Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  But, as he reflected further, there was one thing that had shaken him to the core, making him feel like he should just give up. The day he’d long dreamed of, then had come to believe would never arrive, was finally here.

  He’d been reunited with his father … and it couldn’t have been more of an anticlimax.

  His father was just another stupid, bumbling grown-up who had no idea what was going on around him, just like all the others.

  “What’s the point?” Will murmured, fighting back the tears as he sunk lower into his despondency.

  Dr. Burrows cleared his throat to let Will know he was there. “I’ve got this,” he said, tugging a small package wrapped in grease-stained paper from his pocket. “It’s meat. I managed to tuck some of it away when nobody was looking — in case of emergency.” He made a big show of adding it to the pile of food, but Will didn’t say anything. In the ensuing silence, Dr. Burrows hovered there, making clicking noises with his tongue.

  “Was that really a submarine?” he finally asked.

  Will didn’t look up as he answered. “A modern one … Russian and nuclear-powered, but there was no sign of the crew.”

  Dr. Burrows whistled. “How did —?”

  “It must have been sucked down one of the voids…. Maybe it was drawn in as a plate shifted in the seabed somewhere. Who knows?”

  “Voids?”

  “There are seven of them … called the Seven Sisters. We fell down the one known as the Pore,” Will informed him, his voice flat. “Martha took us to another she called Puffing Mary.”

  “Puffing Mary,” Dr. Burrows repeated, nodding. “And those flying creatures?”

  “The Brights. They’re insects or arachnids or something,” Will said, his head still bowed as he jabbed the point of his cutlass into a slab of fungus.

  “Do you know,” Dr. Burrows began hesitantly, then took a breath. “Do you know, when it just appeared from nowhere like that, I actually thought it was an angel,” he admitted, giving an embarrassed laugh. “The suggestion just popped into my head … and I call myself educated.”

  “An angel?” Will mumbled.

  “Yes. I suppose because of its white coloration and its wings, and most of all because the light above its head looked uncannily like a halo.”

  Will nodded, drawing the blade of his cutlass from the fungus with a slurping sound. “Martha said they were around on the surface long before people were.”

  “How very interesting,” Dr. Burrows said as he found himself a small boulder to perch on. “Imagine … imagine if everything we associate with the archetypal image of an angel derives from a prehistoric insect … and if the remote memory of those creatures has been assimilated into our religious iconography and has remained ingrained deep within our culture.” He chuckled. “So Gabriel and Peter on either side of the Pearly Gates could actually be inspired by giant carnivorous insects.”

  “Or arachnids,” Will said.

  “Or arachnids,” Dr. Burrows conceded, then didn’t speak for a few seconds.

  “Look, Will,” he eventually said, “there’s a lot I don’t know about what’s gone on. I mean, it was a bolt out of the blue when I found out your sister was a Styx. And also that you’re a Colonist. I really had no idea. And then that Rebecca had an identical twin — well, good grief!” He blew through his lips. “And maybe I’m not thinking straight because you’re here … because you followed me underground when you should be back at home with your mother.”

  “Except she’s not my mother,” Will mumbled, but Dr. Burrows either didn’t catch the comment or chose to ignore it as he went on.

  “Exactly how you got all the way down here with Chester … well, I haven’t the foggiest how you managed it. I never in a million years wanted you to be put in danger like this. You’ve probably had a tough time of it, just like I have, and I was wrong to say what I did back there. It was rash of me — I made a snap judgment, without being in possession of all the facts.”

  Will raised his head to look at his father, then gave him a single nod in acknowledgment. It was the closest Will was going to get to an apology, unless his father had changed dramatically in the past six months. In any case, Will wasn’t going to bear a grudge, not when there were more pressing matters to deal with right now, such as trying to stay alive. “Things don’t look great, Dad,” he said. “We’ve got next to no food or water, and I haven’t the faintest idea if this tunnel leads anywhere, and, even if it does, which way we should go.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not going to be of much help there,” Dr. Burrows said. “I was brought here through miles of tunnels by Reb — the Styx girl you called Rebecca Two, and the soldier. Couldn’t find my way back to the Pore in a month of Sundays.”

