Floating Worlds (47 page)

“It’s running like a river,” Kasuk said. His voice boomed hollow ahead of her. “There’s a tunnel—Paula, where does it go?”

“All the way to New York, if it isn’t blocked.”

Junna said, “What’s going on? Kak, shouldn’t we stay where Papa left us?”

Paula walked forward into the dark, feeling her way with her feet. Something brushed her hip. Groping on the wall, she found a cold metal rail along the wall.

“Junna, stay here with her.” Kasuk was passing her in the dark. “I’m going to look around. I’ll be right back.”

Above her, several yards away, a patch of gray light shone an instant and faded. She closed her eyes, useless in the dark. Junna touched her.

“We should stay where Tanuojin left us.”

“No,” she said. “Kasuk is right, we’d just be killed.”

“Is this a war, now?”

“Yes. I guess so.” Just like in the books.

“Who are we fighting?”

“I don’t know, Junna.”

“Are you afraid?”

“I’m cold.”

He moved; she expected nothing; a moment later the heavy clammy material of his shirt surrounded her. Her skin shuddered at the contact. It slipped down her back and she clutched at it.

“Aren’t you—”

“No,” he said. “I’m not cold. It’s nice in here.”

She put the shirt on, shivering, and moved around to warm it. Her feet slipped on the slick tile floor. Kasuk had been gone a long while.

“We need a torch. Maybe there’s something to eat here.” She found the steps again and started up, and Junna caught her arm.

“Stay here. You said yourself my brother is right.”

“But—”

“Do as he said. He has two stripes, and you’re just a woman.”

She stood breeding arguments suitable for the adolescent mind. A wedge of light pointed across the barn from the door. Kasuk’s broad shape came through it and the light thinned and disappeared.

“We have to get out of here,” Kasuk said. He came down the stairs past them. A narrow beam of light shot from his hand, glistening on black water stretching off as far as the light reached. “There are ships all over the sky, and the people in the house are all listening to the box. Something is going on.”

Up over their heads, a dog began to bark. He shone the torch along the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, overgrown with weed. They went down to the cold water. Along the edge it lapped barely to her ankles, but when Junna walked toward the center he fell in over his head. Kasuk held the torch down at his side. Junna swam toward them.

Paula stooped and dipped her hand in the water. It tasted brackish but not polluted. Something splashed away from the light ahead of them. The red beads of its eyes gleamed at them. Above them, on the surface, the dog was barking steadily.

“What is this?” Kasuk asked.

Paula said, “It was an underground railroad, all up and down the coast.”

“You said it goes to New York.”

“Hundreds of years ago. Before the island sank. Who knows where it goes now?”

He aimed the torch beam at the far end of the cavern. The light glanced off the narrowing walls. The water swirled into the black mouth of the tunnel. A wave broke in a ripple of foam.

“Come on.” He took her arm.

“Kasuk. I can’t swim. You go. Leave me here. I’ll be all right—”

A dull thud sounded like a thunderclap somewhere above them. The floor trembled under her. Her knees quaked. The water leaped along the walls of the cave. Kasuk said, “There, you see? Hold on to my back. Junna, stay behind me.” Paula put her arms around him, her cheek against his back, and he dove into the river.

She breathed deep and shut her eyes. The cold water closed over them. She raised her head into the air. Kasuk swam strongly under her. The light was gone. The air smelled of wet rot. One hand on the neck of Kasuk’s shirt, she let him tow her through the water. She heard the current rushing loud along the tunnel walls, and they were swept along in a close roar of water. Kasuk straightened and switched on the torch.

“Hold this.” He gave it to her over his shoulder. “Junna?”

“Here,” his brother called, behind him.

Kasuk swam on his stomach down the tunnel. Paula aimed the light ahead of them. The walls were massed with velvety weed. Thick curtains of it hung down from the ceiling. She ducked her head.

“Watch out!” Junna cried, behind them.

The river swelled. Paula clutched the torch. The water lifted them up and crashed them into the overhead wall. Greasy water filled her mouth and nose. She lost Kasuk. Her head broke the surface of the water and she gasped for air. She held the torch with both hands. The water leaped around her, booming on the walls of the tunnel. The light of the torch glowed in a green band under the water. Kasuk reached her. She flung her arms around his neck.

