Something was very wrong within the narrow stone tunnels and sprawling caverns, and Connell's instincts told him it was only going to get worse.
Mack moved in a half crouch, helmeted head scraping lightly against the stone ceiling. They were exploring the last of the tunnels that led from the chasm where Jansson had disappeared. Mack's anger accompanied his exhaustion — they were running out of places to look.
"How you holding up, Mr. Hendricks?” Lybrand asked. She always stayed only a step behind him, surprisingly agile in the narrow tunnels. Fritz and two more miners followed Lybrand.
"No worries,” Mack said, but in truth his thoughts held nothing but worries.
click-click… click
"Hey,” Mack said. “Did you hear that?"
"I did,” Lybrand said. “What is it?"
Up ahead, something moved.
Mack's anger instantly vanished, a blank stare replacing his focused thought process. What he saw railed against all he knew. They were well over two miles underground, for crying out loud. No animals lived that deep.
But he'd seen it. He'd seen something move.
Something that wasn't human.
The word spider popped into his head, although he didn't have time to count the legs. He'd only seen it for all of a second, maybe two, as it darted through the circle of light cast by his headlamp. It flashed in the light, leaving a definite impression of metal. A two-foot-long, shiny spider.
"Did you see that?” He asked Lybrand, who stood rigidly with her H&K pointed down the tunnel.
"Yes,” she whispered. “What the fuck was it?"
"You got me, mate."
"I saw it, too,” Fritz said. “Looked like a big silver bug."
The group stood rock-still. They crouched over slightly at the waist; the ceiling wasn't quite high enough to allow them to stand, not quite low enough to force a crawl. The tunnel suddenly seemed darker, more enclosed — like a trap.
A sudden burst of walkie-talkie static made them all jump.
"Lybrand here,” she said into the handset.
"This is O'Doyle,” the other voice called. “Report back to the cavern immediately.” He sounded scratchy, faint, and full of static. The walkie-talkies had a pitifully short range in the tunnels.
"Any sign of Jansson?” she asked.
"Not yet. Report back immediately. The second the elevator touches down, you send everybody back up, including Bill Cook, and have them send the elevator back down the second they reach the surface. You guard the elevator shaft. We'll catch up to you a few minutes before it touches down again."
"Got it,” Lybrand said, then put the walkie-talkie back in her belt. “Okay everyone, we're out of here, let's move."
"But we haven't found Jansson,” Fritz said. “We can't just leave! What about those silver bug things?"
Lybrand nodded. “I don't know what those are, but we've been ordered out, so let's move. There's some danger down here, Fritz. I'm sure we're coming back down later."
Part of Mack wanted to support Fritz, argue to stay down and continue the search for Jansson. Another part of him, a much stronger part, wanted to get the hell out of there. Things weren't supposed to be able to live down here. Even if they were, he doubted they looked like spiders.
Two-foot-long, shiny spiders.
Mack turned his crew around and they headed back for the cavern, much faster than they'd come.
While O'Doyle gave his orders, Veronica and Sanji walked along the Picture Cavern's far edge, an amazed Lashon in tow.
"Let me get this straight,” Lashon said in his deep baritone voice. “You're saying that this room is one big textbook?"
"I think so,” Veronica said. She looked about the room, wondering why she hadn't seen it immediately. The ten-by-ten relief carvings covered the majority of the Picture Cavern's space. Thousands of them tiled the walls with even rows of perfect illustrations. A juniper tree here. A tribesman with a spear there. Cactus. Grasshoppers. Tentacle gods. Mountains. A wolf. A bow. Arrows flying. Everything that could possibly make up life in this area of the world was represented in one place or another along the walls.
Sanji stared dumbly. “Oh my goodness. This isn't religious at all. This is a classroom."
"So it seems,” Veronica said. “We are very deep in the mountain, after all, and we can only assume that the culture somehow lived down here. We know their visits to the surface were limited — some of them possibly never saw the surface at all. It's possible they used these carvings to teach their children what things looked like up on the surface."
"But how did they live down here?” Sanji asked. “It's 170 degrees Fahrenheit. We can only tolerate this temperature with the KoolSuits. You are suggesting that people lived their entire lives down here?"
"Maybe the climate was different,” Veronica said. “Maybe thousands of years ago it wasn't this hot at all. Is it possible they had some genetic or dietary way to deal with the temperature? Eskimos have so much blubber in their diet they build up huge body-fat percentages; it helps them tolerate very cold temperatures. Maybe the Chaltelians had a similar adaptive strategy."
"If it is dietary, what do they eat?” Sanji asked. “It would have to be something not yet seen. If it was genetic, they would be radically different from any human we've seen, but it is possible they have some mutation that would have allowed them to tolerate such high temperatures. Doubtful, but still a possibility. Such a mutation would have allowed them to exploit this environmental niche."
Veronica stared at the carvings. The pictures were starting to take shape in her mind, adding to her understanding. “It looks as if they read right to left, and bottom to top.” She touched a tile representing a tentacle god. Her fingers cast strange shadows from the light of her helmet-lamp, making the tentacle god seem to wriggle with life.
"I think they read via groupings,” Sanji said. “Like we use sentences to convey one idea, they use groups."
"What do you mean?"
"See this tiny, patterned line around this set of four pictures?” Sanji said, pointing to the wall. Veronica's eyes widened as she registered the many patterned lines connecting the boxes into various groups.
"Yes, you see it now,” Sanji said with a smile. “These grouped pictures tell a complicated little story. Look at the first picture.” Sanji pointed to a tentacle god standing at the mouth of a cave. “See the clouds? Anytime they wanted to represent the surface, they put in clouds. Now see the next picture?” He pointed one carving to the left, a beautiful work showing a tautly muscled tribesman carrying a spear. Veronica followed the next group to the left — the tribesman plunging the spear into a tentacle god. The next picture disturbed her greatly; three tentacle gods holding the distinct crescent knives, hacking away at the tribesman, cutting him to pieces.
"Looks like they're some bad motherfuckers,” Lashon said.
Veronica absently rubbed her chin. “So this is a story of what happens if you go against the tentacle gods’ will."
All three headlamp beams illuminated the second to last picture. They could see the detail; a severed hand flying through the air, tentacle gods wielding the crescent-knives, the expression of pain and horror on the tribesman's face. The last tile showed the tentacle gods burying the tribesman's remains. Veronica felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach.
"It's a punishment,” Veronica said. “What they did to the miners and what they did at Cerro Chaltel. It's their religion. Someone transgresses against the tribe, the tribe slaughters the transgressor. They hack them to bits, then bury them. The tribesmen acted out the will of their gods.” She felt sick with discovery. A piece of the puzzle she'd labored on for five years was finally answered — she now knew why the tribes wreaked such havoc.