He was asking her everything she knew about Drake; what he had told her when she was Topsoil with him; where he’d taken her; and if she’d met any of the other people in his network.
That’s enough of that, the part of her mind that was in the brilliantly lit room decided, and in midsentence Mrs. Burrows stopped what she’d been saying about Drake. Frowning, the Styx looked at her askance.
“Continue,” he barked.
“You can sod off! You’ve got as much as you’re going to get from me!” she screamed, then clamped her mouth shut.
The other Styx abruptly ceased the cycle of repetitive questions and they both glanced at each other. Then the Styx behind the light made an adjustment to it, and it flared an even brighter orange. The evil hedgehog swelled to the size of a cat and became more powerful, its spines sizzling with pure energy. As Mrs. Burrows kept the meditation exercise running endlessly through her mind, she felt the presence of the overgrown hedgehog circling around her head. But it just didn’t seem to be able to find a way in.
The Styx adjusted the light again so the intense orange flooding out of the bulb was even brighter than before. The hedgehog grew to the size of a dog, but Mrs. Burrows found she could still repel it and stay in the well-lit room at the same time. She had a picture of herself simultaneously riding a bicycle and juggling. If there’s one thing we women are good at, it’s multitasking, she thought jubilantly.
The Styx ramped up the output of the Dark Light several more times, until Mrs. Burrows could stand it no longer.
“I pray that I might not let those around me spoil my peace of mind,” she enunciated quite clearly — certain that she was actually saying the words aloud this time — then passed out. Every ounce of energy had been drained from her.
In an instant the Second Officer, now accompanied by the slightly younger First Officer, came into the room. The Second Officer began to release Mrs. Burrows’s restraints.
“So you got what you wanted?” the First Officer asked, sensing that all was not right.
“She was shutting us out,” one of the Styx said, and the Second Officer stopped what he was doing as both he and his colleague stared at the saturnine man.
“But nobody’s ever done that before,” the Second Officer gasped in astonishment.
The Styx were silent.
“Then you’re not finished with her yet?” the First Officer ventured.
“No, and in a few hours, when she regains consciousness, we start all over again. We do it as many times as it takes,” the Styx behind the Dark Light said.
“We will break her,” the other Styx agreed.
“Even if it kills her?” the Second Officer asked.
Both Styx shrugged indifferently.
“So be it,” they said, almost in unison.
Having climbed back to where his father was waiting, Will had his work cut out for him persuading Dr. Burrows that they should give the new passage a try. Complaining loudly, he eventually agreed, and lowered himself down the rope. Will repeated the trip several times to fetch all their gear, then planted a radio beacon before they set off down the passage, only to find themselves at a fork. They chose which way to go at random, and were almost immediately faced with another intersection, then yet more, and before long they had absolutely no idea what direction they were actually going in.
But more significantly, they found that they were encountering some very steep gradients.
“I reckon we’ve dipped quite some way below the seam now,” Will observed as he leaped down an incline.
Dr. Burrows wasn’t happy. He hadn’t been in favor of leaving the seam so early. “We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know where we’re going,” he sang in a bittersweet way.
“We never know where we —” Will was just replying when they both heard a low noise, like a murmuring, coming from somewhere up ahead.
Will had the aerosol at the ready in a split second, as Dr. Burrows fumbled the Browning Hi-Power out of his pocket and pointed it nervously at the darkness.
“Hold on, Dad, can’t see any creepy-crawlies,” Will whispered as he used the headset to scan the stretch in front of them.
They both listened.
It came again. It wasn’t just a murmuring, it was a voice, a human voice, and Will immediately recognized whose it was.
“Sounds like Chester!” he said to his father.
“Careful. It could be that Limiter,” Dr. Burrows warned in hushed tones. “Might be a trap.”
“No, that’s Chester all right,” Will decided, hardly able to contain his excitement. He dropped his voice several octaves, making it as gruff and manly as he could. “Chester Rawls, is that you?” he called out.
Silence. Then Chester replied.
“Will?”
“Chester!” Will burst out in his normal voice, overjoyed. “Sure is me! I’m here with Dad, and we’re both OK.”
“Thankfully! I knew you’d be all right! Elliott and Martha are with me, and we’re all fine, too. But what’s with the silly voice, and where, exactly, are you? I can’t see you, but you sound really close!”
“So do you! I’ve got my headset working again, so we’ll come to you,” Will proposed. “Just keep talking so we can find you.”
“Got you, loud and clear,” Chester confirmed. “And did those feet in ancient times, walk upon England’s …,” he began to sing, although he was so out of tune it was painful to listen to him.
But as Will and Dr. Burrows moved into the labyrinthine network of passages before them, Chester’s voice seemed to fade away, and there was absolutely no sign of him or the others. Flummoxed, Will and Dr. Burrows retraced their steps to the point they’d started from and, sure enough, they could hear Chester again.
“Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war …,“ the boy was singing.
“Chester, can you hear me? Stop that awful racket for a second,” Will said.
“Course I can hear you. Where’ve you been? We’ve been waiting here like a bunch of muppets, and I’m getting a sore throat!”
