by Eric Brown
‘I can’t think of any reason to wait.’
Hupcka folded the map and passed it to Bennett. ‘Very well. I’ll get the ship loaded with the provisions. We’ll be ready in ten minutes.’
Bennett returned to the A-frame. Rana was sitting beside her father on the bed, holding his hand. She stopped talking when she heard Bennett, looked up and smiled.
‘Sorry to interrupt - we’re almost ready to go. There’s a valley near the entrance, Mack. I can land the Cobra and we’ll go on foot from there.’
Mackendrick looked at his daughter, and then at Bennett. ‘Can Sita come too? I’d like her to be with me.’
Bennett nodded. ‘Of course.’
Mackendrick closed his eyes. ‘This is it, Sita,’ he murmured.
Bennett and Ten Lee returned to the ship, followed a little later by Rana and Mackendrick. He walked slowly, like the old man he was, assisted by his daughter.
Hupcka and his men were carrying backpacks and thermal wear up the ramp. A crowd had assembled around the ship, watching in silence. As Bennett strapped himself into the command couch, he looked through the viewscreen at the faces of the gathered rebels. In their hardened expressions he saw the dawning light of hope, after so many years fighting a hopeless battle.
Ten Lee read the co-ordinates from the map and Bennett programmed them into the onboard computer. Five minutes later they were ready for lift-off.
Hupcka stepped on to the flight-deck. ‘The provisions are aboard, Josh. Mack and Rana are in one of the sleeping chambers. We’re ready when you are.’
Bennett sealed the hatch and looked at Ten Lee. Her eyes regarded him from beneath her bulky flight-helmet. ‘Ready, Joshua.’
‘Hold on, Hans,’ Bennett said.
He touched the controls. The vertical thrusters fired, filling the ship with a concentrated roar. The crowd gathered on the purple plain quickly backed off. Bennett turned the Cobra on its axis, until they were facing west, and eased the ship forward, felt it surge with restrained power. They climbed slowly and banked around the enclosing mountains. Bennett relinquished control and set the Cobra on the pre-programmed flight-path, slabs of cold grey rock passing slowly by a matter of metres from the sidescreens.
He glanced across at Ten Lee, absorbed in the figures scrolling down the screen of her visor. On the engineer’s couch, Hupcka was gripping the harness, staring through the viewscreen with an expression at once awed and alarmed.
Thirty minutes later the Cobra decelerated, and down below they saw the valley between two high summits of snow-covered rock. The valley, likewise, was covered with an undisturbed mantle of snow, blinding in the glow of the gas giant.
Hupcka pointed. ‘There, the entrance is beneath the overhang to the right.’
‘I’ll bring the ship down as close as possible,’ Bennett said.
He engaged manual override, decelerated and edged the Cobra towards the rock face. Perhaps twenty metres from it he switched to vertical thrust, lowering the ship gradually to the valley floor.
‘There’s a bit of a slope down there,’ he warned. ‘Hans, go warn Rana and Mack that we’re coming down on a right-to-left incline. Tell them to brace themselves.’
Slabs of iron-grey rock rose around them as the Cobra descended and hit the ground. The ship tilted suddenly, and settled at an angle of fifteen degrees from the horizontal. Bennett cut the thrusters and the engines whined into silence. He peered through the sidescreen at the overhang, two hundred metres away through a deep drift of snow.
For the next thirty minutes they prepared themselves for the trek. Hupcka handed out thermal trousers and jackets, then distributed the backpacks containing food and water and flashlights. Bennett suited up, began to sweat immediately, and opened the hatch to admit cold air. Mackendrick and Rana emerged from their cabin, muffled beyond recognition in their thermals.
Hupcka looked at Bennett, then around at the others. ‘So, if we are ready, my friends . . .’
Hupcka led the way down the ramp and into the snow, Bennett and Ten Lee following Mackendrick and Rana. The snow was a metre deep and concealed uneven terrain. They picked their way through the drift with difficulty, losing their footing and frequently falling. Bennett helped Rana with her father, and ten long minutes later they made it to the overhang. They rested, regaining their breath, while Hupcka scanned the wall of rock for the entrance.
Mackendrick held on to his daughter’s arm, breathing heavily.
‘You okay?’ Bennett asked.
‘Don’t patronise me, Josh. I’ll be fine.’
Bennett smiled and joined Hupcka in looking for the entrance. The rock at the back of the overhang was a seamless dark grey slab, with no sign of a break or inlet. He considered the awful possibility of coming so far and being unable to find the entrance.
Hupcka had moved up the incline, to where the overhang narrowed so that he had to stoop. At last he gave a cry and waved. ‘Up here!’ He indicated a narrow, dark shadow in the face of the rock.
They joined him and he stepped through first, soon disappearing from sight down the steep drop. Rana and Mackendrick went next, illuminating the way with their flashlights. Bennett stepped after Ten Lee, having to turn and force himself with effort through the crevice.
They were walking down a tight, sloping corridor cut into the rock. Within minutes Bennett was sweating, despite the cold. He unfastened his thermal jacket and cooled rapidly. He stopped and looked back up the way they had come. The entrance was a glimmering sliver of opalescent light high above. He continued walking, soon catching up with Ten Lee.
