"Don't tell me any more," Maris implored. "I think I'm happier not knowing."
There was a rope bridge. Maris wasn't sure that counted as good luck, though. The thing consisted of two ropes, count them, two: one to stand on and one to hold on to while you shuffled over a lot of very hard- and spiky-looking rocks a very long way below. And in full gravity! Another minus for dirtside life: not only couldn't you turn on the lights, you couldn't turn off the gravity.
You had, in fact, very little control at all. But when had she, personally, had any control over her circumstances? Surely not on Tasman, where Johnivans had used her as a spy, runner, and thief until it was more convenient to discard her. Certainly not since she'd run from Tasman. She wasn't even sure she'd had any control over falling in love with Gabrel. It felt more like giving in to a force of nature, like gravity.
Not that she really wanted to think about gravity just then . . . "What the hell," Maris said, and followed Chulayen over the double rope. Actually she crossed a little faster than he did, and a lot faster than Gabrel, whose weight made the device sag and creak alarmingly.
"In a holo," she said when Gabrel finally crossed the chasm, "the native guide would scamper across without even using the top rope, 'stead of gripping it with all ten fingers the way he did."
Gabrel grinned and translated the comment to Chulayen, who was looking rather more olive green than his usual light brown color. Chulayen replied with a spate of words ending in a shaky laugh. "He says he's a soft clerk in a Udaran government office, not a mountain tribesman," Gabrel translated, "and the pilgrim path to the caves is quite bad enough for him. After the pilgrimage he vowed never to go near one of these rope bridges again. Furthermore, he is beginning to hope we will all be killed attempting to enter the caves, so that he won't have to come back this way."
Maris looked with new respect at the little brown-skinned man. Just a clerk in some government office, but he'd joined the Udaran resistance movement, traveled across country to meet unknown foreigners, and led them back through the mountains because his family might still be alive in these mysterious caves of Thamboon. And even if he had gripped the handrope so tightly his knuckles turned white and taken half of forever to shuffle along the footrope, still he'd been the one to show them the way across the bridge. "Well, tell him if that's what the old softies of his country are like, I hope I never run across a tough young one!"
After the bridge they went more slowly; there was nothing so well defined as a path to guide them, only narrow trails through the bent grass. Chulayen studied the outlines of the surrounding hills intently. Gabrel flipped the curved Kalapriyan-style dagger he carried upside down and revealed a primitive compass concealed in the hilt. He and Chulayen stopped and conferred so often Maris began to wonder, then to suspect, then to feel certain—
"We're lost."
"Not lost," Gabrel said defensively, "we just aren't sure exactly—"
"Do you know where we are?"
"Well . . ."
"Does he know where this supposed back entrance to the caves is?"
"I . . . look out!"
Gabrel's shoulder caught her in the midriff and knocked the breath out of her, sending them both tumbling down among the stiff thorny bushes. A moment later Chulayen dove on top of them. Something caught the hem of Maris's long tunic and dragged it upward—damn thorns—and she had just time to think that Chulayen's weight on top of Gabrel's would drive the thorn bushes right into her bare back—and now she heard the buzzing that had alerted Gabrel; some kind of machine?—but she couldn't see over his body pinning her down, wriggled sideways and got room to breathe again, no, more than that, falling into darkness— She landed, hard, on something entirely composed of hard knobbly lumps and sharp edges.
"A flitter," Gabrel said under his breath. "Gods, they're getting blatant about it, not even trying to hide their smuggled technology anymore! Stay down, Maris, if they see us— Maris?"
The breath that had been knocked out of her body came back in, lovely beautiful oxygen, and the bruises—well, one good thing about the dark, she couldn't see the extent of the damage, but it didn't feel like anything was broken. She wasn't even bleeding. Much. Just the one scraped elbow that had found a rock face on the way down. "I think," Maris called up, "I've found it. The back way. Into them caves."
