The same blue light, I think, as I'd seen before. Just a whole lot brighter.
Kenny said, “Well, shit."
You know, there's just nothing sensible to say any more. I thought, What next? Then I walked forward into the crack, giving my head a good whack when I failed to stoop quite enough. I heard the others shuffling on after me, even heard Micky whack his helmet, probably in the same place I did mine. There was a clatter behind me then, Micky's helmet falling off because he insisted on wearing that stupid diadem under it, and it didn't fit so well anymore.
Beyond the crack was a cliff, beyond the cliff, a vista.
That's the only word I know for it.
The others came out of the crack and lined up beside me, the four of us standing on the cliff's edge, looking out at our impossible new world.
Maybe a hundred feet below us was a dark green forest, the tips of the trees waving softly in the breeze. The breeze itself was blowing in our faces, making me wonder why it hadn't moaned to us as it blew through the crack, back into the system of caves and mines.
Oh, who the fuck knows?
Dense, green forest. Beyond the forest, the bright glitter of silver water. Above the soft sound of the breeze, I imagined I could hear the sound of waves washing on the shore. There it is: that soft hiss you hear when little waves wash up the sand at the beach.
I could see hills, far away. Hills disappearing in mist. Up in the shrouded hills I could see buildings. Glittering, like buildings made of gold. The cave walls curved away from us in all directions, then disappeared in the mist as well. There was sunlight coming from somewhere.
Dusty rays of sunlight, like you see when the sun's behind a cloud, but the light's breaking through, shining down on the landscape but not quite on you. I always imagined seeing things like that was what made old-time people think there might be something they could call gods.
Micky turned away, turned toward me, and, voice holding a familiar, querulous whine, said, “This is ridiculous! There can't be anything like this here! There can't be anything like this anywhere! Marumsco Village would fall in, if there was something like this under the ground! The Occoquan River would flood it!"
He stopped suddenly, panting, turning more, looking at the crack in the cliff face, looking like he wanted to run.
There was a loud splintery sound, not quite like breaking wood. Then the ledge on which we were standing broke free of the cliff face, and we all fell. I don't know whether I screamed or not. Just fell down and down until I went into the cool green trees.
* * * *
I don't remember being knocked out or anything, but I awoke once again, awoke with my eyes shut, awoke with a pretty bad headache, with a sense of fullness in my face, with something stiff swinging around gently, banging on my ribs every now and again.
Soft breeze.
Cool on my face, evaporating sweat.
I squinted my eyes open on flickery sunlight, and leaves, leaves everywhere. Confused. What ... arms over my head. Upside down. The world seemed to twirl, putting me in my place, making me dizzy, making me squeeze them shut for a second. That sound ... a whisper-whine, the sound a dog makes when it needs to whine, but doesn't want anyone to hear.
Me.
When I opened my eyes again, I could see I was stuck up in a tree, wedged in the crotch between two skinny branches, way out on a limb. Dark brown trunk barely visible over that way, sky below my feet, invisible, ground.... I tipped my head back carefully and looked, expecting to see the horror of the abyss, to feel myself start to fall. My stomach lurched, but there was nothing: more branches, more leaves, that's all.
The stiff thing banging on me was the katana, hanging up my side, the wakizashi sticking out sideways, caught under one of the skinny branches. Fuck. That's why I'm caught here, instead of ... I made myself not think about it even one little bit more. If I do, I'll want to let go, will see myself falling, screaming, ground coming up, blotting out the ... shut up!
All right. Shutting up now. What else? Am I hurt? I could feel splinters of pain here and there. Looky. See? There's blood trickling up your left arm. You've got a cut. No broken bones, though. I know that already.
When I was a little kid, four, maybe five, with my parents in a place called Moab, in Utah, I stepped out from between two parked cars, not into the street, but up onto the sidewalk, and was promptly run down by a boy on a speeding bicycle. There was a big pain in my leg, too big to get my head around, and when my parents stood me up, I cried and kept one leg off the ground.
My mother said, “Why don't you put your foot down?” Put her hand on my shoulder.
