Eric Brown: Penumbra

They had been walking for perhaps three hours, and Bennett was tiring, the muscles of his legs becoming tight with unaccustomed use. Even the appearance of the circular patterns on the walls, which Ten Lee said were mandalas—representations of the various stages on the path to nirvana—failed to divert his attention. He wondered how Mackendrick, ahead, was coping with the descent.

At last Hupcka called a rest halt. They sat down and passed a canteen of refreshing ice-cold water between them. Bennett played his flashlight up the natural walls, catching flashes of blue and turquoise veins rising in the rock like the ribs in a cathedral ceiling.

Rana sat cross-legged beside her father, holding his hand.

Bennett joined them. “How are you feeling, Mack?”

Mackendrick waved away his concern, “I haven’t felt better for months, Josh.” He stared at Bennett, his gaze intense. “I’ll be fine.” In the glow of the flashlight, though, his thin face looked pared of flesh and his eyes bright with something like fever, or faith.

Bennett looked around at his travelling companions. “How far can we go before having to turn back? What if we find no sign of the Ancients?”

Hupcka shrugged. “We have supplies enough to last us six, seven days. If we find nothing in that time, we really should consider returning to the ship. We could mount a bigger, better-equipped expedition at a later date.”

“So we have a week,” Ten Lee said. “If the aliens are down here, then in that time we will find them.” She looked around the group, something defiant in her expression. “And I know we will.”

They fell silent. Bennett drank his share of water and passed the canteen to Rana. Her eyes shone like amber gemstones. She returned his smile shyly, accepted the canteen, and held it to her father’s lips.

Ten minutes later Hupcka suggested they continue. He led the way, followed by Rana and Mackendrick, Ten Lee and Bennett. They made their way slowly into the heart of the mountain, the plummeting corridor becoming so narrow in places that they had to force themselves sideways to get through. Ten Lee, Rana and Mackendrick managed this without much difficulty, but more than once Hupcka and Bennett became lodged fast in fissures and crevices.

After a further hour of walking, the slope levelled out and they found themselves in a long, high corridor flanked by carved panels. They rested briefly and passed around the water canteens. The random beams of their flashlights illuminated an assortment of panels, and the scenes depicted were all the more stark and startling for being picked out in isolation. As he rested with his back against the rock wall, Bennett looked around at the bas-relief carvings. Among the mandalas were more graphic images: a scene depicting a line of aliens, arms raised; and individual Ancients, long and thin of arm and leg, their heads attenuated, almost equine.

Ten Lee pointed out a mandala to Rana and explained what it represented. Rana gazed around at the alien carvings. She shook her head in wonder. “Do you really think that the aliens—the Ancients—believed in Buddhism?”

Ten regarded her impassively. “I think they believed, maybe even still believe, in the truth, the universal truth. I call that truth Buddhism, but what the Ancients called it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that they shared a common understanding with certain schools of human thought—”

“You can’t be certain, Ten,” Bennett objected.

She turned her passionless gaze on him, and he felt involuntarily chastened. “I’ve had eight months to meditate, Josh. I have come to understand that Penumbra is special.” With a small hand she indicated the mandalas carved on the walls. “These are not the only signs that the truth is to be found here.”

Rana stared at her with massive amber eyes. “Do you think the aliens still exist?”

Ten inclined her head minimally. “I truly believe in my heart that not only do the Ancients exist, but that we’ve been called.”

Something about her calm certainty, her air of utter conviction, sent a cold shiver down Bennett’s spine. He wondered at the chances of two races, separated by hundreds of light years, independently arriving at a similar system of belief. If so, then did it necessarily follow that that belief had its foundations in some form of universal truth, as Ten seemed to believe? For so long he had been comfortable in his belief of nothing, and the notion that there might be some real truth out there he found disquieting.

As if to lighten the atmosphere, Rana said, “At least we know we’re heading in the right direction.”

Bennett smiled at her. He didn’t point out that there was only one possible direction in which they could proceed.

“I reckon we’ve walked for something like five kilometres,” Hupcka said. He looked around him at the narrow corridor. “This is obviously leading somewhere, chambers or living quarters where the Ancients gathered, or still gather.”

Put like that, in terms of this being the lair of aliens, the possibility, however slight, that the Ancients still inhabited this subterranean network made Bennett shudder. It was an involuntary sensation, a superstitious fear his rational self knew to be irrational, but which he could do nothing to banish.

“We’ll go on for a few more hours,” Hupcka said. “Then I suggest we stop and camp for the night.”

Everyone nodded. Bennett was tired and could do with a rest, though he guessed that sleep in the circumstances would be impossible.

They started up again. The corridor was perhaps two metres wide, four metres tall, and, like the incline they had left behind them, seemed chiselled from the rock but for occasional sections where the tunnellers had hit natural caverns. Here the tunnel-like aspect of the corridors ceased, along with the carved panels, and opened out into irregular grottoes, spiked with stalactites and stalagmites, echoing with dripping water. Then the corridor would begin again, along with the panels depicting Ancients in all manner of strange and unguessable rituals.

Hours later—Bennett had lost count; it seemed as though he’d been walking for days—Hupcka halted and pointed ahead. “There! Look!”

Bennett peered. Beyond their flashlights’ dancing cones of radiance, he made out a pale pink glow. They started up again and walked a hundred metres, and the corridor opened out into a cavern perhaps twenty metres wide by as many high, lit by a wan, pink fungus which covered the rock walls and high cave roof. They switched off their flashlights and were plunged into an insubstantial and eerie half-light. As they passed into the cavern, their course was joined by a stream of water pouring in from a mouth-like hole in the rock high above. They followed the burbling stream on a slight downward incline, the pink fungus reflected in surging and rushing highlights.

They walked until the cavern widened yet again, and became a subterranean valley so vast that on either side the walls were hidden by pale wreaths of mist, and vaulted so high overhead that Bennett had to crane his neck to make out the fungi-shrouded ceiling. The valley dropped away at their feet, and far below they made out a forest of etiolated fungal trees, and great lianas or vines hanging from the ceiling. Closer to hand, Bennett saw tiny delicate flowers, pale pink and yellow, growing beside the widening stream.

Hupcka called a halt. Above ground, Tenebrae would be setting. He suggested that they keep to the natural rhythm of night and day and make camp. They pulled bedrolls from their backpacks and laid them side by side on the river bank. Their evening meals were pre-packed cobs of bread, tinned meat, hard cheese and fruit. They gathered in a circle while Hupcka brewed a pot of coffee on a portable stove.