So, he thought as he shone his headlamp down the corridor in one direction, then the other. Which way?
He looked up at the place where he’d entered and calculated that to head toward the continent he wanted to turn to his left.
He took two steps forward and was blown off his feet.
Snapped into survival mode, Mikel hunched into a fetal form as a rush of air rocketed him down the tunnel. The airstream was steady only in velocity, not in dynamics. With no warning it would suddenly twist viciously, then again and again. Several times it slammed him into the wall. He’d fall and then with no respite the wind would pick him up again and hurtle him onward. He wished he hadn’t taken off his helmet but so far his arms were enough protection. Then he was slammed especially hard. His headlamp smashed and broke and the tunnel went instantly utterly dark.
A second later the airstream flipped him over and blasted him toward the ceiling, face first. He kicked out to let his feet take the brunt of the impact and felt the jolt all the way up his spine.
Jesus Christ—
He needed a way out of this. He looked around for anything he could cling to.
Another flip, and then he noticed that he was primarily slamming into the wall on the left. To get back to center, he tried pulling his arms tightly to his sides, straightening his legs. The airstream responded with a push. He must have overshot slightly because he was whipped right out of the airstream directly into another one that slammed him into the opposite wall. Quickly he ducked his head back in the original direction, crossed what he sensed was the centerline, and slammed into the left wall again at an angle that would leave a bruise on his arm from elbow to shoulder.
He tried again directing himself toward the middle with a hell of a lot more caution. He was right, in the exact center of the tunnel the airstream smoothed out and lost some of its turbulence. He caught the sweet spot and stayed there, keeping his head bowed to shield his face. He was moving in the direction he wanted to go and there were no more collisions. For the first time he was able to draw a real breath, as opposed to panicked gasps.
The pneumatic airstream was propelling him at what felt like the speed of a car. Obviously this tunnel had been designed for humans inside contraptions of some kind. The magic carpets? But just in case there was some kind of accident, just in case air pressure became a threat, the designers had provided protection for the body. The mask! he thought suddenly, and almost laughed with the marvel of it. Mikel had felt his lungs firm up but now he realized that his eardrums must have been protected against increased air pressure too; an eardrum would rupture long before a lung collapsed. Perhaps even his bones and muscles had received a boost, which might explain why he hadn’t fractured anything yet. The effects of the mask could have been giving his whole body extra resilience.
Magnificent technology, he thought, humbled, and it would fit in his pocket if he ever headed home. He suddenly felt overwhelmed with the realization that he was plugged into both history and legend. This airstream was Aeolus, the Greek keeper of the wind. Here it was—real, not myth. Undetected by the outside world, perhaps only just revived, and Mikel was in it.
Suddenly, he was weeping.
The tears came fast and puddled inside his goggles, steaming the insides—not that he could see anything anyway. It had finally hit him, after so many close calls. He probably would not make it home. He was underground, in the dark, in one of the most remote spots on Earth. Worse, he was the only person to know one of the secret wonders of the world and he was going to die in it.
Eventually his tears stopped and the profound sense of loneliness froze within him. He was plunging through a pneumatic system that was not designed for human bodies and he didn’t see how he was going to come to a stop except catastrophically. Whatever resilience the mask had given him, it would not help him survive a full stop at a dead end.
Mikel had always thought that if he saw his life flashing before his eyes, it would be the result of an involuntary spasm, but now he felt that he was choosing to do it, seeing his crazy Basque grandmother, then school, university, grad school, Flora and the Group, the scientists—more than one—whom Mikel had stolen artifacts from. With most of his family either deceased or self-absorbed, he didn’t think there was one person on Earth who would mourn him—except maybe Siem, but that would be more a function of feeling overwhelmed by tragedies. Even Flora. She had seemed distraught over the way Arni died and also by his absence—but mourning? No. Mikel couldn’t imagine her grieving for him.
Suddenly, Mikel realized that there might be a way through this. The quartz-and-olivine panels he’d left behind: perhaps they were set in terminals. There might be a way to pinpoint the next one, if there was one.
He listened carefully to see if there was any change in the sound of the wind. His senses on high alert, he wondered how long he’d been suffering the now-painful howling. But then he heard it: a slightly hollow sound, deeper than the shrieking in the rest of the tunnel, nearly a full octave lower.
It came and went and then a minute later it came again, passing him faster than he could make a move. But now he knew what to listen for and when the next one came, he was ready.
Damn it, he missed. But he had the rhythm. Timing it out from memory, he anticipated when he would feel the next sound beside him and jackknifed toward it.
Whipping across the airstream into an opening on the side of the tunnel, his body dropped heavily to the ground as the air support disappeared, but it was not nearly as bad as a crash.
Collecting his wits and his breath, Mikel could not believe he was still alive and in one piece. He waited for the tingling and fear to stop shaking him, then he finally got to his knees and then to his feet. The new space welcomed him like Prospero’s beach in a tempest, sheltering him from the hell of sound and wind.
Still in total darkness, he felt all around the space and realized it was quite small, with no entrance for lava to have spewed through, but it did have what he recognized as another quartz panel. Once again it popped open under his fingertips and just as he’d predicted, it was one of the “bobsleds.” Almost praying, he fumbled around the back of the contraption, trying to free it. Nothing. It was as mysteriously secure as the others.
Many attempts and long minutes later, Mikel cursed and drove his fist into the rock. Feeling claustrophobic and trapped, he began to pry the mask off his face so he could get one damned breath of fresh air. Then, as soon as the mask was in his hands, the area flashed with an extraordinarily bright light. A millisecond later the light was gone. Purple and green afterimages flooded across his eyes. Mikel reached out to feel the niche again to see if he could locate the source of the flash. He was interrupted by a sharp knock on his knee. With a crisp sound like wicker snapping, one of the contraptions had dropped out of the niche and hit his leg, then toppled onto the floor. Mikel had the sudden impression that he’d just been photographed—and approved.
He picked up the sled, praying it hadn’t cracked when it was released.
“Let’s hope you know what to do.”
With one hand on the stone wall to guide him, he stepped back into the tunnel but stopped short of the airstream. He restored the mask to his face, then carefully climbed into the surprisingly firm contraption placing his head in what he saw as a cobra-like hood. He suspected it would fill with wind when he stepped back into the airstream, to carry him along like a sail.