“And please note,” Colonel Spivey interjected. “It’s the very fact that we kept those techniques under wraps, completely secret, that let us discard those awful weapons and at the same time keep them out of the wrong hands. Secrecy isn’t always obscene.”
The black officer nodded and went on. “No, Professor Lustig, I’m not talking about liquefying the ground under the Forbidden City or anything like that. I was thinking instead about the gazer beam itself, propagating outward through space.
“Consider your claim that Beta must have been built by alien beings … aliens who apparently mean us harm … have you given no thought to how the gazer might be aimed? At targets coming into the solar system?” He leaned forward. “I can’t help but wonder if our extraterrestrial foes haven’t badly underestimated us, by inadvertently giving us the very means we need to defend ourselves.”
Alex blinked. A faint smile spread as he sat up straighter. “A defensive weapon … using the beam against Beta’s builders. Yes.” He nodded. “I see your point.”
“By damn, you’re right!” George Hutton slammed the table. Dawning enthusiasm glinted in his eyes. “Wouldn’t that be justice? To turn their own taniwha against them?”
“Um. Wouldn’t that mean leaving the, uh, Beta singularity down there … inside the Earth?” Logan Eng pointed out hesitantly. “… to continue serving as a mirror for the gravity laser?” He motioned with two hands. “Otherwise, no coherent beam.”
“Oh. Right.” George looked crestfallen. “Can’t have that.”
“Are you certain?” the military physicist asked. “You say Beta’s orbit even now carries it briefly up to regions where the rock density’s so low it loses mass. All right, then, what if it were set on just the right trajectory … remaining inside the Earth, but balanced to neither grow nor shrink?”
George looked at Alex. “Is that possible?”
While Alex pondered the question, consulting mental resources Teresa could not imagine, June Morgan commented, “It would save us all that worry about how to deal with a million-degree flaming ball when it’s finally ejected from the Earth. What do you think, Teresa?” the blonde woman turned and asked her, for some reason.
Teresa pushed her chair back. “I’m feeling very tired,” she told Glenn Spivey as she stood up. “I think I’ll go lie down for a while.” The colonel looked at her for a moment and then nodded for a guard to accompany her. Teresa glanced back from the doorway to see Alex Lustig tracing mathematics in a holo tank, surrounded by excited scientists from both camps. She sighed and turned away.
The guard was an ANZAC commando from Perth, a gung-ho Aussie patriot who was nonetheless solicitous and rather sweet. When she asked if it was possible to have some food sent down, he said he would try.
Her bags were in her old room … retrieved from the car and no doubt inspected for good measure. She collapsed onto the same cot she’d awakened in that morning and mumbled a command to put the lights out. Curled up in a ball, clutching a blanket to her breast, Teresa did not feel “home” in any way at all.
In fitful slumber she dreamt the death of stars.
Her old friends. Her guideposts. One by one they flickered out, each with a cry of anguish and despair. Every sigh she echoed in her pillow with a moan.
Something was killing them. Killing the stars.
Poor Jason, she thought in the strange, mixed illogic of sleep. By the time he reaches Spica it’ll be gone. Nothing but black, empty holes. And he so enjoys the light.
Dreams move on. Now she looked out through the bars of a dungeon, across a dark, glassy-smooth sea, barren of reflections. As she watched, the water acquired a faint luminance … a pearly glow that suffused not from above but within. The radiance grew as steam rose; then roiling bubbles burst from a mounting bulge.
The sun rose out of the ocean.
Not the horizon—but the ocean itself. Too brilliant to see, it cast fierce light through her outstretched hand, tracing the contours of her bones. The blazing orb speared upward on a column of superheated vapor. In its wake, mammoth waves rolled across the once-placid sea.
Those water mountains were higher than her prison and heading her way. Yet she didn’t care. Even half blinded, she could trace the fireball’s trajectory and knew with dreadful certainty, It isn’t going away after all. It’s coming back. Coming back to stay.
