Until he was very far away.
CHAPTER SIX
THE VINSON MASSIF
THE SENTINEL RANGE OF THE ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS
ANTARCTICA
AUGUST 19, 10:21 P.M.
The LC-130’s nose lifted on powerful hydraulics to allow us to drive the snowcat out, and the inrush of frigid air was like a punch in the face. I tugged my balaclava into place as I walked down the ramp with Bunny. Top drove the cat and the flight crew waved him down and guided him onto the access road. The crew was instructed to button up the plane and remain aboard. A team from Gateway was supposed to refuel the bird, but so far no one had come to meet us. That was troubling for all of the obvious reasons.
The closest buildings were utility sheds, all of which were dark and probably locked. The main building was a quarter mile away—a two-story central structure with single-story wings stretching off as if embracing the foot of the mountain.
“Lights are on,” said Bunny.
“Doesn’t mean anyone’s home,” murmured Top.
We had all of our normal gear and a lot of the nasty little gadgets developed for us by Dr. Hu. But Bug’s information about the ancient meteor strikes made me paranoid about some kind of weirdo alien space bugs trapped in ancient ice and now melting because of the engines and general operations of Gateway. So I made sure we all wore BAMS units. These are man-portable bio-aerosol mass spectrometers that were used for real-time detection and identification of biological aerosols. They have a vacuum function that draws in ambient air and hits it with continuous wave lasers to fluoresce individual particles. Key molecules like bacillus spores, dangerous viruses, and certain vegetative cells are identified and assigned color codes. Thanks to Mr. Church we had the latest models, which were about the size of a walkie-talkie. We clipped them to our belts. As long as the little lights were green we were all happy. Orange made us sweat. If they turned red we’d be running like hell.
We climbed onto the snowcat and I’m pretty sure we were all thinking something was hinky with Gateway. When you lived at the bottom of the world, visitors were rare. You came out to greet them. And yet every door on the station remained closed. We drove in silence to the main building and Top parked us at an angle that would allow the cat to offer us protection if this turned into an ambush. He idled there for a full minute.
Nothing.
“Maybe they’re putting their mittens on,” suggested Bunny.
“Uh-huh,” grunted Top. “And maybe they’re baking us some cookies.”
“Let’s get to work,” I said. “Combat call signs only.”
I screwed a bud into my ear and tapped it. “Cowboy to Bug. Talk to me.”
“Welcome to the winter wonderland, Cowboy.” The fidelity of the speaker was superb and Bug sounded like he was right next to me instead of sipping hot cocoa at the tactical operations center at the Hangar, the main DMS facility in Brooklyn. “We are mission active and all telemetry is in the green.”
“Okay, we’re on the ground and about to leave the cat,” I said. “Bunny, let’s go knock. Top, watch our backs.”
Top nodded and clicked the switches that made a pair of thirty-millimeter chain guns rise from concealed pods. A second set of switches folded down a pair of stubby wings on which were mounted Hellfire missiles, six per side. Like I said, Mr. Church always makes sure we have the best toys.
“Don’t get trigger-happy, old man,” said Bunny.
“Don’t get in my way if I do, Farm Boy,” said Top.
We got out. The sun was a cold and distant speck of light that seemed poised to drop off the edge of the world. Winds cut across the open plain with the ferocity of knives. The ’Skinz kept us from freezing, but the cold seemed to find every devious opening in our face masks and goggles.
I stopped and raised my head to listen to the wind. It blew across so many jagged peaks that it picked up all sorts of whistles and howls. I wasn’t experienced enough with this part of the world and its sounds, but it seemed to me that there was more to that wind than the natural vagaries of aerodynamic acoustics. It actually seemed like the wind was shrieking at us.
Bunny caught it, too. “The fuck is that?”
I had no answers and didn’t want to give in to any kind of discussion on the topic.
“Time to clock in,” I said. “Bug, where are we with thermal scans?”