Dr. Burrows suddenly spoke up. “Chester, Dr. Burrows here. I think I know the reason for this. It might be similar to the whispering galleries you sometimes find in large churches or cathedrals. There’s one in St. Paul’s. What’s happening is that the layout of the tunnels, maybe helped by the fungus lining them, is reflecting our voices. We might be much farther apart than we think — maybe even miles — but our voices are being transmitted by the acoustics.”
Martha now joined the conversation, her tone rather terse. “You stay put this time — it’s our turn to find you.”
It was a good ten minutes before Chester, Elliott, and then Martha stepped out from around a corner and revealed themselves.
“Chester!” Will cried, leaping up as he saw the trio clearly through his headset.
“That was really weird. Mushroom-powered radio! Now I’ve heard of everything,” Chester exclaimed. But when he was close enough to see Will and Dr. Burrows’s military garb and their new weaponry, he was speechless, and simply stared at them.
“Chester, you just won’t believe where we’ve been. We found this fallout shelter, and a river, which we took up to the surface,” Will replied. “We went back to Highfield. We went home.”
“Home?” Chester choked, almost unable to take in what Will was telling him.
“Yeah, and Elliott, that number you kept repeating when you had the fever … I found out what it was,” Will said.
“Number?” she repeated as she tried to work out what he was talking about. Then it clicked. “The emergency number! So you saw him! Drake’s alive!”
Will nodded. “Certainly is. He was waiting for us in Highfield.”
As something detached itself from the shadows behind Chester, coming full pelt along the ground, Will yelled, “Watch out!” He gave whatever it was a full burst with the aerosol.
Bartleby stopped in his tracks, a chaos of scrabbling legs on the fungus floor, then bo
lted back into the tunnel, yowling.
“Thought it was a spider,” Will said unapologetically. “So you took the traitor back in.”
“He may be a traitor, but he just led us to you,” Chester replied. “Besides, you’re one to talk — you took that lying twin back in.”
They locked eyes, their expressions deadpan, then Will said, “Touché,” and they broke into laughter.
Chester took two massive strides over to his friend and hugged him. “Will, it’s so good to see you,” he said. “But I’m not sure I’m ever going to forgive you for grabbing a quick holiday Topsoil, not without me.”
“You will when you see the food we’ve brought back with us. Fancy a curry?” Will said.
“Is the sky blue?” Chester chuckled.
Martha lit a fire to heat the food, and Elliott dived into the Bergen full of equipment from Drake. As Dr. Burrows sat by himself scribbling furiously in his journal, Will told Chester all about the underground harbor and their return to the surface.
“So, we follow these radio beacons, and we can get home again. Simple as that?” Chester said. “And we don’t have to mess with the Deeps or the Colony.” He punched the air with his fist. “Result!” he roared.
“Yeah, but don’t forget what Drake said — we’ve got to make sure about Dominion first,” Will reminded him.
Chester arched his eyebrows. “And how exactly do we do that? If the Styx didn’t reach the sub in time and they somehow survived the blast, then they’ve either been gobbled up by spiders or the Brights, or —”
“Or they’re still floating around here somewhere,” Will interrupted.
Chester looked doubtful. “They could be miles away by now. And if they did reach the sub, then they could be miles down. C’mon, Will, the likelihood is that they’re out of the running, isn’t it?”
“Drake wants us to make sure,” Will said.
“Then that’s what we do,” Elliott put in, her tone resolute. She’d been listening to the boys’ conversation as she reverently handled the two spare Sten guns Will had brought with him. “We can have a scout around and see if Bartleby picks up any scent trails. And if the submarine got hooked up somewhere farther down the void, we might not have to go too far to check it out.”
“But what if it’s all the way at the bottom?” Chester posed.
He never received an answer to his question, and he didn’t much mind as right at that moment Martha announced that the food was ready.
With Martha handling Bartleby, who was in full bloodhound mode as he strained on his leash and sniffed away at the fungus floor, they explored the passages. They were making their way lower and lower, until they reached the huge cavern that Elliott’s explosion had carved out of the side of the void. Once there, Drake’s climbing ropes gave them the means to work their way around to the other side of the cavern, past where the submarine had been, and into one of the tunnels that lay beyond it.
They trekked down this tunnel and, just as Martha was saying that they must be close to the void again, Will and Chester made a discovery that was to change everything.
“Dad, you need to see this,” Will called to him.
“What is it now?” he answered cantankerously. He’d been moseying along at the back of the group, supposedly to protect them from any spider attacks to the rear. But he certainly wasn’t being very vigilant, his can of repellent stuffed in his duffle-coat pocket. And he’d also been peculiarly uncommunicative for the last couple of hours.
As he joined his son, Dr. Burrows saw that a tall boulder protruded from the fungus, and that the three-pronged symbol was scored into it. “Yes!” he shouted, and hastily removed his Bergen. He delved into it and fished out the black-and-white photograph the submariner had taken.
“Snap! It’s the same one,” he confirmed as he held up the picture to compare it with the boulder before him.
