Alice's Arc

Chapter 19 of 20

Friday morning Alice sat on the chamber floor with the cracked stick across her knees. The small red backup light in her satchel would not carry across the room, let alone into the tunnels. She had a map now and no way to signal her team through it. Biscuit lay at her boot. The tall creature waited by the arch with the raccoon on his shoulder. Rose leaned in the doorway. "You built one light," Rose said. "Build another." Alice opened her satchel and laid out what she had. Wire from the phone rig. Two spare bulbs from the ranger's kit. The red cellophane. A fresh switch. She had learned the mistake of the first stick: one filament, one channel, too much load. This time she would split the current. Two bulbs, wired parallel, one wrapped red. A heavier switch that could hold the draw. She worked through the morning with the pencil in her teeth. By noon she had a new head fitted to the split end of the stick. She tested the white pulse at the far wall. The beam hit clean and threw a circle wide enough to cover the arch. She tested the red. The circle held. She stepped to the mouth of the third tunnel and flashed both across the chamber. Biscuit's ears came up at forty feet. The tall creature raised his hand at the same distance. Rose nodded once. "Farther," Alice said. She walked the creature and Biscuit to the shelf and sent them to opposite tunnel mouths. She flashed sit-white. Biscuit sat. The creature sat. She flashed mark-red. Both fixed on her. She flashed recall, white then red. They came in together across the chamber floor. She still had the curves to solve. She whistled for the blue-winged bird. The bird dropped from the shelf and took its perch on her wrist. She flashed the recall pattern slow. The bird beat its wings, and the pattern flashed back off its feathers, bright enough to bounce down a bend. Alice sent it into the second tunnel. She sent the creature after it with Biscuit at his heel. She counted to twenty and flashed recall through the bird. Both came back at a steady pace, no confusion, no waiting at the corner. Rose watched from the arch. "You have your light," she said. "You have your team." Alice wrote in the notebook: new stick holds. Signals clear at range. Bird relays through curve. Team responsive. She closed the book. She looked at the seven tunnel mouths on her map. Yesterday she had a chamber and no way to work it. Today she had a light that filled the room and a bird that carried it around corners. The deeper tunnels were open to her now. She stood, and Biscuit stood with her.