ONE
Dean stared into a darkness that no human had entered for at least thirty thousand years. The shadows appeared solid, bearing mass and viscosity, rather than simply being an absence of light. It was as if they hunkered down in defiance of the long days and short nights experienced at this time of year on Hawkshead Island. They held the weight of history. Or maybe it was just the cold of the dawn playing tricks on his mind.
“Looks like a good place to tie on,” Lanna said. She pointed at a spur of rock to the left of the narrow fault in the ground as she shrugged a coiled rope from her shoulder.
“I’ll give you a hand,” Dean said.
“Hmm, promises.”
Dean rolled his eyes and glanced back over his shoulder at the Stallion. Emma was climbing down from the high cab, and she caught his eye and smiled. She didn’t smile like that very often. That caused Dean’s paranoia to kick in. Maybe it was quiet laughter. Maybe she’d heard Lanna creep into his tent the previous night. Not that it mattered. Lanna made no secret of their occasional trysts, passing jokes in front of the others without embarrassment. They’d slept together a few dozen times over the years, and Dean took her lead on what any of it meant. Just a bit of fun, she’d say. He definitely agreed with her that, yes, it was fun. But sometimes he’d find himself wishing it could be a little more. Today he’d planned to talk to Lanna about things, find out what their future might hold. Emma’s smile cooled that thought.
“How’re things, Wren?” Emma asked. Wren claimed he’d picked up the nickname on a South American expedition a decade ago, but Lanna said she’d heard it was what his mother used to call him. Six feet and four inches of gruffness and sharp edges: naming him after the UK’s smallest bird gave him a Little John vibe.
“Ready to rock and roll!” Wren said. He was at the Stallion’s open rear doors, prepping the four identical backpacks that they would wear down into the caves. Each one was loaded with tech and worth about ten grand.
“Hey!” Lanna said, punching Dean’s arm. “Dreamer!”
“I don’t dream,” Dean said.
“Sure you do. Everyone dreams.” She waved the rope at him, and he went to help her tie it around the rock spur. “You were mumbling in your sleep last night.”
“I needed a leak.”
“You were saying, ‘Just cut the line’. Something like that.”
“Huh.” A cool thump hit Dean’s stomach. Cold pulsed through him. Just cut the line. He grabbed the end of the rope and scrambled up and around the sharp rock. “You must’ve made me delirious. Raised my heart rate.”
“Raised something.” He caught her eye and he wondered yet again. Really? Just a bit of fun? But the moment to say something had come and gone. Maybe his lack of confidence meant he’d lost too many opportunities to make things more than they were.
They tied the rope around the rock, taking turns to hold on and lean back to test its strength, then threw the coiled end down into the impenetrable darkness of the narrow fracture that formed the cave mouth.
“Okay, come grab your packs, guys,” Emma said, and Dean and Lanna headed over to the parked Stallion, light from their head torches dancing before them. It was a large vehicle, the best that money could buy for an expedition like this, with six chunky-tyred wheels almost as tall as him, independent suspension rods as thick as his thigh, a sealed rear compartment with thick
solar-panelled walls and roof, and reinforced windows, which would have slept four comfortably if it wasn’t so packed with kit, and an elevated cab where Emma usually drove and Wren rode shotgun. It was designed for the most inimical terrain, and they’d used it in places far worse than this.
Somehow, though, Hawkshead Island felt more desolate than anywhere Dean had ever been. He’d visited deforested regions of the Amazon on several occasions, the vast Siberian steppe, and a scattering of remote Antarctic islands exposed by melting ice, but this place sang of solitude and whistled with a constant gentle breeze that originated from unknown places, heading nowhere. The terrain was harsh and rocky, marshy and unpredictable, nurturing a dozen ways to kill them, but it wasn’t only that. Dean thought the feeling was more to do with his memories of being a child in Boston, when harsh winters and hot summers brought real distinguishable seasons. He’d loved it most when it snowed, especially those winters when a storm dumped thirty inches over a weekend, because that had meant a few days off school and endless fun outside with his friends. A fresh new world, a pristine landscape for a while. As the covering melted, revealing the old familiar ground underneath, his heart would sink back towards a less exciting normality.
