Tarn had been assigned a different task, one he hadn't done before. This was strange, as he always did the same job: operating the machine down on the ground floor, next to Fiffdee, turning the wheels to open and close the vents when signalled, monitoring the dials to make sure they stayed in the green area, and notifying a guard if anything unusual happened. He was good at that job and enjoyed it - it was a lot better than his old one, which had been to stock the furnaces and keep the machines up to full strength. That had been a dirty job, leaving him covered head to toe in dust and soot. All the jobs in the machine rooms were dirty and sweaty and uncomfortable, but that one had been hotter and dirtier than most.
Reluctantly, he'd left his post and followed the guard up the steps carved roughly into the rock, before climbing onto the metal staircase which wound its way up to a gantry which overlooked the entire chamber. He'd never been so high before and it made his head spin a little, as if he was going to fall or dive over the edge. Up here they were close to the thick pipes that snaked up out of the machines and disappeared into the roof of the cavern. He'd never really looked up before, he realised, but now found himself wondering where those pipes went. They had to go somewhere, otherwise it wouldn't make sense to keep the machines going all the time. He knew that some boys were sent down and away, marched off into the deep, twisting tunnels, to return with barrels and barrows of the special rocks, but he'd never really considered what could be above the roof of the machine rooms, having always assumed that the sleeping wall was as high as the world could get.
He considered asking the guard, then thought better of it. They didn't like it when any of the boys talked. It seemed to make them nervous.
A couple of the thicker pipes, wider even than a person, rose up directly next to the high walkway. In the side of one of the pipes was a metal hatch, round and studded with rivets. It was large enough for someone to crawl into.
"We've been having problems with some of the extraction tubes," said the guard. Tarn didn't know what extraction meant but it sounded serious. "Some kind of blockage, the boss reckons. It's holding us up, so if we don't get it fixed we'll all be in for it." The guard leaned over the edge of the gantry and shouted down to one of his friends. "How we doing?"
The other guard, far below, shouted back. "We're capped off! Good to go."
"Right," the guard said, pulling a chunky key from his pocket and inserting it into an opening on the side of the pipe. He put the back of his hand against the metal surface for a moment, considered it, then after seeming satisfied took hold of the key and twisted. He tugged at the side of the hatch, swinging it open with a loud creak. As he did so there was a sharp hiss and steam erupted out, forcing the guard to jump backwards. He dodged to the side, pushing Tarn clear of the venting steam. "Capped off, are we?" he shouted back down. "If this tube wasn't half-blocked that would've taken my face off!"
The guard below sent up an apology and strode over to one of the boys working the machines. Tarn, leaning for a better view, didn't recognise who it was. The guard pulled out his whip and cracked it against the back of the boy's head. There was an exchange between them and the boy operated some controls on the machine, and a moment later the steam stopped and dissipated into the air.
"Forget about what just happened," the guard on the walkway said. Tarn wondered whether the guards had proper names, or whether they were all called Guard. "I need you to get in there, figure out what the blockage is, and get back here. You've got ten minutes tops, then we've got to turn everything back on, whether you're out or not. You understand?"
Tarn nodded. He didn't really understand how long ten minutes was, but he had a feeling it wasn't very long. He stepped over to the pipe and gingerly stuck his head inside the hatch. The pipe went up and down and had a ladder of sorts built into its inside wall.
"You want to climb down," the guard said. "That's where they reckon the blockage is. Probably something fallen down from above, or just a build-up of filth. Go check it out, then come back and let me know what it is so we can figure out what to do about it."
Turning around, Tarn put one leg and then the other into the hatch, finding his footing on the ladder and slowly moving down until he was entirely inside the pipe, holding on to the edges of the open hatch with his fingertips.
The guard banged his hand on the side. "Get a move on!"
The ladder consisted of thin metal rungs, jutting out from the wall. They were hot and wet and didn't have much space on which to get a proper foothold. Even sliding his fingers around the rungs was difficult without then getting his hand wedged awkwardly between the rung and the wall of the pipe. He descended cautiously, careful not to slip and tumble all the way down to where the pipe reached the floor and turned at an angle towards the machines.
As he lowered himself rung by tricky rung his fingers began to increasingly ache, the thin rungs pressing uncomfortably into his skin. The inside of the pipe rapidly darkened, until all he could see was the circle of light high above where the hatch remained open.
