Asimov's SF, October-November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He shined it over in my direction. “You okay?"

  “I think so.” I got to my feet, slipping on the bricks, tottering slightly. “Something hit me in the head."

  Kenny put his hand up, touching the helmet. “Me too. Sure am glad I had the chin strap buckled."

  I said, “What'd you yell when the floor broke? ‘Shame on something.’”

  He looked at me, beady-eyed. “Nothing. Something Jews are supposed to say right before they die."

  “Huh. Weird."

  Kenny shined the light around wherever we were, just a mess of bricks, irregular rocky walls visible here and there, big pieces of wood scattered around the floor. When he shined it straight up, all you could see was darkness and dust.

  Johnny was lying spreadeagled in the middle of the floor, my hard hat sitting next to him, a few feet away. When the light was in his face, he looked dead, eyes half open, big goose egg on his left cheekbone, ribbon of black blood coming out of one nostril.

  I leaned down, reached out and put a hand on his chest. “Breathing, anyway.” I picked up my hardhat and fiddled with the lamp, smelled it. Apparently, the gas flow stopped when the flame blew out. Some kind of safety device. I didn't know, and realized my dad probably wasn't expecting I'd be able to get carbide and try to light the damned thing. Just a toy, nowadays.

  I put it on my head, twisted the thumbscrew, heard the hiss, spun the igniter wheel. There was a little cascade of sparks and the flame sputtered to light, filling the room we were in with shadows. The first thing I saw was Micky standing with his back to one wall, dark eyes big, holding his hard hat in one hand, staring at us, silent. There was a big dark splotch on the front of his jeans, with a nice pseudopod down one leg.

  I thought about repeating what he'd said to me at the foot of the conveyor belt ramp, but decided to keep my mouth shut.

  When I tipped my head back, you could see the remains of the floor we'd fallen from, maybe forty feet up.

  Kenny whistled softly. “I wonder why we're not dead?"

  I heard Micky crunching toward us across the bricks. He stopped maybe halfway and picked something up, then kept on. “Here's your pack, Ken. Mine stayed on my shoulder all the way down."

  All the way down. I said, “Canteen?” Kenny opened the pack and handed it to me, one of those flat British desert canteens like you see in World War Two movies. “Maybe if we splash some in Johnny's face, he'll come around."

  Kenny said, “Worth a try."

  Micky said, “I tried to climb out of here first thing. I don't think it's possible."

  I thought about that for a minute, then decided to continue to keep my mouth shut. Maybe I'll bring it up, once we're safely out of this place.

  When I splashed water in Johnny's face, he woke up immediately, sputtering, eyes fluttering, rubbing his face, then looking around, big-eyed and scared. After a bit, he whispered, “See? I told you so. I fucking told you!"

  No way to climb up. Not even a trace of a way. No sign there'd ever been stairs or anything. No clue what this room might have been for, once upon a time. There was a dark hole, the beginning of a tunnel in one wall, nothing but pitch black dark inside. I stood at the mouth of it for a long minute, staring at nothing, my lamp lighting up dwindling rock walls, a square tunnel, not even shored up like a real mine.

  Finally, I said, “I guess we better find out where this goes, huh?"

  * * * *

  A long time later, I stood in another big, empty stone room, the third one we'd found, empty but for rubble on the floor, silent, winding Grandpa's old pocket watch, listening to the soft sizzle of the pawls. They made these things good. Grandpa's been gone, what? Three years already? And the watch goes on.

  I knew Grandpa had been born in 1902, and only lived to be fifty-nine. No idea when the watch was made. Dad said Grandpa had it when he himself was a boy in the 1930s, and it wasn't new then.

  Kenny was looking over my arm and shoulder, down at the watch. “How long's it been?"

  “Eleven-oh-two. Fourteen hours and some."

  “Jeez."

  I thought about reminding him of his religious heritage again, but the joke seemed to have gone stale in my head.

  Micky held up his wrist, showing off the fine gold Helbros he'd gotten last Christmas, the first calendar watch I'd ever seen. “I've got 11:10,” he said. “PM"

  I said, “That date right?"

  He gave me a weird look. “You think we're going to be down here long enough that's going to matter?"

