The Descent Part 48

'You've brought us as far as we can go,' she said. 'You've done everything we set out to do. We've made our discoveries. We know that a great empire once existed down here. Now it's over.'

'Come with me, Ali.'

'We have no food.'

His eyes shifted ever so slightly, a side glance, nothing more. He said nothing, but something about his silence contradicted her. He knew where there was food? It jarred her.

His canniness darted before her like a wild animal. I am not you, it said. Then his glance straightened and he was one of them again.

She finished. 'I'm grateful for what you've accomplished for us. Now we just want to come to terms with where we've gotten in our lives. Let us make our peace,' she said. 'You have no reason to stay here anymore. You should go.'

There, she thought. All of her n.o.bleness in a cup. Now it was his turn. He would resist gallantly. He was Ike.

'I will,' he said.

A frown spoiled her brow. 'You're leaving?' she blurted, and immediately wished she hadn't. But still, he was leaving them? Leaving her?

'I thought about staying,' he said. 'I thought how romantic it would be. I imagined how people might find us ten years from now. There would be you. And there would be me.'

Ali blinked. The truth was, she'd imagined the same scene.

'And they would find me holding you,' he said. 'Because that's what I would do after you died, Ali. I would hold you in my arms forever.'

'Ike,' she said, and stopped again. Suddenly she was incapable of more than monosyllables.

'That would be legal, I think. You wouldn't be Christ's bride after you died, right? He could have your soul. I could have what was left.'

That was a bit morbid, yet nonetheless the truth. 'If you're asking my permission,' she said, 'the answer is yes.' Yes, he could hold her. In her imagination, it had been the other way around. He had died first and she had held him. But it was all the same concept.

'The problem is,' he continued, 'I thought about it some more. And to put it bluntly, I decided it was a pretty raw deal for me.'

She let her gaze drift around the glowing room.

'I'd get you,' he answered himself, 'too late.'

Good-bye, Ike, she thought. It was just a matter of saying the words now.

'This isn't easy,' he said.

'I know. Vaya con Dios.

'No,' he said. 'I don't think you do.'

'It's okay.'

'No, it's not,' he said. 'It would break my heart. It would kill me.' He licked his lips. He took the leap. 'To have waited too late with you.'

Her eyes sprang upon him.

Her surprise alarmed him. 'I should be able to say it, if I'm going to stay,' he defended himself. 'Can't I even say that much?'

'Say what, Ike?' Her voice sounded far away to her.

'I've said enough.'

'It's mutual, you know.' Mutual? That was the best she could offer?

'I know,' he said. 'You love me, too. And all G.o.d's creatures.' He crossed himself, gently mocking.

'Stop,' she said.

'Forget it,' he said, and his eyes closed in that marauded face.

It was up to her to break this impa.s.se.

No more ghosts. No more imagination. No more dead lovers: her Christ, his Kora.

As her hand reached out, it was like watching herself from a great distance. They might have been someone else's fingers, except they were hers. She touched his head.

Ike recoiled from her touch. Instantly, Ali could see how sure he was she pitied him. Once upon a time, with a face untarnished and young, that might not have been a consideration. But he was wary and filled with his own repulsiveness. Naturally he would distrust a touch.

Ali had not done this forever, it seemed. It could have felt clumsy or foolish or false. If she had contrived it in any way, given the slightest thought to it beforehand, it would have failed. Which was not to say her hands were steady as she opened her b.u.t.tons and slid her shoulders bare. She let the clothing drop, all of it.

Nude, she felt the warmth of the lamps on her flesh. From the corner of her eye, she saw the light from twenty eons ago turn her into gold.

As they moved into each other, she thought that here was one hunger at least that no longer had to go begging.

Chelsea's scream woke them.

It had become her habit to wash her hair at the edge of the sea early each morning.

'Another fish in the water,' Ali murmured to Ike. She had been dreaming of orange juice and birdsong - a mourning dove - and the smell of oak smoke on the hill-country air. Ike's arms fit around her just so. It was a shame to spoil the new day with a false alarm.

Then more shouts rose up to them in the tower. Ike lifted from the floor and leaned out the window, his back dented and pockmarked and striped with text and images and old violence.

'Something's happened,' he said, and grabbed his clothes and knife.

Ali followed him down the stairs, the last to reach the group gathered on the sh.o.r.e. They were shivering. It wasn't cold, but they had less fat on them these days. 'Here's Ike,' someone said, and the group parted.

