Post by Edward Cheever on Jan 10, 2009 1:07:47 GMT -6
Here's a short (ish) story I'm working on. I want to use it to peddle myself to Creative Writing Masters Programs, so it needs to be good. I'm just hoping that they won't toss me out cause I'm a fantasy sci-fi nut.
In this post I'll be keeping an updated version of the Story, but I'll be asking for feedback on specific sections periodically. I've run into a post length barrier, so I'm going to extend this story into a second post, and I'll expand into other posts as it becomes necessary.
Jaine
“What is it?” Robert asked.
Mark shook his head. “Heck if I know.”
The gaping hole sat in the side of the ditch’s clay wall. Moss grew on the stones peeking out of the dirt, and a tree’s exposed roots framed the left side. It had been there a long time. It wasn’t supposed to be.
Robert scratched the back of his head. “Well, what’re we gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” Mark said.
“They told us it was just a ditch,” Robert said.
Mark nodded. “I know.”
“Just a solid ditch.”
Mark nodded again. “I know.”
“Well, I guess this is why they have us here to survey the thing,” Robert sighed. “We’d better report it.”
“Yep.”
Robert put his hands on his hips and looked at the hole for a minute. “It doesn’t take two to report it, though.”
“Nope.”
Robert looked at the hole a little more, kind of like a tunnel entrance really. “So who’s gonna go?”
Mark shrugged.
“Huh.” Robert looked at the hole a bit longer, then at Mark. “You go.”
“Alright.”
Mark turned, walked away and disappeared over the crest of a hill.
Robert looked at the hole a while. He shrugged and sidestepped down into the ditch. It wasn’t very steep. They’d make it steep later. Reinforce it a bit. Concrete. Steel. It was natural for now. Dry, usually, as ditches are. Long weeds and poison ivy growing down the sides. Weeds grew along the bottom too, amongst the red and brown pebbles. Robert didn’t give the pebbles much attention.
The hole was a tunnel entrance. He could see back a ways. Not too far, but a ways. Couple feet in, it got gloomy; few more feet, and it was toe-stubbing dangerous; few more and it was perfectly black.
The walls, clay, rock, and dirt were solid. He was an engineer; he knew good walls when he saw them. Low ceiling, though. He could go into it if he wanted. He’d slouch over, bend his knees a little. It’d work. He didn’t go in.
He left the hole, side-stepped up the side of the ditch, found a spot under a tree and sat down. Mark’d be a while.
Robert looked around. Trees were everywhere. Dark green shades that danced along the ground as the treetops swayed in the wind. Bright green shafts of light piercing the shadows. Hundreds of them. The forest shimmered. Shame it was gonna be taken down. The ground was soft. The tree had a nice shape to it. Concave. He leaned against it, smiling. Mark’d be a while. He closed his eyes.
********
Robert slowly woke up and stretched. How long is Mark gonna be anyhow? He wondered. The sun had neared the horizon since he’d shut his eyes last, and the shadows were all changed from the way they had been. And how long did I sleep? His musings were put on hold when he heard a sharp rustling sound. He blinked and glanced about. Something was moving on the far side of the ditch. He couldn’t make it out, but it seemed to be stuck in a bush. It tugged, and tugged, yanked itself free and tumbled a ways into the ditch. Robert leaned forward. The creature stood up, brushed itself off, and rearranged its cloak. She couldn’t have been more than two feet tall. Maybe less.
Robert figured it was a her. Hard to tell from that distance. He figured her cloak must have caught on the bush. He figured he was seeing things.
She gathered herself and looked about. Spotting the hole she gave a short cry of triumph. Robert recognized that sort of shout from the construction site. It was very like the short barks of “Yeah!” and “Alright!” and “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” whenever a heavy piece of building went up well.
She ran over to the hole and peered inside. Shortly, she turned and found a spot nearby. She sat, took a quick look around, though she didn’t spot Robert, pulled out some kind of food, and began to eat.
Had Robert been any less convinced that he was seeing things, or dreaming, he would have been alarmed. As it was, he was merely curious. She struck him as some sort of living doll. She wasn’t a dwarf in any case. From what he could tell she was a perfectly proportioned woman. Just two feet tall. Whatever kind of illusion she was, he didn’t want to frighten her away. So he stayed still.
She seemed rather crude. A fine sentiment, coming from him, but there was something in the way she crouched over her food that reminded him of his dog back home. Occasionally she’d look up from her meal for air, before diving back into the wreck. Robert didn’t know what to think. He’d never imagined, in the event he began hallucinating little people, that they’d be quite like this.
He had been watching for several minutes when something new came hurtling out of the bushes. Green, scaly, and yet somehow covered in a bristling brown fur. The creature flew from the opposite bank and pounced at the woman. The woman, seeing the creature, gave a surprised yelp and scrambled back, terrified.
Illusion or not, it was his illusion. Robert being Robert, he quickly found himself tearing down the side of the ditch at the thing. Its snarling face, gleeful at the sight of its cornered prey, looked up at Robert with a rather different expression. Robert shoved his shoulder into the creature’s chest, and they both went sprawling.
Robert wasn’t the first to get up, but he reached out and grabbed the thing’s left leg before it could get out of reach and tossed it down the ditch a ways. He turned to the woman, who was gawking at him with an odd expression on her face. “Run,” he said, and turned back to the creature. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her sprint for the hole and disappear into its depths.
The strange brown-green creature got up again and eyed Robert warily. The thing seemed about three feet high, or so, and stood perfectly upright. Though it had a definite bestial, even goblin-ish, look, the way it carried itself seemed to indicate a far more human intelligence.
Now that the small woman was gone, Robert seemed to awaken to the facts of his situation. He was standing in a ditch, facing down a goblin with mean looking teeth and very angry eyes. Robert wasn’t sure what he should do.
The creature noticed Robert’s hesitation and made a break for the hole. Strangely, the creature didn’t lope or scramble like Robert somehow felt it would, but picked up its legs and swung its arms not at all unlike an Olympic runner. Surprised, Robert hesitated for a moment, but realizing that the little woman was still in danger, he leapt at the goblin and wrapped his arms around its waist.
The creature gave a startled yelp and squirmed to get free. Robert held on tightly, though the creature became more and more frenzied. The thing’s talons scratched at him, and it tried to kick his face. Robert found himself again at an impasse of options. He couldn’t very well let go, but at the same time his arms were hurting badly and his grasp wasn’t going to hold forever.
The creature took the situation in hand, however, and with a vicious, unnatural gleam in its eye, turned and clamped its toothy mouth down on Robert’s forearm. Robert cried out in pain and turned his attention to getting the thing off. What had once been a creature all too willing to get away from him turned into a leech that couldn’t be removed. Howling in pain, he pulled and tugged at its fur and scales, grasped at its mouth and lips, and gave it several heavy blows to the abdomen and groin.
Along with the pain came a creepy and disgusting sensation. It reminded Robert of the creature’s tongue, and images of a long worm-like tube sliding under his skin sent him into an enraged panic. He rained blows on the thing, but aside from its vice-hold on his arm, it flopped about under his fists like a sodden pillow.
With the same suddenness with which the thing turned and bit him, its jaws lost all power and slipped free in Robert’s wild swinging. The goblin’s body flew off and landed in some nearby bushes.
