Salticid PART 2 of 3
by Christopher T Garry
Artificial dawn filtered down through the crevasse and sent root shadows across Pelly's chest, stomach and legs. Her eyes were open. She could smell the cool earth around her in the small space. With the way the roots supported her she appeared almost to be seated in a reclined flight chair. Across her abdomen, lap and legs she felt the warmth of hundreds of Cleaners perched on her semi-sleeping form, huddling, but nearly still. The sunlight warmed them and they warmed her. As she stirred, the Cleaners shifted. She winced at her stiff weakness. She could almost feel broken bones that were set and knitting, and she could see that most of her body was...what...bandaged? Suddenly sleepy again, she blurred her attention, wondering about her dad, the fall and how she might have gotten here...where ever here was. So many Cleaners... live here.
From under her sleeping form, warm mist rose and intertwined with the roots. Steam traced its way through varied paths around the hanging vegetation, dangling rock formations and moss-covered crystals protruding and dripping with moisture. Far below, a hush of rushing water emerged from a hotspring, disappearing into the dark of the far wall.
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For Deming, the passageways between the caverns were so narrow that it required belly crawling. Most of the tunnel travel was dull and backbreaking, and it left little breath for idle talk with Ari, as it took nearly half a day to get from one cavern to the next this way. Mercifully, the air was fresh, usually rushing past him in either direction. The first Cleaners to find him in the tunnels passed by in a fuss of consternation. However, after a few days, the spiders adjusted and simply hopped up to scramble over his back in the narrow passage.
Their arrival in the first cavern was uneventful. Ari suggested nicknaming each cavern as it went into her record. With Ari's memory capacity she would never lose her way.
This first cavern was named Twilight. The dim light was the same all hours of the day. The vegetation was not nearly as rich and the place looked abandoned of small animals, birds and insects. There were very few Cleaners spotted and there appeared to be no rivers or lakes or hills. Where they might have expected a simulated sky, the artificial ceiling was plainly visible, and was without any variations in the weather. The cavern was only a fraction the size of their home cavern, what Ari called The Atrium.
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While Deming worked his way through the myriad of caverns and tunnels, Ari occupied herself as best as she could with memories of vocational work, old data and theoretical compositions that she filed away to research later.
It took several days for Deming and Ari to develop a routine for travel. Since the tunnels were very difficult to maneuver, a tunnel day meant grueling hours of scrabbling, followed by a bare minimum of exploration of the new surroundings upon arrival. He needed to determine any danger in the cavern, clean up and rehydrate. Then of course eat and sleep deeply. Ari's mind was still haunted by Pelly's blood evidence, and they wished they knew more about what to expect, other than a surprise attack in a dark cavern some day.
To Ari, the tunnels seemed straight as a beam of light and never forked. So far, any given cavern had at least four tunnels leading away, but sometimes as many as a dozen. She had speculated that some tunnels would be compromised or cracked or even collapsed, but this was not the case so far. They accepted that the caverns, the connecting tunnels and the only known rising access way to the surface were all several thousand years old. Despite this, either the planet was more stable than was typical, leaving no tectonic shifts to cause damage or there were maintenance forces at work besides just the Cleaners.
Navigation was the first challenge. He had no specific destination. Initial direction was selected based on the tunnel that Deming had uncovered, since he was suspicious of the large number of spiders that had dropped into it. He was following them, since they would be key to Pelly's survival. Ari kept a careful mapping of everywhere he went, documentation of the location of every unexplored tunnel and the distinctive characteristics and conditions in whatever cavern they found themselves. As arduous as the travel was, neither of them were keen on backtracking.
There were very few guidestones littered about here and the lack of their dim blue light made it extremely difficult to see. He was using the portable lantern as sparingly as possible, as it only held a few hundred hours' worth of light. There was barely enough room to sit up, and the shape of the tunnel wall afforded no rest for his back.
He rummaged through his packs for a brief snack. Deming prepared the paste Grace taught him back in The Atrium. Overall the food supply seemed ample. Many of the roots, sap, water traps, etc. were usable as is. They'd learned that most of the bugs and small animals could be eaten. Raw, apparently. The material was something like fish in its light texture and it was easily digested. It had no particular smell, which, given the texture, was a gift.
About half the caverns he traversed were populated at least sparsely with some sort of food source, regardless of whether the weather was tropical or temperate. One of the caverns had appeared to have nothing useful in it at all, as every surface in it was almost entirely covered in large crystals. It made the tunnels harder to spot. He and Ari noted no life in the cavern whatsoever and no cleaners. The center of the room glowed far brighter than the rest of the crystals, to the point of being indistinguishable and they did not feel inclined to investigate that cavern much further. If the next cavern held no food or water sources then they needed time to backtrack and rethink their direction before supplies ran low.
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Deming found an antechamber off a passageway above the eleventh chamber on the ninth day. The Cleaners' trail down to it was clear. There she was in the center of the root structure cradled, covered in Cleaners that were not fussing at all. Just resting, near as Ari could tell. She doubted that either Pelly or the Cleaners could hear their arrival at that distance as Deming scanned the wall to determine a way over to her through the three-dimensional weave of roots, sinew and underground detritus. Ari posed the first question. "She looks comfortable. I wonder if she was ever hurt, or did she just wander down here?"
