Cartwright's Cavaliers (The Revelations Cycle Book 1)

Cartwright's Cavaliers (The Revelations Cycle Book 1) Page 23

by Mark Wandrey

  Time’s passage was lost to him unless he checked his watch. He was amazed to see it had only been two hours since the lantern died. That didn’t seem possible, it felt like half a day. The mildly radiant hands on the programmable watch had barely been visible in the daylight. Down in the caves, they were so bright he was amazed he couldn’t use the watch to light his path.

  As he’d thought, Jim found the edge of the cavern. The trouble was that, with no light, he was like the blind guys trying to understand an elephant by touch. He slowed to a crawl as he felt along the wall. One direction led out into the water. He slid inch-by-inch deeper and deeper into the water. He knew from past exploring that it wasn’t ice cold, but still not warm. Before it could get over his boots he went back to shore and considered.

  He had no way to get warm again if he got soaked. The power was gone on the survival suit; even though it was naturally water-wicking and insulating, he’d be chilled coming out of the water. The boots were sockless, but they were already starting to acquire ‘locker funk.’ The last thing he wanted was to get soaked if he could avoid it. He decided to start in the other direction. He stopped long enough to fill the water bladder in his pack and add a purification tablet.

  He was able to move a little faster in his chosen direction because he could just slide along the wall. He still had to watch his footing, but at least he didn’t expect to run into a crazy overhang. He reached up from time to time just to be sure, though. He slid along like that for the better part of an hour. It was long enough for him to be relatively certain he was angling to the left, and that there were no exits. Shit. He was beginning to realize just how truly massive this little underground lake was.

  When he got back to the water he stopped and sat there for a time. He considered getting out the survival gear and going fishing, then discarded the idea. With no light, he was risking losing some irreplaceable gear, and even though there were items that could be configured for fishing, he didn’t know what he could use as bait. Besides, he’d never been a fan of sushi. Instead he drank some water and tried to ignore the rumblings from his stomach.

  He resigned himself to going into the water. With the decision made, he took off his boots and stuffed them into the pack, which had a zip closure he hadn’t used since he found the caverns. The only thing he couldn’t keep from getting wet was the laser rifle, which was sealed (for the most part). With the pack back on, and the rifle over his shoulder, Jim slowly walked into the water.

  Yeah, it was cold. Colder than he had anticipated. Why were things always colder on your feet than on your hands, he wondered as he slid along the wall and went deeper into the lake. Soon the water was up to his waist – oh, that was all kinds of fun. Yay, cold! He had to pause a second while certain things retracted and shrunk. He pulled his arms in tight and shivered almost uncontrollably.

  Eventually he got control of himself and proceeded with his exploration. He began to float, and still the wall kept going. The water gently lapped against the wall as he moved along. He stepped as gingerly as he could, concerned he might slice open one of his feet on some unseen sharp object beneath the black depths. The floor of the lake was extremely smooth and only had occasional bits of water-rounded gravel. It had the feel of an ancient seabed. Next thing he knew, his feet were floating off the bottom with the extra lift from his backpack. The wall was still very much before him.

  Since he was already floating and completely wet, Jim decided to keep going. He was in no danger of sinking with the backpack acting as a life vest, so he paddled and pulled himself along. Eventually glancing at his watch, he saw he’d been floating for almost an hour and the wall was doggedly still there. It appeared as though the lake was just a low point at the far side of the cavern, and nothing more.

  In the utter darkness of the lake he floated and tried to decide what to do next. He hadn’t found the initial place he came in, he hadn’t found a way out, and he had no way of calling for help. The cave had been the refuge he needed in the initial aftermath of the battle. He should never have left the first place he landed where he was still able to see the cold Kash-Kah sky above. It was yet another mistake in a long line of mistakes in his life that looked like would culminate in his death. As he floated there, he contemplated the end. Take the backpack off and sink? Go back to shore and eat the muzzle on the laser rifle? Starve? Well, that one would happen by itself if he did nothing, though Jim doubted his ability to just sit on a rock and starve. He decided to push on.