Perhaps it was that dreaded thought that stirred her from the nightmare. Or maybe the creepy feeling that someone was treading softly toward her, across the floor of her tiny quarters. Teresa’s eyes snapped open, though she was still snared by sleep catalepsy and by her mother’s reassuring words.
“Shhh … you only imagined it. There are no monsters. There’s never anybody there.”
A foot collided with the dinner tray, left by the kindly commando. Teresa heard a sharp intake of breath. Momma, Teresa thought, as her heart raced and her right hand formed a fist, you had no idea what you were talking about.
“Shhh,” somebody said, not a meter away. “Don’t speak.”
She stared at two white blobs … a pair of eyes, presumably. Teresa swallowed and tried not to let adrenaline rule her. “Wh … who is it?”
A hand settled gently, briefly over her mouth, hushing her without force. “It’s Alex Lustig.… Do you want to get out of here?”
Why is it, she wondered, that your eyes never completely dark-adapt while you sleep? Only now, staring into the dimness, did she begin making out the man’s features.
“But … how?”
He smiled. A Cheshire Cat smile. “George slipped me a map. He’s staying with the others. Going to try cooperating with Spivey. You and I, though … we’ve got to leave.”
“Why you?” She asked hoarsely. “You were in pig heaven, last I looked.”
He shrugged. “I’ll explain later, if we make it. Right now there’s a coffee break going on, and we’ve maybe fifteen minutes till I’m missed. You coming?”
Teresa answered with action, flinging off the covers and reaching for her shoes.
The Australian was no longer on watch by her door. Instead, a tall, powerful Maori, with permanent-looking cheek tattoos and battle ribbons on his uniform, stood with his back against the opposite wall, his mouth half open in a pleasant leer. At first Teresa wondered if the Kiwi soldier had been won over to their side. Then she saw his glassy look, like a dazer, high on a self-induced enkephalin rush. Only, a dazer wouldn’t be a commando. Somehow, Lustig must have drugged him.
“Choline inhibitors. He won’t remember a thing,” Alex explained. He led her down silent, rock-walled corridors. Each time they approached a door, he referred to a small box before giving the okay to proceed. At last they arrived at the secret quay, where two small boats bobbed in the still, cool waters of Waitomo’s underground lake.
“Won’t the exits be watched?” she asked. It wouldn’t require human guards—just tiny drones, about the size of a housefly.
“This area was swept a few minutes ago. Anyway, nobody but George knows the route we’ll be taking.”
Teresa wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. But there wasn’t much choice. She climbed into the lead boat and cast off as Alex began hauling at the network of ropes lacing the ceiling overhead. As they neared the big doors, the dock lights shut off, plunging them into darkness. The gates rolled aside with a low rumble. Alex grunted, feeling his way from one guide cable to the next. She heard him softly counting, perhaps reciting a mnemonic.
“Are you sure you know what you’re—”
He cut her off. “If you want to go back, you know the way.”
Teresa shut up. Anyway, soon they were under the false constellations again—those parodies of starlight used by phosphorescent worms to lure their hapless prey. Each vista pretended to show unexplored clusters, galaxies … a promise of infinity.
Perhaps all our modern astronomy is wrong, she pondered, gazing across the ersatz starfields. Maybe the “real” constellations are just like those green dots.
No more than lures to bait the unwary.
She shook her head as the ceiling slid slowly past, carrying with it whole implied universes. That was the problem with nightmares, they clung to you, affecting your mood for hours afterwards. Teresa couldn’t afford that now. Nor even settling into “passenger” mode. Action was the proper antidote. She whispered. “Can I help?”
The boat glided smoothly through the water. “Not yet …” Alex panted as he groped for something up ahead, almost tipping them over in the process. Teresa gripped the rocking sides. “Ah. Here it is. George’s special rope. From here we leave the main cave.”
Their craft made a sharp turn, scraping by towers of inky blackness and then embarking under new, unfamiliar skyscapes. A little while later Alex spoke again, now short of breath. “All right. If you take my hand, I’ll help you stand … carefully! Let me guide you to the cable.… Got it? Now that there aren’t other ropes about to confuse you, I could use some assistance. Put an elbow on my shoulder to feel my rhythm. Keep to an easy pace at first. Let me know the instant you feel any motion sickness.”