  I gestured around the room. Irregular stone walls and ceiling. Broken rock on the floor. Scree. Dad would want me to use the right word. Back that way, the black square of the tunnel mouth, tunnel leading only back to the way we'd gotten in, forty feet straight up. On the opposite wall was a ... oh, not another tunnel. Call it a crack.

  Kenny said, “You think we should go down that?"

  “I dunno. Micky might not fit."

  Still enough spirit for him to show me his teeth, a long look, then a wry smirk. “Fat's pretty squishy, you know."

  Kenny giggled, then strangled. Maybe trying not to cry?

  Micky stared at him for a second, eyes dark and empty. Then he said, “I'm hungry."

  “Yeah, me too.” I blew out a long breath, puffing up my cheeks, feeling so nervous for a second I wanted to dance around like an idiot. “Eat. Maybe get some rest? Move on in the, um.” Right. In the morning whose light we wouldn't be able to see down here in the dark.

  Johnny, facing away from us, looking at the tunnel back, suddenly said, “I'm scared."

  Kenny said, “No shit."

  Micky pulled open his rucksack, looked at me for a minute, sort of reached up and touched the helmet I'd lent him, then reached in the pack and dug out a square of waxed paper. “Here's your other sandwich."

  Kenny said, “You want a corned beef ? I got three."

  “Sure. Micky, give mine to John."

  Johnny shook his head, back still to us. You could see Micky's eyes light up.

  I said, “God damn it, Johnny. Kenny's a runt and Micky's just a fat pig. You need to keep your strength up for me."

  Softly, Kenny said, “Hey..."

  I blew out that breath again. “I'm sorry, Ken. Christ, I'm scared as he is.” But John turned and took the ham and Swiss from Micky, who had to content himself with just the one. Later, we each took a swig from the canteen, though we needed to save most of it for the carbide lamps.

  Micky said, “Maybe we'll find water? The walls are damp enough."

  “You want to count on that?"

  You could see Micky think about trying to find our way in the dark, once the water was gone and Ken's batteries were flat. Not a good thing to think about, is it? Then we turned out the lamps to sleep, and it was the darkest fucking dark you can possibly imagine.

  Somebody started to sniffle after a while, but I didn't try to figure out who.

  * * * *

  I opened my eyes on pale blue light, groggy and confused, for just a second not knowing where the fuck I was, if anywhere. Lumps and painful spots, sharp edges under my back ... scree. Like an eagle's cry, I thought, squirming slightly, then, light ... ?

  Pale blue light.

  Light so pale it was almost as black as the abyssal midnight on which I'd closed my eyes some forever long time ago. I sat up slowly, watching shadows move over deeper shadows nothing could penetrate.

  The light was coming from the crack in the far wall of the mine chamber, the crack that'd looked to me like a natural rock formation, not the work of men at all, though I'd been afraid to say that to the others. Maybe Kenny guessed.

  Like luminescence, I thought. Some crud growing on the walls, pumped up by the light from our lamps, invisible to eyes used to the light from the fire. Now...

  I stood up, quiet as can be, walked almost on tiptoe over to the foot-wide crack in the wall, staring in at the light. Not on the walls of the crack, anyway. Coming from somewhere farther away. From somewhere beyond
that first bend.

  “Al?” Kenny's voice.

  I turned, wondering if he could see it too, opening my mouth to say something, I don't know what.

  “Alan!?” Panic in that voice, then a deep, sleepy mumble from Micky, who loved to sleep.

  The flashlight went on with a flare, blinding me, making me squeeze my eyes tight. I heard Johnny say, “Ken? Alan? What's going on?” When I opened my eyes again, the three of them were standing, facing me, all in a muddy sort of blur.

  I said, “When I woke up in the dark, there was some kind of light."

  Micky said, “Light?” His Skeptic voice, the tone that said, You're lying, Alan. I know you're lying.

  I gestured at the crack.

  Kenny turned out the flashlight, and there was nothing but the old original dark black nothing, the adaptation of my eyes destroyed by electric fire. Rods, cones, whatever the hell they'd told us in science class last year. Sudden image in my head of Mrs. Kooyenga, fat, smiling, hair in a bun, freckles on her face, one of the few schoolteachers I'd ever really liked, maybe because I found out I she liked Andre Norton, too, and used the word “flitter” once in class.