Robert felt weak and dizzy. At first he stumbled away from the goblin’s landing, then with a desire to make sure it was dead, or whatever it was, he stumbled towards it. He didn’t make it that far, however, before feeling an intense pressure in his head. Slowing to a very unsteady halt, he looked at his arm. Inside a half-ring of puncture wounds was a nasty red hole. The skin around the wound was already showing the color changes of a bruise.
Stumbling sideways, he tried to regain his balance and failed, passing out in the bottom of the ditch.
********
Robert woke up, just a few moments later, with a strange feeling in his head. It was accompanied by a tingle that ran up and down his arms and legs and one other surprise.
“Work, blast it all. Work!”
He feared, in that moment, that the bite of the goblin had been poisonous. This fear, of course, went hand in hand with the shock of finding another’s voice, or thoughts really, inside his own head. He wondered if he were hallucinating.
“No, no, I’m not hallucinating…” The voice murmured to itself, “…wait! Those aren’t my thoughts!” Robert got the curious sensation that the voice had jerked its head around with wide eyes and full ears, scanning the room. What room, exactly, he couldn’t say. “Who’s there?” The voice demanded.
Unsure of how one should deal with hallucinations, he cautiously answered, “Me.” This elicited a moan from the voice, and Robert felt he could see it slowly massaging its forehead, “Oh no. Oh no no no no,” it muttered.
Robert wondered what he’d said to upset his hallucination.
The voice answered as if Robert had spoken aloud, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Robert was bemused. “What do you mean?” he asked.
The voice was thick with the sort of frustration that comes when you’ve interrupted someone thinking hard. “You were supposed to be kicked out.”
“Of what?” Robert asked.
“Your body.”
Robert was taken aback. Not sure what to say to such a thing, he responded blankly, “Huh?”
The voice answered again, “Your body, your body! When I bit you and did the transfer, it should have sent my mind from its body to yours and you to its.”
Robert wasn’t sure if all hallucinations made as little sense as his. He’d always gotten the impression that hallucinations were very real to those who had them, but his was very surreal.
“No, no,” the voice said. “I’m real.”
Robert didn’t believe it.
“Honestly, I’m not lying.”
Are all hallucinations so … strange? Robert wondered.
“Blast it! I’m not a hallucination!” The voice yelled at him. “Look, I was in the Murk’s body, chasing him in mine, then you got in my way. When you wouldn’t let go, I tried a transfer between us. Something went wrong, and now I’m stuck in your head.”
Robert lay staring at the side of the ditch, I must be dreaming.
“I don’t want to hear it. Now get up,” the voice said.
Robert blinked. Um, he thought.
Robert’s continued confusion infuriated the speaker, “What are you waiting for?” it yelled. “We need to catch him.”
The whole situation struck Robert as strange. His hallucination really seemed to be another person. He even felt the voice’s emotions. They weren’t completely separate from his, but they were still distinct. Not that Robert knew how to express such a thing in those terms. What’s more, the emotions of the voice seemed to blend into his over time. He didn’t know how the voice’s anger was seeping into him.
The anger was reflected in his retort, I’m waiting for somebody to bloody well tell me what’s going on! He had no idea where the word “bloody” came from. He suddenly realized that it was the voice’s vocabulary he’d just used.
The voice was insistent, “It’s getting away! I don’t have time for…” Robert gave the voice a very stern mental glare. The voice seemed to be looking over its shoulder at the tunnel. “It’s a long explanation, I don’t have time for…”
Make time, Robert thought.
“Right… Right. Okay. Fine.” The voice hesitated, “I don’t know where to begin.”
Robert had the strange sensation of looking through a dim window. Images were flashing by, and though he couldn’t make them all out, a few stuck in his head. An underground city, a rusty steel grate with sewage in it, dark tunnels and watery lights, he recognized the goblin, or “Murk,” as the voice had called it, leaping towards him, sunlight and thick brush, and then a very tall and bloated image that looked vaguely like himself.
“Hold on,” he said. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“Well, of course.”
“That isn’t me. It’s all wrong.”
“I know a great big oaf when I see one.”
Robert frowned. “Nevermind, nevermind. Go back to the beginning.” It brought up the image of the underground city. “What’s that?” he asked. He only thought of it as a city because that was the label given it in the speaker’s mind.
“It’s Ghund. The greatest city under the earth.” The more the voice concentrated on the image, the clearer it became.
It was more like a hive to Robert’s mind than a city. He saw a warren of tunnels, each leading to still more tunnels and more tunnels that wrapped around one another in all directions. Furthermore, there were small rooms and systems of rooms, burrows, complexes, unique centers of underground construction. Large open spaces, domes and caverns crisscrossed by artificial bridges and platforms. These led into artificial tunnel entrances, which looked like the homes of mud-dobbers, black wasps, except laid on their sides. These tunnels were like main roads, highways, leading off to coarser, rougher country tunnels. All were lit by a strange low blue light that shown from various places amongst the rocks. All of Robert’s bubbling curiosity about the light, however, was completely over-taken at the first images of the inhabitants of the city.
They were moles.
That can’t be right, Robert thought.
“What can not be right?” the voice asked.
“Well… they’re moles.”
“Of course, they are.”
“Well, surely the city can’t be inhabited by moles!”
“Well, it is not just Moles, certainly; there are also the Jern.”
“That’s not what I meant. And what’s a ‘Jern’?”
“I am a Jern.”
“You’re a Jern?” The image of the goblin came into his mind.
“No!” the voice said. “A Jern. This is me.” The image of the small woman he had protected from the goblin appeared.
“How’s that possible? Wait! You’re a girl?” Now that he said it out loud, he realized he should have felt it from the start.
“Yes, I am a ‘girl,’ though more precisely a woman. As to how I, a Jern, could be stuck in your head when you were attacked by a Murk is what I have been trying to lead you to.”
Robert was half-certain that the whole thing was a dream, but still intrigued said, “I’m listening.”
“I am Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd, high-serf to the royal family and agent of the royal intelligence division.”
“What royal family?”
“The Trousboor family. And stop interrupting.”
“Are they moles, too?”
“Of course, they’re moles.”
“Oh.”
“Now be quiet.”
“Okay.”
“You truly must.”
“I will.”
“Good. At any rate, as member of the royal intelligence service, I was sent to spy on a rival city inhabited by the Murks. To get there I had to travel by way of the world above earth.”
“My world?”
“Yes, your world. Quiet. I arrived safely in their kingdom, smooth tunnels, full of foul smells and waterways. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so rank, though I’d heard stories of it. I also had to squeeze past their surface gate. Thankfully, it was unguarded.”
“Hold on, do you mean to say they live in the sewers?”
“What?”
”The sewers. Tunnels of water beneath cities, carries away waste, that sort of thing.” He thought hard of all the images of the sewers, grates and man-holes he could picture.
She gasped. “How many entrances to the surface are there?”
“In one city? Hundreds.”
“And there are more cities?” she asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“This is horrible.” She muttered, “The king must be warned.”
Robert didn’t know what to think, “Huh?”
She suddenly remembered what she had been saying. “Oh, right. I remained on my duties in their lands for several weeks, observing them, when I was found. He chased me all the way to the surface before he caught me. They aren’t without intelligence, and he quickly realized I was a valuable agent. This was very useful to him.”
“Why?”
“Apparently, he was already under orders to use a Jern for his mission, whatever that is.”
“Wait, how do you know he knew those things?”
“Because I was trapped in his body for a time and saw his memories.”
“Well, then why don’t you know what his mission is?”
“Long term memories become a part of the body, but short term memories are transferred completely with the mind.”
