A Wreath of Stars

Chapter Four

Snook had requested that lighting should be kept to a minimum, and as a result the darkness at the end of the south pipe on Level Eight was almost complete. He felt as though he was standing in a well of black ink which not only robbed him of light but drained all the warmth from his body. There was a flashlight attached to his belt, but the only relief he permitted himself from the pressure of night was occasionally to touch the display stud on his wristwatch. The fleeting appearance of the angular red numerals, telling him that dawn was approaching the world above, also created an illusion of heat.

He felt a gentle touch on his arm.

“What’ll we do if nothing happens?” Murphy’s voice, although he was standing only two paces away, was almost inaudible.

Snook grinned in the blackness. “There’s no need to whisper, George.”

“Damn you, Snook.” There was a pause, then Murphy repeated his question in a voice which was very slightly louder than at first.

“We come back tomorrow, of course.”

“Then I’m bringing a hot water bottle and a flask of soup.”

“Sorry,” Snook said. “No heat sources—one of the cameras has infrared film in and I don’t want to chance spoiling the results. Photography isn’t one of my fields.”

“But you think a magniluct filter will work on a camera?”

“I don’t see why it shouldn’t. Do you?”

“I see bugger all,” Murphy whispered gloomily. “Even with my Amplites on.”

“Keep them on—just before dawn seems to be the most likely time for an appearance, if there’s going to be one.”

Snook was wearing his own low-light glasses and, like Murphy, could see almost nothing. The magniluct lenses were designed to amplify meagre scatterings of light to a level at which the wearer’s surroundings became visible, but where there was less than a threshold level their performance was uncertain. He leaned against the end wall of the pipe, constantly moving his eyes, determined not to miss the slightest manifestation of anything unusual, and occasionally took the Amplites off for a second to compare the two forms of vision. Perhaps ten minutes had passed when Snook began to think he could sense a slight difference—it seemed to him that the blackness was less intense while he was looking through the glasses. No shapes were visible, not even a localised variation in the near-luminance, and yet he became almost certain his field of view was infinitesimally brighter, as if a faintly luminous gas was seeping in to the tunnel.

He said, “George, do you notice anything?”

“No.” The other man’s reply was immediate.

Snook cursed his lack of proper equipment. He had no way of proving that the apparent increase in brightness was not due to the sensitivity of his eyes improving with the long stay in darkness. Suddenly a speck of light, faint as a minor star, appeared at his left and wandered lazily across his vision. Snook pushed the button which, by means of a device he had built during the day, operated the shutters of four cameras. The multiple clicks and the sound of the winding-on mechanisms were shockingly loud in the taut blackness. He checked the time by his watch and memorised it.

“Did you see that?” he said. “A thing like a small firefly?”

There was a moment of silence, then Murphy said, “Gil, look at the floor!”

A spot of dim light Appeared on the floor and gradually became a disk. When the circle was as large as a man’s hand, Snook became aware that he was in fact looking at a transparent luminous dome, tufted on top like a coconut. He fought to control his breathing, and by an effort of will operated the cameras again. Within seconds the dome had risen and enlarged itself into a roughly spherical object resembling a head upon which travesties of human lineaments were barely visible. The body below it glowed within the rock.

There were two eyes near the top, and between them—only slightly lower down—was a third hole which might have been a nose, unadorned by nostrils. No ears were visible, and very close to the bottom was a slitted mouth, tremendously wide and mobile. Even as Snook watched, the mouth twitched and writhed, assuming compound curvatures and quirks which—on a man’s face—would have indicated an interplay of feelings ranging from boredom to anger to amusement to impatience, plus others for which there were no human counterparts.

The sound of Murphy’s harsh breathing reminded Snook that he still had a job to do. He took another set of photographs and, without conscious thought, kept on operating the cameras every few seconds as the apparition steadily rose higher, coming more completely into view.

The alien head was followed by narrow, sloping shoulders and strangely jointed arms which emerged from a complicated arrangement of robes, frills and straps, made more intricate by the fact that they were semi-transparent and thus could be glimpsed at the back of the figure as well as at the front. Shadowy organs slid and pulsed internally. The creature continued to rise through the floor at the same steady pace, in utter silence, until it was fully in view. It stood about the height of a small man, on two disproportionately thin legs which were hazily seen amid the hanging folds of its robes. The feet were triangular and flat, displaying radial arrays of bones among which wove the thongs of what appeared to be sandals.

