"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 it--they 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 image--a 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
people--they 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 North--like 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 in--their 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.