Earth Cult (7 page)

He was anxious to get back for a number of reasons. Apart from the fact that Perry Tolchard was expecting him and his desk would most likely be piled high with rewrites, he wanted to talk to somebody at the NIH, which had an office in Chicago. If there was anything at all – anything worth substantiating – in Cal Renfield's story about the babies born locally and their lack of normal development, then somebody at the National Institute of Health should have the facts and figures and quite probably an expert medical opinion on the cause. Almost certainly, Frank reasoned, it would have something to do with a virus infection or hereditary disease – meningitis or hydrocephalus – that a small percentage of infants were known to suffer from in the first months of life. But an incidence of one in three was unusually high and it wasn't surprising that the
local community was disturbed and liable to lay the blame on whatever seemed strange or inexplicable, especially if it could be given the sinister label, ‘scientific research'.

He lay in the warm darkness and listened to the storm slowly dying away. The lightning flashes became fainter and less frequent, the low grumbling roll of thunder moving northwards over the town, and the fierce downpour slackened to a steady patter of rain which occasionally rattled against the window as if someone were throwing handfuls of rice against the glass.

It was this which finally lulled him to sleep, sliding into a shallow uneasy calm in which the sound of the rain became a shower of neutrinos slicing through the mountain and smashing into the detection tanks at the speed of light. And in the manner of dreams everything became confused so that it was the hotel manager, Stringer, who was in charge of the operation, wearing a white coat, stetson and spurs; and Dr Leach and Cal Renfield were interchangeable, a composite figure embodying the characteristics and mannerisms of both. Helen Renfield was there too, but she became transposed into the girl he had met out on the West Coast – this hybrid female diving from the gantry and swimming in a tank of perchloroethylene as if it were a sparkling blue sunlit pool up on Bel Air …

The morning light was raw, the air clear, and the temperature had dropped by at least four degrees. The storm had swept the sluggish humid layer out of the valley and there was a perceptible chill as the colder mountain air tumbled down from the peaks.

As he was coming out of the bathroom Frank met Spencer Tutt on the landing; he was carrying a pile of sheets, blankets and towels. The young man nodded a greeting and said in his lazy drawl, ‘We got the power back on, so you'll be able to eat breakfast. That were a daddy, weren't it?'

Frank agreed that it had been quite a storm. He said, ‘You get them pretty often, I believe.'

‘That we do. An' they're gettin' to be worse, I can tell you. The one last night was the worst yet.' He regarded Frank for
a moment, his eyes set close together above the prominent sunburned beak of his nose. ‘Looks like them scine-tists over at the Project reaped what they sowed. An' it seems like nobody's gonna lift a finger.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The old Telluride working was flooded last night. Three or four men still down there, trapped by the floodwater. They put out a call for volunteers but there ain't nobody exactly rushin' to help.' He shrugged slightly, the wide rake of his bony shoulders stretching the material of his shirt. He turned away.

‘Isn't there a rescue team in the area?'

‘Oh yeah,' said Spencer Tutt over his shoulder. ‘And we're it.'

‘Do you mean nobody's willing to help them?' Frank said.

He found it hard to believe that the townspeople could be so filled with the desire for revenge that it overcame everything else. But it seemed he had seriously underestimated the depth of bitterness and ill-feeling.

He said, ‘Is the road to the Project still open?'

‘Far as I know. Bin no reports that the bridge is down, anyways.'

Frank stared after the young man's lean angular back; he was shocked and momentarily at a loss. His first positive thought was to wonder if the engineers on the Deep Hole Project had the facilities to mount a rescue operation … it was logical to assume they would in case just such an emergency as this arose. But had they been trained in underground search and rescue? What was required was a team of men with specialized training and knowledge who knew the local strata and were experienced in locating miners buried under rockfalls or cut off by underground streams. In the absence of such expert help the chances of reaching the trapped scientists were negligible.

