Tunnels (33 page)

Having rearranged the kindling, he began to knock two chunks of flint together until a spark leaped into it and a tiny flickering flame took hold. With his head resting on the grit floor, he gently blew on the flame and fanned it with his hand, nurturing it until the fire caught, bathing him in its glow. Then he squatted down next to his open journal, sweeping the layer of dust from the pages, and resumed his drawing.

What a find! A circle of regular stones, each the size of a door, with strange symbols cut into their faces. Carved letters collided with abstract forms — he didn't recognize these characters from all his years of study. They were unlike any hieroglyphs he'd ever seen before. His mind raced as he dreamed of the people who had made them, who had lived far below the surface of the earth, quite possibly for thousands of years, yet had the sophistication to build this subterranean monument.

Thinking he heard a noise, he suddenly stopped drawing and sat bolt upright. Controlling his breathing, he held completely still, his heart pounding in his chest, as he peered into the darkness beyond the fire's illumination. But there was nothing, just the all-pervading silence that had been his companion since the start of his journey.

"Getting jumpy, old man," he said, relaxing again. He was reassured by the sound of his own voice in the confines of the rock passage. "It's just your stomach as usual, you stupid old fool," he said, and laughed out loud.

He unwound the shirt from around his mouth and nose. His face was cut and bruised, his hair was matted, and a straggly beard hung from his chin. His clothes were filthy and torn in places. He looked like an insane hermit. As the fire crackled, he picked up his journal and concentrated on the circle of stones once again.

"This is truly exceptional — a miniature Stonehenge. What an incredible discovery!" he exclaimed, completely forgetting for the moment how hungry and thirsty he was. His face animated and happy, he continued with his sketching.

Then he put down his journal and pencil and sat unmoving for a few seconds as a faraway look crept into his eyes. He got to his feet and, taking the light orb in his hand, backed away from the fire until he was outside the stone circle. He began to stroll slowly around it. As he did so, he held the orb to the side of his face like a microphone. He pursed his lips and dropped his voice a tone or two in an attempt to mimic a television interviewer.

"And tell me, Professor Burrows, newly appointed Dean of Subterranean Studies, what does the Nobel Prize mean to you?"

Now walking more quickly around the circle, a jaunty spring in his step, his voice reverted to its normal tone and he moved the light orb to the other side of his face. He adopted a slightly surprised manner with pantomime hesitancy.

"Oh, I… I… I must say… it was truly a great honor and, at first, I felt that I was not worthy to follow in the footsteps of those great men and women—" At that very moment his toe caught against a piece of rock, and he swore blindly as he stumbled for a few paces. Regaining his poise, he began to walk again, simultaneously continuing with his response. "— the footsteps of those great men and women, that exalted list of winners who preceded me."

He swung the orb back to the other side of his face. "But, Professor, the contributions you have made to so many fields — medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and, above all, archaeology — are inestimable. You are considered to be one of the greatest living scholars on the planet. Did you ever think it would come to this, the day you began the tunnel in your cellar?"

Dr. Burrows gave a melodramatic "ahem" as the orb changed sides again. "Well, I knew that there was more for me… much more than my career in the museum back in…"

Dr.
Burrows's
voice trailed off as he ground to a halt. He pocketed the orb, plunging himself into the shadows cast by the stones as he thought of his family and wondered how they were getting along without him. Shaking his bedraggled head, he slowly shuffled back into the circle and slumped down by his journal, staring blankly into the flickering flames, which grew more blurred as he watched them. Finally he removed his spectacles and rubbed the moisture from his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"I have to do this," he said to himself as he put his spectacles back on and once again took up his pencil.
"I have to."

The firelight radiated out from between the stones in the circle, projecting shifting spokes of gentle light onto the floor and walls of the passage. In the center of this wheel, totally absorbed, the cross-legged figure grumbled quietly as he rubbed out a mistake in his journal.

