Tunnels 02 - Deeper

  Sarah, her head hanging with fatigue, managed a glance at the man. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal massively powerful forearms, and he was deep-chested and stocky, like many of the men of the Colony. He wore a long black rubber apron upon which was centered a small white cross insignia. His scalp was almost clean-shaven, with the odd stubble of white hair beginning to show through, and his enormous brow overhung two perfectly pale blue but rather small eyes. With similar coloration to Sarah herself, he was a "pure stock," to use the local term for the albinos, the descendants of some of the original founders of the Colony. He, like the policemen, had acted very deferentially toward Rebecca, but now he kept stealing glances at Sarah as she trailed listlessly behind him.

  He led her up a flight of stairs and through several corridors, their footsteps clacking on the polished stone floors. The walls were plain and unadorned, interrupted only by the numerous dark iron doors, all of which were closed. He came to one of these and swung it open before her. The stone floor continued in, and she saw that a bed mat lay in the corner under a slit window set high into the wall. There was a white enamel bowl beside her bed, filled with water, and by it were a similarly enameled mug and some slices of pennybun fungus, stacked neatly on a plate. The simplicity and bareness of the room gave it the feel of a monastery or some sort of religious retreat.

  She stood on the threshold but did not make a move to go in.

  The man opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it. He did this several times, like a beached fish, and then seemed to summon up enough courage.

  "Sarah," he said, ever so gently, as he inclined his head toward hers.

  She looked slowly up at him.

  He checked up and down the corridor, making sure no one was close enough to overhear. "I shouldn't speak to you like this, but… don't you recognize me?" he asked.

  She crinkled her eyes as if trying to focus on him, and then a startled look of recognition came over her.

  "Joseph…" she said in a whisper. They were of the same age, and as teenagers had been close. She had lost contact with him when his family had fallen on hard times and been forced to relocate to the West Cavern, to work the fields there.

  He gave an uneasy grin, at odds with his great ham of a face and strangely all the more tender for it.

  "You should know everyone understands why you went, and… we…" He fumbled for the right words. "We never forgot you, some of us… me."

  A door slammed somewhere in the building, and he glanced anxiously over his shoulder.

  "Thank you, Joseph," she said as she touched his arm, then shambled into the room.

  Joseph muttered something and closed the door softly behind her, but none of it registered with Sarah, who dropped her bag on the floor and crumpled onto the bed mat. She stared at the burnished stone of the wall where it joined the floor, seeing in it the outlines of many fossil forms, mostly ammonites and other bivalves, their subtle traces appearing as if some diving designer had drawn them in with a china marker.

  As she tried to organize her different thoughts and emotions into some semblance of order, the massed remains of the fossils, caught for all time in their frozen attitudes, almost made sense to her. It was as if she suddenly understood them, as if she could read a pattern in their chaotic arrangement, a secret key, which helped to explain everything. But then the moment of clarity passed and, in the abounding silence, she drifted into a dead slumber.

  19

  The first rays of the sun tipped over the horizon, suffusing a narrow strip of sky with a dawn palette of reds and oranges. Within minutes, its nascent light was stretching low across the rooftops, pushing back the night and marking the start of a new day.

  Below in Trafalgar Square, a trio of black cabs jostled away from traffic lights as a lone cyclist weaved recklessly between them. Beyond the far corner of the square, a convoy of red double-deckers came into sight, pulling up at the bus stops. But very few passengers could be seen getting on or off at the time in the morning. The rush hour was yet to come.

  "The early bird catches the worm," Rebecca laughed mirthlessly, scanning the sidewalks below as she picked out the odd pedestrian walking there.

  "I think not of them as worms; they are worse than senseless things," the old Styx proclaimed, contemplating the scene with his glittering eyes, which were every bit as alert as Rebecca's.

  In the growing light, his face was so pale and unyielding it could have been carved from a block of ancient ivory. And with his ankle-length leather overcoat and his hands clasped behind his back, he resembled a conquering general as he stood by Rebecca on the very edge of the roof of Admiralty Arch. Both of them showed not the slightest fear at the sheer drop immediately before them.

  "There are those who would oppose us and the measures we are to take," the old Styx said, still regarding the square. "You have begun to cleanse the Deeps of renegades, but it does not end there. There are reactionary factions both here on the surface and in the Colony, in the Rookeries, of whom we have been far too tolerant for far too long. You have brought your late father's plans forward and, now when they are so finely poised, we cannot allow a fly in the ointment."

  "Agreed," Rebecca said, giving no clue that the decision had been taken there and then to kill several thousand people.

  The old Styx closed his eyes, not because the gathering Topsoil light bothered him, but because he had been struck by a thought that was tiresome.

  "That Burrows child…"

  Rebecca opened her mouth to speak, but held her tongue as the old Styx continued.

  "You and your sister did well to pull in the Jerome woman and neutralize her. Your father was not one for unfinished business, either. Both of you have his instinct," the old Styx said, so softly that it could have been construed as affection.