  “We’re stuffed then,” Will concluded.

  “Totally,” Dr. Burrows agreed, but he didn’t sound in the least downhearted. “So let’s get ourselves unstuffed. On your feet, Will, there’s no point in hanging around here.” He came over to Will and gave his shoulder a squeeze. The Burrows family had never been either very demonstrative or tactile in their emotions, so this small gesture was significant to Will.

  “Sure, Dad,” he said, suddenly filled with optimism. This is how he’d always imagined it would be with his father — the two of them facing impossible situations and working together to overcome them. He immediately set about repacking his rucksack, then they started out along the tunnel.

  They quickly found it wasn’t so much a tunnel as an inclined seam, over a hundred feet across at its widest point. As they came to a small offshoot on their left, Will insisted they explore it. He was hoping it might meet up with the passage where Martha and the others had been heading. Will had gone no more than fifty feet into it when he spotted movements. Dark shapes were scuttling across the walls and the roof, and wispy lengths of what could have been the remnants of broken spiderwebs waved slowly in the breeze.

  “Spider-monkeys,” Will warned his father in a whisper. These were smaller and obviously much younger versions, but Will wasn’t going to take any chances. He took out his few sprigs of Aniseed Fire and the lighter he had ready in his pocket, but refrained from igniting the dried plants. He only had the handful, and the creatures didn’t seem to be following as Will and his father backed out of the passage.

  “I reckon that lot were baby spiders — that must be why they didn’t go for us,” Will said. As they returned to the inclined seam, he told his father how he’d seen these smaller spiders clinging to the Bright’s abdomen when it had attacked him and Martha outside the submarine’s conning tower.

  “So either these smaller spiders are a subspecies of the larger ones, and may be parasites on the Brights … or perhaps they are just infants and eventually metamorphose into the flying creatures,” Dr. Burrows speculated. “Like caterpillars into butterflies.”

  “Yes,” Will agreed, catching on to what his father was saying. “And these passages could be where the baby spiders grow up?” He looked around warily. “We could be on the nursery slopes?”

  “Quite right,” Dr. Burrows confirmed. “This could very well be where all the arachnids are born — their breeding ground. Then they spread out through the rest of the tunnel system as they hunt for food.”

  Twenty minutes of trudging up the incline brought them to another side passage, but again they discovered it was occupied by the smaller spiders.

  “How are we ever going to meet up with the others?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know. I suppose we just carry on up the main haul instead,” Dr. Burrows said, trying to sound positive about the situation.

  “But one of these might take us through to Martha and Chester,” Will responded, wondering how much of a risk the smaller spider-monkeys really were. In the end he decided it wasn’t worth blundering into one of the fully-grown ones or, worse still, a Bright, so they just stuck to the seam itself, climbing higher and higher.

  They swapped stories as they went. Will began by telling his father
how he and Chester found his tunnel in the basement and how, by re-excavating it, they had eventually entered the Colony and been arrested. He spoke about the meeting with his biological father and brother, and the moment he’d learned that he’d been born in the Colony himself.

  “Rebecca told me that,” Dr. Burrows said.

  At times Will found it painful to relate what had happened, occasionally lapsing into silence until he felt he was able to resume his story. He talked about the Styx and how brutal they were.

  “I never saw that side of them,” Dr. Burrows said categorically. “They didn’t treat me badly. They let me go where I wanted. In fact, my worst experiences were at the hands of the Colonists, particularly in the Rookeries, where I got a nasty beating from the thugs living there. If the Styx are sometimes harsh, then it’s probably for the good of the Colony, with those sorts of malcontents hanging around.”

  “Harsh? Oh, get real, Dad!” Will said, raising his voice in exasperation. “The Styx are evil…. They’re murderers and torturers! Didn’t you see what they were doing to the Coprolites and the renegades in the Deeps? They were killing them by the dozen.”