Hawkshead Island had been smothered with snow all year round for millennia, but that was no longer the case. Large patches still remained, but wide swathes of landscape now showed through. Temperatures had risen, hovering above freezing for most of the year. This was a changing place, and the island’s desolation was painfully obvious.
They took turns shrugging on their caving helmets and packs, and letting Wren ensure they were all a perfect fit.
“You’re putting on weight,” he said as Dean shouldered his pack.
“Easy living,” Emma said.
Dean laughed. “Screw you.”
“Wren’s right,” Lanna said. “You are developing love handles.”
There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence. Then Lanna caught his eye, wriggled an eyebrow. Wren chuckled.
“Jesus, guys,” Dean said, smiling.
“Okay, gang, let’s hustle,” Emma said. Wren locked the Stallion—he called the vehicle his baby, and however remote their expedition he was always paranoid that someone would come along with the desire and know-how to hotwire a million-dollar piece of kit and steal it—and walked up the gentle slope towards their chosen cave. The Stallion’s big lamps were programmed to stay on for half an hour, lighting their approach and descent into the system. They had sent down a remote-controlled drone that Emma piloted with aplomb, and they’d zeroed in on these caverns as the most likely source of rare earth minerals.
After that, Dean had sent a simple, anonymous message with these coordinates. He didn’t know if Bethan had received them. He didn’t know if she would come, and when she might arrive. If she did, he had no idea how it might be between them. But whatever happened, he knew that in sending her that message he had taken a step away from this world that had never really been his.
What they sought was worth a fortune, and their small team was renowned for its success rate. In the right circles, at least. It wasn’t exactly legal, and the moral side was something that Dean used to put into a solid mental box and set to one side. Once, huddled in a one-person sleeping bag, sweat still sticking them together as their heartbeats and breathing started to slow down, he’d tried talking to Lanna about this. They were on a rocky South Atlantic island where penguins watched their every move and wind drove freezing rain against exposed skin like bullets. She’d laughed at him, then fallen quiet. He had fallen asleep waiting for her to say something profound.
“Follow me, I’ve got the map!” Wren said. He had a small screen attached to his wrist on which he could call up the virtual 3D map of the caverns made by the drone. It wouldn’t be a complete map, but it would show the general lie of the land. “A tight wriggle to start with, so feet first. Twist to the left, then it opens out. It’s a scramble down a steep slope to the first cavern big enough to stand in. Hold onto the rope all the way. I’ll guide you.”
“Don’t get stuck,” Dean said, and Wren grinned. He was a big man and had been on a fast track to semi-pro football when a shoulder injury finished his career. He was always the first of them to venture into narrow spaces. If he could make it, they all could.
Wren grabbed the rope, backed up to the narrow cave mouth, and eased his way in and down. As the darkness swallowed him, Dean experienced a twinge of claustrophobia. Am I really following him in there? he thought, and he frowned. He’d never felt like this before. He’d been caving since he was a kid, and it was usually heights that got to him more than enclosed spaces.
“Don’t wait up,” Wren said, and his face and upper body were swallowed by the darkness almost too soon, as if greedy shadows had closed him off from the rest of the world.
“Comms on,” Emma said, and they each tapped the communications unit curved over their right ear. It transmitted their voices through bone conduction, leaving their ears free to detect any localised dangers. They started calling their names so that the others could check that the systems were working.
“Wren?” Emma asked after a pause.
“Balrog,” Wren
growled, and then he said, “Whoops!”
“What is it?” Dean asked.
“Slippery. Rocks oozing moisture. Muddy. Be careful on the way down. You can start heading in now.”