“Don’t strangle me.” He caught her hands. “I have you.”

Junna swam up to them. “What was that?”

Paula changed her grip to the back of Kasuk’s shirt. He took the torch. “Another bomb. Maybe the drinking dock, that was close. Let’s go.”

They swam off. The river swept them through the tunnel. Junna went on before them, his hair sleek, diving under the surface and popping up again like a water-puppy. They could not reach New York this way. Somewhere ahead, the air would turn foul, the tunnel would collapse, the roof fall in, they would drown in the dark.

“There’s light ahead,” Junna cried.

Kasuk switched the torch off. Ahead, an irregular patch of light shone into the tunnel through a hole in the roof. Paula sighed.

“It’s another station.” The air was clean. They were still inside the dome. Kasuk swam toward the light. Her feet struck the shelving ground, and she let go of him. She walked out of the water. Through the break in the tunnel roof, she could see the domelight. Kasuk grabbed her arm.

“Where are you going?”

“Kasuk—” She turned toward him, her hands on his arms. “Let me go. I have a chance here.”

He wiped his hand over his face. “How far is it to New York?”

“Ten hours. Eight. Depending on the current.”

“Good. Then we can make it.”

“Kasuk! I’ll drown!”

“You heard what Saba said. I may be stupid, Paula, but I know what he told me.” He turned to Junna. “Watch her. I’ll be right back.” He looked up at the hole in the roof, ten feet above them, crouched, and jumped. Swinging from the lip of the opening, he muscled himself up and out of the tunnel.

Paula went into the shallowest water. “We’ll all die,” she said to Junna.

The boy sank down on his hams in the water. “Papa will save us. He always does.” His hands played over the water. In his voice was the cheerful courage of someone who had never been afraid.

In the distance, up on the surface, a dog began to bark. She looked around the tunnel. There was nowhere to go. The opening overhead was too far for her to reach. It darkened, and Kasuk swung down through it. He had a coil of rope around his shoulder and a jug of milk in one hand.

They sat in the shallow water and drank the milk. Outside, the dog barked steadily. Kasuk wiped white foam off his mouth and his young mustaches. “You hear that? They’ll come through this city with packs of those things. We have to get out of here.”

She knew he was right. They tied the rope around their waists, five feet of slack between Kasuk and Paula and twenty feet between Paula and Junna, and she looped her arms around Kasuk’s neck and they swam into the dark.

The tunnel closed in tight around them. They came to a sheet of plastic thrust down through the ground, a foot thick: the wall of the dome. Kasuk dove under it. The air on the far side stank. The light glanced off patches of foam on the walls. The white crusts thickened to nests of round bubbles hanging just above the water. It buzzed. A million wings quivered all over the walls. Wasps zipped back and forth in the air.

“Take a deep breath.”

She filled her lungs and he dove. They tore through the water. It streamed over her face. They shot to the surface. The bubbles and the boom of wings lay behind them. They swam on. Bare rock walls lowered down around them, encrusted with salt. Her throat began to hurt when she breathed. Her mouth was full of a bitter numbing taste. Kasuk swam in a kind of breaststroke, silently, his hands only occasionally breaking the water. The light hung around his neck, shining through the water. A reek of gas clogged her nose. Her lungs refused it. She locked her fingers in his shirt, dizzy. Putting her head down close to the water, she drank the rotten air.

The two Styths swam steadily. In places the current carried them faster than they could swim. Once she lost her grip and was yanked away from Kasuk. Junna caught her before she could scream. She climbed back onto Kasuk’s shoulders. Her head pounded.

Her eyes itched and streamed. The poisonous air clawed at her lungs. The water rose in the tunnel until they scraped their backs against the rock roof. The walls widened abruptly. They were swept into the cavern of an ancient terminal.

Kasuk switched off the light. The terminal was not completely black. Through a wide crack in the roof, she could see the night sky. Far up there, Luna showed, silver-white. They swam into the black tunnel and he switched the light on again.

Wings fluttered past her. Something bobbed against her in the water, crawled along her side and leaped away. She kept her eyes closed against the stinging air. Her throat was raw. She licked her lips and her tongue began to itch.

