What the city didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
Arrogance. Portland played at being civilized, but she God-stomped her way through problems with nary a qualm, just like the lot of Them. This had to be part of the difficulties Portland and her Helping Hands Gods had: ethical inconsistency.
Nessa got into the rat’s minds, became all the rats, and led them away. There were better places for rats to live than this, and the rats knew this, but they were rats and couldn’t think through anything. Nessa thought for them. She hoped. When she finished, she eavesdropped on a dozen telephone calls, to figure out what Portland’s group actually did.
She smiled as she listened to the individually boring but cumulatively interesting telephone conversations. Unlike her expectations, Portland’s do-gooders did more than healing and goody-two-shoes stuff. Portland sponsored a violent gangs task force working at putting said gangs out of business. Legally (though they cheated at the information gathering end of things) and dangerously (the gangs fought back). Her people provided protection to helpless townies against the strong-arm tactics of organized thugs. They exposed the worst corrupt politicians and businessmen. They protected and helped true whistle-blowers and exposed the axe-grinders and fraud-merchants. They monitored elections and made sure tricks weren’t pulled with ballot counts, voting access and registration.
They had become their own multi-State shadow government, self-appointed, making a total mockery of the concept of popular sovereignty. The big dog sat right where She wanted to.
And we’re the good guys? Nessa rubbed her temples and tuned in to the conversation again. “…chatter gobbledygook unknown term mindless drivel verb…”
Perhaps… No. Karma had dictated she and this conversation wouldn’t meet and be on speaking terms.
Nessa giggled. What a question!
Nessa mentally put ol’ right sock away.
31. (Dave)
All morning, as they clambered through the underground city of Derinkuyu, Dave held back, mind churning. Even Haluk’s comments on the blocked areas, how they weren’t supposed to get out their geologist hammers and chisel their way through them, didn’t get a rise out of him.
Elorie thought he was a traitor. So, was their ‘marriage’ one of those ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’ situations? It had to be. Didn’t it? Does El love me?
He couldn’t tell. The question gnawed at him. It gnawed at him a lot.
He didn’t think of himself as a traitor. He couldn’t prove anything or even properly explain himself. His feelings toward Dubuque did influence him. The conflict between Portland and Dubuque poisoned the well. He owed Dubuque. So did Elorie, for saving her life by calling in Persona, but he didn’t think Elorie agreed. Not right now.
What if he was wrong, though? How would he know whether he was a pawn or a controllee? Unfortunately, he would need to understand Dubuque’s limits and the limits of the other Living Saints and self-proclaimed Gods to answer his question.
The beauty of Derinkuyu escaped Dave today. Today this was just another dusty silicosis-generating smelly hole in the ground.
“Is this place always this cold?” Osham asked Haluk. Dave turned away and tried to tune out the answer he already knew.
“The farther from the surface and the farther from the ventilation shafts, the less the temperature changes from season to season,” Haluk said. “Down this far in Derinkuyu, it’s pretty much always about 7.”
“That’s in the mid 40s for you barbarians who don’t understand Celsius,” Jack said. Even underground he wore an Indiana Jones hat. The hat had appeared on Jack’s head for the first time when they left Ankara for Cappadocia.
This whole thing felt so dumb Dave could just spit.
What few ideas he had for doing something different sounded wrong. He fought the urge to stalk off alone. Today, he had to work hard to keep following Elorie.
Dave’s mood brightened when they finished their lunch and moved on to their next area to investigate, Zelve. He hadn’t ever been to the Zelve monastery complex before. The ride from Derinkuyu to Zelve took longer than Dave anticipated, which gave him more time to think. Although Elorie sat by him, she realized her revelation had hurt and she hadn’t tried to draw him out at all today. If anything, she was filled with concern, which he didn’t need either.
When they exited the van, Dave took in the view and sighed. The outside of Zelve was quite beautiful, with many natural fairy chimneys and elaborately carved underground entrances. Many of the columnar fairy chimneys stood more than twenty feet across at their base, pillars of off-white tufa with the usual harder dark gray tufa caps. They weren’t all the same height because of the undulations of ground level, ranging from twenty to more than seventy feet in height, but the pyramidal caps were all at the same elevation above sea level. The pyramidal caps looked like roofs, not chimney tops, to Dave; his daughter Stacy had once had a gnome playset with houses just like that.
They wandered, again in multiple groups, Dave, Elorie and Darrel with Haluk as the others fanned out to question the locals about the Ecumenists, doing their detective work.
