The Fallen World

The Moon City - Part 6

     “Where does it go?” asked the tiny nome, looking through the opening in fascination.

     “You won’t believe it! It's incredible!"

     The young soldier told his tale in a breathless hurry, starting at the beginning and telling everything in chronological order as Shaun told him to, the older brother knowing that he would simply babble it out incoherently otherwise. Half way through, Thomas came to join them, hearing the conversation and curious to know what was going on. The others filled him in on what he'd missed.

     Matthew said nothing about the necklaces he’d found, or the one he’d brought back with him, and gave his motive for going in alone as simple curiosity, an explanation that the others accepted readily. When he’d finished, the others sat around in stunned silence. They’d expected the locked door to lead through into one or two more rooms, a corridor at most, maybe another wing of the installation, but the size of the complex Matthew had described went far beyond what they’d believed possible.

     “People!” exclaimed Thomas in disbelief. “There are people down there? Actually living here?”

     “I saw them with my own eyes,” confirmed Matthew. “Agglemonians.”

     “Agglemonians!” repeated Lirenna, “But how?”

     “They must have been cut off when the Empire fell,” speculated Matthew. “Stranded up here, just as we are.”

     “No, that doesn’t make sense,” replied Thomas. “The fall of the Empire wasn’t a sudden event. It took centuries. They would have seen the end coming and gone back home before it got too bad. Also, what they were doing up here in the first place.”

     “Perhaps they’re descended from the miners,” mused Shaun. “You say you saw an iron mine down there, Matt?”

     “Yes, that must be it,” said Matthew, but he sounded doubtful. “Still doesn’t explain why they didn’t go home, though.”

     “If it had been me, I wouldn’t have gone home,” said Lirenna. “Not if everything down there was falling apart into anarchy. I would have gone as far away from home as possible. A little island or something far away from all the trouble. Just stayed there while I waited for it to blow over.”

     “Your little island would have to have been a long way away,” said Thomas with a grin. “The Empire covered the whole continent and the rest of the world has monsters, hostile humanoid tribes... You’d have had to take a whole army with you to survive. The only really safe places would have been... Oh Gods! Of course!"

     “You mean...” said Jerry tentatively, looking around at the others to see if they were thinking the same thing. “You mean they came up here and deliberately cut themselves off, to avoid the fall of the Empire?”

     “Why not?” said Thomas. “Think about it. The observatory was already here, the mine was already here. All the problems of living up here would already have been solved. Imagine you're the head of a rich family faced with the prospect of a howling mob invading your home, stealing or destroying all your possessions and stringing you and your whole family up from the nearest tree. You’d have wanted to get out, wouldn’t you?”

     “But how could they survive up here?” protested Lirenna. “What would they eat? The miners and the observers could live on food sent up from Tharia via the teleportation cubicle, but the refugees couldn’t have done that. Having to keep coming back to Tharia for food would have defeated the whole object of coming up here.”