by Konig, Artor
Chastened, I retreated from the roof. A glass of hot milk and a handful of biscuits went a good way towards assuaging the cold. Confused and shaken by conflicting emotions, I curled myself up under my eiderdown, trying to get the cold and the dark fear out of my bones.
12. Caves
The wild cold persisted right through the dark hours, powerful and angry, the wind blew without let. Midnight came and went with me still fighting with dark thoughts and the merciless chill. It occurred to me to toddle along and fetch myself a hot water bottle or even to have a hot shower. But I had reached the point where I dared not leave the slight warmth of my blankets. For the first time the chill of the Crag made its way right into my room; a chill I had never even suspected before that night. I listened, hearing only the eternal breath of the storm; I was cut off from those homely sounds that meant so much. I poked my nose from beneath the eiderdown, peering across the limitless expanse of the round bed at the comlink. Only the green digital display was visible; one hundred hours and a handful of minutes.
Resignedly I tucked my head back into the slight warmth of my covers, awaiting the dawn with mixed emotions. Exhausted by all that had occurred on the previous day, I must have drifted off to sleep.
“Cassandra, where are you?” The voice was strident, insistent; I peered muggily from the safety of the eiderdown, bleary in the gloom of the curtained room. There was nobody in the room that I could see, but there were the sounds of somebody in the shower.
“Cassandra, answer please; where are you?” I located the source of this disturbance; it was the comlink. I pressed the relay button and said somewhat sleepily, “I’m here.”
“Thank God you’re somewhere.” The Doctor informed me, his voice was heavy with an emotion I had not heard before. I struggled to get my faculties together, confused by the hint of near panic in his voice.
“Listen Cassandra; are you in your room?” He went on; he wasn’t making much sense.
“Yes, I’m in my room; what’s happening anyway?” I replied a little suspiciously.
“There are people missing, gone; I’m trying to locate them: five people simply will not respond to the comlink. I want you to get down to the kitchen; we’ll have breakfast and see who is where. Have you seen Andrew, Craig, June, Simon or Harry?”
“June and Simon spent the night in my spare room; I didn’t want them running through all that weather to their tower; they were so tired.” I informed him, struggling to shake weariness from my mind.
“Simon and June? That’s a weight off my mind. Did anybody else take any of the south tower rooms, do you know?” There was a definite thread of steel in his voice; I had given him a shot in the arm that he took avidly. His words brought memories of the previous evening flushing through me; I tried to focus on his words.
“Andrew, Craig or Harry; they didn’t turn up for supper last night I don’t think; I don’t remember seeing them.” I told him, “I am not sure if anybody else took rooms here, but I’ll check. Let me get June and Simon on the job then we’ll come down to the kitchen when we’ve had a look around here.”
“Do that little thing for me; thank you Cassandra.” He told me, signing off at once.
I lay back, stretching aching muscles. Gradually I became conscious of another figure in the room; I pulled my blankets about me once again as Simon drifted into focus.
“What’s that all about?” He asked as he stood by the bathroom door, his lean body clad only in a large towel.
“Three of the lads appear to have mislaid themselves.” I replied tensely, “Harry, Craig and Andrew. The Doctor thought you two had also disappeared.”
“They may have gone outside.” Simon mused, his pleasant face drawn with a worried frown.
“Why?” I asked him, “Not in this foul weather.”
“They may have gone before the storm; that only hit at noon yesterday and it came up damned suddenly. They may have gone down the crag for some reason.” He replied. Behind him June emerged from the shower, towelling her hair dry, “What are you chatting Cassandra up for?” She asked cheerfully.
“Three of the lads have done a bunk.” Simon informed her dryly, “The Doctor has just been on the horn to tell Cassandra.”
“Oh Lord, what do you mean?” June asked, suspending the operation on her hair to have a look at both of us.
“Nobody’s seen them for ages; since yesterday afternoon; they’re not in their rooms, as far as I can make out. The Doctor wants us to scout around the tower to see if they’ve secreted themselves anywhere.” I told her carefully; she was already upset and I wasn’t sure how she would react.
