by Greig Beck
“It’s blue.” Jane’s mouth dropped open in a wide smile.
“Is that what I think it is?” Michael felt he should be ready to expect anything now, but the sight made him both astounded and relieved. The mushrooms stood about 15 feet in height and their cups were like café sun parasols throwing out at least 10 feet wide. “That’s dinner taken care of.”
He raced to stand below a smaller one and grabbed at its cup to tear the skin back and grab a handful. He sniffed at it. “Seems okay.” He took a bite and turned to her. “High protein, packed with vitamins and minerals, and, delicious. And it’ll last for weeks, so we can take some with us.”
Jane was tugging at something on one of the walls, and then spun back to him, her hands cupped. “Look.”
Michael could already see the blue light escaping from between her fingers. She opened her hand to display a rod-shaped crystal that shone brilliant blue, like it had some sort of stored energy within it.
“Is that…? I have no idea. What is it?” He reached out for it and she placed it in his hands. It was cold, and the luminescence was so intense he had to squint. He held it up and found it threw a glow over 20 feet around him.
Jane reached into his hands to rub the crystal with her finger. “A lot of minerals can reflect light, and usually do. But they do it best under UV radiation. My guess is that the millions of years of being bathed by the radiation of the core has imbued these crystals with significant fluorescing properties.”
“They absorb the radiation and release it as light—blue light.” He nodded. “I think we now know how Katya and her team were able to navigate the dark labyrinths.”
“And I think our odds are improving.” She grinned. “Let’s go back and tell the others.”
They headed back to their group and Andy was waiting for them in the dark rear of the entrance cave.
“Where did you guys go? What happened to the rule of no one wandering off?” he demanded.
“Sorry,” Jane said. “We found something. Hold out your hands and close your eyes.”
“Is this a joke?” he replied slowly. “Please don’t put anything that’s alive in my hands.”
“No joke, but we have an answer,” Michael said. “Come on, hold ‘em out.”
“Oh boy.” Andy held out his hands in a cup and closed his eyes. Jane placed the crystal in them.
“Holy shit,” Maggie said from the corner of the cave and raced over.
Jane grinned. “Open your eyes.”
Andy did and the blue glow bathed his face. He nodded and laughed. “This. Is. Amazing. It’s cold—how’s it doing it?”
“We think the crystal has somehow absorbed the radiation down here. But this has got to be how Katya and her team traveled in the darkness,” Michael said. “They must have found them in another cave and lit their way home.”
“That’s not all,” Jane enthused. “We found Saknussov’s marks.”
“And food.” Michael held up a chunk of mushroom.
Wenton wandered over and took it from him. “I don’t suppose you also found an elevator?” He sniffed at the chunk. “Mushroom?”
Michael nodded.
“Safe?” Wenton raised an eyebrow.
“Looks and tastes like an edible basidiomycete mushroom to me,” Michael replied.
“You’ve tried it already?” Wenton looked him up and down, and then pinched off a piece. He tossed it in his mouth, chewed a moment, and then nodded. “Well done.”
Andy also took some of the mushroom. “If there’s mushrooms, there’s moisture, and if there’s moisture…”
“There’s water as well,” Maggie finished.
Michael looked at each of their weary faces in the blue glow. “If we can find our gravity well, then we might have enough to continue on to the surface. Let’s gather up some supplies and more of the crystals. I also want some of the skins off the mushrooms as it’s like leather. Might come in handy.”
Michael and Jane took the group back in through the narrow tunnel to the mushroom cave. On entering, Andy darted forward to leap up onto a boulder.
“Oh my God.”
He leaped down and raced to a mushroom as tall as he was. He grabbed at its stalk and shook it, and then grabbed the cup to squeeze. He turned slowly.
“There are hundreds of them.” He raced to another stone to leap up on top to survey the cavern.
“Don’t go too far,” Jane called.
The rest set about gathering the things they needed, plus eating their fill. For the first time in days or even weeks, they felt optimistic about their chances, and Wenton sung in a baritone from somewhere off in the darkness.
Maggie was first to find one wall of the cave running with clear water and pooling in small natural basins. They filled canteens and drank deeply.
As they scouted about, Andy shouted from one side of the cavern. “Here, see this.”
They rushed to him and he crouched down on the cave floor. He pushed some debris out of the way and held his crystal out, illuminating what he had found.
“A path made of fitted stone.”
They squatted, and Jane pushed rubble out of the way and wiped away a layer of soil. “Not just fitted stones—tiles.” She brushed some more. “It’s like a mosaic.”
They cleaned more tiles and then stood and backed up. It showed an image of people or things that were human-shaped. And some were riding on the backs of stout beasts.
“Magnificent,” Maggie said and lifted her crystal. “Do you think this could be where your sea people went?”
“Who knows. I think they went somewhere.” Michael looked over the mosaic. “However, this artifact looks just as old or older. Maybe they were contemporaries.”
Jane moved some more debris from the tiles. “Where does it lead?”
“Let’s find out.” Michael turned. “Have we got everything we need?”
