Freedom Star

Chapter 10

He hit the water with a force that drove all the air from his lungs and a cold shock that almost stopped his heart: the jungle might be hot, but this water flowed down from the glaciers in the high mountains. Disoriented, unable to tell up from down, he flailed wildly, body already screaming for oxygen. Something struck him a numbing blow on the knee and then suddenly, miraculously, his head broke water and he gasped a blessed mixture of air and spray.

The torrent spun him around and he saw the bridge, a dark spiderweb silhouetted against the sky, already far behind him. The walls of the gorge drew closer together as he plunged helplessly onward, faster and faster. If I hit a rock now it will split me in two, he thought; but the very force of the water's flow protected him, building a cushion of high-pressure water around the rounded boulders that swept by him on every side, and in the end the rapids spat him out into a broad, placid pool, surrounded on every side by high rock walls. The icy water had sapped his strength, but some spark still left inside him drove him to move his leaden limbs and struggle to the only landing place he could see, a narrow bit of flat land like a tiny rocky beach beneath a looming granite cliff. Shivering and retching, he pulled himself up onto it and collapsed.

An unknown time later he opened his eyelids, which seemed to be lined with sandpaper, and stared up at the clouds scudding over the rim of the cliff. The sight made him giddy, so he rolled over, groaning, and sat up to take stock of his situation.

It didn't look encouraging. Not one of the walls surrounding the lake looked climbable, and he would have to swim to get to them, anyway; the flat bit of land he stood on was the only place of its kind.

That left him only one option: to plunge back into the river and hope it might carry him some place where he could climb out of the gorge. Of course, it might also carry him to a waterfall or bash his brains out against a boulder—in fact, those were the likely outcomes. Being alive and relatively uninjured now was nothing short of a miracle, and he had strong misgivings about his chances of receiving a second one.

He got to his feet, painfully, feeling as if he'd been thoroughly beaten by a dozen men twice his size, and took a half-dozen steps to the cliff. He could see now it was worse than sheer, leaning outward from its base. Without rock-climbing equipment, a partner, and maybe a jetpack for good measure, he didn't stand a hope in—

Something off to his right caught his eye and he limped over to have a closer look. It was a large chunk of rock that appeared to have split away from the main body of the cliff, but the shadow behind it looked wrong, somehow; shaped funny, and far too black in the gray light of the overcast day. Jon knelt and peered inside.

A cave! More than that, a cave from which he felt a faint but unmistakable breath of cool air. That meant another outlet, and probably one above the gorge, since the cave must have been water-formed and obviously all the water in this area ran to the gorge. All he had to do was follow the cave, and he'd be back in the jungle—and not too far from the camp.

He smiled grimly. Dar's going to be very surprised to see me, he thought; a thought followed immediately by one of far more immediate concern.

"I sure wish I had a flashlight," he muttered. What little light made it into the cave from its narrow mouth penetrated only a couple of metres. Jon hesitated, peering into the absolute darkness ahead of him. He could be entering a maze, and without a light, he could be entering it for good. The thought of crawling through darkness until he starved or fell down a chasm to his death (quite possibly a very slow and agonizing one if he didn't manage to kill himself instantly) was almost enough to drive him back out into the light, but the options he had identified out there weren't much more appetizing.