"Shut up," she growled.
He managed to muffle his coughing with his sleeve, and then joined her, lying by her side.
Together they peered down into the jagged fissure. They were looking from a dizzying height into a huge cathedral-like chamber. Far below, he could see the blur of many points of light. He pulled back slightly from the fissure, and, by angling his head, he could get a better view of the area below, where there were the oddest-looking machines. Will counted ten in all, parked in a row.
They were like stubby cylinders, each having a single serrated wheel-like contraption at one end. They called to mind photos he'd seen of the equipment used in the construction of the London Underground. Will assumed these, too, were some form of digging equipment. Then he spotted several groupings of stationary Coprolites and a handful of Styx watching them from a distance. Will looked at the rifle by Elliott's side and wondered if she was going to use it. At this range, it wouldn't have been difficult for her to snipe at the Styx.
After several minutes, there was a sudden burst of activity. Some of the Coprolites began to move slowly along as the Styx strolled threateningly behind them, their long rifles in their arms. The bulbous men looked tiny in comparison to the strange machines as they climbed into them. One of the machines fired up, its engine turning over with a roar and a black cloud issuing from its rear. Then it began to trundle forward, still under the scrutiny of the Styx, and edged out in front of the others.
Will kept watching as it picked up speed. He was able to see the hatches at the rear and the array of exhaust pipes around it, from which steam and smoke were pouring. He also saw the broad rollers on which it was being conveyed forward and could hear rocks cracking under them. The machine steered toward a tunnel that led off the main chamber and disappeared from view down it. He guessed the Coprolites were going off to do some mining, but he had no idea why so many Styx were monitoring them.
Elliott muttered something as she pulled away from the fissure, and he heard her go to a corner of the gallery. Using his scope, he watched as she reached behind a boulder to draw out several dark packages. He went over to her.
"What's that?" he said before he could stop himself.
She didn't answer him for several moments, then said, "Food," as she stowed the packages in her satchel.
She didn't seem to be about to volunteer anything further, but Will's curiosity was piqued.
"Who… where's it from?" he ventured.
Elliott pulled out a smaller, tightly bound package from her rucksack and tucked it behind the boulder. "If you really need to know, it was put here by the Coprolites — we trade with them." She pointed at the boulder. "I've just left them some of the orbs you filched from the Miners' Train."
"Oh," Will said, not about to complain.
"They're totally reliant on the orbs. The food's not that important to us, but we try to help them whenever we can." She looked rather scathingly at Will. "After what's been happening around here, they could do with all the help they can get."
Will nodded, but he found it difficult to believe he was responsible for what the Styx were doing to the Coprolites and shrugged off the barbed comment. He was beginning to think that he was being blamed for everything that went wrong.
Elliott twisted away from him.
"We're going back," she said, and together they moved off in the direction they had come from, toward the oval runnel again.
The journey home went without incident. They stopped while Elliott gathered up the cave oyster — it was still where she had propped it. Its single stumpy leg had evidently been working overtime, whipping around as it had tried to right itself, producing a disgusting white lather that overflowed from the shell in large gobs. But this didn't put off Elliott. She wound a piece of cloth around the bulky shell and stowed it in her satchel. While she was doing this, Will watched her face through his scope. It was grim and unsmiling. Very different from how it had appeared only hours before.
He regretted his outburst. He knew he shouldn't have said what he had to her. He'd made a stupid, arrogant error and wondered how he could patch things up. He chewed the inside of his mouth with frustration, trying to think of something to say. Then, without a word or even a glance at him, Elliott waded into the water of the sump and was gone. He regarded the lapping water, the film of dust swirling in antagonistic circles from her passage through it, and felt as if he might cry. But instead he took a deep breath and followed after her, actually grateful to be totally immersed in the dark, warm water. It was as if it might clear his mind of his troubles.
As he scrambled out of the water, wiping it from his face, he felt somehow refreshed. The moment his eyes fell on Elliott as she waited for him in the golden chamber, the frustration and confusion returned.
He just didn't understand girls — they were completely unfathomable as far as he was concerned. They seemed to say only some of what they were thinking, then they'd clam up, hiding behind a sultry silence and not saying the part that really mattered. In the past, when he'd put his foot in his mouth with girls at school, he'd tried to fix it by apologizing for whatever he'd done to offend, but by then it always seemed like they didn't want to hear it.
He glanced at Elliott's back and sighed. Oh well, he'd made a pig's ear out of it all, again. What a bloody idiot he'd been. He tried to console himself with the thought that he didn't have to stay with her, or Drake, forever. His single purpose in life remained to find his father. All this was only temporary.
Their water-soaked boots squelched loudly in an otherwise stony silence. They arrived back at the entrance to the base and climbed the rope. There was a stillness in the rooms, and Will assumed Cal had tired of his exercise and gone to sleep.
In the corridor, Elliott thrust her open hand toward him, her eyes averted. He cleared his throat uneasily, not knowing what she wanted, and then suddenly realized she was asking for the return of her scope. He pulled his arm from the loops. She grabbed it from him, but then thrust her hand out again. After an uncomfortable moment, he remembered the pad of stove guns tied to his thigh, and fumbled at the knot to undo it. She snatched this from him, too, then flicked her head around and was gone. He stood there, dripping water into the dust and struggling with a disorder of isolation and regret.
In the weeks that followed, not once did Will again accompany Elliott. What made it worse was that she seemed to be inviting Chester to go with increasing frequency on her "routine" reconnaissance patrols. While Will and Chester never spoke of this, Will would catch glimpses of his friend chatting with Elliott out in the corridor, the two of them whispering together, and felt a sickening pang that he was being left out. Much as he tried to suppress it, he also felt a mounting resentment of his friend. He said to himself that Elliott should be teaching him, not bumbling old Chester. But there was nothing he could do about it.
Will found he had time on his hands. He no longer needed to tend to his brother, who had progressed from the constant laps of their room and the corridor to the tunnel just outside the base. Here he marched up and down, albeit still with the aid of the walking stick. So, to fill the hours, Will either tried to update his journal or just lay on his bed, mulling over their situation.
He realized, possibly a little late, that even in this roughest and most hostile of environments, where you had to do whatever was necessary, however rank and disgusting it might be, consideration for your friends was still paramount. This consideration, this code of behavior, was the glue that held the team together. You did not doubt Drake's or Elliott's judgment. You did not question their orders. You did exactly as they told you, because it was for your own good, and theirs.