The Deep Zone

straightened up and detached the NVDs from his helmet. “We won’t need these for a while, and every ounce we can take off our backs will help. Let’s cache them here.”

Five minutes later they were finished. Bowman said, “From now on, we will be observing strict light discipline. That means one helmet light on for travel or tasks. Otherwise, everything off to conserve battery power.” He looked at Hallie. “We need to move. We’re in a race with that bacterium, and right now ACE has a big head start. Hallie will take the point. She has a map based on notes from the other expedition and she’s been in here before. I’ll follow her. Next, Al, Rafael, and Ron, in that order. Maintain visual contact at all times with those in front of and behind you. Questions?”

There were none.

“One more thing. When we come to vertical pitches or sections requiring dives, we’ll stop, plan, and then move.”

“How far do you intend to go today?” asked Al Cahner.

“Until we can’t go any farther. Anything else?”

Hallie spoke: “Make sure your suits are zipped all the way up. Make very sure the wrist, ankle, and neck seals are secure.”

“This early? They’re hot. I thought we wouldn’t button up until a lot farther in.” Arguello sounded worried.

“We’ll need them very soon.”

Then she led them down terrain steeper than a staircase and experienced, as she always did going into vast caves, not only a sense of descending but of going back in time as well. She knew that a cave like this took tens of millions of years to form. It had already existed for eons when the Egyptians built their pyramids. She knew that when her distant ancestors were knuckle-loping along some African plain, this cave had already been breathing for millennia.

It was both exhilarating and unnerving to enter such a place. What with the wind and rushing water where feeder streams formed rivers, and the heavy wet darkness, she could understand aboriginals’ belief that caves lived. There was more than just the rock and water and wind. There was unquestionably something else here, a presence that Hallie could feel. She was a scientist, but her mind remained open. It had always seemed to her that what people thought of as possible only revealed the borders of their own fragment of eternity. Two hundred years earlier, flight had been unimaginable, germs were undreamed of, and doctors treated the sick by bleeding them, sometimes to death. For Hallie, the only certainty was that the world and their knowledge of it would keep changing, which made the thing denoted by the word “impossible” itself an impossibility.

She had no way to explain what she felt, nor even a name for it, but it was there. Chi Con Gui-Jao was as good a name as any.

The cave ceiling rose seventy feet over their heads—a big chamber, though Hallie had seen bigger, some vast enough to hold Grand Central Station in its entirety. She led them between rocks as big as cottages— breakdown, cavers called such boulders—which had fallen from that ceiling over the eons, and more of which could fall on them at any moment. It was like walking through a minefield, except that the mines were overhead. The gradient eased, but still they had to take each step with great care, their worlds shrinking to the circles of blue light bouncing along in front of their feet.

Hallie stopped them.

“Check those suit seals again.”

She turned and began walking down the moderately sloping floor. After fifty feet, her helmet light revealed a dark, still surface that wasn’t solid rock but didn’t look exactly like water, either. She waded in. The lake’s surface did not ripple like water; it sloshed, heavy and viscous, the consistency of buttermilk but reddish black.

Through clenched teeth, Cahner said, “It smells like rotting corpses and burning crap and year-old garbage.”

“I would keep my voice down if I were you,” Hallie warned softly. “Look up.”

“Mother Mary.” Arguello’s voice, full of sudden fear. “That is many. I do not think I ever have seen so large a colony.”

“How many, do you think?” Even Bowman sounded impressed.

“Given the size of this chamber, a million or more.”

Fifty feet above them, every square inch of the cave ceiling was covered with roosting vampire bats hanging upside down. It looked as though the rock ceiling had grown a vast gray beard. The bats had furry bodies like rats, but ears like a Chihuahua’s. Their faces were pink, and when light from the team’s lights touched them, their lips curled back to reveal jagged white teeth.

“It is said that the ancient Incan kings wore cloaks of vampire bat fur.” Arguello, awestruck. “How do they, ah, poop upside down like that?”

“They invert momentarily, excrete, and go back to their normal hanging position.” Hallie shook her head. “Amazing acrobatics, actually.”

“So we are wading through a lake of bat guano,” Arguello said.

“The stuff must be teeming with viruses and bacteria.” Cahner sounded impressed but also horrified.

“It is, Al, but we’ll be through soon. It’s the only way in.”

“Nasty stuff.” No curiosity in Bowman’s voice, just disgust.

“It could be worse, though,” Hallie deadpanned and waited for someone to reply.

Cahner rose to the bait: “How could it get worse?”

“These bats have just come back to roost after a night of feeding. Very soon, their little bowels will go to work. There’ll be a cloudburst of bloody bat guano. You don’t want to be in here when that happens.”

“Let us make great haste, please,” said Arguello.

“Yes, but not too much. The footing gets uneven here. You don’t want to fall in and get a mouthful of this stuff.”

“Sweet Jesus, no. Hurry up, y’all.” Even brash Haight sounded concerned.

After another five minutes, Hallie felt the cave floor begin to incline upward, and soon she was standing on the rocky shore of the “lake,” watching the others make their way out. Before long they were all together, slathered from the chests down in steaming, stinking, bloody bat excrement.

“We’re a rotten lot, y’all.” Haight kept moving his nose around, rabbitlike, trying, unsuccessfully, to get it out of the stench.

Cahner didn’t laugh. “What do we do now?”

“We take a shower. Follow me.” Hallie led them to a small waterfall that shot out from a ledge of sparkling gold-and-ruby-colored flowstone. One by one, keeping their helmets on, they stood under the natural shower while clear, cold water washed their caving suits clean. Hallie showered last. When she rejoined the others, Haight spoke.

“What do y’all call that place?”

“Batshit Lake. What else?”

“Let’s go.” Bowman’s curt tone ended the small talk. “Hallie, move us out.”

She looked at him, hesitated a moment, then nodded. Despite his brusque way of going, something about the big man was still attracting her. She recalled the staring contest, the way he had winked at her. If ever something seemed out of character for a black ops kind of guy, that did. And maybe that was part of it, the contradiction such an act implied. Contradiction suggested complexity, and with complexity came surprises. As she had learned, some could be good, some bad, but she knew herself well enough to know that, for her, any were better than none.

The route steepened again and led eventually to a great portal, roughly rectangular, twenty feet high by thirty feet wide, in a rock wall that rose higher than their lights could reach. Here all the air that had been moving up from the cave’s unfathomable depths was compressed and blew through the opening with such force that Cahner grabbed a golden stalagmite to steady himself.

“I have been in a good number of caves,” Cahner said. “But I have never seen wind this strong moving