Tunnels (3 page)

"Oh, I hope it's not dangerous," Oscar said, taking a hasty step back. "Been walking around with it next to my new hip — just imagine if it's melted the—"

"No, I don't expect it's that potent — it probably hasn't done you any real harm, not in twenty-four hours." Dr. Burrows gazed into the sphere. "How very peculiar, you can see liquid moving inside… Looks like it's swirling… like a storm…" He lapsed into silence, then shook his head in disbelief. "No, must be you know…
thermoreactive
."

"Well, I'm delighted you think it's interesting. I'll let Mrs.
Tantrumi
know you want to hang on to it," Oscar said, taking another step back.

"Definitely," Dr. Burrows replied. "I'd better do some research before I put it out, just to make sure it's safe. But in the meantime I should drop Mrs.
Tantrumi
a line to thank her, on behalf of the museum." He hunted in his jacket pocket for a pen but couldn't find one. "Hold on a sec, Mr. Embers, while I fetch something to write with."

He walked out of the main hall and into the corridor, managing to stumble over an ancient length of timber dug out of the marshes the previous year by some overzealous locals who swore blindly that it was a prehistoric canoe. Dr. Burrows opened the door with
curator
painted on the frosted glass. The office was dark, because the only window was blocked by crates stacked high in front of it. As he groped for the light on his desk, he happened to uncurl his hand a little from around the sphere. What he saw completely astounded him.

The light it was giving off appeared to have turned from the soft glow he'd witnessed in the main hall to a much more intense, light green fluorescence. As he watched it, he could have sworn that the light was growing even brighter, and the liquid inside moving even more vigorously.

"Remarkable! What substance becomes more radiant the
darker
the surroundings?" he muttered to himself. "No, I must be mistaken, it can't be! It must be that the luminosity is just more noticeable in here."

But it
had
grown brighter; he didn't even need his desk light to locate his pen because the globe was giving off a sublime green light, almost as bright as daylight. As he left his office and returned with his donations ledger to the main hall, he held the globe aloft in front of him. Sure enough, the moment he emerged back into the light, it dimmed again.

Oscar was about to say something, but Dr. Burrows rushed straight past him, through the museum door, and out onto the street. He heard Oscar shouting, "I say! I say!" as the museum door slammed shut behind him, but Dr. Burrows was so intent on the sphere that he completely ignored him. As he held it up in the daylight, he saw that the glow was all but extinguished and that the liquid in the glass sphere had darkened to a dull grayish color. And the longer he remained outside, exposing the sphere to natural light, the darker the fluid inside became, until it was almost black and looked like oil.

Still dangling the globe in front of him, he returned inside, watching as the liquid began to whip itself up into a miniature storm and shimmer eerily again. Oscar was waiting for him with concern on his face.

"Fascinating… fascinating," Dr. Burrows said.

"I say, thought you were having an attack of the vapors, old chap. I wondered if maybe you needed some air, rushing out like that. Not feeling faint, are you?"

"No, I'm fine, really I am, Mr. Embers. Just wanted to test something. Now, Mrs.
Tantrumi's
address, if you'd be so kind?"

"So glad you're pleased with it," Oscar said. "Now, while we're about it, I'll let you have my dentist's number so you can get those teeth seen to, pronto."

Will was leaning on the handlebars of his bicycle at the entrance to a stretch of wasteland encircled by trees and wild bushes. He glanced at his watch yet again and decided he would give Chester another five minutes to turn up, but no more. He was wasting precious time.

The land was one of those forgotten lots you find on the outskirts of any town. This one hadn't yet been covered by housing, probably due to its proximity to the municipal waste station and the mountains of trash that rose and fell with depressing regularity. Known locally as "the Forty Pits," owing to the numerous craters that pitted its surface, some almost reaching ten feet in depth, it was the arena for frequent battles between two opposing teenage gangs, the Clan and the Click, whose members were drawn from
Highfield's
rougher housing projects.

