The Other Tree (29 page)

Chris’s palms were raw from clawing over the rock, as she alternated the flashlight between hands. She had noticed the rock changing composition as they crawled deeper, becoming a darker, rose-grey limestone. Fossil stubs protruded from the walls: dusty grey brachiopod shells, fingers of coral, and the pale caramel whorls of ancient gastropods. This would have been a seabed once, broiling with molluscs, crustaceans, and mats of seaweed like a prehistoric seafood bisque.

Now, it was a cramped and airless hole, and Chris had just torn a small rip in her shirt on a passing sea urchin. Chris had never like sea urchins—they evoked images of young boys from London who used words like “cobber.” She took a weak breath, starting to feel woozy.

She was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate, and she tried not to think of anything beyond putting one knee in front of the other. She had been feeling a strange pressure in her lungs for the past half hour, which she attributed to dwindling oxygen supplies rather than to the mess of emotions bubbling inside her. In particular, she was making a valiant effort not to choke on an exceptionally large ball of guilt which had been working its way slowly up from her stomach to her throat.

“Luke,” said Chris.

She could hear him muttering to himself as he continued crawling.

“You absolve sins, right?” said Chris.

“Sins, yes. Stupidity, no,” said Luke, his voice slightly raspy.

“I’m sorry for getting you into this.”

Luke shoved his pack forward again, crawling after it.

“There were dozens of times I could have turned back,” said Luke. “Especially after the spiders.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Chris struggled to draw breath. It was like trying to breathe from a very small paper bag.

“I’m going to get to the end of this tunnel even if it kills me,” said Luke, barely any air carrying his voice.

As he pushed his pack forward, it skidded suddenly down a steep decline, disappearing like a child going down a slippery dip. Luke clambered forward to follow it, but stopped abruptly at the edge of the slope. There was a silence.

“I think we’ve reached the end of the tunnel,” said Luke.

He stared at his pack, which rested against a rocky hollow where the tunnel just stopped. It was as though the builders had just stopped digging. Luke circled his flashlight down the end of the tunnel—the same jagged walls and gritty floor, but no more tunnel. Just a dead end.

Chris squeezed her head over Luke’s shoulder and took in the sight.

“At least there’s no pile of skeletons,” she said.

Chris could feel herself slowly collapsing inside, like a badly built shelf crashing down in a shower of broken ornaments. Everything seemed to slowly deflate, like a mortally punctured blimp sinking into the sea.

She leaned against the shell-encrusted wall, the sand cool beneath her fingers. Her gaze slid to the dial on her oxygen tank—the needle had been sitting on empty for some time. Her flashlight was fading, and the shadows pressed closer. She turned to look at Luke.

Luke crawled down the slope towards his backpack, sliding the last few feet to the end of the tunnel. He laid his hand gently on the back wall, the cleaves in the rock still clear from where ancient chisels had struck. It was like they had just stopped tunnelling. As though they had realised the pointlessness of their endeavour, and just given up. Luke glanced up the slope at Chris. She was looking at him with an unfamiliar expression that reminded him of something he couldn’t articulate—like the feeling of walking through summer rain.

Or maybe, they’d stopped because they had reached their destination.

“Chris,” called Luke.

Chris blinked, and in the dim light she could see Luke hunched at the end of the tunnel, with his flashlight pointed upwards. He was staring at the ceiling, which was obscured from Chris’s view by an overhang of fossilised shells.

“I think you’d better see this,” said Luke.

With leaden limbs, Chris squeezed her way down the tunnel towards Luke, shoving her pack slowly before her. She edged into the hollow beside him, and the greenish light from his torch reflected in his eyes, bright and vaguely demonic. Chris followed Luke’s gaze to the shadowy roof of the tunnel.

Inset into the jagged ceiling was a smooth stone seal, the size of a trash-can lid. It appeared to be cut from milky-green jade, carved with intricate geometric knots and lines. The surface was ground to a flawless matte finish, and there were two deep, curved depressions in the stone, almost like handles.

“Is that a button, or a manhole?” asked Chris, reaching up to touch the seal.

It was cold and enchantingly smooth.

“Shall we find out?” wheezed Luke, carefully placing his free hand in one of the depressions.