“And, Martha, you’re right — we’re at the edge of the void again,” Will said. He stared down into the darkness where the showers of water fell, wondering where the submarine was. Then he wheeled around to face his father. “But what does this sign mean, Dad? That we’re only at the beginning of the map on your tablets? That doesn’t make sense, because it’s a heck of a hike from the Pore to get here.”
Dr. Burrows didn’t answer as he ran his fingers over the three deep notches chiseled into the boulder.
“Dad, if you think about it, how can this be the beginning of the map?”
Dr. Burrows looked up, his lips slowly curving into a smile as he nodded approvingly. “Good boy, Will, you got there, too. After you worked out how to put the tablets in the correct order, I assumed that they were describing the route from left to right. How mistaken I was to use our Western conventions, when I should have been thinking more laterally. The fact is, they describe the route right to left. So my premise that this symbol must be at the start couldn’t have been more wrong. No, indeed, it marks the end.”
“If we’re stopping here, I could brew up some tea?” Martha offered, but no one took any notice of her, least of all Dr. Burrows, who was putting on his Bergen again as if he was going somewhere.
“I don’t get it. If this is the end of the trail, where the heck is the rest of it?” Will asked. “Where did the ancient people go from here?”
“Faith,” Dr. Burrows merely replied.
“Huh?”
“Take physics, for example…. The lower gravitational pull that we’re experiencing down here is the reason that we lived to tell the tale after falling thousands of miles,” Dr. Burrows said, lobbing his luminescent orb up and snatching it out of the air by the lanyard as it drifted down. Then he stuck his hand through the lanyard, winding it around his wrist so it was held securely in his palm. “And if one continues to travel toward the center of any massive body — this planet, for instance — then it follows that the gravity will continue to decrease even further. Maybe to nothing. Maybe to a zero gravity belt.”
“Sorry, Dad, I don’t underst —” Will tried to say.
“But I’m not just talking about faith in the laws of science. I’m talking about faith in one’s convictions, in one’s beliefs. For far too long, I lacked faith, and faith can move mountains, faith can open your eyes to whole new lands.”
“Well, are we going to take a breather here or not?” Martha asked again.
Dr. Burrows was looking only at his son as he spoke. “You think I’ve been callous and selfish, Will, but some ideas are too big and too important to let people get in the way. I’m sorry if you think I’ve been a poor father to you, but one day you’ll understand.” As he stepped slowly toward Will, he felt inside his coat for the radio beacon and, pulling it out, waved it in front of his son’s face. “You’ll be able to find me, if you want to. It’s up to you.”
“What do you mean?” Will said.
Dr. Burrows continued past Will, and when he was on the ledge with just the void before him … he launched himself off.
“Dad!” Will screamed, lunging at his father in an effort to grab him, though there was no way he could have reached him. Dr. Burrows had gone.
“No!” Chester whispered. Martha and Elliott ran over to watch Dr. Burrows spiral into the vacuum below, the luminescent orb in his hand growing dimmer until there was no sign of it at all.
“He just killed himself,” Martha muttered in disbelief. “Is he mad?”
After the initial shock, they all simply stared down into the infinite darkness. Then Will began to whistle through his teeth in that random way Dr. Burrows did when he was deep in thought.
“Dad may be a little crazy, but he’s not mad,” he replied eventually, with a glance at Martha. “What he was saying about the gravity does make sense.”
“Will, are you all right?” Chester asked. He placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder, concerned at the detached way he was taking Dr. Burrows’s death leap. It wasn’t the reaction that Chester would have expected.
“Logically, the gravity should be
even less toward the center of the planet, shouldn’t it?” Will pondered out loud.
“So what?” Chester spluttered. “We’re hardly going to put it to the test, are we?”
Will nodded, not in response to Chester’s question, but as if he’d suddenly remembered something.
“Martha, you never told us what this void is called. Don’t the Seven Sisters all have names, like Puffing Mary or the Pore?” he asked, as he slipped off his Bergen and began to rummage through it.
Martha shook her head. “Nathaniel and I never got around to it, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with the place after he died,” she said.
Will smiled to himself. “But it should have a name.
Everything has a name. Why don’t we call it Smoking Jean, after my Auntie Jean, because her apartment’s sort of like a black hole, too,” he said. He took several radio beacons and a pair of larger devices, the trackers themselves, from the Bergen before putting it back on. Then he swung around to Chester, Elliott, and Martha.
“Talk to me, Will. What are you doing with those?” Chester asked, frowning.
Will held up one of the trackers. With a pistol grip, it resembled some sort of stubby handgun, but it had a small dish at the front and a dial on the top. He switched it on and aimed it at the void, where his father’s signal caused the needle to vacillate and a slow ticking to come from the device. “That’s my dad,” he said. Then he made a quarter turn, and the needle showed a weaker signal and the ticking came more slowly. “And that’s the way to the fallout shelter.”
He went over to the tall boulder with the carving. “Let’s mark the spot, shall we?” Will said, activating a new radio beacon and then sliding it into a crack in the boulder. “And one for each of you,” he added, doling out the other three beacons to Chester, Elliott, and Martha. He did this so quickly, they didn’t have time to refuse him.
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