When the creature had emerged fully into the tunnel it turned slightly and, in a curiously human gesture, raised one hand to its eyes as if shading them from a bright light. It gave no indication of being aware of the two men. Snook’s powers of reasoning were all but obliterated by a pounding dread, yet he discovered he still had capacity for further surprise. Conditioned by the physical laws of his own existence, he had expected the glowing figure to cease its upward movement when it was on a level with himself, but it continued rising at the same unchanging rate until its head passed into the tunnel roof. The head was followed into the solid rock by the rest of the blue-sketched translucent body.

Spreading outwards horizontally from the plane of its feet, like an insubstantial floor, was a surface of radiance which also travelled upwards, creating the illusion that the tunnel was filling with glowing liquid. When its level passed above Snook’s eyes he found himself blinded with cloudy luminescence and in sudden panic he snatched off the Amplite glasses.

The tunnel plunged into its former state of utter darkness, and for a moment Snook found himself trembling with relief at the sheer luxury of not being able to see anything. He stood perfectly still for a time, breathing heavily, then turned • on his flashlight.

“How’s it going, George?” he said tentatively.

“Not too well,” Murphy replied. “I feel sick.”

Snook gripped Murphy’s arm and urged him away from the end wall of the pipe. “So do I, but we’d better save it for later.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how high our visitor intends to go, but I think you should get the men out of the level above this one. If they see what we just saw the mine will close down for ever.”

“I…What do you think it was?” Murphy sounded as though he wanted Snook to produce an immediate scientific label for the apparition and render it harmless.

“It was a ghost, George. By most of the classical definitions it was a ghost.”

“It wasn’t human.”

“Ghosts aren’t.”

“I mean it wasn’t the ghost of a human being.”

“There’s no time to worry about that now.” Snook put his Amplite glasses on again and found his vision still filled with a cloudy radiance which partially obscured details of what he could see in the tunnel, even with the flashlight on. He took them off and checked the time on his watch. “Let’s see…this pipe is about two metres high and the thing we saw went up through it in about six minutes.”

“Was that only six minutes?”

“That’s all it was. Is there a pipe directly above this one?”

“Only the whole Seven-G system, that’s all.”

“How far?”

“Varies according to the shape of the clay deposits—could be only five or six metres in some places.” Murphy’s voice was mechanical, remote. “Did you notice its feet? They were like a bird’s feet. A duck’s feet.”

Snook shone his light directly into Murphy’s eyes, trying to irritate him into coming to grips with the problem. “George, if the thing keeps rising at the same speed it’ll be on the next level in maybe less than ten minutes. You should get the men out of there before that happens.”

Murphy covered the light with his hand, fingers redly translucent. “I haven’t the authority to take the men out.”

“All right—just stand back and watch them take themselves out. I’ve got to look after these cameras.”

“There’s going to be a panic.” Murphy was suddenly alert. “I’d better get on the phone to the mine manager. Or even the Colonel.” He switched on his own handlight and began hurriedly picking his way over the vacuum pipes which curved along the floor.

“George,” Snook called after him, “the first thing to do is get the men to take off their Amplites and make their way out by ordinary light. That way they won’t see anything unusual.”

“I’ll try.”

Murphy passed out of sight around a curve in the tunnel and Snook busied himself with the task of dismantling his improvised camera equipment. In the absence of proper tripods he had set the four cameras up on a small folding table. He was working as quickly as possible in -the hope of transporting everything to a higher level in time to intercept the ghost again, but it was cold in the tunnel and his fingers refused to function properly. Minutes passed before he had loaded the cameras and the connecting servos into a cardboard carton, gathered up the table and set off in the direction of the main shaft. He had just reached the continuous elevator when the first panic-stricken shouts began to echo down from above.

The electric lighting was stronger on the Level Eight gallery which surrounded the shaft, but Snook was severely hampered by his load and almost missed his footing as he stepped into one of the ascending cages. He steadied himself against a steel mesh wall and made ready to get out at Level Seven-C. The shouting grew louder during the few seconds it took to reach the next gallery, and as Snook was leaving the cage he found his way blocked by three men who were pushing their way in. They jammed the exit momentarily, each clawing the other back. By the time Snook had forced his way out the cage had risen more than a metre above the rock floor and he made an awkward bone-jarring landing, dropping the table in the process.

Other miners, most of them wearing Amplites, had surged out of the south tunnel and were already fighting their way into the succeeding cage. Snook heard the lightweight table splintering beneath their boots.