I screamed, “No!"
My father shouted then and slapped me, and when I put my foot down on the pavement, there was a sound in my head like the spring on an old screen door being stretched and stretched. I don't know what kind of a noise I made then, but the next thing I knew I was in some kind of doctor's office, having my leg wrapped in wet plaster.
I haven't forgotten the sound in my head, or what that big pain was like.
Nothing broken then. Just cuts and scrapes and bruises, oh, my...
I reached up slowly with my left hand and wrapped my fingers around the thicker branch, just below the fork. Felt my hand suddenly grow weak and trembly. No you don't. This isn't gym class, where you can just pretend to be too scared and weak to play their stupid games.
I held on hard, tightening my stomach muscles, and pretty damned quick I was sitting on the branch, not hanging down anymore, feeling the fullness in my head drain away. Okay, good. Burke the Jerk always said he was just pretending, so he wouldn't have to play in any reindeer games. Now ... there was a branch just the right distance overhead, so I stood up, grabbing it, teetering over the same abyss that had almost made me ralph a minute earlier.
Deep breath.
I walked in along the branch, always making sure I had hold of the other one, feeling it sway and dip less and less as I got near the trunk. When I was standing there, holding on to scaly brown bark, I looked down, wondering how hard it would be to pretend I could climb right down. No Tarzan here, of course. But I fucking spend all my time wandering around outside. I ought to be able to...
Christ. Idiot.
I called out, “Micky? Ken?” Well, I wanted to yell, but it came out a cracked, quavery whisper.
My blue hard hat with its carbide lamp was lying neatly on the ground at the bottom of the tree when I got there, perched jauntily on a little pile of dry leaves. It sloshed when I picked it up, and suddenly my lips were as dry and cracked as any desert movie actor you ever saw crawling through the sand. What the hell ... I opened the reservoir cap and took a sip. Warm and brassy tasting, but ... I upended it and drank the rest.
New man.
Life fizzled and popped inside me as I clapped the helmet on my head. Anyway. There's trees here and an ocean nearby. There'd be a little creek somewhere and I could refill it then. Assuming I ever needed carbide gaslight again. This sunlight...
It was coming down through the trees nicely, dappled on the leaf mold and dirt under foot, as pretty as you please. Yellow sunlight. Now how do you suppose...
The trees came to an end eventually, me stopping at the edge of the darkling woods, looking out over a sea of tall grass, grass blocking my way. I'd been walking for an hour according to Grandpa's indestructible pocket watch, calling out names, Micky, Kenny, Johnny, then, feeling more or less like an idiot, Desta, Adar Thu, Tengam.
Nothing.
Just the sigh of the wind in the trees and the maddeningly remote hiss and thud of the sea.
I found that creek of mine flowing out of the woods and into the tall grass. I kneeled beside it, holding my helmet, meaning to refill the lamp, meaning to have another drink. The water was dark brown and, when I picked some up in my cupped hand, kind of oily looking. Iridescent.
Well, you remember, don't you?
I'd been walking along the Marumsco Creek with a couple of boys, boys I hung around with
before the Micky-Kenny-Johnny gang formed, Tommy and Gilbert I think their names were. Rough boys. Mean boys. Boys my parents didn't want me to know.
We'd drunk from the creek that day, and some time later, I split off the other two, heading home on a steamy summer afternoon. I started to feel dizzy and funny, and laid down on the sidewalk, marveling that the cement could feel so cool right out in the hot sun like that. I remember I made it home, but my parents found me sound asleep on the floor when they got back around dinner time, sleeping away, red faced and blazing hot, underneath the piano.
I never heard if the other two got sick or anything, but Tommy died a year or so later, from leukemia. The doctor, making one of the last house calls I remember anyone getting, gave me a bunch of penicillin, calling it tonsillitis. I never told anyone about drinking from the creek.
Stupid now or stupid later?
Thirsty now and thirsty later?
I stuck my tongue in it, then spat hard, scrubbing my lips on the back of my hand. “Jesus,” I whispered, “talk about toilet water.... “That made me giggle. Okay, the sea sounds closer, off to your left. Walk.
