"Stasya! Stasya, are you all right?" she heard above her. Lying spread-eagle on the cold, packed snow, Stasya panted to get her breath back. Through the hole in the cavern's ceiling, she could see the cloudy sky and two small heads. "Stasya!" It was Lucya calling.
Stasya pushed herself up and looked around. Through the ice she'd come, tumbling into an unseen cavern from above. Her heavy furs and the snow had broken her fall, doing nothing more than knocking the wind out of her lungs and stunning her.
"I'm okay!" she called up. She glanced around herself. "There's a big cavern down here. It looks like there are some tunnels, too."
"We're going to lower ourselves down!" Lucya called, moments before a rope dropped through the punctured ice. Stasya checked for injuries as Lucya and David shimmied down.
"We sent up a flare when you fell," Lucya said. "You're sure you're all right?"
"Pretty sure." Stasya got to her feet. She nodded. "Whole."
"Are you sure you don't need me to carry you up the rope?" David asked. Stasya rolled her eyes.
"Thanks prince charming, I can handle it. Before we go up, I think we should check down the tunnels here. They look man-made."
"They could be old mines," Lucya said, rubbing her chin with a gloved hand. "You know? Isaac was telling me that before the Tor came, this area used to have some mining activity. It was so desolate that nobody minded." She shrugged, gazing down each of the tunnels. "They do look artificial."
"What if they have Tor in them?" David asked. "I think we need to go back up. They'll be looking for us."
"Scared?" Lucya asked, grinning. "You finally get an adventure with two women, but you're too chicken to go through with it."
David crossed his arms. "This isn't the kind of adventure I've been trying to get."
"It's the only one you will," Stasya muttered. "Look there. That tunnel has smooth stones on the floor."
"Look now, the Tor came from under the antarctic, and now you think that exploring an underground tunnel system right next to the arctic is a good idea?" David said. "I can't believe you two!"
"Stop whining. Are you going to come with us or not?" Stasya asked. "I just fell twenty feet onto my back and I'm ready to go in there."
David stood still for a moment. "I'm going to leave a message for anybody that finds the hole in the ice."
"Fine," Stasya said, before walking up to the middle tunnel. There was one to the left, and another to the right, but the middle one was larger and cleaner. Cold air gusted out of it.
She shivered, but not from the cold.
"There," David said, at her shoulder. "I left a message stuck to the rope. If anybody comes down here, they'll know it wasn't my fault we're all dead.
"Aw come on, Dave," Lucya said opening her backpack and taking out a bright flashlight. "Why don't you grow a pair? Then all those stories about women you've had will at least be plausible."
Stasya and Lucya laughed, taking the first steps into the tunnel. David grumbled behind them.
Stasya looked closely at the stone, her flashlight held inches from her face. The bluish light was blinding, but she wanted to look at the masonry closer. They were simple, gray stone blocks with sharp edges. There was no plaster or caulk.
"This place must be pretty old," Lucya said, coming to the same conclusion Stasya was. "It looks like it was made without any technology."
"Who would've guessed?" David said. "A man-made mine under the Siberian waste that nobody knew about, and it manages to be old."
As Lucya looked for snow to throw, Stasya saw a tiny flash on one of the stones. It came from a crack in the wall. She put her flashlight closer, moving it in tiny circles, until she saw it again.
"Shut up, both of you," she said to the arguing other two. "Come here."
"What is it?" Lucya asked.
Stasya pointed. "That's ice, right?"
"Ice in Siberia?" David said, putting both hands on his head in mock surprise. "I can't believe it!"
"Look around," Stasya said, too engaged to get angry. "Do you see ice anywhere else?" David stopped and looked at the floor.
"I guess not." Lucya asked. "Probably just something about the stones."
Stasya backed away from the wall, keeping her eyes on it--as if it would disappear. "I suppose."
They kept walking. Lucya pointed her flashlight on the walls and floor, but it was always the same: just gray stone blocks set together. Eventually they came to a passage of two other paths curving back the way they came. "From the other two tunnels we saw," Stasya said. They proceeded forward.
"I feel it necessary to reiterate the fact that I don't like this," David said. When nobody answered, he sighed. "One more time, maybe? I don't like this."
"We get it, David," Lucya said. She grinned and looked at Stasya. "Mozhete li vy poverit yemu? Vy dolzhny chto-to sheptat mne zastavit yego chuvstvovat sebya obdelennymi."
"Hey!" David said "Come on! Don't do that!"
Stasya let a little smile reach her lips. She leaned closer to Lucya. "U vas yest dopolnitelnyy fonar?"
Lucya nodded and laughed. "Come on!" David shouted. "One of these days I'm going to learn Russian and then you won't be able to keep my out of conversations!"
"A chto pechalnyy den budet," Lucya said over her shoulder at him, and Stasya laughed.
"You're just a bunch of aging cheerleaders," David said. His lips wrinkled. "Can't stand to have somebody be different so you make fun of him behind his back. You can't even do it in the same language, because you know I'll get angry! That's it! As soon as we get back to camp, I'm getting Ignat to teach me-" He became aware neither of the women were listening. Quickly after he became aware of himself standing in a huge circular cavern. "What..."
It looked perfectly round. The walls curved gently, with grooves cut into them at varying heights. Carvings and glyphs were set into the frozen walls, a blue colored stone. The center was open--a pit--save for a path across the middle to the other side. Supports for the bridge spiraled down into darkness. The cavern was lit by sunlight filtering through the strange, translucent stone in the ceiling.
