Tiger! Tiger! (12 page)

`Bulletin from G. Foyle. This isn't a natural cave wall. It's made. Brick and stone. Feel.'

Jisbella felt the wall. `So?'

'Means this passage don't end here. Goes on. They blocked it off. Out of the way.' He shoved Jisbella up the passage, ground his hand into the floor to grit his soapy palms, and began swinging the sledge against the wall. He swung in steady rhythm, grunting and gasping. The steel sledge struck the wall with the blunt concussion of stones struck under water.

`They're coming,' Jiz said. `I hear them.' The blunt blows took on a crumbling, crushing overtone. There was a whisper, then a steady pebble-fall of loose mortar. Foyle redoubled his efforts. Suddenly there was a crash and a gush of icy air blew in their faces.

`Through,' Foyle muttered.

He attacked the edges of the hole pierced through the wall with ferocity. Bricks, stones and old mortar flew. Foyle stopped and called Jisbella.

`Try it.' He dropped the sledge, seized her and held her up to the chest-high opening. She cried out in pain as she tried to wriggle past the sharp edges. Foyle pressed her relentlessly until she got her shoulders and then her hips through. He let go of her legs and heard her fall on the other side.

Foyle pulled himself up and tore himself through the jagged breach in the wall. He felt Jisbella's hands trying to break his fall as he crashed down in a mass of loose brick and mortar. They were both through into the icy blackness of the unoccupied caverns of Gouffre Martel . . . miles of unexplored grottos and caves.

`By God, we'll make it yet,' Foyle mumbled.

`I don't know if there's a way out, Gully,' Jisbella was shaking with cold. `Maybe this is all cul-de-sac, walled off from the hospital.'

`There has to be a way out.'

`I don't know if we can find it.'

`We've got to find it. Let's go, girl.' They blundered forward in the darkness. Foyle tore the useless set of goggles from his eyes. They crashed against ledges, corners, low ceilings; they fell down slopes and steep steps. They climbed over a razor-back ridge to a level plain and their feet shot from under them. Both fell heavily to a glassy floor. Foyle felt it and touched it with his tongue.

`Ice,' he muttered. `Good sign. We're in an ice cavern, Jiz. Underground glacier.'

They arose shakily, straddling their legs and worked their way across the ice that had been forming in the Gouffre Martel abyss for millennia. They climbed into a forest of stone saplings that were stalagmites and stalactites thrusting up, from the jagged floor and down from the ceilings. The vibrations of every step loosened the huge stalactites, and every moment a ponderous needle-sharp stone spear thundered down from overhead. At the edge of the forest, Foyle stopped, reached out and tugged. There was a clear metallic ring. He took Jisbella's hand and placed the long tapering cone of a stalagmite in it.

`Cane,' he grunted. `Use it like a blind man.' He broke off another and they went tapping, feeling, stumbling through the darkness. There was no sound but the gallop of panic . . . their gasping breath and racing hearts, the taps of their stone canes, the multitudinous drip of water, the distant rushing of the underground river beneath Gouffre Martel.

`Not that way, girl,' Foyle nudged her shoulder. `More to the left.' `Have you the faintest notion where we're headed, Gully?'

`Down, Jiz. Follow any slope that leads down.'

`You've got an idea?'

`Yeah. Surprise, surprise! Brains instead of bombs.'

`Brains instead of -' Jisbella shrieked with hysterical laughter. `You exploded into South Quadrant w-with a sledgehammer and th-that's your idea of b-brains instead of b-b-b -' She brayed and hooted beyond all control until Foyle grasped her and shook her.

`Shut up, Jiz. If they're tracking us by G-phone they could hear you from Mars.'

`S-sorry, Gully. Sorry. . .' She took a breath. `Why down?'

`The river; the one we hear all the time. It must be near. It probably melts off the glacier back there.'

`The river?'

`The only sure way out. It must break out of the mountain somewhere. We'll swim.'

`Gully, you're insane!'

'What's a matter, you? You can't swim?'

`I can swim, but -'

`Then we've got to try. Go on, Jiz. Come on.' The rush of the river grew louder as their strength began to fail. Jisbella pulled to a halt, at last, gasping.

`Gully, I've got to rest.'

`Too cold. Keep moving.'

`I can't.'

`Keep moving.' He felt for her arm.

`Get your hands off me,' she cried furiously. In an instant she was all spit-fire. He released her in amazement.

`What's the matter with you? Keep your head, Jiz. I'm depending on you.'

`For what? I told you we had to plan . . . work out an escape . . . and now you've trapped us into this.'

`I was trapped myself. Dagenham was going to change my cell. No more Whisper Line for us. I had to, Jiz . . . and we're out, aren't we?'

`Out where? Lost in Gouffre Martel. Looking for a damned river to drown in. You're a fool, Gully, and I'm an idiot for letting you trap me into this. Damn you! Damn you! You pull everything down to your imbecile level and you've pulled me down too. Run. Fight. Punch. That's all you know. Beat. Break. Blast. Destroy - Gully!'

Jisbella screamed. There was a clatter of loose stone in the darkness, and her scream faded down and away to a heavy splash. Foyle heard the thrash of her body in water. He leaped forward, shouted: ` Jiz!' and staggered over the edge of a precipice.

