Earth

WAITOMO CAVES. JUST AHEAD. COME SEE THE WONDER OF THE WAIKATO.

One of the billboards depicted a family of happy spelunkers, helmet lamps glowing as they pointed at astonishing sights just offstage.

“We’ve entered their security perimeter, by now,” Manella said. To seem more relaxed, he’d have to close his eyes and go to sleep.

“You think so?” Teresa knew he didn’t mean the tourist concessionaires. She frowned at the blur of conifers rushing past her window. Manella glanced at her and smiled. “Don’t fret. Lustig isn’t a violent type.”

“How do you explain what happened in Iquitos then?”

“Well, I admit he is… highly accident prone.” When Teresa laughed bitterly, Pedro shrugged. “That doesn’t release him from responsibility. Au contraire. Unlucky people should exercise special caution, lest their bad luck come to harm others. In Lustig’s case—”

“His message hinted he knew something about the destruction of Erehwon. Maybe he caused it! He might be working with Spivey, for all we know.”

Manella sighed. “A chance we’ll have to take. And now we’re here.”

Signs pointed left to public parking. Pedro swooped down, around, and into a slot with a display of panache Teresa could have lived without. She emerged to a syncopation of crackling vertebrae, feeling more respect than ever for the pioneers of Vostok, Mercury, and Gemini, who first ventured into space crammed into canisters approximately the. same size of the tiny car.

She and her companion crossed the highway to the ticket booth, paid for two admissions, and joined other tourists passing under one of the ubiquitous carved archways that seemed a New Zealand trademark. Teresa glanced at those gathering for the two o’clock tour, a sparse assortment of winter travelers that included hand-holding Asian newly-weds, retirees with Australian accents, and local children in quaint woolen school uniforms. For all she knew, any of them might be agents for the mysterious organization they’d tracked to this place.

The meeting had been set up with delicacy and circumlocution, each side taking precautions against a possible double cross. It all struck Teresa as anachronistic, and hopelessly adolescent.

Unfortunately, adolescents ran the world. Big, irresponsible adolescents like Jason or this Lustig fellow, whose dossier read like the biography of a high-tech Peter Pan. Even worse were serious, bloody-minded types like Colonel Spivey, whose games of national security were played with real multitudes serving as pawns. She recalled how intensely the man had worked during the recent space mission. Spivey was driven, all right. Sometimes that could be a good thing.

It could also make some people dangerous.

“You’re sure these people will keep their word?” she whispered to Manella.

He looked back with amusement. “Of course I’m not sure! Lustig may be nonviolent, but what do we know about his backers?” Again, he shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

Ask a foolish question… Teresa thought.

Their tour guide arrived at last, a dark-haired, dark-ski

She caught herself glancing backward to see if anyone was sneaking up behind them, and made herself stop doing it.

The vegetation changed as they passed under a rain forest canopy. Exotic birds flitted under moist foliage that looked so healthy you might never imagine how many other places like this were withering elsewhere on the planet. Here even the smells seemed to convey strength, diversity. This jungle felt as if it were a long way from dying. Inhaling felt like taking a tonic. That calmed her a bit. She took deep breaths.

They turned a corner and suddenly the cave entrance yawned ahead of them. The gap in the mountainside was appropriately dark, foreboding. Steps proceeded downward between slippery metal banisters, with bare bulbs spaced at intervals apparently calculated to maximize eerie shadows, to thrill visitors with an illusion of creaking decrepitude and mystery. ,

Teresa listened idly as the guide recited something having to do with great birds, cousins of the legendary moa, who used to get trapped in caves like these during prehistoric times, leaving their bones to be discovered by astonished explorers many centuries later.

As they descended, he used a beam to point out features of the grottoes, carved over thousands of years by patient underground streams, then embellished with fluted limestone apses by centuries of slow seepage. In places the ceiling gave way to shafts and chimneys that towered out of sight or dropped into total blackness, lined with soda-straw draperies and crystalline, branchlike helicites. Curling galleries curved out of view, hinting at an interminable maze that would surely swallow anyone foolish enough to leave the wooden walkway.

It was, indeed, quite beautiful. Still, Teresa felt little true surprise or awe. It was all too familiar from prior exposure on TV or in net-zines. She nodded familiarly at stalactites and stalagmites, acquaintances already encountered in the past by proxy. Rather than eerie or strange, they were neighbors she had learned a lot about over the years, long before ever meeting them in person.

The good side of the world media village was the sense it gave ten billion that each of them had at least some small co

Perhaps that was why I became an astronaut, in hopes of someday seeing some special place before the cameras got there.

If so, lots of luck. The vast mountain ranges of the moon were still unclimbed. And at present rate, they probably never would be. Likewise the steep canyons, ice sheets, and red vistas of Mars.

Teresa sca

“Now we’ll be going down another set of stairs,” their guide a

The visitors’ voices grew hushed as they descended plank steps, put there to protect the limestone floor from the erosive rub of countless feet. Once, Teresa caught a white flash of teeth as Manella turned to grin at her. She ignored him, pretending not to see.

Soon it was hardly pretense. Colliding with Pedro’s broad back was her first warning the descent had ended. Whispers diminished to an occasional giggle as people bumped awkwardly. A cough. A faint, familiar hiss as someone in the crowd took oxygen from a hip flask, followed by a mumbled apology.

Listening carefully, Teresa made out rhythmic thumping sounds and a faint splash. The tour leader spoke from somewhere to her left. “We’ll divide the group now and continue by water. Each boat will have a guide, standing in the prow, who will pull you along by hauling on ropes arrayed along the ceiling.”

As her eyes adapted, Teresa soon made out smudges here and there — the edge of the dock and several small vessels moored alongside, with a man’s or woman’s silhouette at the bow. She even thought she could trace a webbery of cables draped across the rock overhead.

“Interesting mode of transport,” Pedro commented as they watched the first boat depart. More tourists were helped into the next one and the queue moved forward.

“As each boat rounds the bend ahead,” the chief guide continued. “You’ll leave behind the last illumination. Your pilot will be operating by memory and touch alone. But don’t worry, we only lose one or two boatloads a year.”