“Well, didn’t he know his own mission?”
“I believe he had received the specifics of his mission just before he found me. He knew he would have to take a Jern body for some time. He just didn’t know why.”
“Um, how did he do that anyway?”
“Murks have the unfortunate ability to switch bodies with others.”
“How?”
“Well, they bite you and insert a tube appendage below the skin.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Well, you should know. I did it to you.”
“Oh. Oh! When you bit me?”
“Yes.”
“Weird.”
“At any rate, it knocked me unconscious for a time. When I woke up, he’d already passed through the gate and was on his way here. I barely managed to catch up to him before you went and ruined it all.”
“Uh, sorry?”
“So we have to get my body back. There’s no telling what that creature might do to Ghund if we don’t stop him.”
Robert remained still for a moment, then said, “So you’re sure you’re not a hallucination?”
“No! How many times must I say no? I’m real. Really real.”
Robert sighed. “Is there a way to get you out of my head?”
“There’s no time for this; he’s getting away!”
“Is there?”
“The situation is dire!”
He glared at her mentally.
She sensed he wouldn’t budge until she gave him something.
“Yes,” she grunted. “But we need to get my body back first.”
Robert looked over at the mindless body of the murk. “Do we need it, too?”
She hesitated, “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It is hardly my field of expertise, is it?”
Robert shrugged, “Better safe than sorry.” He said, standing up and walking toward the body.
“It’ll just slow us down.”
“But we might need it.” He bent over to grab its arms and legs.
“You know, I believe I heard once that you don’t need the body of the Murk.” “Really?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I’m positive.” Robert listened to her, and she did sound sincere. His sense of her wavered. He was still getting used to another presence in his head.
Hesitating only once more, he finally turned and headed for the entrance to the tunnel.
“How long do you think this’ll take?” he asked.
“If we hurry, we should be able to catch it before it gets to Ghund.”
In his mind that translated into about a day’s time. There would be no way of getting back before people got worried, but there was no way he’d just walk around with her in his head.
“And if we don’t reach it before it gets to the city?”
“Then it shall become several levels beyond complicated.”
Frustrated, he said, “Can’t you say anything normally?”
“I am not the one speaking unmannerly. You should learn to speak properly yourself.”
Calming down, he muttered, “Sorry.”
She remained silent.
The entrance was just a little too short for him to stand fully erect. He ducked and entered cautiously, one hand on the wall, the other vaguely feeling in front.
He had a sudden thought. “What was your name again?”
“You’ve forgotten my name?”
“Well, yeah.”
“How few social skills do your people have?”
“Look it was a mouthful, alright? Anybody would have forgotten it by now.”
“I didn’t forget yours. Robert.”
“Well, mine isn’t so hard, is it?”
“No, I suppose it is true that it has all the complexity of a gramblefly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind. I suppose it’s better than having a monosyllabic name.”
Robert suppressed his memories of being called Bob.
“At any rate, my name is Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd.”
“Uh….”
She sighed. “Perhaps you could call me by a…” she searched his memories for a moment, “…nickname.”
He thought for a moment. “I’ll call you Jane. How ‘bout that?”
“How surprising,” she mused. “A monosyllable.”
“Look, it’ll make this whole thing easier.”
“Fine. If you must, but spell it with an ‘I’ please.”
Robert’s eyes widened. “How’d you know how I spelled it?”
She seemed to be shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “I’m in your head, dimwit.”
Robert didn’t quite know what to say. This experience really would take a while to get used to. “Oh.”
“Have you got it?”
Robert blinked and shook his head. “Uh, right. Jaine.”
“Gooood,” Jaine said. “We’ll have you trained yet.”
“Also,” she said, “do keep in mind that when you talk to me, you just have to think it.”
“What?”
“You do realize that most of this time you’ve been talking aloud to me when I’m in your head?”
He realized what he must have sounded like, holding a seemingly one-sided conversation. Is that better? he thought at her.
“Yes, much better. Now let’s hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Trying to pick up the pace Robert walked, hunched over, into the darkness.
********
Crouching through the tunnels, Robert sensed a brooding feeling coming over him. The rough dark walls leaned toward him. They seemed to be whispering at him with his every footfall: “We’re going to crush you collapse on you close on you smother you know you know you know.” The cold stone gave him hard looks.
He had never known claustrophobia. Not really. His passing distaste for closets and small rooms had been nothing. It is one thing to watch a Discovery Channel special on tigers; it is quite another thing to be thrown in a cage with one. Robert had never really felt the weight of walls and ceilings before.
“What do you have against tunnels?” Jaine asked.
What do you mean?
“Well, I can feel it, you know. Your hate, or… fear, I suppose, of the tunnels.”
I have nothing against tunnels.
“Yes, you do. You can’t lie to me.”
It’s not the tunnels.
“What is it then?”
I think it’s claustrophobia.
Jaine was silent for a moment. “…And?”
What do you mean, ‘and’?
“What’s claustrophobia?”
Well, it’s… it’s hard to describe.
“Come on, try it.”
He thought for a minute. Well, it’s sorta the feeling you get when you try to stand up, but you can’t stand up all the way. He was very conscious of the ceiling occasionally grazing his back as they passed by. Or the feeling of stretching out your arms, but then you touch the wall and can’t go any farther.
“What’s the big deal?” she asked.
The ‘big deal’?
“Stop infecting me with your plainspeech!” she said, indignant. “It will not do for a high-serf to speak so… common… in the royal courts.”
“You’re ridiculous, Jaine,” he chuckled aloud.
She quivered with embarrassment. “At any rate,” she said, “what is the matter?”
Well, I told you, it’s reaching out, hitting a wall and realizing you can’t extend your arms all the way.
“I do not understand.”
Well…um… okay, look, uh, hmmm.
“Well, if you can’t explain it…”
No, no. I have an idea. All right, you know how you can feel my body?
“All too well, I’m afraid.”
And you know how you can feel my emotions?
“Again, far too well for comfort.”
Okay, well, concentrate on just those two things, as hard as you can.
“Why would I want to do that?”
Trust me.
“Trust you?”
Yes. Just trust me. Okay. Now concentrate until it’s like my body is yours and my emotions are yours.
“This whole endeavor is indecent.”
Just do it.
“All right. Fine. I will do it, but make your point fast.”
He could feel her concentrating, slowly their emotions, even thoughts, were becoming one. The thought crossed his mind that it was a very intimate situation. He wasn’t sure if it was his thought or hers. It reminded him of a time when he had been stuck in a very small service elevator with a female co-worker for about an hour. Awkward.
Clearing his throat he thought about his cramped muscles, his aching back, and his enormous desire to stretch. He extended his arms out to either side. It felt good. Expectant. They felt that they were about to get their long desired stretch.
He hit the walls.
The crush of his expectations, the cramps in his arms, the cold, hard stone, all seemed to leap upon him at once. He pressed against the walls in auto-desperation. He tried to stand but he couldn’t. He was closed in all around.
He heard a yelp in his head and forced himself to stop pushing. It was a hard thing to do.
“What was that?” Jaine asked in a strangled voice.
Claustrophobia.
“It was like the wall started moving! Like it was coming in at us.”
Yeah.
“That’s terrible!” she said, aghast. “And that’s what you’ve been feeling this whole time?”
Yeah.
“Oh.”
Yeah.
They were silent for several minutes as they continued down the tunnel. Robert preferred a chatty Jaine to a silent Jaine. He had to lighten the situation a little.
