Earth Cult (8 page)

One of the engineers led the way, with Frank close behind and the others following on. They carried heavy-duty lamps, nylon ropes, a light-weight folding aluminium ladder and a small kit of basic medical supplies. Lee Merriam had suggested they take along wet-suits and breathing apparatus but Frank had vetoed the idea, saying that if they came to water too deep to wade through they wouldn't proceed any farther: none of them had experience in negotiating underground water courses and it would be risking lives needlessly even to make the attempt. Fortunately the tunnel was mainly dry, with here and there only a small stagnant pool formed by condensation. The one thing they all noticed was the smell: it was, as somebody remarked, ‘as if the mountain had halitosis'. The air was chill and yet had a sour bad taste that Frank imagined to be coming from a large prehistoric animal decomposing in the darkness.

Not for the first time it occurred to him how susceptible the human mind was – in certain situations – to the suggestion that unknown terrors and supernatural forces lurked in the most innocuous of inanimate objects. The night before, sitting in the Cascade Hotel with Cal Renfield, he hadn't thought anything of the tales that the Telluride Mine was a haunted place; it had been nothing more or less than a bit of quaint local folklore that he had patiently listened to and then dismissed. That had been with a drink in front of him and in the comfortable environment of a well-lit room. Now the same story took on meaning, became real, changed from being a childish fairy-tale into something that just might have a basis in fact. The difference of course was that he had exchanged the bright outer world for this dank subterranean granite tomb, which was the natural abode of spirits, phantoms and things that went bump in the night.

It was foolish imagination, he told himself, and for a rational man of the twentieth century rather weak and pathetic … yet he couldn't dismiss the notions lurking in his mind, nor dispel the sense of foreboding which seemed to weigh like a heavy leaden lump in his chest.

The engineer at the head of the party – a man called Craig – halted every now and then to check his plan of the workings. They had left the main gallery some way back and were following one of the narrower side tunnels which intersected with other tunnels of varying sizes. At first Frank had tried to memorize the party's route, holding a plan of it in his head, but he soon lost track of the number of tunnels they entered, whether they had turned left or right, how far they had walked before turning into yet another tunnel – identical to the last one which was identical to the one before that and the one before that. It was hopeless. Everything depended on Craig knowing where he was going and, even more importantly, being absolutely sure of how to get back.

They had been following the labyrinth of tunnels for just over an hour when the engineer halted and called them forward. They clustered round him, the concentration of bright light reflecting the circle of faces which were already streaked with dust and shiny with perspiration. It was odd, Frank thought, that they should be sweating when the air was so chill; even the walls were exuding moisture.

Craig pointed to a cross marked on the plan. ‘As near as I can tell this is where we are now. It's directly above the detection chamber – that's if Lee got his calculations right and the map of these old workings is accurate to within fifty feet.' He looked at Frank, his face set and serious. ‘Now where do we go from here?'

Frank studied the plan. ‘We investigate all the tunnels within this general area—' he traced a circle ‘—and see if we can find a shaft or a fissure leading downwards. One of us – it had better be you, Craig – will remain here as our central reference point. The rest of us will take one hundred paces in each direction and check out the workings. One hundred
paces, okay? Then we return to this spot and report. If we've found nothing we extend the circle by another hundred paces. If you come across something that looks interesting report back immediately. Don't investigate it yourselves, that's the one sure way to get into trouble. Report back here and we'll go in one party and check it out. If you lose your bearings stay exactly where you are and call out.
Don't move an inch
. Stay right there and call out and keep calling out and using your lamp as a beacon. Has everyone got that?'

The medical orderly had got it but he still wasn't happy. He had thin features and apprehensive eyes and a nervous habit of continually licking his lips. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Could I stay right here? I mean, I really don't think I could go out there on my own.' He moistened his lips and smiled apologetically. ‘I'm sorry, but I really couldn't.'

‘All right, you stay here with Craig.'

Frank swept his lamp in an arc. The tunnel was pitted with workings, some of them no bigger than holes in the rock face, and ahead of them the tunnel divided, the smaller entrance partially blocked by rubble and collapsed beams. He shared the medical orderly's apprehension but they had come this far and there was no turning back. The four of them set off, Frank choosing to explore the offshoot of the main tunnel, clambering carefully through the triangle of rotten timbers and treating them like delicate porcelain; he had the uncomfortable feeling that if he breathed a shade too heavily the entire makeshift structure would collapse with him underneath it.

He counted his paces. Provided the way ahead was straight, without side turnings, he shouldn't have any difficulty in finding his way back. This smaller tunnel was no wider than the outstretched span of his arms and he had to stoop slightly to avoid knocking his helmet against the roof. The floor was thick with dust and he was glad to see his progress plainly marked by a series of trailing footsteps.

After thirty paces the tunnel began to narrow and deviate to the right. It also seemed to be on a gradual slope, though
it was difficult to be absolutely sure, with his senses confined to this cramped dark space and lacking an external point of reference.

Soon he was having to walk in a semi-crouch, which was punishing to his thigh muscles. But he consoled himself with the fact that – so far, at any rate – he hadn't had to make any abrupt turns or been faced with a choice of direction, which was what he feared most. As long as we keep on the straight and narrow, he told himself with a certain grim optimism, it should be child's play getting back.

The tunnel was like a long curving tube and it reminded him of an intestine in the body of a large animal, himself a microbe burrowing into the dark interior, a rogue cancer cell seeking out a vital organ.

At seventy-five paces the tunnel became much narrower, so that he had to turn sideways and edge his way forward. It occurred to him that this might be the beginning of a natural fault because it was plainly too small to allow the passage of ore; the only other possibility was that it had been constructed as a linking tunnel between workings, and this turned out to be the most likely explanation, for after ten shuffling paces it opened up into a sizable area and in the light of the lamp Frank could see heaps of rubble and other debris and the pock-marked rock face where the miners had excavated.

