Freenet by Steve Stanton Read Free Book Online

off to the left, showing the ceiling in a perfect reflection. No breeze stirred the stillness, no ripple marred the surface. “It’s amazing.”
    “This is Secret Lake, one of the ancient caverns,” Zen said with a dozen echoes off the icicles. “It’s been here for millennia.”
    Simara squinted up at the ceiling in the meagre light. “Is it frozen?”
    “No, that’s crystal calcite. It’s made from minerals that have seeped down through the mountain. You can see they’re still dripping. That means they’re still alive and growing, but it takes centuries. We’ll never notice any change in our lifetimes. If you look through a single calcite crystal, you see a double image. It’s weird. We used to play here as children, and swim in the cool water.”
    “Those are stalactites?”
    “Right,” Zen said, nodding, “very good. The ones growing up from the floor are called stalagmites, and they
might
join together someday into a column, like that one over there.” He pointed to a white stone cylinder that ran from floor to ceiling. “The bigger ones are called pillars. You’ll see some upstairs in the grand ballroom. C’mon.”
    Simara stooped over the lake to check her reflection in the looking glass. She combed her fingers through a tangle of loose black curls in a pitiful attempt to primp for the party. Her space-wasted cheeks were hollow under high cheekbones, her eyes dark under thick lashes—she had a plain face with a pointed chin, hardly worth a second glance in a crowd, but today her mouth looked cadaverous, and she longed for a smudge of lipstick to add a touch of colour. Her new collared tunic looked smart and dressy, punched out with youthful vigour even without a bra. At least she had that much going for her. She rubbed her rough lips with a fingertip.
    “Don’t worry, you look great,” Zen called back from across the cavern, and his voice echoed in a lingering chant as she turned to follow. “. . . you look great . . . you look great.”
    “Geologists think the ballroom was once a volcano that was buried in a flood,” he said as they walked. The tunnel walls in this area seemed to be coated with antique white porcelain, the ceiling pebbly and convoluted like underwater coral, the air damp and cool, every surface shiny with condensation. “Millions of years later it was pushed up into this mountain range by tectonic action, and the softer sediments were washed away to hollow out the interior. Then the calcite started to coat the walls and collect into pillars. The cave was discovered by the early colonists and became one of the first underground cities. The corporate mining camps come and go as they scrape away the surface of Bali, but our native community is carved into the bedrock of the world.” Zen beamed with pride for his culture and heritage, his striding gait regal and purposeful.
    Simara heard a steady pulse-beat of drums in the distance, then a bustle of voices and a hum of music as they approached the festival. The tunnel widened into a vestibule where a handful of men chatted together and passed a smouldering stick of weed. One man in a matching green cassock stepped forward as they approached. “Sneaking in the back door, Zen?” he asked as he raised an elbow in greeting.
    “Rising up from the underground, brother,” Zen replied as he crossed his arm in passing.
    The man chuckled and nodded as he returned to his friends in a cloud of pungent smoke.
    As they entered the ballroom into a milling crowd, Simara was overcome by sparkling brilliance and loud music. She shaded her eyes and blinked with surprise. The cavern was immense, stretching up above as far as she could view, the walls glassy with white calcite, glowing with strange phosphorescence, huge columns and rockfalls, mounds of flowstone decorated with colourful clan banners. A band raised a cacophony on a raised stage to her left, a ring of drummers surrounded by musicians with stringed instruments and horns. The