It was also the favored spot for kids on their dirt bikes and, increasingly, stolen mopeds, the latter being run into the ground and then torched, their carbon black skeletons littering the far edges of the Pits, where weeds threaded up through their wheels and around their rusting engine blocks. Less frequently, it was also the scene for such sinister adolescent amusements as bird or frog hunting; all too often, the creatures' sorry little carcasses were impaled on sticks.

As Chester turned the corner toward the Pits, a bright metallic glint caught his eye. It was the polished face of Will's shovel, which he wore slung across his back like some samurai construction worker.

He smiled and picked up his pace, clutching his rather ordinary, dull garden shovel to his chest and waving enthusiastically to the lone figure in the distance, who was
unmistakeable
with his startlingly pale complexion and his baseball cap and sunglasses. Indeed, Will's whole appearance was rather odd; he was wearing his "digging uniform," which consisted of an oversized cardigan with leather elbow pads and a pair of dirt-encrusted old cords of indeterminate color owing to the fine patina of dried mud that covered them. The only things Will kept really clean were his beloved shovel and the exposed metal toe caps of his work boots.

"What happened to you, then?" Will asked as Chester finally reached him. Will couldn't understand how
anything
could have held up his friend, how
anything
could possibly be more important than this.

This was a milestone in Will's life, the first time he'd ever allowed somebody from school — or anywhere else, for that matter — to see one of his projects. He wasn't sure yet whether he'd done the right thing; he still didn't know Chester that well.

"Sorry, got a flat," Chester puffed apologetically. "Had to drop the bike back home and run over here — bit hot in this weather."

Will glanced up uneasily at the sun and frowned. It was no friend to him: His lack of pigmentation meant that even its meager power on an overcast day could burn his skin.

"All right, let's get straight to it. Lost too much time already," Will said curtly. He pushed off on his bicycle with barely a glance at Chester, who began to run after him. "Come on, this way," he urged as the other boy failed to match his speed.

"Hey, I thought we were already there!" Chester called after him, still trying to catch his breath.

Chester Rawls — almost as wide as he was tall, and strong as an ox, known as
Cuboid
or Chester Drawers at school — was the same age as Will, but evidently had either benefited from better nutrition or had inherited his weightlifter's physique. One of the less offensive pieces of
grafitti
in the school bathrooms proclaimed that his father was an armoire and his mother a
bowfront
desk.

Although the growing friendship between Will and Chester seemed unlikely, the very thing that had helped to bring them together had also been the same thing that singled them out at school: their skin. For Chester, it was severe bouts of eczema, which resulted in flaky and itchy patches of raw skin. This was due, he was told unhelpfully, to either an unidentifiable allergy or nervous tension. Whatever the cause, he had endured the teasing and gives from his fellow pupils, the worst ones being "'
orrible
scaly creature" and "snake features," until he could take no more and had fought back, using his physical advantage to quash the
taunters
with great effect.

Likewise, Will's milky pallor separated him from the norm, and for a while he had borne the brunt of chants of "Chalky" and "Frosty the Snowman." More impetuous than Chester, he had lost his temper one winter's evening when his tormentors had ambushed him on the way to a dig. Unfortunately for them, Will had used his shovel to great effect, and a bloody and one-sided battle had ensued in which teeth were lost and a nose was badly broken.

Understandably both Will and Chester were left alone for a while after that and treated with the sort of grudging respect given to mad dogs. However, both boys remained distrustful of their classmates, believing that if they let their guards down, the persecution would more than likely start all over again. So, other than Chester's inclusion on a number of school teams because of his physical prowess, both remained outsiders, loners at the edge of the playground. Secure in their shared isolation, they talked to no one and no one talked to them.

It had been many years before they'd even spoken to each other, although there'd long been a sneaking admiration between the two for the way they'd both stood their ground against the school bullies. Without really realizing it they gravitated toward each other, spending more and more of their time together during school hours. Will had been alone and friendless for so long, he had to admit that it felt good to have a companion, but he knew that if the friendship was going to go anywhere he'd sooner or later have to reveal to Chester his grand passion — his excavations. And now that time had come.

