Wormholes (2 page)

She continued paying out the rope to give herself room to maneuver across the roof and tied off the rappelling knot so it wouldn’t slip. She crouched on the rough shingled surface, putting her ear against it. She called “Hello?” loudly several times and listened intently for a response. She pounded on the roof with her geologist’s pick and listened again. The reverberations of the roof gave her information about what was beneath, but it was confusing. The sound was too hollow to have dirt beneath it. She looked up and shook her head somberly. The few faces that poked over the crater’s rim watched her solemnly. Only the murmur of conversations filtered down to her.

She raised her pick and took a wide swing, embedding it into the roof with a dull thunk. She pried up shingles and worked her way through the splintered underlayment, producing a small hole. With several more blows and pryings, she widened the hole, until at last she could peer in, shining a flashlight. An unsettling darkness swallowed the light. She looked up again and was about to shake her head to the people above.

The roof lurched crazily, sending her sliding down almost to its edge, scraping her knees on the asphalt shingles. She recovered and stood up tense and still on the tilting roof. Her heart began to pound, her senses became razor-sharp. She took two steps as if walking on eggs. The roof slumped again, with a creaking, scraping sound, cocking itself into an angle that transformed it into a deadly vertical slide into oblivion. Dacey saved herself by leaping forward and just hooking her pick over the roof’s peak. She strained to pull herself up to reach over it to the other side. She heard the rescue chief shout for ropes to be thrown down. One rope fell wide of the roof to the left, and before another could be thrown, the roof plummeted away with the splintering crack of tearing wood and shingles, carrying her down with it.

She rode the roof down, plunging into the darkness, then grunted painfully as her rope zinged to a lifesaving tautness. A viciously battering cascade of soil and rocks pummeled her, the choking dirt forcing its way into her eyes and mouth. She hung almost upside down, struggling to right herself, praying that the rope and harness would hold. Blinded and suffocating, she spat out the moldy-tasting dirt, grabbed the rope and curled into a blinded ball, swaying back and forth in the blackness, enduring the bombardment. Large rocks careened off the helmet and others struck her legs, leaving red welts. One small boulder glancing off her hip launched her into a slow spin.

But even under the hammering deluge of earth and rock, she remained keenly aware that no sound had yet arisen from the roof’s impact. Then she heard it, a distant booming crash reverberating up from the utter darkness signaling the chamber’s immense depth.

She clamped her jaw, the grit crunching between her teeth and hung on for her life as the rain of rocks dwindled to a trickle, then stopped, except for stray pebbles and occasional light spatterings of soil on her helmet.

She unfolded and coughed raspily, spat and cleared her eyes with the backs of her gloves. She pushed panic down deep, stowed it away as useless. Down to business. She checked herself. Scrapes, bruises and some blood running down her leg, but she was basically okay. She could see nothing of the dark chamber by the waning light that filtered from the large hole above. She toggled the switch on the helmet light. It had been smashed. But the camera was still intact. Still swaying precariously back and forth over the unfathomable abyss, her legs dangling, she dug into a pouch and came out with a small flashlight, shining it up the rope to check whether the lifeline had been damaged. She saw a couple of abrasions. She had to get out quickly before the rope began to unravel. She examined her harness and found it basically sound.

“Okay, you’re still alive,” she whispered to herself reassuringly. “Still kickin’, babe.” She jerked and twisted at the end of the rope to rotate, so she could shine the light around her. She could barely make out dark distant earthen walls in the huge cavern. But this was no time to explore. Later. This crater held many secrets. She brushed more dirt from her eyes, coughed again, bringing up more grit and peered upward at the light.

“
SAY, CHIEF!
” she bellowed. “
YOU WANNA START THAT WINCH AND PULL ME UP?
”

• • •

The Tennessee state cop eased the patrol car through the darkened parking lot of the rest area. Over the past month, there had been two robberies and a rape in these isolated rest stops along Route 40 between Knoxville and Nashville. He and his partner figured that some sick itinerant son-of-a-bitch had decided to attack a few people before moving on to another state. Not on their damned shift, though.

Traffic was sparse on the nearby freeway at three a.m. An occasional truck roared past, its red running lights outlining the large silver boxy form, its headlights pushing an island of brightness ahead of it in the enveloping gloom. A few cars whizzed past, too, probably carrying sleeping passengers and all too often, a nodding driver.

The cop stopped the car at the restroom building and nodded to his partner, who understood his message from five years of working together.

