The Honeycomb

Chapter 8 of Signature

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Chapter Eight

The Honeycomb

Mack, realizing what had happened, was first to turn.

The Group’s three assailants stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the skin’s breached north face, backed by the wide-open Outs. A filthy rag of a bandage peeked from beneath Micah’s listing hood. “Did I lie?” he crowed, brandishing Abel’s signet gleefully. “She goes ‘Blinkety-blank, blinkety-blank. Bring us hither, lead us yon’. And so out of the wild we wanders, and into the Citydel we goes.”

“He keyed me!” Abel spat. “The son of a b***h keyed me!”

Mack clenched his fists and glared. “You idiots!” He took a huge breath. “Now wait just a minute. You people have no quarrel with us. There’s a bunch of stuff in the bed and lab.” He called back the Messrs Ivory. “This table alone is worth your trouble. Plus, there’s food in the galley, and all the spirits you can handle. Just take what you want and go.”

“No quarrel?” Micah’s jaw dropped. “Idiots, are we?” He lifted the table with his peeling boot and kicked it sailing across the room. “I’ll give you a quarrel, Barberus! This is all pilfered crap anyway. You’ll pay, and pay sweet, for the trouble what you caused.” He stepped up nose-to-nose with Mack while his partners moved laterally to cover the Group. “The same hilltop. The same first name, the same gang of googly-eyed gapers. But what gived you the right to flit off pretty whilst the good Lord suffered? That’s what’s got me ear up. Could it be you done a rat on him?” He whirled and stuck a finger in Izzy’s face. “You’ll get yours that much more for singing to the Pilot!” He turned back, said, “I salute ye!” and punched Mack flush in the nose. Before the astronomer could recover, Micah followed up with a left and right to the solar plexus. Mack went straight down. Micah repeatedly kicked him in the head while Ezekiel and Malachi restrained Amantu. “You dirty thieving Barberus! You think you can run around jabbing forks in the tongues of serpents and the Good Lord’ll just look the other way! Palms fifty-two double-dot thirteen: ‘This is my bloody bread, Yahoo!’ Well, you old spiller of fire, Mama’s got a special space reserved just for you!” He hauled Mack up by the hair, slammed his back against the skin and spat in his glassy eyes. “Chris!” he shouted, slapping him hard across the right cheek. “Cross!” and he back-slapped the left cheek. “Double-cross!” He slapped him back and forth, then whipped out his blade. “North!” He slashed Mack’s forehead. “East!” He stabbed him in the right palm. “West!” He stabbed the other hand and hurled the blade upright in the floor. “South, you b*****d!” He kneed him directly in the scrotum. Mack was unconscious before he hit the floor.

“Enough!” Abel cried. “You’ll kill him!”

Micah turned slowly, his hood tilting side to side. “Haven’t we--didn’t we--ain’t we spake before? I could of sweared--” His eyes lit up in their painted splotches. “Blinkety-blank! Blinkety-blank!” Up went Micah’s great sledge of a fist. Down it came on Abel’s passive crown. The big man snatched Malachi’s noose and lash, drew the rope tight around the necks of Amantu, Abel, and Izzy, and snapped the whip twice before handing it back. “Hippity-hop, me lambs! Mal, you’ll be escorting our three fairy friends, and Easy, you’ll be helping me along with our little cross-jumper here.” Ezekiel obediently took one of Mack’s arms. Micah squeezed under the other, and they hauled him out like a load of dirty laundry. Malachi, shrieking and lashing all the while, dragged and goaded the Group along behind. Ezekiel’s and Micah’s eyes flashed every time they checked back over their shoulders. Micah abruptly wheeled under Mack’s dangling arm and began to backpedal. Proceeding thusly, with Ezekiel still pacing directly and Mack’s toes passively plowing the filth, he commenced a running monologue.

