Earthcore, p.28
Earthcore, page 28
“O’Doyle, where are our people?”
“Crook’s at the elevator shaft. Flores and Cooper are with a few miners in the chasm where Jansson vanished, seeing if they can find any sign of him in the tunnels there. Lybrand and Braxton are with Mack, moving toward the Dense Mass.”
“How far away is Mack? Can you reach him?”
O’Doyle nodded, pointed to a walkie-talkie in a pouch hanging from his webbing. “Lybrand has one. She’s dropping battery-powered signal repeaters every thousand feet or so. She and Mack are maybe twenty-five minutes out.”
“Flores and Cooper are closer to the shaft than we are?”
O’Doyle nodded again. “Maybe twenty minutes from it.”
“Call Lybrand. Tell her to bring her group back.”
“Mister Kirkland, I don’t think that’s necessary.”
Connell thrust the severed thumb toward O’Doyle, so close the big man flinched back a bit.
“You not thinking is the fucking point.” Connell’s words came out as a low hiss. “We’ll wait here for Mack’s group, so we head back together with three guns instead of two. Call Flores and Cooper, tell them to take every last miner to the surface immediately, then send the elevator back down. We’re getting everyone out of here until we can figure out the best way to keep everyone safe.”
O’Doyle’s eyes narrowed.
“Everyone is safe,” he said. “That’s what you hire me for.”
Was this giant moron offended?
“Call them, right fucking now, or you’re fired. Understand?”
The narrowed eyes widened, briefly, and the man’s lip twitched — a strange combination of anger and fear.
“Yes sir, right away.”
O’Doyle turned away, pulling his walkie-talkie out as he did.
Connell glanced at the professors. They were still walking around, gawking at the cavern’s endless pictures.
12:32 a.m.
Mack moved in a half crouch, helmeted head scraping lightly against the stone ceiling. KoolSuit or no KoolSuit, he’d never felt so exhausted. Going back up would have helped, but it was a one- to two-day hike to the Dense Mass — someone had to suffer the effects of this endless heat. If he’d dropped out, one of his men would have gone in his place, and that wasn’t acceptable.
He stopped. He heard the two guards behind him stop as well. Mack turned his head slightly, letting his headlamp beam play out into the tunnel’s darkness.
A hand on his shoulder, a woman’s voice near his ear.
“What is it?”
Lybrand. She was always just a step behind him, surprisingly agile in the narrow tunnels.
“Thought I heard something,” Mack said.
“Like?”
He started to speak, stopped. He wasn’t sure what he’d heard. The rattling of someone’s equipment, maybe.
“Probably an echo from us,” he said.
He hoped that’s what it was. There were only two explanations for Jansson’s disappearance, and neither we’re good. The way Kirkland painted the picture made sense. Jansson had either betrayed Mack, Connell and EarthCore, or someone had taken him away. If it was the latter, that someone was in the tunnels and willing to do whatever it took to reach the Dense Mass first. Having Lybrand and that other guard, the chubby one — Braxton, his name was — along helped, but it didn’t chase away the fact that there might be killers down here.
Maybe killers with more guns than Lybrand and Braxton.
“Mister Hendricks,” Lybrand said, “if we’re going to stop, I need to call back and let them know.”
He shook his head, tried to chase away thoughts of bullets bouncing off the narrow limestone walls. Maybe there was danger, sure, but the payoff was enough to bear a little risk. More than enough. Way more.
“No worries,” he said. “We’ll keep going. And would you call me Mack already?”
He took one step, then the noise came again.
click-click … click
Not an echo. Coming from ahead of them, somewhere in the tunnel’s darkness.
“I heard it,” Lybrand said.
She slid ahead of him, knelt, put her rifle to her shoulder and aimed it down the tunnel.
“Mack, get down,” she said. “Braxton, get up here.”
Was this really happening? Three miles underground, and someone was coming after them?
Braxton slid past, knelt next to Lybrand.
