by Jean Kilczer
“The name's Darby O'Malley,” white beard said as we walked, “of the O'Malley clan.” He put out his hand. I shook it quickly and looked back.
Voices!
This time it was Vermakts. I unholstered my stingler.
“Now don't go burnin' down no more trees,” Darby whispered and took my sleeve. “This way.” He pulled me toward another large-boled tree.
“I won't,” I said, “if you don't hit me again with your fucking club.”
He chuckled and lifted the club to show me. “Tis a shillelagh, lad. Now what would ye be called?”
“Jules,” I whispered as the voices behind us grew sharper.
“An' yer clan, brudder?”
“My…my clan brudder? Oh, brother. I-I don't have one. Where's the damn entrance?”
“Yer standin' on it with yer big feet.”
I stepped back.
He reached down, felt around in the grass between tree roots, and lifted a hatch. Dim yellow light showed from the interior, but enough to see a ladder and the braced wall of a vertical dirt tunnel.
“In yer go,” he whispered and gestured.
I went down the ladder a rung at a time to favor my swelling ankle. Darby came in behind me and quickly slid the hatch in place.
“Off!” he said when we reached the ground, and we were in darkness. “That was a wee bit closer than I like.”
“Me too,” I said.
The voices grew louder, but after a minute they faded.
I braced a hand against the wall as he led me along the dark path.
“On,” he called. Yellow glow balls lit the main passageway and a maze of cross cuts in the warren. I had an uneasy feeling that on my own, I'd never find my way back out.
We came to an enormous cavern with dark side passages. I stopped, my jaw open. The walls and floor were burnished gold and amber, lit by glow balls, and laced with streaks of pure blazing yellow. This vast grotto was a mother lode mine. Water dripped down the walls, but the chill of stone was softened by small fires. A narrow, bubbling stream ran along the perimeter of one wall.
But it was the inhabitants that held my attention. Perhaps a hundred dwarfs and about twenty-five or so young people and children of average height lay on thick straw mats, or quietly talked as they worked.
Dwarfism results from mutated genes, I knew, and some of their children can attain average height. Toddlers had free range of the floor, where the warming fires and the stream were fenced in.
Three women talked quietly as they spun and weaved a blanket out of soft animal fur. One looked up in surprise as I walked by and nudged another one. They smiled. I smiled back.
Friendly bunch, I thought.
“Now there's a looker,” I heard one say as I walked by.
“Ye be married, Hannah,” another said.
“Ach, I be married, Bridget, na dead!”
I chuckled as I went by.
Darby led me past a group of males who tended a distillery that was producing a dark, ruby brew with a foamy top. Guinness beer, I guessed. A woman scraped an animal hide spread on a frame with a sharp rock. She paused and watched me as we walked by.
We passed cobblers and hatters and I had the distinct feeling that Darby was parading me before his clan. There was a sense of quiet camaraderie here that I hadn't witnessed even in the Kubraen community on Halcyon, though Kubraens are aliens and it had been difficult for me to read their emotions or understand their connections to each other.
I turned to Darby. “Did you bring the fertilized eggs of Earth animals and seeds when you came here?”
“Aye, the grandfathers did that, and food to last until they were settled into the growing season.”
I held his shoulder to brace myself as he led me to a straw mat. I sat down with a long sigh and leaned back against the wall. My ankle throbbed, but with a little rest I thought it would be OK. “So why the underground community?”
Darby scratched his beard. “The clan left Ireland when they got tired o' living among the arses that decided dwarf tossing was the national sport.”
“What?” I asked.
“Ye take a little person an' ye toss him across the barroom floor, far as ye can. Winner takes the pot. I suppose 'tis great fun if your brain is soaked with the elixir.” He shook his head sadly. “T'was the last straw. The clan pooled their resources, bought a small private star worthy ship, an' left the homeland.”
“But why the Leprechaun act?”
