Caverns

Chapter 9 of Signature

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Chapter Nine

Caverns

There was no shortage of forks or tributaries, no end to the side-tunnels, pits, and alcoves--yet not a single passage even once reached a height that would allow the men to ease their aching backs. While being pursued they were able to navigate visually, albeit with much knuckle-scraping and wounding of knees. But soon even the partial illumination of torchlight was replaced by the dreariest of ignes fatui.

“I’m dying!” Izzy cried, slamming cheek-to-cheek with Amantu. “I’m parched, I’m faded, I’m fagged!” He lolled on his back, licking his lifeless lips. “Anyways, they’re not following us anymore. They’ve got to know something we don’t.”

“Like?”

“Like maybe all these little tunnels terminate in a mass cul-de-sac. You never stopped to consider that? Or like maybe they do have exits, but in places those maniacs know all about.”

Amantu wiped his face. “It is imperative we develop a means of recognition beyond our posteriors. There is space enough to retire this most unbecoming single-file procession.”

“A bad plan, man. We can’t afford to separate--not in the dark, and certainly not for the sake of moral decorum.”

“Yet we are blind, AJ, in objective as well as in sight. What purpose do we serve in sneaking up on the unknown?”

“Hammer’s right, Josh. Since we’re not being followed, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to double back to the tunnels. Those madmen are probably swinging around ahead of us even as we speak.”

“Then what’re those lights behind us?”

“Spots before your eyes; they’re still adjusting. It’s residual illumination.”

“I perceive them also. Yet many more than anticipated. Dozens, shining steadily, and from several angles.” A scratch-and-patter in a passage to their right. A chorus of squeals to their rear. The Group froze exactly as they were; not breathing, not even blinking.

Being thinking men, they weren’t particularly phobic about rodents. To the contrary, Abel was an avid squirrel-feeder, Izzy kept three golden hamsters as office pets, and Amantu had rescued a dozen black rats from university labs. But the creatures now gathering about them were a different breed altogether.

With grain, seed, and vermin in short supply, four centuries of subterranean adaptation had produced an outsized animal that fed almost exclusively on human remains. Fatting originally on discarded body parts, then, as competition grew, on entire cadavers, the Honeycomb Rat developed into an aggressive, almost fearless predator, averaging in size somewhere between a large pug and a small warthog. The characteristic squeals made visual identification unnecessary.

“Oh no!” wept Izzy. “Oh, no-no-no. Not like this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Abel’s voice rose an octave per syllable. “They can’t be after live meat!”

“Shoo!” Amantu smacked down a palm. “Scat!”

The squeals increased in intensity.

“Don’t antagonize them!” Abel cried. “Everybody remain perfectly calm!”

There was a hiss and clatter almost at his elbow. Abel scrambled away screaming, Izzy and Amantu close behind.

The rats made horrible snuffling sounds as they scurried. They slammed their fellows against walls, nipping one another in their passion. Those in the fore savaged competitors popping in from side tunnels, and when the victors came upon Amantu’s furiously wagging behind there was no mistaking their intent. The lead rat bit into a flapping sandal and refused to let go, though the bellowing professor kicked frantically. Another leaped right over the leader, momentarily attaching itself to Amantu’s back before being scraped off by the tunnel’s roof. Amantu thereupon veered into a broader side passage. He whipped off his sandals and slapped them madly. Those rodents just behind the original leaders then went after Izzy, who plunged into a left-hand gap, incidentally joining Amantu. The two ricocheted through this parallel tunnel, calling to Abel at apertures. But their lanky leader had completely lost his cool. His constant screaming produced a matching frenzy in the rats; they poured by like rank water, fighting for fang-holds.

“Josh!” Izzy called desperately, and flung himself into the squealing stream.

Rats do not like being approached from behind. When Izzy sprang in hollering they whirled and hissed menacingly, but, vile cowards that they are, made to scatter rather than retaliate. Biting at anything and everything, the largest scraped along the walls, snapping ferociously while trampling smaller members. Amantu hauled the psychoanalyst back in, but it was too late for their friend. Abel kicked and scraped along until he found himself upright, his head and shoulders protruding into a diagonally-running upper passage. He swung in on his belly while the rats rushed in below, leaping and gnashing.

