"A cave in the ravine," Thorn replied, wondering how much to tell.
"What's your story?"
The man looked at him queerly. He trembled. Then the cracked lips
opened.
To Thorn, squatting there behind the crackling fence of flame, staring
out into a night that was black except for the occasional red hint of
eyes, it seemed that what he heard was what he had always known.
"My name was Darkington. I was a geology student. What saved me was
that I was in the mountains when the power broke loose. I guess we
all knew about the power, didn't we? It was in the air. We'd always
known that some day someone would find out what it was behind gravity
and electricity and magnetism"--he stumbled over the long words--"and
the more they tried to hush it up, the surer we were that someone had
found out. I guess they shouldn't have tried to hush it up. I guess
intelligent creatures can't back out of their destiny like that.
"But anyway I was in the mountains when the power broke loose and ate
up all the metal it could reach. Our party was laid up by the fumes,
and two of them died. Afterwards some of us started out to try to
contact other survivors, but the fumes were worse where we went and
some more died and the rest broke up. I got in with a gang that was
trying to make a go of farming just north of the volcano belt, but we
made a lot of mistakes and then came the first of the long winters and
finished off all our plans and made us realize that the weather had all
gone different, what with the exposed raw rock taking all the carbon
dioxide out of the air, and not enough green stuff left to replace
it. After that I drifted around and took up with different scavenging
gangs, but when the cannibalism started and the cats and dogs began to
get really dangerous, I headed north and made it to the glaciers. Since
then I've just hung on, like you see me."
He turned to Thorn. Already his voice was hoarse. Like nervous hunger,
his eagerness to talk had not carried him far.
Thorn shook his head, peering beyond the fire. "There must be a way,"
he said slowly. "Admittedly it would be difficult and we'd risk our
lives, but still there must be a way."
"A way?" the other asked blankly.
"Yes, back to wherever men are beginning to band together and rebuild.
South, I suppose. We might have to hunt for a long time, but we'd find
it."
There was a long silence. A curious look of sympathy came into the
other man's face.
"You've got the dreams," he told Thorn, making his croaking voice
gentle. "I get them myself, so strong that I can make myself believe
for a while that everything's the way it was. But it's just the dreams.
Nobody's banding together. Nobody's going to rebuild civilization,
unless"--his hand indicated something beyond the fire--"unless it's
those devils out there."