Three headlamps lit up the tunnel, played off the walls, the rock-strewn ground.
Up ahead, something moved: whip-thin legs, a round flash cutting through the light before vanishing behind a shin-high rock.
His brain fished for a word to describe it, came up with a rather unpleasant one: spider. As close as he could get, but it hadn’t had eight legs. Had it?
“Mack,” Lybrand said. “What the fuck was that?”
He shook his head for a few seconds before remembering he was behind her, that she couldn’t see him.
“I don’t know.”
“Some kind of big-ass insect,” Braxton said, his words clipped. “Nobody told me there’d be two-foot-long crawly silver bugs down here.”
“There aren’t,” Mack said, even though there obviously were. “Nothing that big lives this deep.”
Braxton glanced back. “Tell that to the fucking silver bug hiding behind that rock.”
“Eyes forward,” Lybrand snapped.
Braxton did as he was told, aimed his rifle down the tunnel.
“Maybe it’s metal,” Lybrand said. “A robot or something?”
Mack shook his head. “You ever seen a machine move like that?”
No one answered. He certainly hadn’t, anywhere outside of a movie. The speed, the fluidity — only an animal had that kind of motion.
A sudden burst of walkie-talkie static made everyone all jump.
With smooth motions, Lybrand slung her rifle, drew her pistol and aimed it down the tunnel as she pulled the walkie-talkie from her belt.
“Lybrand here.”
The answering voice was so thin and full of static Mack could barely make out the words.
“This is O’Doyle. Report back to the Picture Cavern immediately.”
“Roger that,” Lybrand said. “We saw something moving. An animal of some kind.”
Whatever the thing was, it adjusted its position behind the rock; Mack saw the briefest reflection of something dull and curved, then nothing.
“Leave it,” the thin voice squawked. “Get back here on the double.”
“On our way,” Lybrand said.
She shoved the walkie-talkie back into its pouch, rose to a half crouch. She gripped Braxton’s shoulder.
“Take point, move fast,” she said. “Everyone else, keep up with Braxton. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Braxton slid by once more, heading back up the tunnel.
Mack was only too happy to turn and follow.
12:34 a.m.
When it clicked, it clicked all at once, an instant congealing so final she would never be able to see it any other way again.
“It’s a textbook,” she said, loud enough that her words echoed off the ceiling.
Sanji looked at her. So did Lashon, for once not flicking his eyes toward every corner and shadow.
“Sorry,” she said. She glanced across the cavern, seeing if O’Doyle and Connell were looking as well. They weren’t. O’Doyle was on his walkie-talkie. Connell was mostly in the shadows, his back turned, staring down at something Veronica couldn’t see.
She looked about the room, wondering why she hadn’t seen it immediately. If she ignored the graffiti, bas-relief carvings covered the majority of the Picture Cavern’s space. Thousands of them tiled the walls with even rows of perfect illustrations. A juniper tree. A tribesman with a spear. Cactus. Grasshoppers. Tentacle gods. Mountains. A wolf. A bow. Arrows flying. Everything that could possibly make up life in this area of the world was represented on one tile or another.
Sanji looked around slowly, nodding as he did.
“I see it. My goodness, Ronni, you’re right. This is a classroom.”
Lashon had been little more than armed background decoration thus far, but he finally spoke up.
“If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, what are you talking about? How is this a classroom?”
“Think how deep we are inside the mountain,” she said. “I think the people who lived down here visited the surface very rarely. Maybe some never went outside at all. I think they used these carvings to teach their children what things looked like up on the surface.”
Sanji shook his head, made a tsk-tsk-tsk sound he’d made when she’d been a little girl. Oh how it had driven her bat-shit crazy back then. Now, it called up warm memories of a happy time.
“That doesn’t make sense, Ronni,” he said. “The only reason we’re able to function right now is because of the KoolSuits. How could people spend their entire lives down here? It’s one hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit. You know the roasts I used to make you? Guess what temperature I slow-cooked them at?”
Lashon raised his hand.