  It was almost another hour later when he realized his feet were going numb from the cold. By now he was almost two hours away from the spot where he’d begun. He’d never found the wall in his exploring the lake. What if it went on for a mile or more? He had probably only gone for a few hundred yards in the water, and he had no idea how far there was left to go. His lower legs and hands were going numb, while his thighs tingled from the cold as the water began to reduce his core temperature. He started to think his decision on how to end it all had been effectively taken from him.

  Jim noticed he was being ever so gently pulled. There was a current here. He followed the direction of flow, especially since it was the way he’d been going anyway. Every minute that passed, he felt colder. Worse, he was starting to feel drowsy. He shook his head, whistled, yelled, and even slapped himself to stay awake.

  The intervening time became blurry as he kept his legs pumping and followed the current wherever it was going. By the time he realized he’d floated away from the wall and there was nothing under his feet, he was too far gone to care.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 23

  “Queeert…”

  I’m dead, Jim thought.

  “Ceeeesheee…”

  If I’m dead, what the fuck is that noise?

  “Chiii, chiii, queeeeet….”

  Jim opened his eyes and coughed. He was lying on his back, and he rolled over onto his side, feeling water splash under him. Amazingly, he could see! He was in another cavern, bigger than the first one, much smaller than the second. Unlike the last one, this was about as brightly lit as Earth on a clear, moonlit night. A few feet away was a strangely shaped fungus, the underside casting a light bright enough to read by. There were hundreds of them around. Elsewhere patches of mold on the walls glowed. From the ceiling, about one hundred feet above, another type of fungus that reminded Jim of a chandelier crossed with a jellyfish writhed back and forth – twenty-foot-long tentacles dangling delicately and swaying side to side. They glowed dimly from the bulbous body, but shone brightly from the tips of tentacles that were like gracefully waving fiber-optic cables. Something flew toward one of those tentacles and it was snatched from the air and carried up to the hanging body above.

  “Sheeek, sheeek…” Jim rolled onto his other side to see a creature sitting there. It looked a little like a monkey with huge light-gathering eyes. It was small – maybe the size of a large cat – with long arms tipped with proportionately long, dexterous fingers. Were those opposable thumbs? The rear legs were short, and it was bent over, much like an arboreal species on Earth...which was puzzling, considering there were no trees down in these caverns. It didn’t have a nose like a terrestrial monkey, just a pair of slits. Its ears were almost elfish and nearly half a foot long at the points. Its tail was enormous – at least twice as long as its body – and it was covered in dark fur. It was cute!

  “Hi,” Jim said. It cocked its head, listening. “Are you friendly?”

  “Seeetootoo, pieeeee…” Jim saw a mouth of short, sharp teeth as it spoke with its musical tones. It’s not just animalistic vocalizations, he decided. Another sentient species on Kash-Kah? Why hadn’t the Duplato mentioned them? He took note that this water was warm, compared to the other cavern, and so was the air. He crawled the rest of the way out of the water and checked himself over.

  The warmer water had erased all signs of the cold. He guessed he’d passed out and the little thing pulled him ashore, thoug
h he didn’t know how. It was a fraction of his size and didn’t look wet. How long had he lay there in the shallows?

  There was no sign of his laser rifle. The pond here appeared to be about two hundred feet across. A waterfall poured into the far side from halfway up the wall, likely where he’d come in. He felt his head and found a bump.

  “Did you pull me out of the water?”

  “Qweek, sheee…” Jim narrowed his eyes, and opened a file in his free memory using his pinplants. He could record some things and make text files. He started one on this creature’s sounds. If they were intelligent, he’d be able to isolate a pattern sooner or later. He looked at the creature and figured it was far too small to have pulled him from the water. He glanced around where he lay. The ground was partly rocky, and partly muddy in places. There were quite a few of the creature’s little footprints. More than one could have made? Maybe the creature had help rescuing Jim; it was hard to tell.

