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on thick foam rubber mattresses encased in plastic sheeting. The faces looked dirty and tired, but there was a wild flash in the eyes as in people just awakened. And then a brief pause. You’ll find my book on sale in the lobby, along with information on guided tours for a day or more. Christoph switched on the music and hurried out of the cave, to be the first at the book table.
    A man of Christoph’s age flicked desultorily through the desk copy of the book. Beside him was a slim woman who seemed a lot younger and had something elfin about her. Both were wearing fleece jackets. The man casually asked Christoph if he had ever been cave diving. Not bothering to wait for a reply, he volunteered that he’d been in cave complexes all over the world. His voice had an aggressive tone that Christoph had quite often heard among extreme sports aficionados. Sometimes he had the impression they only turned up at his talks to tell him about their experiences, and to measure themselves against him and challenge him. After the break he would show pictures from parts of the caves not open to the general public, Christoph said. He felt a little ashamed of the way he rose to the bait. The man didn’t react, and carried on flicking through the book. He asked if Christoph had ever been to the caves at Gunung Mulu in Malaysia. An elderly gentleman stepped up to the table. He bought the book without looking at it, and asked Christoph to sign it for him with a personal dedication. The couple stepped aside.
    Just before the end of the break, Christoph noticed them again. They were still by the table. The man was looking across at him and saying something to his girlfriend. There was a mocking expression on his face.
    And now, said Christoph, a little hammily, let’s explore Nirvana! This was a cave system that was hard to get to and that had only ever been seen by maybe a dozen or so people. He brought up the images from the darkness and slow-faded them, just the way they had flashed up in the cave and slowly faded on the retina: a candle stalagmite, a few needle-thin stalactites, gardens of karst that had grown up in the darkness since the last ice age, only to be seen in a single brief shock of light thousands of years later. Shades of brown, white, yellow, a mercury glimmer of damp-looking surfaces.
    Each time Christoph saw the photographs, a shiver went through him. He felt the pressure of the masses of rock, the fear of the complete indifference of the mountain, that with a tiny movement could have squashed all life out of him. He had set up the flashes, loaded the camera, the practiced moves had something calming about them that dispelled his feeling of paralysis. But the fear remained. It would always be there.
    There must be thousands of caves like these, said Christoph, where no man has ever set foot, where no man ever will set foot. There is a world beneath us in the rock, a world full of marvels and secrets. He stopped, he didn’t know what else to say. Words weren’t enough, pictures weren’t enough either. You had to have been thereyourself, and mapped out the senseless beauty. All that could be heard was the sound of the projector, the humming of the ventilator, and the clattering of the carousel that pushed one slide after the other in front of the beam.
    When you go back outside, it’s not the sun or the colors that overwhelm you, it’s the smells of the forest, the smells of life, of things growing and rotting. The cave has no smell. The last shot brought the audience back to the surface, it showed a picturesque little forest lake that was fed from the inside of the mountain. Each year thousands of tons of water-soluble limestone are carried out, said Christoph, the water works day and night, hour after hour, enlarging the cave all the time. He switched off the projector and microphone and turned on the light. People applauded.
    After the talk, a couple of the listeners went up to him and asked questions and inquired