“Ta be left in peace, lad! Our tall people go into town an' buy what we need with the gold we mine. They've spread the word that evil Leprechauns live in these woods an' would kill anyone who gets too close. We're magical, we are.” He winked. “An' we'd steal their children an' turn 'em into changelings that would hunt down their own parents and murder them in their beds fer what they did.”
A slender, red-haired young woman in buckskin pants and a colorful shirt strode up to us and sat next to Darby. “Grandpa!” she took Darby's arm. “Liam O'Donnell. He's going to sing 'Danny Boy'.” Freckles on her nose wrinkled as she smiled shyly at me. Her eyes were a striking green.
Darby kissed her cheek. “Me granddaughter Shannon.”
I smiled back. “Jules.”
People spread out and sat in a semi-circle around a chair with a green glow ball above it.
The community fell silent as Liam, a tall tag, perhaps in his fifties, wearing a ragged gray shirt and brown pants, walked out and sat in the chair.
“No music?” I whispered.
“Oh, no,” Shannon answered. “Tis best sung this way.”
Liam gazed at the ceiling but I had a feeling he was searching within. His face was lined, his jowls beginning to sag, a man whose joys and sorrows were etched in his features. He smiled at the people and shifted position. Then he began to sing.
“Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
from glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying.”
His tenor voice was clear as winter bells and I knew he had power in reserve. But more than that was the honesty of his style and the simplicity of the words. I was immediately caught up in the song and the singer.
“Tis you, tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the
meadow, or when the valley's hushed and
white with snow. Tis I'll be here in sunshine
or in shadow. Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy,
I love you so.”
I shivered with the emotion that overwhelmed me. An ache of love and loss expanded within my chest. His song opened me and touched a part of my soul that I had tried not to expose to the light of day.
Oh, Willa. I lowered my head and felt tears run down my cheeks. I couldn't stop them anymore than I could stem that flowing stream with my two fists. Oh, God, Willa, I miss you. I almost didn't want to hear the rest of the song. It hurt with such a sweet pain of memories. There were quiet sobs around me.
“And if you come, when all the flower
are dying, and I am dead, as dead I well
may be. You'll come and find the place
where I am lying, and kneel and say an
'Ave' there for me.”
I wiped eyes on my sleeve. Shannon moved closer to me, and put her hand on my arm. I glanced around. I wasn't the only one openly crying. When the singer's voice rose, my heart seemed to float with it, until the singer bore me out of this mundane plane of existence and to a place where joy wins the battle over loss.
“And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me.
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be,
if you'll not fail to tell me that you love me,
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.”
Liam sat amid the silence. No one clapped. The song, the singer, were beyond mere applause. Somewhere, a baby cried.
As Liam got up and walked to his place among the people, they reached out to touch hi
m. But they could not bridge the gap that he had bridged, not with mere physical contact.
I looked at Shannon. She still held my arm. Willa was gone. A sense of finality, of a last goodbye, set into my soul.
“You were right about the music,” I told her.
She nodded. “What clan are ye from, Jules?”
I shook my head. “My sister and I were orphans. We were shuffled around to foster homes. She's, uh, she's gone now.”
Shannon sat back. “So then…ye have no family?”
“I have a daughter, Lisa, back on Earth.”
“On Earth?” She lifted brows.
“I visit her, occasionally,” I said defensively. I laid back on the soft mat. What had happened to Huff and Carmen and Chancey? Were they still alive? Or captured? Or looking for me? I had to get back out there. From my reckoning on the night I escaped from Rowdinth, his citadel wasn't too far from here. The real question was where, in Hell's twisted spokes, as Willa would have said, was the laboratory?
Supper was handed out in bowls, from steaming pots, to the line of people who gathered at the long tables. Shannon brought me a bowl of stew with potatoes and beans and meat and barley, on a tray, with a chunk of dark bread, and a glass of the ruby beer. It had been a while since Willa and I had cooked together, and this was the best meal I'd had since then. I thanked Shannon and she smiled and sat beside me to eat her supper.