That’s the trouble with being a big man in a little tunnel, he said while thinking of a comical image of a cartoon man stuck in a tube, with his butt and feet hanging out one end, and his bulging eyes, nose and tongue out the other. It wasn’t as funny as it should have been.
“It gets better,” she said helpfully. “The tunnels widen out and get taller once we leave the dead rock.
Dead rock?
“Oh yes, all of these tunnels near the surface are very dead. There’s no life in them at all. There are no growth rocks, or mosses and lichens, and, of course, no creature life.”
Robert wasn’t sure about how he felt, knowing that there were lichens and things ahead. ‘Creatures’ as she said. But it does get better?
“Yes.”
“I hope so,” he said aloud.
“Those tunnels are also closer to the city and many of them have lights.”
Robert remembered the strange lights he saw in her memory of Ghund. What kind of lights? It’s been bugging me for a while now. It’s not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. It seemed fluorescent, but not, and it had a blue-green tint.
“What is fluorescent?” she asked, confused.
Well it’s… Actually I don’t know how to describe them. They’re long glass rods that glow.
Robert felt his eyes bulge without his permission. “Please, don’t be so surprised,” he said. “You’re making my eyes pop. It’s uncomfortable.”
“But glowing rods?!” she said with wonder and awe. “Do they grow that way?”
Grow?
“Oh, so you make them then? Why do you shape the glowing glass into rods?”
Well… wait, um, the glass doesn’t glow.
“But I thought you said you used them as lights.”
Well, yes. But they don’t glow until you add electricity.
“Electricity?”
Well, yeah. Electricity. Wait, you don’t have electricity down here?
“Apparently not.”
But what about your lights?
He could feel her think for a moment. “Well, it is nothing much. They are common. It is no marvel.”
I’d still like to know.
“Well, the Sern lights are just crystals really.”
Crystals?
“Yes.”
So they’re just glowing crystals? How weird. Do they just grow out of the wall, then?
She shook his head. “No we make them in special facilities under Ghund.”
Make them? How?
“How should I know?”
You don’t know?
“Why should I? That is the task of the low serfs.”
Aren’t you curious?
“Any curiosity of mine bears no mentioning. Their business is below my station.”
Right. She was curious. Robert could tell that much, even though she had walled her mind off again. The claustrophobia thing had probably been too much. He turned his attention back to the tunnel they were crouching through. So where does this thing go again?
“This is one of the old patrol tunnels. They cross all of the likely places Ghund would be attacked if the Murks had ever decided to tunnel in from above.”
Robert was confused. But isn’t this sorta beating them to the punch? I mean it seems like you guys just built all the tunnels for them so they didn’t have to do it themselves.
“As long as these tunnels existed, they would never take the time to dig any of their own. They are odd creatures. With these tunnels we could direct them exactly where we wanted them. Or away from where we did not want them. Most of the tunnels are useless mazes.”
An image of a complicated web of tunnels came into Robert’s mind. Then how will we know where we’re going?
“I had to memorize the correct routes when I accepted I disagreeignment to infiltrate the Murk city.”
Infiltrate? What are you, a spy?
“I am an agent of the royal intelligence division. As I have said before.”
00-Jaine?
“What?”
Nothing.
She was immensely suspicious, but she let it go. “Many of the tunnels I’ve been telling you to pass would have left us lost; more than likely forever. A few others are murder tunnels.”
Murder tunnels?
“They’re… how would you say it,” she unceremoniously rummaged through his memories, “booby-trapped.”
Don’t do that!
“Do what?”
That! He said, thinking at her about what she had done.
“I felt it would be easier to communicate if I used one of your colloquialisms.”
Well, if you’re all up for that kind of thing as a necessity, then let me think over your memories of these tunnels.
“No.”
Why not?
“It is unseemly.”
Oh, is it?
“Yes.”
Hypocrite.
“You do not have the same standards I do.”
Oh, don’t I?
“You should not be upset about this.”
Well, guess what?
“Yes, yes, fine. I see your point.”
Will you let me think on the memories then?
“Why? I won’t look through your memories again.”
It would be beneficial for both of us. It’d make traveling easier.
She remained hesitant.
Well?
“As you wish. But don’t spend longer than you have to.”
It’s just memories of the tunnels; I don’t see what’s the big deal.
“No, you would not I suppose.”
He could feel her protective wall around her mind shift, and like a fog being lifted he could remember the tunnels. Well, it was actually more complicated than that. He remembered sitting at a large desk studiously pouring over old maps and plans. An elderly gentleman leaned over her giving very specific instructions about the layout of the tunnels. Shocked, Robert turned his mind away from the memories for a second.
Did I just think of myself as a girl?
“Well, you would.” Jaine mused. “They are my memories.”
Um, right. Robert thought uncomfortably and returned to the memories of the desks, maps and the old architect.
A short while later he asked Jaine, Are we as far away from the city as I think we are?
“Yes. There are a number of old passageways to the lands below us, but the one we need is still quite far from here.”
If we don’t catch up to your body soon, this might take a lot longer than a day.
“It might.”
Robert groaned. It wasn’t like he was overly fond of his job, of course, but losing it would be the headache icing on the problem cake.
“You think of such strange metaphors.”
Robert groaned again.
Jaine was about to follow up on her musings on Robert’s oddities when they both heard the steady pounding of feet in the distance. They stood there stunned for a moment as the marching feet became louder.
Is that what I think it is?
“Yes, I am afraid so. We truly have poor luck.”
Well, we’re not caught yet. Robert turned around and quickly scuttled in the other direction. I thought that they never patrolled these tunnels anymore! That’s what I got out of your memories.
“Then you weren’t paying attention. They’re rare but they do happen. Where are we going?”
Robert had turned down one of the tunnels they had passed before. There’s more than one way to the underworld, right?
“I do not like the connotations of the word you just used,” she muttered.
Stuff it. And yes, there is more than one way, so I’m taking us to one.
The tunnel was short, but a construct made of something that appeared to be wood stretched its length. It ran up both walls and joined at the ceiling.
“This is a murder tunnel! Why are you taking us down a murder tunnel?”
It’s not a murder tunnel, he thought at her irritably. This tunnel does have a collapsible ceiling, but it was only to be used to close off the entrance to the underworld if the place was under attack.
“Stop calling Miria ‘underworld.’ And the memories I lent you shouldn’t have told you anything about the collapsible ceiling.”
I build things, and I’m pretty good, too. I know a collapsible ceiling when I see one.
They reached the end of the tunnel when the harsh glow of torch light began filtering in from the tunnel exit. They stood at what appeared to be a well covered with boards made of the same woodish material as the construct holding up the ceiling. Several large rocks had been laid on top of the boards. Robert thought he could move them, but it’d take more than the few seconds he originally thought it would take. The sound of footfalls echoed down the walls.
“What do you propose we do now?”
I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Robert glanced around and his eyes settled on the construct. The ceiling! He looked it over carefully. It was well built, but he couldn’t see a lever or any sort of triggering mechanism. Wait a minute! He took a closer look at the nearest support. It had an awkward base and it looked easy enough to dislodge. From what he could see, it wasn’t even important to the overall structure, it just held up one of the minor arches. But as Robert followed the arch, he saw it supporting another arch, which would then collapse a support beam that supported the next arch.
