The Dead Gentleman (2 page)

“Fine,” he answered. “But just a quick look. If we’re lucky, it’s just an ordinary old basement after all.”

“An ordinary old basement?” I laughed. “Aren’t they always?”

Tiptoeing my way through the maze of junk, I tapped my Tesla Stick on the floor, testing the ground. At the center of the room, I paused in front of an overturned sofa. It lay on its side at a suspiciously awkward angle as if it had been dragged out to the middle of the floor and left there. It was out of place.

“Hey, give me a hand with this,” I said, and, with a few grunts, the two of us righted the mildewed sofa back onto its feet, exposing a deep crevasse in the floor underneath. At its narrowest it was maybe a few inches wide, but near the middle it opened into a jagged hole two or three feet across. Where the cobblestone floor was broken away, it had been covered with a thick film of spiderweb. In the blue light I saw, dangling in the sticky strands, bits of animal bone and a few bottle caps. In the middle of everything a single doll’s head stared back at me, its eyes chewed out and missing.

“Attercop,” Bernard whispered. “Told you.”

“Have you ever actually seen an attercop?”

“No,” answered Bernard. “And neither have you. But at least I’ve read about them.”

“Well, this web looks old. Maybe he scurried off to a new home. Let’s make sure.”

Reaching into the shoulder bag at my side, the one marked with the Explorers’ symbol—a machine cog with feathered wings—I took out an oddly shaped gun with a net dangling from the tip and tossed it to Bernard.

Bernard looked at the gun and arched one surprised eyebrow at me. “Are you serious?”

I shrugged. “Net for the netter. You can cover me.”

As gingerly as I could manage, I stepped within reach of the crevasse. If the attercop was home, he’d be waiting just under the web for his prey.

“Any vibration,” Bernard was saying, “even a small one, will bring him to the surface. And he’ll come angry. But attercops are built for climbing, not walking, and their short front legs mean that they are ridiculously slow on the ground. Most of the time they’re only really dangerous in the web.”

Most of the time
.

I crouched down low next to the sofa and slowly, very slowly, reached forward with my Tesla Stick, ready to discharge fifty thousand volts of electricity at anything that came crawling out of the web on more than two legs. My heart was beating hard in my chest, but I just couldn’t stop smiling. Times like that made me feel alive.

Inching the tip of my pole to the edge—I was a good distance away—I tapped the web. Just a tap. I kept a loose grip on the handle, letting the wrist strap hang. I didn’t want the attercop pulling me in along with the pole.

Nothing happened.

I tapped again, harder. The bottle caps jingled against each other as the pole brushed the strands and came away easily. The web had lost most of its stickiness, which was yet another sign that its maker had moved on.

“Looks safe,” I said.

It was much tougher than a normal spiderweb, more like spun cotton, and it took a few sharp jabs to break the thing. As I
worked, the ghastly doll’s head remained suspended by a few stray strands, dangling above the crevasse. Its eyeless gaze settled on me for just a second, before I knocked it into the dark.

Watching the head fall away, I had to shake off the little chill that crept up my neck. With the web cleared, what was left was an open chasm. But if my instincts were right, this was more than that—there was something down there. Even in the paralight, the crevasse looked dark. The walls were uneven and narrowed the farther down they went.

“Hook me up,” I said. “I’m going down.”

“Do you want the netgun?” asked Bernard as he fastened a thin line to my belt.

“No, that thing’s too bulky to climb with, and I’ve got the Tesla Stick if I have any problems. Besides, if that attercop decides to visit up here, you’ll need it more than me.”

Reaching back into my pouch, I took out a shining metal ball and handed it, very gently, to Bernard.

He arched his eyebrow again. “A mayfly? What’s this for?”

“Last resort. What you said earlier about this place having a
history
? Well, if I don’t come back, toss it in and seal up the hole. But make sure I’m truly done for—I wouldn’t want to be down there when the mayfly does its thing.”