Abel plunged down his head. “Professor!”

No answer.

“Izzy!”

Nothing but the sounds of squealing and snapping. He jerked back and pulled himself through the dark, relying on toes, elbows, and fingernails. The rats swarmed atop their fellows; Abel could hear the first claws breaching the aperture.

Before he’d managed a yard the rats were on him. But even as he turned round screaming he was swallowed up in a sinkhole-like depression. With a dozen rats tumbling behind him, Abel slid headfirst down a rock chute into a huge calcite cavern, lit surreally by a bluish phosphorescent powder that clung to every limestone face. The last thing he remembered was a fissure plugged by waving snouts. Abel ran blindly, barking his shins and elbows, gasping: “Eaten alive. Eaten alive. Poor little Izzy. Eaten alive.” When he was all run-out he stopped, pressed a hand to his side, and squinted into the drear.

The great cavern possessed a somber, cathedral-like quality; steep walls brushed longitudinally by that soft blue powder, along with occasional thick calcite streaks that lent an impression of gigantic painted windows. The silence was bottomless.

Abel stumbled up to a pool ringed by stalagmites.

The pool contained a single fat, milky-white cave pearl, deposited drop by drop from a teat-shaped stalactite a centimeter above. Over time a corresponding stalagmite had developed from the pool’s basin; this growth now rose from the pool like a lily’s pistil. The cave pearl was floating in equipoise, at the precise center of dripping stalactite and rising stalagmite, patiently awaiting that one sweet finalizing drop. Between the cavern’s floor and the pool’s rim ran a bench-shaped outcropping smoothed by centuries of overflowing rainwater. The bench seat completely spanned the pool, at one point dipping out of view. It was a natural place to rest.

Abel flopped against the seat’s elegantly bowed back, his elbows dipping into the murky pool. He angrily snatched up the pearl and hurled it ricocheting across the cavern. Echoes raced away like some large obscure animal, but the clatter was clearly preceded by a hard little yelp.

He hit the floor. “Who’s there?”

“Ow-ow!”

“Malachi?” Abel backpedaled carefully. “Are you alone, man? I don’t want any trouble with anybody.”

It’s true what they say about one’s senses sharpening in the dark. Abel’s ears picked up minute movements and sounds, and in half a minute he made out the triangular figure of Malachi crouching on a dusty outgrowth with his cloaked arms tucked in like wings. Malachi’s Colony-eyes were well-adapted to subterranean predation. Perceiving Abel’s shift in focus, he leapt silently and with accuracy onto a projection ten feet away. Immediately a fat swarm of bats, ghostly-white against the phosphor’s soft blue, burst out of a crevice and took off shrieking.

“Talk to me, Mal.” Desperation crept into Abel’s voice. “Let’s work something out.”

The craggy shape approached rock-by-rock. “God’s gonna get--gonna get--God’s getcha gonna--gonna getcha--”

Abel tripped over a low calcite spill and scooted away blind. “This is not the time or place, Mal. We can rationalize. We can deal.”

“G-God doesn’t deal, say the Book. No-not with sin--not with sinn--”

“Not now, Mal! Look, I can get you stuff. Real stuff, not promises. Me and my friends are big shots in the city. We’ve got connections.” Abel ducked into a narrow passage between ribbed outcroppings. “How long’s it been since you had a good steak, with all the trimmings? How’s about a nice Chianti?”

Malachi rose almost directly above him, cawed, “Sliver tongue!” and swept up his arms. “‘P-prick and be done,’ say the Book. ‘It’s meorma, meorma--it’s me or Mama.’” One hand dipped under his cloak. Even in the dimness, the seven-inch blade showed cleanly. “‘Poke the pi--p-poke the pig’, say the Book. ‘Poke the pig to s-save the circle’.”