Chris gripped the other depression, and with a coordinated heave, they both pushed upwards as hard as they could. The seal didn’t budge.

“It’s like those jar lids where you’re not sure if you’re supposed to unscrew them or just pull,” muttered Chris.

There was a clatter from the darkness, and the faint sound of militant shuffling drawing closer. Chris and Luke exchanged an anxious look, and Luke put his flashlight on the ground, freeing his other hand. In the darkness, they scrabbled with the seal, pushing with all their strength.

With a grunt of effort, straining with all her reserves of energy, Chris felt the heavy stone disc begin to shift. Bracing against the tunnel floor, she pushed her shoulder against the stone, and painfully, slowly, it rose from its setting. In tandem, Chris and Luke shunted the stone seal to one side and were suddenly blinded by a brilliant white light.

Chris grabbed her pack and fumbled for the manhole, her vision black from the sudden burst of light.

“Let’s go!” said Chris. “Luke?”

She reached in front of her and felt empty air. A hand suddenly reached down and grabbed her arm, pulling her upwards.

“Don’t just sit there,” said Luke. “You look like a stunned creepy crawly you find after you flip over a damp rock.”

There was a rush of cool air, of light, of blurry shapes, as Chris collapsed, gasping, onto a hard floor. She quickly fumbled for the seal, and her hands brushed Luke’s as she felt the curved edge beneath her fingers. Together, they pushed the cover across the ground and dropped it back over the opening with a solid
clunk
.

Chris blinked quickly, her vision adjusting from the darkness of the tunnel. As her eyes accommodated, countless shapes and shadows seemed to surround her, towering overhead and littered about her feet. As outlines resolved, she realised where they were.

It was a garden.

Mature trees reached skyward while saplings sprung between them. Towering oaks, supple birches, full crowned maples, olive trees, and palms filled the space like a forest. Vines wrapped around trunks and hung between branches, bushes hung with bunches of berries, and long-stemmed flowers burst from grassy tangles. But there was something wrong.

Chris looked down. The floor was stone, covered with a vividly tiled mosaic. A burning orange sun flamed beneath their feet in countless glassy fragments, while a pearlescent moon hung close beside it.

Her gaze adjusted, and everything finally sharpened into focus. The plants around her were all made of stone, rising from the tiled floor—entire trees carved from swirled green malachite, blood orange garnet, cloudy olivine, and veined rose quartz. A blank-eyed deer carved from sandy red marl stood at attention beneath a delicate, lapis pine.

Tentatively, Chris pulled off her oxygen mask and sniffed the air. It was crisp and cool, tasting faintly of chalk.

Luke stared upwards. They were standing in a massive cavern, the roof vaulted to a distant, unseen ceiling, while a soft light drifted down.

“We’re too far down for that to be natural light,” said Luke, pulling his pack over his shoulder.

There was a sudden scrabbling from the other side of the jade seal.

“We’ll ponder that later,” said Chris, dragging Luke through the stone forest.

They wove through stony trees and frozen animals, giraffes and elephants mingling with bears and lynxes. An obsidian gorilla leaned against a coconut tree, while a smoky calcite impala grazed on leaves of banded onyx. Chris and Luke ran breathlessly through the silent scenery, their feet clattering across the glazed floor tiles, with its beautifully detailed rivers and mountains.

They stopped to catch their breath behind a stand of cedars carved from a deep grape tourmaline.

“It’s like a geological theme park,” said Chris. “Or a jewellery showroom with a budget to match the military. I keep expecting to see giant Swarovski crystal swans floating past.”

Luke swept his gaze across the floor, where shining constellations hovered over green hills rising from the seas.

“It’s Creation,” said Luke. “Animals and plants from across the world, across time, made from the minerals of the earth. The mosaic on the floor tells the story of Genesis, and the statues depict the result.”

“So, this is Eden? Or some kind of representation? Is this the Cherubim or is that later?”

“The only thing missing is—”

There was a sound like someone slapping a small pillow, and Luke gave a slight gasp. His lips parted in surprise as his eyes rolled back, and he slumped forward. Chris barely managed to catch him, sagging under the combined weight of Luke and his pack as they crashed together to the floor. Chris noticed the red, feathered dart sticking out of Luke’s coat just as a sharp whizzing object flew past her ear. She felt a passing breeze before a sharp clink echoed behind her, and a second dart bounced off a mudstone trilobite.