  He felt good enough to get up. The creature didn’t respond when he did; it just watched him. Jim marveled at the calmness around him. Most animals instinctively feared anything bigger than they were. Of course, those pointed teeth suggested it was a carnivore. Was he in danger?

  “Chee, chee…” Jim nodded, he had a feeling it had just said he was in no danger.

  “Well, you need a name,” he said to the little being. It gave a disturbingly human nod of its little head. The overly long ears gave him a thought. “Okay, how about Yoda?”

  “Creen, shoo…”

  “Right, stupid idea. He looked around the cavern and grinned. “How about Splunk?” The creature cocked its head. “You want to be known as Splunk?”

  “Keetoo, Sheeti…” and gave a little hop.

  “Okay, Splunk! I’m Jim.”

  “Shooku, chee……Jim.” Jim’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “Splunk!” it said and touched its head. “Splunk, Splunk, Splunk!” And Splunk proceeded to run around jumping from rock to rock singing its name.

  “Okay, I guess you like that then.”

  “”

  Jim was sure now that meant yes. He just wasn’t sure why those little ending words sounded so funny in his head. Almost like Splunk was somehow talking in more than one tonality at the same time. He’d have to use a good recorder when he got home. He found a rock to sit on and sighed. Home. Fat chance of that happening. What he really needed was some heat so he could cook some food.

  “Shiska, choo…” Splunk said. Jim cocked his head and wondered if the little creature had understood him.

  “Can you get me heat to cook? Fire maybe?”

  “Qweek, fire…” and it ran off like a shot.

  “I can’t keep calling it an it,” he said as he watched the feisty little creature race away. Somehow he knew she would be coming back. Just like he knew Splunk was a girl. He just knew it. Jim pulled his pack away from the water a bit and set it against a rock. Opening the waterproof top, he found it had done the job and the interior was bone dry. Before he’d even thought about it, he had the stove taken apart and the heating elements removed. It doubled as a cooking stand if you had wood or other combustible materials. He’d been sure the fungus wouldn’t burn, though. Regardless, just as he finished setting it up he heard scurrying sounds nearby and Splunk raced into sight.

  She ran up on her rear legs. Not nearly as quickly as she’d left, when she’d been using all four to run. She carried something in both arms against her furry body as she approached, using her long tail held out behind her to help with balance.

  “What do you have?” he asked her.

  “Shooo, fire…” She held a bundle of moss, or so it seemed to Jim.

  “How is that fire?” She looked at him with, he could have sworn, a frustrated expression. “Okay, can you make the fire here?” he asked and pointed at the stove’s skeleton, ready to receive a heat source. Splunk put the bundle down and went to examine the stove. She picked up the lightweight metal and turned it over and over with her delicate fingers. Jim noticed she had three fingers with those dexterous thumbs. Each finger seemed to have a retractable claw, just like a cat. He looked at the moss and resisted the urge to see what it was. When he looked back she was eyeing him suspiciously. He could swear she’d read his mind when he thought about looking at the bundle.

  Splunk put the stove back, exactly as she’d found it, and went to the bundle. Taking it over to the stove, she squatted on her haunches and carefully unwrapped it. Inside were a pair of clay lumps. She tipped them both into the stove and put the moss aside, then drew a tiny knife from somewhere. Jim almost jumped to see it. Not only a tool user, but a tool builder? The knife seemed perfectly designed for her hand, and the metal looked like steel.

  She used the tip of the knife to carefully chip at one of the two balls of clay. The blade appeared to be made of good steel and showed no damage. After a moment, a tiny piece of clay chipped off and the ball began to emit a reddish light and smoke. She went after the next ball the same way, and in a second it was chipped open as well. This one had bluish light and smoke. She daintily moved the two together with the knife blade. As soon as they touched there was a pop and a flash. Purple colored flames sparkled in the stove. Intense flames too, Jim could feel the heat from several feet away.

  “Wow,” Jim said, coming closer. It was clean too, the smoke was more like steam, dissipating about a foot above the stove.