Abel yelped, wheeled, and bolted straight into a wall at the end of a cul-de-sac. He expected an answering shriek from Malachi, so he was amazed to hear his own name called out in response. The voice was unmistakable, and appeared to be coming right out of the wall.

“Izzy!”

“Here, Josh!”

“Professor!”

“And here!”

At another blast of flapping wings, Abel spun around with his arms covering his face. But the twisted spire of Malachi was gone. Abel turned back.

“You’re alive!”

“Very much so. Although our circumstances would recommend an ellipsis be placed on that assertion. How are you situated?”

“I’ve got company. Malachi’s in here somewhere, but he took off when he heard you guys calling.”

“Do not alter your position! We are experiencing another of these caverns’ acoustical phenomena.”

“How’s Izzy?”

A snarl appeared slightly to Abel’s left. “Okay, Josh. But so help me, if I ever get out of here alive--”

“Damn it, Izzy! Hammer’s right. This is a major break, and we’ll have to work in concert. All right?”

“Agreed.”

“Whatever.”

Abel placed his lips on the rock. “Don’t change positions, don’t raise or lower your heads, don’t look away. Face my voice directly, both of you, and continue to speak in measured tones. Judging by its feel, this whole wall’s riddled with grooves and recesses. I’ll proceed gradually to my right while you guys match my pace to your left, until we either encounter one another or our voices grow distant. If the latter, we’ll all just as carefully retrace our steps to this point and try again to our left. Sooner or later we’ll meet, or at least find the aperture that’s making it possible to communicate.”

Amantu said, with exaggerated clarity, “I heartily approve of this plan, AJ. We are facing your voice now, and will endeavor to move with the utmost synchronicity. That said, we are prepared to proceed.”

A minute passed. “Christ,” Izzy muttered, “I’d trade my practice for a drink.”

“Do not turn your face. You heard the man. Both parties must behave concordantly.”

The head swiveled defiantly. Izzy could just discern the faint outline of Amantu’s woolly skull. “How long must the blind lead the blind? Why’d you have to drag me along with you, anyway?”

Amantu very slowly turned his head until he was looking down at the psychoanalyst’s dim naked crown.

“Charity too can be blind. I was prey to a rash impulse, in hindsight apparently unwarranted. Nevertheless, that quick reaction preserved your ample carcass from a horde of stampeding man-eaters.”

“One rat over many. Josh! For Christ’s sake, get me out of here!”

“There is no reply. There is nothing! We have lost our sole connection. Who knows how rare that phenomenon might be?”

“You’re the one who ‘guided’ us here! ‘Here’ being a foot-wide ledge in utter darkness.”

“Must you whine in perpetuity? I led us to our colleague, did I not? This labyrinth, as we have observed, is peppered with means of egress. And the darkness is not utter; you exaggerate, as ever. That source of luminosity is nearer than I anticipated. Do press on, Doctor Weaver. You are blocking the road.”

They argued back and forth along the precipice, feeling their way hand-over-hand until they’d stepped out upon an immense smooth-faced rock overlook. Below was a dank cavern full of massive stalagmites, some petered-out stalactites, and the occasional glistening column. Illumination was provided by a pair of jagged apertures on the far wall. A single row of stalagmites rose out of the abyss like volcanic islands, forming a daunting bridge between that wall and the basaltic monolith now supporting Amantu and Izzy. To the bridge’s right ran a wide curtain of cerebella-like calcite flows, and to its left was an impenetrable void. The professor sounded that void with a dropped pebble that pinged back and forth until it was swallowed by silence. “A bottomless basin,” he noted. “A sinkhole for the ages. Our Honeycomb may be worked over by man, but she is eaten away by nature.”

Izzy sat hard. “And so here we die.” He slid a foot before braking with his palms. “The Mercies’ flickering lights beckon, but we’d have to be cockroaches to negotiate that joke of a broken bridge. I’ll starve on this blasted rock, staring at my grave while some backpedaling egghead lectures me on subterranean geomorphology. There’s an irony lurking in here somewhere. Maybe it’s just too dim to see it.”

