The Descent Part 19

'I mean today, Mr Osprey.'

'Today. Yes.' He fumbled with his maps.

She stopped suddenly. They had reached a place overcome by orange and black wings. 'Incredible,' Ada murmured.

'It's their rest stop for the night,' Osprey said. 'Tomorrow they'll be gone. They travel fifty miles every day. In another month, all of the ma.s.ses of monarchs will reach their roost.'

'They don't fly at night?'

'They can't see in the darkness.' He opened the van door. 'I may take an hour,' he apologized. 'Perhaps you should return later.'

'I'll wait for you, Mr Osprey. Take your time. When you're finished, we can have dinner, if you'd like.'

If I'd like? Dazed, Osprey took his rucksack and gently closed the door behind him.

Remembering his purpose, he headed west into the sinking sun. His inquiry dealt with the monarchs' age-old migration path. Danaus plexippus laid its eggs in North America, then died. The young emerged with no parents to guide it, and yet each year flew thousands of miles along the same ancestral route to the same destination in Mexico. How could this be? How could a creature that weighed less than half a gram have a memory? Surely memory weighed something. What was memory? There was no bottom to the mystery for Osprey. Year after year, he collected them alive. While they wintered, he studied them in his laboratory.

Osprey unzipped his daypack and took out a bundle of folded white boxes, the same kind that Chinese food comes in. He a.s.sembled twelve, leaving their tops open. His task was simple. He approached a cl.u.s.ter of hundreds, held a box out, and two or three alighted inside. He closed the box.

After forty minutes, Osprey had eleven boxes dangling by their wire handles from a string around his neck. Hurrying, badly distracted by the girl in the van, he trotted across a sagging depression toward the final cl.u.s.ter. The depression gave way. With monarchs clinging to his arms and head, he plunged through a hole in the ground.

The fall registered as a clatter of rocks, then sudden darkness.

Consciousness returned in bits. Osprey struggled to take stock. He was in pain, but could move. The hole was very deep, or else night had arrived. Luckily he hadn't lost his rucksack. He opened it and found his flashlight.

The beam was a source of both comfort and distress. He found himself lying at the pit of a limestone sinkhole, battered but unbroken. There was no sign of the hole he'd fallen through. And his landing had crushed several boxes of his beloved monarchs. For a moment, that was more defeating than the fall itself.

'h.e.l.lo,' he called out several times. There was no one down here to hear him, but Osprey hoped his voice might carry through the hole somewhere overhead. Perhaps the Mexican woman would be looking for him. He had a momentary fantasy that she might fall through the hole and they could be trapped together for a night or two. At any rate, there was no response.

Finally he pulled himself together, stood up, dusted himself off, and got on with trying to find an exit. The sinkhole was cavernous, its walls riddled with tubular openings. He poked his light into a few, thinking one of them must surely lead to the surface. He chose the largest.

The tube snaked sideways. At first he was able to crawl on his knees. But it narrowed, forcing him to leave his day-pack. At last he was reduced to muscling forward on elbows and belly, careful to scoot his flashlight and the remaining five boxes of live b.u.t.terflies ahead of him.

The porous walls kept tearing his clothing and hooking his trouser cuffs. The rock cut his arms. He knocked his head, and sweat stung his eyes. He was going to emerge in tatters, reeking, farcical. So much for dinner, he thought.

The tube grew tighter. A wave of claustrophobia took his breath. What if he got wedged inside this place? Trapped alive! He calmed himself. There was no room to turn around, of course. He could only hope the artery led somewhere more reasonable.

After an awkward, ten-foot wrestling match, with both arms above his head and pushing mightily with his toes, Osprey emerged into a larger tunnel.

His spirits soared. A faint footpath was worn into the rock. All he had to do was follow it out. 'h.e.l.lo,' he called to his left and right. He heard a slight rattling noise in the distance. 'h.e.l.lo?' he tried again. The noise stopped. Seismic goblins, he shrugged, and started off in the opposite direction.

Another hour pa.s.sed, and still the path had not led him out. Osprey was tired, aching, and hungry. Finally he decided to reverse course and explore the path's other end. The trail went up and down, then came to a series of forks he hadn't seen before. He went one way, then another, with increasing frustration. At last he reached a tubular opening similar to the one that had brought him here. On the chance it might return him to the original chamber, Osprey set his b.u.t.terflies and light on the ledge and crawled inside.