"It looks like it's ice up there, but..." Lucya trailed off. "Look at this place. I don't believe it."
"What is it?" David asked. "What could it be for?" He inched close to the edge and peered down. The bottom was out of sight. "I've never heard of anything like this!"
Stasya ignored the other two. She inspected the carvings on the walls with her light. A long-forgotten language yearned to be read, to be heard once more. Pictures of men and animals, buildings, and what looked like natural formations like rivers and mountains surrounded the supposed words. "Hey. Did anybody bring a camera?" The other two shook their heads, and she looked back to the wall. The path they stood on circled half of the room, giving them ten feet of area to stand. Stasya followed the path to the edge.
"Now I wish we'd brought Ignat with us," she whispered to herself. "He might be able to tell us what this means. At least tell us how old it is." She heard David and Lucya begin to argue. "Maybe even where the language originated." She continued scanning the marks, sighing as she heard raised voices. She checked over her shoulder to make sure nobody was falling into a pit.
Satisfied, she looked at the wall again. Most of the marks meant little or nothing. One small one, however, looked familiar.
"Hello, little man," Stasya said in Russian "At least this civilization knew the importance of stick figures." She inspected the figure. It was a simple image--a man inside a circle. She shifted to get closer to the wall.
Before her eyes, another figure appeared. Two more, in fact; two more stick figures, outside the circle but close, and just as small. She moved her head back to where it was before and the figures disappeared. "Like holography." She moved her head side-to-side and up and down. The image around the circle kept changing. "What is this?"
She stood and turned, taking off one glove. Her shrill whistle pierced through the argument David and Lucya were in, silencing them. "Both of you, get over here," she shouted. "I found something you'll want to see."
"Some property of the stone?" David wondered, moving his head to look at the figure from each angle. "How strange. It changes based on where your head is."
"Do any of the other images do this?" Lucya asked. Stasya shook her head.
"Not that I can tell. I haven't been able to look at all of them that closely, but this one seems special."
"What do you mean?" David asked.
"Look at the flow of the images from left to right," Stasya said, indicating the long curved wall, the other end of which was over a hundred feet away. "Probably, it's a story, like Egyptian hieroglyphics. And here we are, almost at the end." Stasya pointed at a figure next to the stick figure David was inspecting. "Look there."
It was a blobby figure. It had a dripping, liquid look to it, as if it was melting. "And then one more."
The next three figures were identical. Tall, thin, and cutting, like skeletons with pieces of flesh just covering their bones. They were the last three on the wall, and then the pathway ended.
"It ends with these three guys," Stasya said. "What are they? Rulers? Brothers?"
David, still looking at the second figure, used his left hand to brush off dust. He recoiled, gripping his hand. "It's hot!"
"What?"
"The stone, right where that figure is! It feels almost like it's burning!"
Lucya tapped her hand on it a few times, never letting it sit. "He's right. I can feel it through my glove." She moved to the holographic stick figure. "Cool." And then the three thin figures. "This one...cold. Much colder than it should be."
Stasya rubbed the three, feeling their temperatures. When she got to the last set, the triplets, she marveled at the shocking cold. "It feels like ice." She sat back, resting on her heels. "What is this place?"
"We need to get some more people out here," David said, running his hands over the wall, trying to find more anomalies. "Ignat, Price, Julio. I bet all three of them would have heart attacks for different reasons."
"Let's explore more," Lucya said, pointing at the long stone bridge spanning the pit and exited out a dark doorway. "Maybe we can figure out what there was supposed to be down here."
"I think we need to go back," David said. "Somebody's investigated the flare by now."
"We can leave you here," Lucya said. "They'll read your note, and come looking. It's impossible for them to miss this place. Stasya and I will go deeper and you can sit here. All alone. In the cold. Surrounded by strange carvings..."
David snarled. "Bitch."
"Mudak," Lucya said back, in the same venomous tone. David shook his head and wiped dust from his hands.
"I sort of wish you two would just sleep together and be done with it," Stasya said. Lucya gasped and David gave a disgusted grunt, but she noticed neither of them spoke against it. "Keep your mouths shut and keep up."
She crossed the stone bridge spanning the dark pit, and went into the tunnel on the other side. There were no carvings; the walls had reverted to simple stone blocks, but Stasya kept her eyes open for more shifting pictures. "If the stick figure from before changed as your angle to it changed, could we have missed things on the walls before?" she asked. When nobody answered, she looked behind her. "Well?"
"It's possible," Lucya said. "It was dark, though. If we'd missed something...I don't know. It wasn't our fault, I suppose. There's no way we could have seen it."
They walked quietly for a few minutes. The tunnel remained straight, heading away from the circular room.
"I have an idea," David said. "What if this place...what if it's to fight the Tor?" Stasya waited for him to continue. "The Tor hate the cold, and they attack in big groups...a bridge like we just crossed would be easy for humans to defend. A few guns...even swords or something like that."
Stasya thought about it. "You're saying that the Tor existed long enough ago for humans to create this place and then forget about it?" Lucya asked. "That's quite the leap."
"Maybe the carvings back there had something to do with how to beat them, or where they came from, or something like that."
"They came from Antarctica," Stasya said, keeping her flashlight pointed down the tunnel. "They aren't aliens."
"I read a story once," David said, ignoring her, "about an expedition to Antarctica back in the early 1900's. These two guys...they found albino penguins, a deserted city hundreds of thousands of years old, strange alien creatures...and strange glyphs almost like we found that told a story about the civilization there. One of them saw something that drove him nearly mad, but he won't say what it was."
