David Brin - Earth

Those were moments of fantasy, of course. And always they were cut short, refuted by her other senses… by the bouncing echoes of the receding waterfall and the strange feeling of pressure from the rock overhead… reminding her she was actually deep inside a world. A dynamic world, with a habit of changing, shifting, shrugging in its fitful slumber.

New Zealand, especially, was a land of earthquakes and volcanoes. And though all that activity went on slowly in comparison to human lives, Teresa felt a sense of danger beyond the prospect of getting lost and starving to death.

At any moment the mountain might simply decide to squash them.

Somehow, strangely, that patina added to all their other jeopardies seemed to compensate a bit. It felt thrilling, somehow. In that respect we’re alike… Alex Lustig and I. Neither of us was meant to die in a boring way .

She thought about all this while, with other parts of her mind, she paid close attention to each stone and every tricky footing. Alex helped her squeeze finally through a narrow slot, into a passageway that coursed with a stiff breeze. Her fingertips brushed the wall to her left, tracing dripping moisture. Alex stopped her then and slipped the goggles into her hand.

The interactive optics read her pupils’ dilation and damped power accordingly. Nevertheless, the return of sight left her momentarily dazzled. Pyrites and other deceptively gaudy crystalline forms glittered back at her from all sides, their shine accentuated by the gleety dampness, giving the impression of some hermit’s deeply buried shrine. It was lovely. For a moment she was reminded of holos she’d viewed of the Lasceaux and Altamira caves, where her Cro-Magnon ancestors had crept by torchlight to paint the walls with haunting images of beasts and spirits, blowing ocher dust around their hands to leave poignant prints upon the cool stone — markers denoting the one thing she and they intimately shared… mortality.

Teresa consulted her compass — though such things were notoriously unreliable underground. Then she took Alex’s hand to lead him in what seemed the only direction possible, away from the growling river into the heart of the mountain.

So they alternated, stopping frequently to rest, each taking turns being the leader, then the blind, helpless one. She became quite knowledgeable about the contours of his hands, and their footsteps slowly joined in almost the same subconscious rhythm.

Along the way, to pass the time, Alex asked her to talk about herself. So she spoke of her school years and then her life and Jason. Somehow that seemed easier now. She could speak her husband’s name in past tense with sadness but no shame. Teresa also learned a few things about Alex Lustig when his turn came. Perhaps one or two that only slipped between the lines as he told her about his life as a bachelor scientist. In fact, Teresa marveled at how much better a storyteller he was. He made his own labors, in front of chalk boards or holo screens, seem so much more romantic than her own profession as a spacebus driver.

Of course their conversation went in fits and starts. Every third phrase was an interruption. “… Lift your left foot…” or “… duck your head half a meter…” or “… twist sideways now, and feel for a cut to the right…” Each of them took turns verbally guiding and often physically controlling the other one. It was a heavy responsibility, demanding mutual trust. That came hard at first. But there was simply no alternative.

It was during one of her turns to be led that Teresa suddenly felt a passing breeze as they crept along a narrow passage. She turned her head. And even though the fleeting zephyr was gone, she sniffed and began to frown.

“… so that was when Stan told me I’d better shape up my…”

She stopped him by planting her feet and tightening her grip on his hand.

“What is it, Teresa?” She heard and felt him turn around. “Are you tired? We can—”

She held up her free hand to ask for quiet, and he shut up.

Had she really sensed something? Was it because she was blind and paying attention to other senses? Would she have walked right on by if she had been sighted and in the lead? “Alex,” she began. “On which side of the corridor was the next branching on George’s map?”

“Um… as I said, I’m not too certain. I think it was on the left, perhaps four klicks past the lake. But surely we haven’t gone that far yet… Or have we?” He paused. “Do you think maybe we’ve gone past?”

Teresa shook her head. It was a gamble, but the breeze had come from the left…

There were always breezes though, little gusts that blew down the cavern from who knew where, bound for places impossible to guess. Still, something in her internal guidance system had seemed to cry out that last time.

“Did George write a note next to the turn?”

She heard him inhale deeply and imagined him closing his eyes as he concentrated. “Yes… I believe I see some writing… do you think it was something like ‘watch out for the skull and bones’?”

She punched fairly accurately and struck his shoulder. “Ow!” he grunted, satisfyingly.

“No,” Teresa said. “But the turn must have been unobvious. After all, they don’t have to be clear forks in the road. Usually they won’t be.”

“I guess not. Maybe that’s what he wrote down… how to look for it. Did you—”

She dragged his wrist. “Come on!”

“Wait. Shouldn’t I give you the gog—”

He stumbled just to keep up as she led him back through the utter blackness purely by memory, waving one arm in front of her, trying to find that elusive whisper again.

“Alex!” She stopped so suddenly he collided with her. “Look up! Up and to the right. What do you see?”

“I see… Yes. There’s an opening all right. But how do you figure… ?”

She waved aside his objections. It felt right. Her internal compass, her ever-nervous, never-satisfied sense of direction… called her that way. She suppressed a voice of doubt, one that said she was grasping at straws. “Let’s give it a try, okay? Shall I give you a boost up? Or want I should go first?”

Alex sighed, as if to say, What have we got to lose ?

“Maybe I’d better go, Teresa. That way, if it looks like a true passage, I can reach down and lift you.”

She nodded in agreement and bent over, lacing her fingers to form a step. Gently, he took her waist and turned her around. “There, that’s better. Are you ready then?” He planted one foot in her hands.

“Ready? You kidding?” she asked as she braced to take his weight. “I’m ready for anything.”

Even after they had traveled quite some distance along the steep, twisty new path, half crawling, half slithering up slanted chimneys and narrow crevices, Teresa kept refusing his offer to share the goggles. He was doing fine as leader, and she used the excuse that they couldn’t risk a transfer in all this chaos. To drop them would be a catastrophe; they might slide or tumble out of sight and never be found again.

But in truth, Teresa felt a queer craving for sightlessness right now. It was strange — difficult to explain even to herself. Why should anyone prefer to stumble along, hands waving, groping in the dark, utterly dependent on another for warning about what low overhang might lay only centimeters from her forehead? What precipice yawned beneath her feet?

And yet, twice she stopped Alex from taking a route that must have seemed reasonable by sight — the wider or flatter or easier path — urging him instead to take a lesser route. They were climbing most of the time, and though Teresa knew that was no guarantee against some dead end just around the next corner, at least upward meant they had only a mountain to contend with, not an entire planet, twelve thousand kilometers across.