  Kenny put the light back on, and said, “Anyway, we can't go look for it in the dark."

  Micky picked up his helmet and lamp, shook it and listened. “We better reload. Kenny?” It took the last of our water, but for the one sip we each swallowed, though there was enough carbide in Micky's bag to last for a week.

  I led the way down the crack, and it wasn't as bad a trip as we feared. For one thing, it was wider inside than it looked. Micky had to squeeze his belly past the rock at the entrance, but after that all any of us had to do was walk a little crabwise, leaning to the left. Anyway, trying to. I kept cracking my helmet on the rock, though not quite as often as Micky, a good bit taller than me. I don't know if Kenny ever hit his head or not. Even if he did, that leather helmet wouldn't make any more noise than John's head did the one time I heard him grunt, “Ow."

  It went on for maybe a hundred yards or so, and ended just the way it began, the four of us coming out of a crack in the wall, coming out and stopping, one by one, stopping and just standing there.

  That's all we did for a long damned time, until Micky said, “If you told me something like this was under Woodbridge, Virginia, I'd've said you were crazy."

  Hushed. Almost in a whisper.

  I tipped my head back, aiming the lamp's reflector at faraway shadows, trying to see just how far up it went. A hundred yards? Two? I said, “I don't remember us walking downhill any."

  The mine entrance was maybe eighty feet below the precipice at the top of Dinky's Cliffs, and we'd fallen maybe another forty feet when the floor gave way.

  Micky said, “Be funny if there was a door up there and we came out in the basement of the Drug Fair in Fisher Shopping Center."

  I said, “You see a door?"

  Johnny said, “I didn't know Drug Fair had a basement."

  Kenny said, “What the hell is that?"

  He wasn't looking upward, and when I looked where he was pointing, there was a dull gleam like brassy metal. Brassy metal, and long, thin white things, like sticks.

  No. Not sticks. Bones.

  It took a minute to sink in, then we all walked forward in a clump, four terrified automatons puppeting across the floor. There was a brass cuirass lying on its back, some kind of skirt made from strips of metal and scraps of dark leather, arm and leg bones sticking out about where you'd expect.

  Micky said, “This stuff's kind of small, like the Spanish conquistador armor we saw in the Smithsonian."

  I remembered the field trip we'd gone on together. Seventh grade? I said, “This stuff's not Spanish armor.” There was a helmet above the cuirass, crested, with a nosepiece, and a plume that looked like it was made from a horse's tail. There was a skull inside, upper teeth grinning, and when I looked around, I saw a jaw lying not far away, upside down in the dirt.

  Kenny leaned down slowly and picked up a thing like a scabbard, handle sticking out of one end. When he drew the short sword, its blade was slightly leaf shaped, rather than the longer, squarer sword you saw in movies. He said, “I think this is called a gladius."

  When he looked at me, I said, “The leather's still soft, isn't it?"

  “Yeah. You'd think it'd be...” He gestured at the clean white bones.

  “I don't know how long cured leather would last."

  Kenny slid the sword back in its scabbard and started to throw it down, stopped, staring, then bent and put it softly down by the man's side.

  Micky suddenly grunted, looking off into the distance. Grunted and walked away from us, heading toward some colored glitter in the shadows. When we gathered round this next thing, it was maybe worse than the man in ancient armor. Another skeleton. Smaller. Skinnier. No armor. Swaddled in dusty, silky cloth. The colored glitter had come from a necklace of gold and gleaming jewels. Rubies. Diamonds. Emeralds. Maybe sapphires. I guess I should know which is which, though Dad does minerals, not gems. The word corundum popped into my head. Not carborundum. Something else entirely.

  There was a slim gold diadem above the skull, laying back like a halo, though I guess it was on her when she died, and fell off as the flesh rotted away.

  Felt myself try to gag at the too-sharp image in my head.

  When Micky bent down and picked it up, some black strands fell away, fluttering to the ground. Hair? I tried not to gag again as he set it on his own head. There was a little wand sticking up from it, sticking up now from the middle of his forehead, tipped by the fiery gleam of a small ruby.

  “Jesus! Desta, you look like you're ready to go riding on a ther!"

  He smiled when I said it, eyes brightening in the lamplit gloom.