“They’re online but the readings are all over the place. First I get one signature, then I have a couple of hundred, then a dozen, then none. It keeps changing. I don’t think we can trust that intel. Geological survey of the area indicates heavy concentration of metal ores in those mountains.” He paused. “Not sure why that’s messing with thermal imaging for the buildings, though. Best I can advise is to proceed with extreme caution.”
“Roger that.”
Bunny swore softly and then faded to the left side of the main door; I took the right side. I reached out a hand and knocked on the door. Even when you know it’s a waste of time, you go through the motions in case you’re wrong. And, sometimes you do the expected thing in order to provoke a reaction.
We got no reaction at all.
I reached for the handle. It turned easily and the lock clicked open.
Bunny mouthed the words, “So much for the concept of a ‘secure facility.’”
I waved my hand for Top. He turned off the snowcat, dropped down to the ice, and came up on our six, fast and steady.
We entered in silence, moving quick, covering each other … and then stopped. Just inside the metal doorway was a small vestibule, and the back wall of it was one mother of a steel airlock.
“Bug,” I said. “Tell me why I’m looking at an airlock.”
“Huh? Um … I don’t know, it’s not on the schematics for the old radar station. And there’s nothing in the materials purchases or requisitions about it.”
“Balls.”
Top ran his hand over the smooth steel. “Ten bucks says it’s a Huntsman.”
I nodded. In our trade we get to see every kind of airlock they make. And, unfortunately, we get to deal with what’s behind most of those airlocks. Fun times.
“There’s a geometry hand scanner, too,” said Bunny. “Pretty sure it’s a Synergy Software Systems model. The new one that came out last December.”
“Good,” said Bug, “that gives me a starting point. Sergeant Rock, put on a glove and run the scanner.”
Top took a polyethylene glove from a pocket and pulled it onto his right hand. It looked like the blue gloves worn by cops and airport security, but this one was veined with wires and sensors that uplinked it via satellite to MindReader. He placed his hand on the geometry scanner and let the lasers do their work. Normally they create a 3-D map of the exact terrain of the whole hand, but the sensors hijacked that process and fed the scan signature into MindReader. The computer fed its own intrusion program into the scanner and essentially told it to recognize the hand. Sure, I’m oversimplifying it, but I’m a shooter, not a geek. I’m always appropriately amazed and I make the right oooh-ing and ahhh-ing sounds when Bug shows me this stuff, but at the end of the day I just want the damn door open.
The damn door opened.
“You da man,” Bunny said to Bug.
We stepped back from the airlock as the two-ton steel door swung out on nearly silent hydraulics. I expected a flood of fluorescent light and a warm rush of air. Instead we saw only darkness and felt a cold wind blow out at us like the exhalation of a sleeping giant. It was fetid air, though, and it stank of oil and smoke and chemicals. But it was more than that. Worse than that.
It was a meat smell.
Burst meat. Raw meat.
Like the inside of a butcher’s freezer.
INTERLUDE THREE
OFFICE OF DR. MICHAEL GREENE
EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK
WHEN PROSPERO WAS ELEVEN
“Prospero,” said Greene, “we need to talk about your dream diary.”
“I figured we would,” said the boy. He sat on th
e floor between the potted ficus and the couch.
“When I asked you to start your dream diary it was with the understanding that you shared your own dreams.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“Prospero, if these are your own dream images, then what should we think about this?” Greene had his laptop open and he turned it so they could both see the screen. Then he held up one of the boy’s drawings, which showed a pair of giants kneeling in water. The giant on the left was colored in umber and other earth tones; the one on the right was in cooler blues and grays. On the screen there was a high-resolution jpeg of a painting with almost identical composition and color. “This is a very famous painting called Metamorphosis of Narcissus,” said Greene. “It was painted in 1937 by the artist Salvador Dalí.”
“Yes,” said Prospero.
“You admit to having copied this painting?”
“No.”
“But—”
“My drawing is different,” he said. “It’s not the same angle, and some of the other things are different. The decay on the stone figure is worse in mine. And in Dalí’s painting there is a hand holding up a bulb from which another figure is growing. I didn’t put that in because that figure’s not there anymore. The sky’s different, too. He painted it at twilight, but mine is clearly dawn.”