He'd gotten only a short distance when, to his great annoyance, the rock snagged his ankle again. He yanked to free himself, but the ankle stayed caught. He tried to see behind him, but his body filled the opening.

That was when he felt the tube move. It seemed to slip forward an inch or so, though he knew it was his body sliding backward. The disturbing thing was, he hadn't moved a muscle.

Now he felt a second motion, this time a tug at his ankle. It was no longer possible to blame the rock for catching his cuff. This was something organic. He could feel it getting a better grip on his leg. The animal, whatever it was, suddenly began pulling him back.

Osprey desperately tried holding on to the rock, but it was like falling down a slippery chimney. His hands slid across the surface. He had enough presence of mind to hold on to his light and the boxes of b.u.t.terflies. Then his legs cleared the tube, and in the next instant his body and head popped free. He dropped to the tunnel floor in a heap. One of his boxes fell open and three b.u.t.terflies escaped, drifting erratically through his light beam.

He whipped the flashlight around to fend off the animal. There in his cone of light stood a live hadal. Osprey shouted his alarm just as it fled from his light. Its whiteness startled him most of all. The bulging eyes gave it an aspect of enormous hunger, or curiosity.

The hadal ran one way, Osprey the other. He covered fifty yards before his light beam illuminated three more hadals crouching in the tunnel's far depths. They turned their heads from his light, but didn't budge.

Osprey cast his flashlight back the way he'd come. Not far enough away prowled four or five more of the white creatures. He swung his head back and forth, awestruck by his predicament. He took his Swiss Army knife from a pocket and opened its longer blade. But they came no closer, repulsed by his light.

It seemed utterly fantastic. He was a lepidopterist. He dealt with animals whose existence depended on sunshine. The subplanet had nothing to do with him. Yet here he was, caged beneath the ground, faced with hadals. The terrible fact bore down on him. The weight of it exhausted him. Finally, unable to move in either direction, Osprey sat down.

Thirty yards to his right and left, the hadals settled in, too. He flipped his light from side to side for a while, thinking that was keeping them at bay. At last it became apparent the hadals weren't interested in coming any closer for the time being. He positioned the flashlight so that its beam cast a ball of light around him. While the three monarchs that had escaped from his box fluttered in the light, Osprey began calculating how long his battery might last.

He stayed awake as long as possible. But the combination of fatigue, his fall, and adrenaline hangover finally mastered him. He dozed, bathed in light, clutching his pocketknife.

He woke dreaming of raindrops. They were pebbles thrown by the hadals. His first thought was that the pebbles were meant to torment him. Then he realized the hadals were trying to break his lightbulb. Osprey grabbed the flashlight to shield it. He had another thought. If they could throw pebbles, they could probably throw rocks big enough to hurt or kill him - but they hadn't. That was when he understood they meant to capture him alive.

The waiting went on. They sat at the edges of his light. Their patience was depressing. It was so utterly unmodern, a primitive's patience, unbeatable. They were going to outlast him, he had no doubt at all about that.

Hours turned into a day, then two. His stomach rumbled with hunger. His tongue dried in his mouth. He told himself it would be better this way. Without food or water, he might start hallucinating. The last thing he wanted was to be lucid in the end.

As time pa.s.sed, Osprey did his best not to look at the hadals, but eventually his curiosity took over. He turned his light on one group or the other, and gathered their details. Several were naked except for rawhide loin strings. A few wore ragged vests made of some kind of leather. All were male, as he could tell by their p.e.n.i.s sheaths. Each sported a sheath made from an animal horn, jutting from his groin, and tied erect with twine, like those worn by New Guinea natives.

It was easy to antic.i.p.ate the end. His battery began to fail. To either side, the hadals had moved closer. The light faded to a dim ball. Osprey shook the flashlight hard, and the beam brightened momentarily, and the hadals withdrew another five or ten yards. He sighed. It was time. C'est la vie. He chuckled, and laid the blade along his wrist.

He could have waited until the last instant of light before making the cuts, but feared they might not be done well. Too shallow, and it would simply be a painful nip at the nerves. Too deep, and the veins might convulse and close off. He needed to get the strokes right, while he could still see.