Maybe another hour and I came to the beach, white sugar sand sloping down to impossible turquoise water under a burnished blue sky, whitecaps far out, small rollers tumbling closer in, flat waves hissing up across the sand, making it maybe halfway to the end of the grass, then pulling back.
How the fuck, I thought, could there be an ocean under Woodbridge, Virginia?
I tipped my head back and looked up at the sky, trying hard to peer through the blue, to see the rock ceiling I knew had to be there. The sun was a fierce white hole to nowhere, hanging as if pasted to something, halfway down to the horizon, maybe more.
I looked away, dazzled.
Okay, it's not Pellucidar, anyway. No perpetual midday sun. No upcurving land...
As I blinked away spots, I looked up the beach, following the shoreline out of sight with my eyes. Beyond the grass, beyond the forest, the hills we'd seen from the cliff were still there, still full of mist, golden city still glittering like a mirage. Cliffs...
I spun, looking the other way. There! Still there. The cliff wall towered up and up, and there was the little black crack from whence we came, a white scar on the rock below it, where the little ledge had been. Above the crack, the escarpment went on higher, for hundreds, maybe thousands of feet, ending on a sharp, jagged line, only blue sky and delicate tissue clouds beyond.
No cavern wall, I thought. No ceiling.
Not anymore.
Then the sea hissed softly, and I forgot about everything else. Took off my hard hat and threw it on the sand. Toed off my Keds, pulled off my socks, unbuckled my sword harness and dropped my shorts on the ground, pulled off my T-shirt with the Device of Aceta blazoned in magic marker, and stood there in my tight, white, Johnny Weismuller briefs.
Stood for just a second, then ran for the water, white sunlight prickling hard on my naked back.
The seawater was cool, not cold, a little better than the water in Ocean City at the end of summer, not quite so warm as the water in Myrtle Beach a few hundred miles to the south. I'd always liked Ocean City better, but my parents insisted on Myrtle.
And it was real seawater too, salty when it got in my mouth, salty like sweat, too salty to drink.
I stood up, underpants plastered to my skin, flinging my bangs out of my eyes, taking a deep breath, gentle breeze suddenly cold on my wet skin, giving me goosebumps everywhere. There was a shadow on the water, reaching out toward me from the beach. I followed it up, dreading what the shape implied, already rehearsing a Friday scene in my head, when I...
Maybe she was taller than me, maybe not. Tall though. Thin. No, not thin. Slim. That's the word I want. Short red hair in what I think girls call a pixie cut. Head cocked to one side, staring at me with a half smile literally playing on her lips, just like in some damned story or another. Something like the halter top you saw on older girls in the summer. Bumps. Right where ... my eyes went the rest of the way down by themselves, snatched themselves away on their own as well.
Harem pants, they call those.
Diaphanous. That's the other word you'll be wanting.
And I thought I could see ... oh, dear. And me in my wet cotton briefs. I walked straight out of the water and up the beach right then, walked straight to my clothes, red-headed girl padding barefoot right beside me, standing there smiling while I put them on.
“?” she said, when I was done, seawater from my underpants starting to soak through my shorts already. Not a word I knew, just a syllable, random phonemes, nothing more.
I smiled brilliantly, and said, “Um-cluck ..."
She laughed, just a plain old laugh, tapped her chest and said more syllables.
Me Tarzan, you Jane? I felt like I wanted to turn right then and run away, dash off into the grass or trees and run and run, or maybe throw myself into the big blue sea and swim away to the impossible horizon.
Instead, I had the wit to tap myself on the chest. “Alan."
Puzzled look.
“Alan Burke."
“Bawk!?” A very amused and disbelieving look.
Makes me sound like some kind of poultry.
Meanwhile my eyes kept trying to creep on down and take another look at the diaphanous bits. That got an amused look too. And made me keep my eyes higher as I felt myself start to blush.
Well. How about ... “Onol,” I said.
She clapped her hands, “Onol!"
Okay. Good. “Onol of Aceta.” That's me.
