Tunnels (25 page)

"Cal, the magician's apprentice, how are you, lad? What do you think of all this, eh?" He looked from one boy to the other. "By God, it's good to see you two under the same roof again." He shook his head in disbelief. "Brothers, hah, brothers, my nephews. This calls for a drink. A
real
drink."

"We were just about to have some tea," Grandma Macaulay intervened quickly. "Would you care for a cup, Tam?"

He swung around to his mother and smiled broadly with a devilish glint in his eye. "Why not? Let's have a cup of tea and catch up."

With that the old woman disappeared into the hall, and Uncle Tam sat down in her vacated chair, which groaned under his weight. Stretching out his legs, he took a short pipe from the inside of his huge overcoat and filled it from a tobacco pouch. Then he used a taper from the fireside to light the pipe, sat back, and blew a cloud of bluish smoke up at the ornate ceiling, all the while looking at the two boys.

For a time, all that could be heard was the crackling of the burning coal, the intrusive purring of Bartleby, and the distant sounds of the old woman busy in the kitchen. No one felt the need to talk as the flickering light played on their faces and threw trembling shadows over the walls behind. Eventually Tam spoke.

"You know your
Topsoiler
father passed through here?"

"You saw him?" Will leaned toward Uncle Tam.

"No, but I talked to them that did."

"Where is he? The policeman said he was safe."

"Safe?" Uncle Tam sat forward, yanking the pipe from his mouth, his face becoming deadly serious. "Listen, don't you believe a word those spineless scum say to you; they're all snakes and leeches. The poisonous toadies of the Styx."

"That's quite enough, Tam," Grandma Macaulay said as she entered the room rattling a tray of tea in her unsteady hands and a plate laden with some "fancies," as she called them — shapeless lumps topped with white icing.
Cal
got up and helped her, handing cups to Will and Uncle Tam. Then Will let Grandma Macaulay have his chair and sat next to
Cal
on the hearth rug.

"So, about my dad?" Will asked a little sharply, unable to contain himself any longer.

Tam nodded and relit his pipe, unleashing voluminous shrouds of smoke that enveloped his head in a haze. "You only missed him by a week or so. He's gone to the Deeps."

"Banished?" Will sat bolt upright, his face filled with concern as he remembered the term that
Cal
had used.

"No, no," Tam exclaimed, gesticulating with his pipe. "He wanted to go! Curious thing, by all accounts he went willingly… no announcements… no spectacle… none of the usual Styx theatricals." Uncle Tam drew a mouthful of smoke and blew it out slowly, his brow furrowed. "I suppose it wouldn't have been much of a show for the people, no ranting and wailing from the condemned." He stared into the fire, his frown remaining as if he was profoundly baffled by the whole affair. "In the days before he left, he'd been seen wandering around, scribbling in his book… bothering folk with his foolish questions. I reckon the Styx thought he was a little…" Uncle Tam tapped the side of his head.

Grandma Macaulay cleared her throat and looked at him sternly.

"…harmless," he said, checking himself. "Reckon that's why they let him roam around like that. But you can bet they watched his every move."

Will shifted uneasily where he sat on the Persian rug; it felt wrong to be demanding answers from this good-natured and friendly man, this man who was purportedly his uncle, but he couldn’t help himself.

"What exactly
are
the Deeps?" he asked.

"The inner circles, the Interior." Uncle Tam pointed with the stem of his pipe at the floor. "Down below us. The Deeps."

"Its' a bad place, isn't it?"
Cal
put in.

"Never been there myself. It's not somewhere you'd choose to go," Uncle Tam said with a measured look at Will.

"But what's there?" Will asked, desperate to learn more about where his father had gone.

"Well, five or so miles down, there are other… I suppose you could call them settlements. That’s where the Miners' Train stops, where the Coprolites live." He sucked loudly on his pipe. "The air's sour down there. It's the end of the line, but the tunnels go farther — miles and miles, they say. Legends even tell of an inner world down deep, at the center, older towns and older cities, larger than the Colony." Uncle Tam chortled dismissively. "Reckon it's a load of codswallop, myself."

"But has anyone ever been down these tunnels?" Will asked, hoping in his heart of hearts that someone had.

