XII + 

The Fate of Templeton + 

Whatever interest might lie in the spectacle of Titanic conflict which we had witnessed, it was of little direct assistance to our present purpose. It showed that the Dwellers might be sufficiently occupied by more important matters to be unlikely to give much attention to our escape or capture, but we had known that already. If the moment were propitious, there were the greater reason for acting swiftly, and when we found that there was nothing further to be gained from the one volume which we had been able to interrogate, we resolved to cut the knot of our difficulty by a systematic inquiry, from corridor to corridor, for any record of the Vivisection Department, which had been mentioned as dealing with one, at least, of those for whom I was searching. + 

Even then, our inquiry might have been long and difficult, had we not obtained an immediate response from an index, which was almost beside us, at the entrance to the library, from which point we had resolved to commence our inquiry. + 

It replied, “The 92nd on the 14th row, in the Hall of Dead Books, contains a plan of the Level of the Inquirers, which includes the Bureau of Prehistoric Zoology, and the Places of Vivisection. The plan is that of the 28th of the Lower Levels, below the Division. The 73rd book on the 2nd tier on the left-hand side of the 83rd corridor, contains an account of all vivisections during the last five moons.” + 

We went at once to the latter book, as it was the nearer, and it was here that we gained the first sight⁠—at least in picture⁠—of one of those whose absence had brought me on this strange adventure. + 

After we had inquired through much detail, sometimes fascinating in its enigmatic suggestions, sometimes repellent in its exhibitions of what appeared to me to be a very callous brutality, we were shown a table, by the side of which, as I thought at the first glance, a naked man stood with a pair of pincers in his right hand, in which something of the size of a large rat was squirming. + 

There was a row of five large jars upon the table before him, into the first of which he plunged the object of his attention, holding it immersed for about half-a-minute, and withdrawing it in a half-drowned condition. + 

I saw it clearly as it came out, and recognised the red hair of Templeton with a shock of horror. + 

Instantly, the proportions of the room were changed by my knowledge of the identity of the victim. I recognised in the naked man the giant form of a Dweller, and became aware of the huge size of the row of jars before him. + 

I watched Templeton, now hanging limply in the pincers, plunged into a second, third, and fourth of these jars, being raised to the level of the operator’s eyes, and inspected carefully after each immersion. But the fourth inspection was more prolonged than the others, and after making it the Dweller turned to another table, and laid his victim, still in the grip of the pincers, upon a yellow disc that was let into its surface. As the limp body touched the metal it was galvanised into an activity that kicked and writhed with a furious impotence. Lifted again, it was plunged into a globe of light of a white intensity, against which its body showed transparent, every organ, every internal movement in lung, and artery, and intestine, being clearly indicated. + 

It appeared that this test had confirmed the unfavourable indications of the fourth immersion, for the body was now withdrawn from the light, and thrown carelessly into a mesh-sided tray upon the floor, in which a number of nonhuman creatures of unfamiliar kinds were already heaped and squirming. The Dweller pressed a stud with his foot, and the tray slid from the room. I did not follow it further. + 

I felt almost physically sick with repulsion from the brutality which I had witnessed, as I waited while my companion’s mind continued to receive the picture. + 

After a short time, she broke connection also and addressed herself to me. + 

“We now know,” she thought, “the fate of at least one of your companions, and it must be a cause of satisfaction to you that you have pursued your inquiries successfully, and that you are relieved of further trouble by the fact that he had a body which was not worth preservation.” + 

“I felt sure that they were about to destroy him,” I answered, “and could not endure to look longer. How did they do it?” + 

She showed me an instant’s picture of the scene as her mind had followed it. I saw his still-living body in the jaws of half-a-dozen pig-like animals to whom it had been thrown for their fattening. My companion recognised the repulsion that disturbed my mind with a puzzled wonder, and a sympathetic curiosity. + 

“I wish,” she thought, “that I could understand the feeling which moves you.” + 

“I wish,” I answered, “that I could understand how you can reject all violence as evil, and yet condone such actions.” + 

“I condone nothing,” she replied, with a friendly coolness which tended to reduce the temperature of my own thoughts. “I am not concerned to defend or condemn. I am merely curious of your own repulsion. Your fellow-primitive introduced a body which is diseased or defective. It is so seriously so that the Dwellers, after a patient examination, do not think it either fit to continue, or to be used for their own food, and they therefore use it for the fattening of healthier creatures. What better could they do? If you identify yourself with him, should you not be grateful for the trouble to which they went?” + 

