Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  “Really? So soon?” Dr. Burrows mumbled, as he continued to work on a sketch.

  “My arm’s acting up a bit,” Will added, although the injury from the Limiter’s spear had long since healed.

  “Going back to see Elliott?” Dr. Burrows asked, a knowing tone to his voice.

  Will ignored this, raising his eyes to the ever-burning sun. “I just don’t want to overdo it again,” he said, adjusting the wide-brimmed hat that Elliott had fashioned for him from animal hide.

  He and his father were on the side of the pyramid, and while the hat afforded his face a measure of protection from the direct sun, he still had to be careful about the reflected rays in their exposed position.

  “No, quite,” Dr. Burrows finally answered, looking up from his work.

  Will rubbed his eyes and blinked several times. “Of all the places we could have ended up, this one is an albino’s worst nightmare. Dad, do you think next time you could find us a world with a few more clouds?” he asked with a smile.

  “I’ll see what I can do. Off you go if you want to,” Dr. Burrows replied glumly. He depended on his son’s support for the mammoth task of recording the inscriptions and the scenes depicted on each of the tiers of the pyramid. It was all written in one of the languages on the Burrows Stone, and little by little he was deciphering it. He and Will had started at the base of the pyramid and were methodically working their way to the top, knowing they had another two pyramids to tackle that they hadn’t even visited yet.

  “I’ll see you back at the camp, Dad,” Will said.

  “Yes …,” Dr. Burrows murmured. He watched his son make his way down the successive tiers to the ground, leaping distances that would be unthinkable in the Topsoil world. Then Dr. Burrows resumed his work on a numerical sequence, which was making no sense to him at all.

  After a while his concentration was broken by a distant droning. He immediately dismissed it as the wind, telling himself it was another of the violent storms, of which there were many. It sounded as if it was too far away to be a concern, so there was no need to get himself under cover. But then he heard the noise again, louder this time, and it didn’t sound anything like the wind. He wiped his brow, then rose to his feet to study the sky.

  He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but he realized he wasn’t in the best position, so he vaulted up the tiers until he reached the very top of the pyramid. There he walked across the level plateau of stone, passing the radio beacon that Will had left the very first time they’d climbed it.

  “What a view,” Dr. Burrows sighed, never failing to be impressed, no matter how many times he saw it. From this elevated position, he was a considerable way above the canopy of the rain forest, which stretched out before him like some rolling green sea, broken only by the tops of the other pyramids.

  “Where’s the storm?” he said to himself, not seeing any clouds as he scanned the horizon on each side.

  Instead he spotted something in the distance.

  Stepping slowly across to the other side of the pyramid, he shielded his eyes with his hand as he tried to make out what it was.

  “What in earth is that?”

  Something was moving across the clear white sky.

  Something that, as he looked further, was terribly familiar.

  He reeled, nearly losing his footing at the edge of the pyramid.

  And as it changed direction and began to come toward the pyramid, Dr. Burrows could clearly hear the whine of its single prop engine.

  “An airplane? Here?” he said soundlessly.

  As he strained to see more, he wished he’d brought his binoculars with him.

  But there was no doubt.

  It was an airplane.

  And, yes, it was strangely familiar.

  He recognized the W shape of the wings. It was still some distance away, but as it tipped into a full dive, he could hear the howl of the siren on the aircraft, issuing one of the most distinctive and most feared sounds of the Second World War.

  “A German bomber,” Dr. Burrows gasped, nearly losing his footing again. “A Stuka!”

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  ROTOR, as Will and Dr. Burrows spotted on the map in the radio operator’s booth, was an extensive air defense radar system built in the 1950s by the British Government on sixty-six sites in response to the perceived threat from the Soviet Union. It is not an acronym, which just goes to show that Dr. Burrows doesn’t know everything (even if he correctly identified the Sten submachine gun, pictured above).

