by Max Carver
“You're actually touching that?” Naomi asked, raising an eyebrow. “On purpose?”
“For real, guys,” Bartley said, still looking through the huge wall hole. “You probably want to see this.”
“I'm no biologist, but I did dissect an earthworm in high school,” Iris said. “Well, the gatekeeper version of high school. Anyway, these little tentacles—” she indicated the one on the outside of the skin flap, which still flopped around like a blind serpent, flinging droplets of blood. “—these remind me of the...let me think...the parapodia of annelids. They help them crawl or swim, like limbs. But these tentacles are more than just simple stiff projections. Look.” Iris tugged at the flopping tentacle, and it coiled around her finger like a baby's reflexive grasp.
“I'm going to be sick.” Naomi turned and walked away, shaking her head, her braids spattered with rock dust and worm blood. She lit a thin cigar and sat down on the seat of her scouter.
“No smoking in the mines,” Hagen said. Naomi replied with her middle finger.
“How about no dangerous killer monsters in the mines?” she snapped. “How about we implement that policy first?”
“The other thing I can tell you is that worms don't have lungs,” Iris said. “They respire through their skin, fairly passively. That's why they're narrow and usually very small. An organism as large and fast as what we just saw needs fully developed lungs for circulation.”
“So what's the upshot of all that?” Hagen said.
“These things may look like giant worms, but they're a different kind of species altogether. We can't assume anything about them. They may even be fairly intelligent. It takes a lot of neurological tissue to drive that much muscle.”
“You keep saying 'they.'” Alanna approached, having regained her usual cool, steely composure. “Do you believe there are more?”
“It would be strange to find just one individual of any species,” Iris said. “Even if they are solitary creatures, there must be others somewhere.”
“Seriously, over here, people!” Bartley shouted. “Maybe this has something to do with whatever you're all jib-jabbing about.”
“Maybe we should all stop jib-jabbing and get driving,” Naomi suggested.
“What are you seeing?” Iris stepped up the slope to stand beside Bartley. “Oh. Wow.”
Everyone went to join them except Naomi, who remained on her scouter and looked impatient. The robots didn't go, either. The loader stood perfectly still, awaiting further instructions. Malvolio, on the other hand, hung his head and paced.
“Surely, I am an unfit security bot!” Malvolio pronounced. “I failed to protect you. I don't have the right to wear this badge.” Malvolio reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a cloth security badge. “Not that I wore it anyway, for obvious fashion reasons, but it's the principle of the matter. Oh, the shame. The shame!” The drama-bot held up the nozzle of the bug-spray hose with his other hand. It looked bent from the worm crushing it into the wall.
“If it's any consolation, that tank is probably too small to have any effect on that giant worm.” Eric pointed to the liter-sized steel tank with the biohazard and skull symbols, mostly hidden under Malvolio's long, tattered yellow tailcoat. He wasn't sure why he wanted to cheer up the robot; surely it was just pretending to have feelings, being overdramatic as it was programmed to do. “Plus a lot of us didn't have our air masks on for protection.”
“Oh! Even had I succeeded, I would have failed.” Malvolio dropped the nozzle, doffed his top hat, and placed the hat over his heart. He shook his head sadly, gazing at the floor. “Truly, the stars are crossed for us all this evening.”
“Shut up,” Hagen told the drama-bot.
Eric stood behind Iris, looking over her into the huge space beyond the broken wall.
“I didn't expect all that.” Alanna elbowed her way in front of Eric for a better view. “It's like a whole city. Or what's left of a whole city.”
The space beyond the wall was vast, with an expansive vaulted ceiling supported by massive columns. Looking closer, Eric saw the columns were actually remnants of old buildings, with arches so large that cattle could have passed through them. Wide slabs of rock led up as shallow stair-steps to broken remnants of overhead walkways that had once arched in all directions. There were even pieces of what looked like an aqueduct. Colored quartz decorated the ruins, along with more of the circular flower-and-insect writing.