  His tone resumed its usual hardness. "That being as it is, we have scotched the snake, not killed it. Will Burrows is contained for the moment, but he may yet become a false idol, a figurehead, for our enemies. They might seek to use him in their opposition of us and the measures we intend to take. He cannot be allowed to continue to roam unchecked in the Interior. He must be flushed out and stopped." Only then did the old Styx swivel his head slowly toward Rebecca, who continued to gaze down on the scene below. "And the boy might yet piece together what we're doing and sideline our plans. This is to be avoided… at all costs," he stressed.

  "It will be dealt with," Rebecca assured him with unerring conviction.

  "Make sure of it," the old Styx said and released his hands from behind his back, swinging them in front of him and clapping them together.

  Rebecca took her cue from his gesture. "Yes," she said, "we should get under way." Her long black coat billowed open in the breeze as she half turned to the troop of Styx waiting quietly behind her.

  "Let me see one," she ordered as she left the roof edge and strode imperiously toward the rank of shadowy men. There were perhaps as many as fifty of them in a perfectly straight line, and from this a single Styx snapped obediently to life, breaking from the formation. He kneeled down to slip his gloved hand under the lid of one of a pair of large wicker baskets that he and every one of the Styx on the rooftop had by their feet. From the basket came the soft sounds of cooing. He plucked out a pure white dove and closed the lid again. As he passed the dove to Rebecca, it tried to flap its wings, but she took it firmly in both hands.

  She held the bird on its side to inspect its legs. There was something around both of them, as if the bird had been ringed, but these were more than mere metal bands. Made from an off-white fabric, they sparkled dimly as the light caught them. Each band had tiny spheres embedded in it, which had been designed to degrade upon several hours' exposure to ultraviolet light and shed their load. The sun itself was the timing mechanism, the trigger.

  "They are ready?" the old Styx asked as he came alongside Rebecca.

  "They are," another Styx confirmed from farther down the line.

  "Excellent," the old Sty
x said as he began to stroll along the rank of men, each one melding with the next in the weak light as they stood shoulder to shoulder, all wearing identical black leather greatcoats and breathing apparatus.

  "My brothers," the old Styx addressed them. "We're done with hiding. It's time to take what is rightfully ours." He was silent for a moment, allowing his words to sink in. "Today will be remembered as the first day of a glorious new epoch in our history. It is a day that will mark our eventual return to the surface.

  Drawing to a halt, he punched his fist into the palm of his hand. "In the last hundred years we have made the Topsoilers atone for their sins by unleashing the germules they call influenzas. The first was in the summer of nineteen eighteen." He gave a sour laugh. "The poor fools called it the Spanish Flu, and it took millions of them to their graves. Then we gave them further demonstrations of our power in nineteen fifty-seven and nineteen sixty-eight with the Asian and Hong Kong variants."

  He punched his palm with even greater force, the slap of his leather gloves resounding around the rooftop.

  "But those epidemics amount to nothing more than common colds compared to what is to come. The Topsoilers' souls are rotten to the very core — their morality is that of the insane — and they ruin our promised lands with their excessive consumption and greed."

  "Their time is drawing to a close, and the Heathen shall be purged," he growled like a wounded bear, scanning from one end of the rank to the other before he began to walk again, his boot heels clicking on the lead flat of the roof.

  "For today we test a reduced strain of Dominion, our holy plague. And through the fruits of our labors, we will confirm that it can be spread throughout this city, throughout this country, and then to the rest of the world." He raised his hand, splaying his fingers at the sky. "Once our birds take flight, the sun will see to it that air currents carry our message to the evil masses, a message that will be written in blood and pus across the face of this earth."

  Reaching the last man in the rank, he swung around to return down it again, silent until he neared the midpoint of the line.

  "So my comrades, the next time we find ourselves here, our cargo will indeed be deadly. Then our foes, the Topsoilers, will be laid low, just as it is decreed in the Book of Catastrophes. And we, the true heirs to the earth, shall regain what is rightfully ours."

  He came to a dramatic halt and addressed the Styx in a lower, more intimate tone. "To work."

  There was a flurry of activity as the troop got ready.

  Rebecca took over. "On my mark… three… two… one… go!" she commanded, pitching her dove high into the air. The Styx immediately heaved open the baskets by their feet and the birds took to the wing, a white swarm flapping from between the amassed men and lifting from the rooftop.

  Rebecca watched her dove for as long as she could, but the hundreds of others caught up with it, and it was soon lost in the flock, which seemed to linger for a second over Nelson's Column before dispersing in all directions, like a cloud of pale smoke fanned by the wind.

  "Fly, fly, fly!" Rebecca called out after them, laughing.

  Part Three

  Drake And Elliott

  20

  "It's just terrible," Chester kept saying over and over again as the enormity of what had happened sank in. "But there wasn't anything we could do. He didn't have a pulse."

  Chester was remonstrating with himself, laden with a mounting sense of guilt. He believed that he was partly to blame for Cal's death. Perhaps, by being so critical of the boy, he had goaded him on, provoking him into being so reckless and entering the cavern by himself.

  "We couldn't go back in…" Chester babbled on to himself.