“Who, for God’s sake? Who’s missing, Cassandra?” She cried, “Lord, I’m no good with these blasted emergencies. Who’s gone?”
“Andy, Harry and Craig.” I replied.
“Oh no.” Her face crumpled up and she leaned herself against Simon. He enfolded her in his arms, “Ease up, love; they’ll turn up. Maybe they got stuck into some project or found some new rooms down below where there aren’t any comlinks. They’ll turn up.”
“Craig has never missed supper since we came here.” June riposted angrily, “He wouldn’t miss it unless something forced him to miss out; I feel as if something terrible has happened, oh Lord, Harry, Andy and Craig!”
“Why don’t you two have a prowl about upstairs while I have my shower? I’m a bit frozen here; then I’ll join you in a twinkling?” The reasonable tone with which I made the suggestion seemed to get through to June. She looked at me for half a minute before nodding and turning back to her room. I heaved myself up from my bed, gathered up my towel and dressing gown and bolted into the shower.
I donned my warmest tracksuit, my thickest socks and a new pair of track shoes; a pair that I had brought with me when I had arrived at the Crag but had not worn until now. I took a few minutes to straighten my room up, not at all eager to start the distressing work of this day. There was quite a cold feeling, colder than the storm would account for, running up my spine. I somehow knew that we would find the missing boys; but that did not ease that feeling. It was how we would find them that worried me; the Crag and the Castle had any number of perils about them that could cause people to go missing for quite a long time. And that was only the parts of the Castle with which I was familiar; there were any number of places they could have got to that none of us had ever heard of before. And if they were somewhere within our ken but were not answering the comlink there had to be a very good reason. Even the thought of it made me go cold.
I stepped out of the suite into the dim corridor. The light which came from the windows was silver, whipped past on the raging storm wind. I remembered my mittens, turning back to fetch them. I trotted up the stairs, hearing the sound of Simon and June above me. I met them on the third floor; they were coming down the north passage. I joined them in silence as we went along the eastern passage. When we arrived at the end of the cold corridor I asked them, “You’ve checked the lower floors?”
Simon nodded, his expression bleak. We all knew that it was futile to carry on, but none of us suggested stopping. If they’d wanted a room to doss down in during that cold night they wouldn’t have gone all the way to the top of the tower, not with the cold howling around them. Instinct would have brought them into the nearest, warmest unoccupied room. Anyway, Craig and Harry had rooms in the keep; they wouldn’t have had problem with the weather. We checked the rest of that floor then the one above. The fifth and sixth floors gave up their secrets easily; and the missing boys were not part of their hoard.
Silently we made our way down to the kitchen, blinking our eyes at the white light within. The kitchen complex was brightly lit, but it wasn’t cheerful as a result. The men were grim; Bernhart had just finished saying something argumentative, but the mood in that room gave him no leeway.
“Anything?” The Doctor asked Simon as we walked into the room.
“Nope.” Simon replied. There was nothing more to be said. I started preparing br
eakfast; bowls of hot porridge; and damn it if a fellow wasn’t interested. June stood up to help me, getting the bowls from the cupboard and setting them out on the counter while I stirred the pot beside her.
“You won’t need that many bowls.” Bernhart told her caustically as she pulled another armful down from the pile. I turned to see her gaping at him, her mouth working soundlessly. I only just caught her in time as the extra bowls smashed on the floor. Simon was beside me in an instant, lifting the frail girl from my arms. He sat her down on the only comfortable chair in the kitchen, evicting James therefrom as he arranged her comfortably.
James stood beside me for a moment before I sent him along to pick up the pieces of the bowls. I gave his hand a squeeze as he drifted away; he gave me a small smile. June recovered quickly; just as quickly she put herself back to work, this time at the urn. She had just finished making the teapot presentable when Jim and Peter came stamping in from the cold, puffing and blowing,
“Nothing doing, Doc.” Peter said morbidly. “They’re not anywhere; not in their rooms, not in any empty rooms in the keep itself.”
“Who saw them last?” The Doctor asked grimly; there was a wealth of accusation in his voice, though I could see it was not there intentionally.
