The Underdwelling

9

Twenty minutes later—after climbing through those close-packed trunks, navigating petrified logs, and fields of four-foot stumps wider than oval tabletops—they waded through a pool of freezing water and pressed through another stand of trees and what they saw on the other side literally took their breath away.

“Those ain’t trees,” Maki said. “That’s… that’s a city…”

“Can’t be,” Breed said. “Not down here.”

Boyd reserved judgment, as did McNair and Jurgens. They stepped forward, trying to make sense of what they were seeing. At first glance, sure, it did look like some sort of city, though maybe village would have been more accurate. Not buildings exactly, but trees. Immense things like California redwoods spread out and each bigger around than the opening to a train tunnel. About forty or fifty feet up, they had been sheared off flat, giving the impression of flat-roofed, man-made structures. Like the others they were completely turned to stone, but unlike the others they were honeycombed with oval openings, dozens and dozens of them.

Boyd was thinking that, yes, it did look like a village of sorts with gigantic trees used as buildings, but no ordinary village. This was primeval looking, weird and offbeat like those monkey villages in The Planet of the Apes. You just couldn’t imagine men living in places like this, climbing up into those holes and kicking off their shoes. If those cells were indeed domiciles of some sort, they looked like the sort some simian tree dwellers might fashion. Maybe even Tarzan.

“Those are trees,” Jurgens said.

McNair nodded. “Yes… but immense. I’ve never heard of anything like this from the Permian.”

“Maybe they’re not from the Permian,” Breed said.

“They have to be,” McNair pointed out. “I mean, it would be a little coincidental to assume that these were far older, that they had been standing petrified in our theoretical valley when the flood claimed the rest of this forest. It would be stretching.”

He and Jurgens walked around with their lanterns and long-handled flashlights while the others just stood and stared. There were at least a dozen of the big trees, some up on mounds, and some down in little draws sitting in standing water. They led right up to the far wall of the cavern where at some time in the past there had been a cave-in, swallowing the rest of the petrified Permian world. Set amongst them, were dozens of the other trees.

Breed kept panning his light around, studying the boles of those big trees. “I don’t know, Doc,” he said when McNair returned. “These big ones just look… I don’t know…”

“Older,” Maki said.

And Boyd was with them on that. Like this was some sort of sacred grove that had been abandoned, all the little trees inserting themselves and growing wild when whoever or whatever cut those cells was long, long gone. Regardless, there was something eerie about them standing so big and stark like monoliths and monuments. The flashlight beams scanning them made the cell mouths seem to move as shadows spilled from them.

Jurgens and McNair went up to one and started peering inside it. Boyd and Breed followed suit. The openings were all about four-feet in diameter. Inside, were little cells maybe five-feet high by ten long. You could still see the chopping marks in the petrified wood. McNair climbed inside one and examined this.

“It looks like this was done when the tree was still alive,” he said.

“But by who?” Breed said. “I mean, who was around 250 million years ago to hollow out these little apartments?”

Jurgens shook his head. “It wasn’t a matter of who, Breed, but what. There were no people during the Permian. This is, was, the work of some arboreal creature. Some tree-living species that chewed these cavities open.”

“They remind me of those holes the prairie dogs dig in their sand piles at the zoo,” Maki said.

“What could have made these, Doc?” Boyd asked.

“I… I’m not sure,” McNair said. “But it’s apparent that there were very many of them and it must have taken time.”

Boyd looked into another. “Almost looks like toolwork, don’t it?” he said, putting his flashlight beam on the meticulously carved ceiling, the series of hack marks that looked like maybe they’d been done with an axe.

“It wasn’t done by tools,” McNair said, but he didn’t sound convinced of that himself.

“But what cut them off flat on top, Doc?” Breed wanted to know.

McNair said, “There’s no way of telling. Could have been that they grew that way or some natural force did it. The movement of the rock above may have sheared them off over a period of millions of years. Hard to say.”

“Almost looks like it was done on purpose,” Maki said.

Boyd stood before the nearest tree, sweeping his light up it, counting all the cells set into its face. They went right up to the very top. Dozens of them. Looking at them, he was reminded of a bee honeycomb. Whatever lived in them must have been a very good climber.

McNair was taking photograph after photograph.

“Well, gentlemen, I think we should call it a day,” Jurgens said. “No sense waiting around down here until our batteries go dead.”

Boyd was in perfect agreement with that. This was plenty for one day. Let the scientists figure this all out. He wanted to get topside again, get out of the cavern and the mines in general, suck in some air that wasn’t dank and stagnant smelling.

After this I’m gonna need a drink, he thought, maybe four or five of them. In fact, I just might—

Maki, who had been investigating trees ahead, came running back, shining his light around up in the air. “What the hell was that?”

They all looked at him.

In the glow of the lanterns, his face had taken on the color of yellow cheese. His eyes were wide and white, his lips pulled away from his teeth.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jurgens said.

But nobody was saying it was his imagination. They were all looking around them now as if the unpleasant possibility that they might not be alone down there had just occurred to them, had just settled into them like venom. Flashlight beams scanned about, but no one heard anything but that continual, morose dripping of water. The air smelled like it had been blown from a crypt… yellow bones and flaking shrouds, dust and advanced age.

“I heard it,” Maki said. “Up there… up on one of those trees. A kinda scratching sound.”