Amantu stamped a sandaled foot, so great was his vexation. “There is but one source of dimness! Nearly forty years have I fumed behind the lectern, only to stand here--baby-sitting another spoiled child. Just when clear thinking is requisite, again rises that gut-wrenching wail of the comfort-bereaved. How you have juggled a career, Doctor Weaver, is a mystery to me. Do your patients arrive for sessions with kerchiefs in hand?”

“That’ll be about enough of that. At least my people are above arrogance.”

“I? Arrogant? Well, ‘Izzy’, it requires a full measure of humility to tolerate your multitudinous plaints and petty outbursts. That I so recently called you friend is now an outrage even to myself. Your narrow-minded, self-pitying utterances are untenable.”

“Did I say arrogance? Well, I meant ignorance! Ignorance of geography! Ignorance of teamwork! Ignorance of even the rudiments of humanity.”

“And that, sir, will be about enough of that! I deem it only fair to warn you: my patience has been tried unduly. I am a thinking man, not a reactive one. But--so help me!”

Izzy nearly lost his balance pushing himself to his feet. His forward position on the smooth rock’s incline greatly increased his disadvantage in relation to the bigger man, so that now his raised eyes were barely at the level of Amantu’s sternum.

“Your patience!” He scooted upward with difficulty, sliding back an inch for every three gained, until he and Amantu were facing one another perpendicularly to the apertures; the weak light setting one side of their frames aglow, the other side remaining in bleary shadow.

Still the smaller man by half a head, Izzy began to cheat, inching up and around until he and the professor were eye to eye. With his very black face eclipsing an aperture, Amantu became a pair of white floating eyes against the lesser darkness.

“Your patience!” Izzy repeated. “Have you any idea how frustrating this is for me? To meekly abide, in front of my learned friends…to play along with an awkward braggadocio--solely to spare him further embarrassment!”

“Enough,” Amantu snarled.

Increasing his advantage by raising himself on his toes, Izzy mocked the professor’s basso profundo with biting accuracy. “‘I heartily approve of this plan, AJ’! Well, Professor Emeritus, I think I can hear Josh cursing us rather heartily even now!”

“Enough!”

But Izzy was on a roll. “‘Oh, just follow me, Doctor Weaver! Exploration, Doctor Weaver, is a grand feature of my oh-so noble lineage. Doctor Weaver, it is in my genes’!”

“Enough!”

And with that, triggered by a lifetime of being odd man out, the Hammer came down. The heavyset professor could have inflicted considerable damage with this one roundhouse punch, but he was swinging uphill, and his balance was off. The next thing he knew he was spreadeagled flat on his belly, rigid fingers desperately seeking purchase on the smooth rock’s face while he very gradually slipped into eternity.

Izzy dropped immediately and grabbed the professor’s wrists. Amantu instinctively copied the hold.

“Mercy!” Izzy cried, as the heavier man’s weight pulled him along.

Amantu bellowed, “Do not struggle!”

Both men froze, cutouts plastered on stone.

“Find a foothold!” Izzy cried, his nose banging on the rock with each hard consonant. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hammer!” He and the professor slid an inch.

Amantu forced back his head, “There is none!” And down they slid, a foot and more. The men stopped struggling, stopped speaking, stopped breathing.

Now Amantu was holding on using only the pressure of his thighs. All feeling rolled down his arms to his quaking heart. The certainty of death took him, and for a moment he was a breath away from fainting.

“Professor,” Izzy gagged. “I…I…can’t.”

Abruptly the cavern’s light was cut to a fraction. In the apertures were two peaked silhouettes, with accompanying coronas. A torch was thrust through each opening.

Out rang the unmistakable voice of Micah. “Zounds, Easy! What lovers will do when the lights are low!”

“Sirs!” Amantu snapped. And with that he and Izzy scraped down another half-foot. “Anything!”

Micah and Ezekiel hopped across the bridge easily; a torch in one hand, an arm momentarily embracing each rain-rounded peak. They perched upon the final cap to taunt the anxious men, a yard from the rock and two feet below Amantu’s quivering sandals.

“Show him that face you make, Easy. The one with the torch.”

