“What do you think?” asked Logan after Milo came up for air.
“I don’t know,” said Milo. “Looks pretty tight.” He began to shiver.
Logan noticed him. “That’s why it’s good to be a little fat,” said Logan, pointing toward Milo. “You’d think it would make it harder to fit through the squeezes, but it really doesn’t. A little chubbiness compresses pretty good, and I can afford to lose a few pounds down here without getting too skinny. Skinny people like you and Bridget just turn to dust and blow away.”
“Thanks for that,” said Milo with irritation, his teeth beginning to chatter. He had a feeling that the shivering had a great deal less to do with the water temperature than the thought of swimming an ancient subterranean passage.
“Should he be gone this long?” asked Dale. “I thought he said he’d be right back.”
The trio waited in silence, each moment passing with excruciating tension. Milo checked his watch, but realized the uselessness of the gesture. He couldn’t help but imagine Duck stuck in the submerged passageway, struggling as he drowned.
After an interminable wait, the trio was rewarded by a flood of bubbles as Duck shot to the surface, gasping as water ran down his helmet. Milo had never seen the cave guide so excited—never seen anyone so excited, for that matter.
“You have to check out what I found,” said Duck, his words tumbling over each other. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Follow me—and don’t worry; it’s an easy dunk, no risk of getting turned around.”
Without waiting for an answer, he thrust himself under the water again and vanished. Dale waited a few seconds, shrugged toward Logan and Milo, took four deep breaths, and plunged in after.
“Ignore the fear,” said Logan, eyeing Milo’s worried expression. “Don’t think about it—just go for it.”
And with that, the geologist too gasped in air and thrust himself underwater, leaving Milo treading water alone in the cathedral chamber.
He experimentally ducked his head below the surface, catching a glimpse of Logan’s kicking boots before the geologist dematerialized in a cloud of rising bubbles. Milo popped his head back above water, pulse pounding in his ears as he tried to repeat the deep, full breaths of the other men. He pushed himself underwater and kicked downward. Pressure built in his ears and he felt he needed to draw breath, though he hadn’t even reached the entranceway to the flooded passage.
Milo kicked through the crystal clear water once, twice, three times as he thrust himself into the underwater tunnel, feeling the sharp rocks on all sides as they grabbed at his backpack and boots. Pain radiated in his lungs as they contracted, pulling suction against his closed mouth. His vision went gray and blurry, but he was still within the tunnel, couldn’t even see the exit. His pants caught on a snag, forcing him to wriggle and yank loose, costing him precious oxygen.
Lungs convulsing, Milo flailed forward, dragging himself through the tight passage, his body screaming for air. He gasped involuntarily, sucking in a mouthful of water, gagging, muscles burning, face contorted. Just as Milo felt he couldn’t stop his body from breathing in water, two hands plunged into the darkness before him, ringed with bubbles as they seized his backpack straps, yanking him out of the last few inches of the passageway and to the surface.
Gasping, Milo shook, unable to open his eyes as his stomach churned, his lungs burning, his body wracked with pain.
“You can throw up if you need to,” said Dale, slapping him on the back. “Get all that water out—that’s right.”
Milo opened his eyes to see the three men surrounding him, concern written on their faces. Obliging, he vomited.
“It’s okay,” reassured Dale, ignoring the oily slick of regurgitation gathered between them. “You’re doing great. Everybody has a shitty first dunk. This is your first one, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. First one.”
“You made it,” said Dale, embracing Milo as he shivered, rocking him in the cold, shallow waters. “Nicely done. They get easier.”
“Backpack got stuck,” said Milo, teeth chattering as he slowly warmed again.
“I figured as much,” said Dale. “Logan said you chickened out—but Duck and I knew you’d make a run at it.”
“I went for it,” repeated Milo, allowing the heat from Dale’s embrace to wash over his body, fill him from within. “I made it.”
