The Exfiltrator by Garner Simmons (read after txt) 📗

day’s work.  The lift came to a halt. Turning on the LED flashlight, he pointed it down toward the lower chamber.  Balancing the tapas and wine in his left hand, he used the light in his right to pick his way through the darkness.

He found Ella kneeling on the furniture pads, camera in hand, reviewing her day’s work.  Once again, she seemed so completely preoccupied that she reacted with a start at the sound of his voice.

“You’re like a cat.  Don’t you ever make any noise...?” she lied. Having heard him coming toward her for the last ten minutes, she had waited in anxious anticipation as he made his way through the down through the darkness.

“Sorry.  I thought I had.”

Stepping into the soft ring of light cast by the panels on either side of the cave painting, Corbett set down the tapas on a shelf of rock.

“I checked with Gorka.  It’s a Basque law:  When a lady refuses to come to supper, the supper must come to her.”

Shading her eyes with one hand, she glanced up at him, secretly pleased that he had returned as he had promised. The rich aroma of the still warm tapas filled the air.  “Smells delicious.”

“I thought you weren’t hungry.”

“I changed my mind.”  Opening the cardboard box, she selected a tapa and took a bite as Corbett produced a corkscrew.  Kneeling beside her he began to uncork the wine.

“Small problem,” he said. “Forgot to bring glasses.”

She smiled, taking the bottle from his hand.  “Problem…?” she said, raising the bottle to her lips and taking a sip. “What problem?”

“Touchè,” he said, sitting down cross-legged beside her.  Taking the bottle from her hand, he did the same.  “A girl who doesn’t stand on ceremony.”

“Wait a minute… who are you calling ‘a girl’?” she replied in mock indignation.

“Nothing personal.  Just a casual observation.”

“Oh… that’s different,” she finished the first of the tapas and began a second. “These are really delicious.  Gorka made them?”

“He thinks you don’t like his cooking.  Says you’re too skinny.”

“Too skinny,” she exclaimed. “Compared to what…? Him?”

“It’s all right. I set him straight.”

“Really?”

“I told him you’d been raised by wolves.”

She started to laugh. “You did not.”

“Honest to God… lobos savajes, straight from the steppes.” He tried

to keep a straight face as he took another sip from the bottle.

“And what did he say?”

“That it explained everything,” he teased.

Smiling, she tried not to look too pleased by his obvious flirting.

She took another bite. “You’re really terrible, you know that?”

Another silence as neither spoke, then Corbett indicated the figures on the wall before them.

“So tell me about the painting.”  He began again. “What are we

looking at?”

Ella hesitated, attempting to organize her thoughts.  “Honestly…?” she stared at the wall. “I’d say it isn’t just one painting.  It’s a series of vignettes – like snapshots of the lives they lived. I mean, there is so much detail.  The truth is, any serious analysis is going to take time.”

He nodded slowly, studying the details of the images as she continued. “But from what I can tell so far, I think the only way to understand what we’re looking at is to try to imagine it through the eyes of the artist who did the painting.  The first question is: Why here, hundreds of feet below the real world of sunlight and shadow?   Obviously, it couldn’t have been painted from life, but from memory.  A way of preserving the living world outside for those who were trapped below.”

“Trapped…?” Corbett frowned. “What makes you think they were trapped?”

“Just a guess, but I’d say they must have been afraid of something.  Something that had driven them to seek shelter where they hoped their pursuers would be afraid to follow.”

“Interesting theory,” Corbett smiled. “But I could just as easily make a case that it’s a simple catalogue of the animals they depended on for food and survival.”

Ella set the bottle down beside the box of tapas and stepped closer to the painting, tracing the lines of the figures with her fingertips.  “The animals are self-evident.  Bison… antelope… horses.  But look at the group of markings here.”  She indicated a series of stick figures surrounding an opaque rectangular shape.  “Assuming this dark area here represents the cave entrance as it might have appeared 30,000 years ago, then these figures approaching from all sides could easily be seen as portraying some sort of enemy.”

“Whoa, wait… hold on,” he met her gaze. “That’s pure interpretive speculation.  How can you say that?”

“I’m not. The drawings speak for themselves.  The artist has drawn a series of simple figures: torsos with a head, two arms and two legs.  But look closer. Each has been drawn with an additional line attached to one arm – like a spear.  My guess is that the artist is describing some sort of epic conflict – perhaps one they had lost or feared losing.  I’d say this painting was an attempt to somehow leave a record.”

Corbett hesitated, impressed by her insight. “That’s quite an interpretation.  What else do you see?”

Ella crossed to the far side of the painting. “See this?” she asked pointing to a strange tangle of lines.  “Any ideas?”

Rising, Corbett joined her for a closer look at the erratic shape. “That…?”

“Not an animal.”

“That’s a relief,” he started to smile.  “So what do you see?”

“Judging from the petroglyphs I studied in the caves of the Galeras, I’d say it’s two bodies:  One on top, one beneath.  See…?”  Using her index finger, she traced each figure as she spoke.  “The additional lines are meant to capture a sense of motion.”

“Motion…?”  He found himself staring at the abstraction of lines.  She stepped closer.   He felt her breasts through the fabric of her top as they barely brushed against his arm.  He tried