“Yeah, Leo, I know. It’s my turn,” he said tiredly, pulling himself from the car and trudging through the warm, humid night, through the fluttering moths madly circling the lights outside, and entered the men’s room. He walked along checking the stalls. He came out and went over to the women’s side of the red brick structure. He rapped on the metal door with his nightstick. The metallic clunking brought no response.

“State police. Anybody in there?” No response. He repeated, then ducked in and checked the room out. He emerged, stopped and got a drink from the water fountain and walked back toward the car. He nodded to a bleary-eyed trudging couple who’d just gotten out of a Honda, as they split up to head for the restrooms. He paused before he got into the car, peering away down the parking lot into a shadowy area between the street lamps.

He leaned down to the car’s window. “Leo, that van down there. There’s nobody out here for it to belong to.”

“Yeah, Johnny-boy. That’s true,” said Leo scanning the area. “You stay out. Go around, come up from the front. I’ll block it.”

Leo eased the patrol car down the lot and right up behind the dented old blue van. Johnny circled out into the grass, coming up in front, standing on the slight rise beyond the parking lot and peering through the darkened windshield. Leo keyed the plate into the car’s computer, but since it was a Massachusetts plate, he didn’t expect information on wants or warrants back soon.

Leo got out, his eyes riveted on the van. He was a beefy man, but he moved smoothly and quickly when his adrenaline was up, and it was up now. He drew his revolver, a signal for his partner to do the same. No sense taking a chance. Aiming the revolver upward, Leo moved up to the van, took out his nightstick in his left hand and banged on the side, moving out of the line of fire of the back doors. Johnny would warn him if the front doors opened.

“State police. Please come out slowly and keep your hands in sight.” After a long moment, the old van creaked and shifted on its springs from somebody moving inside. He banged again harder, the thunking sound rising above the roar of a passing truck.

“Just a minute,” came a muffled reply, and the handle on the back door moved. The door swung open with a rusty scrape and a head stuck out.

Leo always looked at the eyes first. The eyes told you whether the subject had in mind to cooperate or to go for a gun. But these eyes that squinted at the light were fathomless — like onyx marbles. The distant street lights cast shadows on the face. The man had long, unruly, curly dark hair and a dark beard and moustache. He pulled himself out of the back of the van and stood peering at Leo. He had a slim, taut-muscled body and the long arms were very white. He wore a t-shirt that was wrinkled from having been slept in, faded blue jeans and old white socks with toes flapping loose. No tattoos, prison or professional. No visible scars.

“Sir, do you know it’s against the law to camp at a highway rest stop?”

“No, sorry. I was tired,” the man mumbled blearily. “Thought I’d rest an hour.” He rubbed his eyes and focused them on the officer. “Why do you have your gun out?”

“Just move away from the van. Let me see your driver’s license.” Leo kept his gun aimed skyward. The man obeyed and Leo saw Johnny’s flashlight click on as he began to inspect the van through the windows.

“Where are you headed, sir?” Leo holstered his pistol and studied the license. It was Massachusetts. The name was Gerald Meier. Photo matched the face. He thought he’d known a sneak thief named Gerald Meier once.

“I’m going to Oklahoma.”

“Where in Oklahoma?”

“Gillard.”

“You got family there?”

“No, business.”

“What business?”

“Uh … it’s too complicated to explain.” The man was awake now and a slight edge of indignation crept into his voice. Leo sensed that there was something very much more with this fellow than even his practiced eye could discern. But he couldn’t figure out what.

“Try me.”

“Look, I don’t have to tell you my business, do I?”

“You better if you don’t want to find yourself in a lockup back in Knoxville while we check you out. We’ve had some robberies go down in this area.”

“I’m …” The man paused and looked at Leo, sizing him up. “I’m looking for a job. I just finished one in construction up north. I heard there was an opening from my brother-in-law. I’m meeting him there.”

Leo’s experience told him the explanation was being concocted on the spot. There were too many subtle hesitations.

“Lemme see your hands.” The man offered his hands. They were smooth, no calluses. “Pretty good hands for a construction worker.”

“I wear gloves. I do electrical work.”

“Right. Anybody else in your van? Mind if we look?” Leo was still on the fence about this guy’s story, still trying to decide whether he believed this long-haired hippie-looking guy.

There was another pause. “Nobody in there. Uh, go ahead.”

Leo nodded to Johnny, who held his gun aloft, slid open the side and peered inside, rummaging around. Meantime, Leo stepped to the police cruiser, keeping the man in sight and radioing in Gerald Meier’s name. He returned.

