Gunther's Cavern

by Edward Etzkorn

  June, usually a dependable source of information, could give him no leads as to what had happened to her during the night. Like him, she remembered lying down at the edge of the group when she went to bed, then migrating deeper into the group during the night in search of warmth. After that, she remembered only standing at the edge of the group and calling him, wondering why she was the only person awake.

  Over and over, she assured him her eyes did not hurt and she could see as well as ever.

  Having selected a position at the far end of the rock that constituted the dining table, he could stare into the further reaches of the cavern without making it appear obvious. He could see far less than he’d hoped. The cathedral-like room in which they sat disintegrated into a small chamber just beyond the dining area, which in turn subdivided into three or four narrow passages. Strings of glowworms grew thinner beyond the chamber. In one of the passageways he saw several forms moving about—tardigrades, as far as he could tell, all about Teddy’s height and girth.

  As he returned his vision to the fast-disappearing bevy of larvae before him, his eyes caught sight of a tardigrade standing halfway up the cliff above them, watching. He tried focusing on the figure, but could not see it. Only if he focused on a spot a couple of degrees to the tardigrade’s left or right could he see it. Glancing left, right, and back again, he realized he was looking at a contingent of several tardigrades, standing perfectly still and gazing down at the kids like guards in prison towers. Rad, sitting across from him, coughed to attract his attention.

  “Don’t let them know you see them,” she said in a singsong voice.

  Although puzzled by her voice, he spoke in his usual monotone. “How far does the cavern go?”

  She sang in reply. “Sing your comments, please. Don’t make it any easier for them to understand. We don’t know how far it goes. Probably far.”

  June’s elbow, from the other side, dug into his ribs. She frowned as she pointed at the pit of larvae. “Food kawa cho-ma. Ta kung dumb brother. Ta see no starva larva.”

  She was right. As unappetizing as breakfast was, the amount offered was limited. Although no rules of competition had been established, the faster eaters got more, while the slower eaters went hungry.

  Gunther grabbed two larvae, stuffed one in his mouth and set the other on the rock before him.

  A hand slapped his hand—hard. He turned to see Rocky VII frowning and raising his index finger. Until now, he and Rocky had had little contact. He understood the message—one morsel at a time.

  Returning Rocky’s frown, he chucked the second larva into his mouth, and this time bit it in defiance. It tasted surprisingly bland—more like dog food than Play Doh. And he hated dog food.

  He returned his attention to Rad. This time he sang his question, feeling foolish. “Who’s in charge of the cave?”

  “Some big insects,” she returned—this time in her normal voice.

  He followed her example and spoke normally, too. “Where are they?”

  “We don’t know. Further in the cave, we think.”

  “What are the tardigrades doing?’

  She sang again. “They work for the big bugs. Teddy says he’s trying to negotiate our way out of here.”

  “Doesn’t look like it to me,” he sang.

  “Me neither.”

  One by one, the faces of the kids had turned toward him. Ignoring them as best he could, he spoke again to Rad, resorting to his normal voice. “What are tardigrades, anyway?”

  Her voice, too, returned to normal. “They’re tiny creatures that can live practically anywhere. In high-school biology I did a report on tardigrades that live in moss along streams. Some people call them ‘Water Bears’ because of how cute they look under the microscope. The biggest ones reach a size of 1.5 millimeters.”

  “Yeah, ain’t they cute?” Billy interrupted.

  It took Gunther several seconds to digest Rad’s words. “One and a half millimeters? As in, a sixteenth of an inch?”

  “That’s right. And those are the bigger ones. Considering their size, they’re well developed by evolutionary standards. Their internal structures are a lot like creatures that are far more developed. Digestive system, circulatory system, nervous system, and so on. Most Tardy species have male and female members, but a few are hermaphroditic.”

  “Meaning one individual is both male and female?”

  “Right.”

  “And the ones here that live here, the ones you’ve grown to know and love …?”