Protecting his carton of photographic equipment, he breasted the tide of frightened men until he had reached a clear space at the entrance to a pipe which was not being worked. Breathing heavily, he felt in his pocket for his magniluct glasses and put them on. His picture of his surroundings instantly flared into brightness and he saw that he and the other men on the gallery were apparently waist-deep in a pool of radiance. Snook thought of it as a kind of floor on which the spectral visitor stood, and the sight of it confirmed what he already knew from the behaviour of the miners—that the creature had penetrated to Level Seven.

“Take off your Amplites,” he shouted to the men who were milling around the elevator, but his voice was lost in the aural flux of shouts and grunts. Snook decided against trying to make his way into the south tunnel in case his cameras got smashed. He stood with his back to the wall, waiting for the steadily-moving elevator to carry the miners up to the surface, then became aware of another facet of the ghostly phenomenon. The plane of bluish radiance, the phantom floor, was sinking towards the level of the rock floor. As he watched, the two levels merged and—coincidentally—the exodus of men from the south pipe abruptly ceased.

Snook darted into the tunnel and found that it veered quite sharply to the west. He “swung around the first bend, ran along a lengthy straight section with its tangle of vacuum pipes and discarded projectors, and reached a second bend. When he got round it he stumbled to a halt.

Here, at least ten of the luminous figures were visible.

All were sinking into the floor at a noticeable rate, but in addition these beings had lateral movement. They were walking, with a curious turkey-like gait, some of them in pairs, emerging from one wall of the tunnel and fading into the other. The complex transparencies of their robes swirled around the thin legs as they moved; the eyes—too close to the tops of the tufted heads—rolled slowly; and the impossibly wide slits of mouths, alien in their degree of mobility, pursed and twisted and reshaped in silent parodies of speech.

Snook, paralysed with awe, had never seen anything so essentially alien, and yet he was reminded of textbook illustrations of ancient Roman senators strolling and conversing at their leisure about matters of empire. He watched for the several minutes that it took for the figures to sink down into the tunnel floor, until only the glowing heads were visible moving purposefully through the skeins of vacuum tubes, until finally there was nothing to be seen but the normal evidences of human existence.

When the last luminous mote disappeared it was as if a clamp had been released from about his chest. He took a deep breath and turned away, anxious to get back to the surface world and its familiar perspectives. On his way to the elevator it occurred to him that he had not tried to photograph the alien scene, and that the chance to do so would probably recur were he to go back down to Level Eight. He shook his head emphatically and kept walking at a steady pace to the elevator, clutching his box of cameras. The circular gallery was deserted when he got there, and he had no difficulty in stepping into an empty cage. At Level Four two young miners—one of whom was in Snook’s English class—jumped into the cage with him. They were glancing at each other and smiling nervously.

“What been happen, Mister Snook?” said the boy who was in Snook’s class. “Somebody say we all go to a special meet up top. Others all go pesi.”

“Nothing much happened,” Snook told him in a matter-of-fact voice. “Some people have been seeing things, that’s all.”

Stepping out of the cage into a bright morning world of sunshine, colour and warmth gave Snook a powerful sense of reassurance. Life, it seemed, was continuing exactly as usual regardless of what terrors lurked beneath the ground. It took Snook a few seconds to appreciate that a tense and highly abnormal situation was developing within the mine head enclosure. Perhaps two hundred men were gathered outside the check-out building, from the steps of which Alain Carrier was addressing them in an angry mixture of English and Swahili, laced here and there with expletives in his native French. Some of the miners were giving their attention to

Carrier, others were engaged in group arguments with various supervisors who moved among them. The management were putting across the message that it was the duty of the miners to return to work without further delay; while the latter—as Snook and Murphy had predicted—were refusing to go underground.

“Gil!” Murphy’s voice came from close by. “Where,have you been?”

“Having another look at our transparent visitors.” Snook scanned the superintendent’s face. “Why?” .

“The Colonel wants to see you. Right now. Let’s go, Gil.” Murphy was almost dancing in his impatience and Snook began to feel an obscure anger at the men, and the power they wielded, which could affect other and better human beings in that way.

“Don’t let Freeborn buffalo you, George,” he said with deliberate stolidity.

“You don’t understand,” Murphy replied in a low, urgent voice. “The Colonel has already sent to Kisumu for troops—I heard him on the radio.”

“And you think they’d fire on their own people?”