Dominoes. Robert pulled back and kicked the weak support. The ceiling collapsed in waves, and Robert could just see the outline of the patrol at the end of the tunnel before the falling rock cut off the torch lights and everything went pitch black.
********
Continued in my post below...
In this post I'll be keeping an updated version of the Story, but I'll be asking for feedback on specific sections periodically. I've run into a post length barrier, so I'm going to extend this story into a second post, and I'll expand into other posts as it becomes necessary.
Jaine
“What is it?” Robert asked.
Mark shook his head. “Heck if I know.”
The gaping hole sat in the side of the ditch’s clay wall. Moss grew on the stones peeking out of the dirt, and a tree’s exposed roots framed the left side. It had been there a long time. It wasn’t supposed to be.
Robert scratched the back of his head. “Well, what’re we gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” Mark said.
“They told us it was just a ditch,” Robert said.
Mark nodded. “I know.”
“Just a solid ditch.”
Mark nodded again. “I know.”
“Well, I guess this is why they have us here to survey the thing,” Robert sighed. “We’d better report it.”
“Yep.”
Robert put his hands on his hips and looked at the hole for a minute. “It doesn’t take two to report it, though.”
“Nope.”
Robert looked at the hole a little more, kind of like a tunnel entrance really. “So who’s gonna go?”
Mark shrugged.
“Huh.” Robert looked at the hole a bit longer, then at Mark. “You go.”
“Alright.”
Mark turned, walked away and disappeared over the crest of a hill.
Robert looked at the hole a while. He shrugged and sidestepped down into the ditch. It wasn’t very steep. They’d make it steep later. Reinforce it a bit. Concrete. Steel. It was natural for now. Dry, usually, as ditches are. Long weeds and poison ivy growing down the sides. Weeds grew along the bottom too, amongst the red and brown pebbles. Robert didn’t give the pebbles much attention.
The hole was a tunnel entrance. He could see back a ways. Not too far, but a ways. Couple feet in, it got gloomy; few more feet, and it was toe-stubbing dangerous; few more and it was perfectly black.
The walls, clay, rock, and dirt were solid. He was an engineer; he knew good walls when he saw them. Low ceiling, though. He could go into it if he wanted. He’d slouch over, bend his knees a little. It’d work. He didn’t go in.
He left the hole, side-stepped up the side of the ditch, found a spot under a tree and sat down. Mark’d be a while.
Robert looked around. Trees were everywhere. Dark green shades that danced along the ground as the treetops swayed in the wind. Bright green shafts of light piercing the shadows. Hundreds of them. The forest shimmered. Shame it was gonna be taken down. The ground was soft. The tree had a nice shape to it. Concave. He leaned against it, smiling. Mark’d be a while. He closed his eyes.
********
Robert slowly woke up and stretched. How long is Mark gonna be anyhow? He wondered. The sun had neared the horizon since he’d shut his eyes last, and the shadows were all changed from the way they had been. And how long did I sleep? His musings were put on hold when he heard a sharp rustling sound. He blinked and glanced about. Something was moving on the far side of the ditch. He couldn’t make it out, but it seemed to be stuck in a bush. It tugged, and tugged, yanked itself free and tumbled a ways into the ditch. Robert leaned forward. The creature stood up, brushed itself off, and rearranged its cloak. She couldn’t have been more than two feet tall. Maybe less.
Robert figured it was a her. Hard to tell from that distance. He figured her cloak must have caught on the bush. He figured he was seeing things.
She gathered herself and looked about. Spotting the hole she gave a short cry of triumph. Robert recognized that sort of shout from the construction site. It was very like the short barks of “Yeah!” and “Alright!” and “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” whenever a heavy piece of building went up well.
She ran over to the hole and peered inside. Shortly, she turned and found a spot nearby. She sat, took a quick look around, though she didn’t spot Robert, pulled out some kind of food, and began to eat.
Had Robert been any less convinced that he was seeing things, or dreaming, he would have been alarmed. As it was, he was merely curious. She struck him as some sort of living doll. She wasn’t a dwarf in any case. From what he could tell she was a perfectly proportioned woman. Just two feet tall. Whatever kind of illusion she was, he didn’t want to frighten her away. So he stayed still.
She seemed rather crude. A fine sentiment, coming from him, but there was something in the way she crouched over her food that reminded him of his dog back home. Occasionally she’d look up from her meal for air, before diving back into the wreck. Robert didn’t know what to think. He’d never imagined, in the event he began hallucinating little people, that they’d be quite like this.
He had been watching for several minutes when something new came hurtling out of the bushes. Green, scaly, and yet somehow covered in a bristling brown fur. The creature flew from the opposite bank and pounced at the woman. The woman, seeing the creature, gave a surprised yelp and scrambled back, terrified.
Illusion or not, it was his illusion. Robert being Robert, he quickly found himself tearing down the side of the ditch at the thing. Its snarling face, gleeful at the sight of its cornered prey, looked up at Robert with a rather different expression. Robert shoved his shoulder into the creature’s chest, and they both went sprawling.
Robert wasn’t the first to get up, but he reached out and grabbed the thing’s left leg before it could get out of reach and tossed it down the ditch a ways. He turned to the woman, who was gawking at him with an odd expression on her face. “Run,” he said, and turned back to the creature. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her sprint for the hole and disappear into its depths.
The strange brown-green creature got up again and eyed Robert warily. The thing seemed about three feet high, or so, and stood perfectly upright. Though it had a definite bestial, even goblin-ish, look, the way it carried itself seemed to indicate a far more human intelligence.
Now that the small woman was gone, Robert seemed to awaken to the facts of his situation. He was standing in a ditch, facing down a goblin with mean looking teeth and very angry eyes. Robert wasn’t sure what he should do.
The creature noticed Robert’s hesitation and made a break for the hole. Strangely, the creature didn’t lope or scramble like Robert somehow felt it would, but picked up its legs and swung its arms not at all unlike an Olympic runner. Surprised, Robert hesitated for a moment, but realizing that the little woman was still in danger, he leapt at the goblin and wrapped his arms around its waist.
The creature gave a startled yelp and squirmed to get free. Robert held on tightly, though the creature became more and more frenzied. The thing’s talons scratched at him, and it tried to kick his face. Robert found himself again at an impasse of options. He couldn’t very well let go, but at the same time his arms were hurting badly and his grasp wasn’t going to hold forever.
The creature took the situation in hand, however, and with a vicious, unnatural gleam in its eye, turned and clamped its toothy mouth down on Robert’s forearm. Robert cried out in pain and turned his attention to getting the thing off. What had once been a creature all too willing to get away from him turned into a leech that couldn’t be removed. Howling in pain, he pulled and tugged at its fur and scales, grasped at its mouth and lips, and gave it several heavy blows to the abdomen and groin.
Along with the pain came a creepy and disgusting sensation. It reminded Robert of the creature’s tongue, and images of a long worm-like tube sliding under his skin sent him into an enraged panic. He rained blows on the thing, but aside from its vice-hold on his arm, it flopped about under his fists like a sodden pillow.
With the same suddenness with which the thing turned and bit him, its jaws lost all power and slipped free in Robert’s wild swinging. The goblin’s body flew off and landed in some nearby bushes.
Robert felt weak and dizzy. At first he stumbled away from the goblin’s landing, then with a desire to make sure it was dead, or whatever it was, he stumbled towards it. He didn’t make it that far, however, before feeling an intense pressure in his head. Slowing to a very unsteady halt, he looked at his arm. Inside a half-ring of puncture wounds was a nasty red hole. The skin around the wound was already showing the color changes of a bruise.
