Tunnels 02, Deeper

than a tactic to get her out of the way. There was no possible reason for her to be here.
    As they'd been walking, she'd noted that the spring had gone from Bartleby's step now that there was no scent trail to sniff out. She couldn't remain angry with him for the way he'd behaved; there was something touching about the tenacity he'd shown in tracking his master. She kept reminding herself that this Hunter had been Cal's companion -- the truth was that the animal had spent more time with her son than she had, and she was Cal's mother!
    With a rush of affection, she'd watched Bartleby's huge shoulder blades rising and falling hypnotically, first one side, then the other, as he slunk along. They stuck out at the best of times under his loose-fitting and hairless skin, but they were even more prominent now with his head hanging low. The aimless way he was carrying himself spoke volumes -- he looked exactly the way she felt.
    And now, as they sat on the beach, she couldn't contain her frustration.
    "Wild-goose chase," she grumbled to the cat. He was scratching his ear with a paw. "Ever tried goose?" she asked, and he stopped, his hind leg still poised in the air, regarding her with his huge shining eyes. "Oh, I don't know what I'm saying!" she admitted, and lay back against the white sand as Bartleby resumed his scratching. "Or doing," she confessed to the stone roof far above, invisible in the darkness.
    What would Tam make of all this? What would he think of her if he'd seen the way she'd acted? She'd kowtowed to a patrol of corpse-chewing Limiters! She was supposed to be finding out whether Will was really to blame for her brother's death, and also getting Cal safely back to his home in the Colony. She was a long way from achieving either of those aims. She felt she had failed miserably. Why didn't I stand up to them? she asked herself. "Too weak," she said aloud. "That's why!"
    If the Limiters took Will alive, and she were to come face-to-face with him after he'd been captured, what would she do? The Limiters would probably expect her to kill him in cold blood. She couldn't do that, not without knowing whether he was really to blame for her brother's death.
    But if she didn't, the alternative for him would be worse... unthinkably worse. Death would be a picnic compared to the tortures he would endure at the hands of Rebecca and the Styx. As she pondered her dilemma for the umpteenth time, she realized how strong her feelings were for her son, despite everything he supposedly had done. She was his mother! Could he be capable of betraying his own family? Not knowing the truth was driving her mad.
    She suddenly became so angry that her brother had lost his life. Rage boiled up inside her, and she arched her back, pressing her head hard into the sand.
    "TAM!" she cried.
    Alarmed at her outburst, Bartleby scrambled to his feet. He watched as she sank back onto the beach in a sullen, helpless silence. Her wrath had no outlet, nowhere to go. She was like some clockwork toy that Rebecca and her cronies had wound up, letting it run only so far before stopping it short.
    Bartleby finished washing himself and made several dry, hacking sounds as he spat grains of sand from his mouth, then yawned exuberantly. He sat back fully on his haunches and, as he did so, broke wind with the volume of a bugler trumpeting an urgent retreat.
    It came as no surprise to Sarah; she'd noticed the cat had been supplementing his diet by chewing on the moldy remains of unidentifiable things he found along the way. Evidently at least one of them hadn't agreed with him.
    "Couldn't have put it better myself," Sarah mumbled through her clenched teeth, squeezing her eyes shut in frustration.

     

42

    Following the flight of stone steps wherever they took him, Dr. Burrows had eventually emerged into another vast space. Here he found that the path of regularly laid slabs continued, and he went with it, moving down a gentle incline. For as far as he could see, menhirs peppered the ground. Dumpy, teardrop-shaped boulders up to twelve feet high, with rounded tops -- it was a bizarre sight, as if some semi-deity had been randomly chucking large dollops of dough all over the place.
    Given the uniformity of the menhirs' shapes, thought, Dr. Burrows began to ask himself if they had been positioned not by nature but by design. He muttered various theories about their origin as he went, every so often jumping when his light, falling across the nearest boulder,