Most of the buildings had been smashed, though, and chunks of them were heaped up here and there, mostly along the walls, but also in piles of boulder-sized debris scattered all over the floor.
“That's not time and erosion,” Hagen said. “This looks like a demolition site. A sloppy one.”
“Who would destroy such a valuable archaeological find?” Iris wondered. She sounded personally hurt by it.
“Maybe Caffey Industries?” Alanna suggested. “But even that schmuck Bowler Caffey Junior would understand the economic value here. These are real, intact alien artifacts, actual signs of an intelligent species we've never encountered before. Even if they've been extinct for thousands of years...all this would be priceless. Worth far more by kilogram than the most precious metals. Intelligence is even rarer than gold and platinum.”
“You can say that again,” Naomi grumbled. She remained seated on her scouter, cigar in one hand, plastic explosive marshmallow in the other, ready to pitch it down the throat of the next giant worm that came along. “Which brings us back to the question of why we're doing so much talking and so much less getting the hell of here before we die. Give me one good reason we aren't hauling butt right now.”
“Maybe there's a faster way out through this old city,” Hagen said. “They must have had large tunnels to the surface.”
“You want to go in there? Where the monster worm just went? That way?” Naomi asked. “Am I hearing you right?”
“We'd have to widen this hole to get the trucks through,” Hagen said. “And no matter which way we go, we're probably looking at hours of clearing debris—and that worm could be hiding anywhere in all that rubble—”
“Then forget it!” Alanna said. “Let's keep advancing. I'm not standing around here any longer.”
“Smart woman,” Naomi said. “Good thing you're in charge. Can you believe these men? Anyway, what do you think about trying the upward path now, Miss Li-Whitward?”
“Not unless my geologist's opinion has changed,” Alanna said.
Iris gaped silently at the ruins of what had obviously once been an impressive underground city. Shattered quartz in every hue reflected Bartley's floodlights.
Eric nudged her. “Iris,” he whispered. “Which path?”
“Huh?” Iris looked around and saw everyone looking at her. Eric's words seemed to finally register. “Oh. The night path, definitely. Let's get moving. There's nothing left in there.” She waved a hand dismissively at the ruins and started back toward the cement truck, where she'd been riding with Hagen. Eric thought it was an odd comment—there's nothing left in there—but this wasn't the time to ask what she meant. He agreed that it was past time to get moving again.
“Ride with me,” Alanna said, seizing Iris's arm and redirecting her toward the dump truck, where Alanna had been riding with Prentice. “I'd rather not be alone. Or waste time, I mean. When I could be listening to your expert counsel.”
Iris nodded and went with her, looking too stunned to speak. Eric could sympathize—they'd seen terrible things, two people killed, and they were all still in extreme danger.
“You heard the boss,” Hagen said. “Everybody get moving. As we were.”
“Finally,” Naomi said. She gripped the handlebars of her scouter, her smoldering cigar gripped in her teeth. She'd tucked her prepped plastic explosive somewhere, but Eric doubted it was far out of reach.
Eric climbed into his rig and plugged in with his external length of artificial fiber-optic spinal cord. He was relieved to feel the gray neural hum of the exoskeleton's co
re processors starting up in safe mode. All he needed at the moment was the treads, basic transportation. If the rest of the systems, like the arms, needed more time, he could live with that.
Their caravan started up again, heavily battered now and fewer in number. Most of their meager weaponry was already spent and, anyway, had proven ineffective against the creature hunting them, the largest and most fearsome alien creature he'd ever seen, capable of snapping up and consuming a human being in a single bite.
They drove down into darkness, into a low tunnel lined with black quartz so thick and dusty that it seemed to absorb all light. A row of demonic stone bats the size of gargoyles hung upside down inside the arched entrance to the dark path, their eyes jeweled red, their fangs bared as if eager to feed on any intruders into their domain.
Chapter Twelve
At first, the walls were mostly black, but more details became apparent as they advanced. The ceiling was low compared to the previous chambers and tunnels, and it was decorated with silver stars—just a few at first, then more and more as they traveled deeper down, clusters and constellations of stars set into the black volcanic rock above.
