Tunnels 02, Deeper

were meant to be doing, and why. "Hurry up and stow that stuff... that's if you want to save your brother."
    "I don't understand," Will said, kneeling and hurriedly shoving food into his rucksack as Drake had instructed. "Cal wasn't breathing. He's dead."
    "No time to explain now," Drake barked as Elliott appeared from another doorway. Her shemagh was still around her head and her rifle slung across her back. She handed Drake two bladderlike containers that slopped with the sound of water.
    "Take these," Drake said, shoving them at the boys.
    "What's up?" Elliott asked calmly as she began to pass further items to Drake.
    "There were three of them. The third wandered into a sugar trap," he answered, casting his eyes in the boys' direction as he took a bundle of cylinders from Elliott, some six inches or so in length. He opened his jacket and slotted them inside it one by one. Then he clipped a pad with shorter versions of the cylinders -- each like a thick pencil housed in its own loop -- onto his belt and secured it by means of a short cord tied around his thigh.
    "What are those?" Will inquired.
    "Precautions," Drake answered abstractedly. "We'll be taking a direct route across the plain. We don't have time for subtlety."
    He buttoned up his jacket and flicked the weird contraption over his eye again. "Ready?" he said to Elliott.
    "Ready," she confirmed.

     

23

    Later that evening, Sarah was in her room, poring over the map the Styx had given her. She was sitting cross-legged with it spread open on the floor before her, familiarizing herself with the various place names.
    "CreviceTown," she repeated several times, then switched her attention to the northern reaches of the Great Plain, where reports were coming in of recent renegade activity. She wondered if Will was somehow tied up in it -- given his past record, she wouldn't have been surprised if he was already causing trouble in the Deeps.
    She was distracted by heavy, even steps in the corridor outside. Going to the door, she opened it as softly as she could and saw the massive, unmistakable form lumbering down the corridor.
    "Joseph," she called quietly.
    He turned and came back to her, tucking some neatly folded towels under his arm.
    "I didn't want to intrude," he said, glancing through the partially open door and past Sarah to the floor, where the map was laid out.
    "You should have come in. I'm so glad you're back." She smiled at him. "I was... um..." she began, then fell silent.
    "If there's anything I can do for you, you only have to ask," Joseph offered.
    "I don't think I'll be here much longer," she told him, then hesitated. "There is something I wanted to do before I go."
    "Anything," he reiterated. "You know I'm here for you." He beamed at her, delighted that she felt she could trust him.
    "I want you to get me out of here," Sarah said in a low voice.

    * * * * *

    Moving like a shadow, Sarah kept close to the wall. She'd already avoided several Colonist policemen making the rounds of the surrounding streets and didn't want to get caught now. Ducking into a recess behind an ancient drinking fountain with a tarnished brass spout, she crouched down and checked the darkened entrance on the other side of the street.
    She lifted her head and gazed at the tall, windowless walls of he outer ring of buildings. It had been from this very spot that, so many years ago, she had seen those buildings through her child's eyes. Then, as now, they gave the impression that they hadn't put up much of a fight against the ravages of time. The walls were shot through with ominous-looking cracks, and there were numerous huge and yawning hollows where the facing stones had simply crumbled away. The masonry appeared to be in such an appalling state of repair that at any moment the whole development might come tumbling down on some hapless passerby.
    But appearances can be deceptive. The area she was about to enter had been among the first to be built when the Colony was established, and the walls of the houses were strong enough to withstand anything man, or time, could throw at them.
    She took a breath and whisked across the street, slipping into the pitch-black passageway. It was barely wide enough to allow two people to pass abreast at the same time. At once the smell hit her: The stale odor of the inhabitants, a reek of unwashed occupation so intense it was like a physical thing, intermixed with all that went with it, with human effluent and the pungent stench of