Into the Second World Read online

  In the center of the room was a large table on which sat cups, dishes with food still on them, three candelabras with the candles burned down, at least twenty books in various piles, two ink wells, several pens, and a great scattering of papers. More books sat on the floor.

  Herr Thesiger crossed the room directly to his uncle.

  Professor Queller was something of a surprise. I had pictured him with white hair and a wide beard to match, scrawny, and hunched in form. Henrik Queller was a different sort altogether—a robust man whose unruly brown hair showed only a few silvery threads at the temple. His beard was more peppered, but was cut in a neat Van Dyke style that made him look younger. I saw the family resemblance at once in the strong, square jaw, the full lips, and the strikingly blue eyes.

  Queller looked up, noting my presence with a brief, puzzled frown before turning to his nephew.

  “Look what I’ve found,” the professor said. He gestured at a long table obviously meant to be a sideboard. It had been cleared and dragged over to a window to let the sunlight shine on its surface, which was now littered with papers of varying sizes, more inkwells, and an assortment of pens.

  The whole impression was that of some nobleman’s private quarters having been invaded by a band of students. Boyish enthusiasm had spilled right across the fine carpets and washed up onto the furnishings like a flood tide. But the discourse was on another plane entirely.

  In excited but hushed tones, the two men pored over the notes. I caught references to a chapterhouse near Bolzano, something about karst rivers and lava tubes, and a quick but spirited argument over whether ley lines might run vertically as well as horizontally. Some of it I recognized from Professor Queller’s own publications.

  I listened quietly but impatiently. I did not care for how the professor had ignored me after a single glance. The message clearly was that, being female, I could not possibly be of importance. I leaned against the wall, pack on back and stick in hand, as if ready to depart in a moment. I wasn’t, of course. This was all-or-nothing for me, but I wasn’t about to let them know that.

  The ogre had knelt, though the ceilings were at least ten feet high. I smiled at him, as a fellow outcast. When he smiled back, displaying his mouth full of daggers, I resolved not to smile at him again.

  Queller and his nephew talked on, but when the professor mentioned the name McBride, I had to speak up.

  “Pardon me, gentlemen,” I said. Might as well be polite. “Do you speak of James McBride, the author of Symmes’ Theory of Concentric Spheres?”

  The two men looked up and fell instantly silent. Professor Queller regarded me with open astonishment, as if a cat had just stood and spoke Latin.

  “Have we met, Fräulein?” Queller said.

  “Uncle, you were so caught up, I didn’t have a chance to make introductions.”

  “And now?”

  “Yes, of course. May I present Gabrielle Lauten.” He gestured from me to his uncle. “This is Herr Doktor Professor Henrik Queller, of the University of Rostock, the leader of our expedition.”

  The professor nodded to me. “Fräulein,” he said, still very much mystified by my presence in his apartment.

  “She is a reporter…”

  “Journalist,” I interjected. Foolish, I know, and rude, but I couldn’t help myself. The distinction mattered.

  “Journalist,” he amended, “with the Augsburg Zeitung.”

  The frown deepened as Nik continued.

  “She’s going with us,” he said, smiling brightly.

  “Where?” Queller said, smiling in return but obviously not knowing what I was smiling about.

  “With us, Uncle. Into Lamprecht’s Cave.”

  The smile left.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Queller said. “She can’t go. She’s … a female.”

  “It’s not ridiculous,” Nik said. “Women have gone exploring before. Marianne North. Others.”

  I did appreciate that he was trying, even if he could only manage to name one woman explorer. At the very least, he could add me to his list.

  “It is scandalous.” Queller windmilled his arms as if he could wave away the problem. Could wave away me.

  “My publisher did not tell you?” I said, knowing the answer.

  “The letter promised funding,” Herr Thesiger said. “Very generous. All we had to do was bring along a repor … a journalist.”

  “So you naturally assumed I was a man.”

  “A sensible assumption!” Queller snapped.

  I bit back my first response. The Zeitung had figured if Queller knew I was female, he never would have signed the contract. I wasn’t sure which made me angrier: that the publisher would pull such a deception, or that he was probably right to do so.

  The younger man gave me a look I knew well enough from other men: Let me handle this. I started to speak anyway—I’m not good at keeping quiet when told to—but he turned to Queller and began speaking.

  “Uncle, we talked about this. We need the publicity if our discoveries are not to be ignored. We need the press.”

  “Scientific journals,” Queller muttered.

  “Newspapers,” the nephew said with emphasis. “The common folk do not read Vierteljahrschriften!”

  This struck so close to my heart, I nearly interrupted. Bring science to the masses? Yes, and ten times yes! But their argument rolled on, and I feared to upset it. I do make the occasional smart decision. From time to time.

  “I wish you had not gone to that man,” Queller said in a sulk.

  “I went to many,” the other said. “He’s the first who agreed to fund us.”

  The professor wasn’t done sulking.

  “She presents nothing but problems, Niki.” Queller waved one arm in my direction without actually looking at me.

  “I agree.”

  “She has no experience.”

  “I agree.”