The group was ready, with some of them even having made crude sacks out of the mushroom skins to carry more of the fungi and more crystals. They lashed them to their waists or hung them over shoulders.
“Then let’s follow the yellow brick road.” Michael led them in.
CHAPTER 23
They moved through the narrow cave that soon became a broad passage as wide as a train tunnel. It was strewn with more tumbled debris, evidence of some long-past cataclysm, but it was clear there had once been structures here.
There were thick columns, many fallen to the ground laying in pieces and coated in layers of moss. In some places, the group had to duck under arches carved with faces that may or may not have been human.
Jane pointed. “Only two eyes. That’s a good sign.”
There were also huge stone doorways that were blocked, and some oddly seemed bricked over. They arrived at a set of steps and ascended them through another carved doorway. Michael was first through and held up his crystal rod in the enormous space.
But he didn’t need to. It was already filled with light.
“A city,” he breathed out.
Most of the inside of this corner of the mountain seemed hollowed out. Built into the walls and along winding avenues were buildings, all dark now and filled with nothing but shadows and the silence of the tomb.
From some, long strings of mosses hung down over the facades, giving them a hanging garden look, and Michael could almost feel the ghosts of the past crowding the streets and rushing by them.
“They harnessed the crystals,” Jane said from beside him.
He nodded and turned his head slowly. At several places around the city, huge columns of the crystals were set on pedestals. Some of the rods were columns 20 feet high and they still threw out a brilliant luminescence that seemed incongruous among the decrepit ruins.
“See here.” Andy used his pack to scrub at one of the lichen-covered walls. The debris was wiped away, showing something like glass.
“Crystal,” he said. He quickly did the same to another wall. “This too. The entire place is made from crysta
ls.” He stood back. “Just imagine what it looked like.”
“A crystal city,” Maggie whispered. “It must have been beautiful.”
“Where did they all go?” Wenton asked. “Was there a plague, a war, or something else?”
“I wish we had more time,” Jane asked.
“The craftsmanship is magnificent. I’d love to meet them, even just to talk to them,” Maggie added.
“I imagine that perhaps we’d be as alien to them as they are to us.” Wenton turned to her. “Perhaps to them, we’d be monsters.” He turned back. “Or gods.”
“Did they know about us?” Andy asked. “I mean, did they think their world was the only world, or did they have an idea there was something else?”
“Did we think there was another world down here?” Jane asked.
“Saknussov suspected,” Michael replied. “And they thought him mad.”
“These guys certainly never made it to the surface. We’d know if they did,” Andy replied.
“Really? How would we know? I mean, look around. These ruins are thousands of years old. For all we know, they did make it. Back then, even a few thousand years ago, us surface dwellers weren’t very advanced.” Wenton shrugged.
“I think we would know about it. If they escaped this place, then their own history would have recorded it, somewhere.” Jane looked around. “I don’t think they made it to the surface, and I’m pretty sure there’s no civilization between topside and down here.”
“But there is life in the deep caves,” Maggie said. “We were hunted by something up in the caves. We only caught sight of them briefly, but they looked more mammalian than insectoid, and super adapted to living in darkness.”
“We also encountered some creatures as well, but they were more like giant spiders and could well have come from down here.” Michael looked around slowly. “It tells me there was potential food sources in the deep caves. Survival was possible.”
The group stood in silence for a few moments before Wenton broke it with a clearing of his throat. “Let’s focus. Somewhere around here is our way out. We need to investigate, and it would be a travesty against science not to look around for a while to at least learn a little more about out lost interior folk.”
Michael turned slowly. “We can do both. Look for any signs left behind by Mr. Saknussov, or even better, the gravity well. And make sure we all stay in contact or eyesight. Andy with Maggie and Harry—you guys take that side of the city. We’ll do our scout in 20-minute bursts. Got it?”
They headed out, and he noticed that Jane had already fashioned her crystal into a necklace to hang at her chest and illuminate her way. She turned to him.
“How long do you think we’ve been down here? I’ve lost track of the days with no night.”
“In our surface days or center of the Earth days? They’re two different things.” He smiled as her brows came together.
“What I mean is, the inner wheel turns slower than the outer wheel. In my research, I found that mathematical simulations suggested that the gravity from the Earth’s center causes a slight distortion in time, so time is actually moving slower down here.” He stopped to look up, as if seeing through the cave ceiling. “Months have passed down here, but a lot less up there.”
“So, Katya might have been trapped down here for longer and not known it?” she asked. “Poor woman. No wonder she lost her mind.”
“Yeah, maybe, but I think she got torn up a lot through grief. And also because no one believed her.” Michael pointed with his chin. “Come on, let’s check over there.”
There was a large doorway with the remains of long-petrified wooden doors seeming to be only held together with thick mosses. As Michael gently pushed one, the steel hinges showered to the ground in a rain of red dust, and the once-mighty wooden beams broke off in his hands like paper.
Inside, the blue glow of their crystals cast a ball of illumination around the pair but still left the darker corners to deep shadow.