Murphy’s gaze was direct. “The Leopard Regiment is stationed at Kisumu. They’d massacre their own mothers if the Colonel gave the word:”

“I see. And what am I supposed to do?”

“You have to make Colonel Freeborn believe you can smooth things over and get the men back to work.”

Snook gave an incredulous laugh. “George, you saw that thing down there as well as I did. It was real. There’s no way anybody can convince those men it didn’t exist.”

“I don’t want any of them to get killed, Gil. There’s got to be some way.” Murphy pressed the back of a hand to his mouth in a childlike gesture. Snook felt a pang of sympathy which surprised him with its intensity. It’s happening, he thought. This is the way you get involved.

Aloud he said, “I’ve got an idea I can put up to the Colonel. He might listen, I suppose.”

“Let’s go and see him.” Murphy’s eyes signalled gratitude.

“He’s waiting in his office.”

“Okay.” Snook walked several paces with the superintendent, then stopped and clutched his lower abdomen. “Bladder,” he whispered. “Where’s the lavatory?”

“That can wait.”

“Want to bet? Listen, George, I don’t make a good advocate when I’m standing in a pool of urine.”

Murphy pointed at a low building which had red flowers growing in window boxes. “That’s the supers’ rest room. Go in there. First door on the left. Here—I’ll hold the cameras for you.”

“It’s all right.” Snook walked quickly to the door of the building, went through to the toilets and was glad to find them empty—it appeared that the disorderly meeting was keeping the supervisors busy. He locked himself in a cubicle, set his carton on the toilet seat, picked up the camera which had been fitted with a magniluct filter and took out its spool of self-developing film. A quick glance at it showed him that the improvised technique had been successful—there were surprisingly clear images of the first apparition he had seen -and he dropped the spool into his pocket. Working as swiftly as he could, Snook put a fresh film in the camera, pressed the palm of his hand over the lens to block out all light, and pushed the shutter button twelve times, producing the same number of exposures as were in the other cameras. He put the camera back in the box, flushed the toilet and went outside to where Murphy was waiting.

“That took long enough,” Murphy grumbled, his composure fully recovered.

“It doesn’t do to rush these things.” Snook handed the box df cameras and equipment to the superintendent, dissociating himself from it. “Now where’s Fuhrer Freeborn?”

Murphy led the way to another prefabricated building which was partly screened by oleander bushes. They went into a reception room, where Murphy spoke quietly to an army sergeant who was seated at a desk, and then were ushered into a larger room which was given a vaguely military atmosphere by the presence of numerous maps on the walls.

Colonel Freeborn was exactly as Snook had remembered him—tall, lean, hard as the polished teak of which he seemed to be carved, somehow managing to appear meticulously neat and rough-shod at the same time. The cup-shaped depression glistened at the side of his shaven skull. He looked up from the paperwork he had been studying and focused on Snook with intent brown eyes.

“All right,” he snapped, “what have you found?”

“And a very good morning to you, too,” Snook said. “Are you well?”

Freeborn gave a tired sigh. “Oh, yes -1 remember you. The aircraft engineer with principles.”

“I don’t care about principles—I just don’t like being shanghaied.”

“If you remember, it was your friend Charlton who brought you to Barandi. I simply offered you a job.”

“And refused me permission to leave.”

“Worse things have happened to men who entered this country illegally.”

“No doubt.” Snook eyed the cane with the spherical gold knob which lay on the desk.

Freeborn got to his feet, went to the window and stood looking out towards where the miners’ meeting was still in progress. “I have been informed that you have done valuable educational work among the labour force at this mine,” he said in a surprisingly mild voice. “It is very important, at this stage, that the education of the miners should continue. In particular, it should be impressed on them that ghosts do not exist. Primitive beliefs can be harmful…if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” Snook was about to announce that he preferred the Colonel not to try being subtle, when he intercepted a pleading glance from Murphy. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve just been down to the bottom levels. The ghosts do exist—I’ve seen them.”

Freeborn spun on his heel and pointed an accusing finger.

“Don’t try it, Snook. Don’t try to be clever.”

“I’m not being clever. You can see them for yourself.”

“Right! I’d be very much interested in that.” Freeborn picked up his cane. “Take me to see the ghosts.”

Snook cleared his throat. “The snag is that they only appear shortly before dawn. I don’t know why it is, but they rise up into the bottom levels of the mine around dawn. Then they sink down out of sight again. They seem to be rising higher each day, though.”

