We moved slowly. There was often fainting, and we would have to wait. One day
he decided to cause an earthquake, at the same time rooting us to the spot with nails
through the soles of our shoes. Ellen and Nimdok were both caught when a fissure
shot its lightning­bolt opening across the floorplates. They disappeared and were
gone. When the earthquake was over we continued on our way, Benny, Gorrister and
myself. Ellen and Nimdok were returned to us later that night, which abruptly
became a day, as the heavenly legion bore them to us with a celestial chorus singing,
"Go Down Moses." The archangels circled several times and then dropped the
hideously mangled bodies. We kept walking, and a while later Ellen and Nimdok fell
in behind us. They were no worse for wear.
But now Ellen walked with a limp. AM had left her that.
It was a long trip to the ice caverns, to find the canned food. Ellen kept talking
about Bing cherries and Hawaiian fruit cocktail. I tried not to think about it. The
hunger was something that had come to life, even as AM had come to life. It was
alive in my belly, even as we were in the belly of the Earth, and AM wanted the
similarity known to us. So he heightened the hunger. There is no way to describe the
pains that not having eaten for months brought us. And yet we were kept alive.
Stomachs that were merely cauldrons of acid, bubbling, foaming, always shooting
spears of sliver­thin pain into our chests. It was the pain of the terminal ulcer,
terminal cancer, terminal paresis. It was unending pain ...
And we passed through the cavern of rats.
And we passed through the path of boiling steam.
And we passed through the country of the blind.
And we passed through the slough of despond.
And we passed through the vale of tears.
And we came, finally, to the ice caverns. Horizonless thousands of miles in
which the ice had formed in blue and silver flashes, where novas lived in the glass.
The downdropping stalactites as thick and glorious as diamonds that had been made
to run like jelly and then solidified in graceful eternities of smooth, sharp perfection.
We saw the stack of canned goods, and we tried to run to them. We fell in the
snow, and we got up and went on, and Benny shoved us away and went at them, and
pawed them and gummed them and gnawed at them, and he could not open them.
AM had not given us a tool to open the cans.
Benny grabbed a three quart can of guava shells, and began to batter it against
the ice bank. The ice flew and shattered, but the can was merely dented, while we
heard the laughter of a fat lady, high overhead and echoing down and down and
down the tundra. Benny went completely mad with rage. He began throwing cans, as
we all scrabbled about in the snow and ice trying to find a way to end the helpless
agony of frustration. There was no way.
Then Benny's mouth began to drool, and he flung himself on Gorrister ...