And she said, “Ah-see-tah!"
It never sounded so good before. I confess it always seemed like a dumb name before. Aceta. As in vinegar. As in aspirin.
She clapped her hands again, looking me up and down with a big smile, the whitest teeth I ever saw in my life, whiter than movie star teeth, and where her eyes lingered.
I remember the first time I got a hard on in class. Math class it was, and not all that long ago. I remember I tried to keep on paying attention, but one of the other boys reached out and tapped me on the shoulder, whispering, “Calm down, Burke. You gotta stand up and walk outta here in ten minutes!"
God knows what he was doing looking under the writing panel of my desk. I never asked. But the teacher did want to know, right then and there, just what I found so funny about quadratic equations.
In the wonderful here and now, the smiling, red-headed girl with the big white teeth turned away, motioning me to follow, and walked off up the bright white beach, just as the sun, sinking behind the escarpment, began casting ever longer shadows.
And follow her I did, hypnotized, delirious, reduced to idiocy. Not too much idiocy, however. Pretty soon it dawned on me I was walking behind her and, unobserved, I could look where I wanted.
* * * *
By the time we got to where she'd set up camp, just below the dune line, where a crystalline creek was flowing out of the grass and down into the sea, cutting a gully in the beach, the sun had gone down behind the escarpment. It was pitch black for a few minutes, then a moon came up, rising from the spot where the sun had gone down moments earlier, peering over the cliffs like a gleaming, copper-colored eye.
No stars.
And maybe the moon is just the sun, turned down low and reversed on its track? Damn. Everyone knows the Sun and Moon cross the sky in the same direction! Don't they? Up in the hills, the golden city was hidden by darkness and deep shadow, but you could still make it out, sort of, the shapes of building picked out by little flecks of red. Firelight?
Dad took me to a theater once, so I could see the stage crew setting up for a performance of some Gilbert and Sullivan thing or another. “Pirates of Penzance,” maybe? I don't remember. Maybe this was just like that.
I shivered, not wanting to believe I was in movie make-believe now.
The red-headed girl pulled up the legs of her harem pants, bending over to reach her ankles, then waded out into the stream, stooped again, and cupped a ha
ndful of water to her lips. Watching, I had to recover for a minute before I could think to kick off my Keds and socks, then follow her into the water, glad I had on shorts and didn't have to bother with trying to roll up my jeans.
The water was cold, more goosebumps for me, and sweet, and when I looked up from drinking, the girl was looking at me, showing those teeth again.
Hell, I never was much good at talking to girls, so what difference does it make if I can't talk to this one?
I felt the short hair at the nape of my neck stir, coupled with an intense realization that I wanted to talk to her. Thought again about the difficulty John Carter had had, trying to make sense of Dejah Thoris. Tarzan didn't have so much trouble with Jane, did he? Of course not. Tarzan was such an intelligent and thoughtful ape-man; not a galoot like the Warlord of Mars. Or maybe it's just that D'arnot had made him into an urbane Frenchman after all, where John Carter was no more than a Virginia redneck?
I shook off my little book reverie, just my scaredy-pants mind trying to run away, one way or another, and smiled back at her, hoping she wouldn't recoil from my snaggly teeth. When I was maybe four years old, I fell on a flight of brick stairs and bashed out my upper front baby teeth. When my permanent teeth came in a couple of years later, they looked like hell, a little misshapen, all slightly turned off true in their sockets, one of the incisors distinctly yellow.
No one ever took me to get them fixed.
Nothing but a smile in return, the redhead stepping closer to me, big eyes on mine, looking ever so interested. “?"
“Yeah, right.” I said, “Okay. Sprechen sie Deutsch?” I don't know what the hell I would've done if she'd said, Ja! I learned a little German by reading through the first seven lessons of my father's old college text, but had given it up when they switched from Roman letters to Fraktur.
She tipped her head to one side. “?"
“Great.” Then, turning to a complete idiot, I said, “Hola, Isabel. ¿Como estas?” Nothing? “¿Se me olvido el cuaderno?"
That made her laugh.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2006 Page 30