“We ain’t real partial to city slime. Y’hear me? That’s a naughty little mess you made in the hole, and it won’t be us what’ll be cleaning her up. And that big white light what you shot--we gots laws about bringing fancified technology downstairs. That’s just one more count against you; one of many. Let me read ’em to you straight, just in case you feel you ain’t getting the good Lord’s justice. Le’s see now. They’s moral trespass, burnt offings, and cavern images, not to mention wearing clashing blouses and tippy-toeing through the Outs in the first place. But most of all you been conspiring with a thief. Don’t think we ain’t been watching you prissy pirates over the years, and don’t think we just done met all accidental-like back there. You gots careless; you gots caught. Should of stuck to the well-beat path, like always. We had our eyes on Barbs here for the longest time; he’s ‘Number Three for the Cavalry’, as we likes to call him. A big gun, indeed.” He did a goofy pirouette, forcing Ezekiel to turn along with Mack between them. The doctor’s arms were now strung out in a mockery of crucifixion. “Ain’t she pretty?” Micah beamed. “Just how she’s gonna look for Mama.” He studied Mack critically before raising the drooping head with a fist, singing, “Look up, O thief, look up for a while! Show us that pretty little dead man’s smile.” Mack’s head rolled off the fist. Micah frowned. “What’s this? No sleeping!” He began slapping Mack’s slack face back and forth.

Ezekiel laughed and drew back his free arm. He was just balling up his fist when Abel, barely cognizant, bleated, “Animals!”

Micah and Ezekiel froze as though electrocuted. They ratcheted round to stare, their painted jaws hanging. Micah stepped from under the arm and Mack dropped in a heap.

It was a break. The men squirmed free of the noose and lunged forward while Malachi hung back snapping the whip and looking stupid. Hurriedly lifting Mack upright, the reformed Group created a tight shield of interlaced arms.

“Security!” Micah howled. “The prisoners is revolting!”

Ezekiel called back, “Is they ever!”

All three brigands leaped on the living shield, laughing, peeling away fingers and wrestling back arms. The surrounded Group scrapped hysterically, and for a crazy few seconds it appeared the hooligans might actually be beaten back.

Out of the confusion came a chunk of metal debris, hard onto Abel’s tender skull. Everything stopped on a dime. In a few seconds the action resumed centripetally, but it was hard to tell who was doing the pushing and who the pushing-back, for the men were all tied up around the two principals like Sumo wrestlers. Abel lay on the verge of unconsciousness, peering up at a raving Ezekiel. It was a situation right out of every schoolboy’s nightmare--the restrained onlookers, the looming bully planted squarely over your midsection with his legs spread wide and his fists clenched. Abel dribbled something incoherent. Ezekiel hauled him up by the collar.

“What did you call me, punk?” He cocked back an arm and threw a haymaker that almost broke Abel’s jaw. Ezekiel then dropped to his knees, directly onto Abel’s passively splayed forearms, and began whaling with both fists about the skull and face. “What did you call my mama? Huh, queerboy?”

If not for Malachi, Ezekiel might have beaten Abel to death right then and there. At a barked command from Micah he used his whip to drag Ezekiel off by the throat, then swung him round to face the leader, who merely slapped his lieutenant back and forth and was done with it. The big man easily righted Abel and dusted him off. He checked the tongue, rolled back an eyelid. “How you feeling, son?”

Abel jerked away his head.

Micah fluffed up his hair and wagged a big gloved finger in his face. “Now don’t you think you owe Easy here a ’pology? What you said wasn’t real nice at all.”

Abel lowered his eyes.

“He’s sorry, sir,” Izzy called. “Really he is.”

Micah turned and pensively considered the shivering doctor. After a long minute he breathed, “I should certainly hope so,” and bent to lift Mack. Then, with Micah gloomily discoursing on the paucity of city manners, the party inched across the Outs, much subdued. But the nearer they came to that filthy hole, the lighter his temper grew, and by the time they’d reached the camouflaged entrance he was all genial host.

“Welcome one, welcome all! The whole crowd’s a-waiting. They’s snacks in the rats’ nests and blood in the gutters. Now you get your blasphemous butts down them steps, and don’t you be pleating your petticoats in the process.”