He pulled evenly. Blood jumped from the steel. It leaped out of him. In the shadows, he heard the hadals murmur.

Carefully he switched the knife to his left hand and did the opposite wrist. The knife fell from his grip. After a minute he felt cold. The pain at the end of each arm turned to a dull ache. His blood spread on the stone floor. It was impossible to separate the dying light from his fading vision.

Osprey laid his head back against the wall. His thoughts settled. Increasingly, a vision of the beautiful Mexican woman had begun visiting him. Her face had come to replace his b.u.t.terflies, all of whom had died because his light was not enough. He had arranged each monarch beside him, and as he slumped sideways, their wings lay like orange and black tissue on the ground.

Off in the distance, the hadals were chirping and clicking to one another. Their agitation was obvious. He smiled. They'd won, but they'd lost.

The light shrank. It died. Her face rose in the darkness. Osprey let out a low moan. The blackness pillowed him.

On the brink of unconsciousness, he felt the hadals pounce on him. He smelled them. Felt them grabbing at him. Tying his arms with rope. Too late, he realized they were binding tourniquets above his wounds. They were saving his life. He tried to fight, but was too weak.

In the weeks ahead, Osprey returned to life slowly. The stronger he got, the more pain he had to endure. He was carried sometimes. Occasionally they forced him to walk blindly down the tunnels. In pitch darkness, he had to rely on every sense but sight. Some days they simply tortured him. He could not imagine what they were doing to him. Captivity tales swirled in his head. He began to rave, and so they cut his tongue out. That was near the end of his sanity.

It was beyond Osprey's comprehension that the hadals summoned one of their finest artisans to peel the upper layers of skin, no more, from tip to tip of each shoulder and down to the base of his spine. Under the artisan's direction, the wound was salted to prepare his canvas. Its seasoning took days, requiring more abrasion, more salt. Finally an outline of veins and border was applied in black, and left to grow over. After another three days, a rare blend of bright ochre powder was laid on.

By that time, Osprey's wish had come true. He was mad from pain and deprivation. His insanity had nothing to do with the hadals freeing him to roam in their tunnels. If madness was the pa.s.sword, then most of their human captives would have been free. Who could understand such creatures? Human quirks and fallibilities were a constant source of puzzlement.

Osprey's freedom was a special case. He was allowed to go wherever his whim took him. No matter which band he strayed behind, they made sure to feed him, and it was considered meritorious to protect him from dangers and guide him along the trail. He was never given supplies to carry. He carried no claim mark or brand. No one owned him. He belonged to everyone, a creature of great beauty.

Children were brought to see him. His legend spread quickly. Wherever he went, it was known that this was a holy man, captured with small houses of souls around his neck.

Osprey would never know what the hadals had painted into the flesh of his back. It would have pleased him no end. For, every time he moved, with every breath he took, it seemed the man was carried along by iridescent orange and black wings.

9 - LA FRONTERA.

The frontier is the outer edge of the wave - the meeting-point between savagery and civilization... the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist.

-FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, The Significance of the Frontier in American History The Galapagos Rift System, lat.i.tude 0.55N

Promptly at 1700 hours, the expeditionaries boarded their electric buses. They were loaded with handouts and booklets and notebooks numbered and marked Cla.s.sified, and were sporting pieces of Helios clothing. The black SWAT-style caps had proved especially popular, very menacing. Ali contented herself with a T-shirt with the Helios winged-sun logo printed on the back. With scarcely a purr, the buses eased from the walled compound out onto the street.

Nazca City reminded Ali of Beijing, with its hordes of bicyclists. At rush hour in a boomtown with streets so narrow, the bikes were faster than their buses. They had jobs to get to. Through her window, Ali took in their faces, their Pacific Rim races, their humanity. What a feast of souls!

Decla.s.sified maps showed boom cities like Nazca as veritable nerve cells reaching tendrils out into the surrounding s.p.a.ce. The attractions were simple: cheap land, mother lodes of precious minerals and petroleum, freedom from authority, a chance to start over. Ali had come expecting glum fugitives and desperadoes with no other place to go. But these were the faces of college-educated office workers, bankers, entrepreneurs, a motivated service sector. As a port city of the future, Nazca City was said to have the potential of San Francisco or Singapore. In four years it had become the major link between the equatorial subplanet and coastal cities up and down the western side of the Americas.