“You’re very reassuring,” said Bernard, gingerly pocketing the ball and removing his shoulder satchel. “You know I’d never use it.”

“Protocol and all. You’re the one always quoting me the rules.”

Bernard managed a half smile. “You said it yourself: we are the Academy now. We can change the rules as we like. Just be careful, all right?”

Bernard handed me a coil of rope, and, with a satisfied nod,
I slipped over the edge and into the dark. According to the chronometer, I had less than two minutes of paralight left. I’d hoped to at least scout the bottom before having to resort to using a lantern. Even if this turned out to be an ordinary cavern, there could still be something nasty down here, and I didn’t want to attract attention with real light until I absolutely had to.

I rappelled my way along the rough dirt wall of the crevasse as Bernard fed me an inch of cord at a time. The seconds took forever to tick by as I was slowly lowered through the basement floor, but to go any faster would risk my losing my balance, or Bernard might lose his footing and I’d fall the rest of the way.

Descending into the unknown, I dreamed about what might be at the bottom. Where did the basement of the Percy Hotel lead? It must be someplace special for Merlin to go on like that. The last really wondrous place I’d explored had led to the Ying Obelisk—an enormous tower hidden among the ice rings of Saturn. The stones drank in the sunlight during the day and shone bright gold at night. The creature who lived there looked like angels with their ice-particle wings, and they sailed along the ether winds of space. It was one of the most glorious places any person could see in all of creation, and I’d discovered it under the bed of an eight-year-old girl.

Though I could still just make out Bernard’s silhouette above me, the paralight was fading fast. An unusual panic started to set in the farther I went, as I imagined the walls slowly closing in, tightening like fingers around a bug. I’d have to risk some light after all.

As I fumbled in my breast pocket for a match, I heard Bernard’s harsh whisper from above. “Hey, you’ve stopped! Everything all right?”

Bad enough I was about to light a match, but now we were shouting whispers at each other. “I’m fine!”

With one hand on the rope, I had to pry the match tin open with my teeth, wincing as they scraped the metal. It was a clumsy effort, but after a few tries and some spilled matches I managed to strike one against the rock wall. A quick hiss of sparks and a second later the crevasse was lit by a weak glow.

It took only a few moments for my eyes to adjust, just long enough for me to notice the glint of a solid floor not ten feet below. Its surface was smooth, almost polished. As I put the match to the wick of the small hand lantern clipped to my belt, there was a confused moment as the lantern light was suddenly reflected back at me by four multifaceted eyes not three feet away.

The attercop. It was here after all, and more, it was waiting for me. I spied it just as it was readying itself to pounce, its fangs clicking now in anticipation of this unexpected meal. And here I was, a worm dangling on a hook.

There was no time to think. I pulled the safety hook on my harness and as the creature lunged, I dropped.

The attercop’s fangs just missed me as I fell and landed on the hard floor. Something gave way in my ankle, and worse, I heard the crunch of the Tesla Stick snapping beneath me. But I had escaped the attercop’s grasp—for a moment anyway. As I rolled across the floor, the lantern sputtered and blinked—but it stayed lit.

The attercop was descending, faster than I would have thought possible with its stubby front legs. I had only a few seconds to act. Bernard was shouting something from above, but the blood pounding in my head drowned out my partner’s words.

As the attercop reached the floor, it twisted its grotesque
body around to face me. Next it would rear back on its powerful hind legs and move in for the kill, striking with a bite that would paralyze in seconds.

I managed to sit up—my back to the wall—and raise my lamp at the attercop. Most Explorers use hydro-gas lamps as a backup to paralight goggles. Hydro-gas is safer than lamp oil, less flammable and more reliable. But I keep my lantern filled with old-fashioned lamp oil for a different reason—I’ve made a few modifications to the device. As the spider beast lurched forward, I flipped a switch on the lamp’s handle and a small cylinder of pressurized air began to hiss. The lantern oil was forced out of a tiny spigot on the lantern’s front, passing through the open flame as it arched into a stream of liquid fire. I’d turned my lamp into a fiery squirt can. The burning oil landed directly on the attercop’s round back, running in flaming rivulets into its face, its eyes.

