The Faculty Club

37

I fell, and the walls of the hole arced and I went into a slide that sent me hurtling. Miles’s satchel was across my waist; I had one hand over it and one protecting my head. I was rolling over myself now, smacking different parts on the packed dirt of the walls. And yet there was something thrilling about it. I felt free. I felt hope. I was going to rescue Sarah. This was an adventure, and nothing was going to stop me!

The walls leveled out as I fell until they became ground below me and a ceiling above, depositing me in a wild roll until I skidded in a mounting pile of dirt. I plowed to a stop. My eyes were closed. I froze for a moment and listened. Nothing. No explosions, no snarls, no voices, not even crickets chirping. Just the light sound of air moving through cracks.

Did my fingers and toes still move? Check. Vision intact? Check. Wooden spikes through my torso? Negative.

Things were looking up.

It smelled pungent down here, thick and muddy. The rocky walls were covered with writing, more mathematical than pictorial. They still looked primitive. Maybe this was once the home of the Einstein of cavemen.

My body was sore, but I was okay.

I saw a hallway chiseled through the rock. I moved too quickly and was almost seen by three people at the end of the hall, but they were absorbed in conversation and I pressed myself against the wall faster than I realized I could move.

At the distant end of the hall were three women. Their lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear them speak. They were young. They reminded me of pretty mothers at a playground. Their skin was almost luminous, lit by a shaft of pale light from slats above them. They seemed lighthearted. One of them laughed. The women moved away together, so gracefully that it wasn’t at all clear they were walking. They disappeared around a corner.

I went down the hall after them. I stepped slowly and hoped no one would come around the bend ahead and see me. But it was completely silent. Every step I took, gravel crackled under my shoes. I clutched Miles’s bag and felt the metal inside. It was comforting.

I got to the spot where the women had turned and was hit with a blast of cool, fresh air. The dirt path I’d followed forked and continued also in the other direction, around another turn. For a moment, I started to follow the women, but something told me not to. I turned and went left instead of right. I can’t tell you why. But I was glad I did. Because the path brought me to a stone stairway within a tight, ascending passage lined with columns on either side. The steps were wide but the stairway was steep, the end high above me. As I neared the top, I saw I was heading toward a slanted opening, like the entrances of Assyrian temples I’d seen in history books. No sound, no movement from that opening as I climbed. But when I reached the top, I looked through the door and saw a room I’d seen before. An altar in the center. A pole that loomed from the floor to the high stone ceiling. And beyond all that, a machine, quietly thrumming and moving in the shadows.