Sink: Old Man's Tale (6 page)

“
We are descended
from a tribe of people from the surface,” Leader said. “Their name has long since been forgotten, but we remain. Down here we each have a job, a task. It gives us meaning and direction. Cooks are called Cooks. Diggers, Diggers. The Leader, Leader. We are a functioning machine with many intricate parts.”

Small globes of light made a latticework of tiny glowing orbs around the great dome. They lit the whole town below. Little people in earth-colored clothes moved with purpose, some into the town, most out of it, toward the narrow tunnels that ran from the town at regular intervals, like a giant clock face with hundreds of hours.

“Most of the folk here are miners,” Leader said. “They dig all day, gradually reaching out, farther and farther away. Sometimes we strike water or a metal deposit. Then we tunnel in another direction.”

“Mining dwarfs,” Graham said, his voice flat.

Jeremiah kept his eyes off Graham for fear he would burst out laughing.

“They’re not dwarfs,” Jeremiah managed to say. “They’re just a little vertically challenged.”

“Little’s the right word,” Graham mumbled.

“Only the tallest and strongest become guards,” Leader said.

Jeremiah and Graham shared a look. Even the tallest guard didn’t reach their chests.

“Hi ho,” one of the little men said, raising his hand in friendly salute to a fellow miner.

“I’m saying nothing,” Graham said.

The guards followed behind them, watching the locals closely. The town folk shied away and kept a safe distance. Jeremiah took note of it, but said nothing. If a people were afraid of those responsible for order, what would that mean for them as strangers?

“How is it you became leader here?” Jeremiah said.

“We pass down responsibilities from parent to child,” Leader said. “My father was leader, as was his father, and so on, through the ages. Is this a fair system? No. But it prevents bickering and in-fighting. We are united in a single goal: to get to the surface. Once we are out, we can immerse ourselves in the cultures of those on the surface. But right now, down here, we need to focus.”

The little people were busy about their work, carrying pickaxes, shovels and other digging equipment. They entered the tunnels, turning the dome into a ghost town.

“Your ancestors gave my ancestor this amulet,” Leader said, gesturing to his gold necklace. “It’s written in a language we don’t understand.”

Graham looked at it, but it was all Greek to him.

“Looks like it’s Latin,” Jeremiah said.

“Can you read it?” Leader said.

“I haven’t studied since I was a boy,” Jeremiah said. “Let me take a closer look.”

He held the amulet in his palm and turned his head to the side as he read it. He paused, blinking, before turning the amulet over. Jeremiah frowned for a moment, mumbling under his breath.

“What does it say?” Leader said.

“I’m not sure,” Jeremiah said. “It’s been a while since I studied Latin. But I think it says something like ‘Blessings to he who carries me’. It’s a good luck charm.”

Leader smiled.

“For generations we pondered its meaning,” he said. “Now you have given us the answer. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Jeremiah said.

Leader caught Graham peering at the tunnels around the town.

“You are not prisoners here,” Leader said. “You are free to come and go as you please. But bear in mind that right now there is no way out. If there was, none of us would be here. But you are free to walk around as much as you want. You’ll have to get used to the stares.”

The young children – so small they looked like dolls – waved and stared at them, eyes wide.

“They’ve never seen surface people before,” Leader said.

Jeremiah cracked a rare smile and waved at the kids. Their eyes grew wider still.

“I don’t understand how you could have been down here so long and not found a way out,” Graham said.

“The route to the surface is not an easy one,” Leader said. “It is not straight, and must go around many obstacles. Sometimes there are more obstacles than earth. And we dig by hand.”

“Hand?” Graham said. “Why don’t you build a machine to dig?”

“We have tried,” Leader said. “But every attempt ends in failure.”

“Why?” Jeremiah said. “You have a large population down here. I would have thought you could have trained some bright people to engineer a digger for you.”

“The digger is not the problem,” Leader said. “It is the power source. No matter how hard we try we cannot make one that works.”

“And yet you thrive down here,” Jeremiah said.

“We are human,” Leader said. “We do what we must to survive. Come, I will show you what we know of your world.”

Leader led
them to a large building. The wall was sheer, rising up and up, bending back upon itself until it made a round dome-like shape overhead.

Arranged on plinths were a series of objects they recognized immediately: garbage from the surface, arranged as if it were beautiful art. Tin cans stood in a pyramid. Pet accessories suspended from wires, giving the illusion of invisible animals. There were genuine artefacts from the ancient world too, but they were mixed with the new, placed on an equal footing with the junk.

“These are all the artefacts we have from the surface,” Leader said.

“You kept it all?” Graham said.

“Every scrap we’ve found,” Leader said.

“Why?” Jeremiah said.

“The reasons are two-fold,” Leader said. “First, we like to remind ourselves of what our goal is. Faced with dirt walls all day can get to you. But if there’s hope, a sign of something more out there that you’re trying to achieve, then it’s worth keeping those items on show for everyone to see at any time.”

“What’s the second reason?” Jeremiah said.

“So we can backward engineer what we’ve found,” Leader said. “Often, the technology is beyond us and there’s nothing we can learn. But at other times we can learn a great deal.”

On a flat plinth behind a piece of sheet glass was a map of the Earth, with all its continents and countries clearly labelled. It was a little old and dated.

“One of our greatest finds,” Leader said. “Tell me, is it accurate?”

“It is,” Jeremiah said. “Though some of the countries no longer exist.”