“Gillard, eh? Ever been in Oklahoma, Mr. Meier?”

“Probably. I guess maybe passing through.” They waited while Johnny finished searching the van. The police radio crackled and emitted a message for him. He reached into the car and spoke into the microphone. The dispatcher told him no wants, no warrants on the guy or the vehicle. Leo still didn’t like it.

“Piles of books and several computers in here,” reported Johnny. “Lots of electronics I can’t figure out. It’s kind of a mess. He sleeps in there, looks like. This was taped on the dashboard.” He handed Leo a Google News printout. The story was about a sinkhole in Gillard, Oklahoma, that had swallowed a house. The article included a picture of a young woman in climbing gear who’d gone into the hole. A very attractive long-haired young woman in shorts. Leo held the printout up to the man, who stiffened almost imperceptibly.

“You interested in this, Gerald? You interested in sinkholes? Or are you interested in pretty girls?”

“Officer, look. I’m sorry I stayed too long here. I’m not doing anything. Just let me go on my way.” The black eyes stared at him now in a smoldering anger, but the emotion was carefully controlled. The man reached out his hand for the clipping. Leo hesitated. Damn, he didn’t like this at all. But he handed the man the clipping.

“All right. You go on now, Mr. Meier. But don’t camp in rest areas. There’s lots of motels along the highway.”

“Thank you.” But the man said it with such flat intonation that the actual meaning might have been far more inflammatory.

The two cops got into the car and Leo slowly backed it out of the way. The man cranked the van’s engine, which after some churning finally roared to clattering life. He backed the van out and proceeded with almost insolent slowness down the parking area and onto the freeway.

Leo looked at Johnny and shrugged. “Hell, wasn’t a thing I could do.”

Johnny nodded. “Think we ought to call the Gillard cops? Tell them about this guy and the clipping?”

“We’d look like idiots.” Leo held up a pretend telephone receiver to his ear. “Hello, officer, we stopped a guy here who clips newspapers. And he sleeps at highway rest stops. Shoot to kill.” He chuckled wryly, but his face quickly became serious as he accelerated the patrol car onto the freeway and into the night. “Well, maybe there’s something we could do …”

“L
et it down,” Dacey instructed, waving her hand and watching the crane operator shove the lever forward. The steel mesh basket began to descend with a slight lurch and sway into the crater. She held onto the edge of the basket, staying in her corner to balance the three rescue workers lodged into the other three. From her vantage point, she did a full-circle scan of the craggy earthen walls, searching for signs of more collapses. It had taken a day to rig the crane with extra-long cable and move it into place, and she worried that the sides of the hole might have dried and become crumbly. But as the basket sank from the sunlight and the crowd of onlookers into the dank musty gloom of the cavern beneath the crater, she saw no evidence of further erosion. The last face she saw in the crowd was the drawn face of Anita, the man’s wife. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, hoping for a miracle. The children were not there. Anita said they had been sent to their grandmother’s. The little boy, Brad, cried a lot. And the little girl, Jenny, had been having nightmares.

Dacey promised herself she would find their daddy if he was there. This time they would see everything. One of the rescue workers switched on a floodlight, powered through a black electrical cable snaking down from the surface. The brilliant glare of the light revealed an enormous, ragged chamber that matched the sides of the hole, looking as if it had been ripped from the inside of the earth. Dacey directed the light to various quarters of the crater wall, recording the scenes on her helmet video camera for later study. She began to mentally chart the cavern’s shape. How could it possibly have been formed? Not by running water; not by the collapse of a mine. Water table was high here, but the chamber seemed to have a long undulating topography, roughly the shape of one of those ripply kid’s balloons. Water would have made a smooth straight chamber.

While the chamber had broken the surface at the crater, it was generally horizontal, stretching away on either side. And below? She took another floodlight, carefully leaned over in the wobbly basket and flicked it on, shining it down. The house roof was there, lodged at the bottom. Now they were suspended, swaying slightly, fifty feet above it.

As they settled down upon it, with some scraping and creaking, she motioned for quiet. Amidst the immense, shadowy silence, she could hear the faint sound of trickling water. That, together with the damp earthy smell told her that water might somehow be involved in this cavern’s formation. They clamped the two floodlights to the basket, and the lights swayed and shook with each movement of the people, casting shifting shadows on the walls.

Dacey attached herself to a rope via a climbing harness and heaved herself over the swaying basket’s rail and onto the roof, which had been collapsed by its plunge into a flat expanse of splintered rafters. The rescue chief, now more respectful, had instructed rescue workers to do whatever she said, and they were happy to comply. They realized that these depths were her domain, not theirs.