A body was floating upon the sea. It lay there as quiet as the water.

'It's not hadal,' Spurrier was saying.

'He was a big guy,' said Ruiz. 'Could he be one of Walker's soldiers?'

'Walker?' said Twiggs. 'Here?'

'Maybe he fell off one of the rafts and drowned. And then floated here.'

He had glided in to sh.o.r.e like a ship with no crew, headfirst, faceup, bleached dead white by the sea. His limp arms wafted in the current. The eyes were gone.

'I thought it was driftwood and started out to get it,' Chelsea said. 'Then it got closer.'

Ike waded into the water and hunched over the body with his back to them. Ali thought she saw the glint of his knife. After a minute he returned to them, towing the body.

'It's one of Walker's, all right,' he said.

'A coincidence,' said Ruiz. 'He was bound to drift ash.o.r.e somewhere.'

'Here, though, of all places? You'd think he would have sunk. Or rotted. Or been eaten.'

'He's been preserved,' Ike said.

Ali saw what the others seemed not to see, an incision in one of the man's thighs where Ike had probed.

'You mean something in the water?' said Pia.

'No,' Ike said. 'They did it some other way.'

'The hadals?' said Ruiz.

'Yes,' Ike said.

'The currents. Chance...'

'He was delivered to us.'

The group needed a long minute to absorb the fact.

'But why?' asked Troy.

'It must be a warning,' Twiggs said.

'They're telling us to go home?' Ruiz laughed.

'You don't understand,' Ike quietly told them. 'It's an offering.'

'They're making a sacrifice to us?'

'I guess if you want to put it that way,' Ike said. 'They could have eaten him themselves.'

They fell silent.

'They're giving us a dead man for food?' whimpered Pia. 'To eat?'

'The question is why,' Ike said, staring across the dark sea.

Twiggs was affronted. 'They think we're cannibals?'

'They think we probably want to live.'

Ike did a horrible thing. He did not push the body back out to sea. Instead he waited.

'What are you waiting for?' Twiggs demanded. 'Get rid of it.'

Ike didn't say anything. He just waited some more.

It was appalling, the temptation.

Finally Ruiz said, 'You've misjudged us, Ike.'

'Don't insult us,' Twiggs said.

Ike ignored him. He waited for the group. Another minute pa.s.sed. They glared at him. n.o.body wanted to say yes and n.o.body wanted to say no, and he wasn't going to say it for them. Even Ali did not reject the idea out of hand.

Ike was patient. The dead soldier bobbed slightly beside him. He was patient, too.

They were all thinking similar thoughts, she was sure, wondering what it would taste like and how long it would last and who would do the deed. In the end, Ali took it one step further, and that was their answer. 'We could eat him,' she said. 'But when he was finished, what then?'

Ike sighed.

'Exactly,' said Pia after a few seconds.

Ruiz and Spurrier closed their eyes. Troy shook his head ever so slightly.

'Thank heavens,' said Twiggs.

They languished in the fortress, too weak to do much except shuffle outside to pee. They shifted about on their sleeping pads. It was not comfortable, lying around on your own bones.

So this is famine, thought Ali. A long wait for the ultimate poverty. She had always prided herself on her gift for transcending the moment. You gave up your worldly attachments, but always with the knowledge you could return to them. There was no such thing with starving. Deprivation was monotonous.

Before their strength dwindled anymore, Ali and Ike shared two more nights in the tower room among the lighted lamps. On November 30, they descended to the makeshift camp with finality. After that she was too lightheaded to climb the stairs again.

The starvation made them very old and very young. Twiggs, especially, looked aged, his face hollowed and jowls hanging. But also they resembled infants, curled in upon their stomachs and sleeping more and more each day. Except for Ike, who was like a horse in his need to stay on his feet, their catnaps reached twenty hours.

Ali tried to force herself to work, to stay clean, say her prayers, and continue to draw her day maps. It was a matter of getting G.o.d's daily chaos in order.

On the morning of December 2, they heard animal noises coming from the beach. Those who could sit struggled upright. Their worst fear was coming true. The hadals were coming for them.

It sounded like wolves loping into position. You could hear whispered s.n.a.t.c.hes of words. Troy began to totter off in search of Ike, but his legs wouldn't work well enough. He sat down again.

'Couldn't they wait?' Twiggs moaned softly. 'I just wanted to die in my sleep.'

'Shut up, Twiggs,' hissed one of the geologists. 'And turn out those lights. Maybe they don't know we're here.'