Sanji smiled wide. “Yes, Mister Jenkins?”
“One hundred and seventy degrees,” Lashon said. “Fahrenheit.”
Sanji reached up, clapped the man on the shoulder.
“Very good. When we get to the surface, I’ll dig up my gold stars.”
“Funny,” Veronica said. “Quite hysterical when you look at how much time people had to spend down here, carving away at solid rock. Know what I mean?”
Both men took another slow look around, eyes lingering on some of the larger carvings.
“I see your point,” Sanji said. “Maybe it wasn’t this hot down here back then. Or they had some simple but effective technology for lowering the temperature. Maybe an irrigation system to bring water from the surface to cool things off.”
Lashon raised his hand again.
Sanji nodded at him, the joke already old the second time around.
“Maybe they were muties,” he said. “Like the X-Men or something.”
Sanji managed to not roll his eyes. “A genetic mutation might allow them higher heat tolerances, but only within the laws of physics. Cow meat, chicken meat, pig meat, people meat — when the temperature gets high enough, everything cooks.”
Veronica doubted they were mutants. An irrigation system made the most sense, but in a desert? The water would have had to come from an underground river. She couldn’t think about that now. There had to be some kind of pattern to these carvings, something to make them work together to tell a larger story.
She walked to the wall. The men came with her. She gently touched a tile representing a tentacle god. Her fingers cast strange shadows from the light of her helmet lamp, making the tentacle god seem to wriggle with life.
Sanji also touched the wall, but at the tile’s border rather than the bas-relief carvings itself.
“Ronni, look at this pattern of dots. It makes a box around these four, no, these five tiles.”
She saw the slightly raised bumps beneath Sanji’s fingers. She took a step back, saw that the bumps did, indeed, form a box that contained five tiles.
“Holy shit,” she said. “Nice work, Pops.”
“Gold stars for me as well,” Sanji said.
The first tile showed a tentacle god standing at the mouth of a cave. The image to the right showed a running tribesman carrying a spear. In the third image, the tribesman was snarling, the blade of his spear plunged deep into the tentacle god. The fourth tile made her shudder: three tentacle gods holding double-crescent knives, hacking away at the tribesman, cutting him to pieces. Such detail; a severed hand flying through the air; tentacle gods waving the knives; the expression of pain and horror on the tribesman’s face. Moving headlamps made the small shadows flutter, made it all seem like a bit of real life semi-frozen in stone. The final tile showed the tentacle gods burying the tribesman’s remains.
Veronica felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. A piece of the puzzle she’d labored on for five years was finally answered — she now knew why the Chaltélians wreaked such havoc.
“It’s a punishment,” she said. “The tentacle creatures, they represent some supernatural being. This carving is a warning of what happens if you go against the gods.” She thought of the Americans dead on the plateau above, the skull with the gouge marks on the inside. “I wonder what law Benjamin and the miners broke.”
“That one seems obvious.” Sanji had walked a few feet to the right. “Look at these rows over here. All of the picture groups start with a tribesman or animal at the mouth of a cave. The next picture shows that individual moving into the caves, and then, good day, sir — I say good day.”
The final tiles in each group showed the tentacle gods butchering the transgressor, deer or rabbit or human — Utes or Hopis, maybe, people that had lives and hopes, families and dreams — then burying the remains. It made sense: this was how the Chaltélians stayed hidden for so long.
“These tunnels were sacred,” Veronica said. “If you weren’t from the tribe, it was sacrilege to come near them. The punishment for transgressors was death.”
“Gives me the willies,” Lashon said. “If the mountain is holy ground, aren’t we transgressors, too?”
She didn’t answer. Neither did Sanji.
O’Doyle strode toward them, pistol in hand. Why was his gun out? Lashon straightened up and stood at attention.
“Professors, we have to go,” O’Doyle said. “Mack and Lybrand are almost back. We’re joining up with them and heading back to the elevator.”