Shining a large flashlight across the crumpled roof, she carefully let out the rope, gingerly walking on the shingles, which shifted and crackled under even her light weight. She looked back at the other three in the basket, shrugged and proceeded to stomp and finally jump up and down on the roof. In places it was springy, but it held.

“Feels solid,” she said. “It’ll hold me anyway. Probably okay. Stay harnessed, though.” Her voice was attenuated by the vastness of the chamber, absorbed by the craggy earthen walls.

The lead rescue worker, a wiry middle-aged man named Lonnie, spoke into his two-way radio to the crane operator, hooked himself up and hopped over the railing, letting out his rope and walking across the roof, also carrying a large flashlight. They both played their lights about the gray-brown cavern walls, checking for possible sources of collapse. It looked like they were safe for now, she concluded. She shined the light down the chamber lengthwise in either direction, noticing that the gloomy ends of the passage seemed to narrow significantly. Frustrated, she wrinkled her brow and adjusted her helmet. There might be answers there, if only she knew what geological questions to ask. The others followed, one proceeding to rip a larger hole in the roof with a crowbar.

“Dacey? We got a real problem here,” said Lonnie, peering into the hole.

Dacey carefully walked over beside them. “What’s that?”

“We got no house.” Lonnie rubbed the gray stubble on his face. Meanwhile, a worker carrying a large prybar had stepped to the edge of the roof and probed the solid earth that surrounded it. He nodded in agreement. He took up the rescue group’s video camera and began taping the results of their explorations.

“None?” Dacey crouched onto her knees and explored the hole in the roof. Sure enough, there was almost no debris beneath the roof, at least not enough to constitute anything resembling a full-sized suburban house. Just dirt and rock. Loose dirt and rock, but solid, she judged by the dull chunking sound it made when the men poked at it with a crowbar.

“Looks like all that’s down here is this roof. Could something like quicksand have swallowed up the house?”

Dacey squinted her puzzled squint and sat down on the roof, her forearms on her knees. A distant rumble emanated from one end of the chamber. “Well, there’s a phenomenon known as liquefaction. In earthquakes, the shaking can make water-soaked soil act like quicksand. It’ll sink houses a little ways, but I don’t think it’ll suck one down all the way. I’m still waiting for the seismic records for this area from the earthquake center in Golden, but I’m sure this was no earthquake.” She was silent for a moment, then stood up resolutely, breathing in the cool, dank air.

“Down there,” she said, pointing in the direction of the rumble. “I bet there’s something down there that might tell us something.” The rescue workers hesitated and she understood their reluctance. “Look, there’s no need for you guys to go down there. I’m the geologist—”

“Yeah, but you’re a—”

“You were gonna say ‘a damned good geologist,’ right?”

Lonnie chuckled. “Yeah, sure. What do you want us to do?”

“Let’s tie together a couple of ropes. I’m gonna walk out over the bottom of this cavern to that narrow part and go in. I’ll holler if I’m in trouble. Haul me in quick.”

The men rigged the ropes and tied her harness firmly to the end. They braced themselves against the rafters in the largest undamaged part of the roof. Dacey checked her helmet camera to make sure it was transmitting, and stepped off the roof. She stumbled slightly in the spongy uneven earth, but recovered and began to slog forward.

Her heart beat faster as it always did when she descended into the depths of the earth. And more generally, she was always jazzed when there was an adventure to be had, and this one was a doozy. A healthy fear squirmed in her gut, and she found herself trembling slightly, but she was spurred by the prospect of some new geological discovery. The people in the department called her Rockhound for good reason.

For the first two hundred feet, the floodlights from the basket were sufficient light, but the gloom farther on made her switch on her helmet lamp. The trickling sound was louder here, and the passageway did begin to narrow. She made sure to aim her helmet camera at the sides, to record their structure. The passageway became distinctly cylindrical and the sides smoother, angling slightly downward. As she walked, she noticed that the passage had shrunk to about six feet in diameter. Smaller and smoother. What did it mean?

“You okay?” she heard faintly behind her.

“Yeah, peachy,” she shouted back. The passage grew still smaller. The trickling was louder. Now the passage was about the size of a storm culvert, like a tunnel. She sat down and peered into the tunnel, slowly scanning her head left to right so the camera could capture the scene. She stopped, noticing that farther down the tunnel a chunk of granite lodged in the wall that looked like it had been worn away or chipped. She sat down, tightened her helmet strap, and scooted down into the narrowing tunnel feet first on her bottom. She was just able to sit up in the small tunnel.