"H.P. Lovecraft," Stasya said. "The Mountains of Madness. It's fiction, David." She paused. "Strangely prescient fiction, but fiction nonetheless."
"Think about it!" David said. "They find aliens in the south, a city hidden there, marks on the walls..."
"Yeah, and the Simpsons tried to tell you 9/11 was going to happen," Lucya said. "It's a coincidence."
There was a pause. "I miss the Simpsons," David said.
"We all do," said Stasya. "Look--the tunnel's widening."
It was, growing out until it was twenty feet across and ten feet high. David shivered. "Does it seem colder?" he asked. He patted his arms.
"Yeah," Lucya said. "We aren't getting any deeper, and there weren't any mountains around us when Stasya fell through the ice."
David slipped suddenly, cursing. He got to one knee and craned his neck toward where he'd stepped. "More ice. Maybe there's a lake or something down this way. If there's moisture in the air, it'll feel colder."
"Thanks, Einstein," Lucya said.
They didn't find a lake, but they found the source of the worsening cold.
Stasya later described it like this: A pool of some sort of light. It still looked like liquid, but it wasn't water or anything like it. The light came from deep inside it. None of us had seen anything like it before, and it was so cold we couldn't get too close to it. It...shimmered, and shifted, throwing shadows around us. It was in a deep bowl with a ring around it like the first circular room, but there weren't any other exits. David-
"We have to go back! This is incredible! We need to get people to study it!" David pulled his coat around him. "Plus, it has to be negative fifty in here! Fahrenheit!"
Stasya shined her light on the wall around the bowl, cutting into the moving shadows, looking for more figures cut into the smooth stone. "There, at the very back. Do you see?"
"I see something," David said. "More glyphs?"
"Looks like it," Lucya said. She started walking around the edge of the shimmering bowl. It was smaller around than the first room, but not by much. David and Stasya followed her. When they got to the other side, Stasya searched the wall for whatever she had found.
"They disappeared!" she said. "I would have sworn they were right here!" She tapped a finger on the cold stone.
"What was it you saw?" Lucya asked.
"I couldn't tell from that distance. But I know I saw something."
"Well, let's keep looking," David said. Stasya moved aside and let him look. "It's probably like before, you know, with the stick fig-"
The pathway under him clanked and tilted, sending him falling into the bowl of light. Shouting, Lucya tried to grab his hand, but Stasya pulled her back as he disappeared over the edge. "Why'd you do that?!" Lucya demanded.
"You couldn't stop him; he would have just pulled you in too, and then I would have two injured people to deal with!" Stasya went to the edge, stepping carefully. "Now, help me pull him up."
She looked. David's body was gone. She stretched closer to the surface of the light, trying to see past the deep, shining material. She looked up at Lucya, who stood next to her, confused and angered. "Where is he?"
"I don't see him either," Lucya said quietly. The surface of the light was still and undisturbed. "David!" she shouted. "David, are you all right?"
There was no answer. "David!"
"There must be something else down there," Stasya said. She glanced at the now-angled section of the walkway ringing the bowl. "That thing moved. I think it was meant to. We need to be careful." She took hold of Lucya's hand and gripped the edge of the bowl with her other hand. "Can you hear me David?" Nothing came back. "David!"
The surface of the light betrayed nothing; as if nothing had broken it.
"I think we need to get out of here," Lucya said, trying not to talk too loudly. "Maybe...maybe he already climbed out. Let's go back to the first room. Maybe somebody's followed us." She started to edge her way around the glimmering pool to the entrance, keeping as far as she could from the edge.
Stasya watched her move. The older woman knew how she felt intimately. Cold, suddenly cut off from a friend, scared, unable to figure out her next step. She wanted to believe David was safe, and waiting for her, but the evidence in front of her eyes trampled her.
Stasya followed her, stepping slowly. The edge where David stood had shifted under him, it could anywhere else as well.
Lucya reached the entrance and slumped inside the wide tunnel. After a minute, Stasya joined her and crouched down next to her. "Are you all right?" The young woman didn't look up. "Lucya, look at me right now." She turned her face up. Stasya saw tears. "I'm sorry, Lucya. There's nothing we can do now." Stasya stepped around her and held out a hand. "Come on now, let's get you up and out of here. We'll be able to take a few more people down here and maybe figure out what's going on, but I'm not going back without you."
Lucya took a breath, then grabbed Stasya's hand and got to her feet. She used her glove to wipe some of the tears away. "Thanks. I guess..."
"He was your friend," Stasya said. "Mine too. In this day and age, any death is a tragedy. Don't worry, I'll tell his sister. We...we should..." Stasya peered around Lucya. Behind her, at the edge of the pool, a figure was pulling itself out. Lucya saw her look and turned.
"David!" Lucya shouted, running forward. Stasya almost told her to wait. "Idiot! Why didn't you answer?" She slowed when she got close. "Stasya and I were about to leave! You couldn't-" She stopped. David was still, standing at the edge of the pool. His face was shadowed.
"Lucya..." Stasya said. "I think-"
With a blurred motion, David reach out and grabbed Lucya's arm. "Ow! David!"
"Lucya, get away from him!" Stasya shouted. She ran closer, and grabbed David's wrist. Even wrapped in his coat, it was freezing. She tried to pull his hand off, but it was stuck fast. In her attempts, the flashlight was shined on his face.