  People are the walls of our room, not philosophies.

  from Free Fall

  William Golding (1911–1993)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WE are deeply indebted to: Professor Lidenbrock, his nephew Axel, and Hans Bjelke, naturally; Siobhán McGowan and the team at Scholastic in New York: Starr Baer, Kevin Callahan, Whitney Lyle, Elizabeth Parisi, Jess White, Sawatree Green, Charisse Meloto, Rachel Coun, Jacquelyn Harper, John Mason, Suzanne Murphy, and Ellie Berger; Chicken House in Somerset, especially the one and only Barry Cunningham, our publisher and wearer of many magnificent pairs of shoes; Catherine Pellegrino of Rogers, Coleridge & White; Katie Morrison, formerly of Colman Getty, now at UNICEF; Susan Collinge and Roger Gawn for allowing us access to West Raynham Airfield; Jo Brearley and the pupils of Gresham’s School; Simon Wilkie; Karen Everitt.

  And George.

  Bonus Material

  In Chapter 32, Mrs. Burrows was blindsided by the elderly but evil Styx agents Oscar Embers and Mrs. Tantrumi. Knocked unconscious by a bone-rattling subsonic blast, she was then abducted, shuttled underground, imprisoned in the Colony, and subjected to the horrific Dark Light torture. Her fate, and her mental state, remain in question.

  But how was this bizarre subaudible incident explained to the oblivious citizens of Highfield — the common folk who to this day are frightfully unaware of the threat posed by the Styx and their impending Topsoil invasion?

  The files of Omar Ashmi contain the following account, reported in the local newspaper The Highfield Bugle. Is the article merely indicative of the ignorance of the Topsoil populace? Or does it make disturbingly evident that Styx sympathizers and spies have compromised and corrupted every branch of Greater London bureaucracy, from law enforcement to the media, and are capable of whitewashing or obfuscating the official public record of any event?

  The cover-up continues as the clock counts down to the Styx offensive….

  Will and Bartleby as illustrated by Kirill Barybin, age 19, Bavaria, Germany

  BONUS!

  The Origins of the Colony

  The Old Church, Highfield Village, Greater London C. 1710

  AUGUST 1718. On an already gray and dismal day, the wind picks up, pushing sluggish storm clouds across the sky. They blot out the light, leaving the threatening impression of an early dusk.

  Outside the small and austere church many families are huddled on either side of the graveyard as they wait in silence. They are dressed simply, and all the adults wear black armbands. A tiny boy in a flat cap rubs his eye as a drop of rain falls on it. He looks up at his mother and starts to say something, but she places a hand gently over his mouth. She does her best to smile at him, but her expression is grim.

  A bell begins to toll and the weather-beaten doors to the church swing open. A coffin is carried out on the shoulders of six staunch pallbearers dressed in clothes similar to those of the silent crowd. Behind them is a top-hatted man in black.

  He is Sir Gabriel Martineau, and it is the funeral of his wife, who has died from tuberculosis. He steps slowly, his arms resting protectively on the shoulders of his two young daughters. He is a tall man with muttonchop sideburns and a hooded brow. He carries himself with incredible dignity, his back ramrod straight — just as it always is. His grief-stricken eyes are fixed on the casket, which is of the finest grained oak, embellished with burnished brass handles and casework that wouldn’t be out of place in the best railway carriages of the day. Behind Sir Gabr
iel is a procession of other gentlemen, all impeccably clothed in morning dress. They are powerful industrialists and landowners who have come from all over the country to pay their respects.

  The families lining the way outside step back as the coffin passes by them, and the men remove their hats and lower their heads, except for one or two who steal furtive glances at Sir Gabriel. For he is their benefactor, who in hard times has provided them with a livelihood, so they have not gone hungry or suffered the fate of so many and ended up in the poorhouse. And while they may be saddened by the death of Sir Gabriel’s wife, in truth their main concern is for his well-being. They are completely dependent on him. Any downturn in his fortunes would almost certainly mean the same for them.

