“We’ve known for centuries that some of the earliest settlers lived in this part of the Basin,” the guide was saying, “but we never knew exactly where. Not until this latest cave-in showed us an astonishing set of ruins.”
The word “latest” catches my attention. Both Ivy and Bridge glance at me. They caught it too. But we seem to decide as a group not to interrupt the guide—or perhaps they are waiting for me to interrupt him.
The guide has a spiel. I’m going to let him run through it. If I have other questions, I will have Bridge ask them later.
When the guide finishes, the carts rise simultaneously. Our pilot nods at the other pilot, who then goes into the archway first. We follow at a reasonably safe distance, although I do notice that the air—which had smelled faintly of some kind of flower—now smells harsh with a chemical afterburn.
I ask our pilot about raising the cart’s top, but he doesn’t even turn around.
“We’re not going far enough,” he says.
The lights from the other cart reflect against the black wall ahead. That darkness I saw was part of the construction, not a darkness of an unlit area. The cart hovers for a moment, then eases downward as if it’s going into a shaft.
It disappears. The light on the far wall is diminished by half, and I can almost see the materials.
Our pilot eases our cart into the archway, and immediately the air cools. The afterburn smell is gone; here the air is tangy, almost salty, as if there is an ocean nearby.
I don’t have time to reflect on that. I barely have a chance to look at the walls around me before we descend.
The descent is slow. We are going down a shaft. The pilot holds the cart at a steady speed. If it weren’t for the reflections of light on the smooth walls, undulating in a strange wave, I would think we aren’t moving at all.
There’s almost a feeling of weightlessness to this slow descent. I feel a pang. I understand weightlessness. Even though I’m landborn, I’ve spent most of my life in space. The idea of going down a shaft into the dark ground, the weight of an entire city above me, makes my stomach clench.
Finally, we reach the bottom of the shaft. The shaft opens onto a large chamber with the same smooth black walls. Only here there is lighting, and it looks like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s bluish, recessed into the smooth black wall, and seems to coat everything.
My skin seems paler than it ever has. Paler, with a touch of blue. The light seems almost cool—the opposite of that harsh sun above. I blink and realize that my eyes don’t hurt for the first time since we landed on Wyr.
The carts hover next to each other.
“Normally,” the lead guide says, “we continue forward down various passages, giving the history of this place, but you are in charge here.”
Then he looks at me with such contempt that I start. He waits for a moment, studying me.
Finally he says with a bit of annoyance, as if I haven’t answered a question, “What would you like to do?”
There is nothing in this chamber except the lights, the walls, the ceiling, and the floor—all made of that black material.
“I think we should disembark,” I say.
The guide’s lips thin.
The carts lower and my team climbs out. The pilots remain, letting the carts hover. The other guides get out slowly.
Ivy immediately heads to the walls, slips on a pair of gloves, and touches the surface. I’m busy trying to keep my balance on the slick floor. This material is as smooth as it looks—maybe even smoother.
The other team members gather around me, awaiting orders.
I’m watching Ivy.
“You didn’t build these, did you?” she asks the lead guide.
“No,” he says. “We think they grew.”
Mikk starts beside me, but I’m not quite as surprised. I knew that some of the caves had walls that were “grown,” but I thought they were made of a recognizable stone. I figured the caves would be natural caves, with natural caverns created by water, time, or more cave-ins.
“Grew,” Ivy repeats. “This doesn’t look like a natural material to me. Is it native to Wyr?”
Bridge tries to walk to her. He slides and nearly falls. One of the guides crosses his arms, looking satisfied.
They don’t like us, and they resent our presence. I’m not sure if that’s the typical attitude Vaycehnese who work with tourists have—I know I had it when I ran tourist dives—or if their resentment is directed at us for altering the format of the tour.
“We don’t know if it’s native,” the guide says.
Bridge puts on his gloves as well. He pulls a small device from his pocket. I haven’t seen it before. He holds it close to the wall.
“You don’t know,” he says conversationally. “Does that mean you’ve seen this before?”
“There are other places below the city that have black walls,” the guide says, then hastily adds, “and they’re not open to the public.”
We’re not public, but I’m not going to remind him of that.
“What makes you think it grows?” Bridge asks.
The guide licks his lips. Two of the others look at him and shrug. He tilts his head just a little.
“This chamber wasn’t here before the collapse,” he says.
We are all looking at him now.
He flushes under the scrutiny and looks from one of his men to the other. But they say nothing. They let him tell us.
“The collapse revealed stone walls, like the Basin walls,” he says.
I get the sense that he’s choosing his words carefully, possibly revealing more than he should. That flush of his is telling; if nothing else, it shows us all how uncomfortable he finds this topic.
“After the first day, the black threaded through. No one noticed it right away, but the images taken of the site showed it. We went back after…”
He let his voice trail off. He gives the other guides a helpless look. They look away from him.
Curious. Has no one asked about the black walls before?
Bridge has his hands behind his back. He’s watching the lead guide as if he were a test subject. Ivy has taken her hand from the wall and is surreptitiously glancing at her fingertips, as if they make her nervous.
“After what?” Bridge prompts. “You went back after what?”
The guide swallows. “After the room formed. We examined each day’s images. It grew over the stone. All this black. It just grew.”
“Into this chamber.”
He nods.
“And the shaft we came down?” Bridge asks.
The guide thins his lips but nods again.
“But it didn’t continue along the surface?” Bridge had noticed that. I hadn’t.
“It stops about a centimeter from the lip of the shaft,” the guide says.
No one says anything for a moment. I’m feeling a little dizzy, which could be the unexpected information or it could be the unusual climate. I make myself drink some water and take several deep breaths.
Bridge is frowning. It’s a look of concentration, as if he’s trying to absorb everything the guide is telling us.
Ivy has started to rub the tips of her fingers. Dana Carmak walks over to her and, after putting on some gloves of her own, removes Ivy’s, placing them in a specimen bag. Then she hands Ivy some extra-strong cleaner.
The guide doesn’t seem to notice. He’s watching Bridge for some kind of reaction.
“I take it your scientists have studied this,” Bridge says.
The guide nods.
“What do they think happened?”
He shrugs.
One of the medics steps forward. He has been watching Ivy. “Our scientists say it’s not harmful. We’ve brought hundreds of people down here. No one has gotten ill. No one has had black grow on them. It doesn’t seem to leave the cavern.”