After some discussions about how deep the hole was ("Not bad," Maris reported, "I didn't break nothing."), whether Chulayen and Gabrel could climb down rather than falling in ("Try climbing. Falling's not fun."), and whether there were passages leading into the interior of the mountain ("Why d'you think I said I'd found it? 'Course there's passages!") Gabrel first lowered Chulayen down the precipitous sides of the hole, then swung himself over, hung by his hands for a moment, and let himself drop. A vigorous Barentsian curse helped Maris identify his shadowy form.
"Reckon you found the same ledge I did," she said, not without satisfaction. "Scrape yer elbow?"
Gabrel didn't deign to reply. He asked Chulayen something and got back an answer most of which Maris understood; her Kalapriyan seemed to be improving rapidly with all the practice she got listening to Gabrel and Chulayen. The little clerk didn't think this was the back way that had been used by the priests, and Gabrel agreed that there were probably easier entrances to the cave complex somewhere else; however, the faint continual draft of air past their faces made this one seem as promising as any other.
"Help if we could see anything," Maris complained, and even as she finished speaking a faint glow lit up Gabrel's face. It looked as though his cheek and forehead had intercepted the ledge on which Maris had scraped her elbow; no wonder he was testy. But showing off his light source seemed to be cheering him up.
"Built in with the compass," he explained. "Only turns on when I twist this little knob on the side of the hilt—see?" And he demonstrated by clicking the light on and off several times.
"The Bashir supplies his troops with magic lights also," Chulayen said—that was short and simple enough that Maris could understand it, especially when the clerk also produced a glowing disk from the folds of his sash.
"I thought you were just an office clerk," Gabrel said with suspicion.
"My . . . friends . . . occasionally divert some military supplies," Chulayen explained.
Maris threw up her hands. "This bunu world! Everybody except me is already carrying pro-tech, and who got arrested in Dharampal on suspicion of having outlander weapons? Me!"
After some time crawling along the one useful passage leading from that deep hole, Maris wished Gabrel and Chulayen had been carrying a little more prohibited technology. Something to map the cave complex would have been nice. She wasn't entirely happy with following the faint breath of air moving through the tunnel as evidence that somewhere up ahead were the larger caverns of which Chulayen had spoken. Still, it wasn't like there'd been a lot of choices. The other apparent passages had been only deep crevices with no openings; if this one petered out they'd have to backtrack, climb out of the hole she'd accidentally discovered, and look for another entrance.
Back through that narrow bit where they had to crawl single file on their bellies through slimy puddles . . . She really, really hoped they were going the right way. Then she realized that once they got to the crystal caves, they would have to find something they could steal that would be enough to get the attention of the authorities on Rezerval, lift whatever-it-was without being killed by the cave guards, then go back through that slimy tunnel, trek over the mountains, not get killed by Udaran assassins, find a boat back down the river to Valentin, not get killed by Barentsian assassins, get themselves to Rezerval from a planet whose only access station was Tasman, not get killed by Johnivans . . . She moaned softly to herself. They'd never make it. She might just as well lie down and die right here in the tunnel, except . . .
"What is wrong?" Chulayen asked. He spoke slowly and clearly so that she could understand him.
"Nothin' " Maris said. Her Kalapriyan defini
tely wasn't up to explaining all the ways they could die on the way back. "I . . . don't like tunnels." Okay, so she'd slipped through narrower spaces in the maintenance shafts on Tasman, but even there you could turn on the lights . . . and she knew her way around Tasman.
"There is nothing to fear," Chulayen promised her. "These mountains are very old. Nothing will fall to close our way."
Gods, she hadn't even thought to worry about that possibility!
"And the crystal caves are . . . were . . . very beautiful," Chulayen went on. "You and Gabrel will be the first outlanders to see them. Walls lined with crystals, you understand? Light everywhere. In darkness, one lights a candle first, and light dances everywhere."
That was something good to think about while she crawled on hands and knees through the stinking mud. After a while the passage opened up a little. They couldn't stand up, but at least she didn't have to keep her head down where her nose was practically in the mud. So the smell should have been better . . . but instead, as they progressed, it got worse.
Much worse.
If the roof hadn't raised up so that Maris could stand, she thought she would have thrown up. Chulayen stood up too, with a smothered groan of relief and a hand at the small of his back. Gabrel was too tall; he had to walk in a half-crouch that looked even more uncomfortable than crawling. Still, the change of position must be some relief.
