"My God, it's beautiful," whispered Elizabeth's alternate. Her voice had lost that grating little-girlish chirp, and she seemed to be back, as though this magnificent space had somehow released her from madness. "It makes you want to pray…,
At that moment the torch leaped into a final flicker and went out at last. Perhaps praying wasn't such a bad idea, Elizabeth thought, gasping with shock. She wasn't afraid of the dark, never had been, but this darkness, native to a place that never had seen sunlight, was different.
It wasn't… dark.
The chamber was glowing. Swirls of brightness wreathed the pillars, up and up, until they dissolved in a shining haze high above her head. They flowed up the walls and meandered across the floor like an unearthly meadow of flowers. Their sheen reminded her of bioluminescence, but that wasn't quite right, was it? This was more brilliant, and the color was subtly different.
"Somebody please tell me it's not just me," murmured John. "We're all seeing this, right'?"
"Oh yeah." Major Sheppard dropped the remains of the torch. It struck the floor in a burst of clatter that echoed and amplified through the cathedral's vault until it sounded like an avalanche. "Sorry," he said when the racket had died down.
"Don't do that again!" John ground out, grimacing.
"Don't worry. I'm fresh out of torches." The Major had moved over to a pillar and was picking at the crystals. "Whatever it is, it looks valuable," he observed at last and dryly added, "We're rich."
Elizabeth had a sudden, delicious vision of scraping a handful of crystals from the walls and hitting the nearest drive-through. Five double cheeseburgers with everything… provided there still were any drive-throughs in existence somewhere in the universe. Then something odd she'd been noticing all along pushed its way into the forefront of her consciousness and the appetizing cheeseburger vision popped like a soap bubble.
"Look!" She pointed at several patches of black nothingness that broke up the luminous display at irregular intervals all around the cathedral.
"Tunnels," John said. "Obviously crystal-free."
"Not all of them," Elizabeth's alternate piped up.
At the far end of the rock cathedral opened an area where the glow receded into the distance, almost as if it were beckoning them to follow.
"Well, I guess that takes the choice out of where we're going."
A little grudgingly, John began to herd them all toward the lit tunnel. Elizabeth understood his reluctance. Maybe it wasn't entirely rational, but she shared his suspicion of things that seemed to be too good to be true. As if to prove her point, the tunnel was wide, downright comfortable, its floor and walls rounded and surprisingly smooth, which definitely made a change from the rough passages and fissures they'd encountered so far.
"It almost looks manmade," she murmured, already fearing it wasn't. The softer rock was ground away around the crystals, leaving them to protrude like tiny nubs and spikes.
"Uhuh." Absently running his hand over the surface, John shot her a sideways glance. It told her that he knew as well as she that they were looking at water erosion. "I'd suggest we keep moving. Fast."
The tunnel sloped gently uphill, which was the good news. The bad news was that half an hour in they encountered the first signs of recent flooding. If she'd seen it on a beach somewhere, she'd have called it a tide pool. In a niche in the wall a patch of limestone had been eddied out by time and water to form a deep, perfectly round bowl. The water inside shimmered lime green, reflecting the sheen of the crystals and stirred by the flitting shapes of blind, unpigmented fish.
As they moved on they found a second pool, then a third, and then the first rivulets came trickling toward them. The rivulets soon merged into creeks; the river was about to pay a return visit. Eventually they were staggering shin deep through chilly water, barely able to feel their feet and fighting for balance.
Major Sheppard, who was setting the pace, finally signaled a halt and turned around. "You think we should go back?"
"And then what?" If John had actually tried to keep his teeth from rattling, he'd failed spectacularly. "Sit in the dark until we starve instead of drown or freeze to death?"
"Maybe we can wait out the flood. What do you think, Elizabeth?"
She'd barely opened her mouth when her alternate took a tentative step forward. "No," said the other Elizabeth. It came out like a croak, and she cleared her throat, preempting any interruption with an impatient shake of the head, as if she knew full well that they wouldn't be inclined to listen to her. "No," she repeated more firmly. "We have to keep going. If we turn back, we'll all die."
The phrasing took Elizabeth aback, reminded her of old tales of mad seers, prophets who went unheard. But, paradoxically, for the first time since she'd met her twin, the older woman's eyes were clear and she seemed perfectly lucid. Elizabeth's decision, when it came, was based on gut instinct alone; not a rational argument in sight, which was wildly out of character. The only explanation she could have given was that she knew herself, and that other woman, insane or not, was herself. "We carry on," she said. "She's right."
John blinked. "Come again?"
"You heard me… us," she amended with a quick glance at her double. "Keep going."
"Yes." Major Sheppard was looking at Elizabeth's alternate as though he'd never seen her before. "Yes. She's right."
The older Elizabeth smiled at him gratefully. "Thank you."
"Okay." It sounded a little uncertain, as if John basically agreed but didn't quite trust the process that had brought the majority to their decision. "Move Put."_
A half kilometer or so further into the tunnel, the water ran knee-high and there was a noticeable current now, even though the ground had leveled out for the time being. Too exhausted to waste any energy on talk, they were walking-wading-each wrapped in their own thoughts, the silence broken only by the sloshing of water and ragged breathing. Without warning Major Sheppard stopped again.
"Listen!" he whispered. "You hear that?"
The sound wasn't unlike a train thundering past at night or trees shaking in a November storm-or a waterfall. The distortion of the echo made it impossible to tell how far away it was, but Elizabeth suspected that it was close and that it would be big. And whatever else it might mean for them, getting to that waterfall was a goal now, at least in the short term. Who knew? There might even be a passage to the surface. Together with a herd of flying pigs..
They plodded on and within minutes reached what had to be the summit of the tunnel. After that the ground fell off as rapidly as the roar of the waterfall increased in volume. The current ran uphill now, which explained why it remained moderate. It didn't make the going any easier, though. As the water crept up to their thighs, their hips, waists, and finally to their chests, they linked hands, forming a chain to steady each other.
"How's your leg, Junior?" John asked under his breath.
"Still attached. It's too cold to feel it," grunted Major Sheppard. "How's your head?"
"Still attached. I'm thinking of diving for a while "
Good Lord! As though one of them wasn't bad enough..
Elizabeth grinned despite herself, vaguely relieved that she still could, because most of her body felt frozen solid by now. She'd all but lost sensation below her knees, and the rest wasn't far behind. If they didn't reach a ledge or some other reasonably dry place in short order, they'd die of hypothermia.