“This isn’t all of Zelve,” Haluk said. “Zelve’s spread out across three valleys, and you can get from one to the other underground.” Haluk continued to chatter about various pieces of the complex, who built them, and when. Dave tuned him out, more interested
right now in just taking in the beauty of the place.
They stopped first at a set of dwellings carved into the base of an extended complex of fairy chimneys that weren’t chimneys yet. The off-white tufa, as in most places, had eroded into vertical or near vertical cliffs, and the builders had carved dwellings into them on several levels. Ladders led to the above ground levels here, in this narrow forty foot wide valley.
“This is something else,” Elorie said. “That other above-air place, Goreme, was too elaborate and artificial. This place appears to be almost half-melted. Something out of a Hollywood special effects factory.”
“The rock here is less resistant to rainwater erosion than back at Goreme,” Haluk said. He led them around the dwelling and back out into an open amphitheater-like area. Across, which they walked to on modern concrete, was a bandstand and lights, for some performance not happening right this instant. “Here is where they hold open-air masses for the Christian pilgrims who visit. Beyond is…”
Dave tuned out their guide and opened his eyes to the place. He had to agree with Elorie about this section of Zelve. Definitely Hollywood fantasy. Windows, openings and balconies dotted the rough cliff face, at least five different levels by Dave’s count. In addition were more prosaic structures – a shrine with four fluted columns and a roof with a spire; not carved in place but carved elsewhere and moved here. Also there were many signs of damage: fallen and collapsed buildings and shrines, grotto entrances and fallen balconies that had once been carved into the rock. One entrance, fifty feet farther up the cliff, was mortared shut with head sized stones.
“Although people inhabited Zelve the most recently of any of the places we’ve been, to the early 1950s, this complex originated in ancient times,” Haluk said. “The Direkli Church” Haluk pointed, to the area around the shrine with the fluted columns “is around a thousand years old and is relatively new for Zelve. The Direkli was built according to Iconoclastic doctrine. The Uzumulu – or Grape – Church and the Geyikli – or Deer – Church were built in the Pre-iconoclastic period.” Dave ignored the terms and simply admired the carved buildings and ornamentation.
Haluk led them to the Uzumulu church, which had above its partly collapsed entrance a depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. Nearby were two archangels, Dave’s guess, holding up Maltese Crosses. Beside him, Elorie chimed an ‘oh’ of surprise.
Dave turned to follow Elorie’s gaze. Jack and Georgia jogged toward them, an unknown man in tow.
“This is Tayyar,” Georgia said, trying and failing to hide her excitement. “He has some information we can use.”
Tayyar dressed in Western style clothing and matched Dave’s height but otherwise looked like Haluk’s distant cousin. “Yes, yes. I saw them, the people you seek. My friend disappeared guiding them.”
“Could you describe ‘them’ and what they were doing?” Elorie asked.
“Of course,” Tayyar said. Haluk shook his head in distrust. “They were a group of older men, yes, all dressed in, what you say, suits. Late last summer, very warm for, ah, suits. Sweating. Unaccustomed to heat. They paid Ayberk to take them out on a hike to Ayberk’s secret place.”
“Secret place?”
Haluk cleared his throat. “Just as I said. An unscrupulous guide taking tourists to the back entrance of a common place and telling them it’s a secret underground complex.”
“No, not this one. Ayberk’s secret’s a dangerous place, haunted. The men, they were aware of the place before we told them. They had some kind of map.” Yes! “They wanted help from someone who had been inside the haunted place before.”
“Tell me, how did they refer to this place?” Elorie asked. “On their map.”
“They said their map showed where Al-Aren’s room was, ma’am.”
Georgia nodded. “Perhaps ‘Arrhenius’s Room of Finding’?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s what they said,” Tayyar said.
Haluk rolled his eyes. “And where is this so-called haunted room?”
“I know of no room, but they wanted to hunt for the room in the haunted city. This is, what, six kilometers from here, in the hills to the northeast.”
“In the Burçak Valley?” Haluk asked.
“Yes, yes.”
“A place of nothing more than bad rumors.”
Dave and Elorie shared a glance at each other. Elorie was both worried and nervous.
This was it. He gave her a thumbs up and nodded, nervous himself.
“I can show you the ruins, which are real,” Tayyar said. “We must walk.”
Money changed hands, many bottles of water purchased, and off they went.