"Are you down yet?" The guard's head appeared at the hatch, blocking what little light there was.
"It's dark," Tarn said.
"It's a tube," the guard shouted back. "It goes up and down. It's not like you can get lost. Feel your way along until you find the blockage."
Finally Tarn's foot touched a flat surface and he stepped away from the ladder, enveloped by total blackness. Stretching out his arms he could feel the walls of the pipe all around him but couldn't see a thing. Even holding his hand in front of his face revealed nothing. He crouched down and found where the pipe continued, extending away horizontally. Perhaps it would go all the way into the machines if he followed it far enough. He knelt down and crawled forwards on hands and knees, feeling the sludge filling the cracks between his fingers and seeping into his shoes. They weren't due a shower anytime soon, so he'd probably have to stay covered in this filth for days. He started to feel angry at being forced to come down here, then remembered that he was trying to help by clearing whatever was blocking the pipe. If he could do that, it would probably mean that some of the other boys wouldn't get hit or punished for whatever had gone wrong.
Reaching a bend in the pipe, as it snaked around to the side, Tarn carefully felt his way through the turn. As he did so his fingers fell upon an unexpectedly large and soft shape, wedged into the crook of the pipe. He prodded at it, blinking blindly in the all-consuming darkness. He could feel fabric of some kind, covering a soft surface, with a harder structure underneath. The blockage was larger than he'd initially thought - he traced a thin, cylindrical shape, moving his hands over it, until it connected with a bigger piece. The thinner part flapped about when he lifted it, pivoting around the join. Drifting his hands over the bulk of the shape, he followed it up to a smaller, bulbous protrusion. On top of that was something fibrous and he found two depressions in the front of it, with a thin ridge running down from them to another, more sizable hole, inside of which were several thin, sharp, hard objects, like blunt knives.
Not knives. Teeth.
Tarn jerked backwards, hitting his head on the ceiling of the pipe, and scrabbled back around the bend.
"Hello?" he said, quietly.
There was no answer. Of course, there would be no answer. Nobody could be alive in here, not with the steam venting through the pipe at all times. Tarn sat still, leaning back on the curved wall, alone in the total dark with the dead body.
Not wanting to become another blockage and remembering the guard's time warning, he made his way back along the pipe until he reached the vertical part with the ladder. He climbed up, fingers aching even more on the ascent. All the way up he was acutely aware of the face and arms and hands of the body somewhere below.
When he reached the hatch and looked out, he found the guard sitting on the walkway with something sticking out of his mouth. There was a thin stream of smoke coming off its tip. He looked up at Tarn in surprise. "Well?"
Tarn swallowed loudly. He wasn't used to talking with the guards, and answering felt somehow disrespectful, even in response to a direct question. "There's a body."
The guard blinked. "A body?"
"At the bottom, where the pipe turns the corner."
Frowning, the guard took a deep, sucking breath, and followed the course of the pipe with his eyes, leaning back against the railing. He puffed out a big plume of smoke. It reminded Tarn of the steam coming out of the pipe. "Ah, damn it," the guard said. While Tarn hung on to the inside of the hatch, the guard stood up and leaned over the railing. "You'll never guess what it is," he shouted down. "You know that kid we couldn't find? The one we sent somewhere and then couldn't remember? There was us thinking he'd done a runner, and he was stuck in this pipe the whole time." A guard below responded but Tarn couldn't hear him. The guard on the walkway laughed, and banged his hand on the railing. "Yeah, I know. All that time searching and he was in there. I remember telling them to open the valves up again, and I completely forgot we'd sent him in to take a look. Ah well, two mysteries solved!"
The guard leaned down towards where Tarn clung on. "You stay here. I'm going to go get a rope, and then I'm going to need you to get that body up and out."
"How many minutes left?" Tarn stammered.
Confused, the guard let out a short, dismissive laugh, then disappeared out of sight along the walkway.
Remaining on the ladder, fingers burning and legs cramping, Tarn stared out of the hatch, trying to ignore the darkness below and the thought of climbing back into it. Back down to where the body lay.
As he waited, he found his gaze shifting upwards. Tubes go up and down, the guard had said. This one disappeared off into darkness in both directions, the hole above him extending well into the rocky ceiling of the cavern. It was impossible to tell how far up it went, but the ladder continued above the hatch, the rungs vanishing into the black.
Up. Tarn had never thought of going up before.