She reached the rock and examined it closer. It was glass-smooth, like the polished granite on the side of a building. She screwed up her face in puzzlement. This was a strange rock she
had
to have. She pulled out her geologist’s pick and chopped carefully around the rock. It was bigger than she had thought, about the size of a shoebox and wedged hard in the wall. She continued to chop the hard earth, reaching around the rock with her fingers to pry it out. She yanked hard at the same time that she realized her fingers were wet.

“
DAMN!
” she yelled. The rock had plugged a hole into an underground stream bed! The slippery rock fell heavily into her lap, and she was inundated by a gush of cold muddy water. She kicked back with her feet, but the downsloping bottom of the tunnel had immediately become a water slide and she skittered down into the flow. She tried to dig in her heels, but the mud wasn’t deep enough and she began to slip. She fell onto her back, the cold muddy water gushing into her nose and mouth. She slid farther downward, the wet suffocating muck collapsing in on her. The rope remained slack as she slid. The men were still feeding rope as she went. They thought she was still okay. The meaning of the distant rush of water hadn’t registered with them yet. She shouted, but the sound was a stifled wet gurgle in the rushing mud and water, which was filling the little tunnel.

She slid downward, coughing and gasping for air, faster and faster, realizing that the camera was now out of range of the iPad. She had to do something! She could let go of the rock, but using her arms wouldn’t help. They weren’t strong enough. She spread her legs and tried to jam them against the tunnel sides. But they continued to slither along. The tunnel was so slick! She couldn’t get a breath in the thickening, foaming mud. It rose over her head. She was drowning. She was gathering speed. Still the rope trailed slackly. Soon she would be buried. They could never pull her out.

The toe of her left boot caught on a rock wedged in the tunnel wall and she skewed sideways and jammed herself in the tunnel, the mud and water rushing over her, oozing over her. She held herself there with all the muscle she could muster, tightened her stomach muscles and with a deep grunt forced her body upward. If only there was air above. She felt her face break the surface. She spat the mud from her mouth and shouted. It was not articulate, just a hoarse bellow, but she hoped it conveyed her danger.

The rope jerked taut! She felt herself being hauled against the slimy pitch-black current upstream. The cold sludge flowed and gurgled around her and she struggled to breathe and hold tight onto the rock and reach up to grasp the helmet camera.

Abruptly she was pulled beyond where the stream had broken through. She allowed herself to be dragged over the damp earth and into the floodlights.

“Okay, okay,” she waved weakly, staggering to her feet, still clutching her cargo, covered with mud. She spat again and tried to clear her eyes with the back of her wrist. She felt strong hands under her shoulders bearing her toward the basket. She shivered as the cold air of the cavern washed over her wet body.

“You alright?” It was Lonnie.

She nodded and coughed hoarsely, bringing up an earthen taste.

“Let’s get her out of here,” he said to the men. They crawled into the basket and Lonnie instructed the crane operator over the radio. The basket jerked upward swinging back and forth across the floor of the cave. After switching off the camera and stowing the rock, Dacey untied herself and leaned panting and coughing on the rail, watching the vast, dark chamber fall away beneath her. She shook her head. She still couldn’t figure the damned thing out.

The crowd standing at a safe distance around the crater saw the disconcerting sight of the basket rising into the sunlight carrying three relatively clean rescue workers and one thoroughly mud-covered, bedraggled woman geologist. The crane’s gears ground slightly as it swung the basket clear of the hole and set it down on what was once a quiet suburban lawn. Dacey waved away any help, as well as requests for television interviews, crawling laboriously out of the basket, still clutching almost obsessively the rock and the helmet camera. Anita stood before her, face drawn, eyes wide with fear. Dacey shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “I’m truly sorry. He just wasn’t down there.” Anita slumped and a friend took her around the waist.

“Thank you for what you’ve done. Thanks so much.” She touched Dacey’s muddy shoulder.

“Well, it wasn’t enough. I’m going to figure this thing out, I promise you.”

Anita thanked Dacey again, mumbling something about hoping she was all right, and was helped away. Dacey found a garden hose, turned it on and washed down the rock, oblivious to the mud covering her and the crowd of reporters shouting questions at her. The rock had been sliced smooth on one side. As smooth as if eons of water had worn it away. But the edges were as sharp as if cut by a saw. She detached the helmet video camera and gently washed it, finding it battered but intact. She’d pull the memory card out under more pristine conditions.