There was a taut silence, broken by J.B. “Dark night! Nearly won the order of the brown trousers there. You can relax. It’s a machine.”
“It was like the voice of the night spirits,” Sleeps In Day said from near the entrance to a small bookstore.
Everyone was standing up, brushing off dust.
“I must’ve triggered it by standing close,” the Armorer said. “Amazing the storage batteries still hold enough power to operate it.”
“Can I make it work?” Krysty asked.
Ryan holstered the blaster. “Guess so. The General must be way out of hearing.”
She quickly joined J.B. in front of a blank-screened console. “No picture?”
“No, Krysty. Guess that part of it malfunctioned back in the long winters.”
There was a row of buttons. “Should I press one? This says ‘Food facility.’ I’ll press that.”
Once again the voice came out from concealed speakers. “Want to know about eating, pardner? Then I’m your man. Best burgers you ever tasted. Teriyaki-burger. Mexicaliburger, with the hottest chili that ever blistered your lips. Kazooburger and Zapataburger and Jim and Carla’s supaburger. You ask for it and you got it. With melts and subs and dogs and slushes and sodas in thirty-seven tongue-tingling flavors. It ain’t just star-toppling, pardner, it’s downright apocalyptic.”
The voice had lost a little volume as the message ran on, and the last few words seemed to slur and drag.
“You have to pick the food message.” Mildred sighed. “Cruel, sister, cruel.”
“Want me to try another one, lover? Here’s one for the gift shop.”
Doc stopped her. “I beg you to let it lie, dear lady. Having heard about the range of edibles on offer, I believe I can imagine what attractions the gift shop will have for us. Hand-crafted genuine kachinas from Taiwan. Genuine mica wind chimes from Brazil. Genuine pinon candles from Toronto.”
“What’s Ronto, Doc?” Jak asked, interrupting the old man’s flow.
“Toronto, sweet youth. A Canadian conurbation. The Naples of the north. The Venice of the tundra. Where culture ends and the frontier begins. Through its rooms the women come and go, talking of the place called Toronto.” He rubbed his hand across the silver stubble that decorated his cheeks. “Or should that have been Michelangelo? I disremember.”
Ryan and the others had all gathered around the silent machine, looking at its controls.
“Might help if it told us the way down into the caverns,” Krystysaid.
“What I was thinking.”
“One button’s called ‘How to get there,’ at the top.” Mildred pointed to it.
“Should I press it, Ryan?” J.B. asked.
“All right.”
“It is always better to leave the things sleeping that should not ever be woken,” Two Dogs Fighting said from the back of the small group.
“Press it.”
This time there was an appreciable delay. The voice sounded whispery and tired, like an elderly man awakened from a deep slumber in the afternoon sun.
“You come here for the miracles below the ground ground ground ways of getting there. A pair of rapid-velocity elevators situated at the eastern end of the Visitors’ Centerenterto the heart of the Crystal Room and the other to the Dry Ocean. The large illustrated map by the side of the information desk will show your position locationwise. For the sturdy-hearted and strong-shoed there is the mile-and-one-quarter winding path, past the exit orifice of the nightly bats’ spectacular flight. This is not easyeasy” They heard the faint hissing of the unwinding tape,
“Is that it?” Sleeps In Day asked. “Then we must take this long and winding path.”
Ryan nodded. “I wouldn’t”
But the voice came back again, even quieter, whispering erratically like a dying pirate passing on the location of Flint’s treasure.
“Bats are real messy at keeping housein your mouthinjections available but call the medical report anyone you see touching the stones insideexperience of” Again they heard only hissing static.
“The path’s over here,” called Young Pony Runs.
For the last time, the long-dead voice murmured to the group of invaders.
“Infailure then no need to worry asemergency nuke lights throughout the caverns.”
“Good news about having some emergency lights down there,” J.B. said. “Let’s keep everything crossed it works all right. Otherwise it’s going to be a dark highway.”
There were low walls on both sides of the winding pathway, with a bright yellow line down its center, making it simple for them to follow.
