Emerson eagerly stalks the fear scent, following it to its source.
The feeling is not shared. Though the draft beasts pant and their hooves clatter, all echoes feel muffled, almost deathlike. His fellow travelers react by hunching nervously on the narrow bench seats, their breath misting the chill air.
Kurt the Exploser seems a little less surprised by all this than Sara or Dedinger, as if the old man long suspected the existence of a subterranean path. Yet, his white-rimmed eyes keep darting, as if to catch dreaded movement in the surrounding shadows. Even their guides, the taciturn women riders, appear uneasy. They must have come this way before, yet Emerson can tell they dislike the tunnel.
Tunnel.
He mouths the word, adding it proudly to his list of recovered nouns.
Tunnel.
Once upon a time, the term meant more than a mere hole in the ground, when his job was fine-tuning mighty engines that roamed the speckled black of space. Back then it stood for …
No more words come to mind. Even images fail him, though oddly enough, equations stream from some portion of his brain less damaged than the speech center. Equations that explain tunnels, in a chaste, sterile way — the sort of multidimensional tubes that thread past treacherous shoals of hyperspace. Alas, to his disappointment, the formulas lack any power to yank memories to life.
They do not carry the telltale spoor of fear.
• • •
Also undamaged is his unfailing sense of direction. Emerson knows when the smooth-walled passage must be passing under the broad river, but no seepage is seen. The tunnel is a solid piece of Galactic workmanship, built to last for centuries or eons — until the assigned time for dismantling.
That time came to this world long ago. This place should have vanished along with all the great cities, back when Jijo was lain fallow. By some oversight, it was missed by the great destroyer machines and living acid lakes.
Now desperate fugitives use the ancient causeway to evade a hostile sky, suddenly filled with ships.
While still vague on details, Emerson knows he has been fleeing starships for a very long time, along with Gillian, Hannes, Tsh’t, and the crew of Streaker.
Faces flicker, accompanying each name as recall agony makes him grunt and squeeze his eyelids. Faces Emerson pines for … and desperately hopes never to see again. He knows he must have been sacrificed somehow, to help the others get away.
Did the plan succeed? Did Streaker escape ahead of those awful dreadnoughts? Or has he suffered all of this for nothing?
His companions breathe heavily and perspire. They seem taxed by the stale air, but to Emerson it is just another kind of atmosphere. He has inhaled many types over the years. At least this stuff nourishes the lungs …
… unlike the wind back on the green-green world, where a balmy day could kill you if your helmet failed.…
And his helmet did fail, he now recalls, at the worst possible time, while trying to cross a mat of sucking demiveg, running frantically toward—
Sara and Prity gasp aloud, snapping his mental thread, making him look up to see what changed.
At a brisk pace the wagon enters a sudden widening of the tunnel, like the bulge where a snake digests its meal. Dimpled walls recede amid deep shadows, where dozens of large objects dimly lurk — tubelike vehicles, corroded by time. Some have been crushed by rock falls. Piles of stony debris block other exits from the underground vault.
Emerson lifts a hand to stroke a filmy creature riding his forehead, as lightly as a scarf or veil. The rewq trembles at his touch, swarming down to lay its filmy, translucent membrane over his eyes. Some colors dim, while others intensify. The ancient transit cars seem to shimmer like specters, as if he is looking at them not through space, but time. It is almost possible to imagine them in motion, filled with vital energies, hurtling through a network that once girdled a living, global civilization.
The horsewomen sitting on the foremost bench clutch their reins and peer straight ahead, enclosed by a nimbus of tension made visible by the rewq. The film shows Emerson their edgy, superstitious awe. To them, this is no harmless crypt for dusty relics, but a macabre place where phantoms prowl. Ghosts from an age of gods.
The creature on his brow intrigues Emerson. How does the little parasite translate emotions — even between beings as different as human and traeki — and all without words? Anyone who brought such a treasure to Earth would be richly rewarded.
To his right, he observes Sara comforting her chimpanzee aide, holding Prity in her arms. The little ape cringes from the dark, echoless cavern, but the rewq’s overlaid colors betray a fringe of deceit in Prity’s distress. It is partly an act! A way to distract her mistress, diverting Sara from her own claustrophobic fears.
Emerson smiles knowingly. The hues surrounding Sara reveal what the unaided eye already knows — that the young woman thrives on being needed.
“It’s all right, Prity,” she soothes. “Shh. It’ll be all right.”
The phrases are so simple, so familiar that Emerson understands them. He used to hear the same words while thrashing in his delirium, during those murky days after the crash, when Sara’s tender care helped pull him back from that pit of dark fire.
The vast chamber stretches on, with just the glowing stripe to keep them from drifting off course. Emerson glances back to see young Jomah, seated on the last bench with his cap a twisted mass between his hands, while his uncle Kurt tries to explain something in hushed tones, motioning at the distant ceiling and walls — perhaps speculating what held them up … or what explosive force it would take to bring them crashing down. Nearby, with fastened hands and feet, the rebel, Dedinger, projects pure hatred of this place.
Emerson snorts annoyance with his companions. What a gloomy bunch! He has been in spots infinitely more disturbing than this harmless tomb … some of them he can even remember! If there is one sure truth he can recall from his former life, it is that a cheerful journey goes much faster, whether you are in deep space or the threshold of hell.
From a bag at his feet, he pulls out the midget dulcimer Ariana Foo had given him back at the Biblos Archive, that ornate hall of endless corridors stacked high with paper books. Not bothering with the hammers, he lays the instrument on his lap and plucks a few strings. Twanging notes jar the others from their anxious mutterings to look his way.
Though Emerson’s ravaged brain lacks speech, he has learned ways to nudge and cajole. Music comes from a different place than speech, as does song.
Free association sifts the shadowy files of memory. Early drawers and closets, undammed by the traumas of later life. From some cache he finds a tune about travel down another narrow road. One with a prospect of hope at the end of the line.
It spills forth without volition, as a whole, flowing to a voice that’s unpracticed, but strong.
“I’ve got a mule, her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles down the Erie Canal.
She’s a good old worker and a good
old pal,
Fifteen miles down the Erie Canal.
We’ve hauled some cargo in our day,
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay,
And we know every inch of the way,
From Albany to Buffalo-o-o.…”
Amid the shadows, they are not easily coaxed from their worries. He too can feel the weight of rock above, and so many years. But Emerson refuses to be oppressed. He sings louder, and soon Jomah’s voice joins the refrain, followed tentatively by Sara’s. The horses’ ears flick. They nicker, speeding to a canter.
