shem
had
said, ‘Time to eat’.

He walked through the foliage until he saw a group of women digging in a large trench. Soon, however, he realized that the trench had already been dug, but that something had been buried in it, and they were simply uncovering it.

The smell of cooked meat became stronger, and as he looked into the trench he saw flickering lights which he soon realized were hot coals. Large sticks and shovels were shoved into the coals, and soon large slabs of unknown baked ribs and flanks were extracted from the ashes. In the distance, Peleg could now see at least three similar trenches from which meat was being collected.

No wonder his food was always so tough! He thought about the secrecy which made these people strive to hide their existence. Apparently they dug these trenches under the trees, built fires in them during the day, and then let them die down to coals. After that, prepared meat, probably from the previous day’s hunt, was placed on the coals and then buried to trap in the heat. At night, people would collect the food and then distribute it to the community below.

He also realized that this solved another problem. Almost all activities that people did on the surface could be done below ground—except one. Cooking. No fires or smoke could be allowed underground. In addition to the smoke accumulation which would make breathing difficult if not impossible, it would slowly discolor and blacken the white crystalline walls; making what little light existed below even less effective. Until someone created smokeless fire, there could be no flames in Haganah.

A heavy hand landed on his right shoulder, and he turned to see Shem grinning at him.

“The stars are brilliant, are they not?” he asked. “During the Great Deluge I was unable to view the stars for more than a year.”

He handed Peleg a large stoneware plate piled high with ribs, vegetables, fried roots, a thick slice of rye bread, and a sauce that was certain to be very spicy if its aroma was any indication.

“I think you’ll find that food tastes much better up here in the fresh air,” declared Shem. “We seldom eat topside, however. There are sentries around this area, but you can never be too careful.”

Peleg began to tear into his food. Although the meat was still hard to chew, apparently it toughened further by the time they delivered it to his room.

He asked the question that had troubled him since he arrived.

“What type of meat is this?”

“Usually, it is bear meat,” answered Shem. “However, we prepare whatever the hunting parties bring to us. When the
Creator
blesses, they will sometimes capture a mammoth or, on rare occasions, even a
tannyn
—or, as you would say,
ušemšutum
—which is what you are eating now!”

A loud cricket chirped twice nearby, and Shem grabbed his arm again.

“We must go below, now,” he said with sudden urgency. “You may continue to eat along the way.”

“What is happening?” asked Peleg as they rushed back to the portal. He began to realize that the ‘cricket’ was probably an artificial signal.

“Nothing immediate,” answered Shem. “It is time for the guard change, and we must get out of the way. The cooking pits must be filled in, and when it is clear, the hunters will depart for the day.”

Slowly, with Shem’s help, he stumbled back through the foliage and down into the opening which led back into the caverns; laboriously chewing his food, and awkwardly pushing the rest of his meal into his mouth as quickly as possible.

As always, his two shadow guards remained behind him.

They passed through areas that seemed more residential, much like those he witnessed on the way to his first interrogation. However, this time there was no attempt to quiet the children, as he could hear young voices in loud discussions and laughter. Some seemed to be playing while others were apparently preparing for the day’s activities.

They continued walking as Shem bowed slightly to those who glanced out of their doorways, and on occasion he pointed to Peleg with a smile and a few short words.

In the distance Peleg heard a harsh rasping sound, which grew louder as they approached. When they arrived at the source, he saw that it was a simple child’s pull-toy. A small girl was pulling it across the hallway under the watchful eyes of an older man who sat on the other side of an open doorway.

It was a wooden duck with small wheels. Some internal mechanism powered by the turning wheels scraped together, creating a grating
quack!
whenever she pulled on the attached tether.

Shem spoke briefly to the man inside, and then grabbed Peleg’s empty plate and handed it to him.

The man smiled as he accepted instructions from Shem, and the two began talking. Shem pointed at Peleg excitedly, apparently talking about him, yet never actually introducing him.

Eventually they bowed a farewell, and Shem again grasped Peleg’s elbow and they resumed their journey through the hallways. The brief moments of illumination ceased as they left the dwelling areas behind, and the normal blackness of the underground chambers returned.

They continued downward at a rapid pace, with Shem guiding Peleg’s elbow through turns and occasional staircases. Suddenly they stopped after a single, small downward step, and Shem spoke a short sentence in his own language. A stone slab slid sideways in front of them, spilling bioluminescent light from within the room beyond, and revealing a guard who was actually moving the stone. They stepped through the opening and…

…entered the back of the room where Peleg had first met Shem.

Peleg looked around in the relatively bright light and saw the table, benches, wall hangings, and the low platform with its mosaic of small pebbles on top.

