“You"re late,” Ken snapped, then said, “and it"s only me today.”He threw his bags over the headrest and climbed into the passenger seat. Raul started to ramble, offering an endless succession of excuses, but Ken stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“No bullshit, let"s just go,” he said.“I"m on a schedule here.”
** *
The Jeep bucked and lurched as the tires struck the roots and vines that cluttered the thin layer of dirt that passed for a jungle road.Sweat covered Ken"s body and mosquitoes persisted to hover about his head despite the speed at which Raul drove. He itched all over and didn"t care.
The inherent beauty of the rainforest moved any discomfort to the back of his mind. It seemed such a difficult proposition for people to live in conditions such as these. The humidity, the insects, the predators; all these natural dangers made one have to be on top of their game to simply survive, let alone blossom into a society. To Ken, this fact brimmed with splendor. It echoed the heights humans could reach – did reach – before technology caused universal laziness to wash over the globe.
Two hours after the journey began they entered a clearing.The vision of the site awoke a tinge of sadness within Ken; the soothing embrace of nature in its purest form was ripped away, revealing the ugly beginnings of Humanity"s pursuit of intended uniformity. Rubble from the excavation had been carelessly placed in random piles, creating a rocky maze so thin in some places that stone tore into the Jeep on both sides when they passed.
They drove across the winding stretch of flattened grass that weaved through the debris and stopped at what looked like a giant mouth cut into the landscape.Ken stepped out, pulled his travel case from the back, and removed from it his harness, a coil of thick cable as wide as his torso, and his tool belt. He took a clasp – one of each had been secured on opposite ends of the lead – and fastened it to the Jeep"s tow hitch. That done, he tossed the cord over the edge of the pit. A few seconds later he heard a dull thud. The cable had struck ground. He whistled between his teeth. Judging by how long it took to reach the bottom, it had to be at least seventy feet deep.
A cold, nervous sweat dribbled down his neck as he fastened the tool belt around his waist, wiggled into the harness, locked its catch around the line, and put on his gloves. He crawled to the lip and peered over.
“Bugger, that"s deep,” he whispered.Then, his resolve returning, he turned to Raul and said, “You, wait here,” in an authoritative tone.
While bracing his feet on the rim of the crater he pulled the cable taut, took a deep breath, and plunged into the void.
A rush of cold, wet air greeted him.His arms ached as he lowered himself down one hand at a time; his leg muscles stiffened from squeezing his feet against the rope for support. Had James been there he would have used the second support lead, which he should have done anyway, just in case. Now, if he fell, there"d be nothing to break his fall but the ground below.
He shivered and tried to force thoughts of his carelessness to the back of his mind, which proved a simple task seeing as his anticipation bubbled over any other invading emotion like foam at the crest of an ocean wave.
Still further he descended.No light penetrated the small opening up above, leaving him in the black. Barbs scraped his bare elbows when he swung too close to the cracked tunnel walls.
He considered for a moment how the walls themselves seemed much too round, the plunge much too straight, to be the happenstance creation of wayward dynamite. He thought it possible the channel had been created, then pushed that thought, as well, to the storage space in the deep recesses of his brain. There will be no conjecture here, he thought. There is only observation.Gather the data. The time for assumptions and analysis comes later.
After fifteen minutes of his slow, laborious plunge through the darkness, he felt a sudden breeze.The mugginess surrounding him disappeared – the revealing sign of the end of the channel. He remembered the warning FuadCerrano, the director of the Nicaraguan National Institute, left on his cellular – take it slow once you hit the open, you will have the urge to drop quickly, don’t do that, the plummet is far, yet the floor still seems to come at you in a hurry, the first two men we sent down both broke bones in their legs – and he heeded that advice, placing one hand beneath the other even slower than before.