He fell and struck the water flat with a stunning impact. The icy river enclosed him, and he could not tell where the surface was. He struggled, suffocated, felt the swift current drag him against the chill slime of rocks, and then was borne bubbling to the surface. He coughed and shouted. He heard Jisbella answer, her voice faint and muffled by the roaring torrent. He swam with the current, trying to overtake her.

He shouted and heard her answering voice growing fainter and fainter. The roaring grew louder, and abruptly he was shot down the hissing sheet of a waterfall. He plunged to the bottom of a deep pool and struggled once more to the surface. The whirling current entangled him with a cold body bracing itself against a smooth rock wall.

`Jiz!'

'Gully! Thank God!' They clung together for a moment while the water tore at them.

`Gully. . ' Jisbella coughed. `It goes through here.'

`The river?'

`Yes.' He squirmed past her, bracing himself against the wall, and felt the mouth of an underwater tunnel. The current was sucking them into it.

`Hold on,' Foyle gasped. He explored to the left and the right. The walls of the pool were smooth, without handhold.

`We can't climb out. Have to go through.'

`There's no air, Gully. No surface.'

`Couldn't be for ever. We'll hold our breath.'

`It could be longer than we can hold our breath.'

`Have to gamble.'

`I can't do it.'

'You must. No other way. Pump your lungs. Hold on to me.' They supported each other in the water, gasping for breath, filling their lungs.

Foyle nudged Jisbella towards the underwater tunnel. `You go first. I'll be right behind . . . Help you if you get into trouble.'

`Trouble!' Jisbella cried in a shaking voice. She submerged and permitted the current to suck her into the tunnel mouth. Foyle followed. The fierce waters drew them down, down, down, caroming from side to side of a tunnel that had been worn glass-smooth. Foyle swam close behind Jisbella, feeling her thrashing legs beat his head and shoulders.

They shot through the tunnel until their lungs burst and their blind eyes started. Then there was a roaring again and a surface, and they could breathe. The glassy tunnel sides were replaced by jagged rocks. Foyle caught Jisbella's leg and seized a stone projection at the side of the river.

`Got to climb out here,' he shouted.

`Got to climb out. You hear that roaring up ahead? Cataracts. Rapids. Be torn to pieces. Out, Jiz.' She was too weak to climb out of the water. He thrust her body up on to the rocks and followed. They lay on the dripping stones, too exhausted to speak. At last Foyle got wearily to his feet.

`Have to keep on,' he said. `Follow the river. Ready?' She could not answer; she could not protest. He pulled her up and they went stumbling through the darkness, trying to follow the bank of the torrent. The boulders they traversed were gigantic, standing like dolmens, heaped, jumbled, scattered into a labyrinth. They staggered and twisted through them and lost the river. They could get nowhere.

`Lost. . .' Foyle grunted in disgust. `We're lost again. Really lost this time. What are we going to do?' Jisbella began to cry. She made helpless yet furious sounds.

Foyle lurched to a stop and sat down, drawing her down with him.

`Maybe you're right, girl,' he said wearily. `Maybe I am a damned fool. I got us trapped into this no-jaunte pam, and we're licked.' She didn't answer.

`So much for brain-work. Hell of an education you gave me.' He hesitated. `You think we ought to try back-tracking to the hospital?'

`We'll never make it.'

`Guess not. Was just practicing m'brain. Should we start a racket? Make a noise so they can track us by G-phone?'

`They'd never hear us . . . Never find us in time.'

`We could make enough noise. You could knock me around a little. Be a pleasure for both of us.'

`Shut up.'

`Murder! What a mess!' He sagged back, cushioning his head on a tuft of soft grass.

`At least I had a chance aboard Nomad. There was food and I could see where I was trying to go. I could -' He broke off and sat bolt upright. `Jiz!'

`Don't talk so much.'

He felt the ground under him and clawed up sods of earth and tufts of grass. He thrust them into her face.

`Smell this,' he laughed. `Taste it. It's grass. Jiz. Earth and grass. We're out of Gouffre Martel.'

'What?'

'Was night outside. Pitch-black. Overcast. We came out of the caves and never knew it. We're out, Jiz! We made it.' They leaped to their feet, peering, listening, sniffing. The night was impenetrable, but they heard the soft sigh of night winds, and the sweet scent of green growing things came to their nostrils. Far in the distance a dog barked.

`My God, Gully,' Jisbella whispered incredulously. `You're right. We're out of Gouffre Martel. All we have to do is wait for dawn.' She laughed. She flung her arms about him and kissed him, and he returned the embrace. They babbled excitedly. They sank down on the soft grass again, weary, but unable to rest, eager, impatient, all life before them.

`Hello, Gully, darling Gully. Hello Gully, after all this time.'

'Hello, Jiz.'

`I told you we'd meet some day . . . some day soon. I told you, darling. And this is the day.'

`The night.'

`The night, so it is. But no more murmuring in the night along the Whisper Line. No more night for us, Gully dear.' Suddenly they became aware that they were nude, lying close, no longer separated. Jisbella fell silent but did not move. He clasped her, almost angrily, and enveloped her with a desire that was no less than hers.