Tunnels

of «Chalky» and 'Frosty the Snowman.' More impetuous than Chester, he had lost his temper one winter's evening when his tormentors had ambushed him on the way to a dig. Unfortunately for them, Will had used his shovel to great effect, and a bloody and one-sided battle had ensued in which teeth were lost and a nose was badly broken.

Understandably both Will and Chester were left alone for a while after that and treated with the sort of grudging respect given to mad dogs. However, both boys remained distrustful of their classmates, believing that if they let their guards down, the persecution would more than likely start all over again. So, other than Chester 's inclusion on a number of school teams because of his physical prowess, both remained outsiders, loners at the edge of the playground. Secure in their shared isolation, they talked to no one and no one talked to them.

It had been many years before they'd even spoken to each other, although there'd long been a sneaking admiration between the two for the way they'd both stood their ground against the school bullies. Without really realizing it they gravitated toward each other, spending more and more of their time together during school hours. Will had been alone and friendless for so long, he had to admit that it felt good to have a companion, but he knew that if the friendship was going to go anywhere he'd sooner or later have to reveal to Chester his grand passion — his excavations. And now that time had come.

Will rode between the alternating grassy mounds, craters, and heaps of trash, careering to a halt as he reached the far side. He dismounted and hid his bicycle in a small dugout beneath the shell of an abandoned car, its make unrecognizable as a result of the rust and salvaging it had endured.

'Here we are,' he announced as Chester caught up.

'Is this where we're going to dig?' Chester panted, looking around at the ground at their feet.

'Nope. Back up a bit,' Will said. Chester took a couple of paces away from Will, regarding him with bemusement.

'Are we going to start a new one?'

Will didn't answer but instead knelt down and appeared to be feeling for something in a thicket of grass. He found what he was looking for — a knotted length of rope — and stood up, took up the slack, then pulled hard. To Chester 's surprise, a line cracked open in the earth, and a thick panel of plywood rose up, soil tumbling from it to reveal the dark entrance beneath.

'Why do you need to hide it?' he asked Will.

'Can't have those scumbags messing around with my excavation, can I?' Will said possessively.

'We're not going in there, are we?' Chester said, stepping closer to peer into the void.

But Will had already begun to lower himself into the opening, which, after a drop of about six feet, continued to sink deeper, at an angle.

'I've got a spare one of these for you,' Will said from inside the opening as he donned a yellow hard hat and switched on the miner's light mounted on its front. It shone up at Chester, who was hovering indecisively above him.

'Well, are you coming or not?' Will said testily. 'Take it from me, it's completely safe.'

'Are you sure about this?'

'Of course,' Will said, making a show of slapping a support to his side and smiling confidently to give his friend some encouragement. He continued to smile fixedly as, in the shadows behind him and out of Chester 's sight, a small shower of soil fell against his back. 'Safe as houses. Honest.'

'Well…'

Once inside, Chester was almost too surprised to speak. A tunnel, several feet wide and the same in height, ran at a slight incline into the darkness, the sides shored up with old timber props at frequent intervals. It looked, Chester thought, exactly like the mines in those old cowboy films they showed on TV on Sunday afternoons.

'This is cool! You didn't do all this by yourself, Will, you can't have!'

Will grinned smugly. 'Certainly did. I've been at it since last year — and you haven't seen the half of it yet. Step this way.'

He replaced the plywood, sealing the tunnel mouth. Chester watched with mixed emotions as the last chink of blue sky disappeared. They set off along the passage, past stores of planks and shoring timbers stacked untidily against the sides.

'Wow!' Chester said under his breath.

Quite unexpectedly the passage widened out into an area the size of a reasonably large room, two tunnels branching off each end of it. In the middle was a small mountain of buckets, a trestle table, and two old armchairs. The timber planking of the roof was supported by rows of Stillson props, adjustable iron columns scabbed with rust.

'Home again, home again,' Will said.

'This is just… wild,' Chester said in disbelief, then frowned. 'But is it really all right for us to be down here?'

'Of course it is. My dad showed me how to batten and prop — this isn't my first time, you know…' Will hesitated, catching himself just in time before he said anything about the train station he'd unearthed with his father. Chester regarded him suspiciously as he coughed loudly to mask the lull in the conversation. Will had been sworn to secrecy by his father, and he couldn't break that confidence, not even to Chester. He sniffed loudly, then went on. 'And it's perfectly sound. It's better not to tunnel under buildings — that takes stronger tunnel props and a lot more planning. Also, it's not a good idea where there's water or underground streams — they can cause the whole thing to cave in.'

'There isn't any water around here, is there?' Chester asked quickly.

'Just this.' Will reached into a cardboard box on the table and handed his friend a plastic bottle of water. 'Let's just chill out for a while.'

They both sat in the old armchairs, sipping from the bottles, while Chester looked up at the roof and craned his neck to look at the two branch tunnels.

'It's so peaceful, isn't it?' Will sighed.

'Yes,' Chester replied. 'Very… um… quiet.'

'It's more than that, it's so warm and calm down here. And the smell… sort of comforting, isn't it? Dad says it's where we all came from, a long time ago — cavemen and all that — and of course it's where we all end up eventually — underground, I mean. So it feels sort of natural to us, a home away from home.'

'Suppose so,' Chester agreed dubiously.

'You know, I used to think that when you bought a house, you owned everything under it as well.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, your house is built on a plot of land, right?' Will said, thumping his boot on the floor of the cavern for effect. 'And anything below that plot, going right down to the earth's core, is yours as well. Of course, as you get nearer the center of the planet, the 'segment, if you want to call it that, get smaller and smaller, until you hit the very center.'

Chester nodded slowly, at a loss for what to say.

'So I've always imagined digging down — down into your slice of world and all those thousands of miles that are going to waste, instead of just sitting in a building perched on the very crust of the earth,' Will said dreamily.

'I see,' Chester said, catching on to the idea. 'So if you were to dig down, you could have, like, a skyscraper, but facing the wrong way. Like an ingrown hair or something.' He involuntarily scratched the eczema on his forearm.

'Yes, that's exactly right. Hadn't thought of it like that. Good way of putting it. But Dad says you don't actually own all the ground under you — the government has the right to build subway lines and things if they want to.'

'Oh,' Chester said, wondering why they had been talking about it in the first place, if that was the case.

Will jumped up. 'OK, grab yourself a pickax, four buckets, and a wheelbarrow, and follow me down here.' He pointed to one of the dark tunnels. 'There's a bit of a rock problem.'

* * * * *

Meanwhile, back up at ground level, Dr. Burrows strode purposefully along as he made his way home. He