Eyes clearing, Milo took in the new chamber for the first time. The dimensions were significantly smaller than the cathedral; this new room was no larger than a half-scale Olympic pool, almost entirely flooded but with a small peaked island in the center. The waters were deep, forcing Milo and the three other cavers to hold to one wall.
This new room was younger than the cathedral, at least geologically speaking. There were no colossal columns, no thick stalactites clinging to the ceiling. Instead, much of the roof had fallen away, created a submerged breakdown pile that resembled the aftermath of a rockslide, blocking any exit.
“No way to get through that mess,” complained Dale. “Not without tanks. What were you so excited about?”
“Do you trust me?” asked Duck, again with a boyish grin.
Dale pursed his lips and nodded, but Milo could see the doubt written across his face.
“Then watch this,” said Duck. He swam to Dale first, switching off his headlamp, then to Logan, and finally to Milo. With the last light off, the flooded chamber was plunged into absolute darkness.
Milo looked around, the surrounding blackness omnipresent and impenetrable. He held out his hand in front of his face and saw the dim outline, watched as little flickers of light danced across his peripheral vision, but knew both were illusions.
“Do you see it?” breathed Duck, his whisper gratingly loud against the silence.
Milo tilted his head in every direction, seeing nothing. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a slight but increasing glow. Slowly, he turned to face the source, a warm golden light from deep beneath the waters, easily forty feet below.
“Did you drop a flashlight?” asked Logan, returning the whisper.
“I most certainly did not,” said Duck. Milo could practically hear the smile in the answer.
“You mean . . . that light was there when you got here?” asked Dale.
“Almost missed it,” said Duck. “Gasket on my main light failed, headlamp shorted out. I surfaced to switch it out with one of the spares when I saw the glow. Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
“Of course not,” said Logan. “Nobody has. It’s . . . impossible.”
“I dove to check it out,” said Duck. “Definitely a light source down there, but it’s way too deep to duck, and I don’t think anybody with air tanks will be able to thread through that breakdown pile.”
“So you’re saying we can’t reach it?” demanded Dale, his voice rising.
“Not unless you know a way to get a bulldozer down there,” said Duck. “There is a lot of ugly looking debris in the way.”
“He’s right,” said Logan. “It’s highly unstable and could easily collapse if disturbed. Quite unusual for a cave of this morphology.”
“I hope I’m not the only who doesn’t already know,” said Milo. “But what are we looking at?”
“That’s the thing,” said Logan. “I have no idea—and as far as I know, nobody has ever seen something like this before.”
“You think it could be lava?” asked Dale. “Molten rocks?”
“No way,” said Logan. “We’d be dead within seconds of reaching this chamber. There’s no methane, no bubbles coming up from the breakdown, no exotic gases, no heat . . .”
Milo briefly lost his grip on the wall, splashing into the water before pulling himself back up again. “Definitely not another expedition,” he said.
“Bioluminescence,” suggested Logan. “No other possible explanation. Wish we had a trained biologist down here.”
“I didn’t think we’d need one,” admitted Dale.
&nb
sp; “I tried to get it on camera, but the image won’t turn out,” complained Duck. “I can’t get close enough for a sample either.”
“Assuming it can be sampled,” said Logan. “Or if it wants to be sampled.”
The hair on the back of Milo’s neck stood up, alarmed at Logan’s characterization of the mysterious light source. Duck was the first to click his headlamp back on, followed by the other three, the mysterious glow extinguished as though it was never there. Unprompted, Milo pushed off from the wall, swimming over to the small island in the middle of the chamber as the other three remained to discuss the matter.
Milo dragged himself out of the water and onto the island, little more than an unbroken rounded stone, just fifteen feet across. Now close, he could see a small alter-like collection at the center, a mass of small, stacked stones. His pulse quickened. The arrangement was indisputably man-made, the rocks carefully selected from the breakdown pile and arranged into a cairn of nearly three feet in height.
“What are you?” breathed Milo.