“Perhaps you can update it for us,” Leader said.

Something caught Jeremiah’s eye.

“This must be one of the diggers you were telling us about,” Jeremiah said. “It’s a lot bigger than I imagined.”

It was about the size of an SUV. On the front were a series of large drill bits, all turned and facing inwards, like a monster’s jutting teeth.

“That’s right,” Leader said. “It’s one of the only machines we have down here. We’ve tried everything we can think of to get it to work, but nothing works. We backward engineered it as best we can, but the technology is so advanced it’s difficult to make much progress. It’s like having half the instructions, and having to figure the rest out yourself but without really being able to understand the first half in the first place.”

“Whoever built this digger did a good job,” Jeremiah said.

“Our engineers restored it,” Leader said. “We’ve tried oil, tried heating it and running it through the system again, but each time we try, it just blows up. Now we need to come up with a different system. Something we can use to convert energy.”

Jeremiah smiled.

“It appears my being here may not have been entirely by chance,” he said. “I am, or was, an engineer. I’m sure I can come up with a power system that will make it run.”

“You could?” Leader said.

“Oh yes,” Jeremiah said. “It shouldn’t be that difficult. All we’d need is a converter to turn energy into electrical energy. We probably have most of the materials here already. Though some of your people might have to provide the power we need.”

“We are at your disposal,” Leader said, bowing low. “Anything you need shall be yours. Just name it. I’ll get some workers to move the digger into the castle.”

He left to make arrangements. Graham sidled up to Jeremiah.

“Are you sure you can do this?” he said.

“I was an engineer in the Air Force for thirty years,” Jeremiah said. “I should be able to knock something together.”

Graham wanted to cry with relief.

“You mean, we’re going home?” he said.

“Yes,” Jeremiah said. “With a little elbow grease, we’re going home.”

The digger
had been set up in the middle of the room, with tools of every shape and size arranged around it. There was nothing quite like a new wrench set, unblemished and untouched by any hand but the one that had made it. Jeremiah picked up a 3/8” wrench and felt the weight in his hand, like a samurai holding a great sword. He’d forgotten just how good it felt. He could make out little chips in the wrench’s surface from where it had been hand-crafted.

“Everything you requested is here,” Leader said.

Jeremiah cast an eye over the materials.

“Woah, hold on Chief,” Jeremiah said. “Magnets. Where are the magnets?”

“We’re searching through the items in the museum now,” Leader said. “Please continue to build until we have them.”

He left.

“They’re very hospitable, aren’t they?” Graham said.

“Can you blame them?” Jeremiah said. “With a machine to dig for them, it’ll make their work a lot easier. No more backbreaking labor.”

“But it’s only one machine,” Graham said. “They’re digging lots of tunnels out there.”

“We would only need one machine,” Jeremiah said. “It could do the work of a thousand men.”

“How long do you think it’ll take to build?” Graham said.

“Most of the machine is ready,” Jeremiah said. “We just need to build the power converter. A day. Maybe two.”

“That long?” Graham said.

“There’s no one who can build it faster,” Jeremiah said. “Believe me.”

“If you weren’t so decrepit and old, I might have believed you,” Graham said.

“You could show your only hope of getting out of here within your lifetime a little respect,” Jeremiah said.

Graham bowed down.

“Yes, Master,” he said, before sitting down in one of the tall-backed dining chairs.

“Jack up the backend, will you,” Jeremiah said, shrugging off his coat.

“Who?” Graham said. “Me?”

“No, the Easter Bunny,” Jeremiah said. “Of course you.”

“Jack up?” Graham said.

“It means lift up with the use of a device called a jack,” Jeremiah said.

“I know what it means,” Graham said. “But why am I the one who has to do it?”

“Can you see anyone else here?” Jeremiah said.

“I’m not your lackey,” Graham said.

“You’re my assistant,” Jeremiah said. “Jack up the backend.”

“What are you going to do?” Graham said.

“I’m going to take a look at the engine and see what we’ve got here,” Jeremiah said. “That is unless you want to take a look at it?”

Graham glanced at the engine. He clearly didn’t know the front from the back.

“I didn’t think so,” Jeremiah said.

Graham dragged the jack over to the underside of the digger and began to pump.

“How long do you think it’ll take the digger to reach the surface?” he said.

“Not long I should think,” Jeremiah said. “If it’s running at full power it could go through up to one thirty meters of soil an hour. Maybe more. So it won’t take more than a few hours.”

“Why do you think that?” Graham said, already sweating from the effort.

“Because we didn’t fall that far,” Jeremiah said.

“Felt a long way to me,” Graham said, leaning on the jack and wiping his brow. “And Leader said they’ve been digging for three hundred years.”

“It doesn’t matter how long you dig if you’re digging in the wrong direction,” Jeremiah said. “We’re no more than a few hundred meters below the surface at the most.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Graham said.

“When we fell earlier, we couldn’t have fallen for more than fifty seconds, a minute tops,” Jeremiah said.

“Yeah, so?” Graham said.

“So, don’t you remember your high school physics?” Jeremiah said.

“No,” Graham said. “I’m surprised you do.”

“Look, if we fell for one second the force of gravity pulls at almost ten meters per second per second,” Jeremiah said. “We didn’t fall straight down. We slid most of it, so if we round down we’d end up with…”

He muttered under his breath, eyes moving left to right as he worked out the calculations in his head.