The corridor sloped through the mountain at an angle of thirty degrees, for the most part chiselled from solid rock, but occasionally following the contorted twists and turns of natural chambers.
Only when they had been descending for over an hour did Bennett notice the carvings. In square panels of rock to either side were chiselled hieroglyphs similar to the ones they had discovered on the plain, so many months ago: stars and circles and crosses, all enclosed within squares, triangles and ovals. He recalled the statues of the Ancients they had discovered in the temple ruins. So far he had never really considered the possibility that they might still exist - it seemed too incredible a leap of faith to believe in the word of a single man, Quineau, deranged by too many months locked in a suspension unit. He wondered at Mackendrick’s desire to believe in the remote possibility that, even if the aliens were still alive, they might just possess some form of remarkable healing power. As they descended, Bennett considered Mackendrick, and the desperate desire only the dying must know to go on living.
They had been walking for perhaps three hours, and Bennett was tiring, the muscles of his legs becoming tight with unaccustomed use. Even the appearance of the circular patterns on the walls, which Ten Lee said were mandalas - representations of the various stages on the path to nirvana - failed to divert his attention. He wondered how Mackendrick, ahead, was coping with the descent.
At last Hupcka called a rest halt. They sat down and passed a canteen of refreshing ice-cold water between them. Bennett played his flashlight up the natural walls, catching flashes of blue and turquoise veins rising in the rock like the ribs in a cathedral ceiling.
Rana sat cross-legged beside her father, holding his hand.
Bennett joined them. ‘How are you feeling, Mack?’
Mackendrick waved away his concern, ‘I haven’t felt better for months, Josh.’ He stared at Bennett, his gaze intense. ‘I’ll be fine.’ In the glow of the flashlight, though, his thin face looked pared of flesh and his eyes bright with something like fever, or faith.
Bennett looked around at his travelling companions. ‘How far can we go before having to turn back? What if we find no sign of the Ancients?’
Hupcka shrugged. ‘We have supplies enough to last us six, seven days. If we find nothing in that time, we really should consider returning to the ship. We could mount a bigger, better-equipped expedition at a later date.’
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��So we have a week,’ Ten Lee said. ‘If the aliens are down here, then in that time we will find them.’ She looked around the group, something defiant in her expression. ‘And I know we will.’
They fell silent. Bennett drank his share of water and passed the canteen to Rana. Her eyes shone like amber gemstones. She returned his smile shyly, accepted the canteen, and held it to her father’s lips.
Ten minutes later Hupcka suggested they continue. He led the way, followed by Rana and Mackendrick, Ten Lee and Bennett. They made their way slowly into the heart of the mountain, the plummeting corridor becoming so narrow in places that they had to force themselves sideways to get through. Ten Lee, Rana and Mackendrick managed this without much difficulty, but more than once Hupcka and Bennett became lodged fast in fissures and crevices.
After a further hour of walking, the slope levelled out and they found themselves in a long, high corridor flanked by carved panels. They rested briefly and passed around the water canteens. The random beams of their flashlights illuminated an assortment of panels, and the scenes depicted were all the more stark and startling for being picked out in isolation. As he rested with his back against the rock wall, Bennett looked around at the bas-relief carvings. Among the mandalas were more graphic images: a scene depicting a line of aliens, arms raised; and individual Ancients, long and thin of arm and leg, their heads attenuated, almost equine.
Ten Lee pointed out a mandala to Rana and explained what it represented. Rana gazed around at the alien carvings. She shook her head in wonder. ‘Do you really think that the aliens - the Ancients - believed in Buddhism?’
Ten regarded her impassively. ‘I think they believed, maybe even still believe, in the truth, the universal truth. I call that truth Buddhism, but what the Ancients called it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that they shared a common understanding with certain schools of human thought—’
‘You can’t be certain, Ten,’ Bennett objected.
She turned her passionless gaze on him, and he felt involuntarily chastened. ‘I’ve had eight months to meditate, Josh. I have come to understand that Penumbra is special.’ With a small hand she indicated the mandalas carved on the walls. ‘These are not the only signs that the truth is to be found here.’
Rana stared at her with massive amber eyes. ‘Do you think the aliens still exist?’
Ten inclined her head minimally. ‘I truly believe in my heart that not only do the Ancients exist, but that we’ve been called.’
Something about her calm certainty, her air of utter conviction, sent a cold shiver down Bennett’s spine. He wondered at the chances of two races, separated by hundreds of light years, independently arriving at a similar system of belief. If so, then did it necessarily follow that that belief had its foundations in some form of universal truth, as Ten seemed to believe? For so long he had been comfortable in his belief of nothing, and the notion that there might be some real truth out there he found disquieting.
As if to lighten the atmosphere, Rana said, ‘At least we know we’re heading in the right direction.’
Bennett smiled at her. He didn’t point out that there was only one possible direction in which they could proceed.