But the captives were so shaky, and their captors so heavy-handed, that the whole human knot went tumbling head over heels. At the bottom there was a blind grope-and-scuffle, and when the Group were finally raised by the scruffs of their necks the brigands were thoroughly pissed. Micah shook them one by one, like dusty rugs. “Now don’t you be in such a hurry to get to the party! And once you’re mingled you best not bother trying to run.” He jerked a thumb at the bright chamber. “You in your silky dandies--with all that floundering flesh in there you’ll stick out like flags.” Following through on his own gesture, he stomped up to the opening and, in a stance reminiscent of the Group’s first entrance, leaned in with his hands braced on the walls and yelled, “Hosea! Nahum! Let go of that sphincter and get over here. We gone and bagged us the big one!” Two similarly costumed brutes pushed their way in, leering at the Group. Their painted-round eyes lit up at the sight of Mack. Roughly hoisting him between them, they swung back into the light and began lashing out with their tatterdemalion boots. Micah smacked his big hands together. “Okay! Mal, get the gate. Easy, hold this harlot still so’s I can brand her.” A familiar scrape and rattle, and the gate came crashing down. Izzy almost jumped out of his socks at the sound. Dead sober, he leapt for the side tunnel with Abel hard on his heels.

Micah snatched their collars. “Not this time you don’t! And none of your slickety-tricks, neither.” He tossed his head. “Boys!” Malachi and Ezekiel immediately commenced a very physical, very comprehensive, and very humiliating search of the prisoners. They weren’t in the least shy; this was a head-to-foot, full-body-cavity examination. By the time they were done, the Group were meek as lambs. “You’re going to see the Possle,” the big man proclaimed, “so just you clippety-clop along there!”

“What’s a--” Abel whined, pulling up his shorts, “--for Christ’s sake, sir, what’s a postle?”

“The Possle’s our wise man. He’s a thinker and a stinker and a real pretty boy. And he’s the one who’s gonna spit on your phony story before Mama gores you. Used to be twelve, according to the Black Book, but a certain little Judas,” and he kicked Izzy squarely in the behind, “poisoned all their suppers. Now move, the lot of you!”

The cavern was hot from the heads of a hundred leaping torches. Everywhere were naked, soot-smeared men and women, many of them cripples, pulling themselves along the rock floor and into black recesses, their moans tinged with the strangest inflection of rapture. At the sight of prisoners being kicked through the chamber, these unfortunates began screaming insanely, slapping legs and faces, biting themselves and anyone proximate. The Group, calling out to one another in the most plaintive fashion, were shoved hopping and squealing through the flopping shiny bodies. Micah squeezed between them, shouting into their ears.

“So you think this is exciting, do you? You should see it when the new queen gets mated, man! I already been privy to twice of them juicy little affairs in me lifetime. The whole place turns into a great big nonstop orgy; blood and guts everywhere! And the lucky stiff what gets to pitch the goods, man--well, he’s just like torn to bits by the crowd. Literally, baby! Smashety-smite! Bashety-boom! And so off to God he goes, whilst the queen hunkers back down to her flogging.”

“You mean--” Amantu gasped, “you mean to say you torture your leader?”

“From the day she’s old enough to sing in the key of pain! She’s cultivated, man. Bred to take it and love it, bred to show ’em all how Jesus took it and loved it. That’s the ticket, me little fickle-footed Judas goats: the key to immortality is takin’ it! All you gots to do is peek into the Black Book, though I personally doubts your gentlemens’ pee would have the stuff to render a decent read. God loves to see us suffer. Loves it! Just take a look at the world. And, since God do duly love him what suffers for Him, it only stands to reason He loves him most what suffers for Him most.”

“But no culture--” Izzy gasped “--no culture can subsist on pain! Mercy and compassion are what bond us. Your leaders must be sensitive to grief. Your women must yield to their tender nature. For Christ’s sake, man, everybody can’t be inured to pain!”