Eric's eyes kept straying to the yellow dump truck ahead, with the walls of its empty dumping bed partly folded down to make the truck as compact as possible. He thought of Iris riding in there, and how Iris had immediately looked for him after the monster attack. Maybe she felt something. Maybe he felt something.
He had to shake off that kind of thinking. He'd just been away from home too long. He pictured Suzette, and remembered how they'd spent that last night together in the hayloft, her long strawberry-blond hair splayed out in a puddle around her head. She'd been topless, wearing lacy red panties she'd bought “just for tonight.” Normally she wore special, tight-gripping white undershorts designed to be nearly impossible for a boy to remove, which her parents had required since she was thirteen.
Eric and Suzette had kissed countless times that night, and touched each other more intimately than ever before, but of course she'd preserved her virginity, and his along with it—not that he'd necessarily been so enthusiastic to preserve his own, but she was adamant about waiting for marriage. Yet she tended to avoid talking about marriage with him most of the time.
They'd ended the night with the usual prayer for forgiveness, which she always insisted on after even the lightest make-out session.
Suzette, the girl he wanted to marry, the girl he was out here to strike it rich for. Suzette, the girl who now lived in a co-ed group dorm room, where she apparently hung out in skimpy clothes she would never have worn at home, surrounded by guys in their underwear, who obviously had to be checking her out all the time, and sleeping in beds only a few footsteps apart—
No, he told himself. Suzette had always been virtuous; she wouldn't suddenly turn promiscuous just because she was a thousand kilometers from home and family, living in the big city. If she'd never slept with Eric, whom she'd known all her life, surely she wouldn't turn around and have sex with some strange guy she barely knew.
Surely she wasn't going to fall in love with someone else, and forget about him.
Eric felt despondent as he followed the tunnel down and around a tight curve, and then another. The path grew steeper, carrying them deeper and deeper underground.
“This can't be right,” Naomi grumbled to Bartley, while she puttered her scouter alongside his exoskeleton. Bartley had been lending her a sympathetic ear all the way down, probably hoping for a sympathetic night in her bed sooner or later. Eric doubted it would work out. “We're just going down and down,” Naomi said. “This can't possibly be the way to the surface. We have to go the other way.” An edge of panic crept into her voice. Eric recognized it easily because he was starting to feel it himself, unease gnawing like invisible worms deep in his gut. “Bartley, come on,” she continued. “We have to tell Hagen. We have to go back.”
“You think?” Bartley sounded uncertain. “You're right, we're getting pretty deep here. I'm starting to think this can't be the way out. Because the way out would be up.”
“It feels like the back's getting lower, too,” Naomi said, using the typical miner's term for the ceiling of a tunnel. “We'll be ducking soon. I don't like this.”
It was unusual for Naomi to sound frightened; typically she seemed ready to trounce anyone who stood in her way, even if it was just in the take-out line at Greasy Gary's. Her fear added to Eric's own. Working deep in the mines, you could suddenly become acutely, starkly aware of how far underground you were, of how much rock and earth was just hanging above you, ready to come crashing down.
Still, Eric had to trust Iris and Hagen's carefully considered professional opinions more than Bartley and Naomi's panicky talk of turning back. Panic was on the verge of overtaking them all. Eric tried to think of what he could say to calm down everyone, including himself.
He took on the voice and attitude he'd used when soothing nervous horses back home on the ranch.
“But the giant worm is back that way, too,” Eric said. “And if you think we're moving slowly now, imagine these same trucks going uphill in reverse. There's no room for them to turn around.”
“Uh-huh,” Naomi said. “You sure you're not just taking Iris's side? We see you getting all goopy over each other.”
“We're not—what does that even—” Eric sputtered, surprised by how flustered he felt.
“Well, well!” Bartley grinned. “Look at Mr. Goshy-Gee-I-Got-A-Fiancé-Back-Home. Who's holier than thou now?”
“I don't know what you guys are talking about.” Eric faced forward again, his cheeks burning.