‘I reckon we’ve walked for something like five kilometres,’ Hupcka said. He looked around him at the narrow corridor. ‘This is obviously leading somewhere, chambers or living quarters where the Ancients gathered, or still gather.’
Put like that, in terms of this being the lair of aliens, the possibility, however slight, that the Ancients still inhabited this subterranean network made Bennett shudder. It was an involuntary sensation, a superstitious fear his rational self knew to be irrational, but which he could do nothing to banish.
‘We’ll go on for a few more hours,’ Hupcka said. ‘Then I suggest we stop and camp for the night.’
Everyone nodded. Bennett was tired and could do with a rest, though he guessed that sleep in the circumstances would be impossible.
They started up again. The corridor was perhaps two metres wide, four metres tall, and, like the incline they had left behind them, seemed chiselled from the rock but for occasional sections where the tunnellers had hit natural caverns. Here the tunnel-like aspect of the corridors ceased, along with the carved panels, and opened out into irregular grottoes, spiked with stalactites and stalagmites, echoing with dripping water. Then the corridor would begin again, along with the panels depicting Ancients in all manner of strange and unguessable rituals.
Hours later - Bennett had lost count; it seemed as though he’d been walking for days - Hupcka halted and pointed ahead. ‘There! Look!’
Bennett peered. Beyond their flashlights’ dancing cones of radiance, he made out a pale pink glow. They started up again and walked a hundred metres, and the corridor opened out into a cavern perhaps twenty metres wide by as many high, lit by a wan, pink fungus which covered the rock walls and high cave roof. They switched off their flashlights and were plunged into an insubstantial and eerie half-light. As they passed into the cavern, their course was joined by a stream of water pouring in from a mouth-like hole in the rock high above. They followed the burbling stream on a slight downward incline, the pink fungus reflected in surging and rushing highlights.
They walked until the cavern widened yet again, and became a subterranean valley so vast that on either side the walls were hidden by pale wreaths of mist, and vaulted so high overhead that Bennett had to crane his neck to make out the fungi-shrouded ceiling. The valley dropped away at their feet, and far below they made out a forest of etiolated fungal trees, and great lianas or vines hanging from the ceiling. Closer to hand, Bennett saw tiny delicate flowers, pale pink and yellow, growing beside the widening stream.
Hupcka called a halt. Above ground, Tenebrae would be setting. He suggested that they keep to the natural rhythm of night and day and make camp. They pulled bedrolls from their backpacks and laid them side by side on the river bank. Their evening meals were pre-packed cobs of bread, tinned meat, hard cheese and fruit. They gathered in a circle while Hupcka brewed a pot of coffee on a portable stove.
Bennett ate his bread and cheese, surprised at how hungry he was. Hupcka refilled his mug with hot coffee.
Rana stared down into the valley. She caught Bennett looking at her and smiled. ‘It seems like just yesterday,’ she told him in a small voice, ‘that I was working for the Calcutta police force.’ She shook her head. ‘How did I get here?’
Ten Lee looked at Rana above the rim of her mug. ‘You were called, Rana, as we all were called. We are here for a purpose.’
Rana looked up. ‘What purpose?’
Ten Lee, sitting in the lotus position with her back as straight as a bamboo cane, looked as thin as Buddha after his period of denial. She blinked her canted eyes and regarded Rana evenly. ‘I do not know. We will find out when the time is right.’
Rana half-smiled and looked at Bennett, who tried not to smile himself.
He finished his coffee, moved to the river and swilled out his mug in the water. He remained squatting on the bank, staring down into the valley. He tried to detect movement between the pale trees, the first sign of animal life down here, but saw nothing. When he returned to the camp, the others had bedded down for the night. He lay on his bedroll, closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
He must have succeeded, as he was awoken some time later by the murmur of voices. He rolled over and opened his eyes. Ten Lee was sitting cross-legged on her bedroll, eyes closed in meditation. Hupcka, Mackendrick and Rana were gathered around the stove, sipping mugs of coffee. He joined them, feeling surprisingly refreshed.
‘How long have I been asleep?’
Rana passed him a mug of coffee. ‘About six hours, Josh.’
Hupcka was staring down the valley at the fungal trees. ‘I feel we’re getting somewhere,’ he said at last. ‘The chamber is widening the further we go. Perhaps we’re almost there.’
‘There?’ Bennett asked.
Hupcka shrugged. ‘Where
ver it was that Quineau claimed he made contact.’
They packed away their bedrolls and ten minutes later were ready to move on. Bennett and Hupcka led the way, striding down the gentle incline. They kept to the bank of the river which bisected the valley. On the far side was the forest of pale, leafless trees, as intricate and delicate as undersea coral. This side of the river was bare of vegetation save for a pale fungal growth which covered the ground and made walking treacherous. They made slow progress until the incline levelled out and the fungus gave way to bare rock.
Perhaps one hour later, as they were still trooping through the vast cavern, Bennett saw something. He happened to be looking to his left, to where the wan, ghost-like trees climbed the slope on the far side of the valley, when he caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He turned and stared. He could have sworn that he saw a tall, upright figure move quickly into a stand of distant trees.