Micah punched him thoughtfully. “Oh, they’s a whole spectrum of sorts what lives down here. Some manages from the shadows, some snatches city folk, some works for real like me and the boys, and some wallows in mindless bliss like these swimming pretty parasites. Now us, we’s what’s knowed as butchers. We keeps the floor babies in line with a stomp and a bite and a good Godly gonading, but, y’see, the real reason these crawly goobers is so into it is cause they’s soft. Soft in the psyche. Their relations schools ’em in the ways of God, and they just goes bonkos with the whole process. They’s a long rite of passage--who can lay out the most slapping around, then who can take it best, then who can deal it to his self with the hardest eye, and so on. I mean, after generations like.” He looked around disdainfully. “Sure as David stoned the Big Guy, no regular man started out goosing his self. I mean,” he said diplomatically, “they do very truly believes in the One Holy--as does we all--but they gots it bad, man. They gots the Bug.”

“One point,” Abel tried, “sir--just a word about that postulated pestilence. We’ve only recently witnessed recorded evidence regarding a massive governmental cover-u--”

“Flog all that!” Micah twisted Abel’s and Izzy’s collars in his fists, then hammered their heads forward and backward rapidly, like a man doing an intensive workout set. “One word about that postulated government, Senators! Y’all been playing screw-me since the day before anyone can remember who first begetted who and whatever became of whatnot! But what we do know is that your super-great-great granddaddies done something really Lucyfur-dark a long-long time ago, okay?”

“Four hundred yea--” Amantu got out before taking Ezekiel’s elbow in the ribs.

Micah turned his fright-face on the professor.

“I don’t give a good holy-arse damn about what all your little-dots machines says! You got me? I spits on your unholy works and lies. It’s you what gots us down here in the first place! But, that spat, I’m yet to see a truly sick man in these here caves. All these folks is just nuts cause they’s programmed. And, like I said, cause they’s soft. Still--and I’ll be thumbing out your ugly city eyes at the moment you scumsuckers sees it--we gots God, and that’s something you damned atheists’ll never get back!”

“Exactly!” snipped Abel. “No plague! Official lie--terrible thing--most egregious nature! But sir, please, the whole divinity business…our friend Titus discovered an anomaly--it’s…it’s…how do I put it--”

“It’s a lie is what it is! Everything what comes from machines and thinking mens is lies, meant only to cast dirty thought-clouds on he what climbed up on the cross and taked it for us! You remember that when you’re begging the Possle to keep your innies, you nasty agnostics. And I want you to go ahead and tell him it was Micah who gived you the pew on it all.” He grabbed a fistful of Izzy’s butt and squeezed until the psychoanalyst screamed. “And tell him I said ‘go easy’ on the little one.”

Malachi and Ezekiel were delighted by Izzy’s cry of pain. Malachi shrieked and flapped in circles while Ezekiel howled, “Whoo-oo! I says whoo-oo-oo!”

“S-s-s-city,” Malachi hissed, “for s-s-s-sinn--”

“Tis a fact,” Micah said, nodding gravely. “Down here the Lord don’t take no prisoners. And he don’t like conspirators none, neither. Separate, you three is just warts and bunions. Together, you gots what’s knowed as sin-ergy.”

“But it’s all madness!” Izzy wept. “It’s madness, madness--pure and plain!”

“Mad, are we? What of you, up in your ugly ivy towers with all your filthy phony finery? You think God loves you for your pretty buttons and badges? All you rich men, sticking your stinking silver needles into the eyes of camels!” He spat directly in Izzy’s face. “You b******s! I never even seen a camel!”

With his elbows pressed against his ribs, Izzy could only flap his little tyrannosaur hands and cry, “Me neither! But you fellows have us all wrong! We’re professional men; not capitalists, not epicureans. And we certainly aren’t affiliated with any governmental agencies!”

“Oh, yeah? What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a psychoanalyst, sir.”

“And her?”

“Professor Amantu’s an historian working day and night to understand those atrocities responsible for your unwarranted situation down here, that they may be rectified for the betterment of all. Titus Mack, the man you keep calling Barbara, is also involved in work to save the Colony.”