Stumbling sideways, he tried to regain his balance and failed, passing out in the bottom of the ditch.
********
Robert woke up, just a few moments later, with a strange feeling in his head. It was accompanied by a tingle that ran up and down his arms and legs and one other surprise.
“Work, blast it all. Work!”
He feared, in that moment, that the bite of the goblin had been poisonous. This fear, of course, went hand in hand with the shock of finding another’s voice, or thoughts really, inside his own head. He wondered if he were hallucinating.
“No, no, I’m not hallucinating…” The voice murmured to itself, “…wait! Those aren’t my thoughts!” Robert got the curious sensation that the voice had jerked its head around with wide eyes and full ears, scanning the room. What room, exactly, he couldn’t say. “Who’s there?” The voice demanded.
Unsure of how one should deal with hallucinations, he cautiously answered, “Me.” This elicited a moan from the voice, and Robert felt he could see it slowly massaging its forehead, “Oh no. Oh no no no no,” it muttered.
Robert wondered what he’d said to upset his hallucination.
The voice answered as if Robert had spoken aloud, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Robert was bemused. “What do you mean?” he asked.
The voice was thick with the sort of frustration that comes when you’ve interrupted someone thinking hard. “You were supposed to be kicked out.”
“Of what?” Robert asked.
“Your body.”
Robert was taken aback. Not sure what to say to such a thing, he responded blankly, “Huh?”
The voice answered again, “Your body, your body! When I bit you and did the transfer, it should have sent my mind from its body to yours and you to its.”
Robert wasn’t sure if all hallucinations made as little sense as his. He’d always gotten the impression that hallucinations were very real to those who had them, but his was very surreal.
“No, no,” the voice said. “I’m real.”
Robert didn’t believe it.
“Honestly, I’m not lying.”
Are all hallucinations so … strange? Robert wondered.
“Blast it! I’m not a hallucination!” The voice yelled at him. “Look, I was in the Murk’s body, chasing him in mine, then you got in my way. When you wouldn’t let go, I tried a transfer between us. Something went wrong, and now I’m stuck in your head.”
Robert lay staring at the side of the ditch, I must be dreaming.
“I don’t want to hear it. Now get up,” the voice said.
Robert blinked. Um, he thought.
Robert’s continued confusion infuriated the speaker, “What are you waiting for?” it yelled. “We need to catch him.”
The whole situation struck Robert as strange. His hallucination really seemed to be another person. He even felt the voice’s emotions. They weren’t completely separate from his, but they were still distinct. Not that Robert knew how to express such a thing in those terms. What’s more, the emotions of the voice seemed to blend into his over time. He didn’t know how the voice’s anger was seeping into him.
The anger was reflected in his retort, I’m waiting for somebody to bloody well tell me what’s going on! He had no idea where the word “bloody” came from. He suddenly realized that it was the voice’s vocabulary he’d just used.
The voice was insistent, “It’s getting away! I don’t have time for…” Robert gave the voice a very stern mental glare. The voice seemed to be looking over its shoulder at the tunnel. “It’s a long explanation, I don’t have time for…”
Make time, Robert thought.
“Right… Right. Okay. Fine.” The voice hesitated, “I don’t know where to begin.”
Robert had the strange sensation of looking through a dim window. Images were flashing by, and though he couldn’t make them all out, a few stuck in his head. An underground city, a rusty steel grate with sewage in it, dark tunnels and watery lights, he recognized the goblin, or “Murk,” as the voice had called it, leaping towards him, sunlight and thick brush, and then a very tall and bloated image that looked vaguely like himself.
“Hold on,” he said. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“Well, of course.”
“That isn’t me. It’s all wrong.”
“I know a great big oaf when I see one.”
Robert frowned. “Nevermind, nevermind. Go back to the beginning.” It brought up the image of the underground city. “What’s that?” he asked. He only thought of it as a city because that was the label given it in the speaker’s mind.
“It’s Ghund. The greatest city under the earth.” The more the voice concentrated on the image, the clearer it became.
It was more like a hive to Robert’s mind than a city. He saw a warren of tunnels, each leading to still more tunnels and more tunnels that wrapped around one another in all directions. Furthermore, there were small rooms and systems of rooms, burrows, complexes, unique centers of underground construction. Large open spaces, domes and caverns crisscrossed by artificial bridges and platforms. These led into artificial tunnel entrances, which looked like the homes of mud-dobbers, black wasps, except laid on their sides. These tunnels were like main roads, highways, leading off to coarser, rougher country tunnels. All were lit by a strange low blue light that shown from various places amongst the rocks. All of Robert’s bubbling curiosity about the light, however, was completely over-taken at the first images of the inhabitants of the city.
They were moles.
That can’t be right, Robert thought.
“What can not be right?” the voice asked.
“Well… they’re moles.”
“Of course, they are.”
“Well, surely the city can’t be inhabited by moles!”
“Well, it is not just Moles, certainly; there are also the Jern.”
“That’s not what I meant. And what’s a ‘Jern’?”
“I am a Jern.”
“You’re a Jern?” The image of the goblin came into his mind.
“No!” the voice said. “A Jern. This is me.” The image of the small woman he had protected from the goblin appeared.
“How’s that possible? Wait! You’re a girl?” Now that he said it out loud, he realized he should have felt it from the start.
“Yes, I am a ‘girl,’ though more precisely a woman. As to how I, a Jern, could be stuck in your head when you were attacked by a Murk is what I have been trying to lead you to.”
Robert was half-certain that the whole thing was a dream, but still intrigued said, “I’m listening.”
“I am Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd, high-serf to the royal family and agent of the royal intelligence division.”
“What royal family?”
“The Trousboor family. And stop interrupting.”
“Are they moles, too?”
“Of course, they’re moles.”
“Oh.”
“Now be quiet.”
“Okay.”
“You truly must.”
“I will.”
“Good. At any rate, as member of the royal intelligence service, I was sent to spy on a rival city inhabited by the Murks. To get there I had to travel by way of the world above earth.”
“My world?”
“Yes, your world. Quiet. I arrived safely in their kingdom, smooth tunnels, full of foul smells and waterways. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so rank, though I’d heard stories of it. I also had to squeeze past their surface gate. Thankfully, it was unguarded.”
“Hold on, do you mean to say they live in the sewers?”
“What?”
”The sewers. Tunnels of water beneath cities, carries away waste, that sort of thing.” He thought hard of all the images of the sewers, grates and man-holes he could picture.
She gasped. “How many entrances to the surface are there?”
“In one city? Hundreds.”
“And there are more cities?” she asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“This is horrible.” She muttered, “The king must be warned.”
Robert didn’t know what to think, “Huh?”
She suddenly remembered what she had been saying. “Oh, right. I remained on my duties in their lands for several weeks, observing them, when I was found. He chased me all the way to the surface before he caught me. They aren’t without intelligence, and he quickly realized I was a valuable agent. This was very useful to him.”
“Why?”
“Apparently, he was already under orders to use a Jern for his mission, whatever that is.”
“Wait, how do you know he knew those things?”
“Because I was trapped in his body for a time and saw his memories.”
“Well, then why don’t you know what his mission is?”
“Long term memories become a part of the body, but short term memories are transferred completely with the mind.”
“Well, didn’t he know his own mission?”
“I believe he had received the specifics of his mission just before he found me. He knew he would have to take a Jern body for some time. He just didn’t know why.”
