If she had any chance of escaping, this was it. The only alternative was to sit around for sky knew how long and wait for Jaran – or whoever turned up – to come and collect her. But contemplating the yawning darkness and tasting the oily air inside, she also knew her chances were slim. Even if she managed to descend as far as the main domestem, she’d be operating in pitch darkness. The thought made her palms slick with fear.
She picked up the pipe, hefted it as though it was a hunting spear and then hurled it down the shaft. For a brief second it caught the light – a blurred silvery streak against the swallowing darkness – and then it was gone. Dara listened intently as it struck the stairs or ramp somewhere below – a metallic clatter that resounded off the hard surfaces of the accessway – and then again a moment later as the pipe went cartwheeling downwards. She counted the impacts and tried to imagine it spiralling inexorably towards the abyssal depth of the main domestem. One … two … three … then, nothing.
She was about to turn away, when one last crash echoed up to her, a final ringing clatter, similar but at the same time somewhat different from the previous three. It might have been her imagination, but that final collision between steel and plascrete sounded less like the pipe ricocheting off into the darkness again and more like it coming to rest on something.
She strained her eyes against the dark, trying to see just a bit further downshaft, but to no avail.
Could she have imagined it? That was the most likely possibility. She recalled the chunk of debris that Jaran had dropped down into the shaft the previous afternoon, and the deadening silence into which it had fallen.
But that last impact … If there was something down there, a platform or a ladder or something …
Turning her back to the accessway, Dara stared out towards the limitless horizons and breathed deeply several times.
Then, before she had time to change her mind, she carefully stepped over the hatch coaming in the floor and onto the first step, surrendering to the darkness.
Though the air tasted oily, Dara was relieved to discover the steps themselves quite dry and solid. Ahead, her shadow reached down into the dim confines of the accessway.
Her footsteps, which she kept deliberately light, little more than dry shuffles on the cold plascrete, nevertheless echoed, and when she stopped, listened and clicked her tongue the sound took some time to come back. Drawing a ragged breath, she continued, taking care to avoid the slick ramp beside the stairway; there was no safety rail or barrier to prevent her from stepping sideways onto it, and if she accidently did so she’d plummet to her death.
Instead she kept close to the opposite wall, one hand on it at all times, ignoring the pervading cold that seemed to emanate from it.
After a few minutes the angle of the staircase increased as it followed the curve of the arm down towards the domestem. She looked back up to where the sky was already a distant rectangle. The light pooled on the stairway in black puddles and already the curve of the tunnel was apparent, only the top half of the doorway still visible.
‘Bloody Jaran!’ she muttered, not for the first time, and as usual her words floated away unanswered.
She continued. Her feet were already sunk in shadow and she slowed further, straining her eyes to locate each step before carefully placing her foot on it.
Surprisingly, a small amount of light continued reflecting off the pale plascrete ceiling long after the doorway itself had disappeared. It wasn’t much, but the wan glow at least helped Dara to hold back from complete panic and push herself further into the bowels of the dome, one cautious step at a time.
She’d been descending for perhaps ten minutes, by which time the stairs were more like a ladder, and it was easier to turn towards them and lower herself carefully. The light reflecting along the curve was all but gone, and when she stopped again, to catch her nerves, she realised something odd.
There was light. Not from above, but from below.
It wasn’t much – just an indistinct glimmer, its source hidden. But it was enough to throw a dull glow upwards and, enough to allow her to see her hands and feet. For the first time since entering the accessway, Dara entertained a tiny bit of hope.
The ladder was fully vertical when, reaching down with her left foot for the next step, she was startled to find level floor beneath it. Still firmly holding the stairway, she found herself on a narrow, curved platform which extended a couple of metres to either side of her, built onto the inside wall of the main domestem.
Like the stairs, the platform was plascrete, formed as part of the wall itself and still stable. Around the edge, though, the remains of a steel safety rail had all but rusted away to nothing. Beyond that was the shaft. The yawning chasm dropped from the edge of the platform, dark and threatening, a lake of inky, uncompromising nothing.
A metre from the stairway a small, filthy porthole of clearcrete, set at head height into the outer wall of the stem, admitted a puddle of light, most of which was swallowed by the enormous vertical tunnel of the shaft. The light didn’t reach the opposite wall of the domestem, which remained hidden.
Moving her feet, she felt something against her toes and looked down to discover the steel pipe she’d thrown wedged between the edge of the platform and the rusted remains of one of the handrail stanchions. Carefully, Dara dislodged it and allowed it to tumble over the edge and this time it fell into silence.
Then she spotted the ladder.
It started at the end of the platform, just a couple of steps away, and disappeared straight down into the shaft. At some point the plascrete rungs had clearly been surrounded by a metal safety cage, but, like the rail around the platform, this had rusted away.
The rungs, though, were still there. A ladder down.
But to where? Dara edged a little away from the stairwell, past the clearcrete porthole to the top rungs from where she could, carefully, lean out and peer directly over the edge.
