10
I snapped my mouth shut as soon as I realized what was happening. So did my reflection. Yes, I was horrified. I could admit that. I just didn’t want anyone else to see it. The sweat that had sprung up in that terrible downward crawl was freezing on my body, and it wasn’t just the cold of the room.
“Ingold,” I said, very carefully. “Denton. There’s something going on here that you should see.”
They must have heard something in my voice because they came over at once. “Look at the reflections,” I said, turning my head.
Ingold let out a low whistle. Denton actually jumped, like a cat catching sight of a snake, his feet skidding on the slick floor. “What the hell ... ?”
Ingold brought the lantern as close to the surface as he could.
The fire gleamed strangely between our mirrored faces, and then suddenly color spasmed across the pearlescent surface, great gouts of red and white and orange, as if in imitation of the flame.
I stood up. I wasn’t sure if an extra foot or two of height would help at all, but I didn’t like the way the colors spread.
They bloomed out in circles, like ink soaking through paper.
Our faces were filled with rings of bruising light.
Abruptly Ingold laughed. “Chromatophores!” he said, as the colors splattered across the floor. He sounded utterly delighted. I wished I had a tenth of his enthusiasm.
“Whatafores?”
“Darwin described them in cuttlefish. These… creatures… whatever they are, must possess something similar.”
“Creatures?” I said.
“The floor is alive?” Denton said.
“You’re saying the floor is made of cuttlefish ?!” said Angus.
“No, no.” Ingold laughed again, still staring at the fireworks display across the floor.
“Many animals can change color. Chameleons, frogs, fish. It is hardly limited to one order of life. That may explain the mimicry as well. Most color-changing creatures do so to hide from predators, so possibly ...” He trailed off.
I fixated on the one bit that I understood.
“You’re saying this isn’t stone?” I asked, trying to back away from the floor, which went about as well as you’d expect.
“No,” said Ingold. “Shell, probably. Some kind of protective surface over the creatures. Or creature. I suppose it could be only one.”
The colors shifted, turning darker, browns and purples replacing the brighter colors.
It was still beautiful, but the sense of something other filled the room to choking, thick as firedamp.
They felt wrong. It’s hard to explain—how can a color be wrong?
—but if I were pouring out ink or paint to make patterns, I would have chosen them differently and arranged them differently.
These colors bled together in ways that I couldn’t predict and wouldn’t have expected.
They felt alien . If I stared at them too long, I started to feel dizzy, as if I was looking down from an unexpectedly high place.
“If it’s a shell,” said Angus, ever the practical one, “are you saying this thing is some kind of shellfish? Like a giant oyster?”
“Maybe?” Ingold looked up, his eyes shining. Apparently the alienness affected him less than the rest of us. “But Denton, do you know what this means?”
Judging by Denton’s expression, nothing good. His previous wonder had been wiped away by the sight of the moving faces below. (I could hardly blame him. So had mine.)
“It means Oscar wasn’t hallucinating!” Ingold beamed at us, as if this was a joy and a delight instead of confirmation of all of Denton’s worst fears.
“Good to know,” said Angus. I was already backing toward the entryway.
I hated that crawl space like I had hated few other things on earth, but standing on .
.. whatever this was ... made me queasy with dread.
What if the hard surface was only there because the faces wanted it there?
What if they could just open the floor like a mouth and swallow us all whole?
“I think I ... err ... forgot something ... at camp ...” I said, and bolted for the tunnel.
***
I was bathed in sweat by the time I got to the top of the rippling crawl. It was slightly less awful on the way up, but only because I knew that it didn’t get any tighter. Didn’t squeeze .
I rolled out of the opening to one side, knocked my headlamp against the wall, and sent it askew. I had to take it off to adjust it, which is why I was able to see the red light at the end of the corridor a moment later.
“Christ’s blood,” I muttered. My first thought was that it was just one damn thing after another. My second, much more important thought, was that I was alone up here with it.
I shoved my head down into the crawl space and yelled, “ The light’s here! ” as loud as I could. I expected it to echo, but it didn’t, probably because Angus was just coming out of the hole.
“Where, now?”
I pointed. Of course it had gone out by now. Angus pulled himself out, followed by Denton and a grumbling Ingold. “I don’t know why we couldn’t stay,” he was saying. “Obviously there was something between us and the creatures—”
“Red light,” I said, which stopped him immediately.
