Tunnels 04, Closer

Dark Lights evidently took their toll on this woman. It's as though... how can I put it...?" The doctor faltered as he sought a suitable analogy, then stuck his index finger in the air. "It's as though all the peas have been stripped from the pod."
    The Second Officer frowned through his confusion.
    "Yes," the doctor went on, rather pleased with himself. "The patient has been well and truly shelled, and there's not much left... merely the husk. And peas don't grow back, do they? It doesn't matter how strong she was before, there's no return from where she is now."
    "No new peas," the Second Officer said as he understood what he was being told, and looked at Mrs. Burrows with his sad eyes. "Yes, she had a strong will, all right. She put up one hell of a fight," he said, then laid his hand on the doctor's arm. "But, please, doctor, I need your help. I'm desperate. If you were in my shoes, what would you do now?"
    "Give her back to the Styx," the doctor replied abruptly, pulling his arm away. He seized his valise and trilby, and made toward the hallway with undue haste. He acknowledged the elderly lady and the younger woman with a nod. Then, placing the trilby on his head, he left the house as fast as his thin legs would carry him, still watched by the two women hovering in the hall.
    "Well, 'e left like 'e thought the place was on fire. 'E couldn't get out quick enough," the elderly woman observed, as she shut the front door behind him. "'E thinks the Topsoiler is a dead duck."
    The Second Officer had come out into the hallway. "Ma, she..." he began to reply, but his mother's countenance was so unsympathetic, he turned to his sister for support. "Eliza, I'm only doing--"
    "Doing what ?" his sister cut him short. "He's been our family doctor since the year dot -- he even delivered both of us -- but now he just wants to wash his hands of us," she said unequivocally. "And can you blame him? We're an embarrassment, for Christ's sake! A bloody joke!"
    Hearing his sister use profanities like that had the effect of a slap across the Second Officer's face. He gasped.
    But Eliza was unrepentant. With her pale blue eyes and her wide face, and her almost white hair tied behind her head, she was typical of the women in the Colony. And the Second Officer, with his scalp sparsely covered by hoary bristles, his sloping face and thickset physique, was equally typical of the male contingent. Indeed, they were both immensely proud of their origins, descended as they were from the 'Faithful' -- the loyal employees Sir Gabriel Martineau had invited to live in his new kingdom beneath the soil almost three hundred years ago.
    The Second Officer and his family were highly respected members of the community, and obedient to the Styx. Moreover, the Second Officer's work in the police station meant that he dealt with the Styx on an almost daily basis, doing their bidding however distasteful its nature. But now his erratic conduct in helping this Topsoiler had jeopardized his standing, and had alienated all three of them from the tight-knit community in which they lived. And all three of them knew it.
    "Eliza, the doctor's a busy man," the Second Officer said. "Maybe he has something urgent to do -- another house call to make."
    "Sure, and my best friend's a mushroom," she snorted derisively.
    "Got all of us in a real bind, 'aven't you, son?" the old lady burst out. She and Eliza advanced on the Second Officer, who did the only thing he could and retreated into the sitting room. "Look at 'er. This Topsoiler's eatin' us out of 'ouse and 'ome, and she ain't never ever going to get better. At my age I can't be doing with all this moppin' up after 'er, and tryin' to force costly food we can ill afford down 'er greedy gullet. And now we've got to cough up for yet another bill. What were you thinkin' of, son?"
    Eliza now joined in the attack. "And tongues are wagging all right. People want to know what drove you to haul a half-dead Heathen into our family house, some evil Above Grass we don't' know from Eve. I ask you!"
    "Eliza--" the Second Officer tried, but his sister wasn't finished yet.
    "At the shops yesterday, both Mrs. Cayzer and Mrs. Jempson ignored me completely. They crossed the road to avoid me, they did," she said indignantly.
    The Second Officer didn't have anywhere to go -- the two women had him tight up to Mrs. Burrows' bath chair. And they were going in for the kill, like hounds after a lame fox.
    "Exactly who do you think we are? The