The Other Tree (31 page)

Luke’s mind raced, and his thoughts felt like clear running water in a rainforest brook. He could smell chocolate and burnt toast, and everything seemed to buzz with brilliant edges. Chris was looking at him with an odd expression of concern.

“The seal,” said Luke, running off through the trees, followed by Chris.

“Stay there!” called Chris, somewhat unnecessarily, to Bale.

The cavern fell back into silence, and Bale continued to murmur the familiar words of comforting prayers. Regrets did not come easily to him. He did as was demanded of him, and it would all end as it was meant to. He was still struggling just a little with the whole ending part.

Bale did, on reflection, wish that he had spent more time with his siblings. His family, his community, had had little contact with his younger brother since he had announced he was going to New York to become a stand-up comedian. He hadn’t heard from his sister since she’d left home in a storm of angry words, but he had quietly followed her emerging career as a sculptor. He wondered where they were now, and contemplated whether it was arrogant to wonder if they thought of him at all.

Bale’s thoughts were interrupted by a hollow grinding noise. As it grew closer, he saw Chris and Luke emerge from the trees, dragging the heavy jade cover which had sealed the tunnel entrance. The seal scraped across the tiles with a loud, ceramic hiss.

“Fifty kilos,” said Luke, letting go of the stone seal several metres from Bale.

“Sixty,” huffed Chris. “It weighs almost as much as you.”

“We need fifteen more,” said Luke, scanning the surrounds.

All the stone trees and animals were firmly fixed to the floor, and there were no obvious objects which could be prised loose. Chris and Luke huddled together, voices low.

“How much does your pack weigh?” asked Chris.

“Ten kilos,” said Luke.

“Mine’s about twelve.”

Chris walked over to Bale.

“Do you have spare oxygen tanks?” asked Chris.

“Yes. Don’t you?” said Bale.

Chris and Luke huddled again, muttering and casting glances at Bale.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Chris.

“It has to end somewhere,” said Luke.

Chris nodded, pulling several items from her backpack. She dropped them into an oversized specimen bag that looked as though it’d been designed to hold medium-sized shrubs—for the hardcore botanist. Luke drew a long coil of rope from his pack, looping one end through the straps of his backpack, then through Chris’s pack, tying a firm knot. Bale watched with morbid interest. Chris swung the bulging specimen bag over her shoulder, while Luke piled the backpacks onto the jade seal.

“Get out your oxygen tank,” said Luke.

Partly out of curiosity, partly out of a habit for following firmly worded instructions, Bale complied. He unhooked a large black canister from his pack, which was attached to a solidly constructed breathing mask.

Chris and Luke crouched down, and with some difficulty pushed the jade seal towards Bale, stopping at the edge of the pressure plate.

“Put one foot on the other side,” said Luke. “And when we say move, step off.”

Bale wasn’t entirely sure if they were serious, particularly since their profiles indicated that neither of them had a background in engineering or bomb disposal. It was ludicrous that they expected to just push a pile of junk onto a highly sophisticated killing device and not end up spattered across the tiles. Nonetheless, he placed one foot on the other side of the plate, his full weight still resting on the trigger panel.

Luke and Chris edged the heavy seal forward, so it just touched the depressed panel. They looked at each other, nervous sweat gleaming on their foreheads. Luke smiled faintly.

Way too much Cassia
, thought Chris.

“Move!” said Luke.

Luke and Chris shoved the seal forward, pushing it onto the pressure plate with a dull
thunk
as Bale shifted his weight onto his left leg and lifted his right.

Everyone stood perfectly still, Bale holding the canister of oxygen.

Silence.

“Maybe it’s a delayed trigger?” said Chris.

“Then let’s not stay, shall we?” said Luke.

He turned to Bale, who was having something of a near-life experience.

“Go back the way you came,” said Luke. “Back up through the tunnel. Get Lien to a hospital. Think you can do that?”

Bale’s hands reached automatically to his gun, then his radio, then his flashlight.

“I can,” said Bale.

“And give us your gun,” said Luke.

Chris looked sharply at Luke.

“Sorry,” said Bale. “Responsible gun ownership, you know how it is.”

“Just get out of here,” said Chris.