He didn't have a thought for anyone in the world at that moment; he was a man so obsessed that nothing else mattered, nothing at all.

As a fire sputtered in the hearth, Mr. Jerome reclined in one of the wingback armchairs, reading his newspaper. From time to time, the heavily waxed pages flopped waywardly, and he flicked his wrists reflexively to straighten them up again. Will couldn't make out a single headline from his vantage point at the table; the blocky newsprint bled into the paper to such an extent that it looked as though a swarm of ants had dipped their feet in black ink and then stampeded across the pages.

Cal
played another card and waited expectantly for his brother's response, but Will was finding it impossible to keep his concentration on the game. It was the first time he'd been in the same room with Mr. Jerome without being on the receiving end of hostile glances or a resentful silence. This is itself represented a landmark in their relationship.

There was a sudden crash as the front door was flung open, and all three looked up.

"Cal, Will!" Uncle Tam bellowed as he blundered in from the hallway, shattering the scene of apparent domestic bliss. He straightened himself up when he saw Mr. Jerome staring daggers at him from his chair.

"Oh, sorry, I…"

"I thought we had an understanding," Mr. Jerome growled as he rose and folded the paper under his arm. "You said you wouldn't come here… when I'm at home." He walked stiffly past Tam without so much as a glance.

Uncle Tam made a face and sat down next to Will. With a conspiratorial wave of his hand, he indicated to the boys to come closer. He waited until Mr. Jerome's footsteps had receded into the distance before he spoke.

"The time has arrived," Tam whispered, extracting a dented metal canister from inside his coat. He flipped off the cap from one end, and they watched as he slid out a tattered map and laid it over their cards on the tabletop, smoothing out the corners so that it lay flat. Then he turned to Will.

"Chester is to be Banished tomorrow evening," he said.

"Oh, God." Will sat up as if he'd been shocked with an electric current. "That's too sudden, isn't it?"

"I only just found out — it's planned for six," Tam said. "There'll be quite a crowd. The Styx like to make a spectacle out of these things. They believe a sacrifice is good for the soul."

He turned back to the map, humming softly as he searched the complex of grid lines, until finally his finger came to rest on a tiny dark square. Then he looked up at Will as if he'd just remembered something.

"You know, it's not a difficult thing… to get
you
out, alone. But Chester, too, that's a very different kettle of fish. It's taken a lot more thought, but" — he paused, and Will and Cal stared into his eyes — "I think I might have cracked it. There's only one way you escape to the Topsoil now… and that's through the
Eternal
City
."

Will heard
Cal
gasp, but as much as he wanted to ask his uncle about this place, it didn't seem appropriate as Tam went on. He proceeded to talk Will through the escape plan, tracing the route on the map as the boys listened raptly, absorbing every detail. The tunnels had names like

"The problem with this," Tam said with a sigh, "is the unknowns, the variables, that I can't help you with. If you hit any snags when you're out there, you'll just have to play it by ear… do the best you can." At this point, Will noticed that some of the sparkle had gone out of Tam's eyes — he didn't look his normal confident self.

Tam ran through the whole plan from beginning to end once again and, when he'd finished, he fished something out of his pocket and passed it over to Will. "Here's a copy of the directions once you're outside the Colony. If they catch up with you, heaven forbid, eat the damn thing."

Will unfolded it carefully. It was a piece of cloth the size of a handkerchief when completely opened. The surface was covered with a mass of infinitesimally small lines in brown ink, like an unruly maze, each representing a different tunnel. Although Will's route was clearly marked in a light red ink, Tam quickly took him through it.

Tam watched as Will refolded the cloth map and then spoke in a low voice. "This has to go like clockwork. You'd put
all
your kin in the very worst danger if the Styx thought for one second I'd had a hand in this… and it wouldn't just end with me; Cal, your grandmother, and your father would all be in the firing line." He grasped Will's forearm tightly across the table and squeezed it to emphasize the gravity of his warning. "Another thing: When you're Topsoil, you and Chester are going to have to disappear. I haven't had time to arrange anything, so—"

"What about Sarah?" Will blurted as the idea occurred to him, although her name still felt a little odd on his lips. "My
real
mother? Couldn't she help me?"

