Spiral (50 page)

THE MINERS' TRAIN
chugged out of the station in the Colony as they set off on the first leg of the journey that would take them deep into the bowels of the Earth. Unlike the last time, when Will had stowed away in one of the open trucks, he was now in the guard’s car at the very end of the train. And although the warped timber planking that formed the sides and roof of the car had numerous gaps in it, at least it offered a degree of protection from the smoke and soot spewing from the locomotive up ahead as it began to build up a head of steam.

Over the roar of the engine, Will could hear the pair of pure white stallions whinnying in the next car. The First Officer had requisitioned them from one of the Governor’s residencies — the official had kept them hidden away in his personal stables during the troubles, knowing that the starving masses would have devoured them, given half a chance. The Governor had been beside himself with rage when Cleaver turned up with an official letter from the newly formed Colonists’ Committee, although he’d had no choice but to let them go. The horses would be a real boon in the Deeps; Drake wanted to cover the distance across the Great Plain as quickly as possible, and the railwaymen assured him that there was bound to be a cart somewhere in the Miners’ Station to hitch them to.

The guard’s car was dimly lit by a single shaded luminescent orb suspended at its rear. For a while Will watched the odd fiery spark as it found its way into the car, then traced a short streak in the air until it burned itself into invisibility. Watching the brief lives of these sparks, he found himself thinking about the parting from his mother. Will didn’t know quite what had changed between them, but she hadn’t given him the send-off he’d had on other occasions. Mrs. Burrows was aware of the risks her son would be facing, yet she simply hugged him in a perfunctory way and wished him good luck.

And Will had to admit that this time he himself had felt differently about leaving her.

Perhaps they had both changed because of all they’d been through. Or, he asked himself, was it because he was growing up and didn’t need his mother in the same way that he’d used to? He was still mulling this over when the rocking motion of the train began to make his eyelids feel heavier and heavier, and he drifted into sleep.

And, as the temperature gradient gradually rose the deeper they penetrated into the Earth’s crust, none of them did much more than sleep and eat for the next twenty-four hours. Their journey was broken several times for the horses to be fed and watered, and for the huge sets of storm gates across the track to be cranked open to allow the train through.

They finally drew into the Miners’ Station, and it was much as Will remembered it — a ramshackle row of rather unimpressive huts. He jumped from the guard’s car, his boots crunching in the layer of iron ore, coke, and clinkers covering the ground. Drawing in a long breath through his nose, the arid air evoked the time when he, Chester, and Cal had stolen through this very cavern. And Bartleby. They’d all been killed or touched by death, and that’s why not one of them was with him at that moment.

He was still mulling this over as he began to walk toward the station huts but then came to an abrupt stop. The old Will would have taken the opportunity to explore the huts, but he found that he had no desire whatsoever to investigate them. It just didn’t seem important to him anymore. Instead he helped Sweeney and the Colonel unload the equipment while Drake went off with the Colonist engine driver and his assistant in search of a cart. They quickly located one, and once the stallions were harnessed and the equipment in place, Elliott and Drake led the way from the cavern on foot, as the Colonel drove the cart.

Will had shown the Colonel how to wear one of Drake’s headsets, adjusting the drop-down lens over his eye so he could see the way clearly without the need for any light. Then Will had found himself a place to sit at the very rear of the cart behind the equipment, and put on his own headset. Now back in the familiar world of shifting orange light, he was quite content to watch the sides of the tunnel slipping by as Sweeney jogged along behind the cart.

Drawing on his enhanced senses, Sweeney was scanning the tunnel behind and checking the side passages for any lurking Limiters, when his gaze fell on Will.

“Hey, lazy boy,” the huge man ribbed him. “Don’t strain yourself too much.” Will was framing a suitably indignant response when Sweeney continued, “You know, I just
love
this place.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked, shifting uncomfortably as sweat trickled down the small of his back. “It’s hot and dusty . . . and just foul.”

“Sure,” Sweeney answered. “But for the first time in a long time, I’m not getting any radio interference.” He touched one of his temples. “You have no idea what it’s like to have some tosspot of a DJ burbling away in your head all day and all night. Some weeks it’s not too bad, but then it suddenly kicks in big-time, and I have to listen to bleedin’ Ryan Seacrest prattling on whether I want to or not.” He curled his lip in disgust. “But in this place, there’s not a whisper . . . there’s nothing. Just glorious peace and quiet.”

Will nodded to show he understood.

“Yes, sirree, I can really see myself settling down here one day,” Sweeney said.

They hadn’t encountered a single living soul — human, Styx, or Coprolite — as they emerged into a vast cavern where the ground was peppered with large, teardrop-shaped boulders.

Will had taken advantage of the incline to stretch his legs and was jogging behind the cart alongside Sweeney.

“Oh God!” the boy suddenly burst out.

“Whassamatter?” Sweeney asked, peering around them. “Got something?”

“No, it’s not that,” Will assured him. “I know where we are . . . and I hoped I’d never see it again. My brother died not far from here. And my real mum, too.”

Sweeney was silent for several of his lumbering strides. “That’s tough, Will. I’m sorry.”

They crossed a path of well-worn paving slabs, and an hour later the huge opening in the ground came into sight.

“There it is . . . the Pore,” Will told Sweeney gloomily.

Drake and Elliott had come to a stop and were waiting for everyone to catch up.

“We’ve spotted something new,” Drake informed them. “There appear to be some huts by the side of the Pore.”

Elliott had her eye glued to her rifle nightscope. “Three . . . three huts,” she confirmed.

“We know this area well, and they weren’t there before,” Drake said. He’d spent years in this land of eternal night, latterly with Elliott, and as Will watched them both now, he realized they were back in their element. “We’re going in to investigate,” Drake said, then he and Elliott moved ahead again. Colonel Bismarck followed at a distance, keeping the stallions to a steady trot, as Will and Sweeney remained on the lookout for any Limiters.