"Nyet!" Lucya shouted as the light panned over the shadow. David's face had become lined and blue, with milky, blank eyes, drawn lips, and cold breath. "David!"
Stasya tried pushing on him, but he stood still as she slipped backwards. Lucya began beating on his chest, arm, and face. Each blow sounded like a hammer hitting a block of ice. She cried out in pain and anger.
Stasya reached back with the flashlight, and cracked David across the face with it. It didn't seem to hurt him, but it pushed him backwards. Lucya was able to tear her arm out of his grip and stumble away.
Before she could take two steps, David had a hand on her shoulder. She tried to duck away, but fell to her stomach. Stasya dropped the flashlight and jumped forward, grabbing her hands. She yanked on the woman.
David had her ankle in one hand, and a single pull took her away from Stasya. Stasya fell backward with Lucya's gloves in her hands. She watched, weak, as David jumped into the pool of light with the screaming woman; her face pleaded with Stasya as she disappeared into the still surface.
Stasya was left sitting, panting in the wide hallway. The flashlight illuminated one wall. Stasya watched the edge of the pool, trying not to blink. She got to her feet, still locked on it. She stuffed Lucya's gloves into her pockets and picked up the flashlight. The pool remained still.
She backed away, then turned and ran. In three minutes she reached the first circular room, the one with the glyphs and the stone bridge across the middle. She slowed down to catch her breath and make it safely across.
As she waited, she heard footsteps behind her. She made for the exiting tunnel and started down it, able only to jog. As the circular room dwindled behind her, she risked a glance. She thought she could see two figures standing next to each other across the bridge.
Tor? She asked herself. They didn't look like Tor. Something else. Nam ne nuzhno eto. I have to get back to the camp and let people know.
WE WANT YOU, STASYA.
She stumbled and nearly crashed into the wall. The scream that had pounded into her head nearly blacked her out. She slowed and looked behind her. It was too dark to see anything, but she could hear fast footsteps.
WE NEED THREE.
"No!" Stasya yelled. She turned and ran, powered by fear. She got to a four-way intersection and ran through, seeing little except the path in front of her and a wild, spinning light coming from her right hand.
For a brief moment she felt hot, like surrounded by lava, and carried forward by strong arms to safety.
Then the feeling disappeared and her strength faded. Her ankles and knees burned, and she breathed through cotton. She tore the collar of her coat and limped forward, putting one hand against the wall. She couldn't hear anything behind her. She wondered if she was safe.
I should have known, she told herself when she looked ahead. In the pinprick of light from the cavern she'd fallen originally, she saw two bodies. They weren't moving. They must have taken the other paths to the exit. She stopped and gulped down air, keeping the flashlight trained on them.
"Now what?" she whispered. She knew she couldn't go back, it was just what they want. She knew getting closer to the pool of light was dangerous.
Ideas dropped into her head. She turned around and started walking away from the exit. She clicked her flashlight off and hoped her eyes would adapt quickly. She started running.
As she expected, she heard footsteps behind her, but only one pair. The other one--David, or Lucya--was trying to flank her down one of the other tunnels. Just before reaching the four-way intersection, Stasya turned and glanced behind her. In the light from the cavern, she could see hair fanning out behind the figure running at her. David was taking one of the other paths.
David was left-handed. When she got to the four-way intersection, she cut right, still running in darkness. She knew she had a fifty-fifty chance of escaping. She ran forward, praying she would see an empty path when she rounded the long corner toward the exit.
The light shined out, making her squint. There was no one in front of her.
She pushed out of the tunnel, breathless. The sky, open through the crack in the ice she had first plunged through, blinded her. Then it went dark.
WE WILL FIND YOU, STASYA. WE NEED TO BE COMPLETED.
"You won't get me," Stasya snarled, groping her way to the rope.
YOU CAN'T STOP US. THOSE BEFORE YOU HAVE TRIED. BUT JUST AS THE FIRE WILL LIGHT ITSELF, AND THE MIND WILL OPEN ITSELF, SO SHALL THE ICE MAKE ITSELF. WE GET STRONGER ON EACH WORLD DAY-BY-DAY, AND AS YOUR ENEMY-RAVAGED WORLD TEARS ITSELF ASUNDER, SO WILL WE ON THE OTHER WORLDS APPEAR. SOON IT WILL BE TOO LATE. WE'RE SORRY, STASYA, BUT THERE WILL BE MORE OF US...UNTIL ALL COMES TOGETHER.
Stasya realized she was frozen still, stuck standing with her mouth open a few feet from the rope. David's note was still attached. She glanced behind her, saw nothing, stuck her flashlight in her backpack, and grabbed on to the rope. She pulled herself up a few feet, swayed, and then started to inch her way to the hole in the ice above her, imagining the rope coming undone and trapping her in the cavern.
It took her ten minutes before she was able to grab the cold land above her and pull herself up. It had gotten darker, but she could still see the shapes of the human's camp across the snow. She quickly pulled the rope up after her, and then sat, breathing the freezing air.
She got to one knee, and then stood, arms and shoulders burning. She plodded back to the camp, drained.
When she entered the camp, the two guards in the towers called out about her return. The camp seemed empty. Julio helped her into a tent.
She told her story, he told theirs: the Tor had been spotted near a southern guard post, and the camp had gone to hunt them out. So, when she, David, and Lucya, returning from their watch at one of the eastern posts, had thrown up the flare and not returned, there weren't enough people to try and find them. The hunters still hadn't returned. She asked to see Isaac, and Julio told her he would see if he was available.