I paused a moment, knowing that the query required something better than a random answer, and the pause lengthened to silence. + 

Feeling might still remain, but judgment answered too plainly. + 

I had forgotten once again that we were alien and inferior creatures, of an uninvited coming. Did not my own race feed one living animal to another in their zoological reservations? Would they have taken the preliminary trouble to examine the body of such a creature? When they decided to reduce the number of the tame and trusting doves in their capital city, had they sufficient care or intelligence to select the weaker or diseased for destruction? + 

Did they not kill and torture countless thousands of other creatures, even including those that they had bred and trained to friendship, to gratify curiosity or to gain some possible advantage to themselves in combating the diseases that their vices earned? + 

Could that which I had seen be properly described as vivisection of any kind? Such things might be; and I had little confidence that the Dwellers would hesitate to practise such infamies, but, in fact, I had not seen them. + 

I answered simply, “I was unreasonable, and you have taught me wisdom, as you do so often.” + 

“I am less sure of that,” she answered doubtfully, “for there is something in your mind by which my own is confused and baffled. I can neither understand it, nor be sure that you are entirely in error. We stand aloof from violence, as you do not, nor do the Dwellers. But you have two standards of judgment. You regard your own violence to others as more tolerable than is theirs to you. This to me appears as though you make assertion of your own inferiority. But I do not know.⁠ ⁠… Shall we inquire further as to the fate of your second friend?” + 

“Will you do it for me,” I answered, “I do not wish to see it.” + 

She assented mutely, and after a short interval she reported the success of her investigation. + 

“Your second friend is alive and happy. His body has been cleaned and improved. I cannot discover more, as there is no record of the intentions of those who are dealing with him, but only of the facts which are past already. But I think you would do well to leave him, and inquire no further. Shall we not return to the surface together, where you may find some place of hiding, and perhaps of a permanent security?” + 

“I cannot do that,” I answered definitely. “I could not return to say that I have learnt that he is living, and made no effort to reach him.” + 

My thought reacted more sharply to her suggestion because I feared the adventure as I had not done previously, and was aware that, should I hesitate, my cowardice might be the harder to conquer. “Did you ascertain how far distant he has been taken?” + 

I suppose she recognised the finality of my decision, for she made no further protest, but answered quietly. + 

“He appears to be immediately beneath us, though at a great depth. But we shall have to inquire of the other book of which we were told, to learn the way by which we may reach him.” + 

“Let us do it quickly,” I replied, for the thought of Templeton writhing in the clutch of the giant pincers, while the Dweller gazed upon him and decided, coolly and judicially, upon his destruction, would not leave my mind, and I was eager to be diverted by action. + 

We found the Hall of the Dead Books at the farther end of that in which we were. The dead books were a livid white, and, for the most part, the little hands had withered and fallen. They lay round them in a dry dust, or hung shrivelling from those that had not been long dead. + 

We found the book we sought without difficulty, and though it did not react to our queries with the urgent impatience of the living, its responses were mechanically prompt and accurate. + 

I do not tell all that we learnt as we searched the pages of this book, such as the maps of the reverse surface of the interior, and stranger things on which I am entirely silent, because we did not actually see them, and they are too incredible to be lightly added to a narrative which must appear fictitious, in any case, to the obtuse and unimaginative. It is not everyone who can realise that the human mind has no real power of invention, nor that it is impossible to add to that which is infinite. + 

We went down in vision for five hundred miles by one continuing spiral, seeing glimpses of inexplicable things on many levels, until we came to a place in which were two colonies of the older Dwellers, each attempting to postpone the weariness of years by activities of the mind, and who were known (by the nearest synonyms in our language) as the Seekers of Wisdom, and the Seekers of Science. I write science rather than knowledge because the impression I received was similar to that which has degraded the use of the former word, so that its implication is of the assertion of speculative theories with a dogmatism equal to that of the theologians whom it despises, and with a lack of imagination and spiritual perception which insures that scientific handbooks of one decade become the derision of the next. + 

We ascertained and memorised very carefully the passages by which the descending spiral could be reached, and the ways which must be taken when we left it. We could not discover whether they were the channels of crowded traffic, or lonely as the dark tunnels which we had already penetrated, but we had gained much in having learnt the way by which we must go, and our next task was to find an exit from the library. + 

We should have pursued this purpose, and might have continued the adventure together, and completed it successfully, had we not been drawn aside to observe a movement among the books at the farther side of the library. + 

It was foolish in itself, and disastrous in its consequence, but the sight which drew us was sufficiently curious to be some excuse for our error. + 