Tayyar led them over a fence and then up a goat path that wound up the side of the valley in which Zelve lay. After following a ridgeline for nearly a mile they twisted down into another valley dotted with farmland. Another mile further the valley bottom narrowed into a narrow path that led them up another ridge, and down the next. “This is the Burçak Valley,” Tayyar said. “The entrance is only a little way farther.”
“Have we circled around back to Zelve?” Lisa asked Haluk. “I’m a bit lost.”
“No, not at all,” Haluk said. “I am pained to say this, but if there is anything here, this isn’t a back entrance to anything I am aware of.”
“Camel dung burner,” Tayyar said, muttering at Haluk.
The valley curved left and opened to about a thousand feet wide; to their right they passed a goat pasture and a stone house build from the off-white tufa carved into blocks. “Only a little farther. Yes, here is the place.”
Tayyar pointed at a fallen boulder, twice man high, about a third of the way up the side of the off-white tufa cliff to their left.
“There is nothing,” Haluk said.
“The entrance is hidden behind. Let us go. We must climb.”
They followed, carefully, as Tayyar led them on a meandering path up the slope. Dave paced warily, noting how easily the tufa crumbled beneath his boots. He spotted a narrow opening behind the boulder. “Beware the tight opening,” Tayyar said. “There’s one of the lesser underground cities here, what I’ve named Burçak after the valley. I’ve no idea where the original entrance was.”
The narrow passage opened into a straight corridor similar to the mid-levels of Derinkuyu; the boulder had once been a part of the corridor wall but erosion had loosened it from its moorings enough to allow them entrance. Dave had to inhale to squeeze in, and even so, the passageway marked the front of his shirt and his rear end with chalk-like tufa marks.
They turned on their flashlights. “Step with care,” Haluk said. “This place isn’t tourist-safe. Do not put our weight on any unsteady rocks. A place like this might have areas ready to collapse.”
“Don’t listen to that fakir,” Tayyar said. “This place here is safe. Ahead and down two levels the passages get unsafe, but here is safe.”
They walked deeper in, where the air grew dank and cool. “If you want to follow where I think Ayberk must have taken these men, we must go down here.”
Tayyar led them to a shaft, only thirty degrees off vertical. The side of the shaft had ample footholds and a rope secured at the top. Unlike Derinkuyu, Dave hadn’t yet seen a stairway. “People come here, but not often,” Tayyar said. “This is Ayberk and my favorite place. Much worth here to see, if you want to experience the underground cities as they were before the authorities made them tourist-safe. I haven’t been since Ayberk vanished.”
Right, Dave said. He had a bad feeling about Tayyar, and wondered how many tourists ‘vanished’ into places like this. He suspected their belongings ended up in the pockets and packs of the guides.
They climbed down the rope with ease, aided by the footholds.
“Here – these footprints,” Tayyar said, pointing at the floor at the edge of the passageway. Dave didn’t notice any footprints, but Jack knelt down and nodded. “We’re on the right path. See how many of them they were.”
Tayyar led them a litt
le farther, past four side corridors, three of which were impassible due to rock falls. “Here is the way,” he said, pointing at a dimly lit ventilation shaft, which had a ramp carved in one side. The shaft went down at least fifty feet – Dave couldn’t tell – and boulders covered the ramp ahead less than twenty feet down. “Watch step here, we’re not going far.”
Tayyar took them down only one level, and after a turn, Dave suspected they stood under the passage they had walked two levels up. “Here is bad place. Watch feet.”
This passage had few flat places, instead covered by rocks fallen from the walls and ceilings, only slightly less impassible than the side corridors Dave spied earlier. Rooms branched to their right. As in Derinkuyu and the other undergrounds, the rooms often had cylindrical rolling stone doorways in front of them or beside them – or, in some cases, fallen across the passage.
“Here is the problem,” Tayyar said. He stopped at a cross passage to their right. This passage was more than impassible, instead covered, floor to ceiling, with rocks. “This blockage wasn’t here before. The footprints end here.”
“So he says,” Haluk said. “So, friend, how much are you going to demand to find the way around this blockage?”
Tayyar sighed, expressively put upon. “I know of no way past this.” He peered at his dingy wristwatch. “Best we be leaving now. As I said, this place is haunted, and only a fool would stay here past dark.”
What, the ghosts tell time, too?
“How far has the ceiling fallen in?” Elorie asked. “How long would it take us to clear this?”
“Weeks and weeks, perhaps months, unless you hire many men,” Haluk said. “I’m sure Tayyar here has quite a few brothers and cousins who would be quite willing to help you.”
99 Gods: Betrayer Page 39
