Chapter 44 Chapter 44 Another Crypt

Richard and Nicole have more nagging problems to resolve than Frances.When they returned to the square, they found that their tent was gone.I knocked on the lid of Ai Yunniao's entrance and exit many times, but there was no response.For both of them, the situation was unsettling and its complexities were self-evident. Richard became restless and muffled.For this, he apologized to Nicole, saying it was an eccentric temperament that came from feeling unsafe after being away from the crowd.He fiddled with the computer for hours, stopping only occasionally to ask Nicole a few questions about the geography of the city of "New York."

Nicole lay on her sleeping mat, thinking about swimming across the Sea of ​​Columns.She is not very good at swimming. During training, she spent 15 minutes for a distance of 1,000 meters, and it was in a calm swimming pool!To cross the Sea of ​​Cylinders, she has to swim 5,000 meters in icy, choppy waters, accompanied by "cute" creatures such as sharks. A 20 cm tall fat man with a funny appearance interrupted her contemplation. "Will you have a drink, beauty?" Falstaff asked her. Nicole turned sideways to study the robot up close. He was drinking from a large mug in his hand, and his beard was beaded with water.He wiped his beard with his sleeve and hit his glove. "If you don't want to drink," he said with a heavy British accent, and put his hands on his hips, "well, maybe Lord John will teach you a thing or two." His little face made a strange look at her , very rude, but funny.

Nicole laughed, and Falstaff laughed too. "Not only am I witty and witty," said the robot, "I can also inspire wit and humor in other people." "You know," Nicole said to Richard, who was looking at the computer a few meters away, "if you get bored of being an astronaut, you can build children's toys and become a millionaire." Richard came and picked up Falstaff.He thanked Nicole for his compliment. "As I see it, we have three options," he said, very earnestly, "we can swim; or we can look around in 'New York' to see if we can find anything we can build a boat on; , we can still wait here until someone comes to rescue us. But I dare not be too optimistic about these three options.”

"So, what do you think is best?" "I suggest a compromise approach. If the lights are on, we can search carefully key areas of the city, especially around the three squares, to see if we can find materials for shipbuilding. We are here to probe a Rama , or two Rama days. If things don't turn around, we'll just have to swim across. I don't have much confidence that someone will come to the rescue." "I think that's a good idea. But I want to do one thing first. It goes without saying that we're running out of food. Before we start exploring, should we try to get that melon up?"

Richard agreed with her that it was wise to get enough food first.But he didn't like the idea of ​​using surgical stitches again. "You're lucky," he said, "not only that the thread didn't break, it didn't slip off your belt, however, it did cut completely into your glove in two places and nearly cut off your belt. " "Do you have any other ideas?" Nicole asked. "The mesh material is obviously available," replied Richard. "If we can cut it, it will be very useful. Then, I go down the well, and you don't have to worry about it..."

"You're wrong," Nicole interrupted him, laughing. "In any case, Richard, this is not the time to be brave. It's a good idea to use that grid. But you're too heavy." Now, if something happens, I can't pull you out." She patted him on the shoulder lightly, "Of course I don't want to embarrass you, but I'm actually an athlete." Richard feigned hurt pride and said, "But the stories say that no matter what happens, it's always the men who do the hard work and show dexterity and strength. Don't you remember those cartoon fairy tales?"

Nicole smiled tenderly: "Yes, my dear," she said softly, "but you're not Big Eyes, and I'm not Olive Oyer." "I don't know if I can take it," he said, shaking his head vigorously, "At the age of 34, I realized that I don't have 'big eyes'... What a blow to my self-image! ' He hugged Nicole gently. In the open space of the square, they lay side by side on sleeping mats, their minds were full of their own worries, and they couldn't fall asleep. Nicole heard Richard turning over and asked in a low voice, "Are you still awake?"

"Yes," he replied, "I've been counting the characters in Shakespeare's plays by heart, over a hundred, and I haven't fallen asleep." Nicole raised herself on one elbow, and facing her companion, said: "Tell me, Richard, where did your interest in Shakespeare come from? I know you were brought up in Stratford, but It's hard for me to imagine how an engineer could be like you, who loves computers and numbers and those small parts, but is also obsessed with a playwright." "My therapist told me it was a form of escapist paranoia." After a few seconds, Richard replied, "Because I don't like the real world and the people in it, I made up another world. It's just that I didn't create it from scratch, but took advantage of a genius' creation and expanded it into a wonderful illusion."

"Shakespeare is my God," he added after a pause, "when I was nine or ten, I stood in the park by the Avon, next to those theaters, and Hamlet, Ford Statues of Stafford, Lady Macbeth, and Prince Henry. I used to be there all afternoon, weaving out follow-up stories to characters I liked. with my father... I never knew what he was going to do..." "But I don't think you want to hear this..." Richard suddenly stopped his narrative, "Everyone has their own childhood trauma, I should talk about something else." "We should talk about how we really feel," Nicole replied, and she was a little surprised that she would do so. "Talk about things you never tell anyone," she added softly.