  “We don’t know. I’m not even sure what species they’re sprung from. They look like the ones I studied, only a million times bigger.”

  “I’d love to know their whole life history, but first let’s talk about getting us out of here.”

  Several of the kids jumped at once. Two or three pairs of eyes shot up to the cliff above them.

  Rad’s fists clenched in front of her. Her thumb and forefinger squeezed the larva in her hand so hard it stopped wiggling and oozed a light-colored substance. She spoke between clenched teeth. “Not now. Tiptoes.”

  “Huh?”

  Several kids mouthed the words as Rad spoke. “Tip … toes.”

  Without another word, he focused on the last two dozen larvae and the fingers avidly grabbing them. Impulsively, he added his fingers to the pit.

  Hood led the way back to The Swamp, Gunther tripping behind Rad like a stalker. To his frustration, even after they were back in the sleeping area, she rebuffed his every effort to talk to her.

  “They’re watching,” she sang at last. “Stupid dumbbell, you’re drawing attention to yourself. Get away from me and tend the garden.”

  He could hardly contain his aggravation. “The garden!? How can there be a garden?”

  She pointed, and he realized that six or seven of the group had squatted down and were fanning their fingers over the rocky floor just outside their sleeping area. Several dozen forms grew there, greenish-blue in color.

  Satisfied with his response, she sang. “Go around the other way and meet me on the far side. Stand on your tiptoes.”

  He did as she ordered. She stopped on the far side of the sleeping area, her back to the stream. There she stood on tiptoes, graceful as a ballerina, waiting for him to join her.

  Awkwardly, he stopped opposite her and did the same, as if he were her ballet partner. He had to touch her shoulders to balance himself.

  Never in his life had he felt so silly. He was sure the other kids were laughing behind his back. He sang: “Why are we doing this?”

  She was not laughing. She answered in her usual spoken voice. “You don’t have to sing when you’re on tiptoes. But we’ve got to be careful. The Tardies are always listening. You have to assume they hear everything we say. I don’t know exactly how they do it. They seem to pick up the vibrations through the ground. The more of you touches the ground, the better they hear.”

  Although she sounded sincere, some voice in the back of his brain told him he was being set up, that the rest of the kids would at any time break out into laughter as he fell into their trap. Still, he saw no choice but to go along. “Okay. So how do we get out of here?”

  “The way we came in is a few hours away. It’s steep, and it’s guarded by giant insects. And the Tardies always know where we are.”

  “How do you know the way out is guarded by giant insects?”

  “We tried it once.”

  “When?”

  “Back when we first got here.”

  “That was it? You never tried again?”

  “Trust me. One meeting with those giant bugs will make you a believer.”

  “So we just sit around here like POWs, waiting to die of starvation?”

  “You sound like Serge. He thought we should try again, too.”

  Her words shut Gunther up. He let go of her shoulders, settling down on his heels. This conversation was not taking him where he wanted to go. Seeing her waitin
g for him, still on tiptoes, he touched her shoulders and raised himself up again. “Tonight will be my turn to go to the lab.”

  She shook her head, throwing them both off balance and almost pitching them to the ground.

  “Don’t worry about it. The swelling and redness go away in a few days. It doesn’t hurt your eyesight.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “I think it’s got something to do with being able to see outside the cave. From what I gather, most of the species down here have been living in darkness so long they’ve lost the ability to see. Even the life forms that still have eyes can’t see out of them. The neural pathways are gone. Reverse evolution. In the lab, they’re working on some kind of procedure to restore sight, so the creatures can see on the outside.”

  “Why would they care about that?”

  “You ask too many questions.” Obviously tired of maintaining her ballerina position, she set herself down on her heels again and motioned for him to join the group working in the garden. “Come on, act like a normal passive human being.”

  Still on tiptoes, he shot a last statement at her. “I want someone to show me the way out of here.”