It took almost an hour to get to the Project: the road above the bridge spanning Eagle River had been washed away in places and there had already been some attempts
made at clearing the rubble and making the road passable. Tyre tracks indicated that a number of vehicles had passed to and fro and Frank wondered if the scientists had been able to summon outside help.

But when he arrived it soon became evident that they hadn't. Professor Friedmann might have been a first-rate theorist in the field of neutrino astronomy but his grasp of practical matters – particularly when it came to organizing an underground rescue operation – was far too tentative and unsure, lacking the knowledge and ability to deploy men in the most effective manner.

There were two or three small groups standing around the compound, rather lost and aimless it seemed, and Professor Friedmann was talking with the Senior Engineer, a burly man wearing a bright yellow safety-helmet, the two of them standing at a trestle-table spread with maps and charts. Dr Leach wasn't to be seen, Frank noted, and he wondered if he was one of the men trapped underground.

Professor Friedmann had a look in his eyes that could only be described as controlled panic. He nodded brusquely as Frank came up, tapping a ruler on the table in a rapid nervous tattoo, not really listening as the Senior Engineer explained the layout of the ventilation and water-drainage systems in the vicinity of the detection chamber. After a moment he interrupted the man and said, almost fervidly:

‘Are they organizing a rescue team? Are they on their way?'

‘No on both counts,' Frank said. ‘And they don't intend to either.'

‘They have plenty of air,' the Senior Engineer said, continuing his technical resumé of the installation. ‘As far as we can tell the system is still functioning. If they managed to stay on the gantry above the water-level then there's better than a fifty-fifty chance that they're okay. The drainage tunnels were only checked a couple of weeks ago and they were in good working order, so by now the level should be falling. I estimate—' he looked at his watch and calculated
silently —that within ten hours, fifteen at the outside, the chamber should be clear.'

‘Aren't you in telephone contact with them?' Frank asked.

Professor Friedmann shook his head. He looked grey and ill. The line's dead,' he said in a quiet voice. ‘We lost contact at midnight.'

‘How many men are down there?'

‘Four. They went on duty at ten o'clock, just before the storm began. I was about to recall them—' his voice faltered ‘—but couldn't get through.'

Frank moved up to the table and studied an elevation diagram of the detection chamber; it took him a moment to get his bearings, and when he had he said to the engineer, ‘Are these the ventilation shafts?'

The Senior Engineer looked at Professor Friedmann as if making sure that it was all right to speak, then he nodded. There are three in the roof, two for inflow, one for extraction. We can't be a hundred percent certain but we think they're still operational.'

‘How big are they?'

The Senior Engineer raised one grizzled eyebrow and shook his head. ‘I know what you're thinking and the answer is no: they're too small. And if they weren't too small it wouldn't do those four guys much good anyway – they're seamless aluminium, there's not a handhold anywhere. You can forget that.'

‘This is the main tunnel leading from the shaft – is that right?'

‘Yeah, that's the one.' The Senior Engineer's voice had quickened in response to Frank's queries, as if at last there was someone prepared to take an interest in the problem and make a constructive suggestion. He was a broad thickset man with the kind of hands and wrists that can twist steel bars. He looked too as if he had been in the wars: there was an old deep scar across his forehead and the tip of his right index finger was missing.

‘Have you been down to check the height of the water?
Perhaps the tunnel isn't completely flooded. It's possible.'

‘There's no need to go down. There are sensors in the main shaft and we know from them that the lower level is flooded to the roof. There's just no way to get through until the water starts to drain off.'

Frank said, ‘The lower level? You mean there's more than one level in that area of the mine?'

‘Sure, the place is a regular warren of them.' The Senior Engineer pulled another chart forward and traced a blunt finger along a series of interconnecting tunnels. ‘The workings extend in every direction, some of them beyond the detection chamber—'

‘Which is how far from the main shaft?'

‘A helluva long way,' the Senior Engineer said dourly. ‘Mile and a half, maybe more.' He looked into Frank's eyes. ‘You're thinking of trying to reach the chamber by another route?'

