here among the books,' he said. 'But now you're here!'
In turn, Ali told of the expedition's sad demise. She related Ike's self-immolation in
the hadal fortress. 'But are you sure he died?' Thomas asked.
'I saw it myself.' Her voice caught. Thomas expressed his condolences.
'It was God's will,' Ali recovered. 'And it was His will that led us here, to this library. Now we shall attempt to accomplish the work we were meant for. Together we may come closer to the original word.'
'You are a remarkable woman,' Thomas said.
They set about the task with acute focus, grouping texts and comparing observations. At first delicately, then avidly, they examined the books, leaves, codices, scrolls, and tablets. None of it was shelved neatly. It was almost as if the mass of writings had accumulated here like a pile of snowflakes. Setting the lamp to one side, they burrowed into the largest pile.
The material on top was the most current, some in English or Japanese or Chinese. The deeper they worked, the older the writings were. Pages disintegrated in Ali's fingers. On others, the ink had foxed through layer after layer of writings. Some books were locked tight with mineral seep. But much of it yielded lettering and glyphs. Luckily the room was spacious, because they soon had a virtual tree of languages laid out on the floor, pile by pile of books.
At the end of five days, Ali and Thomas had excavated alphabets no linguist had ever seen. Stepping back from their work, it was obvious to Ali they'd barely made a dent in the heaped writings. Here lay the beginnings of all literature, all history. In a sense, it promised to contain the beginnings of memory, human and hadal both. What might lie at its center?
'We need to rest. We need to pace ourselves,' Thomas cautioned. He had a bad cough. Ali helped him to his corner, and forced herself to sit, too. But she was excited.
'Ike told me once, the hadals want to be like us,' she said. 'But they're already like us. And we're like them. This is the key to their Eden. It won't give them back their ancient regime. But it can bind them, and give them concordance as a people. It can bridge the gap between them and us. This is the beginning of their return to the light. Or at least of the sovereignty of their race. Maybe we can find a mutual language. Maybe we can make a place for them among us. Or they can make a place for us among them. But it all starts here.'
The torture of Walker's men began. Their screams drifted up to Ali and Thomas. Periodically the sounds tapered off. After a night of silence, Ali was certain the men had died. But then the screaming started again. With pauses, it would go on for many days.
Before they could continue their scholarship, Ali and Thomas received a visitor. 'He's the one I told you about,' she whispered to him. 'He leads them, I think.'
'You might be right about him,' Thomas said. 'But what does he want with us?'
The monster approached with a plastic tube marked HELIOS. It was badly scratched. Ali immediately recognized her map case. He went directly to her, and she could smell fresh blood on him. His feet were bare. He shook out the roll of maps and opened them. 'These came into my possession,' he said in his crisp English.
Ali wanted to ask how, but thought better of it. Obviously, Gitner and his band of scientists had failed to escape. 'They're mine,' she said.
'Yes, I know. The soldiers told me. Also, I've studied the maps, and your authorship is clear. Unfortunately they're not real maps, but only your approximation of things. They show how your expedition proceeded in general. I need more. Details. Detours. Side trips. Diversions. And camps, every camp, every night. Who was in them, who wasn't. I need everything. You have to re-create the entire expedition for me. It's crucial.'
Ali glanced at Thomas, fearful. How could she possibly remember it all? 'I can try,'
she said.
'Try?' The monster was smelling her. 'But your very existence depends on your
memory. I would do more than try.'
Thomas stepped forward. 'I'll help her,' he volunteered.
'Help her quickly, then,' the monster said. 'Now your life depends on it, too.'
On February 11, at 1420 hours and 9,856 fathoms, they reached a cliff overlooking a valley. It was not the bottom of the pit; you could see a gaping hole in the far distance. But it was a geological pause in that abyss they had been following.
Before she tried again to martyr herself, Ike tied his nameless daughter to a horn of rock along the wall. Then he flopped on his stomach along the edge to get a view of the land and sort through his options.
It had the shape and size of a crater, lit with a sienna gloom. Veins of luminous minerals spidered through the encircling walls, and the fog was lambent, flickering like tongues. He could make out the architecture of this enormous hollow, two or three miles across, and its honeycombed walls and the vast, intricate city it cupped.
Five hundred meters beneath his perch, the city occupied the entire floor. It was at once magnificent and destitute. From this height he could clearly see the whole obsolete metropolis.
Spires and pyramids stood in ruins. In the distance, one or two towering structures rose nearly as high as the rim, though their tops had crumbled away. Canals had harrowed the avenues deep, carving meandering canyons. Much was in collapse or flooded or had been overrun with flowstone. Several giant stalactites had grown so heavy they had fallen from the invisible ceiling and speared buildings.
It took Ike time to adjust to the scale of this place. Only then did he begin to distinguish the multitudes. They were so numerous and packed together and enfeebled that all he saw at first was a broad stain upon the floor. But the stain had a slight motion to it, like the slow agitation of glaciers. Here and there, winged creatures launched from cliffside aeries, darting through the fog.
In effect, the refugees were camping not in but atop the old city. He couldn't make out individual figures from this distance, but he guessed there had to be thousands down there. Tens of thousands. He had been right about the sanctuary.
They must have come from throughout the planet to this single place. Even though Ike had guessed they were migrating to a central location, their numbers astounded him. Haddie was a solitary race, as willing to demolish one another as their enemy, prone to wandering in small, paranoid packs. He'd decided there were probably no more than a few thousand left in the entire subplanet. There had to be fifty times that right here. For them to have gathered this way, and in apparent armistice, it had to be like the end of the world.
Their abundance was good news and bad. It all but guaranteed that Ali would end up in the refugee horde, if she was not already among them. Ike had devised no specific gambit, but had been relying on a much smaller mob to deal with. Finding her from a distance was going to be impossible, and infiltrating them a lengthy nightmare. Just locating her could take months. And all the while he would have to tend the hostage, his daughter. The prospect threw him into a downward spiral. He looked at his watch – Troy's watch – and noted the time and date and altitude.
He heard the pad of feet, and started to rise up, knife in hand. He had time to see a rifle butt. Then it axed into his face, he felt it clip his temple, and all the brawl went out of him.
By the time Ike revived, he was bound hand to foot with his own rope. He pried his eyes open. His captor was waiting, seated five feet away, barefoot and in rags, sighting on Ike's face through a US Army night-vision sniperscope. A pair of binoculars hung from his neck. Ike sighed. The Rangers had finally hounded him to earth.
'Wait,' Ike said. 'Before you shoot.'
'Sure,' said the man, his face still burrowed behind the rifle and sight.
'Just tell me why.' What had he done to deserve their vengeance?
'Why what, Ike?' The executioner lifted his head. Ike was thunderstruck. This was no Ranger.
'Surprise,' Shoat said. 'I didn't think it was possible, either, an ordinary joe trumping the great Ike Crockett. But you were easy. Talk about bragging rights. I mug Superman and get the girl.'
Ike couldn't think of what to say. He looked across at his daughter. Shoat had tightened her bonds.