  From the corner of his eye, Gunther caught movement from the top of the ridge—a tardigrade had twisted its body sideways as if to hear him better.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed. And the rest of us, too.”

  “So? We’re going to live here for the rest of our lives, on a diet of butterfly larvae? Don’t you see how gray and skinny everybody looks? You’re all wasting away. In another month or two our muscles will be so weak we won’t be able to go anywhere even if we try.”

  When she merely sighed, he added, “Yesterday, when June and I got here, you told me you expected me to get you out of here. Remember?”

  She nodded. “I’ll ask Hood.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Hood took him into a recess in the rock, out of earshot of the rest of the kids. His manner was not friendly. He did, however, make a point of standing on tiptoes, and he insisted that Gunther do the same. Although Hood seemed to appreciate it even less than Gunther did, they grabbed each other’s shoulders to maintain the position.

  “You got a death wish, my brother?” Hood said.

  Gunther forced himself to match Hood’s defiance. “No. Do you?”

  “’Cause you gonna get yourself killed if you try to pass them big freakin’ bugs that guard the way out of this cave.”

  “And you’re gonna get yourself killed if you stay down here forever, eating baby butterflies and growing moss on your skin.”

  “The Tardies are working on a way to get us out.”

  Gunther hissed. “You really believe that?”

  “Like the man says, sometimes you just gotta believe …”

  Hood gave it up. For the first time since Gunther had known him, Hood betrayed a hint of weakness. “No. We stay here, we’re gonna die here—one by solitary one. Serge was only the first.”

  “Have you tried getting out?”

  Hood’s hostility returned in a rush. “Man, you gotta be kidding me. No way you can get past them bugs. Not unless you plan on being bug food. You gotta come up with a better plan than that.”

  Gunther resisted the urge to buckle under. Hood towered above him by a good six inches, and his voice undercut Gunther’s by several decibels. But Gunther was the dungeon master. If the kids were to get out of this cave alive, he had to lead them.

  “I’m going to go to the cave entrance today. I’m hoping you’ll lead me there, but if you won’t I’ll ask Billy or Rocky VII.”

  Hood scowled. “Hey, man—why the heck would you want to do that? Those guys can’t find their way to the loo without help.” He set himself down on his heels, then rose on tiptoes again. “Okay. You want to get to the cave entrance, I’ll take you to the cave entrance. If the giant bugs kill us, they kill us.”

  Gunther could not answer at once. He’d expected more of a fight.

  “Maybe take Billy along,” Hood added. “And we better create a hullabaloo to cover our disappearance.”

  Gunther would have preferred another traveling companion. “Does it have to be Billy?”

  Hood reacted with hostility. “Yeah, it has to Billy! I just agreed to put my life on the line for you, and now you’re gonna question who I choose to bring with us?”

  Gunther waved his arms in a peacemaking gesture, forcing both of them to take a step backward. “Billy it is.”

  Grabbing Gunther’s shoulders in a vise, Hood returned to tiptoes. Gunther gripped Hood’s shoulders with the same ferocity.

  “Big football star keeps complaining about how he needs to get out of here, we’ll just let’s see what he can do about it,” Hood said.

  “How about one of the girls, too?” Gunther knew June would want to come along, but without knowing what lay ahead, he hesitated to expose her to the danger.

  Hood reacted fast. “We don’t need girls along.”

  “Sometimes they’re smart. Maybe they can slip past the guards when we can’t.”

  Hood wavered. “Maybe. Which one do you want?”

  “I don’t know them as well as you do. Not June or Tiff. I was thinking maybe Rad.”

  Hood shook his head. “No. Rad’s smart. Much as she tees me off most of the time, we need her to stay with the group in case the Tardies come up with something weird while we’re gone.” He gestured with his chin. “Kara.”

  The choice surprised Gunther. Sass and Van appeared more athletic. Despite his misgivings, he shrugged. “If you think so.”