‘You're the engineer, you tell me. If we went down as far as this level and worked our way along we'd be within striking distance of the chamber. But it would all depend on there being an access point to the power level; there isn't one marked on the diagram but that doesn't mean there isn't a natural fissure leading down to it. Do you recall having seen one?'

The Senior Engineer scratched his chin while he thought about it. He looked doubtful. ‘We did a lot of blasting in that area when we were constructing the chamber, opened up a few cracks here and there, but I don't remember breaking through to the lower level.'

‘Perhaps there's no real cause for alarm,' Professor Friedmann said hopefully. His eyes were vague and frightened behind the blue-tinted spectacles. ‘They could very well be safe on the gantry, it's thirty feet high.'

His voice betrayed the bland reassurance of what he was saying; it reminded Frank of a schoolboy telling a rather unconvincing fib that he doesn't expect anyone to believe.

‘There are four men underground,' the Senior Engineer said, spacing the words deliberately. ‘If that isn't cause for
alarm, what the hell is?' He spread his hands on the table and stared down at the diagram as if by sheer concentration he could make the fissure appear, its position magically marked.

Frank said, ‘There's nothing to be lost by checking it out. If we get there and find there's no access point, we come back. But maybe in a mine as old as this there's a reasonable chance we could get through. Wouldn't you say so?' The question was addressed to the Senior Engineer. There didn't seem much point in soliciting Professor Friedmann's opinion.

‘We need somebody with experience.'

‘I've been underground before now.'

‘A mile deep?'

‘No,' Frank said.

‘I guess we can't be choosy. What would you say – a team of four?'

‘Five plus a doctor.'

Professor Friedmann seemed to wake out of a trance. ‘There's no doctor here. We have a medical orderly, will he do?'

‘As the man said, this is no time to be choosy.' Frank straightened up and looked at his watch. ‘I reckon it should take us two to three hours to get down and along the tunnel to within reasonable proximity of the chamber. Is there anyone who's familiar with the workings and can estimate our position underground with a fair degree of accuracy?'

‘I've got two men who know that area pretty well.'

‘I'll take them both.'

‘And me.'

‘If you insist on coming but I think you should stay on the surface. We can relay any messages via a land-line and you can keep us informed on the weather situation. I wouldn't like to be caught down there during another freak thunderstorm.'

The Senior Engineer nodded briskly. ‘All right, that sounds sensible to me. I'm Lee Merriam by the way.'

‘Frank Kersh.'

‘Okay, Frank, I'll have one of my men get the equipment together. Thank God that's one thing we're not short of.' He turned to go.

‘If there's a member of the scientific staff called Fawbert who'd like to come along, tell him he's welcome,' Frank said.

Lee Merriam glanced back at Professor Friedmann, who said stonily, ‘That won't be possible; Fawbert is one of the men underground.'

He half-expected to see bones gleaming in the beams of the lamps – the remains of prospectors long-dead calcified in the final rite of clawing at the rock face, their fleshless fingers clutching emptily at the dank musty air.

There were no human remains but there was other evidence that men had been scrabbling here in the darkness, seeking the elusive yellow grains which speckled the rock in the wild dream that tonight they would go to their beds rich men. Warped and rusting tracks, splintered and rotting beams, buckled iron trollies – the detritus of greed and abandoned hope littered the tunnels like carefully-preserved historical exhibits in a museum. The mine had yielded up its treasure and then been left to moulder in dripping, creaking silence; and very slowly, with the infinite patience of nature, the earth was reclaiming its own, the vast pressure of billions of tons of rock squeezing tighter and healing the wounds so that in time nothing would remain but a tracery of scars.

The first stage had been easy. They had been lowered in the cage to one of the upper levels and entered a gallery which Lee Merriam had calculated was along the same line as that of the detection chamber. They were headed in the
right direction but still separated from the lower level by 150 feet of what could well be solid rock. The plan of the mine gave no indication of natural faults or old shafts – nor indeed if it was possible to work their way along without progress being halted by a blocked tunnel. It was a blind gamble with no guarantee of success.