'The abyss is the abyss,' said Cooper. 'Light one and you light the other. We'll all be better for this, you'll see.'
'Propaganda.' Vera turned her head in distaste.
'Your expedition,' Thomas said. He was angry tonight. 'Where have they gone?'
'I'm afraid the news isn't good,' said Cooper. 'We've lost contact with the expedition. You can imagine our concern. Ham, do you have our map?'
Cooper's son opened his briefcase and produced a folded bathymetric map showing the ocean floor. It was creased and marked with a dozen different pens and grease pencils. Cooper traced his finger helpfully across the latitudes and longitudes. 'Their last known position was west-southwest of Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands. That could change, of course. Every now and then we harvest dispatches from the bedrock.'
'You're still hearing from them?' asked January.
'In a sense. For over three weeks now, the dispatches have been nothing but bits and pieces of older communications sent months ago. The transmissions get mangled by the layers of stone. We end up with echoes. Electromagnetic riddles. It only suggests where they were weeks ago. Where they are today, who can say?'
'That's all you can tell us?' asked January.
'We'll find them.' Eva Shoat suddenly spoke up. She was fierce. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying. Cooper cut a glance at her.
'You must be worried sick,' Vera sympathized. 'Montgomery is your only child?' Cooper narrowed his eyes at Vera. She nodded to him. Her question had been phrased deliberately.
'Yes,' said Eva, then looked at her husband's son. 'I mean no. I'm worried. I'd be worried if it were Hamilton down there. I should never have allowed Monty to go.'
'He chose it himself,' Cooper tautly observed.
'Only because he was desperate,' Eva snapped back. 'How else could he compete in this family?'
Vera saw Thomas across the table, rewarding her with the slightest hint of a smile. She had done well.
'He wanted to be part of things,' Cooper said.
'Yes, part of this,' Eva said, throwing her hand at the skybox view.
'And I've told you, Eva, he is a part of it. You have no idea how important his contribution will be.'
'My son had to risk his life to be important to you?' Cooper disengaged. It was an old argument, obviously.
'What precisely is this, Mr Cooper?' Foley asked.
'I told you,' said Sandwell. 'A research facility.'
'Yes,' said January, 'a place to season your hadal captives. By the way, General, are you aware the term was once used about African slaves arriving in this country?'
'You'll have to excuse Sandy,' Cooper said. 'He's a recent acquisition, still adapting to
the language and life on campus. I assure you, we're not creating a population of slaves.'
Sandwell bristled, but kept silent.
'Then what do you need live hadals for? What is it you're researching?' Vera asked. Cooper steepled his fingers gravely. 'We're finally starting to collect longer-term data on the colonization,' he said. 'Soldiers were the first group to go down in any numbers. Six years later, they're the first to show real side effects. Alterations.'
'The bony growths and cataracts?' said Vera. 'But we've seen those since the beginning. The problems go away with time.'
'This is different. In the last four to ten months we've been monitoring an outbreak of symptoms. Enlarged hearts, high-altitude edemas, skeletal dysplasia, acute leukemia, sterility, skin cancer. The horning and bone cancers have come charging back. The most disturbing development is that we're starting to see these symptoms among the veterans' newborns. For five years we've had nothing but normal births. Now, suddenly, their newborns are displaying morbid defects. I'm talking about mutations. The infant mortality rate has soared.'
'Why haven't I heard of this?' January asked suspiciously.
'For the same reason Helios is rushing to find a cure. Because once the public finds out, every human inside the planet is going to evacuate. The interior is going to be left without security forces, without a labor force, without colonists. You can imagine the setback. After so much effort and investment, we could lose the whole subplanet to whatever this is. Helios doesn't want that to happen.'
'What's going on?'
'In twenty-five words or less? The subplanet is changing us.' Cooper gestured at the creature on the stadium screen. 'Into that.'
Eva Shoat laid a hand upon her long throat. 'You knew this, and you let my son go down?'
'The effects aren't universal,' said Cooper. 'In the veteran populations, the split is roughly fifty-fifty. Half show no effect. Half display these delayed mutations. Hadal physiologies. Enlarged hearts, pulmonary and cerebral edema, skin cancer: those are all symptoms that hadals develop when they come to the surface. Something is switching on and off at the DNA level. Altering the genetic code. Their bodies begin producing proteins, chimeric proteins, which alter tissues in radically different ways.'
'You can't predict which half of the population will develop the problems?' asked
Vera.
'We don't have a clue. But if it's happening to six-year veterans, it's eventually going to happen to four- month miners and settlers.'
'And Helios has to find a solution,' observed Foley. 'Or else your empire beneath the sea will be a ghost town before it ever starts.'
'In vulgar terms, precisely.'
'Obviously, you think there's a solution in the hadal physiology itself,' Vera said. Cooper nodded. 'Genetic engineers call it 'cutting the Gordian knot.' We have to resolve the complexities. Sort out the viruses and retroviruses, the genes and phenotypes. Examine the environmental factors. Map the chaos. And so Helios is building a multibillion-dollar research campus here, and importing live hadals for research purposes. To make the subplanet safe for humans.'
'But I don't understand,' said Vera. 'It seems to me research and development would be a thousand times less complicated down below. Among other things, why stress your guinea pigs by transporting them to the surface? You could build this same facility at a subterranean station for a fraction of the cost. You'll need to pressurize the entire laboratory to subplanetary levels. Why not just study the hadals down there? There would be no transportation costs. The mortality rate would be far lower. And you could test your results on colonists in the field.'
'That's not an option,' de l'Orme said. 'Or it won't be soon.' They all turned to him.
'Unless he brings up a sample population of hadals, there won't be any hadals to sample soon. Isn't that the idea, Mr Cooper?'
'No idea what you're talking about,' Cooper said.
'Perhaps you could tell us about the contagion,' de l'Orme said. 'Prion-9.'
Cooper appraised the little archaeologist. 'I know what you know. We've learned that prion capsules are being planted along the expedition's route. But Helios has nothing to do with it. I won't ask you to believe me. I don't care if you do or not. It's my people who are at risk down there. My expedition. Except for your spy,' he added,
'the von Schade woman.' January's expression hardened.
'What's this about a contagion?' Eva demanded.
'I didn't want to worry you any more,' Cooper said to his wife. 'A deranged ex-soldier has attached himself to the expedition. He's lacing the route with a synthetic virus.'
'My God,' his wife whispered.
