Castle Dreams

Twenty Shaft

“Here it is!”

Gene had hoped that mining engineers so bent on safety would have thought of providing escape shafts in case of accident. Shafts that went all the way to the surface. They had indeed provided them.

He pushed against the panic-bar and the heavy blastproof door gave. He stepped halfway in and confronted a small landing which abutted a spiral stairway constructed of unpainted metal. The shaft was lit with tiny blue lights glowing dimly.

“This is convenient.”

Sativa poked her head in and looked up and down the shaft.

“We’re near the bottom level. It’s a long way up.”

They entered the shaft. Gene closed the door quietly. They then began a cautious climb up the spiral.

“I don’t like the idea of being trapped between levels,” he said in low tones.

“It’s a chance we must take. Do you think it goes all the way to the surface?”

“Stands to reason. Opens out onto the slope of the hill, probably.”

“Damn it,” she said. “This is no good.”

“Why?”

“They’d be fools not to cover all the safety exits.”

He stopped. “Right. Should have thought of that.” He thought a moment. “We could try to shoot our way out.”

She shook her head. “You’d be killed. Let’s explore the next level down. There is one entrance they might not cover.”

“Which is?”

“The tunnel leading out to the plain.”

“The one they use as a loading dock? We don’t know if it really exists.”

“It must. It’s the only way to get anything big into the mine.”

“But why wouldn’t they be guarding that, too?”

“Because it’s a hidden entrance and the inner door is probably huge and impregnable. But we can blast through it from this side.”

“With the nukes? Jeez. Okay, I’m game. But which level?”

“We’ll have to try them all. But my instincts say down.”

“Right.”

They reversed direction, increasing their pace a bit, trying to keep the stairway from vibrating with their footsteps. The walls of the shaft were of striated rock, smoothly bored. Gene wondered what high-tech marvel had sliced through solid rock like so much cheese. Lasers, probably, but maybe something better. Particle beams. Gamma-wave lasers?

Another landing below. Gene descended the last few steps and approached the door cautiously. He put his ear to it.

Sativa stood behind him and waited.

He took his time. At last he straightened up and looked at her.

“I’m going to risk a peek.”

He grasped the handle, pressed the thumb tab, and pulled. He eased the door out of its jamb until a crack of darkness appeared. A draught of cooler air flowed to his face.

He listened. Then he widened the crack a hair and peeked.

The tunnel was empty except for more crates of armaments. He heard nothing. After waiting at least a quarter-minute, he opened the door and stepped out. He raised his weapon.

“Are you sure you can use that thing?” she asked.

“Are you sure you’re a good teacher? I pushed all the right buttons.”

“But the safety’s on.”

He glanced down. “Oh.” He flipped the tiny lever the other way. “Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it. Which way, do you think?”

“My sense of direction is fairly good. I’d say the other side of the mountain is to the left.”

“Check.”

Gene shut the door carefully, and darkness, except for Saliva’s greenish glow, returned.

She touched something on her suit and the light cut out. They stood in complete darkness for a time, listening.

Silence.

Before long the strips along the front of her suit began glowing again.

“There is a proper light on this thing,” she said. “But I’ve been reluctant to use it.”

An intense beam shot from the region of her right shoulder and made a tight circle on the wall. She fiddled with a control until the circle widened.

“Little photon-shooter. I shouldn’t be doing this, though.” She shut it off. “Their sensors can pick up the tiniest bit of trace radiation.”

The intensity had hurt Gene’s eyes, and now the light’s absence blinded him. But his heightened sensitivity returned quickly and soon he was navigating quite well by the weak halo of the strips.

More war materiel. These crates were bigger and there seemed to be more of them.

They walked on, carefully checking all directions at each intersection. Gene imagined himself having a sixth sense, sending out feelers into the darkness. It wasn’t magic — he hadn’t a magic spell for that — but he hoped there were enough remnants of the facilitation spell to give his imaginings some force. Nothing tickled his feelers yet, but he was getting a tingly feeling from them.

He stopped.

“Did you hear something?” He looked back.

“Um, no. Did you?”

“I thought.”

They waited briefly, ears cocked.

“Must have kicked a pebble or something,” he said.

They moved on.

Saliva pulled him close and whispered, “We’d better keep our voices down.”

“Right, sorry.”

Their footsteps were oddly muffled in the silence. Porous rock absorbing sound? Perhaps it was the kind of absolute silence that is overwhelmed by the body’s own interior noise: heartbeat, the rush of blood, the creak of bone. The same way that the mine’s utter darkness revealed spectral shapes and flashes — the random, stray firing of light-receptor cells in the retina.

It was not long before they heard a rumbling sound nearby, as of huge doors rolling back.

Sativa grabbed his arm and squeezed.

They retreated from the sound of the freight elevator, retracing their steps. They reached the door of the escape shaft. Gene opened it.

There came sounds of voices below. From high above, the unmistakable vibrating thud of heavy boots on the stairs.

“We’re stuck, unless we find another shaft,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to be making that desperate last stand you mentioned.”

They ran off into the darkness, made a few turns, and raced down a tunnel.

Another dead end. They skidded to a stop.

“You can give yourself up,” Sativa said.

“So they can thank me and then kill me?”

“There’s the chance they’d let you go.”

“Back to my magic kingdom? Yeah, they’d believe that, all right.”

“If it’s real,” she said, “you could prove it.”

“I don’t want them in my world. Besides, it doesn’t work like that. I could show them the portal, and they might not even be able to perceive it, let alone go through it. That’s the way it works. That’s what keeps my world safe from wholesale invasion. Most of the time, anyway. We do get retail now and then.”

“In any event, it doesn’t matter.” She let out a breath. “I might as well tell you. I’ve been dropping nuclear grenades, a few dozen of them.”

“Oh? Charming. Time-fused, I suppose, to go off … When, exactly?”

She checked a digital readout on the left sleeve of the suit.

“We have very little time.”