And that cloying, sickly sweet smell kept getting worse.
"Watch out for crevasses," Gabrel warned in a low voice. He angled his dagger hilt so that a faint light showed the broken ground before them. Maris realized that the black areas weren't just deep shadows but actual openings in the cave floor, falling down who knows how far? She certainly didn't want to find out. Fortunately they were mostly narrow. She stepped across the openings carefully, holding Chulayen's hand for safety, then helped to balance him while he crossed each one.
"Bigger ones coming up," Gabrel murmured, "and we must be close now. Somebody else has been using this part of the cave." His light illumined a roughly planed plank that bridged a wide crevasse ahead.
"Smells like something crawled in here to die," Maris muttered.
"Maybe somebody fell through." Gabrel dropped to his knees, then to his stomach. One hand over his mouth and nose, he lowered his other hand with the light down into the gaping crevasse, then gasped suddenly and jerked backward, gagging.
"What is it?" Maris whispered.
"Don't look!"
Chulayen squeezed past her and whispered something in Kalapriyan to Gabrel, then took the light and lowered it at arm's length into the crevasse, peering intently. When he straightened up he looked even greener than before, but maybe that was just the effect of the dim light among the shadows of the cave.
Or the effect of the smell.
"I can look or you can tell me," Maris said, carefully taking the shallowest breaths she could, "but I ain't going out on that plank until I know what's underneath me."
"Bodies," Gabrel said reluctantly.
Maris supposed she had already known that, because she didn't feel shocked or surprised. Just cold. "His people?" She jerked her head at Chulayen.
"He didn't recognize anyone . . . There's no way of telling for sure," Gabrel said. 'They've been . . . their heads are . . . I don't understand it. Why drag prisoners all the way up here just to execute them?" He turned to Chulayen and repeated the question, got back a long answer whispered so fast that Maris couldn't follow a word of it.
"He doesn't really know either, I don't think," Gabrel told Maris. "He keeps saying that Meer Madee told him they use the prisoners to make the bacteriomats and then they die."
"I guess we got to go on, then," Maris concluded. "Us seeing a heap of mangled bodies isn't going to count for evidence, is it? Even if you had a rope and could get down there and bring one back . . ."
"It might prove something," Gabrel said, "or it might not, depending on what's been done to the bodies. Unfortunately, we do not have a rope." He didn't sound that unhappy about it.
For once Maris found it easy to obey Gabrel's injunction not to look down as she crossed the plank across the crevasse. She really wished there were some way to turn off the gravity for that few seconds, though.
On the far side of the crevasse things improved. A lot. The cave was high enough for even Gabrel to stand up in, and wide enough that they could walk side by side. If you could call what they were doing walking. Gabrel evidently figured they were getting close to where the action was, so he insisted on what he called "slow advance mode," which was apparently a military term for sneaking up on some place really slowly and carefully.
Accent on slowly.
First Gabrel twisted the hilt of his dagger so that only the faintest light came from it, barely enough to show the uneven floor of the cave; and even that was shielded by his hand so that nobody in front of them would be likely to see it. He would take three steps forward, then pause and listen. He'd motion to Chulayen, who did the same thing, a lot more quietly than Gabrel. Last came Maris. Another pause to listen. Then they repeated the whole thing.
After a minor eternity of three-steps-and-listen, Maris realized that the cave was slowly getting brighter. She could see sparkly bits on the sides of the passage, and long back-cast shadows where those bits stuck out. She tapped Gabrel on the shoulder and pointed to the shadows. He nodded acknowledgment, twisted the light off and tucked his dagger back into the sash of his tunic.
Moving even more slowly than before, they came from the shadows of the crevasses to a world of glittering lights. The walls around them flowered with crystalline shapes, some like sharp-edged flowers, some like stars, others like broken bits of space debris, with no recognizable form to them, but a sense of some underlying purpose in their structure. The reflections from the crystal facets danced and swam around them, making Maris so dizzy that it was hard to reason out the cause: the light source must come from torches somewhere ahead. Torches, people . . . they slowed even more. A murmur that had at first seemed no more than the sighing of the cave now sounded like water, then like voices babbling indistinguishable syllables. Gabrel put his finger to his lips, listened intently, then turned to Chulayen with brows lifted. Chulayen shook his head; Maris deduced that he, too, was unable to make any sense out of what they were hearing. But at least it proved there were living people in the caves before them.