Richard turned his head, looked at her, and slowly held out his hand.She wrapped her hands gently around his fingers. "My father worked for British Railways," he said. "He was a very intelligent man, but he was very awkward with people. After graduating from Sussex University, he was looking for a career that suited him. The world Too tough, as the economy recovers from the 'Great Turmoil'... "When my mother told him that she was pregnant, he was terrified of his responsibility. He wanted to find a stable, secure job. He had always been good at the exams. Exam marks, so he became a dispatcher at Stratford station.

“He hated the profession because it was boring, repetitive and unchallenging for a man with an education. My mother told me that when I was very young, he applied for a few jobs and was rejected by his clumsy The interview performance was botched. Then, as I grew up, he didn't try again and just grieved, complained and drank at home and made everyone around him miserable." There was a long silence.Richard looked miserable.Nicole squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm sorry, too." Richard's voice was a little husky. "I'm just a kid with an unbelievable sense of wonder and wonder at life. If I come home and show great enthusiasm for something new I'm learning, Or if something happened at school, my dad would just rant and rant. "When I was 8, I came home from school early in the afternoon and somehow got into an argument with my dad. He wasn't at work that day and drank as usual. Mum went shopping. Now I remember I don't know why I quarreled with him. It must be a small thing. I told him that he was wrong. When I kept arguing with him, he suddenly hit me on the nose hard. I fell to the corner, the bridge of the nose Broken, bleeding profusely. From then until I was 14 years old, I guarded myself carefully and never went into the house until I was sure that my mother was home." Nicole imagines an adult beating an 8-year-old. "How can a man break the bridge of his own child's nose?" she found it incredible. "I've always been very shy," Richard continued, "and decided that I inherited my father's gregarious personality, so I didn't have many friends my own age, but I was eager for people to connect with each other." He stared blankly. I stared at Nicole, stunned, and suddenly remembered the topic he was talking about, "I regard the characters in Shakespeare's plays as my friends, and I read his plays in the park every afternoon, immersed in the The world he created. I can even recite whole acts of his plays. When I stroll home, I talk to Juliet and Ariel." It was not difficult for Nicole to guess what happened after Richard, she thought: "I can guess what happened after that. Your youth was lonely, clumsy, and emotionally repressed; obsession with Shakespeare saved you from your pain .Those theaters around your house, and you see your friends, and they’re on stage.” Nicole felt a surge of excitement, and she leaned over and kissed Richard lightly on the cheek. "Thank you for telling me that," she said.Just after dawn, they came to the grid. Nicole was surprised to find that the net rope she had cut to free the Aiyun bird had been repaired.The whole grid is like brand new. "Obviously, weaving creatures have been here," speculated Richard.After seeing so many incredible things, he was no longer surprised. They cut a few lengths of net rope and headed back to the "barn".On the way, Richard tried the elasticity of the rope and found that it could be stretched by 15%. Although it was slow, it could return to its original length by itself.The time required for recovery varies significantly with the degree of stretching.When they got back together, Richard began to study the molecular structure of the rope material. Not wanting to waste time, Nicole tied one end of the rope to a low object outside the "barn" and began lowering herself down the well.It was Richard's job to make sure there was nothing wrong, and the rope would be useful in case of an emergency. Going down to the bottom of the well, Nicole recalled how desperate she was down here a few days ago.She couldn't help shaking.But she soon turned her attention to her mission.She inserted medical probes deep into the melon at both ends to use as makeshift handles, then clipped both handles to the backpack.It was very neat and smooth when going up. "Okay!" She smiled at Richard and handed him the melon. "Now we should continue with our plan A?" "Fine!" he replied, "now we know where the next 10 meals are coming from." "Nine meals." Nicole corrected him with a smile, "After seeing that you had two meals, I have re-estimated and adjusted." Richard and Nicole left the "barn" and walked briskly towards the square to the west, searching the open space back and forth.They went one by one through the narrow alleys nearby, but found nothing with which to build a ship. Richard did come across the centipede creature.While they were searching a square, a centipede entered the square and crawled straight across.Richard tried various methods, including lying in front of it, hitting it with a backpack, etc., trying to stop it, but all failed.When Richard came back to Nicole, a little dejected, she smiled at him. "That centipede is absolutely useless," he reassured himself. "Where the hell is it going? It doesn't have anything. I don't think it has any sensors. It just wanders around." "The advanced technology of an extraterrestrial species is indistinguishable from magic." She remembered a sentence he often said, so she gave it back to him. "But that damned centipede isn't magic," he replied, a little annoyed at Nicole's sneer, "it's just a fool." "So what are you going to do if it stops?" Nicole asked. "What? Of course I'll check it. What do you think?" "I think we'd better concentrate on looking elsewhere," she replied. "I don't know how a centipede will help us get off the island." "Okay then," said Richard suddenly. "Obviously our plan was wrong. We won't find anything on the ground. These creatures must be cleaning here regularly. We should find another one here." A hole, like the burrow of the Aiyun bird. We can scan with multispectral radar to see if there is any place that is not solid ground." Although the second hole was less than 200 meters away from the center of the West Square, it took them a long time to find it. At first Richard and Nicole searched the square, and after an hour they were sure it was all solid ground.So they expanded the search area, and finally at the end of a dead-end alley, a place surrounded by tall buildings on three sides, and in the middle of the road, they finally found another cover. It has no camouflage at all, and it is the same size as the Aiyun bird's cave: 10 meters long and 6 meters wide.