The room was large and dust was still suspended in a deathly still air. At the room’s center was some sort of stone table or altar.
“A place of worship?” Jane asked.
“Maybe. I wonder what sort of god they prayed to.” Michael lifted his crystal to the wall. “Looks like writing.”
Jane joined him. “Where’s a good linguist when you need one.” She looked along the lettering. “I can’t make out anything resembling any sort of character set from the surface. I know there are about 101 different alphabets in the world, from English to Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Kanji, and the list goes on. But there’s nothing of them I see in this. It looks more like code.”
“At least we can say it probably isn’t a derivative of one of them, and more than likely an entirely new language. I wonder what it sounded like?” he asked.
“This is better.” Jane had moved along the wall a little further. “Picture writing.”
There were carved images that appeared in a fresco style running along the wall. “They were people.” Michael squinted. “But their faces look different.”
The image showed a figure standing on a pedestal with arms outstretched, and a group of men and women kneeling around it.
“Their leader maybe? Or some sort of divinity figure?” Jane asked.
The next figure showed an image of a massed group of people, but now they seemed armed with spears and shields. Some of them rode on the back of huge beasts, like elephants except with six legs.
“This is an army,” she said.
“And this is why.” Michael held his crystal closer to the wall’s fresco.
The army of people faced another force. The small, carved figures were shown facing another massed group of a different sort of creature.
Michael brought his light and face closer. These new figures looked to be either wearing armor, or they themselves were armor-plated. He rummaged in his woven bag for the small statue of the figure he had found. It was similar to those in the picture—human-shaped, but armored.
“The arthropod army. Looks like they did evolve,” she said. “Remember when I said that on the surface the amphibians won the race to colonize the land? And eventually, we humans evolved from those first limbed fish? Seems the arthropods were the ones who were highly evolved here and continued to make war on the mammals.”
The next image was one of carnage—with the bigger, armored people killing, impaling, and burying their faces into the bodies of the fallen mammalian people.
“They were getting massacred,” Jane said softly. “And feasted on.”
Michael looked around. “Yes, and it looks like the bigger guys eventually won.”
“Or this race was chased off or escaped.” Jane was at the last few images. It showed columns of people being led out of the city by the divine figure. But some were heading into the deeper labyrinths of the cave.
“Maybe they’re still in here, or out there in the jungle somewhere.” She stepped back. “But they never came back here.”
“Some that escaped took to the sea in boats.” Michael traced the outlines of the fleet of small craft. “And some chose the endless darkness of the deeper caves. Which ones survived?”
The pair continued walking around, examining the walls, but they showed little else.
“They left perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. If some went further into the caves, they would have found the gravity wells and surely would have traveled in them,” Jane said.
“Maybe they only planned to stay in hiding for a few years, and then come back. Maybe something happened and they got trapped.” Michael sighed. “So many theories, and no one to ask.”
“Hey, Jane, Michael.”
“That was Andy. He must have found something,” Michael said. “Come on.”
They headed out of the gallery and stood on the stone steps for a moment, trying to locate their friends. A few hundred yards in the distance, a small blue glow rose up on the end of a waving arm.
“There h
e is.” Jane grinned.
They moved through the tumbled stone columns and around large, cracked pathways. Michael wondered if at one chaotic time, these roads ran red with the blood of the former occupants.
They leaped up onto a fallen wall and kept climbing a hill of rubble to the top. Andy was waiting, a grin splitting his face. He stood aside and pointed.
“Arkady Saknussov, I presume?”
In a shallow basin was a skeleton, human, and still in the remains of tattered clothing. A leather belt was around its waist with the scabbard and hilt of an ancient blade still in the sheath. Plus, there looked to be a desiccated satchel tucked under one of its hips. The bones of one of his legs were horribly broken, and he had obviously dragged himself here, but no further.
Close to the body was a metal hammer and several spikes, the ancient tools of a caver from over 500 years ago. But this time, they had been used for other purposes.
“The last thing he did was to leave us a message,” Wenton said. “In Russian.”
There were lines of Cyrillic lettering close to him, and Michael crouched and held the crystal over them. He began to read the words.
“I’m too late and have missed the gentle people of the interior by perhaps a thousand, thousand years. It seems their choices were hard ones: to fight, die, and be feasted upon. To flee to other lands perhaps across their red sea. Or maybe some ascended to their own idea of heaven in the caves above.” Michael looked up at Jane. “Just as we thought.”
He looked back down at the last few sentences. He frowned. “The others know I’m here. And they are always watching.”
Michael looked up slowly. “That’s all he wrote.”
“Well, that’s certainly comforting,” Wenton lamented. “To be feasted upon by the attackers, and also, they were watching him. Who was watching him?”
“I assume he meant the same group that attacked this city.” Michael looked up.
“Makes no sense,” Wenton huffed. “The events would be thousands of years apart.”
“Why? Even topside, we have some groups that have clan or religious wars carrying on centuries,” Jane replied.
“Are we safe here?” Maggie asked.