A suggestion of a smile dropped into place on Tam's face. "I wondered when you'd think of that," he said. The smile disappeared, and he spoke as if choosing his words carefully. "If my sister is still alive — and nobody knows that for sure — she'll be well and truly hidden." He glanced down at the palm of his hand as he rubbed it with the thumb from the other. "One plus one can sometimes add up to zero."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if by some miracle you did happen to find her, you might lead the Styx her way. Then
both
of you would end up feeding the worms." He raised his head again and shook it just once as he fixed Will with a thoughtful stare. "No, I'm sorry, but you're on your own. You're going to have to run hard and long, for all our sakes, not just yours. Mark my words, if the Styx get you in their clutches, they
will
make you spill your guts, sooner or later, and that would endanger us all," he said ominously.

"Then we'd have to get out, too, wouldn't we, Uncle Tam?"
Cal
volunteered, his voice full of bravado.

"You've got to be kidding!" Tam turned sharply on him. "We wouldn't stand a chance. We wouldn't even see them coming."

"But…," began
Cal
.

"Look, this isn't some game, Caleb. If you cross them once too often, you won't be around long enough to regret it. Before you know it, you'll be dancing Old Nick's Jig." He paused. "You know what that is?" Tam didn't wait for an answer. "It's a lovely little number. Your arms are stitched behind your back" — he shifted uncomfortably in his seat — "with copper thread, your eyelids are stripped off, and you're dropped in the darkest chamber you can imagine, full of Red
Hots
."

"Red
whats
?
" Will asked.

Tam shuddered and, ignoring Will's question, went on. "How long do you think you'd last? How many days of knocking into the wall in the pitch-black, dust burning into your ruined eyes, before you collapsed from exhaustion? Feeling the first bites on your skin as they start to feed? I wouldn't wish that on my worst…" He didn't finish the sentence.

The two boys swallowed hard, but then Tam's expression brightened up again. "Enough of that," he said. "You've still got that light, haven't you?"

Still stunned by what he'd just heard, Will looked at him blankly. He pulled himself together and nodded.

"Good," Tam said as he took out a small cloth bundle from his coat pocket and put it on the table in front of Will. "And these might come in handy."

Will touched the bundle tentatively.

"Well, go on, have a look."

Will untied the corners. Inside, there were four
knobbly
brown-black stones the size of marbles.

"Node stones!"
Cal
said.

"Yes. They're rarer than slug's boots." Tam smiled. "They're described in the old books, but nobody '
cept
me and my boys has ever seen one before, Imago found this lot."

"What do they do?" Will asked, looking at the strange stones.

"Down here, it's not like you're going to beat a Colonist or, worse still, a Styx in a straight fight. The only weapons you have are
light
and
flight
," Tam said. "If you get in a tight corner, just crack one of these things open. Chuck it against something hard and keep your eyes shut — it'll give a burst of the brightest light you can imagine. I hope these are still good," he said, weighing one in his hand. He looked at Will. "So you think you're up to this?"

Will nodded.

"Right," the big man said.

"Thanks, Uncle Tam. I can't tell you how…," Will said falteringly.

"No need, my boy." Tam ruffled his hair. He looked down at the table and didn't speak for a few seconds. It was totally unexpected; silence and Uncle Tam didn't go together. Will had never before seen him like this, this gregarious and massive man. He could only think that he was upset and trying to hide it. But when Tam raised his head, the broad smile was there and his voice rumbled as it always did.

"I saw all this coming… it was bound to happen sooner or later. The
Macaulays
are loyal, and we will fight for those we love and believe in, no matter what the price. You would've tried to do something to save Chester, and gone after your father, whether I'd helped you or not."