21. Escape
They ran blindly, without thinking.
Lots of others were running too – other centipedes, and hundreds of other underground creatures – ants and beetles and bugs, and bigger things too. Things the centis would normally hunt, or be hunted by. Now none of them were thinking about eating each other. They were just fleeing from the smoke that was drifting down the tunnels from the surface.
It was coming from a bonfire that a Hoo-Min had lit, to burn the leaves. But what do centipedes know about bonfires?
They only knew they were choking and terrified.
They ran. Their many swift legs carried them fast and far along the tunnels. They kept together. They ran instinctively along down-sloping tunnels because these were freer from smoke.
That was how they found themselves in the water-cave under the Up-Pipe.
There they stopped. They were too tired to run any more. The smoke in their breathing holes made them weak. But down here there wasn’t any smoke. At least, not yet.
“Maybe we’ll be safe here,” said Belinda.
Safe? Safe, under the Up-Pipe?
“Mama, we’re not safe here!” said Harry. “The Hoo-Mins send water down the Up-Pipe to Get us! Last time we were here, we nearly—”
Belinda turned round slowly and looked at Harry.
“The last time you were here?” she said. “The last time you were here? How many times have you been here, since I told you NEVER NEVER NEVER to come here?”
“Two times,” said Harry at last, hanging his little round head.
Belinda sank to the ground.
“You might as well have left when my other centis did,” she said sadly. “You don’t love me. You don’t listen to me. You don’t care what I say. I might as well not be your mother.”
Harry threw himself on top of her.
“Mama! That’s not true! Of course I love you, of course I care! It was just…”
But he couldn’t think what it was “just”. He couldn’t remember now why he had disobeyed his mother.
George said bravely, “It was my fault. I talked him into it,” but Belinda hardly heard him.
She just kept lying there, shaking her head sorrowfully and saying, “You came to this worst-place-in-the-world. You didn’t believe me. I was trying to keep you safe.”
Harry kept touching her gently with his front feelers, trying to tell her how sorry he was.
“Please, Mama,” he said at last, “let’s get out of here. It’s dangerous, honestly! The white-choke stuff is safer than this! At least it doesn’t drown you!”
But even as he crackled, some of the white-choke came creeping down the tunnels after them. It began to fill the water-cave.
(In case you’re interested, the Hoo-Min on the surface had been pumping smoke down a hole to kill snakes and other things, and it was spreading right through the network of tunnels. But the centipedes didn’t know that.)
Belinda jumped up on to her forty-two feet.
“We can’t go back up that tunnel!” she said. “Let’s run alongside the water-channel – maybe there are other tunnels at the other end!”
But even as she crackled, they felt that smoke was coming stealing towards them from the far darkness at the other end of the cave!
It was coming thicker and thicker, spreading itself all around them. It had even reached the bottom of the Up-Pipe and was beginning to creep upward!
22. The Living Ladder
George and Harry remembered at the same moment.
“The earth-pile! Quick!”
Belinda watched, puzzled, as the two centis began frantically pushing and shoving at the loose earth with their heads and front legs.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “We must run! We must—” But she had to stop because the smoke was getting thicker.
And suddenly she understood.
“NO!” she crackled as loudly as she could. “Not that! Not Up the Up-Pipe, I tell you, NO!”
But George and Harry took no notice. They had quite a high pile of earth now. It was nearly tall enough for George to reach the bottom rim of the Up-Pipe with his front four pairs of legs.
Not quite, though.
Now each time they shoved a bit of earth to the top of the pile, to make it higher, it rolled back down. They were not going to make it!
Suddenly Harry stopped digging and piling and looked at his mother.
“Mama,” he said. “Come here. Come quickly.”
Belinda wasn’t stupid. She saw what Harry wanted. As the white-choke got thicker, it overcame all her other fears.
She ran up the side of the earth-pile. She stood upright on the top. She easily reached the rim of the Up-Pipe.
She got a good grip on the inside of the pipe with her front eight pairs of legs.
“Climb!” she said.
Her segments were as good as a ladder. The two centis ran up her body faster than you could run upstairs.
They were inside the Up-Pipe.
Belinda’s urgent signal crackled after them: “Keep going! Hide up there and come down when it’s safe! Don’t look back, I’m all right!”
23. Up the Up-Pipe
Once they were in the pipe, they just kept climbing.
The inside of the pipe was smooth and it was wet. Every now and then, they slipped. But their sharp little feet found places to grip on to and always they kept struggling upward.
Neither of them looked back. They just kept going.
Luckily the pipe was not very long. Quite soon they were at the top. They came up through a little hole. It was a drainage hole for a shower, but they didn’t know that. The shower was in a shower-room, and the shower-room was in the home of a Hoo-Min. But they didn’t know that, either.
The two centis scrambled out. They were not standing on earth. They were standing on something smooth and hard. They listened. Nothing! They crept further from the hole and began to explore.