When they finally reached the Pore, the continual deluge of water from above splattered their heads and shoulders, helping to cool them. The ground by the basic huts was strewn with deflated hot air balloons, and beside them a wooden platform extended almost forty feet over the huge void. Will, the Colonel, and Sweeney stepped around the sagging forms of the balloons as they moved to the end of it.

Sweeney whistled as he tried to see across to the other side of the titanic void and, not finding it, peered down. “That’s one . . . big . . . mother. You threw yourself down it, didn’t you, Will?” he asked.

“Didn’t have much choice at the time,” Will mumbled. It dawned on him that they were here to do precisely the same again. Unless Drake had a better idea, such as using one of the balloons to carry them down to the fungal ledge far below.

Will began to retrace his steps along the platform, repeating to himself, “I
really
don’t want to do this.” And he really didn’t — the prospect of taking a step off the edge and pitching headlong into that black nothingness again filled him with unremitting dread. He sought out Drake where he and Elliott were deep in conversation. They fell silent as he arrived.

“What’s the plan now?” Will demanded. “Are we really going to jump down the Pore? And how the heck are we going to know when we’re deep enough to find the passageway?” He was furious that the two of them seemed to be leaving him in the dark, just as it had been all that time ago when they’d first rescued him, Chester, and Cal on the Great Plain. After all he’d gone through, hadn’t he earned the right to know what they were intending to do?

Drake caught the edge in the boy’s voice. “For lack of any other alternative, that was my original idea,” he answered. “I agree that our chances of hitting the right fungal ledge at exactly the right depth are slim at best. Particularly as there isn’t a radio beacon to guide us.”

Drake slipped a tracker from a pouch on his belt. It resembled a strange-looking handgun with a dial on top of it and a small dish where the muzzle should have been. The tracker was able to detect the VLF, or Very Low Frequency, signals that the radio beacons broadcast. Will had planted these beacons at various points along the route he’d taken with Dr. Burrows and Elliott when they’d somehow found their way through to the inner world the first time.

“Haven’t seen one of those in a while,” Will said as Drake aimed it at the Pore and depressed the trigger. It emitted a single click, then remained silent. Will frowned. “That’s weird,” he said. “Is it working properly?”

“It should be. Don’t forget the beacon you left at the jump-off point on the second Pore is quite some distance from us,” Drake reminded him.

“Yes, by Smoking Jean,” Will said, recalling his name for it.

Drake nodded. “And I also agree with you that it’s going to be a bit hit-and-miss if we do a swan dive with the nuclear weapons tied to our ankles.”

Will was frowning. “You don’t have a plan at all, do you?” he accused Drake. “You’re just making this up as you go along!”

“That’s the way it works,” Drake replied.

Will was shaking his head angrily. “Wow, that’s just great. So you don’t actually have a clue what we’re going to do next.”

“Will,” Elliott intervened, reaching out as if to touch his shoulder but then lowering her hand to point at the ground. “Look at the tracks you’re on.” It was clear that something heavy had passed that way, because the rocks had been pulverized. “Lots of Coprolite machines went by here.” She raised her rifle to peer through the scope. “And I can see one of them way over there . . . around the side of the Pore. Drake and I think we should recce it.”

Drake indicated the balloons by the huts. “The Styx must have been using those to get up and down, but from the state of them, they obviously switched to another method some time back. And I ask myself what that could be — did they find or even
make
themselves an alternative route? I think we owe it to ourselves to find out, don’t you?” He punched Will gently on the arm. “Happier now?” he asked, smiling at the boy.

“Much,” Will replied, smiling back.

With Will beside him in the cart, Colonel Bismarck drove the stallions along the tracks by the edge of the Pore. Will was soon able to make out the Coprolite digging machine. The cylindrical body of battered steel shone like quicksilver as he squinted through his lens.

They came nearer and the Colonel slowed the horses, but there was no sign of either Elliott or Drake by the machine.

“Where are they?” Will asked as Sweeney caught up with the cart. “And why aren’t they keeping in touch over the radio?”

“Wait here,” Sweeney replied, and went to find out.

As Will saw him reach the digger, he, too, disappeared from sight. It was a good twenty minutes before the horses began to stamp the ground and become agitated. Then Will heard what he thought was the distant rumbling of a vehicle. And it sounded heavy.

“What’s that?” he asked, angling his head and looking around. “And where’s it coming from?”

“There!” said the Colonel, pointing.

Where Will had last seen Sweeney, a Coprolite digger rose into view. As it came at full pelt toward them, the Colonel struggled to control the horses. It stopped, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees on the spot, boulders popping beneath the massive rollers that bore it along.

The rear hatch swung open, and Elliott and Sweeney dismounted into the cloud of smoke issuing from the machine’s exhausts. “Got ourselves a ride!” Sweeney called over to Will.

It turned out that Drake had found the Coprolite digger fueled up and ready for use. Will didn’t question it — he was just relieved that there was an alternative to jumping down the Pore.

Once all the equipment was on board and lashed down, the Colonel freed the stallions and watched them gallop off. “I do hope they make it back to the station,” he said with some regret.

Then everyone boarded the digger. The interior of the vehicle was fabricated from beaten metal — most of it was grimy except for several areas that shone brightly from their regular use. Will took in the display at the navigator’s station, and the red glow coming from an inspection port in the boiler.

Drake, sitting at the front of the vehicle, pushed in and twisted a rod to engage the engine, then depressed a pedal. The digger lurched forward, and he steered it around to face the opposite direction. Will joined Elliott and Sweeney to watch from the open hatch at the rear of the vehicle as the digger’s nose dipped down an incline.