Sure enough, there was a hole like a well up against the cave wall, three feet or so wide. We looked over the edge, already beginning to figure out what had happened.
I shone the light down, and as I had feared, there was the professor. He was ten feet below, standing in water up to his waist. His blue eyes were bright with relief.
“Thank goodness,” he said with a sigh. “I thought you wouldn’t find me.”
“Are you all right?” Cassie asked.
“It was quite a fall but the water broke it and I think I’m still in one piece. You can pull me out whenever you’re ready.”
Cassie and I exchanged looks. I knew we were both thinking the same thing.
“What do you think?” she said to me as she looked down.
My head was full of impossible ideas, like making our clothes into a rope to haul him out. But the growing murmur of voices behind us brought me back to reality.
“Doc,” I called. “Can you hear me?”
“Sure. What’s up?” he said.
“The thing is, the baddies aren’t too far behind us. There’s no way we can get you out of there before they arrive and find Cassie and me.”
There followed an incredulous moment of silence while my old friend digested my words. “What do you mean…?”
“Don’t worry, they won’t find you there as long as you keep quiet. I promise we’ll come back as soon as we can.”
Those words sounded empty even to me, but he managed to reply all the same. “Okay, sure. I’ll be waiting for you… here.”
“Wait a minute, Ulysses,” Cassandra said as she put her hand on my shoulder. “I think it’s too risky. It won’t be easy to find this place again. And besides”—she lowered her voice so that only I could hear—“there are those bastards with guns… and whatever it is that pulled off that mulatto’s head. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to leave the professor alone.”
“I know, I know. But there’s no way we can get him out in time. Souza and his men will be here in a matter of seconds, and it’ll be worse for all of us.”
“There has to be a way,” she implored. “We can’t just leave him here.”
Of course she was absolutely right. But the more I thought about it, the fewer options I could see.
The quick steps of the mercenaries echoed on the walls of the cave. I could distinguish the voices of at least four of them. Even the reflection of their flashlights was becoming more visible every moment.
I peered over the edge of the hole. “Move aside!” I said urgently.
Then I grabbed the petite Mexican girl by the armpits and to her astonishment, lifted her off the ground. “I’m sorry,” I said, and kissed her briefly on the lips.
“You’re sorry?” she asked, confused. “What are you—”
But before she could finish the question I dropped her down the same hole the professor was in.
Without looking down, and with the voices of our pursuers just around the corner, I switched off the flashlight. Holding my arms close to my sides, I also let myself drop into the darkness.
59
From our position pressed back as close to the wall as possible, we saw the beams of the flashlights moving rapidly above our heads. They passed by without noticing the well we were in.
A few seconds later we heard the voices and the steps receding into the distance and allowed ourselves a sigh of relief. Miraculously, my desperate act had been successful. I turned the flashlight on and shone it on my friends, with my hand shielding the light.
“Are you both all right?”
The answer was a hard slap.
“Yes, thank you would have been enough,” I protested rubbing my cheek.
Cassie jabbed her finger at me. “Don’t you ever do anything like that to me again! What were you thinking of, throwing me in the well like that? You could have killed me, pendejo!”
“There was no time for discussion,” I said. “Anyway, it was only ten feet or so and you can see nothing happened to you. Doc,”—I turned to my friend looking for support—“throw me a hand.”
“To strangle you!” he said and shook his head in disbelief. “You were supposed to get me out of here, not get yourselves in.”
“I had to make a quick decision. At that moment it seemed the only way out.”
“Way out?” Cassie snapped. “Jumping into a hole is a way out? You… you…”
“I couldn’t agree more with Ms. Brooks,” the professor said. “What you did was absolute idiocy.”
I raised my hands. “Okay, that’s enough! There’s no point in arguing about who threw who into the well and why. We’ve got to concentrate on how to get out of here.”
“You don’t say?” Cassie grumbled.
I pointed the beam up, but the view was not very promising. “The walls are smooth stone, and they’re damp,” I said as I passed my hand over the surface. “There’s no question of climbing them.”
“What if we make a human ladder?” the professor suggested as he calculated the distance to the mouth of the well. “That way, at least one of us would be able to get out.”
“Maybe, but what about the other two? We’d be back where we were two minutes ago, only worse.”
“And all this water?” Cassandra asked, a little calmer by now. She put her hands in the dark water that came up to her waist. “Where do you think it’s coming from?”
“I’d say it’s from the flooding,” the professor said.
“Yeah, I guess so… but so much?”
“Don’t forget we’re several feet below ground level.”
I put my hand in the water. “Wait a minute! Can’t you feel something like a current?”
The professor put his hand in too. “Hmm… yes, you’re right,” he agreed.
I shone the flashlight on the sides of the well but all this revealed were the walls of stone we had already seen. They were broken by a section where some blocks of rock, which seemed to have fallen from above, were piled.