She waited, knowing too well the look on Julio's face as he walked out of the tent. He thought she was crazy.
Stasya pushed herself up and looked around. Through the ice she'd come, tumbling into an unseen cavern from above. Her heavy furs and the snow had broken her fall, doing nothing more than knocking the wind out of her lungs and stunning her.
"I'm okay!" she called up. She glanced around herself. "There's a big cavern down here. It looks like there are some tunnels, too."
"We're going to lower ourselves down!" Lucya called, moments before a rope dropped through the punctured ice. Stasya checked for injuries as Lucya and David shimmied down.
"We sent up a flare when you fell," Lucya said. "You're sure you're all right?"
"Pretty sure." Stasya got to her feet. She nodded. "Whole."
"Are you sure you don't need me to carry you up the rope?" David asked. Stasya rolled her eyes.
"Thanks prince charming, I can handle it. Before we go up, I think we should check down the tunnels here. They look man-made."
"They could be old mines," Lucya said, rubbing her chin with a gloved hand. "You know? Isaac was telling me that before the Tor came, this area used to have some mining activity. It was so desolate that nobody minded." She shrugged, gazing down each of the tunnels. "They do look artificial."
"What if they have Tor in them?" David asked. "I think we need to go back up. They'll be looking for us."
"Scared?" Lucya asked, grinning. "You finally get an adventure with two women, but you're too chicken to go through with it."
David crossed his arms. "This isn't the kind of adventure I've been trying to get."
"It's the only one you will," Stasya muttered. "Look there. That tunnel has smooth stones on the floor."
"Look now, the Tor came from under the antarctic, and now you think that exploring an underground tunnel system right next to the arctic is a good idea?" David said. "I can't believe you two!"
"Stop whining. Are you going to come with us or not?" Stasya asked. "I just fell twenty feet onto my back and I'm ready to go in there."
David stood still for a moment. "I'm going to leave a message for anybody that finds the hole in the ice."
"Fine," Stasya said, before walking up to the middle tunnel. There was one to the left, and another to the right, but the middle one was larger and cleaner. Cold air gusted out of it.
She shivered, but not from the cold.
"There," David said, at her shoulder. "I left a message stuck to the rope. If anybody comes down here, they'll know it wasn't my fault we're all dead.
"Aw come on, Dave," Lucya said opening her backpack and taking out a bright flashlight. "Why don't you grow a pair? Then all those stories about women you've had will at least be plausible."
Stasya and Lucya laughed, taking the first steps into the tunnel. David grumbled behind them.
Stasya looked closely at the stone, her flashlight held inches from her face. The bluish light was blinding, but she wanted to look at the masonry closer. They were simple, gray stone blocks with sharp edges. There was no plaster or caulk.
"This place must be pretty old," Lucya said, coming to the same conclusion Stasya was. "It looks like it was made without any technology."
"Who would've guessed?" David said. "A man-made mine under the Siberian waste that nobody knew about, and it manages to be old."
As Lucya looked for snow to throw, Stasya saw a tiny flash on one of the stones. It came from a crack in the wall. She put her flashlight closer, moving it in tiny circles, until she saw it again.
"Shut up, both of you," she said to the arguing other two. "Come here."
"What is it?" Lucya asked.
Stasya pointed. "That's ice, right?"
"Ice in Siberia?" David said, putting both hands on his head in mock surprise. "I can't believe it!"
"Look around," Stasya said, too engaged to get angry. "Do you see ice anywhere else?" David stopped and looked at the floor.
"I guess not." Lucya asked. "Probably just something about the stones."
Stasya backed away from the wall, keeping her eyes on it--as if it would disappear. "I suppose."
They kept walking. Lucya pointed her flashlight on the walls and floor, but it was always the same: just gray stone blocks set together. Eventually they came to a passage of two other paths curving back the way they came. "From the other two tunnels we saw," Stasya said. They proceeded forward.
"I feel it necessary to reiterate the fact that I don't like this," David said. When nobody answered, he sighed. "One more time, maybe? I don't like this."
"We get it, David," Lucya said. She grinned and looked at Stasya. "Mozhete li vy poverit yemu? Vy dolzhny chto-to sheptat mne zastavit yego chuvstvovat sebya obdelennymi."
"Hey!" David said "Come on! Don't do that!"
Stasya let a little smile reach her lips. She leaned closer to Lucya. "U vas yest dopolnitelnyy fonar?"
Lucya nodded and laughed. "Come on!" David shouted. "One of these days I'm going to learn Russian and then you won't be able to keep my out of conversations!"
"A chto pechalnyy den budet," Lucya said over her shoulder at him, and Stasya laughed.
"You're just a bunch of aging cheerleaders," David said. His lips wrinkled. "Can't stand to have somebody be different so you make fun of him behind his back. You can't even do it in the same language, because you know I'll get angry! That's it! As soon as we get back to camp, I'm getting Ignat to teach me-" He became aware neither of the women were listening. Quickly after he became aware of himself standing in a huge circular cavern. "What..."
It looked perfectly round. The walls curved gently, with grooves cut into them at varying heights. Carvings and glyphs were set into the frozen walls, a blue colored stone. The center was open--a pit--save for a path across the middle to the other side. Supports for the bridge spiraled down into darkness. The cavern was lit by sunlight filtering through the strange, translucent stone in the ceiling.
"It looks like it's ice up there, but..." Lucya trailed off. "Look at this place. I don't believe it."