Then he saw something that stopped him dead. The shrine was topped by three ivory masks. Someone had made it into this distant, deep room. The masks were not fertility idols; they were shamanistic animal representations, the first of a monkey, the second a leopard, and the third an antelope. Trembling, Milo reached out to touch them, as if that would somehow assure his mind of the reality of the impossible find. His fingertips drifted across the smooth, carved white. Any paint had long since faded, absorbed by the darkness. A thin veneer of calcite had begun to form around the edges, gently cementing the masks in place. They’d been there for thousands of years, maybe longer.
“What is it?” said Dale, calling out from behind him.
“Some kind of altar,” said Milo without looking up. “Man-made. Carved artifacts too.”
“From DeWar?” suggested Dale as he began to swim over. “Or maybe the Japanese? It can’t possibly be native, can it?”
“Can’t say for certain,” said Milo, shaking his head. “But look at the calcification—I highly doubt it’s modern.”
Examining the artifacts closely, Milo realized the central, largest mask—that of the leopard—had been visibly moved. The thin calcite around it was cracked, as though it had been taken and then carefully replaced. Though every instinct as a historian demanded he leave the artifacts undisturbed, Milo lifted the mask. Beneath it was a large natural bowl, not unlike a stone mortar, glassy waters filling it to the brim. And within the pooling liquid lay a leather-bound book.
Before he could announce the book, Milo heard a disturbance from the waters behind him. He abruptly swiveled back toward the group. Dale, Logan, and Duck shrank back as the waters besides them bubbled and frothed with movement and light. A figure was rising from beneath the surface of the black subterranean lake.
CHAPTER 19:
SACRILEGE
Joanne rose up through the dark waters, coughing as her head broke the surface. Treading in place, she swiveled around, seeing Logan, Dale, and Duck to one side and Milo standing on the island in the center of the flooded chamber.
“Ahoy,” said Joanne. “You blokes were hard to find—I must have been right on your heels until you hit that big room back there. Took me forever to figure out where you’d gone. How about leaving some directions next time?”
“Sorry,” mumbled Duck with a genuinely apologetic tone. “I was going to do it on the way back out.”
“Bad boy!” exclaimed Joanne. “I ought to tell your mother!”
“Why are you here?” asked Dale. “What’s going on?”
“I have not-so-good news,” said Joanne as she swam to the nearest wall. “The weather up top has deteriorated significantly; satellite modeling shows a tropical storm turning toward our location. It’s a big one, maybe even a hundred-year storm, and could make things bloody wet and bloody dangerous down here. We’ve been requested to return at the earliest possible.”
“Return?” asked Duck. “To base camp? Or all the way to the surface? Can’t we just wait it out in one of the upper chambers, above the water table?”
“Not as such,” said Joanne apologetically as she hauled herself partially out of the water, hanging onto the wall beside the three men. “Too risky. They want us all the way out for now. We could be contending with flooded passageways and fast-moving waters. If that weren’t enough, the weather could make resupply missions quite difficult, and there’s always the matter of keeping the hatch in working order. I think we’d all be more comfortable out of the caverns for a day or two, let this weather nonsense blow over.”
“I suppose they have their reasons,” grumbled Dale, scratching his face in frustration. “But just when we’ve started making some real progress! Milo, tell me everything on the way back up.”
“I will,” promised Milo, stealing one last glance at the ivory masks.
Joanne smiled and nodded, but Milo got the distinct impression that haste was of the essence. She’d already spent too much time tracking them down. Logan was the first to take a big lungful of air and duck beneath the surface, disappearing in a froth of bubbles.
“Milo—you’re next,” said Joanne, waving him over. “We really ought to go quickly, please.”
“Just a minute,” said Milo. He thought about mentioning the leather-bound book, but immediately thought better of it. Best to avoid the temptation to stay longer, especially given the approach of a massive downpour.
A hundred-year storm, thought Milo. He envisioned the serpentine river filling with water, drowning the cathedral chamber and the little island he stood upon. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference—the book was already waterlogged—but the coming flood might be just enough to lose it forever.