  “No, I didn’t. How do you know it was the Styx and not simply a breakaway band of renegades? By all accounts they’re a pretty lawless bunch.”

  Will just shook his head.

  “You have to respect other cultures, and never attempt to judge them by your own values,” Dr. Burrows said. “And don’t forget you’re the outsider — it’s their world you crashed into, uninvited. If they’ve treated you badly, then all I can say is you must have done something to offend them.”

  Dr. Burrows’s pronouncements rendered Will momentarily speechless. He made a series of pfuu sounds, as if he was spitting feathers. “OFFEND THEM?” he managed to get out in a furious croak when he was finally able to speak again. “OFFEND THEM?” He took a breath to calm himself. “You’re being a complete ignoramus, Dad. Haven’t you listened to a thing I’ve been telling you?”

  “Take it easy, Will,” Dr. Burrows urged. “The way you’re behaving is typical of all those times you’d fight with your sister and suddenly flip your lid.”

  “She wasn’t my sister,” Will countered angrily.

  But Dr. Burrows wanted to make his point. “You were always at each other’s throats, constantly squabbling. Nothing changes, does it?”

  Will realized that it was futile trying to reason with his father, and decided the only way to convince him was to tell him the rest of the story. He related all the events that took place in the Deeps, while his father listened intently.

  “Deadly viruses, shootings, and a mother you’d never known. That all makes for one whale of a tale,” Dr. Burrows said, assuming his son had finished. But Will wasn’t quite done yet.

  “Dad, something’s been bugging me ever since you left.” “What’s that?” Dr. Burrows said.

  “That night back in Highfield, when you rushed out of the living room — what were you arguing about with Mum?” he asked.

  “I tried to tell her what I was planning to do, but she didn’t want to know…. She was glued to some program on the goggle box. Your mother’s not an easy person at the best of times, and I have to confess my patience was wearing thin.”

  “So what happened? Did you tell her where you were going?” Will asked.

  “Yes, I did, as far I knew myself. The only way I could get her attention was to switch the television off so she’d listen to me. Then she really let fly on me.”

  “You switched the telly off,” Will said, then whistled expansively. That was the one thing you never did to Mrs. Burrows. It was rather akin to breaking the first commandment in the Burrowses’ house: Thou shalt not interrupt my viewing.

  “I only wanted to explain to your mother what I was intending to do,” Dr. Burrows said weakly, as if he was trying hard to justify what he’d done.

  “Dad, there’s something else, too…. You keep saying she’s my mother. She’s not my real mother, and you’re not my real father, are you? Why did you never tell me I was adopted?”

  Dr. Burrows remained silent for several paces. As they walked side by side, Will felt the tension between them, and wondered if his father was going to answer him. He did finally.

  “When I was young, my parents had a friend who used to visit,” Dr. Burrows said. “He was called Jeff Stokes, but to me he was Uncle Stokes. He was married to some woman who owned a stables outside London, and he had a couple of kids, but he never brought them with him.” Dr. Burrows smiled. “He was a fascinating character, and both my mother and father loved his company. There was a ripple of excitement in the place whenever he turned up, always in the latest model sports car or on a massive motorbike. And for me it was extraspecial, like Christmas or a birthday, because he never came empty-handed — he always brought me the most wonderful presents. A magic set or some Matchbox cars … he even gave me my first microscope, in a little wooden case with slides of crystals and butterfly wings. I can’t tell you how much those presents meant to me, particularly as my parents never had much money for things like that.”

  “Cool,” Will said absently, not knowing where his father was going with this.

  “I must have been around nine when he brought me two white mice in a cage. My parents had never allowed me to have any pets, so I was over the moon. I stayed up late into the evening, just watching my mice, until my father packed me off to bed. When I woke up in the morning, first thing I did was rush over to where I’d left the cage. It wasn’t there. I couldn’t understand it. I tore all over the house looking for it, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. My father came downstairs because I was upset and crying so much. He told me I must have had a dream because there never was a pair of white mice in a cage. He said I must have dreamed the whole thing. And my mother gave me exactly the same story.” “So they lied to you,” Will put in.