“The water runs out through here,” Cassie said as she crouched with the water up to her chin. Then she stood up, took off the weapon she still carried across her shoulders, and said, “Here, take this and give me the flashlight.”
Without a word I did as I was told. I thought I knew what she intended to do.
She checked that the flashlight was a waterproof model, then took a deep breath and dived into the dark water.
We could see from above what she was trying to do, which was to check whether there was a hole we could escape through. After all, if water could get through, we might be able to do the same ourselves.
The water turned murky as Cassie moved some rocks and the diffuse light vanished, but a few seconds later she emerged with her blond hair stuck to her face, water running off her chin and her mouth open.
“The way is blocked because of a cave in,” she said when she had her breath back. “I think we might be able to move the rocks away and see what’s behind them.”
“Great,” the professor said, “but if we move the rocks that have caved in, won’t that bring on another collapse?”
“Well, of course, that’s possible,” Cassie said.
“And even if we manage to move them without bringing the whole well down on us… there’s still no guarantee that there’s a way out, is there?” the professor insisted, sounding uneasy.
“Doc, if you want a guarantee, you’ll have to buy a washing machine,” I said.
He looked at both of us, then tightened his lips, and gave in. “Oh, well,” he said at last, “I suppose we have nothing to lose.”
Cassie and I took it in turns to dive moving the rocks that blocked the way. The professor meanwhile held the flashlight above us in an attempt to illuminate the water, which was getting murkier by the second.
“How’s it going?” he asked me as I came out to breathe and Cassie dived down.
I took a moment to get my breath back before answering. “Not bad, I think…” I said panting, “We’re taking out a whole lo
t of rocks, and the roof hasn’t fallen on us yet. I’d say that’s good.”
“But do you really think we’ll be able to get out this way?”
“Well, I can’t think of any other way, so why not try this one? We might be lucky.”
“I hope so,” he muttered. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t fallen in here none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t be a nuisance, Doc.” I grumbled. “When you get back home, you can make an appointment with a psychologist and tell him all about this. What matters now is to get out of this hole as soon as possible.”
“Yes, yes, sure… It’s just that I—”
Cassandra interrupted him by poking her face out of the water. She looked annoyed. “Professor, would you be kind enough to aim the flashlight where you’re supposed to? I can’t see a damn thing down there!”
The last thing I heard before I relieved Cassie was the professor apologizing. I went on blindly shifting rocks, even though I did not seem to be achieving much in the process.
I grabbed a particularly heavy rock with both hands and pulled it with my feet braced against the sides. Either as a result of the pressure from my legs or picking that precise one, several hundred pounds of rock crumbled like a house of cards.
Knowing that if the collapse trapped me I would be unable to escape, I thrust myself back. At the same moment someone grabbed my arm and pulled hard, dragging me out of the water.
“What happened?” Cassie asked with alarm. She was holding my arm tightly.
“I… I don’t… know,” I said, stammering and opening and closing my mouth like a fish. “The whole thing caved in when I tried to move a pretty big rock.” When I had recovered my breath I added, “We’ll have to wait till the sediment settles before we can take a look. I hope not everything has collapsed. And by the way…”—I smiled awkwardly—“thanks for helping me.”
“You owe me twice,” she said, raising two fingers.
“Twice?”
“Have you forgotten the snake I decapitated in the forest?”
“Oh, that…” I said as if I had difficulty in recalling the incident. “Actually, I had the situation under control.”
“Really?” Her voice was scornful. “Well, that wasn’t what the look of panic in your eyes said.”
“It was a look of concentration. I was just waiting for the right moment to pounce.”
“Yeah, of course, I’ll try to remember that next time.”
The professor intervened at this point. “My friends, this discussion of yours is absolutely fascinating, but I think the water is getting clearer.”
I looked down and saw that he was right. Without stopping to think, I dived once again to ascertain the scale of the destruction. I ran my fingers along the wall, where new rocks seemed to have taken the place of the old ones which were now strewn along the bottom. Then I reached with my arm out as far as I could to check where the rock wall was now, but try as I might, I could not feel it.
I decided that it would be better to try with the flashlight. I emerged and grabbed it from the professor’s hands ignoring their questions. I took a deep breath and dived again.
In front of me, still hazy because of the suspended mud, I saw a darker section in the middle of what had previously been a wall of rock. Careful not to bring on another collapse, I checked the shadow and realized it was an opening some eighteen inches wide.
Very carefully I went in through the hole and came out on the other side into a dark, claustrophobic passage. It was partly flooded, seven or eight feet wide and five feet high.
I directed the flashlight to the walls and ceiling of that underground corridor, lined with slabs of stone which were covered thickly with dark green lichen. The end of the passage lost itself in the distance, swallowing up the beam of white light reflected on the water.
That underground passage, perhaps without any exit, was a threatening, gloomy space. An oppressive, silent place like a deep and sinister tomb.
Somewhere I would never have had the slightest desire to enter.
But the only place where we could go, all the same.