"Well, there've been stories. In the year two twenty or thereabouts, they say a Colonist made it back after years of Banishment. What was his name… Abraham something?"

"Abraham de
Jaybo
," Grandma Macaulay said quietly.

Uncle Tam glanced at the door and lowered his voice. "When they found him at the Miners' Station, he was in a terrible state, covered in cuts and bruises, his tongue missing — cut out, they say. He was almost starved to death, like a walking corpse. He didn't last long; died a week later from some unknown disease that made his blood boil up through his ears and mouth. He couldn't speak, of course, but some say he made drawings, loads of them, as he lay on his deathbed, too afraid to sleep."

"What were the drawings of?" Will was wide-eyed.

"All sorts, apparently; infernal machines, strange animals and impossible landscapes, and things no one could understand. The Styx said it was all the product of a diseased mind, but others say the things he drew really exist. To this very day the drawings are kept under lock and key in the Governor's vaults… though no one I
know's
ever seen them."

"God, I'd give anything to look at those," Will said, spellbound.

Uncle Tam gave a deep chuckle.

"What?" Will asked.

"Well, apparently, that Burrows fellow said the selfsame thing when he was told the tale… the
selfsame
words, he used.

After the talk, the tea, the "fancies," and the revelations, Uncle Tam finally rose with a cavernous yawn and stretched his powerful frame with several bone-chilling clicks. He turned to Grandma Macaulay.

"Well, come on, Ma, high time I got you home."

And with that, they bade their farewells and were gone. Without Tam's booming voice and infectious guffaws to fill it, the house suddenly seemed a very different place.

"I'll show you where you'll be sleeping,"
Cal
said to Will, who only mumbled in response. It was as though he were under some kind of spell, his mind teeming with new thoughts and feelings that, try as he might, he couldn't keep from rising to the surface like a shoal of hungry fish.

They wandered out into the hallway, where Will perked up slightly. He began to study the succession of portraits hanging there, working his way gradually along.

"I thought your granny live in this house," he asked
Cal
in a distant voice.

"She's allowed to come visit me here."
Cal
immediately looked away from Will, who wasn't slow in noticing there was more to this than
Cal
was letting on.

"What do you mean, 'allowed to'?"

"Oh, she's got her own place, where Mother and Uncle Tam were born,"
Cal
said evasively, with a shake of his head. "C'mon, let's go!" He was halfway up the stairs with the backpack hooked over his arm when, to his exasperation, he found Will wasn't following him. Peering over the banister,
Cal
saw that he was still hovering by the portraits, his curiosity piqued by something at the end of the hallway.

Will's hunger for discovery and adventure had taken hold of him again, sweeping aside his sheer fatigue and his preoccupation with all he'd so recently learned. "What's through
herre
?" he asked, pointing at a black door with a brass handle.

"Oh, it's nothing. Just the kitchen,"
Cal
replied impatiently.

"Can I have a quick look?" Will said, already heading for the door.

"
Cal
sighed. "Oh, all right, but there's really nothing to see," he said in a resigned tone and descended the stairs, stowing the pack at the bottom. "It's
just
a kitchen!"

Pushing through the door, Will found himself in a low-ceilinged room resembling something from a Victorian hospital. And it not only looked but smelled like one, too, a strong undercurrent of carbolic blending with indistinct cooking smells. The walls were a dull mushroom color, and the floor and work surfaces were covered with large white tiles, crazed with a myriad of scratches and fissures. In places, they had been worn into dappled hollows by years of scrubbing.

His attention was drawn to the corner, where a lid was gently clattering on one of a number of saucepans being heated on an antiquated stove of some kind, its heavy frame swollen and glassy with burned-on grease. He leaned over the nearest saucepan, but its simmering contents were obscured by wisps of steam as it gave off a vaguely savory aroma. To his right, beyond a solid-looking butcher's block with a large-bladed cleaver dangling from a hook above, Will spotted another door leading off the kitchen.

"Where does that go?"

"Look, wouldn't you rather…,"
Cal
's
voice trailed off as he realized it was futile to argue with his brother, who was already nosing into the small adjoining room.

