And though it might be loaded with some drug or fatal herb, Sander could not have refused to finish it after that first taste, any more than he could have, in his present state of dire hunger, thrown a grilled fish from him. He finished the biscuit in two bites and eagerly bit into the second.
Oddly enough, though the morsels were small, two of them gave him a feeling of repletion, though they added to his thirst. Now he eyed the remaining untried buttons, wondering if this box also had an answer for that need.
He went at the matter methodically. Another red button gave him a bar, darker brown, but of somewhat the same consistency of the square, which smelled like baked fish. The green line produced three different wafers, unlike in shades. These he put aside with the fish bar. The yellow had only one button in working order. But after pressing it, the box offered him a small cup of some thin, shiny material that was filled to the brim with a semi-soft, pale cream substance. A touch of his tongue informed him that this was sweet. The last row—at the next to the last button—slid out to his hand a slightly larger shiny cup, a lid of the same substance creased tightly over it. When he had worked that off, Sander held a measure, not of water, but of a liquid with an aromatic odor he had never smelled before. He gulped it down though it was hot. Like the cream stuff, it was sweet to the taste but it slaked his thirst.
Carefully, he put the fish bar and the wafers inside his coat. The cream substance, for want of any spoon, he licked clean of its container.
Would the same knobs work again, providing him with extra provisions? Once more he tried the same combination of pressed knobs, but no more supplies appeared. Did it only then work once? Had there in the beginning been food delivered from each of those buttons—but now that abundance had failed through the long seasons, so only these were left—and perhaps he had exhausted the last of what the box had to offer?
The thing was a machine of some kind, of course, but how it worked he could not guess. It was certainly too small to hide, within its interior, supplies to be cooked and offered. Sander got down on the floor, looking up through the transparent surface of the table at the box’s underside. But it was entirely solid.
He was no longer hungry or thirsty, but he was still a prisoner. The stool on which he sat—if it were moved against the wall, would it give him extra height so he might reach the top of the partition?
When he tried to shove it, he found that it could only be drawn back from the vicinity of the table far enough for some one to be seated, no farther.
Sander shrugged. He suspected there were no short cuts here. It would require patience and all the wit he possessed to learn the secrets of these rooms. Rhin—if he could win an answer from the koyot, he would at least know in which direction he must advance, which of the three walls was the barrier to be crossed.
He whistled, and the sound seemed doubly loud and strong. Listening, he could hear nothing but his own faster breathing. Then—from afar—came the yelp. However, it was so echoed within the area, he could not pinpoint the direction.
Once more he began a patient and exhaustive search of the wall surface. He knew what to look for now. Only this combing of the walls was fruitless. No warm spots were to be found, even though he made that sweep twice.
Finally Sander returned to the table, flung himself on the stool and rested his elbows on the surface, which supported the box, holding his head in his hands as he tried systematically to think the problem through. There were none of those mysterious handholds on the walls, that he would swear to. He had leaped several times, trying to catch at the top of the same barriers. But so slick was the coating there, his hands slipped from any grip he tried to exert. Then—how did he get out?
For Sander was very certain that there was a way out of this room, doubtless one as cleverly hidden as those handholds had been. What was the purpose of this place? It seemed that whoever had constructed it—unless that mind was either entirely alien or warped—had intended to make it difficult for any one to travel through. The situation, Sander decided, looked like some kind of testing.
Testing—he considered that idea and concluded that such an answer fitted what small facts he knew. The purpose of the testing, unless it was to gauge the imagination or intelligence of the captive, he could not now know. But its former purpose was immaterial, it was how he might confront the problems offered him now that mattered.
So far, by trial and error and the use of what he considered good sense, he had solved two problems. He had found the first door and he had supplied himself with food and drink. Both of those answers had merely required persistence and patience. Now he was faced with that one that demanded more in the way of experimentation.
The walls were sealed, and he believed any attempt to scale them would be useless. So—what did that leave? The floor!
Again he thought that he could be better served by his sense of touch than his sight. Sander slipped from the stool to his hands and knees, and selecting the nearest corner, he searched that carefully before he started out, sweeping inch by inch across the pavement which, though not quite as smooth as the walls, was uniformly level. First he made a circuit around the base of the four walls, hoping to find at one of them the release he was convinced lay somewhere.
Failing any such discovery, he launched farther into the middle of the room. It was only when he realized that he had entirely swept the whole of that surface that he sat down, with his back to that impenetrable wall, to again consider what he termed the facts of his case.
He had entered through that wall, the one now directly opposite to him. But the hidden latch there was plainly unresponsive to any return. He had searched the three other barriers, and the floor. Nothing.
Dully he leaned his head back against the wall at his back and forced himself once more to consider that room. There were four walls, a floor, high above his head a ceiling that the walls did not reach. There was the table, the box that had fed him, two stools that could not be moved far enough to aid in any climbing.
Table—stools—box— He had explored everything else. Did the secret lie in the center of the chamber after all? Excited by hope, he got up. Neither stool could be shifted any more than his first try had proven. And the knobs—surely they were meant for food delivery, not as he first conceived, for operating some device of the walls. Now—the table.
Despite his strongest efforts, he could not shift it even a fraction of an inch. The metal legs, though they appeared to rest on the surface of the floor, might well be embedded in it for all the good his pushing and pulling did.
Table, stools, box—
Once more Sander subsided on the stool to think. The patterned colors of the knobs were before him—red, green, yellow, brown—Red, since the beginning of time had registered with his species as a signal of power—of danger. It was the red of a fire that destroyed if it could not be curbed, of the flush that anger brought to a man’s face.
Green soothed the eyes. That was the color of growing things—of life. Yellow—yellow was gold, treasure, sunshine, also a kind of power, but less destructive than red. Brown—brown was earth—a thing to be worked with, not that would work of itself.
Why was he wasting his time considering the meaning of colors? He had to find the way out—he had to!
Still, he could not break his intent stare at the rows—red, green, yellow, brown. They provided food; they were useless for his other need.
Brown—yellow of the gold hidden in the earth—green of the things that grew on it—red—of fire that could lick earth bare of life. Somehow a pattern began to weave in his mind, though he tried to drive such foolishness out, to think constructively of what he must do. But were such thoughts foolish? Fanyi would say no, he supposed, her belief in her Shaman powers being such she was able to accept without doubt strange vagaries of the mind. Sander had never believed—really believed—in anything he could not see, touch, taste, hear for himself.