The door slid shut behind them, leaving his two guards outside with the “doorman”. Shem indicated the stone bench that Peleg had previously occupied, and Peleg sat, resting his arms on the stone table. Shem resumed his position across from him in the large, cushioned, stone chair, and began to speak.

“Peleg,” he began slowly. “I wish to try and explain something to you. But it will be difficult, because you lack much of the technical and scientific concepts necessary to understand.”

Peleg was taken aback by this, and instantly offended. He had been educated in the finest institution on the planet, with its emphasis on reason and
Knowledge
. Shem might be older than he looked, and perhaps he
did
survive the Great Calamity, but this community certainly didn’t exhibit any remarkable technologies. As near as he could tell, it was simply an underground warrior outpost of
Gutian
descendants. Whatever this caveman knew was bound to be old and outdated anyway.

But he slowly calmed himself. His mission was still to learn and (somehow) report back home. He reasoned that his chances of returning were much greater if he didn’t anger or offend his current host.

Shem was continuing.

“I shall try to create a comparison for you, and I would ask that you be open-minded to ideas that may be foreign to you, and to accept, for the purposes of speculation, certain concepts which may seem, initially, impossible.”

Peleg nodded, anticipating an onslaught of more myth and superstition. Of
course
he would be expected to suspend belief. That’s what all cults were based on.

“I would like you to join me on a thought experiment,” said Shem. “You are aware of what I mean by this?”

Peleg again nodded, thinking of the thought experiments back at the
Citadel
. He remembered one of his favorites—trying to determine how a person would reason, if limited to a pre-selected, specified vocabulary. Great for fun and speculation, but very limited in actual, objective research.

“I would like you to consider the planetary calculator designed by Tarshish. But instead of the gears moving arrows and indicators, I would like you to imagine they are connected to simple carpentry equipment, like saws and hammers. As the mechanism turns, it pulls the saw or raises and lowers the hammer. Never mind, for the moment what power is turning the mechanism—simply accept (for this experiment) that it is sufficient.”

Peleg tipped his head for Shem to continue.

“Now, obviously this mechanism is much larger, and it also has extensions for stitching cloth, sanding and polishing wood, and moving paint brushes. In fact, it is so huge that there is space in the middle for an large ocean vessel like your
Urbat
!”

Shem looked sharply at Peleg to see his reaction, but Peleg was resolutely non-responsive, waiting for the point.

“What this mechanism does is build ships!” Shem announced, and hurried on to avoid interruption. “Wood, pins, nails, cloth, and all other building materials are fed into it, and it cuts and assembles everything until, at the end, without any human help, a finished seaworthy vessel is ready and waiting in dry-dock!”

The complexity of such a mechanism overwhelmed Peleg, and he blurted, “That is ridiculous! Such an assembly could never be built!”

Shem raised his hand and nodded to calm him.

“Remember, this is simply a thought experiment,” he said. “We are not concerned with feasibility or practicality, only theoretical possibilities. Levers
could
be built to operate such equipment, and there is nothing in the laws of nature that would prohibit such a device.”

Peleg nodded in grudging acquiescence, and Shem continued.

“Now we must add the ability to process the raw materials. Other mechanisms must be set up elsewhere, to collect wood, hemp, flax, metal, and other materials from other places, and then they must be connected to our main mechanism, along with conveyors to move the materials and then store them until they are needed. Of course, other devices would be needed to retrieve the materials from storage.”

Shem sat silently, waiting for Peleg to process all of this. Peleg had resisted the urge to protest with his previous outburst, since it was very difficult to imagine such a monstrosity, but had to admit that there was nothing
physically
impossible about it. Except for…

“Wait,” exclaimed Peleg. “Perhaps I can accept the mechanical aspects of this scenario, and you have explained ahead of time to ignore the energy requirements. But…”

He raised a finger, eager to expose the breakdown in this chain.

“You must have instructions!” he said triumphantly, thinking of how Untash had coordinated the refitting and rebuilding of the
Urbat
. “Simply having devices that cut wood and sew cloth are not enough. Decisions must be made. You
must
have people to determine how long a piece of wood is, where to cut it, at which angle a joint must be placed, and thousands of other options! Unless you can determine a method of instructing each device how and when to do what it does, you’ll never have a sea-going vessel. You’ll just have lots of sawing and hammering.”

Shem was silent for a few moments, while Peleg experienced a very immature glee at stumping Shem. This was quickly followed by a slight embarrassment as he wondered why he felt so proud. Of course he should be able to stump this cave dweller. But he did have to admit, grudgingly, that he would never have imagined this thought experiment himself.