At first it was like staring into the darkest, most starless night. But then a series of indistinct glimmers appeared – pinpricks no brighter than distant stars, running in a downwards spiral away from her.
In the darkness, with her sense of perspective foreshortened, it seemed to Dara that the lights – presumably portholes like the one beside her – were three or four hundred metres apart and each most likely marked a platform similar to the one on which she stood.
Ignoring the trembling in her legs, Dara tightened her grip on the topmost rung and carefully swung her weight onto the ladder.
In her biceps and shoulders a familiar, dull ache formed. Dara hesitated, knowing that if she continued this mad descent there’d be no going back. There was no way she would have the strength.
But then, imagining all the things she was going to say and do to her brother when she caught him, Dara began climbing down.
She quickly lost all sense of momentum. Unlike her ascent of the tower, when she’d had the dome itself by which to gauge her progress, the climb down inside the shaft was in darkness, which left her feeling as though she was climbing through space, going nowhere.
Even the platforms that regularly emerged from the deep gloom below provided little context. It became an effort simply to keep her mind on what she was doing – to keep her attention focused on placing the next foot one step further down, gripping the next rung firmly. Even though the consequences of a fall were too hideous to contemplate, Dara caught herself drifting off on a couple of occasions into a strange, disjointed reverie.
After twenty or thirty platforms had passed – she’d long since lost count of how many – she stopped and eased herself down so that she was seated on a platform with her legs and feet dangling out over the edge. A wave of fatigue swept over her, the ache in her back threatening to cramp, so she quickly hooked one arm through the rung beside her. Then, using her free arm, she retrieved one of the prosup sachets, tore the top off using her teeth, and sucked hard at it. The bland muck actually tasted good.
The food had
a reviving effect and in no time she felt stronger. Briefly, she closed her eyes, comparing the difference between having them shut and having them open. It wasn’t much.
She wondered what was going on back at the escarpment. With all that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours, Dara hadn’t given the rest of the clan a thought. She wondered what Eyna was doing – if she was out hunting as normal, or if things had changed with her and Jaran’s disappearance.
Jaran. Again Dara tried to come up with some conceivable excuse for her brother having put her in this situation, and again she came up with nothing.
She turned her attention back to the shaft. The dull porthole lights she’d passed on the way down now formed an almost complete spiral – she’d done a full circumnavigation of the inside wall. Looking down, she still had three more circuits to complete, and even then there was no knowing what she’d find. Hopefully there was something there. If the ladder simply stopped, she knew she was dead.
Ignoring the protests from every muscle in her body, Dara forced herself back to her feet and reached across for the next section of ladder.
It was about an hour later when she stepped on to a platform different from the previous ones. It ran a full circle, all the way around the inner wall. It also jutted right out into the shaft, narrowing the circular aperture of the enormous tube by about a third.
Evenly spaced around the inner circumference, four giant black cabinets, each five or six times her height, were set against the platform edge. Each was connected to the wall by thick cables, which ran across the floor and then vanished up the walls towards the dome above.
Dara lay down in the shadow of the nearest cabinet. Even though this platform was so much wider, she still pressed her back hard against the outer wall of the shaft and lay facing inwards, using the bulk of the cabinet as a wall to prevent her from slipping over.
The domestem creaked slightly, the sound echoing up and down the long shaft. She could hear the steady drip of water, but the hard walls reflected the noise so effectively that it could have been coming from anywhere and there seemed little point risking a search.
At some point, quietly and without realising it, she slipped into sleep and dreamed. Strange, disconcerting dreams.
She was walking alone, across a plain of impossible size and whiteness. Every step took her no closer to the featureless horizon ahead and no further from the one behind. Occasionally she’d stop and look around, but there was nothing to see. Overhead, no sky, no sun. Only white.
Below her feet, no earth. Only white.
And yet, despite the emptiness, despite the isolation, she couldn’t fight the notion that something was there with her. Watching. Waiting. Hunting. Some intent malevolence lurking in the corners of her vision, sliding up behind her with no more substance than breath against the skin of her neck. Whenever she turned, though, whirling to catch whoever – or whatever – it was, there was only white.
Sometimes she’d reach – or try to. Opening her mind and pulling at the hard whiteness below her feet, attempting to draw up even the tiniest skerrick of earthwarmth to take her beyond that horizon, but each time she tried, all the reward she received for her efforts was a searing bolt of white pain across the back of her eyes.
Sometimes there were voices, as indistinct and directionless as the presence hunting her.
Sometimes something brushed against her – a whisper kiss against the exposed flesh of her arm, or a crawling trickle of sensation against her thigh. But when she clawed and scratched and slapped at it, there was never anything there.
Sometimes there were ghosts. She could feel them walking with her, looking over her shoulder, looking ahead, or back, or to the side, but never up or down.
Finally, a dark smear of substance appeared against the white distance. So far away as to be indistinguishable.
At her back, the hunting energy – the thing – tried to turn her steps aside, to veer her away from that distant speck, but Dara wouldn’t allow it. She fought, kept tracking herself, one footfall after another, until the dark shape slowly began to resolve itself into a person – into a woman.