Teresa forbore telling him her entire life had been a battle with vertigo. “Lay on, Macduff,” she whispered with an effort at cheerfulness.
“And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’ “he finished the quotation. “We’re off.”
Trying to stand in a swaying boat while dragging on a cable overhead in total darkness—it wasn’t exactly the easiest thing Teresa had ever attempted. She almost fell over the first few times. But leaning against him made it easier. They could brace each other on four legs. Soon they were breathing in the same cadence, gliding across the smooth pond with hardly a sound and only the green sprinkle overhead to give the cave walls outlines.
Soon those walls were closing in again, she could tell. The darkness and silence seemed to accentuate her other senses, and she was acutely aware of every faint drip of condensation, every aroma rising from her clothes and his.
The boat bumped once, twice, and then went aground on a rocky bank. “Okay,” he said. “Carefully, crouch down and help me feel for the bag of supplies.”
Letting go of the rope, they came closer than ever to tipping over. Teresa gasped, clutching him. Together they fell in a heap of arms and legs, gasping—and also laughing with released tension. As they tried to untangle, he grunted. “Ow! Your knee is on my … ah, thank you.” His voice shifted to falsetto. “Thank you very much.” They laughed again, in tearful relief.
“Is this what you were looking for?” she asked, as one hand came upon a nylon bag. She pushed it toward him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Now where’s the zipper? Don’t answer that! Here it is.”
There was something bizarre and really rather funny about all this fumbling in the dark. It made your hands feel thick and uncoordinated, as if smothered in mittens. Still, altogether, this beat languishing in a tiny room, feeling sorry for yourself.
“Here, take these,” he said, apparently trying to hand her something. But in reaching out she wound up jabbing him in the throat. He made exaggerated choking sounds and she giggled nervously. “Oh, stop. Here, let’s do it this way,” she suggested, and ran her fingers from his neck down to his right shoulder. She felt his left hand move to cover hers. Together they followed his sleeve down to his other hand.
Funny, she thought along the way. I had this image of him as being soft, mushy. But he’s solid. Are all Cambridge dons built like this?
With both hands he pressed into hers an object—a pair of goggles. But he didn’t let go quite yet.
“We had to get you out,” he told her in a more serious tone. “We couldn’t let Spivey take you off to jail.”
Teresa felt a lump, knowing she had underestimated her friends.
“He’d have used your jeopardy as one more threat, to coerce George and the others,” Alex finished. “And we decided we just couldn’t allow that.”
Teresa pulled her hand away. Of course. That’s completely right. Have to stay practical about this.
“So you’re dropping me off now and going back?” she asked as she adjusted the elastic headband.
“Of course not. First off, we haven’t got you out yet. And anyway, I’m not staying to be Colonel Spivey’s tool!”
“But … but without you the gazer …”
“Oh, they’ll manage without me, I suppose. If all they want to do is keep the damn thing down there—” He paused and caught his breath. “But I’m not bowing out completely. There’s method to this madness, Captain Tikhana.”
“Teresa … please.”
There was another pause. “All right. Teresa. Um, got yours adjusted yet?”
“Just a sec.” She pulled the strap and toggled the switch by one lens. Suddenly it was as if someone had turned the lights on.
Unlike mere passive infrared goggles, which would have detected very little down here, these monitored whichever way her eyes turned and sent a tiny illuminating beam in just that direction, for just as long as she was looking that way. The only exception was where they detected another set of goggles. To prevent blinding another user, the optics were programmed never to shine directly at each other, so when Teresa looked around for the first time, she made out limestone walls, the inky waterline, the boat—but Alex Lustig’s face remained hidden inside an oval of darkness.
“Couldn’t have used them before because Spivey had spy sensors—”
Teresa waved aside his explanation. It made sense. “Now where?” she asked.