Will's eyes lit up when he saw what was in there. It was like an alchemist's storeroom, with shelf upon shelf of squat jars containing unrecognizable pickled items, all horribly distorted by the curvature of the thick glass and discolored by the oily fluid in which they were immersed. They resembled anatomical specimens preserved in formaldehyde.

On the bottom shelf, laid out on dull metal trays, Will noticed a huddle of objects the size of small soccer balls that had a gray-brown bloom to them.

"What are these?"

"They're
pennybuns
— we grow them all over, but mostly in the lower chambers."

"What do you use them for?" Will was crouching down, examining their velvety, mottled surfaces.

"They're mushrooms. You eat them. You probably had some in the Hold."

"Oh, right," Will said, making a face as he stood upright. "And that?" he said, pointing at some strips of what appeared to be beef jerky hanging from racks above.

Cal
smiled broadly. "You should be able to tell what it is."

Will hesitated for a moment and then leaned a little closer to one of the strips; it was definitely meat of some description. He sniffed tentatively, then shook his head.

"No idea."

"Come on. The smell?"

Will closed his eyes and sniffed again. "No, it doesn't smell like anything I—" His eyes snapped open and he looked at
Cal
. "It's rat, isn't it?" he said, both pleased that he was able to identify it and, at the same time, kind of appalled by the finding. "You eat rat?"

"It's delicious… there's nothing wrong with that. Now, tell me what
kind
is it?
Cal
asked, reveling in Will's evident disgust. "Pack, sewer, or sightless?"

"I don't
like
rats, let alone eat them. I haven't got the slightest idea."

Cal
shook his head slowly, with an expression of mock disappointment.

"It's easy, this is sightless," he said, lifting the end of one of the lengths with his finger and sniffing it himself. "More gamey than the others — it's a bit special. We usually have it on Sundays."

They were interrupted by a loud, machine gun-like humming behind them, and both spun around at the same time. There, purring with all his might, sat Bartleby, his huge amber eyes fixed on the meat strips and drops of anticipatory saliva dripping off his bald chin.

"Out!"
Cal
shouted at him, pointing at the kitchen door. The cat didn't move an inch, but sat resolutely on the tiled floor, completely mesmerized by the sight of the meat.

"Bart, I said get out!"
Cal
shouted again. The cat snarled threateningly and bared his teeth, a pearly stockade of viciously sharp pegs, as his skin erupted with a wave of goose pimples.

"You insolent mutt!"
Cal
snapped. "You know you don't mean that!"

Cal
aimed a playful kick at the disobedient animal, which dodged sideways, easily avoiding the blow. Turning slowly, Bartleby gave them both a slightly scornful look over his shoulder, then padded lethargically away, his naked, spindly tail flicking in a gesture of defiance behind him.

"He'd sell his soul for rat, that one,"
Cal
said, shaking his head and smiling.

After the brief tour of the kitchen,
Cal
showed Will up the creaking wooden staircase to the top floor.

"This is Father's room," he said, opening a dark door halfway down the landing. "We're not supposed to go in here. There'll be big trouble if he catches us."

Will quickly glanced back down the stairs to assure himself the coast was clear before following. A huge four-poster bed dominated Mr. Jerome's room, so tall it almost touched the dilapidated ceiling that sagged ominously down toward it. The space around it was bare and featureless, and a single light burned in one corner.

"What was here?" Will asked, noticing a row of lighter patches on the wall.

Cal
looked at the ghostly squares and frowned. "Pictures — there used to be lots of them before Father stripped the room out."

"Why'd he do that?"

"Because of mother — she'd furnished it, it was her room, really,"
Cal
replied. "After she left, Father…" He fell silent, and because he didn't seem inclined to volunteer any more on the subject, Will felt he shouldn't probe further — for the moment, anyway. He certainly hadn't forgotten how the photograph Grandma Macaulay had shown him of his mother had been inexplicably hidden away. None of these people — Uncle Tam, Grandma Macaulay, or Cal — were divulging the whole story. Even if they were indeed his true family — and Will once again found himself questioning the fantastical notion that they were — there was evidently more to all this than he was being told. And he was determined to find out what it was.