"They'll never let him go back… or you."
"But why?" Will asked. "We'll promise not to say anything… about all this."
There were a few seconds of silence, and then Grandma Macaulay coughed gently.
"It wouldn't wash with the Styx," she said. "They couldn't have anyone telling the Topsoilers about us. It might bring about the Discovery."
"The Discovery?"
"It's what we're taught in the Book of Catastrophes. It is the end of all things, when the people are ferreted out and perish at the hands of those above," Cal said flatly, as if reciting a verse.
"God forbid," the old lady murmured, averting her eyes and staring into the flames again.
"So what will they do with Chester?" Will asked, dreading the answer.
"Either he'll be put to work or he might be Banished… sent on a train down to the Deeps and left to fend for himself," Cal replied.
Will was about to ask what the Deeps were when out in the hall the front door was flung open with a bang. The fire flared and threw up a shower of sparks, which glowed briefly as they were drawn up the chimney. Grandma Macaulay peered around the side of her armchair, smiling as Cal and Bartleby both leaped to their feet. A powerful man's voice bellowed, "HELLO IN THERE!"
Still sleep-ridden, the cat blundered sideways against the underside of an occasional table, which crashed to the ground at the same instant that the drawing room door burst open. A massive, thickset amn entered the room like dirty thunder, his pale yet ruddy-cheeked face beaming with undisguised excitement.
"WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS HE?" he shouted, and locked his fierce gaze on Will, who rose apprehensively from his chair, uncertain what to make of this human explosion. In two strides, the man had crossed the room and clasped Will in a bear hug, hoisting him off his feet as if he weighed no more than a bag of feathers. Letting out a deafening roar of a laugh, he held Will at arm's length with his feet dangling helplessly in midair.
"Let me look at you. Yes… yes, you're your mother's boy, no mistake; it's the eyes, isn't it, Ma? He's got her eyes, and her chin… the shape of her handsome face, by God, ha-ha-ha!" he bellowed.
"Do put him down, Tam," Grandma Macaulay said.
The man lowered Will back down to the floor, still staring intently into the startled boy's eyes and grinning and shaking his head.
"It's a great day, a great day indeed." He stuck out a hug ham of a hand toward Will. "I'm your uncle Tam."
Will automatically held out his hand and Tam took it into his giant palm, shook it in an iron grip, and pulled Will in toward him, ruffling his hair with his other hand and sniffing at the top of his head loudly in an exaggerated manner.
"He's awash with Macaulay blood, this one," he boomed. "Wouldn't you say so, Ma?"
"Without a doubt," she said softly. "But don't you be frightening him with your horseplay, Tam."
Bartleby was rubbing his massive head against Uncle Tam's oily black pant legs and insinuating his long body between his and Will's, all the while purring and making an unearthly low whining sound. Tam glanced briefly down at the creature and then up at Cal, who was still standing next to his grandmother's chair, enjoying the spectacle.
"Cal, the magician's apprentice, how are you, lad? What do you think of all this, eh?" He looked from one boy to the other. "By God, it's good to see you two under the same roof again." He shook his head in disbelief. "Brothers, hah, brothers, my nephews. This calls for a drink. A real drink."
"We were just about to have some tea," Grandma Macaulay intervened quickly. "Would you care for a cup, Tam?"
He swung around to his mother and smiled broadly with a devilish glint in his eye. "Why not? Let's have a cup of tea and catch up."
With that the old woman disappeared into the hall, and Uncle Tam sat down in her vacated chair, which groaned under his weight. Stretching out his legs, he took a short pipe from the inside of his huge overcoat and filled it from a tobacco pouch. Then he used a taper from the fireside to light the pipe, sat back, and blew a cloud of bluish smoke up at the ornate ceiling, all the while looking at the two boys.
For a time, all that could be heard was the crackling of the burning coal, the intrusive purring of Bartleby, and the distant sounds of the old woman busy in the kitchen. No one felt the need to talk as the flickering light played on their faces and threw trembling shadows over the walls behind. Eventually Tam spoke.
"You know your Topsoiler father passed through here?"
"You saw him?" Will leaned toward Uncle Tam.
"No, but I talked to them that did."
"Where is he? The policeman said he was safe."
"Safe?" Uncle Tam sat forward, yanking the pipe from his mouth, his face becoming deadly serious. "Listen, don't you believe a word those spineless scum say to you; they're all snakes and leeches. The poisonous toadies of the Styx."
"That's quite enough, Tam," Grandma Macaulay said as she entered the room rattling a tray of tea in her unsteady hands and a plate laden with some "fancies," as she called them — shapeless lumps topped with white icing. Cal got up and helped her, handing cups to Will and Uncle Tam. Then Will let Grandma Macaulay have his chair and sat next to Cal on the hearth rug.
"So, about my dad?" Will asked a little sharply, unable to contain himself any longer.
Tam nodded and relit his pipe, unleashing voluminous shrouds of smoke that enveloped his head in a haze. "You only missed him by a week or so. He's gone to the Deeps."
"Banished?" Will sat bolt upright, his face filled with concern as he remembered the term that Cal had used.
"No, no," Tam exclaimed, gesticulating with his pipe. "He wanted to go! Curious thing, by all accounts he went willingly… no announcements… no spectacle… none of the usual Styx theatricals." Uncle Tam drew a mouthful of smoke and blew it out slowly, his brow furrowed. "I suppose it wouldn't have been much of a show for the people, no ranting and wailing from the condemned." He stared into the fire, his frown remaining as if he was profoundly baffled by the whole affair. "In the days before he left, he'd been seen wandering around, scribbling in his book… bothering folk with his foolish questions. I reckon the Styx thought he was a little…" Uncle Tam tapped the side of his head.
Grandma Macaulay cleared her throat and looked at him sternly.
"…harmless," he said, checking himself. "Reckon that's why they let him roam around like that. But you can bet they watched his every move."
Will shifted uneasily where he sat on the Persian rug; it felt wrong to be demanding answers from this good-natured and friendly man, this man who was purportedly his uncle, but he couldn’t help himself.
"What exactly are the Deeps?" he asked.
"The inner circles, the Interior." Uncle Tam pointed with the stem of his pipe at the floor. "Down below us. The Deeps."
"Its' a bad place, isn't it?" Cal put in.
"Never been there myself. It's not somewhere you'd choose to go," Uncle Tam said with a measured look at Will.
"But what's there?" Will asked, desperate to learn more about where his father had gone.
"Well, five or so miles down, there are other… I suppose you could call them settlements. That’s where the Miners' Train stops, where the Coprolites live." He sucked loudly on his pipe. "The air's sour down there. It's the end of the line, but the tunnels go farther — miles and miles, they say. Legends even tell of an inner world down deep, at the center, older towns and older cities, larger than the Colony." Uncle Tam chortled dismissively. "Reckon it's a load of codswallop, myself."
"But has anyone ever been down these tunnels?" Will asked, hoping in his heart of hearts that someone had.
"Well, there've been stories. In the year two twenty or thereabouts, they say a Colonist made it back after years of Banishment. What was his name… Abraham something?"