  “She young and pretty,” Queller said. “You very likely will fall in love with her, and then you will take all sorts of risks to protect her. Unnecessary risks!”

  “Everything has risks.”

  “She’s a female, Niki,” Queller said. “Hardly more than a girl.”

  “I agree.”

  “Oh, do stop saying that. You know what I mean. We shall have to be aware of her … delicate sensibilities. Of her,” I could almost see him groping for words, “feminine requirements.”

  “I agree.”

  “A pox on your agreements!”

  “Uncle, she is inexperienced, but so are you. She’s not as strong, but then I’m not as strong as Cosmas. You would, I’m sure, prefer an expedition comprised of several copies of yourself, but that’s not how this works. I’ve got experience in this, experience you supposedly rely upon.”

  Queller’s face went red from the neck up. Herr Thesiger concluded quickly.

  “She has the bank draft, Uncle. All we requested. We can pay our fees and be gone within two days. Tomorrow, even! But the letter of instruction is clear. Miss Lauten must join the expedition or the draft is canceled.”

  A pause ensued, as when storm clouds have gathered but lightning has not yet struck. I fancied I could hear thunder, but the professor now surprised me.

  “Why do you wish to go on this expedition?” he asked, looking directly at me at last. His voice was thick from an effort to control it.

  “Because,” I replied, “I am a scientific journalist and this expedition may well make new discoveries. I wish to be there for it and to report it to the world.”

  Queller looked at me for a long moment and then another. His nephew whispered at his ear, but the professor waved him off.

  “Why did you ask about McBride?” Queller said after another pause.

  The abrupt change was disconcerting, but I replied at once. “He is an advocate of Symmes,” I replied. “The theory of a hollow Earth.”

  “It is more than a theory,” Queller said.

  “I know you regard it as fact,” I said.


  “Of course!” Queller exclaimed. “It is indisputable.”

  “It is disputed by quite a number of scientists. They all agree that the Earth is a solid sphere with a molten core.” I was being pushy, but I would stand on my own ground.

  “They are wrong,” Queller said firmly. “Is that why you interrupted? So you could dispute?”

  “I wished only to ask what Symmes’ theories have to do with the attempt to find and rescue Étienne Fournier.”

  The professor’s eyebrows went up. “It has everything to do with … Niki, did you not tell her?”

  His nephew shrugged. “I let you have the honor.” He winked at me. Winked!

  “Monsieur Fournier has been gone for how long?”

  It took a moment to realize he was asking me. “Over three months,” I replied.

  “Nearly four,” Queller said. “A span of time during which an experienced man should be able to cover at least two thousand miles.”

  I thought the figure rather high, but said nothing.

  “The calculation leads to one of two conclusions. Either Fournier and his entire party are dead, an eventuality I find most unlikely, or Lamprecht’s Cave goes deeper—far deeper—than any of the self-appointed experts suppose.”

  The professor crossed to the table as if to show me something but reversed course at once. He went back and forth from window to table as he continued.

  “Fournier is no fool. He looked at the evidence and came to the same conclusion as I have. The cave with its legendary passage outre la mer, the stories of magical treasure, the existence of the Troll Gates so long thought mythical, all point in the same direction. Down!” He pointed dramatically at the floor.

  “Plumb the depths indeed. I shall never forgive that scoundrel for not bringing me along. Not even a letter!”

  I knew where he was going with this diatribe, but I chose to hear him out. I was already making notes in my mind about the crackpot professor and his hodgepodge crew. The Zeitung story was in danger of becoming a comedy. The Herr Doktor Professor went on without a pause.

  “You will object that it is impossible to carry enough supplies to last four months. That deep caverns are more bereft of nourishment than is a trackless desert. If that is true, then we shall find only corpses.

  “I propose, however, to consider another possibility. I hold that Herschel, Symmes, Davy, all were on the right scent. The possibility of a second world at the Earth’s core is well established by them.”

  “But where is the evidence?” I asked, carefully, for his extreme passion was a bit intimidating.

  “All around us,” he cried. He gestured to the table. “Before your very eyes, should you care to open them.”

  I shot him a look that I hoped was a righteous glare; I didn’t care what he made of it, but he ignored it.

  “Here” the professor said, patting the table. “Come here and see.”

  “Careful,” Herr Thesiger said, “if he thinks you’re a willing student, you’ll be at it for hours. All teachers are the same.”

  “Nonsense,” Queller said. He frowned at his nephew, but his eyes twinkled. “And do put down your pack, Fräulein, and remove your hat. We are not without courtesy, you know. Cosmas, if you please.”

  I shrugged off my pack. The ogre Cosmas extended a long arm, and I handed him the pack and hat. I was awfully glad to be free of the weight.

  Queller directed my attention to a particular manuscript, which was covered in a tiny script with careful sketches interspersed.

  “I cannot read this,” I said after a moment. “It’s no language I know.”

  “It is Italian,” Queller said. Before I could protest that it was most certainly not Italian, he added, “It is in code. The author used a rather clever substitution cipher by which he borrowed the substitutions from other languages. That is why you see umlauts and eñes, which do not appear in Italian. He also chose to omit entirely the letter G. That maneuver puzzled me for some time.” He chuckled, at himself, I think.

