Shoat opened the lid and turned the machine on. He stepped back, plugging a portable earphone into one ear, and held a small camera/speaker ball in front of his face. On screen, his face rotated and mugged. 'Testing, testing,' his voice spoke over the computer speaker.
Against the wall, the feral girl grunted, eyes wide with fear, a stranger to such magic.
'Here's what you're going to do, Ike. Take the laptop down into night-town there. Once you reach Ali, open the laptop up. Make sure the computer's in line of sight, a straight shot from you to me. I don't want to lose transmission. Then get their presidente on the horn for me. While you're at it, give this whelp back to them. A good-faith gesture. I'll take it from there.'
'What's in it for me?'
Shoat grinned. 'That's my man. What would you like? Your life? Or Ali's? Wanna bet
I know the answer?'
It was exactly the chance Ike had wanted for her. 'All right,' he said. 'You're the boss.'
'Good to have you on board, Ike.'
'Cut my ropes.'
'Of course.' Shoat wagged the knife as if Ike were a naughty child, then tossed it on the ground. 'But first we need to understand each other. It's going to take you a while to crawl over here and cut yourself loose. And by that time I'll be locked and loaded in a cozy sniper's nest not too far away. You're going to escort this cannibal down through that rabble and back to her people. And set up my link with their CEO, whoever that guy is.'
Shoat set the computer on the floor and backed toward a tall, jagged hole in the wall. Ike had his eyes on the knife.
'No tricks, no detours, no deceit. The laptop's switched on. Don't turn it off. I want to be able to hear everything you say,' Shoat said. 'And don't come looking for me. From my cubbyhole, I've got a clear shot all the way down the trail. Screw up, and the fireworks begin. But I won't shoot you, Ike. It's Ali that pays for your sins. I'll kill her first. And next, just to piss them off, their leader. After that I'll work through targets of opportunity. But there's not going to be a bullet for you. I promise. You can live with yourself. You can live with them. Hell can have you back. Are we clear?'
Ike started crawling.
And in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.
– JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
27
SHANGRI-LA
Beneath the intersection of
the Philippine, Java, and Palu Trenches
Ike descended into the ancient city, leading his daughter by a rope. The city loomed in the organic twilight, a puzzle of remnants, fused architecture, and eyeless windows.
On the floor of the vast canyon, at the ruins' edge, Ike slung Shoat's laptop computer on one shoulder and bent the plastic candle he had been given, breaking the vial inside. The wand came alive with green light. Even without his sniperscope, Shoat would be able to track his progress through the city.
For the first half-mile or so there was no outright challenge, although animals scuttled along the flowstone. With each step, Ike tried to piece together some alternative to what was already in motion. Shoat's spiderweb seemed unbreakable. Ike could practically see the back of his own head through the electronic scope. If only he were the prey, he thought. He could duck the bullet, or take it. But Shoat had clearly pronounced his targets: Ali first. Ike continued through the fossilized city. News of human trespass was rippling forward through the city. In the penumbra of his green light, shapes that normally would have appeared as silhouettes against the pale glow of stone now lurked as shadows. The candle's neon glow was devastating his night vision. Then again, from the beginning of this doomed expedition, he'd been squandering his nocturnal powers, even eating human food. There was no disguising his origins anymore.
Click language cricketed in the gloom. He could smell hadals crowding the penumbra, musky and smeared with ochre. A rock thrown from the shadows struck him on the arm, not hard, just to goad him.
Winged beasts swept inches overhead. Ike maintained his stoic gait. Several others circled out of reach. He felt warm spittle dribbling down his neck.
A monstrosity came racing from ahead and blocked the way. Squat, encrusted with fluorescent mud, he sported a penis sheath and battle scars and brandished an ax. He flicked his tongue like a reptile and bulged his eyes, all challenge. Ike kept his motions passive and the beast let them pass.
The plastic slicks and mineral convolutions of the city floor began to angle upward. Ike approached that rise in the city's center which he had spied through the binoculars. The camp grew dense with refugees, and the canals were fouled with their raw offal and sewage. They lay on the bare ground, ill and hungry.
In his years of captivity, Ike had never seen a fraction of the traits and styles gathered here. Some had flippers for arms, others feet that were tantamount to hands. There were heads flattened by binding, eye sockets genetically emptied. The variety of body art and clothing was wild. Some went naked, some wore armor or chain mail. He passed eunuchs proudly scalped at the groin, warriors with hair woven with beads and horns woven with scalps, and females bred for their smallness or
fatness.
Through it all, Ike kept his expression impassive. He climbed the pathway winding toward the hilltop, and the mass of hadals thickened. Here and there, stripped rib cages arched above ravaged carcasses. In times of such want, he knew, human chattel went first.
Behind him, the girl kept pace. His daughter was his passport. There were no challenges to Ike's advance, and he continued through the city. From the cliffs above, Ike had seen how the pit didn't bottom out, but only paused. And yet the entire race seemed to have rooted here. They showed no signs of taking their nomad spirit deeper. It made him want to plunge farther into the hole, to scale the inverse mountain, just to see what new sights there might be. His curiosity made him sad, because it was unlikely he'd live to see another hour, much less another land.
A pile of ruins projected from the top of the heaped flowstone, and Ike aimed for the highest structure. Climbing higher, Ike and the girl reached Walker's men. The two mercenaries were lashed to broken columns, not with rope, but with their own entrails. Seeing her enemy, the girl capered. Ike let her. One lifted his eyeless face to the jubilation. They had taken his lower jaw off, too. The tongue lay spastic on his throat.
After a minute they continued. They crested the mound. The ruins on the flat top occupied several acres. Hadals lay or sat about on the amorphous folds of stone, but, strangely, had not taken up residence in the crowning structure itself. Again, Ike was struck by their sense of waiting.
The wall on one side of the main building had crumbled, and Ike and the girl clambered up its rubble. Warriors bluffed charges and hooted threats and insults. None came closer than the edges of his light, though, and the effect was a riptide of greenish shadows.
They reached that top floor of the ruins Ike had seen through the binoculars. The roof had caved in or been peeled off, and the result was a high stage open to Shoat's sniperscope. The gallery was more spacious than Ike had expected. In fact, he saw that it was some kind of library, dense with holdings.
Ike stopped in the center of the room. This was where he'd sighted Ali reading, though she was gone now. The floor was flat, but listing, like a ship beginning to sink. This was as good a place as any. It gave him a sense of space, exposed to the equivalent of sky. If he had his choice, Ike didn't want to die in some little tube of a cavity. Let it be in the open. Also, as instructed, he needed to stay in Shoat's line of sight.
While he waited, Ike was furiously gathering information, patching together contingency plans