They emerged briefly into the open, at the top of what looked like an almost sheer drop toward the black mouth of the caves. But the trail zigged and zagged in an easier pattern.
“Must be where the bats come out at night,” Krysty commented, pausing at one of the sharp turns.
Ryan stared out into the black funnel of rock. “Yeah. See the marks on the walls. Generations of shit down there. Hope we don’t have to wade through it.”
Sleeps In Day joined them. “Ryan Cawdor.”
“Yeah.”
“If there are no lights, then we shall not follow. We will return and pursue the marks of the wags, perhaps hold them between us, like the horns of the buffalo.”
Ryan nodded. “Sure.”
THE LIGHTS WERE WORKING. A string of flickering yellow bulbs set along the right-hand wall of the path gave just enough illumination to follow the painted marks.
“Are we off to see that wonderful wizard, ma’am?” Doc said to Mildred.
“How’s that?”
“Following the yellow brick line.”
“Sure, Doc, sure.”
“Wish that there was proper lighting, so we could appreciate what this place really looks like,” Krysty said as she walked close to Ryan, close enough for him to be able to catch the familiar scent of her body.
“See one fireblasted cave and you’ve seen them all. Just be glad to get to the other side and meet up with the General and chill him. Steal his wag and drive back to Jak’s place. And then jump on again.”
“Always jumping on again, lover.”
He nodded slowly. “I know.”
MILDRED SIPPED at her water canteen. “Not much left,” she said. “Think this General’s going to let us have our pick of his supplies? Sure he will.”
Doc was breathing hard, finding that the constant up and down of the narrow path tired him. “I have managed to make out many of the signs that tell us what wonders we are passing by. But all is lost in the deepest and most Stygian blackness. A great, great pity, is it not?”
Jak was the only one there able to appreciate anything of the beauties of the caverns. The albino condition that seemed to have bleached all of the blood from his body had also left him with poor sight in the brightness of noon. But he saw well in the dark.
“Boring, Doc,” he said. “Stalactites and stalagmites. All there is. Got stupe names.”
“I observed we had passed by The Venetian Gondola, The Sleepy Giraffewhich I could just glimpse and bore precious little similarity to any giraffe I ever saw. As for London Bridge and the Endless Embrace Well!”
“There is a map here.” Thomas Firemaker, his voice still as taut as a drawn bowstring, called everyone to a place where several paths seemed to intersect.
It was a plan of the caverns, painted onto a sheet of clear plastic. In the dimness of the caves, the colors had hardly faded.
The overhead emergency lighting was just strong enough for them all to be able to see the map.
“That’s where we came in,” J.B. said, pointing with the muzzle of his Uzi at the top section, which showed the aboveground area of the caverns. “There’s the one elevator. The other one not far ahead of us. And the underground eatery’s there as well.”
“Look.” Jak ran his ivory finger across to the far side. “Says Stores, Personnel. Private. That’s place.”
Ryan considered it. He had always had an excellent sense of space and direction, something that had saved his life on several occasions. He could see the blacktop that had drawn them to the Visitors’ Center, and the way it continued around the far side of the caverns, where the tire tracks of the last of the General’s wags had vanished.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Can we stop off at the restaurant?” Krysty’s green eyes seemed to shine in the gloom like molten emeralds.
“Doubt there’ll be any food worth risking.” Ryan looked around. “Though I guess it could just have survived in some forms. Mebbe freeze-dried, if there’s anything like that. Been kept in a dim light and a constant cool temperature for all this time. It’s on our way toward that area around back.”
THE DOORS OF ONE of the elevators were wide open. The others stood slightly ajar, with a skeletal human arm protruding between them, the fingers hooked into claws. The remains of the nails were jagged and broken, black with old blood.
“Poor devil.” Mildred stooped and peered at the sad relic. “Must somehow have gotten trapped in the elevator at the time of the missiles. Power went out and sheor hecouldn’t get the doors open enough. Miserable way to go.”