  “The manuscript has been in the basement of a chapterhouse near Bolzano for over two hundred years. It was written by a dissenting mage who went to the center of the Earth and returned.”

  I was dumbfounded by this statement, but I was also instantly skeptical. With cause, evidently, for his nephew spoke up.

  “We don’t know that for certain.”

  Queller waved a hand in dismissal. “I am certain, even if you are not.”

  I looked to Thesiger for elaboration. He spoke with a shrug.

  “The whole manuscript—we have but an excerpt here, of some difficult passages—tells a remarkable but obscure story.”

  “Not obscure!”

  Thesiger ignored that. “This fellow went into Lamprecht’s Cave only a few years before it was sealed. He writes in metaphors and snippets of poetry, nothing stated without ambiguity, but we’re sure he traveled downward for some weeks.”

  “At least ten,” the professor asserted.

  “Or five,” the nephew said. “Again, nothing is plain. In any case, he found a city. We think it may have been built by dwarves, but it was uninhabited.”

  “He found food and water?” I asked.

  “He must have,” Thesiger said, “though he never speaks of that. When he was unable to go farther, he returned to the surface and wrote his account.”

  “But this is extraordinary,” I said. “Why does no one know of this?”

  “We know,” Queller said with a note of preening.

  “The mage was, er, problematic,” the younger man said. “He spoke of his journey to others, but it was always tied up with weird tales and predictions about the end of the world. As his writings were incomprehensible, his brethren thought he had gone mad. They preserved the document, but after his death it was all forgotten as mere raving.”

  “Until Étienne unearthed it,” Queller said.

  “Fournier?”

  “The very same.” Queller grinned. “Niki’s hero, don’t you know.”

  I still had trouble believing the great explorer, the same man who had gone with Burton and Speke to Tanganyika, who had crossed Australia alone, would have ventured to the roots of the world on such flimsy evidence. I said as much.

  “But there’s more evidence,” Queller said. “Much more. Have you made a study of dwarvish or elvish origin stories?”

  I admitted I had not.

  “Atlantis? The Long Dig?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of those,” I replied, indignant. “Every child has heard such stories from the nursery, or heard the romance songs set in those places.”

  “The stories are true. As real as Homer’s Troy.”

  The professor said this with such utter sincerity, I had to hide my derisive smile behind my hand. Homer wrote legend, not history. Everyone knew that. By now, though, I had the measure of this man, so I said nothing.

  “We go in search of Étienne Fournier,” Thesiger said, “but also in hope of finding something more. Isn’t that true of any expedition of discovery, to pass from the known to the unknown, to expand the realm of the former at the expense of the latter?”

  I nodded. “That is as well said as anything I’ve heard about exploration,” I said. “And it will be my job and privilege to chronicle it.”

  The nephew looked to his uncle and raised an eyebrow. Queller frowned.

  “I see no way to avoid it,” Queller said.

  “She has our money,” Thesiger said.

  “I said she may come!” The professor glared at me. “You must understand I accept no responsibility for you, neither for your safety nor your well-being. You have inserted yourself into this expedition. Very well, you must see to yourself.”

  “Come, Uncle, don’t be ungallant.”

  “Ungallant! She brings this on herself. She cannot extort me and still expect a cordial welcome.”

  “Not extortion, surely,” Thesiger protested. “The terms come from her publisher, not from the lady herself.”

&nb
sp; “She agreed to the terms—happily, I should think.”

  “And I happily accept your terms,” I interjected. If they started quarreling out of aggrieved male pride, I’d be doomed. “I agree with you, Herr Doktor Professor.” I confess I smiled, glanced down, tilted my head, and generally used what gestures I could to seem inoffensive. One does what is necessary.

  “It was badly done,” I continued. “Unprofessional, if not actually illegal. In any other circumstance, I’d have refused out of hand. But I accepted eagerly, and why? Because this expedition is important—to me, certainly, but even more to the world at large and particularly to the enterprise of Science.”

  Professor Queller’s face softened, and he puffed up visibly.

  “Shall we find and rescue a great man? I do hope so. That alone is a fine goal, but you have a greater ambition, and I share it. Others have found the headwaters of rivers, sought a northwest passage, or even discovered whole continents. But who can claim to have discovered an entire world?”

  “There, you see, Niki?”

  “Of course I want to go.” I continued. “Anyone with a brain would want this. I’ll do all you ask; I shall soldier without complaint. If I should be a burden, I give you leave to set me aside. Abandon me in the dark, for the sake of the expedition.”

  “Now, now, hmph,” Queller muttered, raising a hand in protest. “We are not so crude as all that.”

  “Of course not,” I said, “but you need not worry. I’ll keep up. I’ll bear my own burden. And when we return, I’ll make you famous.

  “I’ve said why you must take me,” I said, turning back to the nephew. “Now let me tell you why you want to take me.”

  “Go on.”

  “I am more than a journalist,” I said, “I am a scientific journalist. I’ve made a study of ethnography. I have published papers.” This was just barely true. “I’ve read all of Professor Queller’s works and most of Fournier.”