Free The Healer by Michael Blumlein

shadows dance on walls. In front of him he watched the darkness dissolve and the tunnel unfold as if by magic.
    Distance, he found, was hard to judge, and he stayed glued to Slivey, until at length the miner halted. They had reached a wide, low-ceilinged room that was obviously man-made. Lights were affixed to its walls, and in the middle of the floor was a covered metal booth occupied by a man at a control panel. Bolted to the floor outside the booth sat an enormous steel drum wrapped with a thick wire cable. Coming off the drum, the cable line was taut, and Payne followed it to its point of attachment, a metal cage partway across the room. Theset of rails that they'd been following disappeared down a haulage drift in the opposite direction.
    Slivey spoke to the man in the booth, then ushered Payne into the waiting metal cage. His nerves a bit more settled, Payne snuck a peek over the side of it and had just enough time to feel a draft of air in his face before being unceremoniously yanked back. Slivey muttered something about a death wish. Payne protested. He had nothing of the kind. He was curious, that was all. Slivey growled at him to stay put, and an instant later, with a lurch the cage descended.
    Every hoistman, Payne later learned, had his own distinctive way with the levers that controlled the movement of the cage, a sort of signature touch, and this one, he decided, had to have a tremor in his hands the way it jerked and jumped. Either that, or he was doing it intentionally—perhaps every newcomer got hazed this way. Slivey didn't seem to mind, but Payne felt uneasy. It was pitch black, and as they banged and rattled downward, his stomach churned and he had visions of a cable snapping, followed by a long and mortifying fall.
    But they reached the bottom without incident. The shaft, Slivey told him, was three thousand feet deep. And that was just the beginning of the mine. The current working levels were several hundred feet deeper and reached by foot. He asked if Payne had had enough.
    â€œEnough?”
    â€œYou ready to go back?”
    The idea, in fact, had crossed his mind. “Not at all.”
    â€œGood,” said Slivey. “Excellent. Follow me.”
    He led Payne down a long and gently sloping decline, his pace steady and sure-footed, the advancing cone of his headlamp pointed straight ahead and never veering. Payne had to walk a little faster than he wanted, and his breath came a little harder, too. The air was not as fresh or wholesome as it was outside, and it stung his lungs to breathe it. According to Slivey, this was due more to the dampness than the cold. It never froze so far beneath the earth, but it neverwarmed up either. The temperature pretty much stayed the same year round.
    â€œNo seasons in the hole,” he said. “No hurricanes, no sandstorms, no blizzards. It's a steady place to work with a steady climate. Only thing that changes is the rock. She keeps you on your toes. Keeps things interesting.”
    For a miner he was talkative, and Payne was grateful. In some real way it made him feel safe. When he stopped talking, the idea of where they were began to weigh on him, how far beneath the ground, how massive the mountain overhead. Massive and oppressive. He trusted Slivey, but his every instinct told him that this was not a place for him to be. His body needed fresh air, sky and natural light. Instead, it felt compressed and trapped. It wanted out, and he had to exercise an iron will to keep going.
    It helped somewhat to know they weren't alone. Nearby were hundreds of other men, although you couldn't tell by listening. The drifts were so long and twisting, and the rock between them so thick, and the air so heavy, that sounds were either deadened or entirely absorbed. Once, far-off and muffled, he heard what he assumed was an explosion. Otherwise, save for their muted footsteps, the drip of water and the low sibilance of air flowing through the ventilation tubing, it