Greene said, “Making changes to someone else’s art is not the point. You took the theme and basic composition from Dalí and gave it to me as if it was something from your own dreams.”
Prospero shook his head. “No, that’s not what happened.”
“It is. And I checked, most of your ‘dream’ images are borrowed from paintings by famous artists. The big organic machine picture is The Elephant Celebes by Max Ernst. The drawing of the red building is Giorgio de Chirico’s The Red Tower. Do you want me to go on?”
“Wait,” said Prospero, surprised, “are you mad at me?”
“I’m disappointed. I thought we had established a relationship of honesty, Prospero. I don’t enjoy being lied to.”
The boy looked alarmed. “I’m not lying. You’re the only person I ever tell the truth to. The whole truth.”
“Then explain these drawings. Why did you copy them and try to pass them off as your own?”
“No,” said Prospero quickly. “Look at them. You think my bull-god is the same as de Chirico’s? It’s not. My bull is older and it has the marks of the whip and the claw. It’s ready to be given to the Elder Things as payment.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Greene. “Did you know about these paintings before you had your ‘dreams’?”
“I knew of them before I started the dream diary for you,” explained the boy, clearly upset, “but that’s because I went looking for them.”
“What does that mean?”
“I … well, I’ve always had dreams like this. I never dream about the stuff human kids dream about.”
“You are human, Prospero.”
“Don’t start that again, Doc. Not now, okay?”
Greene spread his hands. In several previous sessions Prospero had expressed his hope that there were others like him here on Earth, and that if he found them maybe together they would be able to solve the problem of how to get home. Wherever and whatever home was. “Continue,” he said, his patience thin.
“I had those dreams and then once I was surfing the Net, looking for people like me, you know? That’s when I found this Web site about the artwork of the surrealism movement. There was a painting by Max Ernst that showed the Loplop.”
Greene nodded, and located the image online, and then in Prospero’s sketchbook. It showed a strange creature that was part bird, part human, and entirely unreal. The artist had done a number of drawings of the creature, claiming that it was his alter ego, which he also referred to as his “private phantom.” The painting that matched—or nearly matched—one of Prospero’s drawings was one of the creature in the midst of running, or perhaps dancing. The painting, known as L’Ange du Foyer (Le Triomphe du Surréalisme), or The Fireside Angel, was subtitled “The Triumph of Surrealism.”
Prospero came over and bent to touch the picture on the laptop screen. His touch was gentle and on his face was an expression of self-aware pleasure that Greene thought looked beatific. There was text beneath the image, and Prospero read it in a soft voice. “‘Naked, they dress only in their majesty and their mystery.’” He turned to the doctor. “Don’t you get it? This isn’t me copying what they did. This is me finding other people like me. Other people who have seen the things I’ve seen. Not just Ernst. Others. André Breton, Louis Aragon, and Philippe Soupault.” He laughed and then rattled off a long list of names. “Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, René Crevel, Max Morise, Man Ray, Roger Vitrac, Gala Éluard, Salvador Dalí, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert, Yves Tanguy…”
Greene held a hand up to stop him. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
“They saw what I see. They knew it’s real. They wrote about it, painted it, told people about it. They knew, Doc. They knew that my world exists. Do you know how much I needed that? To know that I’m not crazy, that this is real?”
Greene said nothing. This was a dangerous moment for the boy and he had to decide if he had reached a new level with Prospero or if the boy had revealed just how far his psychosis ran.
Before he could organize a comment, Prospero snatched up the sketchbook and hugged it to his chest.