Ali was relieved to see that the people of Nazca City looked normal and healthy. Indeed, because the subplanet attracted younger, stronger workers, the population abounded in good health. Most of the station cities like Nazca had been retrofitted with lamps that simulated sunlight, and so these bicyclists were as tan as beachcombers. Practically everyone had seen soldiers or workers who had returned to the surface several years ago suffering bone growths and enlarged eyes or strange cancers, even vestigial tails. For a while, religious groups had blamed h.e.l.l itself for the physical spoliation, calling it proof of G.o.d's plan, a vast gulag where contact meant punishment. But as she looked around, it seemed the research labs and drag companies really had mastered the prophylaxis for h.e.l.l. Certainly these people exhibited no deformities. Ali realized that her subconscious fears of turning into a toad, monkey, or goat had been for nothing.

The city was a vast indoor mall with potted trees and flowering bushes, clean, with the latest brand names. There were restaurants and coffee bars, along with brightly lit stores selling everything from work clothes and plumbing supplies to a.s.sault rifles. The neatness was slightly marred by beggars missing limbs and sidewalk merchants hawking contraband.

At one intersection an old Asian woman was selling miserable puppies lashed alive to sticks. 'Stew meat,' one of the scientists told Ali. 'They sell it by the catty, 500 grams, a little more than a pound. Beef, chicken, pork, dog.'

'Thanks,' said Ali.

Obviously it intrigued him. 'I went exploring yesterday. Anything that moves goes into the pot. Crickets, worms, slugs. They even eat dragons, xiao long, their snakes.'

Ali peered out. A long gossamer sausage stretched beside the road, twenty feet high, a football field in length. The plastic had bold hangul lettering along the front. Ali didn't read Korean, but knew a greenhouse when she saw one. There were more, lying end to end like gigantic plump pupae. Through their opaque walls she saw fieldworkers tending crops, climbing little ladders propped in orchards. Parrots and macaws soared alongside the convoy of buses. A monkey scampered past. The subsere - the secondary population of invader species - was thriving down here.

In the far distance a detonation rumbled gently. She'd felt similar vibrations through her bedsprings all night. The incessant construction work was evident everywhere. It didn't take long to detect the man-made edges of this place. The neat right angles ab.u.t.ted raw rock. Pressure fissures spiderwebbed the asphalt. A patch of moss had grown heavy and peeled from the ceiling, exposing mesh and barbed wire and surging lasers overhead.

They reached a newly cut ring road girdling the city, and left behind the traffic jam of cyclists and workers. Picking up speed, they gained a view of the enormous hollow salt dome containing the colony. It was life in a bell jar here. The entire vault, measuring three miles across and probably a thousand feet high, was brightly lit. Up in the World, it would be approaching sunset. Down here, night never came. Nazca City's artificial sunlight burned twenty-four hours a day, Prometheus on a caffeine jag.

Except for a catnap, sleep had been impossible last night. The group's collective excitement verged on the childlike, and she was caught up in their spirit of adventure. This morning, exhausted with their imagining, they were ready for the real thing.

Ali found her fellow travelers' last-minute preparations touching. She watched one rough-and-ready fellow across the aisle bent over his fingernails, clipping them just so, as if his mortal being depended on it. Last night, several of the youngest women, meeting for the first time, had spent the wee hours of the morning fixing one another's hair. A little enviously, Ali had listened to people placing calls to their spouses or lovers or parents, a.s.suring them the subplanet was safe. Ali said a silent prayer for them all.

The buses stopped near a train platform and the pa.s.sengers disembarked. If it hadn't been brand new, the train would have seemed old-fashioned. There was a boarding platform trimmed with iron rails painted black and teal. Farther along the track, the train was mostly freight and ore cars. Heavily armed soldiers patrolled the landings while workers loaded supplies onto flatcars at the rear.

The three front cars were elegant sleepers with aluminum panels on the outside and simulated cherrywood and oak in the hallways. Ali was surprised again at how much money was being plowed into development down here. Just five or six years ago, this had presumably been hadal grounds. The sleeper cars, on glistening tracks, declared how confident the corporate boards were of human occupation.