“Andrew was helping me yesterday afternoon.” Sam spoke up, “And Craig in the morning. Craig mentioned something about the old hydroelectric plant before he knocked off for his breakfast.”
“Did he come up for his breakfast?” The Doctor asked quickly; nobody could say. Harry as well; all three had last been seen down in the Nest and nobody could vouch whether or not they had gone back up the stairs. Therefore they were down in the caverns beneath the cellars, or lurking in the cellars themselves.
“We will divide up into quartets.” The Doctor decided, “Those of you who have pistols must fetch them. Garreth and Ronald; you will stay at the upper watch post; Cassandra, you will come with me. Simon, June, Jim and Peter, check the first level of cellars. Bernhart, James, Frank and Bob, check the second. Brett, Sam, Roger and Alex, check the third level. I will go straight down to the Nest. Garreth, Ronald, keep an eye on the scene outside, in case we are needed for any mission. Keep you comlinks on you in case there is a call-up.” The Doctor looked about to see how we were taking this. We nodded through our porridge, the gloom of the grey, stormy day giving weight to our forebodings.
We finished that meal quickly, the boys who had firearms then trotted off to fetch them. The Doctor already had his weapon stuck into his belt. He paced up and down, his face grim. Nothing was said, not even when the others arrived. Ronald and Garreth buzzed us on the comlink to check our ‘phones but even then there was little to say. We marched to the cellars in our little groups.
Quickly we went down the stairs, our torches at the ready though most of the cellars had lights of some sort. I felt a chill each time we went down another course and another group left our party. Finally it was just the Doctor and I, facing the long and lonely stair down to the Nest.
The harsh stone of the narrow stairway showed in the light of the naked globes, the electrics conduit going down the peak of the tunnel with a Spartan luminaire every six metres. The shine of one fitting going behind me, the shine of the wall at elbow-height where so many elbows had passed, the gloom of the dark part of the tunnel highlighted by the shine of the next fitting. I moodily observed the gleam of the light on the Doctor’s hair as he trod steadily down that rough hand-hewn stair. The silence; the sound of his breathing; neither of us said anything. So many times I had travelled this way; never before had my heart been so heavy. We came to the end of that ordeal at last, the first of many.
The five Wrens stood, watchful and patient. All of them had been serviced; all of them were ready to fly. The air in that cave gusted slightly, eddies of winterly wind swirling around the noble silver craft. We stood together in silence for a moment, looking at them. The Doctor at length heaved a sigh, turning to me.
“Where shall we begin? With the passage out maybe, just so we can write it off?”
“I guess so, Doctor.” I replied quietly. We crossed the wide, level concrete floor, under the rigid vanes of the mighty craft. We looked up, beyond the floor to where the wide passage opened out near the roof on the northern side. The floor which led up to that hole was rough but there was a passable track leading up. The Doctor went first, lithe and controlled in every movement, but not entirely possessed of that fluid grace normal to him.
He was badly shaken by this; that I could see. His dream was suddenly in the balance. He had known for a long time that he ought to be getting more personnel for the base, but now the frailty of his position had suddenly been brought home to him. It had been ruthlessly hammered home; but I could not see whether or not he was coping with this shock.
Losing two pilots out of eleven, losing a technician of Harry’s calibre, was something he could not afford. I followed him in silence as we struggled up the steep and demanding passage up to the sea-ward entrance of the Nest. We stood there for thirty seconds, looking out at the furious storm, the grey and heaving ocean so far below us. The Doctor looked at me, a hunted expression on his face, “We mustn’t let this stop us, Cassandra.” He told me
“We must find out what happened to the boys.” I replied, “And make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Quite.” He agreed shortly, looking down at the ocean again, seemingly immune to the bite of the grey wind.
“We must also find a method whereby we can recruit more people of a high calibre.” I pressed, “Whatever the outcome of today’s events; that is something you cannot neglect any further.”
