Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [48]
“That don’t mean there are more than one of … whoever this is … in here.” My cousin exuded his usual confidence, but it wasn’t working. The marks seemed all to be made by feet of roughly the same massive size. Regardless, retreat was never even discussed. When I look back now, I wonder about this. We were all down here for our own hustles, pursuing our own self-serving delusions, maybe, but now that we found ourselves on the trail of something genuinely new, something undiscovered, all that could wait. We had to see it through. It was decided then that we should break up into pairs and explore the three tunnels ahead, returning to this spot after five minutes.
Jeffree pushed off with Carlton Damon Carter before the rest of us had even adjusted our gear, so the captain moved to the left entrance with Garth in tow. I tried to follow them, but my cousin literally pushed me back to the last group. Nathaniel and Angela Latham. Nathaniel smiled. Angela wouldn’t even look at me, the way she hadn’t since we’d gotten here. Not like she was mad, or even uncomfortable. Just like her eyes naturally went three feet over and down in my presence.
“If we were to find something, Chris.” Nathaniel left her to run up beside me, the most energy I’d seen him exert since we got down here. He tapped on my hood to get me to reveal an ear to him. “Naming rights would be no small issue. Of course, it’s really intellectual property rights that are prominent here.” The ceilings continued to lower as we went. It was all downhill, taking Nathaniel, Angela, and I farther into the depths.
“Fortunes can be made in being an expert, I’m sure you know,” he damn near purred. “There’s documentaries, coffee table books, reality shows. But even if you get to play the expert role, you’d need management. Someone to deal with the finances, publicity.”
“Slow down, Chris. Listen to him. He’s the best.” Angela followed me on my other side, tugging on my arm in a way I decided to read as seductive. Nathaniel, watching, smiling, knew his wife hypnotized me, but he also knew she was so far out of my reach that my obsession posed no threat. “There’s not much left to be new in the world anymore, Chris,” he told me, grabbing her gloved hand right across me and squeezing it. I stopped, just to look at them. This sent Nathaniel into a riff on international property rights and the Internet. I turned to Angela. She was looking at me now, but just to impress upon me that I should be listening to him. Her face modeled the seriousness with which she thought I should be taking Nathaniel’s pitch. I mimicked her without meaning to, until I caught myself.
“That’s enough. For today. Let’s go back.” I turned to walk in the other direction. I tried to split through the two of them, but Angela held tight and they stepped out of my path before I could reach them.
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Nathaniel asked when he caught up to me. It had been five minutes and we were heading back to the first cavern, and from the dread in his voice I knew that he too had noticed the mess of tracks that had formed behind us. Tunnel entrances I had ignored on the way down now seemed to tempt me as possible return routes. Had we really walked down in a straight line, or was that just an illusion? Was one of these side openings actually our way out?
“These are the freshest tracks right here.” Angela, bent down on her knees, took a picture of the evidence with her cell phone for posterity. “The others are shallower; the wind’s thinned them out. And they’re crusted over.” The two of us looked down at her, and when she got up, we followed behind. She walked faster leading, but it wasn’t more than a minute later when the little woman halted abruptly. Flung a flat palm up in the air to motion