“Yeah, you're hiding it well,” Naomi snickered. “You're a real master of disguise. Okay, we'll keep rolling with your girlfriend's plan for now. But when we hit a dead end or drive into a lake of magma a thousand kilometers below surface, there's going to be a lot more than 'I told you so' to pay. You're going to owe me, Eric.”
“Yeah,” Bartley said. “You're going to owe us bigly.”
The hallway grew even steeper and narrower, closing in on them from all sides. Statues and engravings gave way to arrangements of bones. In some places, complete animal skeletons stood watch on ledges and in nooks in the rough black-rock wall. Some of the bones looked reptilian, with long jaws crammed full of sharp teeth; others looked more like mammals, one with a pair of extra-long saber teeth, another with goat-like horns, yet another with four sets of extra-long claws like a tree sloth, but with a ridge of bony spikes down its back.
More bones were embedded in the walls, in rows and columns that resembled the flower-and-insect writing they'd seen earlier; here, the flowers were replaced by the skulls of birds and small rodent-like mammals, while the insect ideograms around them were drawn in small, thin bones, maybe taken from the same creatures.
“This looks evil to me,” Bartley whispered, crossing himself for protection. Eric silently agreed with him. A message written in skulls and bones was unlikely to be a positive one. He doubted it translated to Have a Nice Day! or Eat at Slappy's Pizza!
“Maybe it's a warning,” Naomi said. “Like, 'Go back or you'll end up like these chipmunks and squirrels.' Seems pretty clear to me, actually.”
Eric nodded. They'd gone deep, the air was almost unbreatheably stale, and the writing on the wall was spelled out in a language of death.
Just as he was about to speak up, throw in with Bartley and Naomi and their insistence on going back, the cramped chamber widened into a large, vaulted, circular room. It suddenly felt easier to breathe under the high ceiling.
A galaxy of silver stars glittered above. At the center of the ceiling was a map of the solar system, and Eric recognized it as the one where they stood now, the solar system where Caldera was located. He'd certainly spent enough time looking at maps and pictures of it before traveling here.
On the ceiling map, four planets and an asteroid belt orbited a small red sun rendered in rubies. The innermost planet, a small and lifeless ball of rock,
was depicted with gray moonstone. The two outer planets also looked familiar: an ice giant rendered in platinum and diamonds, a gas giant in assorted pink and red gems, with glittering diamond rings.
Caldera was a rocky world choked by ash-filled clouds, but the version of it depicted on the solar system above was in emeralds and sapphires, indicating an Earth-like ecosystem brimming with life. Things must have changed, probably because of the hundreds of active volcanoes still smoking all around the surface of the planet.
Colossal statues ringed the room, larger than any they'd seen before. A cluster of statues occupied the center of the room, too.
Brake lights flared ahead as the dump truck stopped, bringing the whole caravan to a halt.
Iris leaped from the dump truck's cab, followed by Alanna. Malvolio unicycled in circles around them, running his mouth.
“What's the hold-up now?” Hagen shouted, leaning out of the concrete mixer cab. Bartley and Naomi, just ahead of him, grumbled along with their own less polite complaints about stopping.
“We have a situation,” Alanna called to him. “Drama-bot, tell them what you saw.”
“I scouted ahead, as I was tasked to do,” Malvolio said, wheeling past Eric toward the concrete mixer. He was again juggling his one ball as if he had three. “Beyond yonder bug altar, a choice among three paths lies before us—”
“Seriously?” Naomi snapped. “I want the path that goes up this time. Up! I'm not going any further down.” She looked at Hagen as she said it.
“She's right,” Bartley said. “We can't keep going deeper.”
“I'm sorry,” Iris spoke up, her voice barely audible in the big chamber. “Could everyone just be quiet for one minute? Thanks. Sorry. Thank you.” Then she closed her eyes, spread her arms, and began turning slowly while walking in a wide circle around the cluster of statuary at the center of the circle, like a planet rotating on its axis while revolving around its sun.