"What is it?" David asked. "What could it be for?" He inched close to the edge and peered down. The bottom was out of sight. "I've never heard of anything like this!"
Stasya ignored the other two. She inspected the carvings on the walls with her light. A long-forgotten language yearned to be read, to be heard once more. Pictures of men and animals, buildings, and what looked like natural formations like rivers and mountains surrounded the supposed words. "Hey. Did anybody bring a camera?" The other two shook their heads, and she looked back to the wall. The path they stood on circled half of the room, giving them ten feet of area to stand. Stasya followed the path to the edge.
"Now I wish we'd brought Ignat with us," she whispered to herself. "He might be able to tell us what this means. At least tell us how old it is." She heard David and Lucya begin to argue. "Maybe even where the language originated." She continued scanning the marks, sighing as she heard raised voices. She checked over her shoulder to make sure nobody was falling into a pit.
Satisfied, she looked at the wall again. Most of the marks meant little or nothing. One small one, however, looked familiar.
"Hello, little man," Stasya said in Russian "At least this civilization knew the importance of stick figures." She inspected the figure. It was a simple image--a man inside a circle. She shifted to get closer to the wall.
Before her eyes, another figure appeared. Two more, in fact; two more stick figures, outside the circle but close, and just as small. She moved her head back to where it was before and the figures disappeared. "Like holography." She moved her head side-to-side and up and down. The image around the circle kept changing. "What is this?"
She stood and turned, taking off one glove. Her shrill whistle pierced through the argument David and Lucya were in, silencing them. "Both of you, get over here," she shouted. "I found something you'll want to see."
"Some property of the stone?" David wondered, moving his head to look at the figure from each angle. "How strange. It changes based on where your head is."
"Do any of the other images do this?" Lucya asked. Stasya shook her head.
"Not that I can tell. I haven't been able to look at all of them that closely, but this one seems special."
"What do you mean?" David asked.
"Look at the flow of the images from left to right," Stasya said, indicating the long curved wall, the other end of which was over a hundred feet away. "Probably, it's a story, like Egyptian hieroglyphics. And here we are, almost at the end." Stasya pointed at a figure next to the stick figure David was inspecting. "Look there."
It was a blobby figure. It had a dripping, liquid look to it, as if it was melting. "And then one more."
The next three figures were identical. Tall, thin, and cutting, like skeletons with pieces of flesh just covering their bones. They were the last three on the wall, and then the pathway ended.
"It ends with these three guys," Stasya said. "What are they? Rulers? Brothers?"
David, still looking at the second figure, used his left hand to brush off dust. He recoiled, gripping his hand. "It's hot!"
"What?"
"The stone, right where that figure is! It feels almost like it's burning!"
Lucya tapped her hand on it a few times, never letting it sit. "He's right. I can feel it through my glove." She moved to the holographic stick figure. "Cool." And then the three thin figures. "This one...cold. Much colder than it should be."
Stasya rubbed the three, feeling their temperatures. When she got to the last set, the triplets, she marveled at the shocking cold. "It feels like ice." She sat back, resting on her heels. "What is this place?"
"We need to get some more people out here," David said, running his hands over the wall, trying to find more anomalies. "Ignat, Price, Julio. I bet all three of them would have heart attacks for different reasons."
"Let's explore more," Lucya said, pointing at the long stone bridge spanning the pit and exited out a dark doorway. "Maybe we can figure out what there was supposed to be down here."
"I think we need to go back," David said. "Somebody's investigated the flare by now."
"We can leave you here," Lucya said. "They'll read your note, and come looking. It's impossible for them to miss this place. Stasya and I will go deeper and you can sit here. All alone. In the cold. Surrounded by strange carvings..."
David snarled. "Bitch."
"Mudak," Lucya said back, in the same venomous tone. David shook his head and wiped dust from his hands.
"I sort of wish you two would just sleep together and be done with it," Stasya said. Lucya gasped and David gave a disgusted grunt, but she noticed neither of them spoke against it. "Keep your mouths shut and keep up."
She crossed the stone bridge spanning the dark pit, and went into the tunnel on the other side. There were no carvings; the walls had reverted to simple stone blocks, but Stasya kept her eyes open for more shifting pictures. "If the stick figure from before changed as your angle to it changed, could we have missed things on the walls before?" she asked. When nobody answered, she looked behind her. "Well?"
"It's possible," Lucya said. "It was dark, though. If we'd missed something...I don't know. It wasn't our fault, I suppose. There's no way we could have seen it."
They walked quietly for a few minutes. The tunnel remained straight, heading away from the circular room.
"I have an idea," David said. "What if this place...what if it's to fight the Tor?" Stasya waited for him to continue. "The Tor hate the cold, and they attack in big groups...a bridge like we just crossed would be easy for humans to defend. A few guns...even swords or something like that."
Stasya thought about it. "You're saying that the Tor existed long enough ago for humans to create this place and then forget about it?" Lucya asked. "That's quite the leap."
"Maybe the carvings back there had something to do with how to beat them, or where they came from, or something like that."
"They came from Antarctica," Stasya said, keeping her flashlight pointed down the tunnel. "They aren't aliens."
"I read a story once," David said, ignoring her, "about an expedition to Antarctica back in the early 1900's. These two guys...they found albino penguins, a deserted city hundreds of thousands of years old, strange alien creatures...and strange glyphs almost like we found that told a story about the civilization there. One of them saw something that drove him nearly mad, but he won't say what it was."