“You’re right.” He agreed listlessly, still looking out over the sea, “I’ve been neglectful; you are correct. But there has been so much that I’ve had to deal with. And,” He looked up at me, a lost expression on his face, “I have rather burnt my bridges as far as recruiting is concerned. The whole world is itching to get the Wrens, those who’ve been chastised by us. It won’t be easy to get reliable people; we certainly can’t advertise for them.”
“We have a comprehensive list of aviators and techs, with all their details on file.” I told him patiently, “We don’t have to advertise, we simply have to persuade. We can contact them and see how it goes.”
“You’re right again. Cassandra, keep by me; make sure I don’t slip my gears again, there’s a dear.” He gave the ocean one last, thoughtful glance before turning away. We walked back down the grim and rocky passage, shining our torches on the walls against the chance that the missing men were hiding somewhere there. At the floor of the passage we had another look at the fleet, still just where we had left them.
“They wouldn’t be hiding in one of the Wrens?” I asked, more to keep the Doctor on the job than that I thought it was a sensible suggestion. The Doctor took a scanner out of his pocket, activated it then shook his head. “No; there is nobody within any of the craft.” He shoved the device back into his pocket, turning to look at the two exits from the floor of the Nest. One was the entrance to the control room; the other was the stairway, going both up and. down. I remembered what Sam had said about Craig mentioning the hydroelectric plant; it was down those stairs. “We’ll have a look in a moment.” The Doctor agreed, his voice distracted. He led the way into the control room, flicking on the seldom-used overhead lights. The cavern showed in all its rough but cathedral-like gloom. The roof rose magnificently above us, marred by a column of cables depended from the very peak of that lava dome.
The messy bunch of cables, both heavy and light, seemed to have been frozen in the very act of writhing. They passed close to a catwalk which crossed the middle of the cave, bisecting the circular catwalk just below the curve of the cave’s roof. There was one stair going up to the catwalk, its foot beside the wide passage through where we had entered the cavern. On the far side of the cave, just above the catwalk, there was a cave mouth, a black and somehow ominous hole. Some of the cables passed down that hole, ta
cked onto its roof. It was obviously bigger than it appeared, high above us as it was. The Doctor’s eyes were focussed on it, his bearing taut. I glanced down at the foot of the stair, seeing some drifted dust collected there. There were footprints in the lime dust and white prints on the metal of the stair. I pointed this out to the Doctor and he looked at once. He set his shoulders and nodded to me, “Let’s have a look, Cassandra.” He started up the stairs. I hesitated for a moment before taking out my transmitter, thumbing it on, “Garreth, Ronald?” I asked. The Doctor stopped, looking down at me from the tenth tread of the ancient iron stairway.
“Yo, Cassandra?” Ronald replied.
“Ronald, we’ve found footprints at the bottom of the catwalk in lower control, going up. We’re going after them, up to that hole in the wall; do you copy?”
“Clear as a bell, Cassandra.” He told me.
“So if we don’t return you lot will know where to look.” I finished in a rush.
“Sure thing, Cassandra; be careful.” He signed off. I nodded at the Doctor and surged up the stairs after him.
“That was a sensible move.” He told me, a touch of wonder in his voice, “Why didn’t I think of that?” His voice was slightly stricken, knowing well as he did that an error like that was far more serious than it appeared. I didn’t reply. He turned up again, swiftly rising to the level of the noisy iron walk. The old metal was black with corrosion but still solid. There were no flakes of rust, any breakages or weak spots; but there was that sense of great antiquity, that gloomy feeling that this solid structure would outlast us with contemptuous ease.
The hole was wide and high; there was a wide gap between it and the catwalk. Its floor was level with the rail of the iron walkway; there were two struts supporting the catwalk that were drilled into the rock close to the mouth of the cave. The iron strut that gave the better deal, being slightly closer to the floor of the cave, had those white dusty marks on it that had first drawn my attention to the stairway. The bar was four feet long and two inches wide, a solid I-beam with its flat face uppermost. I saw that the wall of the cave was rough and cracked; the I-beam was thrust mightily into that solid rock. I peered down at the floor below the walkway; there was nothing to be seen behind the banks of instruments there.