rock. Their labs have created new drugs to help them push the depths. They've approached the subplanet the way America approached manned landings on the moon forty years ago, as a mission
requiring life support systems, modes of transportation and access, and logistics. While the rest of the world's been tiptoeing into their planetary basements, Helios has spent billions on research and development, and is poised to exploit the frontier.'
'In other words,' Thomas said, 'Helios isn't sending these scientists down out of the goodness of its heart. The expedition is top-loaded with earth sciences and biology. The object of the expedition is to expand knowledge about the lithosphere and learn more about its resources and life-forms, especially those that can be exploited commercially for energy, metallurgy, medicine, and other practical uses. Helios has no interest in humanizing our perception of the hadals, and so the anthropology component is very small.'
At the mention of anthropology, Ali started. 'You want me to go? Down there?'
'We're much too old,' January said.
Ali was stunned. How could they ask such a thing of her? She had duties, plans, desires.
'You should know,' Thomas said to Ali, 'the senator didn't choose you. I did. I've been watching you for years, following your work. Your talents are exactly what we need.'
'But down there...' She had never conceived herself on such a journey. She hated the darkness. A year without sun?
'You would thrive,' said Thomas.
'You've been there,' Ali said. He spoke with such authority.
'No,' said Thomas. 'But I've traveled among the hadals by visiting their evidence in ruins and museums. My task has been complicated by eons of human superstition and ignorance. But if you go back far enough in the human record, there are glimpses of what the hadals were like thousands of years ago. Once upon a time they were more than these degraded, inbred creatures we reckon with today.'
Her pulse was hammering. She wanted not to be excited. 'You want me to locate the hadals' leader?'
'Not at all.'
'Then what?'
'Language is everything.'
'Decipher their writings? But only fragments exist.'
'Down there, I'm told, glyphs are abundant. Miners blow up whole galleries of them every day.'
Hadal glyphs! Where could this lead?
'A lot of people think the hadals have died off. That doesn't matter,' said January.
'We still have to live with what they were. And if they're merely in hiding somewhere, then we've got to know what they're capable of – not just their savagery, but the greatness they once aspired to. It's clear they were once civilized. And if the legend is true, they fell from their own grace. Why? Could such a fall be lying in wait for mankind?'
'Restore their ancient memory to us,' Thomas said to Ali. 'Do that, and we can truly know Satan.'
It came back to that, their king of hell.
'No one has managed to decode their writings,' Thomas said. 'It's a lost language, possibly – probably – lost even to these remnant creatures. They've forgotten their own glory. And you're the only person I can think of who might find the language locked within hadal hieroglyphics and script. Unlock that dead language, and we may have a chance to understand who they once were. Unlock that language, and you may just find the secret of your mother tongue.'
'All that said, I want to be perfectly clear.' January searched her face. 'You can say no, Ali.'
But of course she could not.
BOOK 2
INQUISITION
Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?
– JOB 41:1
8
INTO THE STONE
The Galapagos Islands
June 08
It seemed the helicopter was bound west forever across the cobalt blue water, landless, stained red by the sunset. Night chased her across the infinite Pacific. Childishly, Ali wished they could stay ahead of the darkness.
The islands were all but covered with intricate scaffolding and decks, miles and miles of it, ten stories high in some places. Expecting amorphous lava piles, Ali was affronted by the neat geometry. They'd been busy out here. Nazca Depot – named for the geological plate it fed to – was nothing but a vast parking garage anchored on pylons. Supertankers floated alongside, mouths open, taking on small symmetrical mountains of raw ore conveyed by belts. Trucks hauled containers from one level to another.
The helicopter sliced between skeletal towers, landing briefly to disgorge Ali, who recoiled at the stench of gases curdling into mists. She had been forewarned. Nazca Depot was a work zone. There were barracks for workers, but no facilities, not even cots or a Coke machine, for passengers in transit. By chance, a man appeared on foot among the vehicles and noises. 'Excuse me,' Ali yelled above the roar of the helicopter.
'How do I get to Nine-Bay?'
The man's eyes ran down her long arms and legs, and he pointed with no enthusiasm. She dodged among the beams and diesel fumes, down three flights to reach a freight elevator with doors that opened up and down like jaws. Some wag had written 'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate' over the gate, Dante's welcoming injunction in the original.
Ali got into the cage and pressed her number. She felt a strange sense of grief, but couldn't figure out why.
The cage released her onto a deck thronged with other passengers. There were hundreds of people down here, mostly men, all heading in one direction. Even with the sea breeze brooming through, the air was rank with their odor, a force in itself. In Israel and Ethiopia and the African bush, she had done her share of traveling among masses of soldiers and workers, and they smelled the same worldwide. It was the smell of aggression.
With loudspeakers hammering at them to queue, to present tickets, to show passports, Ali was swept into the current. 'Loaded weapons are not permitted. Violators will be disarmed and their weapons confiscated.' There was no mention of arrest or punishment. It was enough, then, that violators would be sent down without their guns.
The crowd bore her past a bulletin board fifty feet long. It was divided alphabetically, A-G, H-P, Q-Z. Thousands of messages had been pinned for others to find: equipment for sale, services for hire, dates and locations for rendezvous, E-mail addresses, curses. TRAVELER'S ADVISORY , a Red Cross sign warned. PREGNANT WOMEN ARE STRONGLY ADVISED AGAINST DESCENT. FETAL DAMAGE AND/OR