Will rode between the alternating grassy mounds, craters, and heaps of trash, careering to a halt as he reached the far side. He dismounted and hid his bicycle in a small dugout beneath the shell of an abandoned car, its make unrecognizable as a result of the rust and salvaging it had endured.

"Here we are," he announced as Chester caught up.

"Is this where we're going to dig?" Chester panted, looking around at the ground at their feet.

"Nope. Back up a bit," Will said. Chester took a couple of paces away from Will, regarding him with bemusement.

"Are we going to start a new one?"

Will didn't answer but instead knelt down and appeared to be feeling for something in a thicket of grass. He found what he was looking for — a knotted length of rope — and stood up, took up the slack, then pulled hard. To Chester's surprise, a line cracked open in the earth, and a thick panel of plywood rose up, soil tumbling from it to reveal the dark entrance beneath.

"Why do you need to hide it?" he asked Will.

"Can't have those scumbags messing around with my excavation, can I?" Will said possessively.

"We're not going in there, are we?" Chester said, stepping closer to peer into the void.

But Will had already begun to lower himself into the opening, which, after a drop of about six feet, continued to sink deeper, at an angle.

"I've got a spare one of these for you," Will said from inside the opening as he donned a yellow hard hat and switched on the miner's light mounted on its front. It shone up at Chester, who was hovering indecisively above him.

"Well, are you coming or not?" Will said testily. "Take it from me, it's completely safe."

"Are you sure about this?"

"Of course," Will said, making a show of slapping a support to his side and smiling confidently to give his friend some encouragement. He continued to smile fixedly as, in the shadows behind him and out of Chester's sight, a small shower of soil fell against his back. "Safe as houses. Honest."

"Well…"

Once inside, Chester was almost too surprised to speak. A tunnel, several feet wide and the same in height, ran at a slight incline into the darkness, the sides shored up with old timber props at frequent intervals. It looked, Chester thought, exactly like the mines in those old cowboy films they showed on TV on Sunday afternoons.

"This is cool! You didn't do all this by yourself, Will, you can't have!"

Will grinned smugly. "Certainly did. I've been at it since last year — and you haven't seen the half of it yet. Step this way."

He replaced the plywood, sealing the tunnel mouth. Chester watched with mixed emotions as the last chink of blue sky disappeared. They set off along the passage, past stores of planks and shoring timbers stacked untidily against the sides.

"Wow!" Chester said under his breath.

Quite unexpectedly the passage widened out into an area the size of a reasonably large room, two tunnels branching off each end of it. In the middle was a small mountain of buckets, a trestle table, and two old armchairs. The timber planking of the roof was supported by rows of
Stillson
props, adjustable iron columns scabbed with rust.

"Home again, home again," Will said.

"This is just… wild," Chester said in disbelief, then frowned. "But is it really all right for us to be down here?"

"Of course it is. My dad showed me how to batten and prop — this isn't my first time, you know…" Will hesitated, catching himself just in time before he said anything about the train station he'd unearthed with his father. Chester regarded him suspiciously as he coughed loudly to mask the lull in the conversation. Will had been sworn to secrecy by his father, and he couldn't break that confidence, not even to Chester. He sniffed loudly, then went on. "And it's perfectly sound. It's better not to tunnel under buildings — that takes stronger tunnel props and a lot more planning. Also, it's not a good idea where there's water or underground streams — they can cause the whole thing to cave in."

"There isn't any water around here, is there?" Chester asked quickly.

"Just this." Will reached into a cardboard box on the table and handed his friend a plastic bottle of water. "Let's just chill out for a while."

They both sat in the old armchairs, sipping from the bottles, while Chester looked up at the roof and craned his neck to look at the two branch tunnels.

"It's so peaceful, isn't it?" Will sighed.

"Yes," Chester replied. "Very… um… quiet."