“Um, how did he do that anyway?”
“Murks have the unfortunate ability to switch bodies with others.”
“How?”
“Well, they bite you and insert a tube appendage below the skin.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Well, you should know. I did it to you.”
“Oh. Oh! When you bit me?”
“Yes.”
“Weird.”
“At any rate, it knocked me unconscious for a time. When I woke up, he’d already passed through the gate and was on his way here. I barely managed to catch up to him before you went and ruined it all.”
“Uh, sorry?”
“So we have to get my body back. There’s no telling what that creature might do to Ghund if we don’t stop him.”
Robert remained still for a moment, then said, “So you’re sure you’re not a hallucination?”
“No! How many times must I say no? I’m real. Really real.”
Robert sighed. “Is there a way to get you out of my head?”
“There’s no time for this; he’s getting away!”
“Is there?”
“The situation is dire!”
He glared at her mentally.
She sensed he wouldn’t budge until she gave him something.
“Yes,” she grunted. “But we need to get my body back first.”
Robert looked over at the mindless body of the murk. “Do we need it, too?”
She hesitated, “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It is hardly my field of expertise, is it?”
Robert shrugged, “Better safe than sorry.” He said, standing up and walking toward the body.
“It’ll just slow us down.”
“But we might need it.” He bent over to grab its arms and legs.
“You know, I believe I heard once that you don’t need the body of the Murk.” “Really?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I’m positive.” Robert listened to her, and she did sound sincere. His sense of her wavered. He was still getting used to another presence in his head.
Hesitating only once more, he finally turned and headed for the entrance to the tunnel.
“How long do you think this’ll take?” he asked.
“If we hurry, we should be able to catch it before it gets to Ghund.”
In his mind that translated into about a day’s time. There would be no way of getting back before people got worried, but there was no way he’d just walk around with her in his head.
“And if we don’t reach it before it gets to the city?”
“Then it shall become several levels beyond complicated.”
Frustrated, he said, “Can’t you say anything normally?”
“I am not the one speaking unmannerly. You should learn to speak properly yourself.”
Calming down, he muttered, “Sorry.”
She remained silent.
The entrance was just a little too short for him to stand fully erect. He ducked and entered cautiously, one hand on the wall, the other vaguely feeling in front.
He had a sudden thought. “What was your name again?”
“You’ve forgotten my name?”
“Well, yeah.”
“How few social skills do your people have?”
“Look it was a mouthful, alright? Anybody would have forgotten it by now.”
“I didn’t forget yours. Robert.”
“Well, mine isn’t so hard, is it?”
“No, I suppose it is true that it has all the complexity of a gramblefly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind. I suppose it’s better than having a monosyllabic name.”
Robert suppressed his memories of being called Bob.
“At any rate, my name is Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd.”
“Uh….”
She sighed. “Perhaps you could call me by a…” she searched his memories for a moment, “…nickname.”
He thought for a moment. “I’ll call you Jane. How ‘bout that?”
“How surprising,” she mused. “A monosyllable.”
“Look, it’ll make this whole thing easier.”
“Fine. If you must, but spell it with an ‘I’ please.”
Robert’s eyes widened. “How’d you know how I spelled it?”
She seemed to be shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “I’m in your head, dimwit.”
Robert didn’t quite know what to say. This experience really would take a while to get used to. “Oh.”
“Have you got it?”
Robert blinked and shook his head. “Uh, right. Jaine.”
“Gooood,” Jaine said. “We’ll have you trained yet.”
“Also,” she said, “do keep in mind that when you talk to me, you just have to think it.”
“What?”
“You do realize that most of this time you’ve been talking aloud to me when I’m in your head?”
He realized what he must have sounded like, holding a seemingly one-sided conversation. Is that better? he thought at her.
“Yes, much better. Now let’s hurry. We don’t have much time.”
Trying to pick up the pace Robert walked, hunched over, into the darkness.
********
Crouching through the tunnels, Robert sensed a brooding feeling coming over him. The rough dark walls leaned toward him. They seemed to be whispering at him with his every footfall: “We’re going to crush you collapse on you close on you smother you know you know you know.” The cold stone gave him hard looks.
He had never known claustrophobia. Not really. His passing distaste for closets and small rooms had been nothing. It is one thing to watch a Discovery Channel special on tigers; it is quite another thing to be thrown in a cage with one. Robert had never really felt the weight of walls and ceilings before.
“What do you have against tunnels?” Jaine asked.
What do you mean?
“Well, I can feel it, you know. Your hate, or… fear, I suppose, of the tunnels.”
I have nothing against tunnels.
“Yes, you do. You can’t lie to me.”
It’s not the tunnels.
“What is it then?”
I think it’s claustrophobia.
Jaine was silent for a moment. “…And?”
What do you mean, ‘and’?
“What’s claustrophobia?”
Well, it’s… it’s hard to describe.
“Come on, try it.”
He thought for a minute. Well, it’s sorta the feeling you get when you try to stand up, but you can’t stand up all the way. He was very conscious of the ceiling occasionally grazing his back as they passed by. Or the feeling of stretching out your arms, but then you touch the wall and can’t go any farther.
“What’s the big deal?” she asked.
The ‘big deal’?
“Stop infecting me with your plainspeech!” she said, indignant. “It will not do for a high-serf to speak so… common… in the royal courts.”
“You’re ridiculous, Jaine,” he chuckled aloud.
She quivered with embarrassment. “At any rate,” she said, “what is the matter?”
Well, I told you, it’s reaching out, hitting a wall and realizing you can’t extend your arms all the way.
“I do not understand.”
Well…um… okay, look, uh, hmmm.
“Well, if you can’t explain it…”
No, no. I have an idea. All right, you know how you can feel my body?
“All too well, I’m afraid.”
And you know how you can feel my emotions?
“Again, far too well for comfort.”
Okay, well, concentrate on just those two things, as hard as you can.
“Why would I want to do that?”
Trust me.
“Trust you?”
Yes. Just trust me. Okay. Now concentrate until it’s like my body is yours and my emotions are yours.
“This whole endeavor is indecent.”
Just do it.
“All right. Fine. I will do it, but make your point fast.”
He could feel her concentrating, slowly their emotions, even thoughts, were becoming one. The thought crossed his mind that it was a very intimate situation. He wasn’t sure if it was his thought or hers. It reminded him of a time when he had been stuck in a very small service elevator with a female co-worker for about an hour. Awkward.
Clearing his throat he thought about his cramped muscles, his aching back, and his enormous desire to stretch. He extended his arms out to either side. It felt good. Expectant. They felt that they were about to get their long desired stretch.
He hit the walls.
The crush of his expectations, the cramps in his arms, the cold, hard stone, all seemed to leap upon him at once. He pressed against the walls in auto-desperation. He tried to stand but he couldn’t. He was closed in all around.
He heard a yelp in his head and forced himself to stop pushing. It was a hard thing to do.
“What was that?” Jaine asked in a strangled voice.
Claustrophobia.
“It was like the wall started moving! Like it was coming in at us.”
Yeah.
“That’s terrible!” she said, aghast. “And that’s what you’ve been feeling this whole time?”
Yeah.
“Oh.”
Yeah.
They were silent for several minutes as they continued down the tunnel. Robert preferred a chatty Jaine to a silent Jaine. He had to lighten the situation a little.
