The guard was an ANZAC commando from Perth, a gung-ho Aussie patriot who was nonetheless solicitous and rather sweet. When she asked if it was possible to have some food sent down, he said he would try.
Her bags were in her old room… retrieved from the car and no doubt inspected for good measure. She collapsed onto the same cot she’d awakened in that morning and mumbled a command to put the lights out. Curled up in a ball, clutching a blanket to her breast, Teresa did not feel “home” in any way at all.
In fitful slumber she dreamt the death of stars.
Her old friends. Her guideposts. One by one they flickered out, each with a cry of anguish and despair. Every sigh she echoed in her pillow with a moan.
Something was killing them. Killing the stars.
Poor Jason, she thought in the strange, mixed illogic of sleep. By the time he reaches Spica it’ll be gone. Nothing but black, empty holes. And he so enjoys the light.
Dreams move on. Now she looked out through the bars of a dungeon, across a dark, glassy-smooth sea, barren of reflections. As she watched, the water acquired a faint luminance… a pearly glow that suffused not from above but within. The radiance grew as steam rose; then roiling bubbles burst from a mounting bulge.
The sun rose out of the ocean.
Not the horizon — but the ocean itself. Too brilliant to see, it cast fierce light through her outstretched hand, tracing the contours of her bones. The blazing orb speared upward on a column of superheated vapor. In its wake, mammoth waves rolled across the once-placid sea.
Those water mountains were higher than her prison and heading her way. Yet she didn’t care. Even half blinded, she could trace the fireball’s trajectory and knew with dreadful certainty, It isn’t going away after all. It’s coming back. Coming back to stay.
Perhaps it was that dreaded thought that stirred her from the nightmare. Or maybe the creepy feeling that someone was treading softly toward her, across the floor of her tiny quarters. Teresa’s eyes snapped open, though she was still snared by sleep catalepsy and by her mother’s reassuring words.
“Shhh… you only imagined it. There are no monsters. There’s never anybody there.”
A foot collided with the dinner tray, left by the kindly commando. Teresa heard a sharp intake of breath. Momma, Teresa thought, as her heart raced and her right hand formed a fist, you had no idea what you were talking about.
“Shhh,” somebody said, not a meter away. “Don’t speak.”
She stared at two white blobs… a pair of eyes, presumably. Teresa swallowed and tried not to let adrenaline rule her. “Wh… who is it?”
A hand settled gently, briefly over her mouth, hushing her without force. “It’s Alex Lustig… Do you want to get out of here?”
Why is it, she wondered, that your eyes never completely dark-adapt while you sleep? Only now, staring into the dimness, did she begin making out the man’s features.
“But… how?”
He smiled. A Cheshire Cat smile. “George slipped me a map. He’s staying with the others. Going to try cooperating with Spivey. You and I, though… we’ve got to leave.”
“Why you?” She asked hoarsely. “You were in pig heaven, last I looked.”
He shrugged. “I’ll explain later, if we make it. Right now there’s a coffee break going on, and we’ve maybe fifteen minutes till I’m missed. You coming?”
Teresa answered with action, flinging off the covers and reaching for her shoes.
The Australian was no longer on watch by her door. Instead, a tall, powerful Maori, with permanent-looking cheek tattoos and battle ribbons on his uniform, stood with his back against the opposite wall, his mouth half open in a pleasant leer. At first Teresa wondered if the Kiwi soldier had been won over to their side. Then she saw his glassy look, like a dazer, high on a self-induced enkephalin rush. Only, a dazer wouldn’t be a commando. Somehow, Lustig must have drugged him.
“Choline inhibitors. He won’t remember a thing,” Alex explained. He led her down silent, rock-walled corridors. Each time they approached a door, he referred to a small box before giving the okay to proceed. At last they arrived at the secret quay, where two small boats bobbed in the still, cool waters of Waitomo’s underground lake.
“Won’t the exits be watched?” she asked. It wouldn’t require human guards — just tiny drones, about the size of a housefly.
“This area was swept a few minutes ago. Anyway, nobody but George knows the route we’ll be taking.”
Teresa wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. But there wasn’t much choice. She climbed into the lead boat and cast off as Alex began hauling at the network of ropes lacing the ceiling overhead. As they neared the big doors, the dock lights shut off, plunging them into darkness. The gates rolled aside with a low rumble. Alex grunted, feeling his way from one guide cable to the next. She heard him softly counting, perhaps reciting a mnemonic.
“Are you sure you know what you’re—”
He cut her off. “If you want to go back, you know the way.”
Teresa shut up. Anyway, soon they were under the false constellations again — those parodies of starlight used by phosphorescent worms to lure their hapless prey. Each vista pretended to show unexplored clusters, galaxies… a promise of infinity.
Perhaps all our modern astronomy is wrong, she pondered, gazing across the ersatz starfields. Maybe the “real” constellations are just like those green dots. No more than lures to bait the unwary.
She shook her head as the ceiling slid slowly past, carrying with it whole implied universes. That was the problem with nightmares, they clung to you, affecting your mood for hours afterwards. Teresa couldn’t afford that now. Nor even settling into “passenger” mode. Action was the proper antidote. She whispered. “Can I help?”
The boat glided smoothly through the water. “Not yet…” Alex panted as he groped for something up ahead, almost tipping them over in the process. Teresa gripped the rocking sides. “Ah. Here it is. George’s special rope. From here we leave the main cave.”
Their craft made a sharp turn, scraping by towers of inky blackness and then embarking under new, unfamiliar skyscapes. A little while later Alex spoke again, now short of breath. “All right. If you take my hand, I’ll help you stand… carefully! Let me guide you to the cable… Got it? Now that there aren’t other ropes about to confuse you, I could use some assistance. Put an elbow on my shoulder to feel my rhythm. Keep to an easy pace at first. Let me know the instant you feel any motion sickness.”
Teresa forbore telling him her entire life had been a battle with vertigo. “Lay on, Macduff,” she whispered with an effort at cheerfulness.
“And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’ ” he finished the quotation. “We’re off.”
Trying to stand in a swaying boat while dragging on a cable overhead in total darkness — it wasn’t exactly the easiest thing Teresa had ever attempted. She almost fell over the first few times. But leaning against him made it easier. They could brace each other on four legs. Soon they were breathing in the same cadence, gliding across the smooth pond with hardly a sound and only the green sprinkle overhead to give the cave walls outlines.
Soon those walls were closing in again, she could tell. The darkness and silence seemed to accentuate her other senses, and she was acutely aware of every faint drip of condensation, every aroma rising from her clothes and his.
The boat bumped once, twice, and then went aground on a rocky bank. “Okay,” he said. “Carefully, crouch down and help me feel for the bag of supplies.”