They ran around two sides of the small room (not that they knew about rooms). Then they found a long opening – a crack – that they could run through. They were so muddled up and frightened and tired that it was only when they were about to run through this crack that Harry thought to look around for Belinda.
She wasn’t there.
He rushed back to the hole and looked down. It was dark down there. A trickle of white-choke came up. He couldn’t see anything.
“Mama!” he crackled.
From the door-crack George signalled, “Come on!”
“I can’t! I can’t leave her!”
“If she wanted to come up, she could, easily.”
“But why would she stay down there? – MAMA!”
“She told us to keep going, that she’d be all right! She knows all the tunnels. She’s probably found another tunnel to go home by!”
“She wouldn’t leave us. I’m going back down!” said Harry.
George dashed back to the drainage hole and grabbed Harry by a back leg.
“You are not going back down there!” he said. “She helped us get up here, that’s what she wanted! She wants you to obey her. Do what you’re told for once! Come on, we must find another way to get out before a Hoo-Min comes!”
Very unwillingly, Harry took his head out of the hole and let George pull him to the door. They didn’t know it was a door, of course. They went under the bottom of it and found themselves in an enormous black-dark place. It wasn’t no-top, but the top was so far away that at first they thought they must be outside. But there was no earth under their feet and it all smelt strange and horrible.
It smelt of Hoo-Min, and Hoo-Min food, and shut-in-ness, and it scared them silly. It also mixed them up.
They ran for a long time, alongside a straight-up-hard-thing. They were trying to find a hole or any way out, but they couldn’t find one.
They were getting very, very tired.
The hard cold stuff began to hurt their feet. But that wasn’t the worst.
It was warm in that place
. And dry. And into the hearts of the two centis came a great fear. Not just that they would never escape. But that they would Dry Out.
“I think – I think we should go back down the Up-Pipe,” said Harry.
“If we can find it,” said George.
Harry stopped running.
“It’s over that way,” he said.
“No, it’s not. It’s over that way.”
George waved his feelers in the opposite direction.
They looked at each other.
“Hx,” said George slowly. “I think we’re lost.”
24. Bad Smell and Silence
They huddled together in a corner of the room.
“I hate this awful place!” said George.
“It stinks so badly I can’t smell where there’s water,” said Harry.
“Listen,” said George. “Do you hear anything?”
They both listened. It was very silent. In the earth-tunnels there are always little noises, but not here. It was very spooky, not being able to hear or see, or sense anything familiar.
“What shall we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wish Mama was here!”
“So do I!”
But she wasn’t. So they had to think of something to do by themselves.
“Let’s – let’s get away from this straight-up-hard-thing,” said George.
They turned inwards and started cautiously towards the middle of the room.
They felt terribly scared. While they’d been next to the straight-up-hard-thing, at least they had felt protected on one side. Now they could be Got-at from all around. The silence and the unknown smells added to the awful scariness.
They kept bumping into each other, not by accident. Just to feel that the other one was there.
At last George whispered, “There’s something just ahead.” He couldn’t see anything, but his feelers knew it.
They found it. It was hard and cold. It too went straight up, but it wasn’t a wall.
It was shaped like the water-post. They could walk all around it.
“It’s like – it’s like the outside of the Up-Pipe,” said Harry, which was a very clever thing for him to say because what it actually was, was a hollow metal bedleg.
“Let’s climb it,” said George. “Maybe there’s water up there.” He was beginning to feel very dry.
It was hard to climb, but no harder than the Up-Pipe. Quite soon they found themselves climbing something much easier. It was soft and loose, like lots of spiders’ webs put together, only not sticky. They scrambled up it and found themselves on a flat surface. It was made of the same soft, warm stuff.
They almost liked it. It was kinder to their feet. They ran about on it and would have even played, if they hadn’t still been so scared, and they hadn’t been feeling so dry. Besides, the smell was suddenly much stronger.
Harry ran up a hill and down the other side. The hill was even warmer. George followed. They kept running and exploring in the dark.
“Hx! Here’s a tunnel!” crackled George excitedly.
25. The Blanket Tunnel
They ran into a deep, warm tunnel. It was nothing like earth; it was made of warmweb stuff.
Still, it felt wonderful after the openness of the floor. They felt covered and safe. They ran along, one behind the other, George first. Harry, behind him, ran faster, and ran right over George so he could be in the lead.
But the smell was very, very strong in here.
Harry stopped suddenly. George bumped into him.
“What?”
“There’s something strange here.”
George came alongside and they felt the strange thing with their feelers.
“Well, it’s meat, that’s for sure,” said George.
Suddenly the two centis realised that the smell they’d been smelling was a foody smell. But it was something they’d certainly never eaten.
“I’m hungry,” said Harry.
“Me too,” said George.
“Shall we—?”