Denton took off down the tunnel. I went after him, nearly losing him at the squeeze, but we caught up again at the split in the tunnel. He was looking both ways, clearly frustrated.
“Two and two,” Angus said, jerking his head toward me. “You take Denton left. Ingold and I will go right.”
Denton bolted the moment he heard the word left . I ran after him, the beam of light bouncing crazily on his back. I couldn’t remember what this branch was like. A dead end, I was pretty sure, though I wasn’t sure how many twists it took to get there. “Denton, wait!”
It is somewhat embarrassing to be outpaced by a man half again your age. I told myself I was still recovering from the crawl. I managed to catch up to him and grab for his shoulder. The pain in my side felt like a bayonet.
“Denton ... wait for ...”
He shook me off. “There’s a man down here! I’d nearly caught him!” And then he was off again, and I had to stop and put my hands on my knees and breathe until the spots in my vision went away.
Not ten seconds later, I heard a cry from the tunnel ahead. It was anguish and surprise all at once, and I would have thought that Denton had fallen into a hole and broken everything, except that what I heard was a single word, in Denton’s voice.
“Oscar?! ”
I skidded around the last turn in the corridor, gasping like a broken-winded horse.
My light illuminated a tableau like the one of the posters plastered all over Paris advertising lurid plays—Denton against the far wall, caught in the beam, one hand outstretched; a second man, on his knees at the base of the wall, head thrown back.
He wore an unlit headlamp and a thick set of mining goggles, giving him the look of some strange insect dug up in the far reaches of the earth.
Denton grabbed his shoulders, hauling him upright. “Oscar, it’s me! Denton!”
The man’s mouth opened and he took a step forward, lips silently forming Denton’s name. That was all it took for the doctor to fling his arms around his cousin and begin pounding his back. “Oscar, I thought you were dead!”
When they finally separated, Denton was frowning. “What’s wrong?”
Oscar smiled sheepishly and touched his throat, then shook his head. He reached into his pack and pulled out a green slate and a piece of chalk and wrote: SORRY. CAN’T TALK.
“You can’t talk?”
He erased the slate with his sleeve. MINE GAS. HURT THROAT. DR SAID NOT TO.
“Good lord,” said Denton. “You’ll have to tell me all about it. Ah—sorry, here, let me introduce my friend. This is Lieutenant Easton.”
“Why’d you run?” I managed to get out, without sounding too wheezy.
THOUGHT YOU WERE OTHER MEN.
“It’s just us,” Denton said. He laughed, brief and hysterical. “Have you been avoiding us all this time?”
Oscar tapped the slate over the words OTHER MEN and shrugged, with another sheepish smile.
“What other men?” I asked.
DON’T KNOW. CHASED UNTIL I GOT LOST.
Approaching footsteps heralded the arrival of Angus and Ingold. “We heard the yell,” Ingold said. He didn’t sound winded. He looked uncertainly from Oscar to Denton, then back again.
“I’m fine,” said Denton. He laughed again, another half-hysterical bark. “Better than fine! This is Dr. John Ingold and Angus. Everyone, my cousin Oscar, who has given us quite a scare.”
Oscar ducked his head, clearly embarrassed, and stood clutching the slate.
“We’ve been hunting all over for you,” said Denton, after an awkward moment of silence. “And you’ve been here in the mine the whole time? Why didn’t you answer any of my letters?”
Oscar shook his head. LOST, he wrote on the slate.
I was facing Oscar and Denton, my head turned a little to one side so as not to blind them with my lamp. That was probably why I saw Angus calmly reach down, lift his pistol, and point it at Denton’s cousin.
The sound of the gun being cocked was extraordinarily loud in the tunnel.
“Angus, what are you—” Denton started.
“Take off your goggles,” ordered Angus.
The man gazed at us in silence, his mouth a little open, as if he had been panting. Denton began to protest, but Angus lifted the gun half an inch. “ Do it ,” he ordered.
Slowly, grudgingly, Denton’s cousin lowered his head, covering his face with his hands, and pulled the goggles down. When he lifted his head again, his eyes were tightly closed.
“It’s the light,” said Denton angrily. “If he spent a long time in the cave, his eyes desensitized. The light hurts him.”
“Open your eyes,” grated Angus.
“Easton.” Denton appealed to me, caught somewhere between exasperation and panic. “Easton, do something!”
“Angus is the wisest man I know,” I said, which was true, even if I had no idea what he was getting at.