“Kasuk—Kasuk—” Just beyond the light, Junna choked and gasped for breath. Kasuk spun around, grabbing for him. She clung to his shoulders. The boy gagged; he vomited; mucus streamed from his nose. He was dying. Kasuk pressed his mouth to his brother’s and breathed into him. Paula laid her head against his back. Something bumped her. Tore at her; cut her wrist with its teeth. She struck at it, whining, and it darted away, green in the flashlit water.

Kasuk said, “Can you breathe now?” His voice was hoarse.

“Yes,” Junna whispered. “Better.”

Her teeth chattered. The fish was back, swarms of fish, nibbling at her arms, swimming into the deep sleeves of the shirt. She fought them off. Kasuk slid his arm around her.

“Should we go back?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How close are we?”

“I don’t know.”

Junna swam beside them, his lips near the surface of the water, sipping off the air where it was least poisonous. Kasuk reached for him.

“We can’t stop now.”

They swam on. When Junna began to drag at the end of the rope, Kasuk lashed him and Paula to his back. The light went out. He carried them on through the dark. His strength amazed her, his measureless endurance. She clung to him in a half-delirium. If he had dived to the bottom she would have drowned rather than leave him.

He dragged them on and on through the tunnel. She swallowed water and heaved it up again. Her head reeled. She clung to Junna with one arm. The current whirled them around in a dizzy eddy. Kasuk hit something solid and held tight. She raised her head. Her eyes were swollen almost shut. They had come to a fork in the river. The wild current, leaping across a bar of concrete, was dragging them into the left-hand channel. On the right, overhead, another stream thundered straight down twenty feet to meet them. Kasuk dragged them to the right side of the tunnel. With them hanging on his shoulders he climbed hand over hand up the weed-covered wall, through the roar and the flying spray of the waterfall, into a cold sunlit layer of sweet air. She gulped it into her aching lungs. Kasuk pulled them through a crack in the earth out to the surface. They lay on cold stones and slept.

She woke up shivering. Her mouth tasted foul. His black skin rough with gooseflesh, Junna slept curled up beside her. Kasuk was gone.

High above her the sky was brilliantly sunlit but she lay in deep shadow on the floor of a gorge. The steep slopes on either side were overgrown with brush and wiry pine trees. The air tasted fresh and delicious. They were inside a dome; the only dome it could be was New York. She sat up, looking for Kasuk. She still wore Junna’s shirt. The boy stirred in his sleep, his length doubled up on the ground, and his hair caught with leaves. There was a stream running along the foot of the far wall of the gulley. She climbed down through rocks to the inch-deep water and drank from her cupped hand.

Above her the brush rustled violently. She stood. Kasuk was climbing down the slope, a dead swan hung over his shoulder, one long wing trailing.

“Let’s eat.”

“That?” she said, uncertain.

He stepped across the trickle of water and went up through the jumbled boulders toward his brother. She followed him. When she sat down beside him, he was tearing open the swan’s belly with his claws. Its long neck stretched out over the ground, the feathers rumpled. The swan had fattened on eelgrass and popcorn and children’s lunches. The raw meat made her gag. The Styths picked out the bird’s heart and liver, packed in congealing yellow fat.

“Kak,” Junna said. He hooked his arm around his brother’s neck. “You saved our lives.”

Kasuk was using a swan feather to pick his teeth. He pushed Junna away. The younger boy turned to her. “Didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said. “You saved both of us.”

His heavy shoulders lifted and fell. “I just kept thinking about my father. I couldn’t let him down again. So it was really my father.” He grabbed Junna by his shaggy hair and shook him. “Go keep watch. Make sure nobody sneaks up on us.”

The boy raced off. Paula’s eyes followed him in his headlong run across the gulley and in among the trees. The swan’s broad wings sprawled around her, the feathers broken. Kasuk wiped his hands on the grass.

“My father told me to protect him. I’m just dragging us deeper. Can we leave the dome?”

“You’ll need an air car,” she said. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going with you.”

“Saba told me—”

“I don’t care what he said. I’m telling you what I’ll do.”

He made a little harried gesture, avoiding her eyes. A flap of his torn shirt hung down over his stomach. His chest was massive, his shoulders like a beam. His strength was perfect. He wore no scars from fighting, no killing marks.