Tunnels (47 page)

"They'll listen, all right, while they're cutting out your liver or hacking you limb from limb!" Imago rebuked him. "You little idiot,
d'you
think Tam gave his life just so you could chuck yours away?"

"I… no…"
Cal
was blinking with fright as Imago continued to shout.

Still holding the pendant tightly, Will pressed it to his forehead, covering his face with his hand. He just wanted everyone to shut up; he didn't need any of this. He wanted it all to stop, if only for a moment.

"You selfish, stupid… what are you going to do, get your father or Granny Macaulay to hide you… and risk their lives, too? This is going to be bad enough as it is!" Imago was yelling.

"I just thought—"

"No, you didn't!" Imago cut him off. "You can never go back,
d'you
understand? Get that into your thick head!" Casting the rest of the chocolate bar aside, he strode to the opposite side of the chamber.

"But I…"
Cal
started to say.

"Get some sleep!" Imago growled, his face rigid with anger. He wrapped his coat tightly around him and, using his satchel as a pillow, he lay down on his side with his face to the wall.

* * * * *

There they remained for the better part of the next day, alternately eating and sleeping with hardly a word passing between them. After all the horror and excitement of the past twenty-four hours, Will welcomed the opportunity to recuperate, and spent much of the time in a heavy, dreamless sleep. He was eventually woken by Imago's voice, and lethargically opened one eye to see what was going on.

"Come over here and give me a hand, will you,
Cal
?"

Cal
quickly jumped up and joined Imago, who was kneeling by the center of the chamber.

"It weighs a ton." Imago grinned.

As they slid aside the metal circle in the ground, it was patently obvious Imago could have managed by himself and that this was his way of patching things up with
Cal
. Will opened his other eye and flexed his arm. His shoulder was stiff, but his injuries didn't hurt nearly as much as they had.

Cal
and Imago were now lying full-length on the ground, peering down into the circular opening as Imago played his light into it. Will crawled over to see what they were looking at. There was a well a good three feet across and then a murky darkness below it.

"I can see something shining,"
Cal
said.

"Yes, railway tracks," Imago replied.

"The Miners' Train," Will realized as he saw the two parallel lines of polished iron glinting in the pitch-blackness.

They pulled back from the hole and sat around it, waiting eagerly for Imago to speak.

"I'm going to be blunt, because we don’t have much time," he said. "You have two choices. Either we lie low up here for a while and then I get you Topsoil again, or—"

"No, not there," said
Cal
right away.

"I'm not saying it's going to be easy to get you there," Imago admitted. "Not with three of us."

"No way! I couldn't take it!"
Cal
raised his voice until he was almost shouting.

"Don't be so hasty," Imago warned. "If we did make it Topsoil, at least you could try to lose yourselves somewhere the Styx can't find you. Maybe."

"No," repeated Cal with absolute conviction.

Imago was now looking directly at Will. "You should be aware…" He clammed up, as if what he was about to say was so terrible that he didn't quite know how to put it. "Tam thinks" — he quickly corrected himself with a grimace — "
thought
that the Styx girl who passed herself off as your
Topsoiler
sister" — he coughed uneasily and wiped his mouth — "is the
Crawfly's
daughter. So Tam just killed her father back there in the City."

"Rebecca's father?" Will asked in a nonplussed voice.

"Oh, great,"
Cal
croaked.

"Why's that important? What does—" Will managed, before Imago cut him short.

"The Styx don't leave be. They will pursue you, anywhere you go. Anyone who gives you shelter — Topsoil, in the Colony, or even in the Deeps — is in danger, too. You know they have people all over the surface." Imago scratched his belly and frowned. "But if Tam was right, it means that as bad as your situation was before, it's worse now. You're in the very greatest danger. You are
marked
now."

Will tried to absorb what he'd just been told, shaking his head at the unfairness, the injustice of it all.

