As they descended, he used a beam to point out features of the grottoes, carved over thousands of years by patient underground streams, then embellished with fluted limestone apses by centuries of slow seepage. In places the ceiling gave way to shafts and chimneys that towered out of sight or dropped into total blackness, lined with soda-straw draperies and crystalline, branchlike helicites. Curling galleries curved out of view, hinting at an interminable maze that would surely swallow anyone foolish enough to leave the wooden walkway.
It was, indeed, quite beautiful. Still, Teresa felt little true surprise or awe. It was all too familiar from prior exposure on TV or in net-zines. She nodded familiarly at stalactites and stalagmites, acquaintances already encountered in the past by proxy. Rather than eerie or strange, they were neighbors she had learned a lot about over the years, long before ever meeting them in person.
The good side of the world media village was the sense it gave ten billion that each of them had at least some small connection with the whole. The bad side was that no one ever encountered anything, anymore, that was completely new.
Perhaps that was why I became an astronaut, in hopes of someday seeing some special place before the cameras got there.
If so, lots of luck. The vast mountain ranges of the moon were still unclimbed. And at present rate, they probably never would be. Likewise the steep canyons, ice sheets, and red vistas of Mars.
Teresa scanned craggy terraces, shaped over millennia by the slow drip-dripping of carbonate-rich water. No doubt she and Pedro were already being watched by Alex Lustig’s mysterious organization. Their instructions had been to keep to the rear. If Pedro knew anything more, he hadn’t told her.
“Now we’ll be going down another set of stairs,” their guide announced. “Hold onto the rail because the lights grow dimmer, to let our eyes adapt for the Grand Cave.”
The visitors’ voices grew hushed as they descended plank steps, put there to protect the limestone floor from the erosive rub of countless feet. Once, Teresa caught a white flash of teeth as Manella turned to grin at her. She ignored him, pretending not to see.
Soon it was hardly pretense. Colliding with Pedro’s broad back was her first warning the descent had ended. Whispers diminished to an occasional giggle as people bumped awkwardly. A cough. A faint, familiar hiss as someone in the crowd took oxygen from a hip flask, followed by a mumbled apology.
Listening carefully, Teresa made out rhythmic thumping sounds and a faint splash. The tour leader spoke from somewhere to her left. “We’ll divide the group now and continue by water. Each boat will have a guide, standing in the prow, who will pull you along by hauling on ropes arrayed along the ceiling.”
As her eyes adapted, Teresa soon made out smudges here and there — the edge of the dock and several small vessels moored alongside, with a man’s or woman’s silhouette at the bow. She even thought she could trace a webbery of cables draped across the rock overhead.
“Interesting mode of transport,” Pedro commented as they watched the first boat depart. More tourists were helped into the next one and the queue moved forward.
“As each boat rounds the bend ahead,” the chief guide continued. “You’ll leave behind the last illumination. Your pilot will be operating by memory and touch alone. But don’t worry, we only lose one or two boatloads a year.”
A poor joke, but it touched off nervous titters.
“A few more turns and you’ll arrive at the main grotto, where our famous worms will perform their unique show for you — the centerpiece of Waitomo Caves. Then, by another route, you’ll be returned here to the landing. We hope you enjoy your visit to the wonder of the Waikato.”
Some wonder. So far Teresa hadn’t seen anything particularly impressive. Much bigger caves were regularly featured on the National Geographic net-zine.
The tourists just ahead of them boarded a boat. There was room remaining at the back, but their guide held out a hand to stop Manella. “You, sir, look just a bit heavy to add here. I’ll take you two in the last one myself.”
As Pedro sniffed indignantly, the guide helped them into the final boat. Then he moved to the bow and cast off. The dim remaining light disappeared behind them as he pulled the ceiling-spanning ropes hand over hand and they passed around a bend into pitch darkness.
Teresa tried using biofeedback to speed her adaptation to the dark and found it disconcerting how little training helped. You couldn’t amplify what doesn’t exist.
By now there were no signs of the other boats. They might have drifted over a cliff, for all Teresa knew. Or perhaps some stealthy monster waited just ahead, plucking each group silently and swiftly from their stygian barges.
The waters were chill to her fingertips when she dragged them alongside. They also seemed to have a faint oily quality. Bringing a few drops to her lips, she tasted minerals. It wasn’t unpleasant though. The underground river was slow but clear and fresh. It tasted timeless.
“Some years the water rises too high to let boats pass,” the guide told them in a soft voice. “And during droughts they can be stranded.”
“Are there eyeless fish, down here?” Teresa asked.
The native’s low, disembodied laughter seemed to dance along the sculpted rocks. “Of course! What sort of buried river would this be without such? They live on seeds, pollen, and insect larvae carried down here from ki waho, the outside world. Some of those larvae survive to become flies, which in turn feed…”
Teresa grabbed the gunnels quickly as she sensed something massive approach from the left — moments before their boat grated against rock, tipping slightly. “Just a second,” the voice told them. “I have to step out to guide us around this column. Hold on.”
She traced the faint scrape of a boot on a sandy bank. Without any sight at all, not even the dark eclipse of Manella in front of her, she sensed only vague movement as their vessel scoured along a limestone verge and then emerged round a corner into a starry night.
Teresa gasped. Stars? Sudden disorientation left her staring at the brilliant vault overhead, amazed.
But it was early afternoon when we arrived. How ?
Automatically, she sought her friends, the familiar constellations, and recognized none of them. Everything had changed! It was as if she’d passed through some science fictional device, to a world in some distant galaxy. The swirl of stellar clusters arced overhead in vast, regal, and totally alien splendor.
Teresa blinked, suffering from acuity of senses. Hearing told her she was underground. Her internal gyroscope said she was less than two kilometers from the car. And yet the clinquant stars screamed of open sky. She shook her head. Wrong. Wrong. Readjust. Don’t make assumptions!
All this happened in a narrow instant, the time it took for her to notice that every one of these “stars” shone the same exact shade of bright green. In half a second Teresa settled the sensory clash, seeing how this artful hoax was perpetrated.
The boat rocked as a figure occulted the false constellations, stepping back into the bow. The guide’s silhouette eclipsed bright pinpoints as he hauled away at a line of blackness overhead. “Our cave worms make their homes along the roof,” his voice echoed softly. “They produce a phosphorescence that lures newly hatched flies and other insects whose eggs and larvae were swept here from the outside world. The bright spots lead those insects not outside, not back into Te Ao-marama, but onto sticky snares.”
Something was wrong. Teresa sat forward. She whispered. “Pedro, his voice…”
With uncanny accuracy, Manella grabbed her hand and squeezed for silence. Teresa tensed briefly, then forced herself to relax. This must be part of the plan. With effort she sat back and made the best of the situation. There was nothing else to do, anyway.