  “Shoo, fire…”

  “So it is,” he said and put the pot onto the fire and filled it from his backpack bladder. It started to steam in just seconds. “Wow,” he said again as he started crumbling beef stew cube into the bubbling water.

  Later he sat spooning the food into his mouth and wondering why it tasted so much better than before. The fire had burned for almost a half an hour. Once his food was done, Splunk had investigated it. She sniffed once and shook her head, leaving for a few minutes she returned with a small dead lizard which she stuck on the tip of her knife and roasted over the flames.

  “Lizard kabob,” Jim chuckled.

  “Fee, kabob…”

  “Kabob,” he nodded and said around a mouthful of stew. “Lizard on a stick.” Splunk shrugged and Jim almost choked on his food. After she’d toasted the animal, she ate it, bones and all, cleaned the knife and made it disappear. The fire went out a short time later. Jim had to know more about that fire! It was fascinating!

  After he’d eaten, he felt incredibly better...and incredibly tired shortly thereafter. He made a sleeping space on the ground and stripped off most of his clothes, then wrapped up in both blankets. When he looked over he saw Splunk had made a bed for herself out of his pack. Smiling, he closed his eyes and was asleep in less than a minute.

  Jim woke up and looked around the alien environment lit by glowing fungus and yawned. It was very different from the world of the other cave, up the waterfall. This was tolerable, being able to see beyond the few feet around him. He felt almost reborn and somehow infused with a sense of well-being he hadn’t felt in some time. And he had no idea why he felt that good.

  “Chooey, chaka…” Splunk said from on top of his pack.

  “Good morning to you too, Splunk,” Jim said and yawned. This little creature had emptied his pack and laid out everything. His first instinct was to be worried, some of that survival gear might be essential later. Then he saw that none of it appeared to be missing or damaged in any way, so he relaxed. Splunk appeared to have been studying each item in turn. “Anything interesting?” he asked, gesturing to the equipment.

  “Opoo, Ceek…” Splunk held up the nano-treatment unit. It was huge in her tiny hands.

  “Nanites,” Jim said and took the offered unit. “They fix injuries.” Splunk cocked her head and regarded him. Jim smiled and reached out. She took his hand and felt it while he examined hers. She was quite warm to the touch.

  “Shepa, Leek…” Jim shook his head and chucked. />
  “I wish I understood you,” he said. Again, Splunk looked like she was studying him. “Can you bring more of the hot rocks so I can cook?” She gave a quick chirp and raced off, returning in minutes with more clay lumps, and another dead lizard. Jim already had the stove set up, and soon the water was boiling, and the reptile roasting.

  After he’d eaten, he dressed in his mostly dry clothes and explored the cave. This one, unlike the other, was teaming with life. The lizards were numerous, and of several different species. There were insects too, both flying and crawling. And, of course, a multitude of lichen and fungus. The lizards and insects all appeared mostly sightless, or with low-light adaptations. Splunk, not so much. Her eyes were big and sensitive, more like a nocturnal creature than a subterranean.

  There were others of her kind too. He had glimpsed them, but always at a distance. When he tried to approach them, they would quickly disappear into the fungal wilderness. When he returned from his explorations, Splunk running along with him, Jim was faced with the fact that he only had one meal left. And he wasn’t looking forward to finding out what lizard kabob tasted like.

  “Splunk,” Jim said, “I wish I could get out of here.”

  “Geeka, out…”

  “Yeah, out.” Splunk turned and pointed as if she was indicating where the bathroom was. Jim laughed out loud. She turned to look at him.

  “Out…” she said, and pointed again. Jim stood for another moment then began frantically packing his gear back up. When he was done, he gestured.

  “Lead on,” he said, and Splunk took off at a run. Jim fell in behind. He knew he couldn’t keep up, so he just moved as best he could while avoiding falling or turning an ankle. Every time he lost sight of Splunk, the little creature stopped and waited for him to catch up before continuing onward.

 

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