  He was rocked to the very core. He'd never seen anybody die, not before his very eyes. It took him back to the time he had been in the car with his father and they'd driven past the aftermath of a bloody motorcycle accident. He didn't know if the twisted body by the roadside was dead — and he'd never found out. But this was different. This was someone he knew, who had died while he'd actually been watching. One minute Cal was there, the next he was just a limp body. A dead body. It was so absolute, and so brutally final; it was as if he'd been talking to someone on the telephone and they'd been cut off, never to speak again. Chester just couldn't come to terms with it.

  After a while he lapsed into silence and he and Will walked side by side, their boots scuffling in the dust. Oblivious to his surroundings, Will placed one foot mechanically in front of the other like a sleepwalker, as the canal continued for mile after monotonous mile.

  Chester watched him with concern. If Will didn't pull through this, he didn't know how they would be able to go on. The Deeps weren't the sort of place that gave you any leeway; you had to have all your wits about you if you wanted to stay alive. The grim spectacle of Cal's demise chillingly confirmed that hard truth. All Chester could do now was keep them on course by the side of the canal, which had altered direction and seemed to be taking them directly toward one of the flickering points of light. With every hour, the light grew brighter and brighter, like a guiding star. Guiding them to what, he didn't know.

  * * * * *

  On the second day, they came close enough to the light to make out the unsteady illumination it was shedding on the curving rock wall around it. They were evidently at the limits of the Great Plain. As Chester crept stealthily, Will just ambled along behind, not giving his surroundings the slightest attention.

  They arrived at the source of the light. A metal arm, about a foot and a half long, sprouted from the rock wall with a blue-tinged flame dancing at its end. It hissed and spluttered in the breeze as if disapproving of the boys' presence there. Under this gaslight, the canal continued undeterred, straight into an opening in the wall so perfectly round that it had to be man-made, or at least Coprolite-made. But there was no ledge, or anything else that would afford them a way beside it.

  "Well, that's that," Will articulated miserably. "We're snookered."

  He backed away from the canal, totally disregarding a small stream issuing from the wall beside it. Water was trickling out of a fissure at about chest height and had worn a smooth groove down the cavern wall. It ran into an overflowing basin of water-polished rock. From there it flooded over the lip and down several small plateaus until it drained into the canal. The passage of water had left a brownish stain around its path, but this didn't deter Chester from sampling a mouthful.

  "It's good. Why don't you try some?" he called over to Will. It was the first time he'd attempted to speak directly to him in nearly a day.

  "Nope," Will replied morosely, flopping down on the ground with a forlorn sigh. He hugged his knees to his chest, rocking gently, and lowered his head so his face was hidden from Chester.

  His frustration building to the bursting point, Chester resolved to snap his friend out of it, and stomped over to him.

  "OK, Will," he said in a level, carefully controlled voice, so much so that it didn't sound natural at all and alerted Will to what was coming next. "We'll just sit here until you make up your mind you want to do something again. Take your time. I don't care if it's days or even weeks. Take as long as you want. That's fine with me." He blew through his lips. "In fact, if you want to just stay here until we rot, that's fine with me, too. I'm very sorry about Cal, but it doesn't change the reason why we're here… why you asked for my help to find your dad." He didn't speak for a moment, hovering over Will. "Or have you just forgotten about him?"

  The last sentence had the effect of a jab to the stomach. Will gasped, but still he didn't raise his head.

  "Suit yourself," Chester snapped at his friend, then retired a short distance, where he lay down. He didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard Will talking. It came like words in a dream, and Chester realized he must have nodded off.

  "…you're right, we must keep going," Will was saying.

  "Huh?"

  "Let's be on our way." Will got briskly to his feet and went directly to the
trickling stream to give it a cursory investigation. Then he began to study the opening where the canal passed into the cavern wall, shining his lantern just inside the entrance, in the hard shadows where the gaslight didn't penetrate. Nodding to himself, he focused his attention on the vertical rock face above it.

  "We're all right," he announced, returning to where he'd left his backpack and shrugging it onto his shoulders.

  "Huh? We are what? "

  "I think it's clear," was Will's inscrutable response.

  "Yeah, clear as mud!"

  "Well, are you coming or not?" he harshly asked Chester, who stared at his friend, suspicious of the sudden change that had come over him. Will was already by the side of the canal, clipping his lantern onto his shirt pocket. Ha faced the wall for a few seconds, then began to heave himself up it. Finding foot- and hand-holds, he climbed in an arc that took him under the spluttering gaslight but over the entrance of the slow-moving canal, until he was safely on the opposite side.

  "Not the first time that's been done," he declared. He called to Chester, still on the other bank: "Come on, don't just stand there. It's a piece of cake — not difficult to get across. Someone's chiseled out some grips."

  Chester looked indignant and impressed in equal measures. His jaw dropped, as if he was about to say something, but he thought better of it, muttering only, "Business as usual."

  * * * * *

  Although Will wasn't following any discernable path, he now seemed to be so convinced they were going in the right direction that it was Chester tagging along after him again. Marching swiftly, they moved deeper into the featureless expanse, not encountering any other landmarks, until they eventually arrived at a place where the floor became looser and began to gradually ascend. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the canopy above their heads was also increasing in height but, with every step the boys took, the winds around them seemed to be blowing with much greater force.