Bale looked at the priest and the botanist, in all their feeble glory. He moved to leave, then paused, reaching into his pocket. Bale pulled out a thin leather necklace with an object threaded through it.

“If you see Emir, could you give this back to him?” said Bale. “It seemed important to him.”

Bale lowered the item into Chris’s hand, and her fingers closed around it. Bale gave them a brief nod, then disappeared through the trees. His footsteps finally faded into silence, leaving Chris and Luke alone in the deserted cavern. Chris glanced at the pressure plate, feeling a little like the person left to clean up after the house party with a hung-over bear asleep in the living room.

Chris looked down at the object in her palm. Threaded on the leather cord was a single piece of amber, irregular and imperfect, about the size of a coin. It was the colour of late-afternoon sun, foggy in parts but rubbed smooth from frequent touch. Hanging in the golden resin was a miniature fern frond, the tendrils slightly curled like a loose fist. In the light, the amber glowed softly, almost like a living thing.

Oh, my God, he kept it
.

It had been a throwaway find under the pine trees, on a day full of noxious weeds and ravenous mosquitos. Emir had been having a rough week at uni, and he’d decided to accompany Chris to Turook National Park on her search for Illiope ferns. It had not been a particularly successful expedition—they had been chased by a feral terrier, attacked by swarms of midges, and they’d managed to get prickly burrs tangled throughout their clothing. It had been raining that day, and as Chris rummaged through the humid undergrowth, she had pulled a cloudy piece of amber from the roots of a towering pine.

She had given it to Emir, as compensation for an unproductive day. He had stood silently in the rain, tendrils of wet hair plastered to his neck, shoes full of muddy water from when Chris had missed seeing the brook. He had pocketed the piece of amber wordlessly, and Chris had felt vaguely embarrassed. She had never thought of it again.

Clearly, Emir had.

Chris noticed Luke watching her, and she tucked the necklace into her pocket. She turned to the pressure plate, piled with Bale’s backpack, the jade manhole cover, and their own battered packs. Chris picked up the coil of rope, with one end tied to the straps of their packs.

“Do you want your stuff that badly?” asked Luke.

“I want to get through this. I want to come out the other side and live a long and meaningful life. I want to get through the trials, bring down SinaCorp, and pull out their corrupt empire by its shrieking roots. Do you think we can do that with this?”

Chris held up her specimen bag of assorted bric-a-brac.

“It would certainly make for an impressive story,” said Luke.

“And if we failed, it would make for an embarrassing one. I don’t want to get to the Medusa and think, ‘Damn, I wish I had my mirror.’ Or when we get attacked by killer crows, think, ‘If only I had my sack of birdseed.’”

“You’ve been carrying a sack of birdseed?”

“Killer crows!” said Chris, waving emphatically.

“Okay.” Luke walked towards the opening in the cavern wall. “Just wait til we’re as far away as possible.”

Chris followed Luke, unravelling the length of rope as she went. She reached the end of the coil just as they stepped through the doorway in the cavern wall. Shining their flashlights into the darkness, they could see a roughly carved corridor leading further in. Faintly luminous moss patched the walls, casting an uncomfortably dim yellow glow.

Chris grabbed the end of the rope firmly with both hands.

“If it triggers the self-destruct sequence or releases some unstoppable creature, you can say ‘I told you so,’” said Chris.

“How comforting,” said Luke.

“Ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

Taking a deep breath, Chris yanked on the rope and began hauling the packs towards her.

The effect was instant.

As soon as the packs slid from the pressure plate, there was a click as the panel shifted back upwards. There was a faint grinding noise, which grew rapidly louder, until it became a deafening roar from above. Chris risked an upward glance as she continued pulling the rope hand over hand.

The ceiling was falling.

Not falling like tumbling chunks of rock, but falling like a solid slab of obliteration. The previously unseen ceiling now raced towards the cavern floor like a meteorite plunging to earth. Shimmering trees and stone animals splintered with a noise like a million glass bottles exploding, spraying the cavern with multicoloured shards as the roof crushed downwards. Chris leapt backwards in the tunnel as the ceiling crashed to the floor, hitting the ground with a resounding crack. For several moments, her ears rang with muffled echoes, and she could feel the shock of the vibration still shuddering through her bones. She stared at the opening, now blocked with a wall of solid stone.

