through an opening this big.”
“Y’all know what they say about caves. If she blows, she goes. This is one monster we got us here.” Haight, impressed.
“What’s on the other side of that?” Bowman was poking his light beam into the void, trying to assess the terrain.
Hallie followed the caver’s protocol of keeping her light focused on his chest rather than shining it onto his face, where it would blind him. “A place where a lot of people died.”
She led on, down over boulders, past pits with bottoms their lights could not reach, through gardens of varicolored speleothems, white and red and black stalactites and stalagmites. Some were as thick as tree trunks, great columns that rose to the ceiling. Other, younger stalagmites stuck up like short spears from Cueva de Luz’s floor.
The darkness down here was the luminal equivalent of absolute zero. It began to have weight, like water on a dive, and it consumed the beams of their lights more quickly than any surface darkness ever could. Hallie felt it pressing her body and her mind. There were other physical manifestations of the cave’s presence. Its out-blowing breath pushed their chests and faces, filled their noses, had substance and force. There was nothing foul or corrupt in the scent now, but neither was it like any odor ever smelled on the surface. It came up from the cave’s ancient heart, carrying a coppery tinge like the smell of fresh blood and other, stranger things unknown to the world of light.
FOURTEEN
THEY ENTERED A TIGHT, TWISTING PASSAGE, THEN DESCENDED a jagged vertical chute that required them briefly to “chimney”—to press their backs and feet against opposite walls and work their way down foot by foot. They dropped out of that into a room big enough to contain a football field. Near its center, a bus-sized slab of gray stone had peeled off one wall. Following Hallie, they worked their way through boulders and rubble until all were standing beside the giant slab. It rose twenty feet over their heads and was wreathed in mist that boiled up off a small river running down one side of the chamber, an offshoot of the cave’s main watercourse.
“Some piece of rock.” Haight was playing his light over the slab, examining it in detail.
“This is more interesting.” Hallie moved her light down to the floor of the cave, beneath the end of the rock platform.
“Good Lord. Those look like…” Cahner didn’t finish the sentence.
Bowman did. “Bones. Human bones. Right, Rafael?”
“That is correct. The ancient Cuicatecs believed in many gods. They relied on human sacrifices to stay in good graces with them.
“Those all’re
“They believed that the most effective sacrifices were children.” Arguello sounded sad. “Their souls were thought to be more pure, therefore more powerful.”
“How would they get down this deep, though?” Haight had turned professionally curious. “We’re two hours past the twilight zone, at least.”
“They would line up from the surface all the way down to the places of killing, each holding a torch,” said Arguello.
“Why here?”
“That we do not know. But obviously they considered such places to have great power.”
Bowman had been shifting from foot to foot. “Let’s keep moving. Good people are dying up top.”
They started down again, following the bouncing circles of blue-white light. After a while, the descent assumed a rhythm that let Hallie’s mind wonder. And what she thought was:
Then the down-climbing grew treacherous again. It was not like hiking down a trail on the surface, nor even like clambering over boulders and talus, and not just because of the surrounding darkness. Down here, everything was wet. There was no trail or path, only an endless jumble of steeply sloping rocks and debris. The trick was to stay on top of the boulders as much as possible, moving along without dropping down into the spaces between them. It required both balance and courage, because sometimes the distance between boulders was a jump from the slick round top of one to the slick round top of another, with empty space of unknown depth yawning between them. At other times, the only way to keep going was to down-climb steep or even vertical faces. None was more than twenty-five feet, but such a fall could maim or kill easily enough.
Even in such terrain, Hallie felt the familiar skill coming back as she descended. When she was in a boulder garden, her brain would automatically plot a path several yards ahead that her feet could follow. Climbing down a short face, her hands and feet seemed to find placements on their own, her fingers to become one with the wall’s protrusions and hollows. To those behind her, she appeared to be almost floating along, so smooth and even was her progress. Bowman, coming next, stayed close despite his size, though his movement was less fluid. Next in line was Cahner, his experience in caves serving him well. His progress was not as graceful and efficient as Hallie’s, but he moved easily and with confidence. Arguello was having the most trouble, and before long, he was sweating hard and swearing. Back at the tail end, Haight could have gone much faster had he not had to stay behind the two older men, but he seemed happy to be easing along, taking in the surroundings, even humming some Appalachian tune to himself as he went.
Hallie came to a huge stalagmite, taller and thicker than one of the Parthenon’s columns, colored red and yellow and black by minerals in the dripping water that had created it. The formation rose from the cave floor straight up to the ceiling. Even in this Brobdingnagian cave, such a speleothem was remarkable, and it was the signpost she had been anticipating.
“Let’s stop here.”
“Why?” Bowman impatient, prodding.
“Because if you keep going you’ll fall about five hundred feet straight down.”
“The big wall you told us about?”
“None other. Stay beside me, be careful, and I’ll show you.”
The others waited while she and Bowman stepped closer to the edge of the cliff. Their lights, shining out into the void, revealed the top of a gigantic canyon, deep enough that their beams did not reach the bottom.
“One thousand, seven hundred and eighty-nine feet across to the far wall.” Hallie aimed a laser range finder across, then pointed it straight down. “Five hundred and twenty-three feet deep.”
“This is a beautiful thing.” Cahner eased up and played his light over polished bronze walls so smooth they gleamed. “Think of the water flow it took to carve such an abyss. Unimaginable.” There was pure awe in his voice.
“Do we take a break here?” Arguello was already dropping his pack to the floor. “I could use a snack. And some water. It will take you an hour or so to rig the rappel rope here, will it not?”
“We won’t be rigging rappel ropes. Remember I mentioned that back at BARDA?” Bowman cast his light around, assessing the area.
“I had forgotten. But I will just grab a snack in any case.” Arguello started munching a Hershey bar with almonds. Hallie considered saying something about conserving their rations, not gobbling stuff this early into the expedition, but decided it would be better to mention it to Arguello when she had a chance to be alone with him.
Haight was focused, gleefully, on the down-climb. “
“In my pack, actually.” Bowman dropped his backpack and began digging through it. “I couldn’t release these until we were in the cave, with zero chance of security breach.” He handed each of them small bags that resembled zippered toiletry kits. “Otherwise, you would have been carrying them yourselves, believe me. Drop your packs, look at this gear. We’ll be here awhile.”