“So you can’t show me these ghosts?” Freeborn’s lips twitched into a smile.

“Not now, but they’ll probably appear tomorrow morning again—that seems to be the pattern. And you’d need to be wearing Amplite glasses.”

Aware of how incredible his story sounded, Snook went on to describe everything he had seen and done in the mine, with a full description of the ghosts and of his experimental camera equipment. When he had finished speaking he called upon Murphy to corroborate his statement. Freeborn gave Snook a speculative stare.

“I don’t believe a word you’ve told me,” he said, “but I love all the circumstantial detail. You say these day-trippers from Hades are only visible through low-light glasses?”

“Yes—and that’s your solution to the whole problem. Issue instructions that every man has to turn in his Amplites and the ghosts won’t be seen again.”

“But how would the men see to work?”

Snook shrugged. “You’d have to install full-scale lighting the way they did before magniluct was invented. It would be expensive—but a lot cheaper than closing down the mine.”

Freeborn raised his cane, in an absent-minded gesture, and its gold head slid naturally into the depression on his skull. “I’ve got news for you. Snook. There isn’t the remotest possibility of the mine being closed down, but I’m still fascinated by this story you’ve dreamed up. Now, about those cameras -1 presume you didn’t think of using self-developing film?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Open them up and let me see what you got.”

“Suits me.” Snook began opening the cameras and removing the spools. “I’m not too happy about the polarised or the infrared, but the one with the magniluct filter should show something if we’re in luck.” Snook unrolled the spool in question, held it up to the light, and clucked with disappointment. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything here.”

Freeborn tapped Murphy on the shoulder with his cane. “You’re a good man, Murphy,” he said evenly, “and that’s why I’m not going to have you punished for wasting my time today. Now get this lunatic and his cameras out of my office, and never bring him near me again. Have you got that?”

Murphy looked apprehensive, but stood his ground. “I saw something down there, too.”

Freeborn flicked his cane. Its weighty head travelled only a short distance, but when it collided with the back of Murphy’s hand there was a sound like that of a twig being snapped. Murphy drew breath sharply and gnawed his lower Up. He did not look down at his hand.

“You’re dismissed,” Freeborn said. “And, from now on, anybody who contributes to the mass hysteria that’s been going on here will be regarded as a traitor to Barandi. You know what that means.”

Murphy nodded, turned quickly and walked to the door. Snook got to it first, turned the handle for him and they went outside together. The miners’ meeting was still in progress and had grown even noisier than before. Murphy raised his right hand and Snook saw that it had already begun to swell.

He said, “You’d better get that seen to -1 think you’ve got a broken bone.”

“I know I’ve got a broken bone, but it can wait.” Murphy caught Snook’s shoulder with his good hand and stopped him walking. “What was all that meant to be about? I thought you had an idea you were going to try out on the Colonel.”

“I tried it. Full lighting in the mine…no magniluct glasses…no ghosts.”

“Is that all?” Murphy’s face showed his disappointment. “I thought you were going to prove to him that the ghosts were real. You and your bloody box of tricks!”

Snook paused thoughtfully. The more people who knew about his plan the greater the risks would be, and yet he had forged a rare link with Murphy and had no wish to endanger it. He decided to take the chance.

“Look, George.” Snook pressed his fingers against the side pocket of his jacket, outlining the film spool within. “When I went into the toilets a while ago I took this film out of one of the cameras and put a new one in its place. This one shows our ghost.”

“ What?” Murphy tightened his grip on Snook’s shoulder. “That’s what we needed! Why didn’t you show it to the Colonel?”

“Calm down.” Snook twisted free of the other man’s grasp. “You’ll ball the whole thing up if you make too much fuss. Trust me, will you?”

“To do what?” Murphy’s brown face was rigid with anger.

“To change the situation. That’s your only hope. Freeborn’s on top right now because this is his private little universe where he can order a massacre if he wants, and get away with it. If he had seen the evidence that ghosts really exist he would have buried it, and probably us too.

“You saw the interest he took in the cameras. He didn’t believe what we told him, but he wanted to look at the film -just in case. It suits people like Freeborn to keep things the way they are, with nobody in the outside world giving a damn about Barandi or anything that happens in it.”

“What can you do about that?” Murphy said.

“If I can reach the Press Association man in Kisumu with this film, I promise you that by this time tomorrow the whole world will be looking over Freeborn’s shoulder. He’ll have to call off his Leopards—and there’ll be a chance to find out what our ghosts really are.”