The Deep Zone

components. At its base were a twelve-by-twelve viewing screen and binocular eyepieces like those found on light microscopes. Barnard bent over the screen. Casey used an oversized mouse and dials as big as cookies to calibrate the settings. They both remained standing. There were no chairs or stools in a BSL-4 lab. Sitting in Chemturions was like trying to sit while wrapped in a stack of inner tubes.

“Okay. Here’s our new ACE.”

As Casey worked the controls, Barnard saw an image clarifying on the viewing screen. He had looked at thousands of microbes over his career, and their beauty still amazed him. As a child he had had a kaleidoscope, a telescope-like tube that, when rotated, rearranged colored pieces of glass into striking patterns. When he tried to describe the microscopic world to other people, that was the best analogy he could come up with. But the reality was infinitely more astonishing: unearthly beauty, every color of the spectrum, and every shape imaginable. God’s artwork—or, really, the Devil’s. Streptococci, burning like red suns against a butter-yellow sky. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, golden globes with ruby filaments streaming behind like the long red hair of a drowned woman. Corynebacterium diphtheriae, graceful green wands with maroon heads, groups of them looking like beds of tulips.

The microbes came into sharp focus and Barnard saw half a dozen oblong-shaped objects. Their smooth perimeters were white, their bodies the rich red of Burgundy wine. The depth of hue increased toward the center, where it finally became black. Magnified a million times, framed, and hung on a wall, the image could have been a painting by de Kooning or, in his wilder moments, van Gogh.

“Now, here’s what I wanted to show you.”

The image changed to reveal more purple oblongs with white perimeters. The color deepened toward the middle of the organism, but its center had a reddish tint, rather than the solid black Barnard had seen in the previous image. And the white perimeters were jagged and cracked, rather than smooth and intact.

“You got into its genetics.” In the suit, Barnard sounded like he was speaking in a closet, but the excitement in his voice was sharp.

“That’s right.”

“How?”

“We fractured its skull. Withdrew mitochondrial material and breached its defenses to reach the genes.”

“Where’s the but? There has to be one, or we’d both be dancing around in my office now.”

“The but is that we’re not exactly sure why it happened. You know what it’s like, playing with the genes of these things.”

“Like trying to do brain surgery with a jackhammer.”

“Yep. The trick is not destroying the whole thing, and it’s quite a trick.”

“So, what are we looking at for time?”

“Before we do it again? Realistically, two days. Maybe three.”

Barnard gaped. He had been the recipient of so much bad news recently that he’d been primed to hear Casey talk about weeks or even months. “By God, Lew. That’s incredible. Can I take this to the president?”

“Well, I hate to overpromise and underdeliver. But yeah, I think you can go with it. That good enough for you?”

“More than good enough.”

“We’re not all the way there, Don. Not by a long shot.”

“No, but based on what you just reported, we have taken a huge step closer.”

“Yeah, I think we can say that.” Casey suppressed a grin, but the smile in his eyes was a mile wide. They stood there gazing at each other through the plastic hoods. Barnard felt an affection for Casey not unlike what he had felt for his men in Vietnam. He could happily stay down here for the rest of this shift and the next one, as well. But he had news to deliver, and he was aware that at best he was a director-level distraction. Still, he did not want to leave. When he was up in his office with his three-piece suit and secretary and windows showing daylight, it felt wrong. Down here, it felt right. Deadly, but right.

He smiled and patted Casey on the shoulder, his heavy rubber-gloved hand thumping on Casey’s biosuit. Clumsy, but Casey got the idea.

“I gotta go make some calls, Lew. Find me when something more happens.”

“Damn right. Now go on, give the powers that be some good news. Turn around and I’ll disconnect you.”

Barnard started to leave, then stopped. “One more thing. Who did it?”

Casey looked embarrassed.

“I thought so. Nice going, Dr. Casey. Keep it up and you may make a scientist yet.”

TWENTY-ONE

THEY TRAVELED FOR TWELVE HOURS AFTER HALLIE AND Bowman secured Haight’s body. No two steps were alike. There were crashing waterfalls, glistening slopes slick as tilted ice, vertical faces, rubble fields, wormhole crawls. At the shorter drops, they rappelled on their only rope, a ninety-meter PMI Classic that Bowman was carrying. Where the vertical distance was too great, they donned their Gecko Gear and down-climbed. In other places the cave floor dipped below the surface of lakes so vast their lights could find no shores, and these had to be waded or swum, Bowman going first, rigging a line where he could, and the others hauling themselves along the line to join him. There were long passages where the space between the cave’s floor and its ceiling was so small that they could move forward only by taking off their packs and shoving them in front or pulling them behind. They had to pass through acres of boulder gardens, sections where, over the course of eons, huge fragments of ceiling had broken off and fallen. The trick here, as it had been earlier in the entrance chamber, was to avoid dropping between the rocks. But walking along their wet tops, which were never flat but always jagged or rounded, took immense concentration and was physically exhausting.

By three P.M. the next day, even Bowman was beginning to falter. He halted them at the only potential site for a camp, and it was a poor one. The floor sloped downward and there was no one place big enough for all of them to deploy their sleeping bags together. There was one spot where the four of them could stand. It was about eight feet square, walled by giant breakdown rubble. A narrow slot between two of these boulders gave exit, and from there each found a place on the boulder-littered floor with room for a sleeping bag. Now Hallie and the others were standing in the little clearing, spooning MRE chicken and dumplings out of foil pouches.

“This is very bad.” Arguello listlessly stirred his glop. “Muy malo.”

At first, Hallie thought he was talking about the food, but those last two words signaled something else. Not very bad. Very evil. Food was not evil.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the thing that happened to Dr. Haight. To Ron.”

“He had an accident.”

Arguello looked up, careful to avoid shining his light in her eyes. “You think so?”

“Don’t you?”

“There is evil in this cave, and I can feel it.”

Cahner spoke first.

“What does it feel like, Rafael?” He was looking at Arguello intently. The light was on Arguello’s chest, but Hallie could see the seriousness of his expression.

“Excuse me?”

“You said that you could feel evil in the cave. I was asking what that felt like.”

“Oh, yes. I see now. It feels like nausea, but not only in the stomach. Everywhere. A sick and weak feeling. Like maybe the flu. But worse.”

“You believe the cave is evil.” There was no hint of mockery or sarcasm in Cahner’s question.

“No. Not the cave. But there is evil in the cave. There is a difference.”