With the sputtering brand beneath his raised chin, Ezekiel was the Grim Reaper personified. He grimaced and gnashed, his red-tinged hood flapping. “Whoo-oo-ooo! I’m gonna get you, you nasty atheists, you. Whoo-oo-oo!”

Micah roared with laughter, shaking the professor’s foot while doing a spirited jig on the lip of infinity.

“I beg you,” Amantu whispered. “I can hold no longer.”

“Lucky for you we happened by. Me and Easy was just strolling along, making with the mandibles, when we heared what sounded like a pair of ginger cats in heat. Had us a peek through the tribe’s windows and--oh, Lord, I about blushed with the sight of ye. I just thank the Good Almighty we arrived in the nick of time.” He lifted the professor’s tattered robe and walked his fingers up the calf.

Amantu kicked involuntarily. His nails dug deeper into Izzy’s wrists and the two slid another foot. “Cease, pervert! We are in dire need!”

“Pervy, am I? Just who’s wearing the pretty gold party dress, that’s what I’d be asking m’self about now.” He lifted the robe again and, standing on tiptoes, ran his fingers right up the back of Amantu’s thigh.

This playful act, to a man of such propriety, was an unspeakable violation. Utilizing forgotten muscles in his forearms and thighs, the bellowing professor shot up the rock like a spider, hauling Izzy with him. Micah and Ezekiel roared with laughter and set their torches in niches chipped out for just such a climb. “We’ll make rockers of ye yet, missies!”

Flat on their backs, the doctor and professor peered between their knees as Micah and Ezekiel picked their way up, utilizing handholds only now visible.

“Pagans, pagans,” the frighteners sang, “all fall down!”

Backing up frantically, Amantu and Izzy were astonished to see Abel’s face pop out below the grinning climbers.

Both monsters whirled at the displacement of torchlight.

“Ha!” Izzy yelped. “Turnabout!”

“That’s right,” chattered Abel, thrusting the torches left and right. “I warned you guys last time. Don’t force me. I’ll burn you if I have to.”

“A wholly qualified sentiment!” Amantu crowed. “These men are psychopaths!”

The climbers exchanged glances.

Micah bluffed a kick.

Ezekiel followed up with the real thing.

Abel parried with the right-hand torch and went straight for Ezekiel’s lancing right leg with the other.

The ragged old robe caught instantly. Ezekiel beat at the racing flames, lost his balance, and flew screaming off the rock back-first. Down he went like a comet, blazing all the way.

Micah stared bitterly before switching his gaze to a high stalagmite just beyond that critical peak now occupied by Abel. He kicked off his perch and sailed over Abel’s torches like a huge black witch, landing on all fours with the nimbleness of a bighorn. He righted himself soundlessly, glared at the awestruck Group, and went hopping and swaying back along the bridge of stalagmites. At the apertures he drew himself erect, cutting out half the light and breathing hard. His eyes burned in his silhouetted hood.

Then he was gone.

With the rock’s face lit by torches, its chipped-out handholds became plainly visible. Even so, it was the hardest thing in the world to coach the stranded men down. Izzy, as the lightest, had to come first--Abel could catch him when he jumped, while both he and Izzy were required for the larger professor. But for Izzy, who saw Ezekiel’s death as an augur, the simple three-foot hop onto the nearest cap was an ordeal that made Abel scream himself silly. Even when he had hold of the doctor’s arms it was a fight to peel him off the big rock, and in the end only Amantu’s weight on his shoulders could make Izzy release his wide embrace. The professor himself made the little leap with a surprising nimbleness.

Abel had memorized Micah’s holds and turns across the tricky stalagmite bridge. The men moved delicately, feeling their way up and around each peak before swinging over to the next, then spontaneously turned for panting congratulations on a ledge below the twin openings.

Izzy puffed up and offered his paw all around. “They were wrong to underestimate the Group.”

Amantu shook it well. “And a most formidable Group we are.” He was uniquely moved when Abel’s hand completed the knot. “Well!” He pulled his hand away and, to conceal his embarrassment, poked his head out into the light.