“And so fell Eden,” said Luke.

“Did we just fail something?” said Chris.

Half of Chris’s pack lay crushed under the solid rock, while only a third of Luke’s pack had made it into the corridor, protruding sadly like a burst tube of toothpaste. Chris picked through the scattered mess, salvaging what she could into a canvas satchel. Luke managed to extract a handful of battered items from the remains of his pack, distributing them amongst his pockets.

“Okay, first trial is the Cherubim,” said Chris, looping her satchel over her shoulder. “Assuming that wasn’t the Cherubim.”

Luke felt that perhaps this comment was directed at him, since Chris had rather arbitrarily nominated him the expert on apocryphal riddles. And although he did feel exceptionally lucid, this was not the same as feeling enlightened.

As they proceeded down the passageway, the light from the moss was so weak it made their eyes ache. Just as Luke was starting to worry that perhaps this tunnel would mirror their earlier descent, they arrived at a plain sandstone archway. Whereas the passage so far had been hewn from the surrounding rock, the corridor beyond the archway was paved in smooth, oyster granite, and the plaster walls were covered in faded frescoes. Small frosted panes embedded in the ceiling illuminated the hallway like skylights on a cloudy day.

Luke considered the unadorned archway and the silent corridor beyond.

“Do you think it’s a trap?” asked Chris.

“This entire complex could be a trap,” said Luke. “Would it make any difference?”

“Probably not.” Chris stepped into the illuminated corridor.

Luke winced instinctively, half-expecting something to explode, possibly Chris. He was exceedingly relieved when pieces of her didn’t come raining down.

Chris reached up to one of the softly glowing panels and tapped it with a fingernail. It appeared to be a pane of translucent quartz, ensconced in the plaster ceiling.

“Maybe fireflies, or bioluminescent moss,” she mused.

“Perhaps reflected light, channelled from the surface,” said Luke. “The light in the cavern had to come from somewhere.”

Luke stepped carefully over the threshold, into the softly lit corridor. He had been expecting some sense of wonder or spiritual affinity in this place, but as they continued down the hall, the only sense he had was of a place deserted, like a hotel on a dead world.

The cracked frescoes told faded stories of fertile plains and fields of waving wheat. There were human silhouettes painted on the walls, almost like shadows cast by unseen figures. They were loosely draped in long robes, carrying sheafs of barley and ears of corn. Other figures played wooden pipes and small lutes, while flocks of dun sheep grazed on the long grass.

Chris noticed a faint rumbling noise, which she had earlier dismissed as the aftershocks of the cavern collapsing.

“Do you hear that?” said Chris.

“The noise like a giant boulder rolling towards us from very far away?” said Luke, unruffled.

“Do you think it’s the Cherubim? Do you think we’ll recognise them?” Chris tried not to think about the consequences of having the wrong answer to the wrong riddle at the wrong time.

“Eventually, yes.”

“Was the Cherubim the one about wisdom? Or was that the flaming sword?”

Chris rummaged through her satchel, pulling out a page of scribbled notes which didn’t make nearly as much sense as when she was writing them.

A sudden piercing scream shattered the air, trailing into a deep moan, and then silence. The noise hit Chris and Luke like a wave of freezing water—there was something uncontrollably visceral about a human scream, commanding every instinct to turn and run. There were domestic pest control devices which played looped recordings of dying vermin, in the belief that it would deter other pests. They had not thought to conduct any studies on the psychological impact of the device on the human occupants.

Chris flashed a glance at Luke. He stood motionless, listening to the suddenly terrible silence. Chris took a step forward, and then another. In her experience, the longer you stood still after something disturbing happened, the harder it was to start moving again. Sometimes, she had gone into the empty biology labs in the evening to borrow some scalpels, only to find a traumatised first-year student huddled in the corner, still covered in amphibian innards from the morning’s practical session, muttering, “The thing, the thing— Oh God, it— How did they get inside—?!”

Chris found that, if you didn’t scrub down straight away, scrape everything off your lab coat, and step outside for some sunshine and fresh air, you would eventually have to be led away to the infirmary and the careers counsellor. She had seen a lot of undergrads turn vegetarian after those early lab sessions.