60
“This place sends shivers down my spine,” Cassie said almost inaudibly, looking at the thick shadows that surrounded us.
“We’ve been in the water for a long time and that’s chilled you.” As I said this I made to put my arm around her shoulders, but held back at the last minute. “You’ll be okay as soon as we get out of this water.”
“No, Ulysses, I won’t. It’s this place. It’s so—”
“Disquieting,” the professor said.
I saw her silhouette nod, with a sigh. “Very disquieting,” she said in a whisper.
“It’s true it doesn’t have a good vibe,” I said, “but I also think we’re lucky to have found it.”
“Sure,” she agreed, “but I still I have a bad feeling about it.”
“That’s because all this looks like the set for a horror movie,” the professor assured her, with academic unconcern. “Your subconscious can’t help relating dark, sinister places like this to the scenes of our worst nightmares.”
“Thanks a lot, Professor,” Cassandra grumbled, “Now I feel much calmer.”
“It was just a way of expressing it, my dear.”
“Yeah, you explain that to the cuate without a head back there.”
“Why don’t you stop your chatting and we start looking for a way to get out of here,” I said. I was trying to forget that horrible image, but it kept coming back to haunt me.
“Ándele pues,” she said, and grabbed the flashlight. She bent over (the ceiling was not high enough to allow even her to stand) and led the way on.
“Wait,” I said, and showed her the weapon she had handed me a while before. “You don’t want to carry this any longer?”
Cassie turned around with a weary grimace. “It’s too heavy.”
The water, which was unbelievably cold, froze me to the marrow. It flowed between my legs, pushing me forward gently, as if urging me to get out of there. The beam of the flashlight was reflected on the surface and the thousands of drops of condensation on the walls, but the atmosphere in that narrow passage was still unbearably oppressive.
We walked on in silence, bent double, overwhelmed by the disturbing atmosphere of the place and distressed by the feeling that it was part of a hallucination we were never going to be able to escape from.
“What is this place supposed to be?” I asked in a whisper, just to break the unnerving silence.
The professor, walking in front of me and behind Cassie, turned in the shadows. “I was wondering the same thing,” he said. “I might be wrong, but I’d say this is an old system of channels for waste water.”
“You mean—?”
“A sewer.”
“How nice.”
“The thing to remember,” he said as he passed his hands over the walls, “is that sewers are very complex structures. The social and technological level required is far higher than that needed to build pyramids or temples.”
“Sewers, the peak of human civilization,” I mocked solemnly.
Cassandra stopped short. “Hmm,” she said, “things are getting complicated.”
“What, even more?”
“The tunnel divides just ahead. What do we do?”
“Is there anything that would make you favor one over the other?” the professor asked.
“Well, no. In fact, no. They’re both exactly the same.”
“In that case—”
“The one on the left,” I said without hesitation.
The professor raised his eyebrows in surprise. “What makes you so sure?”
“Well,” I said, “when we were following Souza and his men, we had the morning sun on our left. Therefore we were going south.”
“So?”
“So, in my opinion, we should head north and get as far away from them as possible.”
“Very well, smarty pants,” Cassie said. “And how do yo
u know the left-hand tunnel goes north?”
“Easy. Do you remember Jack Fawcett’s compass?”
“Don’t tell me you—”
Without a word I put my hand inside my shirt and brought out the rusty chrome-plated pendant I wore around my neck. I put my hand forward, opened my fist, and showed them the old compass. The needle was unmistakably pointing to the left.
“They must have thought it was just an ornamental medallion, when they searched me.” I smiled. “And they didn’t even take the trouble to open it.”
Following the magnetized arrow we went on down the left-hand tunnel of that flooded sewer. But the same dilemma presented itself a few yards ahead when the pipe divided once again, this time into three apparently identical channels.
We decided to apply the same logic and took the left-hand passage but we had not gone more than a few steps when the same thing happened. And then again, and again and once more, until Cassandra stopped at the next intersection.
“We’re screwed, compadres.”
“What is it?” the professor asked.
“We’re dumb.” She sighed wearily.
“Why? What’s happened?” I asked as I caught up with her.
She pointed the flashlight to the wall on her right. “See that arrow? I made it myself quite a while ago. We’ve been going around in circles.”
“Fuck… How’s that possible?”
“You tell me,” she said, dazzling me as she did so. “You and your great idea about following the pinche compass!”
“But…” I checked the needle, which was still pointing stubbornly left. “It’s impossible. A compass can’t be wrong.”
“Unless a large ferrous mass is affecting it so that it can’t point north,” the professor said.
“A ferrous mass?”
“Yes, like a deposit of iron-bearing rock, or anything else that might be strongly magnetic.”
Cassie and I exchanged an understanding look. We had both thought of the same thing.
“It must be the monolith,” she said with conviction. “Maybe it’s made of some kind of magnetic mineral.”
The professor took a moment before he suggested, “It might even be pure magnetite.”
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 25