He wanted to rush them out of here? Connell was pulling a fast one, show them the cavern so he could say he tried, then, oops, we accidentally drilled right through it.
“We’re not leaving,” Veronica said. “This is a monumental find, do you understand?”
O’Doyle nodded. “Of course. But there’s danger down here and Mister Kirkland wants everyone out.”
Veronica’s hands went to her hips. “Well, I really don’t care what Mister Kirkland said! He can’t just boss us around, you know. He can’t make us leave.”
The scarred man’s lips pressed into a tight line, the very image of someone who was almost finished trying to be nice.
“Maybe Mister Kirkland can’t make you leave, but I can. And I assure you, professor, you won’t enjoy it.”
Lashon moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with O’Doyle. Both men stared, hard-eyed.
Veronica felt a hand on her elbow.
“Ronni, I don’t think a hammer is all that effective against guns, do you?”
She glanced at O’Doyle’s pistol, at Lashon’s machine gun.
O’Doyle pointed to the other end of the Picture Cavern. “Go join Mister Kirkland. Please.”
Veronica wanted to punch him but doubted she’d hurt anything other than her hand. Even if she had a hammer — the literal kind rather than a figurative one — it would probably just bounce off that too-thick skull.
She stormed toward Connell, Sanji a step behind.
12:37 a.m.
The figures danced across the computer screen in front of Katerina and Achmed. Both scientists stared in bewilderment, then shook their heads.
“That’s impossible,” Achmed said.
Katerina shook her head in denial of what her eyes told her. She thought for a moment, pondering the results and what it meant if they were accurate. It was mind-boggling and entirely unacceptable.
“How long did it take us to run that equation?” Katerina asked.
“Thirty-five minutes.”
“Can we shorten it up at all?”
“We can’t,” Achmed said. “If we think there’s a mistake in these results, we have to reenter everything from scratch, assume we made an error in the entry somewhere.”
Katerina pondered that option. If the data was accurate, she needed to alert Connell immediately. But it just didn’t make sense. There was no way the data could be accurate. It was a mistake. It had to be. “Run it again,” she said. “And let’s make sure we do it right this time.”
1:01 a.m.
Kayla slid through the shadows. A strong breeze carried sand across the camp, made waves roll across the canvas covering the Quonset huts.
She adjusted her bag, moving it to the small of her back as she knelt next to the miners’ hut. She sat perfectly still, eyes slowly scanning the area. People were moving, but they were all preoccupied with their tasks. They’d been here long enough that no one bothered to look around anymore — the camp had become familiar to their eyes.
Kayla stayed still for another five minutes, watching carefully, then slid to the hut’s rear window and peeked through. A dozen miners inside, every last one of them sleeping so soundly they might as well have been passed out. Expensive KoolSuits sat in limp piles on the floor or draped over tables.
Amazing. Without O’Doyle and Connell around, discipline slacked off considerably. If O’Doyle hadn’t been in the tunnels, she wouldn’t have come into camp at all — there was risk, then there was pure stupidity.
She watched for a few more minutes. Nothing moved. She slowly opened the hut’s back door and slid inside. All those sleeping men. She could have killed them all if she wanted to, one at a time, silent and sure. But she wasn’t there to kill anyone.
She quietly gathered up a KoolSuit and slid out the door. They’d certainly miss the suit. This time O’Doyle might even search the hills and find her warren. But she needed only a peek into the tunnels, and that was the last bit of information she needed before selling to the highest bidder. She’d try to penetrate the tunnels in a few hours, perhaps at three or four a.m., her last action on this mission. If she could get in, great; if not, she was still in her Land Rover and out of the area by six a.m.
And a few hours after that, the bids would start rolling in.
1:17 a.m.
Achmed hadn’t screwed up.
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Katerina said.
No one answered her. The entire lab staff — all bleary-eyed from the constant stress, the lack of sleep — stood around her, staring at Angus’s map display. The red dots and yellow lines remained. People had double-checked Achmed’s calculation, then triple-checked them.