Dean stepped forward before Emma or Lanna could move, keen to get on with this. He didn’t like the unfamiliar nervousness, and knew that the best way to subdue it was to confront it head on. The more he thought about things, the more troubled he became. Just like his problem with Lanna.
“What is it, Dean?” Lanna asked.
“Huh?” Dean grabbed the rope and stood at the cave mouth, facing his two teammates.
“Dunno. I thought I heard you sigh.”
Wren laughed, and Dean heard it echoing up from behind him as well as through his comms.
“Just wind,” Dean said, and he started easing back into the cave mouth. Darkness drew him in and down, cooler even than the cold air outside. The atmosphere in the cave was utterly still, like a held breath, and he gripped the rope hard as he descended. The powerful light from his headlamp washed across the sloping floor beneath his feet. Wren was right, it was slippery and muddy, and his teammate’s footprints were already being washed away as Dean added his own.
“I’m in the cavern,” Wren said. “Whoah.”
“All good?” Emma asked.
“Yeah. All good. It’s beautiful.”
Dean smiled at the wonder in Wren’s voice. Letting your mask slip there, big guy.
“We’re heading down,” Lanna said. Dean felt the rope above him tighten and then vibrate as the other two started descending after him.
He slipped a couple of times, easing his weight and grip on the rope to keep himself upright. Then he saw his own shadow splashed ahead of him and felt Wren grab his waist, easing him down the last slippery slope into the larger cavern.
Dean turned to thank him and then saw what Wren had seen.
“Wow,” he said. The cavern wasn’t huge, but one end was taken up with a pool of water, a sheen of retreating ice an inch below the surface casting a ghostly glow upwards when his light fell upon it. It silvered the cavern’s uneven walls and low ceiling. Gentle ripples passed across the water, perhaps from their footsteps on the cavern floor, or maybe from something that had just ducked beneath the surface.
Stop that shit right now! Dean thought. He smiled at his overactive imagination.
“Told you,” Wren said. “But look this way.” He tapped Dean on the shoulder, and
he turned and added his light to Wren’s.
At the other end of the cavern a wide crack split the wall from floor to ceiling, offering them a way deeper into the system. They’d guided the drone in that direction the day before, but none of them had appreciated the full detail of what they were seeing. The fault they had just descended, this cavern, and the tunnels leading off it had been clogged with ice for many millennia until the permafrost started thawing forty years before. That melt had sped up during the past decade: as the ground thawed so had much of the surface ice, creating routes for the passage of warm air from above that accelerated the melt even more. Now, sculptures of ice clung to walls and hung from ceilings, some of them ragged where they’d cracked and fallen away, others smooth and shimmering where water flowed across their surface. The ice was dark and dirty in places, a deep emerald green elsewhere, and here and there it seemed to swallow the pure white light from their headlamps and glow as if lit from within. It illuminated the whole cavern.
“Amazing,” Dean muttered, and then he felt Lanna nudge against him and grasp his hand. He’d been so enraptured with the scene that he hadn’t heard Emma and her complete their descent. She squeezed, and he experienced one of those sublime moments of overwhelming peace, wholeness, and presence that rarely lasted more than a few seconds.
They stood together for a while, just looking around and taking it in. Their combined headlamps set the cavern on fire. It was as if the icy cave relished this first touch of light in many millennia. Perhaps it was the first time ever.
“Okay,” Emma said at last. “Let’s move on. Wren?”
“Yeah.” He tapped the display on his small wrist screen, and as he turned the image followed his movement, perfectly synchronised with their surroundings. “This way.”
They headed off into the cave system, feet splashing in mud, thin thermal jackets protecting them from most of the chill. It was colder down here than up in the open air, but their suits were designed for such environments. Lanna tied the end of a ball of strong wire-threaded string to the rope they’d left hanging down from above. The reel was attached to her belt, and as they moved off she rested one hand there to ensure the string played out behind them.
Wren went first, as usual, then Emma followed behind him. She carried a probe which she used to tap the walls, pausing now and then to check the readings.