“And your bigmouthed girlfriend?”

“Abel Lee is an ex-medical practitioner and legal mediator. Nowadays he speaks at universities and councils. He can direct your grievances to the proper offices. We can all help you! We’re not the bad guys here. We’re your friends!”

“Saints! And all this time we thoughts you was sent by Beezly Bub his self! How could we of been so wrong? You only looks like a Roman, Senator!” He took Izzy by the hair and whirled him round twice before hurling him feet-first into the sea of naked groping humanity. “Professional men, eh? Well, Mister Ain’t-Affiliated--psychoanalyze them!” Undaunted by Amantu’s bulk, he tore the professor out of Ezekiel’s headlock and repeated the process. “Rectify that, you old Black Prince, you!” Lastly went Abel. “Mediate away, Philistine!” The man seemed even bigger and more vital for all his expended energy. He ripped the bandage from his head, raised his fists lustily, and roared like a gorilla. While his cohorts picked out distracted specimens to slap, he went wading through the glistening arms and legs, occasionally reaching down for a tongue to yank or an eye to gouge. “Brethren! Who amongst ye covets the services of professional men? Come to them for courteous counsel, seek their hands for pain over pity. What’s that? You have no gold to jangle? You fear they will do their precious punishing elsewhere? Well, we, me lambs, are not so mercenary! We dole it out for free!” He kicked a man in the mouth and received a gargling scream of pleasure.

Momentarily forgotten, the Group pawed through the thrashing mass until their foreheads met. They peeked from behind a hot mound of lolling limbs. Their sadistic guards were looking this way and that, moving away gradually while stomping and punching. With their ominous peaked shadows reeling against the spit-and-hiss of torches, the brutes appeared colossal and unreal.

“Disrobe immediately!” Abel gasped.

Amantu gasped right back, “Sir!”

“It’s the only way, Hammer. Remember what he said about us standing out like flags? Well, he’s right. We’ve got to blend in.” He shoved a sooty arm from his face. “This is no time for modesty. I don’t like the sound of this postle-person.”

Izzy went absolutely white. “I’ll not! We’re educated men. We have shame, we have refinement. Dignity’s all that separates us from this mob.”

“These robes,” Amantu mumbled, “have great significance.”

“Then give my regards to the postle. Look, we don’t have to discard our clothes, just screen them. Keep ’em bundled out of sight.”

“Reprobates?” called Micah, some thirty feet away. The Group dug deeper. Following Abel’s lead, Izzy and Amantu wriggled out of their robes and slithered through the bodies like worms, becoming increasingly moist and smudged. Abel led them to the nearest wall, and there elbowed out a channel along the jutting rock.

“Ugh,” Izzy grunted, pushing off a slimed-over woman either dead or unconscious.

“Shut up!”

“Sybarites?”

The men moved along the wall as one long segmented creature; crowns to soles, right hands clutching tightly rolled clothing, left hands brushing aside hair and assorted appendages. The occasional scarred face popped in raving.

Abel urged them into a side-chamber with fewer torches and occupants, assuming, from then on, lead-man position. One wall of the chamber was a massive stone oven. There were crude ceramic plates on cut-rock tiers. The place reeked of burnt fat.

It was all very close. Firelight sizzled on the shadows, protrusions leapt and shrank. The nude Group members held their clothes uncomfortably, while Izzy turned a radiant crimson. They were just getting decent when Amantu, over-cautious with his robes, dropped the whole mess and left himself, for one agonizing moment, frontally, fatally, and fully exposed. Every eye was drawn to the spot.

“Hammer!” Abel managed, as Amantu’s hands raced to cover his heart. “I didn’t--I don’t--I--”

“Aortic surgery,” the Professor admitted uncomfortably. “A shunt was customized.”

“Atheists!”

Izzy blushed even deeper. “I humbly apologize, Hammer, for having goaded you earlier. Had I known--”

“Oh, posh,” Amantu mumbled, “‘Izzy’.”

“Gone! They’s in the Honeycomb!”