But they didn’t. Something stopped them from having a bite. They kept feeling the meaty thing, which blocked the tunnel. It rose steeply in front of them – a meatcliff. They felt and felt. George felt in one direction, Harry in the other. After a while they ran back to each other.
“This meat-cliff is only part of it, whatever it is,” said Harry.
“It’s huge,” said George.
“It goes on and on,” said Harry.
“No end to it,” said George.
“It’s got bumps and hollows,” said Harry.
“Some parts are hairy,” said George. “It must be some kind of hairy biter.”
“Maybe,” said Harry. But the most ghastly thought had come into his head. He dared not say it.
They were quiet for a moment. Then George said, “Let’s climb up it!”
Harry said slowly, “You know what I think it is?”
But George didn’t want to listen. “We can’t stay here!” he said. He began scrambling up this big warm meat-mountain.
Harry couldn’t bear to be left behind. He scrambled up after him.
26. The Meat-mountain
They climbed up a straight place that had wrinkles on it which made it easy to climb. It was the sole of a foot, but they didn’t know that.
When they got to the top, they slipped between two knobbly things. These were toes. But they didn’t know that.
They ran down a gentle slope, dodging between the stiff hairs, and came to a long thing like a branch, except that it was hairy too. Here, the roof of the warm tunnel lay right on top of them and they had to push through. But they were used to burrowing, and this was easier than that.
At the other end of the branch – which was a long way – they came to a smoother part. It was like a big flat warm meaty floor. No hairs here.
“Stop a minute,” said Harry.
“What?” panted George.
“Why is it going up and down?”
“I don’t know!”
“I do,” said Harry. “It’s breathing.”
That stopped George, but only for a moment.
“Let’s go on!”
“Grndd,” said Harry.
“Oh, what?” said George crossly. He sensed that Harry was going to say something he didn’t want to hear.
“I think – I think – we may be climbing on a Hoo-Min,” said Harry quietly.
At these dreadful words, they both crouched down in terror. But after a while, George stood up again.
“Well, it’s not doing us any harm,” he said. “Maybe it’s dead.”
“I sometimes think you’re stupid,” said Harry. “It’s not dead. It’s warm and it’s breathing. If you ask me, it’s asleep.”
That made George brave again.
“Listen,” he said. “What’s the most important thing for us right now?”
“To get home,” said Harry.
“No,” said George. “That’s second-most-important.”
“To get damp,” said Harry.
“Right,” said George. “And I smell water.”
Harry moved his feelers around. He could smell it too, now. It was rather a long way off, but he knew it was ahead of them, not behind.
Harry knew they were doing the thing Belinda had warned him never to do. He was sure they were in terrible danger. But when a centipede feels itself drying out, nothing else seems to matter except getting damp.
“All right,” he said at last. “Let’s head for it. When we’re damp, we’ll be able to think better.”
They began to run across the flat meaty floor towards the moist smell.
27. The Lovely Wet Tunnel
They passed a nice little nest on their way – just the right size for one of them to curl up in. (It was a tummy button, of course, but they didn’t know that.)
They were both very tired by now. George got into the little round nest and turned around in it several times. When he curled up tight, it just fitted hi
m.
“You can’t rest now, Grndd!” crackled Harry. “We must go—”
Suddenly there was an upheaval. Something came down hard on top of the warm-web above the little round nest. Huge hard things moved around, prodding and scratching. And the whole vast meat-mountain they were on heaved and shook.
George shot out of the nest just in time. The two centis clung together. Then, as the prodding things went on digging and rubbing at the little round nest, they scattered and ran.
They ran through a heaving forest of hairs. This was tricky for them. The hairs grew so thickly here that they had to push through. Several times their little claw feet got caught on the hairs and they had to pull free.
The hairy forest moved up and down even more than the hairless floor, even after the whole meat-mountain had stopped heaving about. And then The Noise started.
It was a rumbling, gurgling, growly sound, a little like thunder, but wetter. It happened – then stopped – then it happened again. It kept on happening.
“What’s that noise?” asked Harry fearfully.
But George didn’t even bother to answer. His cuticle was feeling drier and drier. His breathing holes were all dry around the edges. His feelers, back and front, were so dry he felt they might snap off if he bumped into them.
He could sense the water. It was getting nearer! Nothing else mattered. He made for it, and Harry, though quaking with fear, followed.
At last they came out of the forest and found a meaty ridge in front of them. There was no warm-web tunnel roof over their heads now. They were in the open.
They ran along the ridge. There was a great curly complicated bit of meat at the top. They found a tiny tunnel in the middle, and stood for a moment, peering in. Should they go down it?
But the moist smell was not coming from there. It was close by, though. They ran over a prickly slope, and suddenly, there it was – a round hole, rather like the top of the Up-Pipe only it was made of warm meat.
They stopped on the edge and peeped in. The noise was coming from here and it was very loud, but they just didn’t care.