  The procession crosses the gateway into the graveyard, where it stops before the newest and largest monument, an imposing tomb built from freshly mined limestone from one of Sir Gabriel’s quarries. His stonemasons have labored day and night to complete it, and at its apex are two small but intricately carved figures, one of which is holding a shovel, the other a pickaxe. As the coffin bearers come to a halt, Sir Gabriel and his daughters continue to the open side of the tomb.

  While the parish vicar finishes the burial service, Sir Gabriel holds his stance, erect and unbowed. As the coffin is manhandled into the side of the tomb, the younger of his daughters begins to weep. He does nothing to comfort her. His head suddenly seems to sag and his shoulders to stoop, the weight of his sorrow too much for him to bear. The change is noticed by the common people gathered around the tomb, some of whom whisper to each other in concern.

  The heavyset men grunt with the effort of lifting a large panel of masonry. As it is levered into place with timber staves, stone grinding on stone is the only sound to be heard until, with a final thud, the slab is fully seated.

  The coffin is sealed inside the tomb.

  Sir Gabriel suddenly gasps as if he has been awoken from a deep dream. He staggers and seems on the verge of collapse. Instead he walks away, leaving his daughters by the graveside.

  The collected dignitaries murmur in muted amazement at this extraordinary break in protocol, but Sir Gabriel doesn’t pay them any heed, advancing in a shambling walk until he has reached the dry stone wall that borders the graveyard. Here he stops to survey the horizon. As far as the eye can see there are rolling green grasslands, interrupted only by the narrow brown scar of the main cart track that serves as the road to the north. This is virgin land. The expansion of Highfield village will not claim it for another fifty years. And at an even more distant point in the future it will be swallowed up by the relentless reach of London as the city sprawls out into the region and claims the territory as one of its thirty-three boroughs.

  A single magpie shrieks its ugly call from a clump of nearby Elder trees and Sir Gabriel sags against the wall, his head hung low. For a man known to pride himself on strict adherence to formality and decorum, his behavior is highly irregular. That his people are seeing him in such a state seems to be of no concern. It is as if the weight of life is just too great for him to bear and he is no longer able to keep up any sort of pretense. At the very point in the proceedings when he should be greeting all those that have attended the ceremony, he has abandoned them — and his own daughters — for solitude.

  The murmuring around the graveside increases and the people stir uneasily, not knowing what to do.

  Then a strange sight presents itself, and silence once again returns to the cemetery.

  Two men are making their way with great poise over the freshly cut grass, picking out a path between the graves as they head in Sir Gabriel’s direction. In the days, months, and years afterward when the incident is discussed, nobody can remember seeing them until this very moment. Indeed, all witnesses swear blind that the odd duo, who were conspicuous to say the least, weren’t waiting in attendance with the families outside the church. Neither did they, it is absolutely certain, accompany the great and good as they emerged from inside the church at the conclusion of the service. Instead, the witnesses avow, they simply appeared in the middle of the churchyard, much as fiendish spirits materialize from the ether.

  For the men cut strange figures. They are equally tall, but not in a wholesome way, as if their bodies achieved such height by unnatural and torturous means. And their faces are gaunt and their cheeks cavernous, causing a number of the onlookers to draw comparisons between the duo’s appearance and that of the victims of the Great Plague in their last days of life. But it is their eyes, above all else, that many of those present remember, saying they were as black as the blackest pebbles of jet washed up on the shores of Robin Hood’s bay.

  Age, however, differentiates them. Of the two men, it is noticed that one is considerably older than his companion. Streaks of gray cut into his otherwise dark hair, which is raked tightly back over his head in a style shared by his cohort.

  The people gathered by the tomb assume the men must be officers of the high church. Their black, ankle-length frock coats and stiff white collars lend them a clerical air. This impression is further heightened by the reverential way in which, before him, the older man holds a small book in both hands.

  While his more youthful companion remains several paces behind, the old man does not falter in his approach. Reaching Sir Gabriel, he comes to a sudden halt and clears his throat respectfully. Sir Gabriel takes a few moments to register his presence. Still leaning against the stone wall, he raises his bowed head a degree, then straightens up to give the man his undivided attention. The old man seems to be speaking with single-minded conviction as he waves the book over at the grasslands, then spins around to stab a skeletal finger at something back in Highfield village itself.

