Free Earth and Air by Peter Dickinson Page B

doing. As it happened the man was looking straight towards the mouth of the tunnel.
    He stared for an instant, and bellowed. Automatically Steff jerked back, caught his foot, and fell. Before he could rise the man was on him. He was grabbed by the shoulders, hauled to his feet, and shaken violently back and forth, while the man continued to bellow.
    â€œMother of Christ, who the hell are you? And what in God’s name do you think you’re doing here, you nosy little bastard? I’ll show you!”
    The man flung him back against the rock wall, grabbed him before he could fall, and began to batter him to and fro again.
    â€œCharon?”
    Winded, half-stunned, terrified, Steff wasn’t aware of deciding to say the name. It was a barely audible croak, forced out of him by the violence of his shaking. But the man paused, staring. He wasn’t much taller than Steff, but broad-shouldered, with a weather-beaten, flat, snub-nosed face and dark eyebrows that joined above his nose.
    â€œMother of Christ!” he said. “The boss sent you? That case, what cause you got to go sneaking around like that?”
    â€œNo . . . No . . . He didn’t . . . No one did. I’m looking for Ridiki . . . My dog.”
    â€œSo what the hell makes you think your bloody dog might be down here? Hector’s the only dog down here. Come to that, how’d you get past him without him yelling his head off? And how come you know what the boss calls me?”
    â€œShe isn’t down here—not like that. She’s dead. A snake bit her. But Ridiki’s short for Eurydice. That’s her real name. The story, you see . . . And this is Tartaros. It’s an entrance to the underworld . . .”
    â€œAnd so I’m Charon. Look, kid, that was just a lucky guess. Like I said, it’s what the boss calls me, one of his jokes, because of what the mine’s called. Next thing you’ll be telling me Hector’s got three heads, and you charmed your way past him by playing him beautiful music.”
    â€œWell, sort of. I’d brought my pipes, you see, to leave for Ridiki, but when I saw he was one of our dogs, I played him . . .”
    â€œHold it there. One of your dogs? You’re Deniakis? Don’t tell me you’re one of the old man’s kids? No, they’re older . . .”
    â€œHe’s my uncle.”
    â€œYour dad was the one those bastards in Athens got?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    The man paused, thinking.
    â€œRight,” he said. “You’re in a mess, kid, a bloody, stupid, dangerous mess you got yourself into. And by sheer fool’s luck you’ve run into the only Mentathos who’s going to get you out of it. Your dad was my wife’s childhood sweetheart. All of ten years old they must have been. Fell for each other, click!, just like that. He smuggled a puppy down to show her, let her cuddle it. And they weren’t supposed even to talk to each other; their dads would’ve flayed them if they’d heard, and they’d both got elder brothers at the school to keep them toeing the line. Year and a half they kept it up, stolen moments, couple of friends they could trust. Then her brother twigged, got up a Mentathos gang to take it out on your dad and his brother, but Deniakis—he’s your uncle now—was waiting for us with his own gang, and between us we pretty well wrecked the school. Upshot was her dad took my wife away but they smuggled letters back and forth for years.
    â€œShe told me all this before we married—I didn’t like it, of course—but she got me to understand she wasn’t in love with him, not like that. He was going to come to our wedding in disguise, bringing his wife, but his ministry sent him to America, so when our first kid was on the way she wrote to him and asked him to be a sort of secret godfather. I’d tried to talk her out of it and I tried again when he wrote back and said