He wanted more!
The hole shown on the map… what could it be? All the routes wouldn't converge there, it wouldn't be so prominent in the ancient temple's triptych, if it was just some geological feature!
He halted on the path, muttering animatedly as he began to point in the air at an imaginary blackboard.
"Great Plain," he announced, pointing at the left of the blackboard with a thrust of his hand as if he was addressing a lecture hall full of students. He swung his other arm up to the right, outlining a ring in the air with his light. "Big hole… here," he said, jabbing repeatedly into its center. "What are you, mystery hole?"
He lowered his arms to his sides, exhaling through his tea-stained teeth. Yes, that hole had to be important.
The triptych flashed before him. There was a message in those three panels. And he needed to recall the last letters of the inscription so that he could complete the translation and put the whole thing together. But it remained just out of his grasp!
He sighed.
He had to get to the hole and find out for himself.
Maybe it was what he was yearning for… a way down.
Maybe there was still hope.
He started off again with a burst of enthusiasm.
About twenty minutes into his new journey, Dr. Burrows heard a scratchy noise ahead of him and immediately looked up.
The noise came again, clearer.
Within seconds his light revealed that two forms were gliding toward him on the path.
He couldn't quite believe what he was seeing — two people walking together.
As they drew closer, he saw that it was a pair of Styx: the soldiers known as Limiters, from the look of their long coats, rifles, and backpacks. He'd seen a couple of them before at the Miners' Station when he'd first gotten off the train. The scratchy noise was their voices.
He couldn't believe his luck. He hadn't so much as glimpsed a single living soul for days and thought how bizarre it was to bump into another human being down here, never mind two, in this network of thousands of miles of passageways and interlinking caverns. What were the chances?
When they were no more than fifteen feet from him, he hailed them, calling out "Hello!" in an expectant, friendly voice.
One of them glanced at him, with ice-cold eyes and a face devoid of expression, but there was no effort at any sort of acknowledgment. The other soldier didn't even raise his eyes from the path ahead of him. The two of them continued marching purposefully and talking to each other, not paying him any heed whatsoever as they moved on.
Dr. Burrows was flummoxed but didn't stop, either. Their total lack of interest made him feel like a street beggar who'd had the effrontery to ask a couple of businessmen for money. He couldn't believe it!
"Oh, well, suit yourself," he said with a shrug, turning his thoughts back to more important matters.
"Where are you, what are you, hole in the ground?" he inquired of the silent menhirs around him, his mind again churning with endless theories.
43
"Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!" Chester called as he and Will pulled the oars. Chester had said he'd done some rowing with his father, and Elliott had let him take control the moment they'd clambered into the rickety-looking boat. In fact, boat was to grandiose a word for the canoe-cum-coracle, which had creaked ominously as they all climbed aboard. It was about fourteen feet long and had a wooden frame over which a hidelike material was stretched and stitched.
It clearly hadn't been designed to carry four passengers, particularly to with all their gear. Scrunched up in the prow of the boat, Cal grumbled quietly to himself as he tried to nurse his bad leg. He was attempting to position himself so he could straighten it out, which was nigh on impossible with Will pressed so close by.
"Oi! Watch it! There's no way I can row if you keep dong that!" Will protested when Cal dug into his back yet again as he shifted himself around. Cal finally found that the optimum position was for him to lie in the bottom of the boat with his head crammed into the V of the prow — by doing this, he could hook his bad leg up on the side and extend it fully.
"This ain't some pleasure cruise, you know!" Will joked in between breaths when he caught the curious sight of a foot sticking up in the air from the corner of his eye.
"Stroke… str— concentrate, Will!" Chester ordered as he endeavored to get his friend to row in time with him. It quickly became evident that Chester didn't really know what he was doing, either, despite his earlier claims. All too often his oars skimmed ineffectually over the surface with a spray of water.
"Where did you say you learned to do this?" Will asked.
"Wilderness camp," Chester admitted.
"You're kidding!" Will exclaimed.
"Shaddup, will you?" Chester retorted with a broad smile.
Their syncopation was chaotic, to say the least, but Will decided that traveling by boat had to be the best way to get around. The physical exertion from the rowing was blowing the cobwebs from his mind; he felt more clearheaded than he had in days. And the light breeze gusting over the water was just enough to whisk the perspiration from his brow as he heaved on the oars. He felt invigorated.
They seemed to be making good time, although Will couldn't see that shore — or anything else, for that matter — to judge how fast they were going. The endless darkness and the invisible stretch of water all around them were a little daunting; the only light was from Chester's lantern, dimmed to its lowest setting, in the bottom of the boat.
Perched at the helm, Elliott, true to form, watched alertly behind them, although the island had long since been shrouded from view. Facing her as they rowed, Will and Chester were just about able to make out her dim silhouette. They were waiting for her to issue instructions, but it seemed like an interminably long time before she spoke.
She suddenly told them to stop, and Will and Chester rested the oars, although the boat seemed to coast along surprisingly quickly by itself, as if caught in a powerful current. Will hung his head over the side — he could see faint, indistinct shapes deep within the water. They appeared to intensify and then fade away just as fast. Some were small and darted rapidly, while others, more substantial forms, moved ponderously and gave off a much stronger light.
As he watched with rapt fascination, the broad, flattened face of a fish, maybe as much as a foot and a half across from gill to gill, bobbed up just below the surface. Between its large eyes there was a long stalk, which had at its tip an greenish, pulsating light. Its mouth gaped open to release a gush of bubbles, closed again, and then the fish submerged. With a frisson of excitement, Will immediately spotted the resemblance to anglerfish, which inhabit the deep recesses of Topsoil oceans. There must be a whole ecosystem hidden under these waves, he thought. Living creatures that generate their own light!
Much as the fish had just done, he opened his mouth to say something to the others about his discovery when he was silenced by a tiny splash, like a stone hitting the water, perhaps some fifty feet off the port side.
"It starts," Elliott whispered cryptically.
A distant bang followed, maybe as much as a second later. More of these splashes and subsequent bangs ensued, but they were too far away for Will to see what was causing them.
"Now would be a good time to turn off that light," Elliott suggested.