"So you're saying that if I go Topsoil, I'm on the run. And if I went to Auntie Jean's, then…"

"She's dead." Imago shifted uneasily where he sat on the dusty rock floor. "That's the way it is."

"But what are
you
going to do, Imago?" Will asked, finding it impossible to grasp the situation he was in.

"I can't go back to the Colony, that's for sure. But don't you worry 'bout me; it's you two that need sorting out."

"But what should I do?" Will asked, glancing over at Cal, who was staring at the opening in the floor, and then back to Imago, who just shrugged unhelpfully, leaving Will feeling even worse. He was at a total loss. It was as though he were playing a game where you were only told the rules after you made a mistake. "Well, I suppose there's nothing Topsoil for me, anyway. Not now," he mumbled, bowing his head. "And my dad's down here… somewhere."

Imago pulled over his satchel and rummaged inside it, fishing out something wrapped in an old piece of burlap, which he passed to Will.

"What's this?" Will muttered, folding back the cloth. With so many thoughts racing through his head, he was in a state of confusion, and it took him several seconds to appreciate just what he'd been given.

It was a flattened and solid glob of paper, which easily fit into his fist. With torn and irregular edges, it had evidently been immersed in water and then left to dry, the pieces clumped together in a crude papier-mâché. He glanced inquiringly at Imago, who offered no comment, so he began to pick away at the outer layers, much as one might peel the desiccated leaves from an ancient onion. As he scratched at their furred edges with a fingernail, it didn't take him long to separate the pieces of paper. Then he laid them out to inspect them more closely under his light.

"No! I don't believe it! This is my dad's writing!" Will said with surprise and delight as he recognized Dr.
Burrows's
characteristic scrawl on a number of the fragments. They were mud-stained and the blue ink had run, making very little of it legible, but he was still able to decipher some of what was written.

"
'I will resume,'
" Will recited from one fragment, quickly moving on to the others and scrutinizing each of them in turn. "No, this piece is too smudged," he mumbled. "Nothing here, either," he continued, and "I don't know… some odd words… doesn't make any sense… but… ah, this says
'Day 15'
!" He continued to scour several more fragments until he stopped with a jerk. "This piece," he exclaimed excitedly, holding the particular scrap up to the light, "mentions me!" He glanced across at Imago, a slight waver in his voice. "
'If my son, Will, had,'
it says!" With a puzzled expression, he flicked it over to check the reverse side but found it was blank. "But what did Dad mean? What didn't I do? What was I
meant
to do?" Will again looked to Imago for help.

"Search me," the man said.

Will's face lit up. "Whatever he was saying, he's still thinking about me. He hasn't forgotten me. Maybe he always hoped that somehow or other I'd try to follow after him, to find him." He was nodding vigorously as the notion built to a crescendo in his head. "Yes, that's it… that must be it!"

Something else occurred to him at that moment, deflecting his thoughts. "Imago, this has to be from my dad's journal. Where did you get it?" Will was immediately imagining the worst. "Is he all right?"

Imago rubbed his chin
comtemplatively
. "Don't know. Like Tam told you, he took a one-way on the Miners' Train." Sticking a thumb in the direction of the hole in the floor, he went on. "Your father's down there somewhere, in the Deeps. Probably."

"Yes, but where did you get this?" Will demanded impatiently, closing his hand over the scraps of paper and holding them up in his palm.

"'Bout a week after your dad arrived in the Colony, he was wandering around on the outskirts of the Rookeries and was attacked." Imago's voice became slightly incredulous at this point. "If the story's to be believed, he was stopping people and asking them things. Round these parts they don't take kindly to anyone, least of all
Topsoilers
, nosing about, and he got a good kicking. By all accounts, he just lay there, didn't even try to put up a fight. Probably saved his life."

"Dad," Will said with tears welling in his eyes as he pictured the scene. "Poor old Dad."

"Well, it can't have been too bad. He walked away from it." Imago rubbed his hands together, and his tone changed, becoming more businesslike. "But that's neither here nor there. You need to tell me what you want to do. We can't stick around here forever." He looked pointedly at each boy in turn. "Will?
Cal
?"