“Run like hell,” Abel cried. They threw themselves into their robes and ran, not caring who or what they stepped on. The natural order of flight held sway: lanky Abel, corpulent little Izzy, and finally the thickset, puffing professor. The men ducked into a high, tube-like tunnel, letting Abel make the spot decisions whenever they came upon forks. It wasn’t long before they’d completely lost their thudding predators. Mounted torches grew rarer and weaker; on certain long sections of wall they’d petered out altogether. Faced with an endless choice of side-tunnels, some blind, some leading into tapering, pitted blowholes, Abel tentatively led them down a particularly dark left-hand passage into a surprisingly well-lit tunnel. Catching the sounds of stomping and shouting, they took a number of kneejerk zigs and zags, finally huddling in the dark against a warm left-hand wall.

“Halls,” Izzy panted. “Natural. Tunnels bored out.” He blinked at the rock. “Maybe only--maybe just scraped out.”

Abel whispered, “Duck!” The men scrabbled into niches. After half a minute’s dead silence they heard hard running, advancing in one breath and receding the next.

Izzy peeked from his hole, said, “The acoustics are odd,” and immediately retracted his head like a turtle. “I thought--” His eyes rolled to the tunnel’s ceiling. Clopping noises met overhead and radiated in all directions. “But…balls descending!”

The Group crept out of hiding and snuck between torches by touch, hitting the floor every time the clattering was repeated.

“They’ve got to be just as confused,” Abel said, peeking into a passage with a gazillion capillaries. “What did the big one call this place?”

“The Honeycomb,” Amantu mumbled. “The selfsame term related by Doctor Mack--by Titus, that is.” He visually measured apparent blind alleys in the roof and walls. “And Doctor Weaver is correct. The earth has been worked extensively, perhaps over decades. Yet--there is a peculiar unfinished quality to the narrower passages. Do you men not see these grooves? What instrument would produce them?”

Abel’s fingers inspected a series of scored marks. “At all costs we must find Ti.”

“Sound guidance. Lead on, ‘AJ’.”

Abel crept side-to-side and rarely looked back, checking torches and tunnel floors like a mountain lion studying branches and prints. This Honeycomb section was riddled with narrowing tunnels and partial excavations, with cells and burrows, with stairways to empty pits, with chipped-out handholds to nowhere. Some passageways were lit, some bare, but nearly all contained branches, wells, and flues. One of the brighter tunnels revealed warrens housing mangled bodies in varying degrees of decomposition. Abel availed himself of a sputtering torch with one hand, cupped the other over his mouth and nose, and stepped cautiously through the well-rounded portals. Outside of a particularly large chamber an enormous cross had been gouged out of the facing tunnel wall. This place featured a vault containing--along with the ubiquitous pocks, holes, and fissures--ranks of vertically aligned berths holding the skeletons of people hanged, pummeled, and otherwise murdered.

Izzy winced over Abel’s shoulder. “Ugh. Criminals, you think?”

“I’m not sure. There’s a message chipped out of the rock under this berth. It says, ‘Daniel, 2:29’. And under that it reads, ‘Think in thy bed’.” He straightened. “Not a whole lot to think about, now, is there?”

“Mine’s name was Joel,” Izzy mumbled. “And he was 2:23, whatever that means. It says here, ‘Be joyful’.”

“Well, he certainly does seem to be smiling.” Abel moved down the line. “Here’s a guy named Amos. Amos, 7:12. Amos has an admonition. It says, ‘Go, flee away’.”

“Sage advice.”

“These bones,” mused the professor, “appear to have been gnawed.” He peered deeper into the berths. “The cradles open into pitch. Can these be the mouths of burrows?”

“Then it’s true!” Izzy cried. “The rumours!” His whole frame crimped. “Cannibals!”

“Shh!”

Crunching gravel, clipped exchanges. It was too late to flee, and too late to kill the torch. The men could only squeeze into a crouching huddle.

