Tunnels 03, Freefall

clearly recognized her from the way they were looking at her. One of them immediately whipped her head around and began to walk off, tugging her children behind her. The other woman continued to simply glare, her top lip hooked in a vicious snarl as she clenched the handle of her baby buggy. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt which displayed to full effect the large crimson heart tattooed on her upper arm with the name Kev emblazoned on it.
    Mrs. Burrows was flabbergasted.
    Following the television appeal, there had been a few mentions in the tabloid newspapers, but it was all pretty low-key stuff. However, the local rags had picked up on the story, running a series of articles about her and her missing family, and then there'd been a two-page spread on Chester's parents, in which there were several rather ambiguous comments about Mrs. Burrows suitability as a mother. Inevitably, Mrs. Burrows had achieved a degree of local notoriety from these.
    Trying to shrug off the incident, she began to walk slowly up
    Highfield High Street
    , then sped up. She didn't want to be late for the first of her job interviews.

10

    Martha was chopping a bundle of dried plants she'd fetched from one of the outhouses. With both hands she lifted a football-sized fungus from her basket, and plopped it onto the table.
    "Looks a bit dodgy," Will commented, wrinkling his nose.
    "These are rare as snake feet round here," Martha said as she patted the sides of the mushroom, rather like a baker with a lump of dough. Then she began to peel away the tough outer skin as one would a very large orange. "You should know what this is."
    "Will nodded. It was a pennybun, but in comparison to the ones he'd seen in the Colony, this was a sorry specimen. Its skin was dry and in places ruptured, and it sagged as if it had lost some of its innards. "Has it gone off?" he asked.
    "No, it's jugged pennybun."
    "Jugged?" Will said.
    "Yes, I hang them for a couple of months. Gives them a richer flavor," she answered. She began to cut it into small sections, lobbing them into a cooking pot.
    "Just looks rotten to me," Will said, nudging the end of one of Martha's chisels so it spun on the tabletop. He watched as it came to rest, then spun it again.
    "Look, haven't you got anything better to do?" Martha asked gently.
    "Not really," Will said listlessly.
    "Are you bored because you and Chester can't play together as much as you used to?" she said.
    "We don't play together -- that's for kids. "We fool about," he said a little sharply, then checked himself, replying more civilly. "Well, we can't really, not with Elliott the way she is. It doesn't feel right."
    "It's more than just that, isn't it, lad? You've got that restless look in your eyes, like Nathaniel did before he went off on his expeditions. Itchy-feet," she pronounced, giving him a knowing glance as she continued to cut up the pennybun.
    "Yes, s'pose... a bit," Will replied, then pulled himself up in his chair. "Martha, you know we... Chester and I... we can't stay here forever. We have to get back up Topsoil somehow -- and soon. If the Styx go ahead with the Dominion plot..." he tailed off.
    "I know, I know," Martha said sympathetically. "Will, I hate to be the one to tell you this, buy you might be wasting your time. You might be too late already."
    "Doesn't matter," Will said tersely. "We've still go to get back -- just in case we can do something to stop them."
    "And as far as getting back -- it's never been done, and never will be. There's no way back," she said, with a thrust of her knife into a slab of the mushroom flesh. "You can't climb up the inside of the Pore or any of the other Seven Sisters. It's miles. You would never make it." She paused to look directly into Will's eyes. "Don't think we didn't try."
    "What about whatsisname? De Jaybo? Will asked as Martha resumed work on the pennybun. "He managed it, didn't he?"
    "Ah," Martha began, taking a moment to pick her nose. Will rolled his eyes. "You've obviously been told the story. He claimed he fell down the Pore, and that he kept going, to a hidden place where he saw all manner of weird and strange things -- horrible things. He said he saw another world where there was daylight."
    "Yes, I heard all that."
    "Another world, with its own sun?" Martha said, shaking her head. "There were some in the Colony that said he didn't know his up from his down, and that he'd blundered out Topsoil somewhere, and all the things he said he saw were a load