Tunnels 03, Freefall

said.
    He watched as Elliott absently tugged a third polished stone from the soil. As her hands were already full with the other two stones, she eventually tossed it into the pool of spring water. The splash made Bartleby roll over and sit up, as if he'd missed a fish leaping out of the water, or another unfortunate amphibian to chew on.
    "What if it had been your dad? Would you have been able to shoot him too?" Will asked.
    "Never thought about it," Elliott replied quickly. "My father's dead and gone, so it's never going to happen."

    * * * * *

    In a jam-packed pub in the heart of Soho, a man in a heavy overcoat was slouched by himself at a corner table. His hair was unkempt and his face ruddy. Obviously the worse for drink, he clumsily examined his glass, discovering that it was empty. He mumbled something under his breath and banged the table with his fist, which sent the glass spinning to the floor where it shattered. Then he lifted his head. "The Styx!" he spat, and began to shout, his words slurred and barely intelligible. "To hell with them!"
    The low hum of conversation in the pub continued unabated -- nobody appeared to take the blindest bit of notice of him. The man blearily regarded the throng around him, people having a quick drink after work before they made their way home.
    He sneered lopsidedly.
    "And to hell with the lot of you! You're all blind to what's going on!"
    Again nobody seemed to pay any heed to him, nobody except for a thin man with a sallow, hollow-cheeked face, who was suddenly at his table.
    "Pull yourself together, Drake. If you carry on like this, you'll get yourself arrested. And you know what a night in the cells means," the tall man warned in a low growl. He leant closer to Drake so he couldn't be overheard by those around them. "I helped you because I owed you a debt of honor for saving my daughter, but I'm not your fairy godmother. I might not be able to do it a second time."
    Drake wiped the spittle from his lips with his hand. "Sometimes I think Elliott saved me ," he drawled, his eyes heavy lidded as he peered up at the former Limiter, who had pulled him from the van that day back on Highfield Common.
    All at once Drake's belligerence turned to despondency and his head sagged on his shoulders. "The White Necks have me beat at every turn. I let Celia down. I let Leatherman down. I let every one of them down. And, for all I know, the Styx still have the virus. I might as well just chuck in the towel. I'm finished -- we're all finished." He gave the thin man a desperate look. "What's left for me? What can I do now?"
    "Oh, we'll think of something," the thin man said confidently, as he helped Drake to his feet. "Now, let's get you home."

40

    "I've had enough for today," Will decided.
    "Really? So soon?" Dr. Burrows mumbled, as he continued to work on a sketch.
    "My arm's playing up a bit," Will added, although the injury from the Limiter's spear had long since healed.
    "Going back to see Elliott?" Dr. Burrows asked, a knowing tone to his voice.
    Will ignored this, raising his eyes to the ever-burning sun. "I just don't want to overdo it again," he said, adjusting the hat with a wide brim that Elliott had fashioned for him from animal hide.
    He and his father were on the side of the pyramid, and while the hat afforded his face a measure of protection from the direct sun, he still had to be careful about the reflected rays in their exposed position.
    "No, quite," Dr. Burrows finally answered, looking up from his work.
    Will rubbed his eyes and blinked several times. "Of all the places we could have ended up, this one is an albino's worst nightmare. Dad, do you think next time you could find us a world with a few more clouds?" he asked with a smile.
    "I'll see what I can do. Off you go if you want to," Dr. Burrows replied glumly. He depended on his son's support for the mammoth task of recording the inscriptions and the scenes depicted on each of the tiers of the pyramid. It was all written in one of the languages on the Burrows Stone, and little by little he was deciphering it. He and Will had started at the base of the pyramid and were methodically working their way to the top, knowing they had another two pyramids to tackle, which they hadn't even visited yet.
    "I'll see you at the camp, Dad," Will said.
    "Yes..." Dr. Burrows murmured. He watched his son make his way down the successive tiers to the ground, leaping distances that would be unthinkable in the Topsoil world. Then