The jagged shadows of Malachi and Ezekiel rippled along the tunnel wall like animated cave paintings. Hard running at the other end quickly diminished to padding, and a moment later Micah’s shadow was leaning in to join the others. For the longest time the trio of shadows vacillated there, without budging.

Finally Micah’s voice bounced round the tunnel: “You know that smell what living folk gives off when they’s around the dead?”

“I stink I do,” replied Ezekiel.

“Comes from horror. Their gonads hitch up and the funk wells out of every pore. Only one smell’s got a sweeter stink than horror.”

“And what stink would that be?”

“Terror,” Micah said. “Makes a man a veritable cold-sweat flower. And when they’s more’n one around, that big ol’ stink makes for a downright dandified bouquet.”

Ezekiel leaped in to one side, his eyes gleaming from Abel’s trembling torch. “Chris!” he cried and, pinching his nose, appended, “Pee-ee-you!”

Malachi, hopping in on the other side, yelled, “C-c-cross!” and stood grinning with his fists on his hips, a psychotic adult Peter Pan.

The warren’s opening was now a hellish mantelpiece; Malachi and Ezekiel the side-lit ogre bookends, fully-illuminated Micah the oval-framed grinning portrait. Micah, stepping aside to expose the gouged-out cross, said pleasantly, “And Double-Cross! It taked some fancy slitherings, but you three serpents appears to have done-finded the perfect hole.”

Ezekiel and Malachi began a creepy flanking maneuver; darting their heads like snakes while flicking their tongues and flapping their arms. The Group instinctively bunched into a line, pushing Abel forward. He waved his torch back and forth uncertainly, holding it on Malachi after a faked attack.

“Wawa,” said Malachi. “Wawa, wawa.” He grimaced and gritted. “Wa-wa-watch my eyes. Not my-ha, not my-ha, not my-ha.” He flapped his robe urgently, distracting Abel long enough for Ezekiel to take an enormous sideways stride.

But Abel parried swiftly, shifting the torch one to the other. “I don’t wish to hurt you, sirs.”

Ezekiel shook his hood hard. “Wrong! Don’t watch me. Watch him.”

Upon this cue he rushed forward. Abel swung to meet him directly, allowing Malachi to swoop in from the side.

Amantu’s black hand was the tip of a lash, plucking the torch from Abel’s fist and jabbing it side-to-side like an epee: flame-first into Malachi’s snarling mask, then, in the same twisting thrust, base-downward onto the closing crown of Ezekiel.

Both freaks hit the floor screaming. The action froze. Everybody dropped what they were doing and stared at the professor with a new respect.

Now, Moses Matthew Amantu was a most imposing man, physically as well as intellectually. With a spitting torch in his hand he was fearsome enough to give even a backward bully like Micah pause. Abel and Izzy clambered into berths, squealing as they scrambled through rotted remains. They wiggled blindly down adjoining passages, pausing to call back plaintively before wiggling on.

Micah and Amantu stood their ground, staring each other down in the petering torchlight; a pair of facing stalagmites. The only sounds were the receding calls of Abel and Izzy, along with Malachi’s hissing whimpers, and an occasional rolling moan from Ezekiel. In time even these prominent noises were swallowed up in the Honeycomb. Still that stare went on. The torch coughed and sighed; light left the chamber as though a dimmer switch were being adjusted by an unseen hand. And still that stare went on. Now darkness permeated the warren’s interior, broken only by the intense afterglow of two steady pairs of locked eyes.

Without looking away, Amantu quietly set down the spent torch, adjusted his robes, and slipped into the hewn berth.

His friends were still calling back when he came up to them on his hands and knees.

“Hammer!” Izzy gasped. “You are truly a man! We might have been--we could have been--we certainly would have been--”

“Prudence,” observed the professor in the dark, “would dictate we press on.”

“Hear, Hear!” coughed Abel. “Follow me.” But he didn’t budge. The men could hear him breathing hard. A minute later firelight was leaping behind them.

Izzy poked him in the rear. “Then move, damn you!”

Spiders in a drainpipe, the Group slapped down their palms and scuttled on.