Before stepping forward to examine the area Frank found a small piece of whitish stone and marked the place he had emerged from, aware that it would be only too easy to lose his bearings. He swept the beam of light along the walls and moved slowly forward, crouching down to peer into the holes, most of which were quite shallow, a dozen feet into the rock or less. At the far end of the small cavern was a tunnel – fairly wide and high – and he shone the light along it. He nearly dropped the lamp in the dust when he saw what he thought was an answering flash of light. He held the lamp steady and there in the distance, unmistakably, was a light.

He tried to call out but his throat was parched. He swallowed and tried again, his voice dead and muffled and
sounding strangely alien in his ears. There was no answer. He swivelled the lamp from side to side and the light in the distance copied the movement, and it was then the realization came to him that what he was seeing was in fact a reflection – there was something shiny at the far end of the tunnel reflecting the beam back at him.

He was relieved and also curious. What kind of material could have retained such a bright surface finish after being underground for fifty, sixty years – maybe longer? Could it be a mirror? Or some form of metal that had withstood corrosion and oxidization? But that was plainly impossible, for such metals had been unknown when the mine was in use.

His hundred paces were up, and he knew he ought to make his way back, but the object at the end of the tunnel baffled and intrigued him. He thought: I'll check it out and then return. It's in direct line with the cavern so all I have to do is turn through 180 degrees and head straight back. There's nothing in the way; I can't go wrong if I keep to the main tunnel.

He held the lamp in front of him and watched its reflection advancing towards him, the bobbing beam of light moving eerily in the pitch darkness. It was farther away than he had realized – a good deal farther, in fact. He walked on, occasionally stumbling over rocks half-buried in the dust, feeling the cold sweat on the back of his neck and beginning to regret his decision to go beyond the hundred paces. He had given the others strict instructions not to proceed one step farther and already he was breaking his own rule.

The glare of the light dazzled him as he approached the object: it was black and smooth, he now saw, a flat highly-polished surface without a blemish. It blocked the tunnel completely.

This was no natural object. Nothing in nature was this smooth, unless it was glacier ice, and certainly no rock strata could adopt this formation without being cut, machined and polished by mechanical means. Had it been buried here for
some purpose? Was it perhaps connected with the Project, part of the neutrino detection equipment?

Frank couldn't imagine what it might be, or what its function was, or how it had come to be here, nearly a mile underground beneath the Mount of the Holy Cross. For no discernible reason he thought of the Telluric Faith and how the Tellurians believed the mountain to be the focal point of some kind of supernatural power, a cosmic force-field where lines of energy intersected and formed an aura of Earth Magic …

Where had that phrase come from? Cal Renfield hadn't used it, he was quite certain, and neither had the Tellurians during their Prayer Meeting. Frank closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cool black rock. Something seemed to vibrate inside his head as if a million molecules were being jostled by a high-voltage current. Behind his eyelids a series of phosphorescent lights whirled in deepest space and he began to feel the ground trembling and falling away. He tried to hold on, to cling to the rock, but it was like trying to grab hold of an oiled glass surface. Was it an earth tremor far below or a rockfall blocking the tunnel? He opened his eyes and saw cracks appearing everywhere, jagged fissures advancing like dark sinister lightning flashes along the floor of the tunnel.

Everything was shaking and he became suddenly aware of a high-pitched oscillation which seemed to emanate from the vibrating rock. The sound was at the limit of human hearing, experienced through the skull and bones rather than actually heard, and it increased in intensity until it became physical pain, cutting like cheese-wire through the cerebral cortex and piercing the nervous system like needles of pure white light.

Yet curiously the sensation was tolerable, as if the pain was more imagined than real, and Frank wondered if any of this was actually happening. Or was it all illusory, the spinning molecules inside his head creating this frenzy of noise and movement and disordered perception?

Then he was sliding, not fast but gently, the smooth black rock supporting him and carrying him down into the lower depths. The lamp was gone, he had lost it, he was adrift in a subterranean world of sliding blackness and panic rose up in his throat like nausea. He was descending into the earth, falling slowly as in a nightmare towards the bottomless black void at the core of the planet and there was nothing to save him, nothing to reach out and touch, not the faintest speck of light anywhere at all.

His feet were wet.

He had the distinct sensation that water had seeped into his boots and that he was standing ankle-deep in freezing cold water. This is a funny kind of hell, Frank thought, and moved his right foot experimentally. There was the swirling sound of water and he felt the drag of it impeding his movement. Tentatively he took a step forward, then another, holding his arms out in front of his face in case he walked into something. The water sucked at his boots but it was a reassuring sound and the fact of having wet feet didn't upset him in the least.

The ground was hard and firm, like concrete, and he gained confidence, making steady progress through the watery darkness. He could smell something pungent – perchloroethylene – and the thought of this preoccupied him until he walked into the side of a stainless steel tank.

He was in the detection chamber.

The layout of the place was still clear in his mind – the four tanks in line down the centre of the chamber and the gantry at one end – and he guessed right first time, choosing to follow his right hand, and eventually arrived at the metal stairway which he climbed thankfully and with immense gratitude to God, Providence, or whatever it was that moved the heavens.

After searching through the desk he found a flashlight, and a single sweep of the gantry was enough to reveal everything he needed to know and been afraid he might find. Four bodies lay sprawled about, their clothing wrinkled and damp, looking like rag dolls that had been tossed down by a
child too weary to play any more. Fawbert was one of them, his long fair hair plastered across his eyes like pale seaweed.

There was nothing to be done, nothing that could be done which would make a jot of difference. Frank sat down and waited, propping the flashlight on the desk so that it shone into the chamber, away from the corpses.