An outcropping of crystal-encrusted stone partially blocked the way forward. They crowded behind it and peered at what they could see of the lighted cave. The moving sparks of reflections from the crystal walls were so confusing that it was hard to make out details even close to the torches affixed to the walls at intervals, but it looked to Maris as if there was just one person walking around, and any number sitting against the cave walls—shadow upon shadow, moaning and mumbling singsong nonsense that chilled her even while she told herself that she couldn't expect to understand Kalapriyan mumbling. No matter what the language, the tones were those of madness.
"One guard," she breathed to Gabrel, and he nodded. They moved back a few (agonizingly careful) steps and held a whispered conference. What would be the best way to get rid of the guard so they could free the prisoners? Her appearance, or Gabrel's, would be sure to alarm him. Could Chulayen pass as another guard for long enough to lure the man back here where they could capture him? He looked dismayed at the suggestion but said something that Maris thought would have sounded snobbish, if he could have got enough intonation into his whispers.
"What'd he say? What's he going to do?" she demanded under her breath as Chulayen inched toward the cave opening again.
"He says he isn't dressed right to be a guard but if he tries really hard he thinks he can imitate a lower-class Rohini accent long enough to get the man back here."
Maris nodded. Like she thought—snobbish. She remembered Gabrel's brief explanations about the class differences between Rudhrani and Rohini. Hmm. If this Chulayen was Rudhrani, and a Udaran government employee at that, what
was he doing with the resistance movement? Was he leading them into a trap?
Chulayen called out in Kalapriyan. The guard's pacing stopped, and Gabrel didn't seem to be worried by whatever Chulayen had said, so probably it was all right. But the guard didn't come toward them. Chulayen said something else and the guard took a step closer. Would he—
"Baba! Babaji!" A child's cry of delight echoed from the walls of the cavern, and a small figure ran past the guard, all the way to the outcropping of crystals that concealed their party. Chulayen leapt forward, dropped to one knee and embraced the child, heedless of the torchlight falling upon his exposed face. Tears glittered on his face as he rocked the child back and forth in his arms. His story had been true, then; Maris had been worrying about the wrong thing, as usual.
What she should have been worrying about was the number of guards. The first man, the one they'd tried to lure back here, gave a shout—for help?—and suddenly there were three, no, five men all coming at them, the others must have been sleeping, and now they were really sunk—
"Back here!" Gabrel pushed her unceremoniously back into the deepest crevice between the crystal pillar and the cave wall, then strode forward into the torchlight and said something in Kalapriyan. The guards seized him and Chulayen, tore the child from Chulayen's arms, and dragged all three of them out of Maris's sight.
They didn't search further. She huddled in the crevice and alternated between wondering what to do next and cursing Gabrel. She'd recognized the Kalapriyan word for "two" in what he said, so presumably it was something like "It's just the two of us." Nice that they took his word for it! But what was the good of leaving her free on her own? Anybody would think he'd forgotten that she wasn't a real Diplo with wonderful weapons and secret powers—just a Tasman scumsucker with no skills but lying and evasion. Demons take the man—if only they'd both hidden—well, okay, there probably wasn't room in here for both of them; it was a tight fit for her alone. So fine. He should have hidden and let her be captured, then rescuing them would've been his problem. Talk about getting noble and chivalrous at the wrong moment! Johnivans would have dived for cover without a second thought, probably first pushing her out into the light to distract the guards, and . . . Would you really prefer that? Okay. No, she wouldn't. Gabrel was worth a hundred of Johnivans. He was brave, Chulayen was honest, and she, Maris, was a nasty suspicious little liar who thought the worst of everyone until proven wrong and who didn't deserve to be the only one of them left free.
Disappearing Act Page 31