The colonists grew it in orchards now, and pressed and filtered it in three harvests a year. Except for the oil the fruit was good for nothing except fertilizer. It was good to have clean-burning fuel for light, instead of wiring every building with electricity, especially in the outlying settlements. It was one of Sel's favorite discoveries--particularly since there was no sign the formics had ever discovered its usefulness. Of course, the formics were at home in the dark. Sel could imagine them scuttling along in these tunnels, content with smell and hearing to guide them.
Humans had evolved from creatures that took refuge in trees, not caves, thought Sel, and though humans had used caves many times in the past, they were always suspicious of them. Deep dark places were at once attractive and terrifying. There was no chance the formics would have allowed any large predators to remain at large on this planet, particularly in caves, since the formics themselves were tunnel makers and cave dwellers.
If only the formic home world had not been obliterated in the war. What we could have learned, tracing an alien evolution that led to intelligence!
Then again, if Ender Wiggin had not blown the whole thing up, we would have lost the war. Then we wouldn't have even this world to study. Evolution here did not lead to intelligence--or if it did, the formics already wiped it out, along with any traces the original sentient natives might have left behind.
Sel bent over and squat-walked into the tunnel. But it was hard to keep going that way--his back was too old. He couldn't even lean on his stick, because it was too tall for the space, and he had to drag it along, keeping it as close to vertical as possible so the oil didn't spill out of the canister at the top.
After a while he simply could not continue in that position. Sel sat down and so did Po.
"This is not working," said Sel.
"My back hurts," said Po.
"A little dynamite would be useful."
"As if you'd ever use it," said Po.
"I didn't say it would be morally defensible," said Sel. "Just convenient." Sel handed his stick, with the lamp atop it, to Po. "You're young. You'll recover from this. I've got to try a new position."
Sel tried to crawl but instantly gave up on that--it hurt his knees too much to rest them directly on the rocky floor. He finally settled for sitting, leaning his arms forward, putting weight on them, and then scrabbling his legs and hips after him. It was slow going.
Po also tried crawling and soon gave up on it. But because he was holding the stick with the light, he was forced to return to walking bent over, knees in a squat.
"I'm going to end up a cripple," said Po.
"At least I won't have to hear your mother and father complain about what I did to you, since I don't expect to get out of here alive."
And then, suddenly, the light went dim. For a moment Sel thought it had gone out, but no--Po had stood up and lifted the stick to a vertical position, so that the tunnel where Sel was creeping along was now in shadow.
It didn't matter. Sel could see the chamber ahead. It was a natural cavern, with stalactites and stalagmites forming columns that supported the ceiling.
But they weren't the straight-up-and-down columns that normally formed when lime-laden water dripped straight down, leaving sediment behind. These columns twisted crazily. Writhed, really.
"Not natural deposits," said Po.
"No. These were made. But the twisting doesn't seem designed, either."
"Fractal randomness?" asked Po.
"I don't think so," said Sel. "Random, yes, but genuinely so, not fractal. Not mathematical."
"Like dog turds," said Po.
Sel stood looking at the columns. They did indeed have the kind of curling pattern that a long dog turd got as it was laid down from above. Solid yet flexible. Extrusions from above, only still connected to the ceiling.
Sel looked up, then took the stick from Po and raised it.
The chamber seemed to go on forever, supported by the writhing stone pillars. Arches like an ancient temple, but half melted.
"It's composite rock," said Po.
Sel looked down at the boy and saw him with a self-lighting microscope, examining the rock of a column.
"Seems like the same mineral composition as the floor," said Po. "But grainy. As if it had been ground up and then glued back together."
"But not glued," said Sel. "Bonded? Cement?"