Milo opened up his wet backpack and pulled out a sealable laminated plastic bag. Moving quickly, he carefully scooped up the book and placed it within the sack, filled it to the brim with water from the stone bowl, and tucked the heavy container as securely as possible within his pack. The water added a lot of extra weight, granted, but at least it’d keep the book stable until they reached base camp. Submerged paper held up remarkably well over time, even in acidic seawater, leaving Milo with full confidence he could preserve the book once they’d returned.
“Milo!” shouted Joanne, waving him over urgently as Dale and Duck plunged beneath the surface in quick succession, unwilling to wait their turn.
“Coming!” he exclaimed, strapping on the backpack again and swimming across the chamber. Thrilled by his discovery, Milo felt no fear as prepared his lungs for the dive. Three quick breaths—hold—and he forced himself beneath the surface, kicking toward the underwater tunnel.
The book was important, yes, but not as groundbreaking as the mask-decorated altar. No scholar had ever even considered the possibility that a tribal warrior could have made it so far into the depths of a supercave. But what next? An established understanding of Stone Age African culture, technology, and human ability would be replaced with a monolithic question mark, a tangle of unanswerable questions. He knew full well the gaps left by such controversial finds were too often filled with vitriol and doubt, to say nothing of the inevitable ad hominem attacks against his already-tainted career.
Grasping rocks with his hands, Milo pulled himself into the passageway, pressure in his ears and burning in his lungs as he scraped and bumped along the low ceiling.
Milo could see himself descending into the dismissed ranks of other historical revisionists, like the archaeologists who supposedly unearthed Roman olive jars in Brazilian bays, or claimed that China had discovered North America in the 1400s. No—it’d be even worse than that—he’d be trying to convince the academic community that early African hunter-gatherers descended through a half-mile of vertical rock and swam flooded chambers, all without ropes, light, heat, or food. It would be a shaky claim indeed, especially when built atop the broken foundation of his career.
His backpack caught on the same rocky snag, abruptly jolting him to a stop. Milo
knew what to do this time, twisting himself free and kicking off from the passageway, shooting upward again.
No rational scholar would accept the idea, Milo concluded. Maybe it’d be better if flooding from the hundred-year storm washed the masks and altar away. Milo felt it unlikely—the structure could have survived a hundred such storms, maybe more.
Pulse pounding and vision gray, Milo broke to the surface.
Milo found the long march back to base camp infinitely more exhausting than the trip down. As he answered Dale’s increasingly frustrated questions, he felt as though he was slipping forward in time, his mind drifting as they waded, walked, and crawled up through the airless tunnels. One moment he’d be in the present, inches from the bottoms of Dale’s oversize boots, the next a quarter mile further along, the group in another configuration, with no memory of the interceding journey.
The group eventually emerged from the anthill and into the base camp chamber. They were all soaked to the skin, caked with drying mud, heavy packs dripping and soggy. A pounding headache reverberated within Milo’s skull, exacerbated by the echoing waterfall.
If Dale Brunsfield had been expecting a welcome reception—or even a single person to greet him—he was disappointed. Looking around, Milo only saw the empty camp, the dimly illuminated globes lazily tilting on the ceiling above, no movement other than the cascading froth of the falls.
The others dropped their packs at the edge of the supply depot. Logan sat down on a rock and put his face in his hands, drained by his exertions. Joanne slumped down beside him. Dale crawled inside his tent while Duck, frowning, began organizing a haphazard pile of ropes and carabiners beside the supply depot.
“How soon do we have to get out of here?” Logan asked without dropping his face from his hands.
“Ask me again in ten minutes,” answered Joanne. “I’m so bloody tired I can’t think.”
“Definitely take ten,” called Duck from the supply pile, loud enough for the rest to hear. “If you don’t take time to recover, we’ll never get up the shaft before the storm hits. Everybody needs to eat something too.”
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