That’s the trouble with being a big man in a little tunnel, he said while thinking of a comical image of a cartoon man stuck in a tube, with his butt and feet hanging out one end, and his bulging eyes, nose and tongue out the other. It wasn’t as funny as it should have been.
“It gets better,” she said helpfully. “The tunnels widen out and get taller once we leave the dead rock.
Dead rock?
“Oh yes, all of these tunnels near the surface are very dead. There’s no life in them at all. There are no growth rocks, or mosses and lichens, and, of course, no creature life.”
Robert wasn’t sure about how he felt, knowing that there were lichens and things ahead. ‘Creatures’ as she said. But it does get better?
“Yes.”
“I hope so,” he said aloud.
“Those tunnels are also closer to the city and many of them have lights.”
Robert remembered the strange lights he saw in her memory of Ghund. What kind of lights? It’s been bugging me for a while now. It’s not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. It seemed fluorescent, but not, and it had a blue-green tint.
“What is fluorescent?” she asked, confused.
Well it’s… Actually I don’t know how to describe them. They’re long glass rods that glow.
Robert felt his eyes bulge without his permission. “Please, don’t be so surprised,” he said. “You’re making my eyes pop. It’s uncomfortable.”
“But glowing rods?!” she said with wonder and awe. “Do they grow that way?”
Grow?
“Oh, so you make them then? Why do you shape the glowing glass into rods?”
Well… wait, um, the glass doesn’t glow.
“But I thought you said you used them as lights.”
Well, yes. But they don’t glow until you add electricity.
“Electricity?”
Well, yeah. Electricity. Wait, you don’t have electricity down here?
“Apparently not.”
But what about your lights?
He could feel her think for a moment. “Well, it is nothing much. They are common. It is no marvel.”
I’d still like to know.
“Well, the Sern lights are just crystals really.”
Crystals?
“Yes.”
So they’re just glowing crystals? How weird. Do they just grow out of the wall, then?
She shook his head. “No we make them in special facilities under Ghund.”
Make them? How?
“How should I know?”
You don’t know?
“Why should I? That is the task of the low serfs.”
Aren’t you curious?
“Any curiosity of mine bears no mentioning. Their business is below my station.”
Right. She was curious. Robert could tell that much, even though she had walled her mind off again. The claustrophobia thing had probably been too much. He turned his attention back to the tunnel they were crouching through. So where does this thing go again?
“This is one of the old patrol tunnels. They cross all of the likely places Ghund would be attacked if the Murks had ever decided to tunnel in from above.”
Robert was confused. But isn’t this sorta beating them to the punch? I mean it seems like you guys just built all the tunnels for them so they didn’t have to do it themselves.
“As long as these tunnels existed, they would never take the time to dig any of their own. They are odd creatures. With these tunnels we could direct them exactly where we wanted them. Or away from where we did not want them. Most of the tunnels are useless mazes.”
An image of a complicated web of tunnels came into Robert’s mind. Then how will we know where we’re going?
“I had to memorize the correct routes when I accepted I disagreeignment to infiltrate the Murk city.”
Infiltrate? What are you, a spy?
“I am an agent of the royal intelligence division. As I have said before.”
00-Jaine?
“What?”
Nothing.
She was immensely suspicious, but she let it go. “Many of the tunnels I’ve been telling you to pass would have left us lost; more than likely forever. A few others are murder tunnels.”
Murder tunnels?
“They’re… how would you say it,” she unceremoniously rummaged through his memories, “booby-trapped.”
Don’t do that!
“Do what?”
That! He said, thinking at her about what she had done.
“I felt it would be easier to communicate if I used one of your colloquialisms.”
Well, if you’re all up for that kind of thing as a necessity, then let me think over your memories of these tunnels.
“No.”
Why not?
“It is unseemly.”
Oh, is it?
“Yes.”
Hypocrite.
“You do not have the same standards I do.”
Oh, don’t I?
“You should not be upset about this.”
Well, guess what?
“Yes, yes, fine. I see your point.”
Will you let me think on the memories then?
“Why? I won’t look through your memories again.”
It would be beneficial for both of us. It’d make traveling easier.
She remained hesitant.
Well?
“As you wish. But don’t spend longer than you have to.”
It’s just memories of the tunnels; I don’t see what’s the big deal.
“No, you would not I suppose.”
He could feel her protective wall around her mind shift, and like a fog being lifted he could remember the tunnels. Well, it was actually more complicated than that. He remembered sitting at a large desk studiously pouring over old maps and plans. An elderly gentleman leaned over her giving very specific instructions about the layout of the tunnels. Shocked, Robert turned his mind away from the memories for a second.
Did I just think of myself as a girl?
“Well, you would.” Jaine mused. “They are my memories.”
Um, right. Robert thought uncomfortably and returned to the memories of the desks, maps and the old architect.
A short while later he asked Jaine, Are we as far away from the city as I think we are?
“Yes. There are a number of old passageways to the lands below us, but the one we need is still quite far from here.”
If we don’t catch up to your body soon, this might take a lot longer than a day.
“It might.”
Robert groaned. It wasn’t like he was overly fond of his job, of course, but losing it would be the headache icing on the problem cake.
“You think of such strange metaphors.”
Robert groaned again.
Jaine was about to follow up on her musings on Robert’s oddities when they both heard the steady pounding of feet in the distance. They stood there stunned for a moment as the marching feet became louder.
Is that what I think it is?
“Yes, I am afraid so. We truly have poor luck.”
Well, we’re not caught yet. Robert turned around and quickly scuttled in the other direction. I thought that they never patrolled these tunnels anymore! That’s what I got out of your memories.
“Then you weren’t paying attention. They’re rare but they do happen. Where are we going?”
Robert had turned down one of the tunnels they had passed before. There’s more than one way to the underworld, right?
“I do not like the connotations of the word you just used,” she muttered.
Stuff it. And yes, there is more than one way, so I’m taking us to one.
The tunnel was short, but a construct made of something that appeared to be wood stretched its length. It ran up both walls and joined at the ceiling.
“This is a murder tunnel! Why are you taking us down a murder tunnel?”
It’s not a murder tunnel, he thought at her irritably. This tunnel does have a collapsible ceiling, but it was only to be used to close off the entrance to the underworld if the place was under attack.
“Stop calling Miria ‘underworld.’ And the memories I lent you shouldn’t have told you anything about the collapsible ceiling.”
I build things, and I’m pretty good, too. I know a collapsible ceiling when I see one.
They reached the end of the tunnel when the harsh glow of torch light began filtering in from the tunnel exit. They stood at what appeared to be a well covered with boards made of the same woodish material as the construct holding up the ceiling. Several large rocks had been laid on top of the boards. Robert thought he could move them, but it’d take more than the few seconds he originally thought it would take. The sound of footfalls echoed down the walls.
“What do you propose we do now?”
I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Robert glanced around and his eyes settled on the construct. The ceiling! He looked it over carefully. It was well built, but he couldn’t see a lever or any sort of triggering mechanism. Wait a minute! He took a closer look at the nearest support. It had an awkward base and it looked easy enough to dislodge. From what he could see, it wasn’t even important to the overall structure, it just held up one of the minor arches. But as Robert followed the arch, he saw it supporting another arch, which would then collapse a support beam that supported the next arch.
Dominoes. Robert pulled back and kicked the weak support. The ceiling collapsed in waves, and Robert could just see the outline of the patrol at the end of the tunnel before the falling rock cut off the torch lights and everything went pitch black.
********
Continued in my post below...