She was ancient. The dark skin of her face creased heavily below a tight shock of brilliant white hair. Her naked breasts drooped long to her belly and her bare feet sank slightly into the whiteness, as though it was unable to fully support her, even though she was stick-thin, her every rib clearly visible.
She stood, patient, waiting, as though carved from wood, smiling as Dara struggled towards her, even though Dara could feel the pressure of the white; hard, cold and relentless, trying to push her aside and keep her walking into the emptiness.
Finally Dara stopped before the woman, trembling and sweat-heavy from the exertion of her will.
The old woman smiled.
‘Good girl,’ she said, in a voice that came from somewhere inside Dara.
Then, even though Dara hadn’t noticed it before, the old woman was holding a snake in her hands – a long, sinuous black snake with a dark red diamond pattern along its back. Slowly, the coldblood curled up the old woman’s bare arms, wound around her neck and then flowed downwards, across her breasts, down the wrinkled thighs, around her bare ankles, and onto – no, into – the white ground. Dara watched it disappear into that seemingly impervious surface, sending a series of shallow, concentric ripples out in all directions.
When she looked up again the old woman was gone and in her place stood an ancient gnarled and twisted tree, adorned with just a couple of dusty, pale green leaves that trembled in an invisible breeze.
Then Dara woke in darkness so complete that she screamed.
The scream resonated up and down the shaft, mocking her from a thousand metres above and below. When it finally echoed into oblivion, she was left with just the thunder of her heartbeat and the dislocated dripping she’d noticed earlier.
She’d slept into night. Into blindness.
The plascrete wall was icy at her back, and her thigh and shoulder ached where they’d been in contact with the unyielding floor.
Slowly, gingerly, Dara manoeuvred herself into a sitting position.
Even though she knew the platform was wide and that she’d lain down several metres from the shaft, in her imagination the yawning darkness was right beside her, surrounding and pressing from every direction.
‘Shi!’ She listened to the echoing clamour of her curse until it, like her scream of a minute earlier, died to nothingness.
What an idiot she was. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but above her head the portholes had gone dark, leaving her trapped, suspended in the darkness until sunrise, however far away that might be.
It was the longest night of her life.
Living in the bush, even on the darkest nights, there was always some form of light – starlight, moonlight, the dull glow of dying embers in the firepit. Many times, Dara had hunted under the sparse luminescence of a crescent moon painted bloody by distant bushfires. Never had she experienced darkness like this. The cold seemed to enfold her, smothering her dispassionately so that there was no point in even closing her eyes against it.
From time to time she dozed – shallow, fitful sleep, filled with dreams of falling – until finally she woke as the early dawn was throwing spears of crimson light in through the spiral of portholes, casting a hundred red beams across the domestem, each a spoke in a pinwheel of red light glowing against the darkness. Immediately above her the nearest porthole caught in its aura millions of tiny motes – dust, or moisture, or something else – each individual particle shifting listlessly in the gleaming, scarlet air.
It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
Slowly, she uncurled from the tight knot into which she’d formed herself. As she stretched the knots and stiffness out of her muscles, she passed her right hand through the beam and watched the red glow play across her skin, throwing a perfect, hand-shaped shadow onto the far wall.
Through a square hatchway in
the floor, a little way around the platform, the ladder continued down. Taking a deep breath, Dara continued her descent.
Gradually the light lost its focused intensity and the bright spokes gave way to the same dirty, diffused puddles of illumination she’d become accustomed to.
Platform after platform she continued down, resting occasionally and on one occasion stopping to slurp at a shallow pool of dirty water on one of the ledges. It did little to slake her now-raging thirst, but it removed some of the dryness from the back of her throat and eased the pain of her cracked and desiccated lips. Twice more she passed wider platforms like the one on which she’d spent the night, but each time she simply continued onwards, downwards.
When, in lowering her right foot, searching the darkness for the next rung, she instead met solid ground, her initial reaction was to freeze in place, clinging to the ladder like some kind of startled insect, too afraid to let go.
She’d reached the bottom.
‘Jaman!’ she exclaimed, and she knew from the way her voice echoed above but not below her that she was at the end of the ladder – for better or worse.
Cautiously, Dara lowered her other foot and stood there, still gripping the ladder, that tenuous link to the opening and sunlight now so far above her head. The nearest porthole was perhaps ten metres up and allowed just sufficient light to discern her immediate surroundings.
The bottom of the shaft, unsurprisingly, consisted of a perfect circle of hard plascrete. At the wall where she stood, the ground was uncluttered, smooth and level. After a moment to build her nerve, Dara released her grip on the ladder and took a couple of tentative steps away from it, an odd sensation of liberation and accomplishment sweeping through her. Below her feet the floor was solid, and through it, masked by a thick layer of plascrete, Dara sensed the faint tingle of distant earthwarmth. Her first impulse was to reach, to try and pull some of that energy into herself, but the effort proved futile. Perhaps the plascrete was too thick or perhaps she was simply too exhausted.
Daywards Page 11