  Sir Gabriel, once more in control of his composure, turns quickly toward where the man is indicating. The congregation is too far away to hear the message that the curious envoy is delivering, but there is no doubt Sir Gabriel is absorbed by what he is being told. His intense and intelligent eyes stare past his wife’s new grave, past his abandoned daughters and the people gathered by the tomb. Although not one of them has any inkling what can be of so much interest at this saddest of times, they are merely grateful that their benefactor appears to have reclaimed his faculties. They utter small prayers of thanks.

  The book in its grip, the old man raises one hand to the sky, and drops the other to point emphatically at the ground. Sir Gabriel follows the sweeping gestures with his eyes and also looks down, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

  He nods in agreement….

  Sneak Preview

  The Fourth Book in the New York Times Bestselling TUNNELS Series

  WILL COLLECTED some water and supplies and was just about to return to his father when Elliott appeared. She was carrying some firewood in her arms, with Bartleby scampering along behind her.

  “Going somewhere?” she inquired, seeing the Bergen on Will’s back and the Sten gun in his hand.

  Will looked at her, the resignation in his eyes saying it all. “I left you a note. Dad thinks he’s got as far as he can with his pyramid, and he’s set on seeing one of the others. You know what he’s like — he’s decided it has to be right now.”

  Elliott clicked her tongue against her teeth. “And after all I’ve tried to tell him.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Will sighed.

  She dropped the pieces of wood. “Right, I’m coming along for the ride, too.”

  Will was delighted. “Really?”

  Dr. Burrows was far from pleased when he saw that Elliott was with Will. But he didn’t say a word because he knew he’d gone against her advice that they shouldn’t stray far from the camp.

  It was unusual for all three of them to be together on an outing. In fact, other than the odd foray to the ruins of the city in the jungle, Dr. Burrows hadn’t been anywhere for some time, instead concentrating all his energies on the pyramid by the base camp.

  They were following a bearing he’d taken on the nearest of the two new pyramids, tramping th
rough the jungle in an extended line. As expected, Dr. Burrows had taken it upon himself to lead the party and was striding off ahead, with Will next, and Elliott and Bartleby bringing up the rear. It reminded Will so much of the moment they’d entered this secret world for the very first time, without any idea what they’d find or where they were going. It felt like an age ago to him now.

  Other than the odd birdcall or crack as a twig snapped underfoot, all was silent as they traversed the platform of leaf detritus on the jungle floor. The three of them were soon covered in sweat because of the high humidity; the huge weight of tree foliage above trapped a layer of air where they were walking, and there was very little in the way of a breeze.

  Then they began to notice that the ground was becoming damper and that the giant trees were no longer affording them as much protection from the sun. They had entered a sparse forest of dumpy-looking cypress trees, their lower trunks disproportionately large, as if they were swollen. And everything up to a height of around twelve feet was stained with mud and draped with dried-out weed.

  “Flood basin,” Dr. Burrows proposed, as they broke off to gaze around.

  “What’s that over there?” Elliott asked, pointing ahead to an area of disturbed water, its undulating surface bright green with algae.

  “A swamp?” Will suggested.

  “Let’s find out,” Dr. Burrows said, heading straight toward it.

  “I just knew he was going to say that,” Will moaned.

  They waded through the water, which came up to their thighs, keeping an eye out for snakes or crocodiles. But the place seemed to be populated entirely by lizards, ranging in size from small geckos to three-foot-long iguanas — nothing more threatening than that. The lizards’ iridescent skins shone vivid blues, reds, and greens as they basked in the sunlight. Hardly moving, they opened their mouths to make hissing sounds when Will or any of the others came too close, or to shoot out their long tongues at passing dragonflies. Bartleby seemed to be really quite unsettled by the reptiles and stuck close to Elliott.