Niko stops walking and she raises on her arms. “Por favor.” She shifts her weight to one arm to beckon with the other. “Por favor.”
Niko steps toward her, the question How can I help? already breath in his mouth. But she is dead and damned and consigned to torment. Relief from what has been willed is beyond action or even consideration. How many damned down here, what private universes of suffering? Millions certainly. Billions probably. Even to alleviate their torment would consume the balance of his mortal years and derail him from his mission. Harden your heart, Niko. You cannot save them. They are already lost. Harden your heart.
That shouldn’t be too difficult for you, buddy pal, whispers another facet of himself, the demon voice in the Greek chorus of his self-deprecating soul.
The legless woman regards him now with her head atop her upcurved back. The shocking termination of her thighs. Some carved sphinx half buried in the hardpan of the plain, artifact of a civilization lost and alien and cruel. Her pleading face. Her pain-dulled eyes. Her outstretched hand. Already sprouting from her ragged stumps are tiny buds of legs to be.
Orange light throbs again to gleam her doubled trail of blood, which leads toward one of the distant blockish shapes.
I’m sorry, Niko says. I’m sorry. And hurries past ashamed and afraid. Behind him come her spanish imprecations. Niko feels her gaze between his shoulderblades. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
SCATTERED ON THE lambent plain are granite blocks. Ten feet square and smoothwalled, their shadows moving in the intermittent airborne orange light that waxes, lengthens, flickers, dies. The spanish woman’s driedblood trail abruptly stops beneath the bottom edge of one such block.
Warily Niko touches the rough hewn granite. A fissure jags the surface. The hard ground around it fissured too. Niko lowers his hand and steps back. A block like this would have to weigh what? Fifty, sixty tons? Niko leans away from the block and cranes up at the cavernous expanse of black that is not night. He frowns and quells a welling urge to blindly run. Instead he walks among the widely scattered cubes toward the source of the orange light. No nightchirps of crickets here, no hiss of wind in leaves. No freeway surf boom, no distant music or conversation. What he will hear down here is screams and moans and cracking whips. What human laughter he will hear is maniacal and leached of pleasure. The sounds that come across the plain are oddly flattened. The space is vast and the horizon unattainable, but Niko cannot shake his sense of being inside something, the certainty of living rock above his head. The panic-tinctured claustrophobia of being underground.
Now a man’s voice weakly calls out to him. Hey. Hey. Hey. Dull repetition as if uttered by rote. Hard to fix direction. Hey. Hey. Coming from his… left? Yes, from the block of granite nearest him. From its base.
Niko has decided to ignore the voice when it begins to call his name, Niko Niko Niko, with an urgency quite different from its leaden repetition. Gooseflesh sweeps his back and arms and his scalp grows tight. Your name is something you don’t want to hear called out down here. Unaccountable shudders in the mortal world are caused when someone says your name in Hell.
Niko turns toward the granite block. Emerging impossible from beneath the bottom and flush with the flat hard ground is a man’s head and neck and right arm. The man lies facedown where he’s been smashed flat. It’s too dark to discern more detail.
Niko stops before the man. “How do you know my name?”
The chanting stops. Then once more, Niko, in a whisper all relief. A thin weak voice with little air behind it. No surprise when tons of granite sit on top of lungs pressed flat as burst balloons. “You don’t. Recognize me? I’m crushed.”
“I can barely see you.” Niko glances around, half expecting some trick, some ambush or cruel joke.
“It’s Sam.”
“Sam?”
“Sam Gamundi. Samwise.”
“Samwise?” Niko can’t believe what he’s just heard. “Sam?” And hears himself ask a question that must, in this place, be the most hackneyed of clichés. “What are you doing down here?”
“Trying to. Dig my way out. I’ve made a start. Already.” But then Sam senses Niko’s larger question. “I don’t know. No one tells us. Anything and. There’s no way to. Find out.”
Pale orange flares and Niko sees that Sam indeed has made a start. Beneath the free right arm a small depression near his free shoulder has been scraped out with his fingernails and presumably leads beneath his flattened chest.
Niko frowns. The ground here is like rock. How long would it take to—
He gasps at sight of Sam’s face. Hydrostatic pressure from the impacting granite block burst cells and arteries and veins toward the free end of Sam’s body like stepping on half a waterfilled balloon. One of Sam’s eyes has popped partway from the socket. The other is beet red. Blood has burst from his ears and nostrils and mouth, from beneath fingernails scraped down to nubs.
Mercifully the orange light fades. “I’m luckier. Than most. I have something. To dig with.” Sam waves his free arm feebly. “Most others have to. Wait until. The rock wears away. Before they can. Get out.”
“Until it wears away?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna be. Down here forever. You learn to. Think longterm. You must not. Have been here. Very long.”
“I only just—”
“Well that’s the thing. It takes a while. To adjust. Hey are those. Shoes?” The head turns slightly. “And clothes. They let you in. With clothes? And. Shit is that. Your guitar? Son of a bitch. You mean you get. VIP treatment. Even here?”
“It’s not like that, Sam. I’m on a kind of mission. I’ll do whatever I can to help you but—”
“Son of a bitch. You’re not dead.”
Niko slowly shakes his head.
“Son of a bitch. You always were. The luckiest guy. I ever met. In my life. I followed your career. Since we were. In school. Had all your albums. Used to tell people. I knew you. Way back when. Told em even then. I knew you were. Going to be famous. Always carrying that. Little guitar around like. Linus’ blanket. Son of a bitch. How in the world. Did you get down here. And you not dead?”
“Um. I took a cab.”
Oddly enough Sam accepts this with a slight nod. But then Sam has probably learned to accept an awful lot.
“What can I do, Sam?”
“For starters you can. Get me out. From under this. Damn thing.”
Niko appraises the block. “I don’t see how. There’s no way in hell—uh, there’s no way to move this block.”
“Don’t move it. Dig me out. From under it. I’m pretty much. Healed under here. But I can only. Do so much. With one arm.”
Niko squats, sighs, lets go of the guitar case. “Sam. I don’t—that would take a long time, and I don’t—”
“See the block. Closest to us. Over there?” The free arm points. “I see it.”
“On top of it there’s. A tool that. Got dropped there. Bring that back. And you can. Dig me out. With it.”
“A tool.”
“Uh huh.”
“You want me to climb on top of that block and bring back a tool that got dropped there and dig you out.”
“You got it.”
Niko sighs again. “Sam.”
“Listen Niko. You’re mortal. Down here. You’ll need sleep. You’ll need food. Whatever your mission is. You aren’t gonna get. Far without food. Or sleep. And you’ll get filleted. Like a chicken. If you get caught. Sleeping anywhere. In this joint. I can help you. I don’t know. What you’re doing here. But this place is really. Really big. I can help you get. Where you’re going.”
Niko shakes his head. Not negation but resignation. “All right, Sam. Back in a few minutes.”