He made his way down the side the cavern wall on roots and rocks. She awoke before he reached her. Cleaners scattered everywhere, as if to make room. From the looks of it she was warm, dry and nourished.
"Daddy!" They embraced. Her jumper was covered in dried blood and looked to have been shredded to near uselessness. It was tied off loosely in several places. She seemed to have lost weight, thought Ari.
"How did you get here? Can you walk?"
"Yes, quite well, actually." He started a physical assessment of her. Feet, legs, arms--but she shooed him away. "Stoppat! Don't you think I checked already? I've been down here for a hundred years. I have been exploring. There is a hot spring down on the bottom. This is where they make more Cleaners! Well, one place at least. I've seen smaller ones and I can watch them feed from the moss beds."
Ari could hardly believe that the child sounded more excited still to be learning than to be found. Deming took it all in and undid his pack, finding a little food. Pelly worked her fingers over an organic knit sack anchored to a root near her perch. It produced small seeds which she shared with Deming. She popped one in her mouth.
He eyed his seed with an eyebrow up. "You know with all the blood I found on the south slope I thought you were dead. What happened?"
"I'm sorry. I fell again. I was working with some sort of a nest I found in the canopy. It took nearly an hour to reach it. I had taken a position above and to the side to observe, but the branch I was on split. It felt like falling for a half hour. I bashed one branch after another on the way down. Knocked out before I hit the ground I guess...I don't remember anything else. I didn't mean to make you worry."
"Did they really carry you all this way?" He indicated the Cleaners that were scattered around them, above and below.
"I don't know. I woke up here stripped and covered in webbing. My clothes were by the spring at the bottom. It was a few days before I was steady enough to go get them. How long have I been gone?"
"Ah, fifteen days." He looked over the side of the perch and could see the bottom. Ari calculated it at least eighty meters down. "How far did you explore?" He wiped his hands on his ragged trousers.
She brightened and pointed at the entrance that Deming has used. "I went up to the next chamber up through that passageway. It's snowing there!"
This gave Ari pause. She went over her mapping record and could see that overall they had made an arc, rather than a straight line away from the Atrium. It might be worth it to investigate the next chamber to see if there was a shorter path back and whether any new discoveries could be made.
Deming and Pelly agreed. He made a map for his daughter in case they got separated or he was struck unconscious. It would be no good having Ari with the only map if Pelly couldn't get to Ari.
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After a tour of the Cleaner's chamber, they reached the twelfth cavern the next day. It was considerably colder and far too dark to see more than a few dozen paces. The sky seemed to be a blur, and wind snarled down from above them. Deming held the rags to his head in an attempt to keep warm and to keep the cloth from being whipped away. Ari indicated her assessment to him. He yelled over the wind, "Ari says we're only a few hundred meters from the surface. This is probably a collapsed cavern. Maybe part of our wreckage caused it, now that I think of it. We need to be careful, since it might still be unstable. How far are we?"
Pelly looked at her map, as she folded herself around it to keep it from ripping off the tablet. She yelled back, "We're about thirty kilometers from home, maybe only four or five kilometers beyond the crash site." He had passed under it two days ago.
Deming nodded deeply. Already, he was getting very cold from his sweaty clothes being pierced by cruel ice and wind. "We should double back and rest up in the warmth of the tunnel. There is no telling where the next tunnel is and whether we even want to take it, or the one after."
They retreated the way they came and within moments were safely in the security of the tunnel that descended back to the previous cavern and past the ante-chamber. They backed down the tunnel far enough to feel the warm air wafting up from the cavern behind them. That cavern's warm fruit trees still could be detected in the air, and it made Ari think of the waterfall by the first tunnel found.
Deming tried to sit back against the tunnel wall. He frowned and then just stretched out flat anyway. He accidentally kicked Pelly's pack. She had already stretched out as well, farther down the tunnel. She whispered something to him that neither Ari nor Deming caught.
"I said, good night," she repeated, rather crossly.
Ari said to him, "You're still cold. I would guess she is too."
Deming seemed to consider this and grumbled as he turned over. He breathed, "You're not subtle."
"Correct," she replied. He was still adjusting to the changing relationship with his daughter. They were both still missing Pelly's mother, gone only two months. Comforting Pelly was complicated. She didn't want to hold hands or talk or cry. To be expected, thought Ari. Part of that had to be the girl's aversion to her own contact empathy.
Deming sighed and began backing down the tunnel until he was alongside his daughter. She seemed tense at first and there was a great untangling of cloth and pack straps and laces and zippers and clips that Deming had stirred up as he worked himself into a decent position. He was trying to avoid crushing Pelly into the curvature of the tunnel wall that rose behind her. In the end the space worked to roll the two into each other. Pelly settled for a spot to rest her head on her father's chest. However, he offered to have her face away, so that their matching shapes would afford a more economical use of the space and allow more freedom to move, he explained.
"You want to spoon?" she said, a smile in her voice, as she flipped over.
He reached behind him to swat away stones poking him. "Oh, I'm just trying to be practical," he grumbled.
____END PART 2 of 3____
The story is completed in the next part, so keep going~! Thank you for reading, please vote, give feedback and share~!