After the meal, people sat in groups and quietly talked and laughed. Two couples held hands and disappeared into passageways. Some smiled as they strolled by to glance discreetly at me, and then continued on.
“You're the latest news,” Shannon said.
Glad it wasn't the obituary, I thought. “Front page?”
“Oh, yes.” She got up and went to an old woman dwarf in a hooded black robe who sat before a blackened iron pot on a small fire and dropped bones into it.
Darby strolled over. “Well, what do ye think, lad?' Could ye love me comely granddaughter?”
“What?” I asked.
“We be needing some new blood in the clan.” He turned to stare at her. “An' she's sure a pretty lass. I'm thinking ye might stay an' make yer home among the O'Malleys.”
“That's quite an offer. But I-I have an important mission that I'm committed to finish.”
“Sure ye do. An' ye wouldn't want yer freedom taken away, now would ye?”
I bit my lip. “Maybe not.”
“I'll tell ye, lad, ye can either have ye freedom or the comfort o' family.”
“I know.”
Shannon said something to the old woman and nodded toward me.
The woman got up, rummaged through an animal skin on the floor beside her, took out a bag and hobbled over to me, followed by Shannon.
“This is Mother Holly-Eva,” Shannon told me.
Mother Holly-Eva nodded at me and carefully took off my left shoe and sock.
Now what? I thought as she opened the bag and pulled out soggy cabbage leaves that dripped back into the bag.
What the hell? I thought as I smelled urine. “You know what, Mother Holly-Eva, my ankle feels better already! I think all it needed was some rest!”
Too late.
Too late!
She slopped the leaves across my bare ankle as though she hadn't heard, and wrapped them under my foot.
I leaned my head back. Christ and Vishnu. I watched her take a roll of red thread from her robe and tie the cabbage in place. God forbid I might lose it.
“Thanks a lot, Shannon,” I muttered.
She smiled. “Thank you, Mother Holly-Eva.”
The mother didn't look up as she gathered her bag, her roll of thread, and returned to her boiling pot.
“How long am I supposed to keep this on?”
“Two days,” Darby said and chuckled.
“I haven't got two days.” I sat up. “I have friends up there who are counting on me.”
Well. Maybe.
“I've got to get back out there…to the surface. Uh, to my friends, I mean.”
“Aye, an' what would ye important mission be all about? If I could ask.” I heard the note of sarcasm in his tone.
“You've heard of General Ki Rowdinth?”
“Oh.” Shannon nodded and soft red curls brushed her bare shoulders. “We all know about General Rowdinth. The mon's a lunatic.”
“And so he is,” I agreed. “He's hired two scientists to develop a weapon that can – “
“Destroy Earth,” Darby finished.
I was too shocked to reply.
“We know about his plan,” Shannon offered. “But what can we do about it?”
“W-CIA will know what to do, if we can only locate the lab.”
Shannon glanced at Darby.
“What?” I asked.
Darby sat down beside me and stared into the distance as he rubbed his lips.
“Do you know where it is?” I ventured.
“We know,” he answered softly. “But tis impenetrable, lad. Ye mission is a suicide one.”
“Just point me to it. That's all I'm asking.”
Darby looked at Shannon and raised his brows. “I tried to keep him here, lass.” He turned to me. “If yer mind's made up, well then, I'll show ye the way.” He stood up with a grunt.
“No, Grandpa,” Shannon said firmly. “I won't have it! I can show him the way an' run back, if need be.”
I snapped the red thread and pushed off the cabbage leaves with my other foot.
“I'll get ye jacket,” Shannon said.
Darby stared at her and I saw the fear of loss in his eyes.
“I'll send her home,” I said, “as soon as she shows me the way.”
He nodded.
I went to the stream and washed off my bare foot.
Shannon handed me a towel and waited while I dried off my foot and put on my sock and shoe.