'Where are they taking us now?' someone grumbled publicly. He wasn't the only one. People had begun complaining that Helios was cloaking each stage of their journey in unnecessary mystery. No one could say where their science station lay.

'Point Z-3,' answered Montgomery Shoat.

'I've never heard of that,' a woman said. One of the planetologists, Ali placed her.

'It's a Helios holding,' Shoat replied. 'On the outskirts of things.'

A geologist started to unfold a survey map to locate Point Z-3. 'You won't find it on any maps,' Shoat added with a helpful smile. 'But you'll see, that really doesn't matter.'

His nonchalance drew mutters, which he ignored.

Last evening, at a catered Helios banquet for the freshly arrived scientists, Shoat had been introduced as their expedition leader. He was a superbly fit character with bulging arm veins and great social energy, but he was curiously off-putting. It was more than the unfortunate face, pinched with ambition and spoiled with unruly teeth. It was a manner, Ali thought. A disregard. He traded on a thin repertoire of charm, yet didn't care if you were charmed. According to gossip Ali heard afterward, he was the stepson of C.C. Cooper, the Helios magnate. There was another son by blood, a legitimate heir to the Cooper fortunes, and that seemed to leave Shoat to take on more hazardous duties such as escorting scientists to places at the remote edges of the Helios empire. It sounded almost Shakespearean.

'This is our venue for the next three days,' he announced to them. 'Brand-new cars. Maiden voyage. Take your pick, any room. Single occupancy if you like. There's plenty of room.' He had the magnanimity of a man used to sharing with friends a house not really his. 'Spread out. Shower, take a nap, relax. Dinner is up to you. There's a dining car one back. Or you can order room service and catch a flick. We've spared no expense. Helios's way of wishing you - and me - bon voyage.'

No one pressed the issue of their destination any further. At 1730 a pleasant chime announced their departure. As if casting loose on a raft upon a gentle stream, the Helios expedition soundlessly coasted into the depths. The track looked level but was not, sloping almost secretly downward. As it turned out, gravity was the workhorse. Their engine was attached to the rear and would only be used to pull the cars back to this station. One by one, drawn by the earth itself, the cars left behind the sparkling lights of Nazca City.

They approached a portal t.i.tled Route 6. An extra, nostalgic 6 had been added with Magic Marker. In a different ink, someone else had attached a third 6. At the last minute a young biologist hopped down from the train and took a final quick snapshot, then ran to catch up again while the others cheered him. That made them all feel well launched. The train slid through a brief wall of forced air, a climate lock, and they pa.s.sed inside.

Immediately the temperature and humidity dropped. Nazca City's tropical environment vanished. It was ten degrees colder in the rail tunnel, and the air was as dry as a desert. At last, Ali realized, they were entering the unabridged h.e.l.l. No fire and brimstone here. It felt more like high chaparral, like Taos.

The tracks glittered as if someone had taken a polishing rag to them. The train began to pick up speed, and they all went to their rooms. In her berth, Ali found a wicker basket with fresh oranges, Tobler chocolate, and Pepperidge Farm cookies. The little refrigerator was stocked. Her bunk had a single red rose on the pillow. When she lay down, there was a video monitor overhead for watching any of hundreds of films. Old monster movies were her vice. She said her prayers, then fell asleep to them and the hiss of tracks.

In the morning, Ali squeezed into the small shower and let the hot water run through her hair. She could not believe the amenities. Her timing with room service was just right, and she sat by the tiny window with her omelette and toast and coffee. The window was round and small, like a cabin port on a ship. She saw only blackness out there, and thought that explained the compressed view. Then she noticed ELLIS BULLETPROOF GLa.s.s etched in small letters on the gla.s.s, and realized the whole train was probably reinforced against attack.

At 0900 their training resumed in the dining car. The first morning on the train was given to refresher courses in things like emergency medicine, climbing techniques, basic gun craft, and other general information they were supposed to have learned over the past few months. Most had actually done their homework, and the session was more like an icebreaker.