  Kara and Billy were eager to join. “Beats sittin’ around here,” Billy said.

  Kara’s asthenic frame expanded by having been asked to join an expedition with the two males who all at once seemed to be in charge. Despite her excitement, her voice sounded apologetic. “I don’t even remember what the start of the cave looks like.”

  “Neither do we, Cookie,” Hood said. “Maybe better if we don’t.”

  Rad’s bloodshot eyes shot daggers at Gunther while Hood told the group their plan. All the children stood on tiptoes in a circle at the edge of the sleeping area. Gunther thought to take her aside to try to explain the full facts of the mission—for reasons he could not quite explain, he did not want her angry with him. Then he thought better of it. Unless he allowed her to come, she’d be angry at him regardless.

  “Enjoy yourself, Dungeon Master,” she hissed as she walked past him after the impromptu meeting. “I’ll keep the home fires burning.”

  June nudged him. “Care, hear? Farts be with you. Todo cronk la live go nada.”

  He nodded. “Don’t worry. I won’t take any chances. Farts be with you, too.”

  They spat on their thumbs and rubbed them together. “Ugh!”

  Sass provided the ideal disturbance. While the four kids on the mission clambered up what Hood said was the easiest route toward the outside world, she strode to the middle of the garden, tossing her head from side to side in a cocky manner. There Van, Giles, Rocky VII, and Tiffany were brushing their charges with loving touches, cropping dying leaves and flowers with their fingers. Flapping her arms, she shouted with exaggerated frustration as she stamped her feet and twisted them round and round, as if rubbing the plants into fragments. Anyone who did not know the plan would have thought she’d flipped her lid.

  “Are you guys crazy? What do you think you’re doing? Growing food for dumb insects? Back in the real world we’d stomp those stupid bugs into smithereens!”

  The “gardeners,” as planned, jumped to their feet in anger, some of them with arms raised. Several of them shouted at once.

  Rocky VII shook his finger at her. “What business is it of yours?”

  “Gone crazy, you chubby little monkey!” Tiff yelled.

  “Gonna pull your hair and drag you …” added Van, masking a smile.

  “Totally out of order!” Giles finished up.

  Sass
completed her march around the garden by stomping between the last and next-to-last rows. “You guys are as bad as the Tardies! Man, what stupid people you are, growing food for bugs!”

  As she stomped and sweated and fended off attacks by the gardeners, the four climbers scrambled upward as fast as they could go. Between tight limestone curtains, through corridors of stone and between stalagmite teeth they charged, headed for the entrance—and, they hoped, exit, of the cave.

  INTERLUDE 4

  Over and over, Dicey tried to penetrate Gunther’s and June’s brains—if not by telepathy in real time, at least by recreating their thoughts. To help the process, she wandered aimlessly through first Gunther’s room and then June’s, fingering objects, examining the photos they displayed, trying to make contact with these creatures who had grown within her, then escaped as babies, and now wandered somewhere as free spirits.

  Not once did she consider the possibility that they might be dead. They were calling to her to find them, to help them, to extricate them from whatever situation they’d gotten caught in.

  She fully believed in mental telepathy. What was wrong with her telepathic powers now? Why could she not make contact?

  At last, as the first rays of sun seeped over the eastern hills and awoke shadows across the room, she gave up her attempt at telepathy. At any moment the searchers would be knocking on her door. In a final effort to guide her footsteps on the upcoming day, she summoned up her memories of the night before the children had disappeared. They’d been yawning, acting as if they were tired and bored.

  That’s the key, Dicey, she told herself. Acting. Feigning boredom.

  But they were not in the least tired—or bored. So palpable had been their excitement, it had set her nerves on edge. If what they’d told her was accurate, they’d planned on visiting the back spring—which matched what Jimmy B told her. To watch a pupa turn into a butterfly. Judging from June’s reaction, that explanation had been an utter fabrication. But whatever the real explanation, it had something to do with the back spring.