  “Yes, they lied to me. My mother had a chronic fear of mice, and my new pets had to go. But at the time I really believed what they’d told me, and it wasn’t until years later that I put two and two together and figured out what they’d done. However, I didn’t resent them for it. It was kinder to let me think it had all been some dream, rather than make me surrender my beloved mice.” Dr. Burrows cleared his throat. “Will, your mother and I were going to tell you that you were adopted. But we wanted you to be old enough to deal with it, to understand what it meant. I promise you that.” He met his son’s eyes. “And now that you know, does it really make any difference?”

  Will didn’t answer straightaway. “Yes, I think it does,” he said eventually. “Deep down I always had this feeling that I didn’t quite fit in with you and Mum, and certainly not ever with Rebecca … I mean the Rebeccas. I tried to make myself fit … make myself feel I belonged … I suppose I forced myself to believe that I did…. But that’s not right, is it? Even if this stuff with my real family in the Colony and the Styx had never happened, I was still living a lie, wasn’t I? Even if it was my own lie?” Will took a breath to try to steady his voice. “And that wasn’t right, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t, Will. We should have told you before,” Dr. Burrows agreed. Then he changed the subject altogether. “We seem to have been walking upward for a very long time.”

  “Well, the explosion’s completely plugged it up,” Martha said as she returned down the passage to Chester and Elliott. She looked at the girl, who was sitting cross-legged on her stretcher, chewing on a piece of biltong made from dried spider-monkey meat and sipping from a canteen.

  “Sorry,” Elliott said, flicking her eyebrows apologetically. “I couldn’t see any other way out.”

  “No, you did the right thing,” Martha assured her. “If it was a toss-up between who got us first — the Brights or the Limiter — I’d already put my money on the Limiter. He wasn’t going to let us get away with our lives.”

  “That vile Rebecca twin we had with us!” Chester growled, then made a pah sound. “I just knew she was lying through her
teeth, but Will didn’t want to know. The Styx are all foul liars, with no exceptions!”

  Martha cleared her throat, and Chester slowly turned to Elliott as he remembered what she had revealed back in the cavern. He shifted awkwardly where he sat. “Er … no offense meant,” he mumbled at her.

  Elliott had stopped chewing and was staring at the boy. “Topsoil filth,” she said through her tight lips. Chester’s eyes opened wide with surprise, until she suddenly burst into laughter. “Only kidding, Chester! My father may have been one of them, but I hate them as much as you do.”

  Chester swallowed, trying to summon a smile but still looking a little shaken.

  “My mother served in the Garrison in the Styx Compound, where they met,” Elliott explained. “When she found she was with child, she moved as far away as she could to the West Cavern. To say it was a difficult situation would be putting it lightly — she would have been Banished and he executed if anyone had discovered their secret. So he didn’t have an awful lot to do with me while I was growing up, but he did come and visit us whenever he could. Then, when I was nine years old, the visits suddenly stopped. Word was he went missing in action — on some Topsoil operation.”

  “But don’t you feel a bit funny about it?” Chester ventured. “I mean, you speak Styx, you’re half Styx, and yet you’ve fought and … and you’ve killed Styx, haven’t you?”

  “No, look, I’m a Colonist through and through, like my mother. She brought me up as one, and I saw how the Styx treated my people. I loathe them as much as anyone else,” she answered.

  “So why did you leave the Colony?” Martha asked.

  “Somehow, someone found out who my father was and tried to hold it over my mother. I don’t know who — she wouldn’t say, but she was going mad with worry. So I thought if I went, it would stop.”

  “Did it?” Martha said.

  “I don’t know,” Elliott said, her voice sad. “I haven’t had any contact with her since I left.”