  Thers were beasts of burden we'd invented for Jupiter, kind of like trunkless, three-legged elephants, though in our drawings they looked more like well-upholstered footstools. They were telepathic, but humans weren't, so you had to direct them by wearing a mind-control circlet.

  Kenny said, “Who do you suppose she was?"

  I shrugged. Ugly? Pretty? Old? Young? Fat? Skinny? “I dunno. Rich enough, though."

  He said, “My Uncle Sid has a jewelry store in Manhattan. I bet he could get fifty thousand bucks for that necklace."

  Fifty thousand. My Dad paid less than fifteen for our house in Marumsco Village back in 1958.

  Micky settled the circlet more firmly around his head, then put his helmet back on, lamplight guttering and hissing softly. Then he leaned down and picked up the hem of the woman's yellow silk dress, lifting it high. I felt something clench hard in my chest.

  Nothing.

  Leg bones. Pelvis like a clean white bowl.

  I can't imagine what he expected to see.

  I heard Kenny puff out one hard, sharp breath.

  Micky smirked and let the dress fall back into place.

  It went on like that for hours, the rest of the “day,” I guess. There were hundreds of skeletons down here, scattered around by ones and twos, in little groups, and sometimes alone.

  At one point, Kenny whispered, “It's like they came here together, and died together, all at once.” Then he said something in Hebrew. I didn't ask what, this time.

  I could see Micky turn then and stare at us, eyes big and dark.

  The skeletons were all human, no dogs, goats, chickens, apes, whatever, and the ones in groups were all dressed in costumes somehow related to one another. Spanish Conquistador armor? Greek hoplites? Maybe these guys in white linen kilts and striped headcloaks were ancient Egyptians? Inanely, “The Streets of Laredo” started running in my head. When I was a kid, I thought the line about “dressed up in white linen” meant the cowboy was wearing one of those Mark Twain “ice-cream suits.” When I asked my Dad, he laughed a bit, then sobered up and explained to me about winding sheets.

  Micky kept on taking stuff off the dead people, just the way he'd taken the necklace and diadem, but I was the first one t
o take a sword. We came on this guy, anyway I assume it was a guy, a tall skeleton with big, thick bones, dressed up in what I swear was a jeweled Barsoomian leather harness. Gahan of Gathol?

  He was wearing a thing like a parachute harness, with two swords in it, one long, one short, both curved, with hilts long enough you could take them in both hands. Your classic Barsoomian long and short swords. I recognized them, though, from reading, from museums. Katana and wakizashi. But this guy wasn't wearing what you'd call a kendo outfit.

  Watching me buckle on the swords and belt, Johnny said, “Wouldn't he be kind of, um, naked?"

  I shrugged, feeling cool in my stolen finery. “J. Allen St. John always showed them with bits of cloth here and there. Maybe it rotted away?” Maybe some other kids came by, once upon a time, and took it? If we look, will we find the skeletons of dead schoolboys somewhere, dressed up in knickers and Bobby Blake-style caps?

  Micky said, “I think Burroughs wanted his readers to picture Dejah Thoris with her genitalia visible."

  Genitalia. Funny how a person will be like that. Micky will say all kinds of things, but you couldn't get him to say anything more explicit at gunpoint.

  Eventually, we all took swords and strapped them on, Micky picking out a long, straight Frankish sword that seemed like it was too heavy for him, Johnny picking up something that looked more like a machete than a sword, Kenny finding a rapier like an enormous hat pin that, to my vague astonishment, he seemed to know how to use, whipping it around in the air, falling into a stance with the sword tilted forward, other hand back, a stance that pretty much screamed en garde.

  And, eventually, we were all tired again. And hungry. And thirsty. No food, of course. And no water. By then we were hundreds of yards away from where we'd come in, standing looking at another crack in the wall, no bigger than the first.

  It was Johnny who said, “What the fuck are we going to do?"

  I said, “I dunno. It'll take us a while to starve to death, anyway."

  Kenny said, “Not that long to die of thirst, though."

  That shut everyone up.

  Finally, Micky said, “I'm tired. Let's take a nap or something.” As I said, Micky loves to sleep. Then the lights were off, and we all stood there, staring at each other like a bunch of gooves, in the blue light from the crack in the wall.