“Luke!” whispered Chris, dragging his limp body behind a ridge of ferrous brown boulders. “Luke!”

There was no response.

* * *

Emir grabbed Docker’s arm as the second shot went off, sending the dart just wide of the mark.

“What are you doing?” said Emir, holding Docker’s forearm.

Docker turned to Emir, eyes cold.

“Getting the job done. What are you doing?”

“Getting the job done without shooting people.”

“You might find the two mutually exclusive,” said Docker.

There was a testosterone-filled pause, and Emir let go of Docker’s arm. Emir had seen the size of the discarded oxygen tanks, and he was surprised that Chris and Luke were still conscious. But in their current condition, even a standard dose of sedatives might be dangerous. It was true that Chris had put herself in this situation, and if she was determined to get herself killed, then it was her responsibility. But SinaCorp wouldn’t be the ones to pull the trigger, if Emir could help it.

“Arlin!” called Docker, his voice ringing clear through the cavern. “I have a proposition.”

Docker listened to the silence—he knew Chris could hear him.

“It’s not too late to cooperate,” continued Docker, scanning the stony trees with calculating eyes. “It’ll be hours before the priest wakes up, and we’ll be long gone by then. Come with us, get what you came for, and we’ll make sure you’re both taken care of, in the most benevolent sense of the phrase.”

Docker could almost hear her breathing through the hush of the cavern. He could taste her fear and anger.

“It’s a win-win situation, Arlin,” said Docker. “We all get what we want. Even Emir.”

Emir gave Docker a sharp look, which Docker ignored with a humourless smile.

“Your choice, Arlin,” said Docker. “I’ve heard that starvation is a particularly slow and painful way to die.”

Docker holstered his tranquilliser gun and turned to Roman as she strode briskly towards him.

“The radar is still gibberish. There’s some kind of interference from the rocks,” reported Roman. “We’re scouting the perimeter—” She looked pointedly at Emir. “We’re
supposed
to be scouting the perimeter for visual signs of an entrance.”

Docker looked expectantly at Emir, who reluctantly headed towards a far cavern wall.

“A broad variety of existing and extinct organisms appear to be represented,” said Roman as Docker flipped open an electronic pad, streaming with data. “We haven’t encountered any statues of humans, though.”

Emir stopped in mid-step, and Roman and Docker paused as the voice came through on all three earpieces at the same time. Bale’s voice sounded tight and tense.

“I think we may have a problem.”

* * *

Bale should have seen it coming, really. Unfortunately, his training in cults and prehistoric belief systems, as well as his own very deep vein of faith, did not always prepare him for symbolic irony. Although he had been conditioned to see pentagrams in any loose collection of five points, which contributed to his belief that the Southern Hemisphere, beneath its unholy constellation, was somehow inherently corrupt, he did not, in fact, possess a great imagination. Certainly not the kind of imagination that lent itself to unexpected questions or metaphysical allusions.

Bale had ventured through the cavern according to Roman’s search pattern and had spotted the cavern wall through an orchard of carnelian cherry blossoms. It was a jarring reminder that they were still underground, as Bale’s gaze was drawn upwards along the red rock wall. Maintaining a scouting distance of about twenty metres, he had continued to follow the wall, regularly checking his scanner, which was still giving off static.

He had been passing through a grove of glittering sapphire weeping willows when he noticed something dark flash past. On second glance, Bale could see a hollow in the cavern wall, like the entrance to a cave. He had cautiously approached for a closer inspection, which was when he had heard the unpleasant and unmistakeable click. He felt the floor under his right foot give way just a fraction, and he’d had enough sense to move no further.

Bale had looked down and seen what was he was standing on. It was tiled, like every other part of the intricately detailed floor. A large mosaic of a lush, fully crowned tree sprawled across the ground, its rich brown branches reaching out. A thousand shades of green rippled beneath him, but the tree was bare of fruit, bar one.

Bale stood upon the image of a large, glossy, red apple.