That afternoon, Shoat escalated their teachings. Slide projectors and a large video monitor were set up at one end of the dining car. He announced a series of presentations by expedition members on their various specialties and theories. Ali was enjoying herself. Show-and-tell, with iced shrimp and nachos.

The first two speakers were a biologist and a microbotanist. Their topic was the difference between troglobite, trogloxene, and troglophile. The first category truly lived in the troglo - or 'hole' - environment. h.e.l.l was their biological niche. The second, xenes, adapted to it, like eyeless salamanders. The third, troglophiles like bats and other nocturnal animals, simply visited the subterranean world on a regular basis, or exploited it for food or shelter.

The two scientists began arguing the merits of preadaptation, the 'predestination to darkness.' Shoat stepped to the front and thanked them. His manner was crisp, yet random. They were here on Helios's nickel. This was his show.

Through the remainder of the afternoon, various specialists were introduced and gave their remarks. Ali was impressed by the group's relative youth. Most had their doctorates. Few were older than forty, and some were barely twenty-five. People wandered in and out of the dining car as the hours wound on, but Ali sat through it all, fixing faces with names, drinking in the esoterica of sciences she'd never studied.

After a patio-type supper of hamburgers and cold beer, they had been promised a just-released Hollywood movie. But the machine would not work, and that was when Shoat stumbled. To this point, his day of orientation had featured scientists who were practiced speakers, or at least in command of their topics. Seeking to enliven the evening with a change of entertainment, Shoat tried something different.

'Since we're getting to know each other,' he announced, 'I wanted to introduce a guy we'll all come to depend on. We are extremely fortunate to have obtained him from the U.S. Army, where he was a famous scout and tracker. He has the reputation of being a Ranger's Ranger, a true veteran of the deep. Dwight,' he called. 'Dwight Crockett. I see you back there. Come on up. Don't be shy.'

Shoat's tracker was apparently not prepared for this attention. He balked, whoever he was, and after a minute Ali turned to see him. Of all people, the reluctant Dwight was that very same stranger she'd insulted on the Galapagos elevator yesterday. What on earth was he doing here? she wondered.

With all eyes on him now, Dwight let go of the wall and stood straight. He was dressed in new Levi's and a white shirt closed to the throat and b.u.t.toned at each wrist. His dark glacier gla.s.ses glittered like insect eyes. Sporting that awful Frankenstein haircut, he looked completely out of place, like those ranch hands Ali had sometimes seen in the hill country, troubled in human company, better left in their remote line shacks. The tattooing and scars on his face and scalp encouraged a healthy distance.

'Was I supposed to say something?' he asked from the back of the car.

'Come up here where everyone can see you,' Shoat insisted.

'Unreal,' someone whispered next to Ali. 'I've heard of this guy. An outlaw.'

Dwight kept his displeasure economical, the slightest shake of his head. When he finally came forward, the crowd parted. 'Dwight's the one you really want to hear from,' Shoat said. 'He never got around to graduate school, he doesn't have an academic specialty. But talk about authority in the field. He spent eleven years in hadal captivity. The last three years he's been hunting Haddie for the Rangers and Special Forces and SEALs. Now I've read your resumes, folks. Few of our group have ever visited the subterranean world. None of us has ever gone beyond the electrified zones. But Ike here can tell us what it's like. Out there.' Shoat sat down. It was Ike's stage.

He stood before their patter of applause, and his awkwardness seemed endearing, a little pathetic. Ali caught a few of the murmured remarks about his scars and exploits. Deserter, she heard. Berserker. Cannibal. Slave runner. Animal. It was all traded breathlessly, in the superlative. Strange, she thought, how legends grew. They made him sound like a sociopath, and yet they were drawn to him, excited by the romance of his imagined deeds.

Dwight let them have their curiosity. The tracks sibilated in their growing silence, and people turned uncomfortable. Ali had seen it a hundred times, how Americans and Europeans chafed at silence. In contrast, Dwight was downright primal with his patience. Finally his reticence proved too much. 'Don't you have anything to say?' Shoat said.

Dwight shrugged. 'You know, I haven't had such an interesting day in a long time. You people know your stuff.' Ali wasn't prepared for that. None of them were. This odd brute had been sitting in the rear all afternoon, deliberately unremarkable, quietly getting educated. By them! It was enchanting.