They were both silent for a while, until Will spoke up.

"Chester!" He couldn't believe that with everything else that had been going on, he'd completely forgotten about his friend. "Whatever you say, I've got to go back for him," he said resolutely. "I owe it to him."

"Chester will be all right," Imago said.

"How can you know that?" Will immediately shot back at him.

Imago simply smiled.

"So where is he?" Will asked. "Is he really all right?"

"Trust me," Imago said cryptically.

Will looked into his eyes and saw the man was in earnest. He felt a huge sense of relief, as if a crushing weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He told himself that if anyone could save his friend, then it would be Imago. He drew a long breath and lifted his head. "Well, in that case, the Deeps it is."

"And I'm going with you,"
Cal
put in quickly.

"You're both absolutely sure about this?" Imago asked, looking hard at Will. "It's like hell down there. You'd be better off Topsoil; at least you'd know the lay of the land."

Will shook his head. "My dad is all I have left."

"Well, if that's what you want." Imago's voice was low and somber.

"There's nothing for us Topsoil, not now," Will replied with a glance at his brother.

"
Okeydokey
, it'd decided, then," Imago said, checking his watch. "Now try to get some shut-eye. You're going to need all your strength."

But none of them could sleep, and Imago and
Cal
ended up talking about Tam. Imago was regaling the younger boy with stories of his uncle's exploits, even chuckling at times, and
Cal
couldn't help but join in with him. Imago was clearly drawing comfort from reminiscing about the stunts he, Tam, and his sister had pulled in their youth, when they had run rings around the Styx.

"Tam and Sarah were as bad as each other, I can tell you. Pair of wildcats." Imago smiled sadly.

"Tell Will about the cane toads,"
Cal
said, egging him on.

"Oh dear God, yes…" Imago laughed, recalling the incident. "It was your mother's idea, you know. We caught a barrel load of the things over in the Rookeries — the
sickos
there raise them in their basements." Imago raised his eyebrows. "Sarah and Tam took the toads to a church and let them out just before the service got underway. You should have seen it… a hundred of the slimy little beggars hopping all over the place… people jumping and shrieking, and you could hardly hear the preacher for all the croaking…
burup
,
burup
,
burup
." The rotund man rocked with silent laughter, then his brow furrowed and he was unable to continue.

With all the talk about his real mother, Will had been trying his hardest to listen, but he was too tired and preoccupied. The seriousness of his situation was still foremost in his mind, and his thoughts were heavy with apprehension about what he'd just committed himself to. A journey into the unknown. Was he really up to it? Was he doing the right thing, for himself and his brother?

He broke from his introspection as he heard Cal suddenly interrupt Imago, who had just started on another tale. "Do you think Tam might have made it?"
Cal
asked. "You know… escaped?"

Imago looked away from him quickly and began drawing absently in the dust with his finger, clearly at a loss for words. And in the silence that ensued, intense sorrow flooded
Cal
's
face again.

"I can't believe he's gone. He was everything to me."

"He fought them all his life," Imago said, his voice distant and strained. "He was no saint, that's for sure, but he gave us something — hope — and that made it bearable for us." He paused, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond
Cal
's
head. "With the
Crawfly
dead there'll be purges… and a crackdown the likes of which hasn't been seen for years." He picked up a cave pearl and examined it. "But I wouldn't go back to the Colony even if I could. I suppose we're all homeless now," Imago said as he flicked the pearl into the air with his thumb and, with absolute precision, it fell into the dead center of the well.

"Please!" Chester whimpered inside the clammy hood, which stuck to his face and neck with his cold sweat. After they had dragged him from his cell and down the corridor to the front of the police station, they had pushed something over his head and bound his wrists. Then they'd left him standing there, enveloped in stifling darkness, with muffled sounds coming from all around.

"Please!" Chester shouted in sheer desperation.