"H.P. Lovecraft," Stasya said. "The Mountains of Madness. It's fiction, David." She paused. "Strangely prescient fiction, but fiction nonetheless."
"Think about it!" David said. "They find aliens in the south, a city hidden there, marks on the walls..."
"Yeah, and the Simpsons tried to tell you 9/11 was going to happen," Lucya said. "It's a coincidence."
There was a pause. "I miss the Simpsons," David said.
"We all do," said Stasya. "Look--the tunnel's widening."
It was, growing out until it was twenty feet across and ten feet high. David shivered. "Does it seem colder?" he asked. He patted his arms.
"Yeah," Lucya said. "We aren't getting any deeper, and there weren't any mountains around us when Stasya fell through the ice."
David slipped suddenly, cursing. He got to one knee and craned his neck toward where he'd stepped. "More ice. Maybe there's a lake or something down this way. If there's moisture in the air, it'll feel colder."
"Thanks, Einstein," Lucya said.
They didn't find a lake, but they found the source of the worsening cold.
Stasya later described it like this: A pool of some sort of light. It still looked like liquid, but it wasn't water or anything like it. The light came from deep inside it. None of us had seen anything like it before, and it was so cold we couldn't get too close to it. It...shimmered, and shifted, throwing shadows around us. It was in a deep bowl with a ring around it like the first circular room, but there weren't any other exits. David-
"We have to go back! This is incredible! We need to get people to study it!" David pulled his coat around him. "Plus, it has to be negative fifty in here! Fahrenheit!"
Stasya shined her light on the wall around the bowl, cutting into the moving shadows, looking for more figures cut into the smooth stone. "There, at the very back. Do you see?"
"I see something," David said. "More glyphs?"
"Looks like it," Lucya said. She started walking around the edge of the shimmering bowl. It was smaller around than the first room, but not by much. David and Stasya followed her. When they got to the other side, Stasya searched the wall for whatever she had found.
"They disappeared!" she said. "I would have sworn they were right here!" She tapped a finger on the cold stone.
"What was it you saw?" Lucya asked.
"I couldn't tell from that distance. But I know I saw something."
"Well, let's keep looking," David said. Stasya moved aside and let him look. "It's probably like before, you know, with the stick fig-"
The pathway under him clanked and tilted, sending him falling into the bowl of light. Shouting, Lucya tried to grab his hand, but Stasya pulled her back as he disappeared over the edge. "Why'd you do that?!" Lucya demanded.
"You couldn't stop him; he would have just pulled you in too, and then I would have two injured people to deal with!" Stasya went to the edge, stepping carefully. "Now, help me pull him up."
She looked. David's body was gone. She stretched closer to the surface of the light, trying to see past the deep, shining material. She looked up at Lucya, who stood next to her, confused and angered. "Where is he?"
"I don't see him either," Lucya said quietly. The surface of the light was still and undisturbed. "David!" she shouted. "David, are you all right?"
There was no answer. "David!"
"There must be something else down there," Stasya said. She glanced at the now-angled section of the walkway ringing the bowl. "That thing moved. I think it was meant to. We need to be careful." She took hold of Lucya's hand and gripped the edge of the bowl with her other hand. "Can you hear me David?" Nothing came back. "David!"
The surface of the light betrayed nothing; as if nothing had broken it.
"I think we need to get out of here," Lucya said, trying not to talk too loudly. "Maybe...maybe he already climbed out. Let's go back to the first room. Maybe somebody's followed us." She started to edge her way around the glimmering pool to the entrance, keeping as far as she could from the edge.
Stasya watched her move. The older woman knew how she felt intimately. Cold, suddenly cut off from a friend, scared, unable to figure out her next step. She wanted to believe David was safe, and waiting for her, but the evidence in front of her eyes trampled her.
Stasya followed her, stepping slowly. The edge where David stood had shifted under him, it could anywhere else as well.
Lucya reached the entrance and slumped inside the wide tunnel. After a minute, Stasya joined her and crouched down next to her. "Are you all right?" The young woman didn't look up. "Lucya, look at me right now." She turned her face up. Stasya saw tears. "I'm sorry, Lucya. There's nothing we can do now." Stasya stepped around her and held out a hand. "Come on now, let's get you up and out of here. We'll be able to take a few more people down here and maybe figure out what's going on, but I'm not going back without you."
Lucya took a breath, then grabbed Stasya's hand and got to her feet. She used her glove to wipe some of the tears away. "Thanks. I guess..."
"He was your friend," Stasya said. "Mine too. In this day and age, any death is a tragedy. Don't worry, I'll tell his sister. We...we should..." Stasya peered around Lucya. Behind her, at the edge of the pool, a figure was pulling itself out. Lucya saw her look and turned.
"David!" Lucya shouted, running forward. Stasya almost told her to wait. "Idiot! Why didn't you answer?" She slowed when she got close. "Stasya and I were about to leave! You couldn't-" She stopped. David was still, standing at the edge of the pool. His face was shadowed.
"Lucya..." Stasya said. "I think-"
With a blurred motion, David reach out and grabbed Lucya's arm. "Ow! David!"
"Lucya, get away from him!" Stasya shouted. She ran closer, and grabbed David's wrist. Even wrapped in his coat, it was freezing. She tried to pull his hand off, but it was stuck fast. In her attempts, the flashlight was shined on his face.
"Nyet!" Lucya shouted as the light panned over the shadow. David's face had become lined and blue, with milky, blank eyes, drawn lips, and cold breath. "David!"
