Tunnels 01, Tunnels

with us for as long as--"
    "My God, what's that? " Will interrupted him, pointing at an outlandish figure that had stepped into view from the shadow of a towering stack of fruit boxes. Apparently ignored, it stood outside the huddle of Colonists and inspected a pineapple as if it were a rare artifact while the exchange continued with the gesticulating Mr. Clarke junior.
    The boy followed Will's finger to the stationary figure, which appeared to be human, with arms and legs, but was swathed in some kind of bloated diver's suit, which was a dull bone color. It was bulbous, like a caricature of a fat man, and the head and face were completely obscured by a hoodlike extension. Its large goggles glinted as they caught the light of a street lamp. It looked like a man-shaped slug, or, rather, a slug-shaped man.
    "Don't you know anything?" The boy laughed with undisguised scorn at Will's ignorance. "Its only a Coprolite."
    Will frowned. "Oh, right, a Coprolite."
    "From down there," the boy said, flicking his eyes toward the ground as he walked away. Will lingered behind for a moment to watch the strange being -- it moved so slowly it reminded Will of the leeches that inhabited the sludge at the bottom of the school fish tank. It was an improbable scene, the pink-jacketed Mr. Clarke junior peddling his wares to the crowd while the Coprolite examined a pineapple, both deep in the bowels of the earth.
    He was deliberating whether to go over to talk to Mr. Clarke junior when he spotted two policemen at the edge of the crowd. He left quickly and went on his way, nagged by a question that elbowed all other thoughts aside. If the Clarkes knew about the Colony, then how many others in Highfield were leading double lives?

    * * * * *

    As the weeks passed, Will was assigned to further work details in other parts of the Colony. It gave him an insight into the functionings of this subterranean culture, and he was determined to document as much of it as he could in his journal. The Styx were at the very top of the pecking order and a law unto themselves, and next came a small governing elite of Colonists, to which Mr. Jerome was privileged to belong. Will hand no idea what he or these Governors actually did, and, on detailed questioning, it appeared that Cal didn't, either. Then there were the ordinary Colonists and finally an underbelly of unfortunates, who either could not work or refused to do so, and they were left to rot in ghettos, the largest of which was the Rookeries.
    Every afternoon, after Will had swabbed the dirt and sweat off himself using the basic facilities in the so-called bathroom of the Jerome house, Cal would watch as he sat on his bed and jotted down meticulous notes, adding the occasional sketch where he felt it was warranted. Perhaps it would be of children working at one of the garage dumps. It was quite a scene; these tiny Colonists, little more than toddlers, so adept at scavenging the huge mounds of litter and taking so much care to sort everything into hoppers for processing.
    "Nothing goes to waste," Cal had told him. "I should know, I used to do it!"
    Or it might be a picture of the stark fortress in the farthermost corner of the South Cavern where the Styx lived, which had a huge iron stockade enclosing it. This drawing had been by far the greatest challenge for Will because he hadn't had an opportunity to get very close. With sentries patrolling the neighboring streets, it wouldn't do to be caught showing too much interest in it.
    Cal was at a loss to understand why Will took such great pains to write in his journal. He persistently badgered Will, asking him what the point of it all was. Will had replied that it was something his father had taught him to do whenever they found anything during their excavations.
    And there it was again, his father. Dr. Burrows was still his father as far as he was concerned, and Mr. Jerome, even if he was Will's real father -- though he still wasn't wholly convinced of that -- came a poor second in Will's estimation. And his deranged Topsoil mother, and his sister, Rebecca, still felt like family. Yet he felt such affection for Cal, Uncle Tam, and Grandma Macaulay that sometimes his loyalties churned in his head with the ferocity of a stoppered tornado.
    As he put the finishing touches on a sketch of a Colony house, his mind wandered and he began to daydream again about his father's journey into the Deeps. Will was eager to discover what lay down there and knew that one