He pointed downward, and she understood why even the peeper colonel’s little robot watchers wouldn’t be able to follow them. “Okay,” she said. And together they sorted equipment from the nylon bag.
Claustrophobia was the least of her worries as they kicked along a deep, twisting tube, carried by the current of an underground stream. Nor did the bitter cold bother her much—though Teresa kept an eye on the tiny clock readout, calculating the time before hypothermia would become a problem.
Alex’s flippers churned the water in front of her, creating sparkling flecks in her goggles’ beam. Spectrum conversion always made things look eerie, but here the effect was otherworldly, other-dimensional. The taper of his legs seemed to stretch endless meters, kilometers ahead of her, like this surging hypogean torrent.
The river held their lives now and they were helpless to turn back if George Hutton’s map proved wrong or if they took some fatal wrong turn. She imagined they might, as in some old movie, be swept downward ever deeper into the Earth’s twisting bowels, to some Land That Time Forgot. In fact, though, washing ashore on a misty underground dinosaur refuge was less unsettling to contemplate than some likelier possibilities … like meeting their end pinned to a porous wall, the freshet plunging past them through crevices too small for human flesh to pass.
Was Alex planning to lead her all the way to the river’s outlet, somewhere on the Tasman Sea? If so, the timing would be tight. Their air capsules weren’t rated for more than a couple of hours.
Perhaps it was the coolness, but Teresa’s thoughts soon calmed. She found herself wondering at the sculpted shapes of the sweeping, curving tube … at the way different hardnesses of stone overlapped in smooth relief and how patient eddies had carved cavities into the ancient mountain, laying bare fine patterns, delicate to the eye.
Those eddies were dangerous. Even with gloves and knee pads it was hard to ward off every sudden invisible surge, every buffet and blow. Teresa felt certain there were daredevils among the world’s bored, well-fed majority who would pay George Hutton handsomely for this experience, without ever understanding where they were or what they were seeing.
At one point the river opened into a large chamber with an air pocket. They met at the surface, spitting out their mouthpieces as they treaded water.
“Amazing!” she gasped. And the black oval covering his face seemed to nod in agreement. “Yes, it’s unbelievable.”
“Where to from here?”
“I
… think we take the way to the left,” he answered after a pause.
Teresa churned her legs, rotating. Yes, the river split here, dividing into two unequal paths. Alex was referring to the narrower, swifter-running branch. “You’re sure?”
In answer, he held out the miniplaque that hung from a cord around his neck. “Did you see any other large chambers on the way here? Did I miss one?” She peered at the sketch. A computer graphics device could reproduce only what it was given, and George Hutton’s drawing had apparently been scrawled in a hurry. “I … I’d have to say you’re right. Left it is.”
They reset their goggles and mouthpieces and kicked off toward the left-hand opening, and an ominous roaring. Teresa was intensely aware of the annotation Hutton had inscribed at this point on the map, in red letters.
Be careful here! the inscription had said.
Only a few meters into the new stretch, Teresa realized just how friendly the last one had been. No time or energy could be spared for sightseeing or philosophizing now. Curves loomed suddenly out of the froth ahead, confusing her smart goggles. Confusing her. Even with the help of slip-streaming—the natural tendency to ride the current’s center—it took every ounce of effort just to keep the writhing stone intestine from crushing her!
It can’t be much farther, she figured, remembering her brief glimpse at the sketch, unsure whether she was calculating or simply praying. The last pool has to be just ahead.
No sooner did she think that though, than suddenly she was caught in a tangle with Alex Lustig’s legs. With the river plowing into them from behind, the collision was a series of buffets that made her head ring, knocking dazzling spots before her eyes. The goggles only made things worse by dimming suddenly in response to her pupils’ shocked dilation.
A sharp scrape on one leg made Teresa aware of jagged stones, too fresh and rugged to have lain in the smoothing flow for long. A rockfall must have partly blocked the stretch of river. She writhed to one side barely in time to avoid being impaled on one jutting monolith, then had to grab Alex’s leg as the current swept her toward another jagged jumble just ahead!