“Anything?” Dean asked after a while.
“Traces,” she said.
“Maybe just picking up minerals in the meltwater,” Lanna said. The walls dripped and flowed, and they splashed through mucky water that streamed in the direction they were heading, sometimes shallow, sometimes up to the shins of their heavy boots. There was probably
a series of subterranean waterways ploughing through the melting permafrost, carving new channels or following old routes that had frozen thousands or millions of years before. It was something that always worried them in situations like this: as the team geologist, Dean was supposed to put their minds at rest. Yes, sure, the tunnels are safe, he’d say, but they all knew the truth—they were taking their lives in their hands.
That was why they were never keen to go too deep.
These tunnels, illuminated by bright splashes from their helmet lamps, were ancient natural architecture revealed as the deep soul of the ground itself began to thaw. Billion-year-old rock existed on a different timescale to puny people. One day these tunnels would cave in, change, erupt, just as someday a tree would fall. That didn’t stop a person from touching it or walking by. Dean’s trust in his surroundings, his awareness of risk and its mitigation, came from his understanding of geological timescales.
Those timescales had been upset, and sometimes accelerated, by the thaw, potentially causing flash floods, ice-weakened cracks and faults in the seemingly solid surroundings, and cave-ins. Plenty of stuff here was ready to kill them without a second’s warning. Dean felt the weight of this place ready to drop and crush them flat.
They moved onwards, erring down, and ten minutes later he realised that they’d passed the last of the strange ice sculptures. They’d been reducing in size and frequency, catching light and reflecting deep, old colours and suspended dirt. Now there were no more.
“This is it,” he said. “We’re past the point where ice formed down here.”
“Ground’s still slick,” Wren said.
“A century ago these caves would’ve been mostly dry.”
They were in a wider passage, the floor uneven, several tall dark cracks slashed upwards into the ceiling. Some of these faults would provide routes deeper into the cave complex. Emma edged closer to one wall and ran the probe up and down, and a series of loud uneven crackles echoed around the chamber.
“Okay,” she said, checking the digital readout. “Okay! This might be a good place to start. Dean, check it out.”
Dean moved beside her and shone his lamp across the surface. The powerful light reflected from the dampness there, a thousand glimmering drips, and it was far too bright. He flicked it off.
“Aim your lights left and right,” he said. “Not directly at the wall.” The others did as he asked, and he pulled a small, weaker penlight from his belt. He stepped in closer and ran his gloved hand across the surface. He shook away the moisture and leaned in, moving the torch slowly left and right, up and down. Plucking a knife from his belt, he pressed its point against the wall… and stopped.
“What?” Emma asked."
“Hang on.” Dean took a couple of steps back and lowered his penlight. “Am I seeing things?”
The others turned and their lamps splashed from the wall again, too bright for detail.
“Just penlights,” Lanna said, and Dean heard something in her voice.
“You see it?” he asked.
“Maybe.” She turned off her headlamp and took out her own smaller torch, and the others followed suit. The cave became much darker, shadows crowding in from deep cracks in the walls and scampering across the ceiling as if trying to avoid being seen.
“Come on, rock boy, what is it?” Wren asked. “Signs of cerium?”
“Paintings,” Emma said, and Dean let out a deep breath, relieved that it wasn’t just him.
“Holy shit,” Lanna said. “How old?”
Dean shook his head. His heart beat faster. He was trying to comprehend, compute, but all sense left him as he attempted to understand just what they were looking at.
“Not just paintings,” he said. “Carvings. Images carved deep into the rock, then dyed or painted in somehow. Otherwise they’d have eroded away by now.”
“So how old?” Emma asked, echoing Lanna.
“Don’t know.” Dean played his light back and forth across the uneven cave wall, trying to establish the extent of what they had found. He was no archaeologist, but sometimes his own expertise crossed with different disciplines that all explored and investigated Earth’s history. ...
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