The crevasse brightened with the flash of fire, and shadows flickered around me as the beast writhed in pain. It squealed in rage as it tried to brush out the flames, but the clinging oil just burned hotter as it caught the fine hairs that covered the attercop’s body. My lamp extinguished, I curled up in a tight ball and hugged the wall, avoiding the blind thrashing of the dying creature.

After a few long minutes, the monster stopped its twitching. Though the lamp was spent, the crevasse was still lit by the burning, crackling body of the dead attercop. I almost threw up at the smell of cooking spider meat. My hands were shaky with adrenaline and pain from my injured foot, and my head was spinning with questions.

What was the thing doing down here—waiting for me? Attercops were supposed to be easy opponents because they were
predictable
. Hit the web and the attercop comes running—always. They don’t wait in the shadows to get the jump on their victims because they aren’t that smart.

Yet this one was. It had waited until I got close enough, dangling from my climbing rope and nearly defenseless. Even then it paused to strike at the last possible moment, as if it was afraid to act too hastily, as if it wanted to stay down in the dark, as if it was guarding something.…

For the first time I took a moment to really observe my surroundings here at the bottom of the crevasse. The light cast by the burning attercop was already beginning to fade, but I could see, all around me, flickering reflections. Dirt and rock walls, no tunnels or visible exits except for the way I came down, and the floor beneath—smooth as a mirror. The floor was rock along the sides, but gradually the rough stone gave way to volcanic glass, deep black and flawless except for a single line cut into a six-foot circle in the middle of the floor. And in the middle of the circle was a handle.

It was a door—a door that had been cut into the floor. A door that led straight down.

I felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the attercop. Here was a real mystery.

“Hey, Bernard! Get down here. There’s something you’ve got to see!”

Peering up at the opening, I could see Bernard’s silhouette clearly enough—he was still peering over the ledge—but I got no answer. Merlin was uncharacteristically quiet, too.

“Bernard?”

This time he moved. I could see him shuffling around at the top of the hole, though why he was still silent was anyone’s guess.
Perhaps he was so thrown by my fight with the attercop that he was too shaken to speak.

“C’mon, Bernard. There was only one of these beasties and I’ve taken care of him. If you bring down the treats, we can make a roast of it!”

Still, Bernard said nothing. Instead, my calls were answered by a new sound—the crack and rumble of rock sliding.

I had a sudden, terrible image of the mayfly. Once activated, the little bomb would tear through the dirt, rock, whatever it found. In his panic, had Bernard let the mayfly loose, only to leave me here to die? Or was he really betraying me? The tunnel mouth above my head was collapsing, unearthing tons of rock that would close this portal forever—and bury me in the process. My mind wasn’t working right. I couldn’t accept that my friend and partner would abandon me now. I called, I begged and I cursed. I tried climbing, but more and more earth was falling down, blinding me, choking me.

All that was left for me was the strange door.

Some doors are meant to stay shut
. Even then, Bernard’s warning hung in my mind. But I’d opened many doors before, followed paths no one had followed. That is what Explorers do—that is our calling, our purpose.

And if I didn’t open this one, I’d die.

And so, my mind made up, as the roar of the mayfly above me built to its explosive peak, I grabbed the handle of the black door with both hands and pulled.

But it occurs to me now that I’ve started a bit late in my story. So many things that come to pass depend on what came before, but I guess that’s the way with stories. Still, I should think you
would be confused, being dropped into the action like this without so much as an introduction. So before we go any further, I should take a breath, collect my thoughts and put the important stuff in order in my head. Next time, perhaps, I’ll back up and start at the beginning.

Here’s hoping I have time to finish the tale.