“I think I understand now,” he declared. “Those devices I’ve been building? The ones my dad keeps taking from me and selling to the military? They’re nothing. That was just me starting the wrong way. No … no, it was me getting up to speed. But this, this,” he said, thumping his palm against his sketchbook so hard that it seemed he wanted to push the book into his own heart, “this is what I needed to make me stop doubting myself. God, it’s like a light went on in my head the way it does in cartoons. Wow. I know, Doc. I really know what I have to do. The writers, they’ve been dropping clues for years. Lovecraft, Derleth, Howard? All of them, the ones everyone thinks were writing stupid horror stories? They weren’t. Oh no. Oh, hell no. They were dropping clues. They were sending up smoke signals, knowing that someone like me would be out there, watching, looking, waiting for contact.”
“Prospero,” said Greene evenly, “I’m going to need you to calm down. Why don’t you take a seat and let’s do some control breathing together—”
“Shhh, Doc,” said Prospero, “you need to listen now. This is so big. This is so huge my head feels like it opened up on hinges. I can feel the truth in there. I can feel the answers. They’re whispering to me. They want me to find them.” He cut Greene an almost conspiratorial look. “You’ve been a big help. You kicked me in the butt and now I know what I have to do.”
“What is it you think you have to do?” asked Greene carefully.
“I have to find the books. They all hinted about them. Those writers, they weren’t writing about fake monster stuff. They were making sure the clues got out there. Most people—the human herd—they think it’s all nonsense and junk. But it’s not. No. I need to find those books and then I need to get to work building it.”
“Building … what?”
“My God Machine,” said Prospero as if that answer should have been obvious to even the meanest intelligence. Laughter bubbled out of him. “I bet my dad would even help me. He’ll have to. He’ll want to.”
“What is a God Machine, Prospero?”
The boy walked slowly across the room, still clutching the sketchbook to his chest. He stopped by the window and raised his face to the warm sunlight.
“It’s how I’m going to go home,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE VINSON MASSIF
THE SENTINEL RANGE OF THE ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS
ANTARCTICA
AUGUST 19, 10:25 P.M.
I heard Bunny’s sharp intake of breath.
I heard
Top softly murmur, “God in heaven.”
Then something moved in the darkness. We crouched, weapons ready, barrels following line of sight, fingers lying nervously along the curves of our trigger guards.
Inside the chamber, a dozen yards away, we could hear something. It wasn’t footsteps. Not exactly. This was a soft, almost furtive sound. A shift and scrape as if whatever moved in there did not move well. Or was unable to move well.
“NV,” I said very quietly and we all flipped down the night-vision devices on our helmets. The world of snow white and midnight black instantly transformed to an infinitely stranger world of greens and grays.
The thing in the darkness was at the very outside range of total clarity. It moved and swayed with a broken rhythm, obscured by rows of stacked supplies.
“What the fuck…?” breathed Bunny.
The thing moved toward us, a huge, weird shape that was in no way human. Pale and strange, it shuffled steadily toward the open door, but we only caught glimpses of it as it passed behind one stack of crates and then another. The abattoir stink of the place was awful and it seemed to intensify as this creature advanced on us.
“Got to be a polar bear,” whispered Bunny.
“Wrong continent,” said Top.
Their voices were hushed. They were talking because they were scared, and that was weird. These guys were pros, recruited to the DMS from the top SpecOps teams in the country. They don’t run off at the mouth to relieve stress. Not them.
Except they were.
“Cut the chatter,” I snapped, and from the way they stiffened I knew that it wasn’t my rebuke that hit them—but the realization that they were breaking their own training. Each of them would have fried a junior team member for making that kind of error. So … why had they?
The thing in the darkness was behind the closest set of crates now. In a few seconds it would shuffle into view. I could feel fear dumping about a pint of adrenaline into my bloodstream.
And then the creature moved into our line of sight.
In the glow of the night vision it was green and unnatural, though I knew that it was really white. Not the vital white of an Alaskan polar bear, or the pure white of a gull’s breast. No, this was a sickly hue and I knew that even with the NV goggles. This was a pallor that had never been touched by sunlight, even the cold light here at the frozen bottom of the world. This was a mushroom white, a sickly and abandoned paleness that could only have acquired that shade in a place of total darkness. It provoked in me an antagonism born of repugnance and I nearly shot it right there and then.