“Lead the way, lass,” I said and took my jacket from her extended hand.
Shannon led me through a side tunnel to a dead end where sand sifted into small piles around our feet. Fingers of light pierced through three pairs of tiny holes at eye level in the wall. I brushed dirt from my hair and peered through one pair.
Beyond the holes, a mirrored bubble chamber, about two meters in diameter, and clamped to a platform that had wheels, stood in the center of a lab. A red globe pulsed and spun within the bubble's transparent center, with a golden kernel within that, and surrounded by an outer blue halo that turned green, then back to blue.
I leaned against a wall. “That's it! That's the Dark Energy Project!”
“Tis what ye been lookin' fer?” She smiled.
“Sure tis. There must be a way inside!”
“No one knows where.” She shook her curls in the narrow beams of light. “We happened upon it when we were digging a new tunnel and heard the machine.”
I stared through the holes again. “I expected it to be…”
“What, lad?”
“I don't know. I mean, the damn thing's on wheels!”
“Aye.”
“Shannon, dark energy is born of space itself, you see? It defies gravity. It's pushing the universe out.” I gestured with my hands.
“Out where?”
“Not where. To expand faster than it should. I mean, than it would've. If they've harnessed that energy within the chamber, and they expect to destroy Earth with it, it should be…” I shook my head.
“Bigger?” she asked.
I nodded. “Bigger.”
“Well, lad, I'm sorry ye disappointed.”
“I didn't say that.” I gestured toward the wall. “I mean, it lessens one of the four forces of the universe.”
Her green eyes widened. “Aye, then I suppose it should be bigger. Unless…”
“What?”
She peered through a pair of holes again. “Unless tis concentrated, like the singularity in a black hole.”
“A dark-energy singularity? Did you read that in a scientific journal?”
Sh
e shook her curls in the narrow beams of light. “Tis just a thought, lad.” She drew in a soft breath and moved back. “Hush,” she whispered.
I peered through holes again and saw two coveralled Terran men shuffle into the dark lab. I leaned against a wall. “Don't talk, Shannon,” I whispered, closed my eyes and tried for a probe. But they just shut down the chamber, ordered the lights off and were gone before I had a chance to link for an image of the entrance.
“Dammit!” I whispered. I hadn't even gotten a good look at them. Well, I could find this passage again, with Shannon's help, and notify Joe.
Black-hole type singularities of dark energy? I thought. Was that possible? There are millions of black holes roaming the Milky Way. There's one in the vicinity of Earth's solar system, as you count space distances, but it's drifting out between the galaxy's arms, and black holes don't purposely target planets, or whole solar systems. Could dark energy do that? Ah, hell! I'm a biologist, not a particle physicist.
“C'mon, Shannon.” I took her hand. “Show me the entrance to the surface with the hatch.”
She led me down the tunnel, feeling her way along the wall. “Then ye be leaving us?”
“I've got to contact W-CIA. This lab's going to be shut down, or blown up. It's the military's call.” I paused and took her shoulders. “Shannon, if the government decides to blow it up, you and your people will have to leave. There's a good chance this whole maze of tunnels and caverns will collapse with it.”
“But this is our home, Jules! Where would we go?”
“Maybe Darby and the elders can devise some contingency plan if the cavern becomes uninhabitable.” I smiled. “Anyway, you're too pretty to spend your life underground.”
In the dusky light of glow balls, I saw tears shimmer in her eyes.
“I'm sorry,” I said and hugged her. We paused and I wiped her tears with my sleeve.
“I know, Jules. But not near as sorry as I am.”
I made a mental map of the paths as we continued toward the hatch. Maybe it was the urine cure after all, but my ankle felt a little better.
We paused at the bottom of the ladder. Chances were good we would never see each other again. I was at a loss for words.
“I…I'll keep your clan's location a secret,” I said lamely and glanced up at the hatch. “Do you know if it's day, or still night out there?”