Stasya tried pushing on him, but he stood still as she slipped backwards. Lucya began beating on his chest, arm, and face. Each blow sounded like a hammer hitting a block of ice. She cried out in pain and anger.
Stasya reached back with the flashlight, and cracked David across the face with it. It didn't seem to hurt him, but it pushed him backwards. Lucya was able to tear her arm out of his grip and stumble away.
Before she could take two steps, David had a hand on her shoulder. She tried to duck away, but fell to her stomach. Stasya dropped the flashlight and jumped forward, grabbing her hands. She yanked on the woman.
David had her ankle in one hand, and a single pull took her away from Stasya. Stasya fell backward with Lucya's gloves in her hands. She watched, weak, as David jumped into the pool of light with the screaming woman; her face pleaded with Stasya as she disappeared into the still surface.
Stasya was left sitting, panting in the wide hallway. The flashlight illuminated one wall. Stasya watched the edge of the pool, trying not to blink. She got to her feet, still locked on it. She stuffed Lucya's gloves into her pockets and picked up the flashlight. The pool remained still.
She backed away, then turned and ran. In three minutes she reached the first circular room, the one with the glyphs and the stone bridge across the middle. She slowed down to catch her breath and make it safely across.
As she waited, she heard footsteps behind her. She made for the exiting tunnel and started down it, able only to jog. As the circular room dwindled behind her, she risked a glance. She thought she could see two figures standing next to each other across the bridge.
Tor? She asked herself. They didn't look like Tor. Something else. Nam ne nuzhno eto. I have to get back to the camp and let people know.
WE WANT YOU, STASYA.
She stumbled and nearly crashed into the wall. The scream that had pounded into her head nearly blacked her out. She slowed and looked behind her. It was too dark to see anything, but she could hear fast footsteps.
WE NEED THREE.
"No!" Stasya yelled. She turned and ran, powered by fear. She got to a four-way intersection and ran through, seeing little except the path in front of her and a wild, spinning light coming from her right hand.
For a brief moment she felt hot, like surrounded by lava, and carried forward by strong arms to safety.
Then the feeling disappeared and her strength faded. Her ankles and knees burned, and she breathed through cotton. She tore the collar of her coat and limped forward, putting one hand against the wall. She couldn't hear anything behind her. She wondered if she was safe.
I should have known, she told herself when she looked ahead. In the pinprick of light from the cavern she'd fallen originally, she saw two bodies. They weren't moving. They must have taken the other paths to the exit. She stopped and gulped down air, keeping the flashlight trained on them.
"Now what?" she whispered. She knew she couldn't go back, it was just what they want. She knew getting closer to the pool of light was dangerous.
Ideas dropped into her head. She turned around and started walking away from the exit. She clicked her flashlight off and hoped her eyes would adapt quickly. She started running.
As she expected, she heard footsteps behind her, but only one pair. The other one--David, or Lucya--was trying to flank her down one of the other tunnels. Just before reaching the four-way intersection, Stasya turned and glanced behind her. In the light from the cavern, she could see hair fanning out behind the figure running at her. David was taking one of the other paths.
David was left-handed. When she got to the four-way intersection, she cut right, still running in darkness. She knew she had a fifty-fifty chance of escaping. She ran forward, praying she would see an empty path when she rounded the long corner toward the exit.
The light shined out, making her squint. There was no one in front of her.
She pushed out of the tunnel, breathless. The sky, open through the crack in the ice she had first plunged through, blinded her. Then it went dark.
WE WILL FIND YOU, STASYA. WE NEED TO BE COMPLETED.
"You won't get me," Stasya snarled, groping her way to the rope.
YOU CAN'T STOP US. THOSE BEFORE YOU HAVE TRIED. BUT JUST AS THE FIRE WILL LIGHT ITSELF, AND THE MIND WILL OPEN ITSELF, SO SHALL THE ICE MAKE ITSELF. WE GET STRONGER ON EACH WORLD DAY-BY-DAY, AND AS YOUR ENEMY-RAVAGED WORLD TEARS ITSELF ASUNDER, SO WILL WE ON THE OTHER WORLDS APPEAR. SOON IT WILL BE TOO LATE. WE'RE SORRY, STASYA, BUT THERE WILL BE MORE OF US...UNTIL ALL COMES TOGETHER.
Stasya realized she was frozen still, stuck standing with her mouth open a few feet from the rope. David's note was still attached. She glanced behind her, saw nothing, stuck her flashlight in her backpack, and grabbed on to the rope. She pulled herself up a few feet, swayed, and then started to inch her way to the hole in the ice above her, imagining the rope coming undone and trapping her in the cavern.
It took her ten minutes before she was able to grab the cold land above her and pull herself up. It had gotten darker, but she could still see the shapes of the human's camp across the snow. She quickly pulled the rope up after her, and then sat, breathing the freezing air.
She got to one knee, and then stood, arms and shoulders burning. She plodded back to the camp, drained.
When she entered the camp, the two guards in the towers called out about her return. The camp seemed empty. Julio helped her into a tent.
She told her story, he told theirs: the Tor had been spotted near a southern guard post, and the camp had gone to hunt them out. So, when she, David, and Lucya, returning from their watch at one of the eastern posts, had thrown up the flare and not returned, there weren't enough people to try and find them. The hunters still hadn't returned. She asked to see Isaac, and Julio told her he would see if he was available.
She waited, knowing too well the look on Julio's face as he walked out of the tent. He thought she was crazy.