shoplifters?”
Logan nodded at the array of screens that surrounded Landau. “You’ve got enough LCDs here for the security pit at the Bellagio.”
“Security pit, my aunt Fanny. It all begins and ends right here.” Suddenly Landau’s brow creased with suspicion. “Who are you, anyhow?”
“Don’t worry. I’m one of the good guys.” And Logan flashed his ID.
“In that case, check this out.” Landau waved at the forest of glass panels and the half-dozen keyboards arrayed beneath them. “Here’s where all the data gets entered, all the numbers get crunched by autonomous programs.”
“I thought that was taken care of at the Maw.”
Landau waved a dismissive hand. “You kidding? They’re just the piano builders. I’m the artist who plays the instrument. Watch.”
With a quick flurry of keystrokes, Landau brought up an image on one of the monitors. “See, we receive sensor, sonar, and visual information from the ongoing diving missions. It all comes into a program, here, that maps out the underwater terrain. It’s a beast of a program, too. And this is the result.”
Logan followed the outstretched hand toward the image on the screen. It was indeed remarkable: a fantastically complex wireframe CAD image of an undulating, almost lunar, landscape, thickly honeycombed with tunnels and boreholes.
“That’s what it looks like, forty feet below us,” Landau explained. “With each new dive, our representation of the swamp bed-and the caverns below it-expands.” He demonstrated how the image could be manipulated, zoomed and panned, rotated on the X, Y, and Z axes. “You mentioned the Maw. You seen it yet?”
Logan nodded.
“While you were there, did you get a chance to check out the Grid?”
“You mean, that thing that looks like a bingo card on steroids?”
“That’s it. Well, what I’ve got here is the other half of the equation. The Grid is a two-D representation of what’s been explored so far. And this shows its exact topology.” Landau patted the display with almost fatherly pride. “When we find the-the target, we’ll use this to ensure it is fully mapped and explored.”
Logan murmured his appreciation. “Is this your first assignment for Porter Stone?”
The youth shook his head. “Second.”
Logan waved a hand around. “Is this unusual? All this equipment, tools, expensive setups-just for a single expedition?”
“It’s not for a single expedition. Stone’s got a warehouse somewhere in the south of England. Maybe more than one. That’s where he stores all the stuff.”
“You mean, the vehicles and electronics? Portable labs?”
“So they say. Everything he might possibly need for a particular site.”
Logan nodded. It made sense: like the inactive labs, such an arrangement would allow Stone to get up and running quickly, with as little time wastage as possible, in almost any conceivable climate or terrain.
It was refreshing to chat with someone who hadn’t heard of him before, who didn’t pester him with a hundred questions. Logan gave a smile of thanks. “Nice talking to you.”
“Sure. Mind tossing me that book on your way out?”
Logan walked over to the book that had fallen from the tech’s lap. Picking it up, he saw it was William Hope Hodgson’s exceptionally weird novel The House on the Borderland.
He handed it to Landau. “Sure this is the kind of book you want to be reading out here?”
“What do you mean?” Laudau took the book and cradled it protectively.
“The Sudd’s bizarre enough. Reading stuff like that besides may rot your mind.”
“Huh. Maybe that explains it.” And Landau turned around and resumed his typing.
F rom White, Logan crossed another floating tube into Maroon, which housed-according to a small sign at the far end of the access vent-the historical archives and exotic sciences. Although Logan had no idea what “exotic sciences” were, he began to get an idea as soon as he peeked into some of the additional modular labs that had been installed in this wing. One darkened lab was stocked with ancient books and manuscripts about alchemy and transmutation; the walls of another were plastered with maps of Egypt and Sudan, as well as photographs of pyramids and other structures, each image overspread with a tangle of lines and circles, intersecting at odd geometric angles. Clearly, Stone would explore any avenue of knowledge, no matter how abstruse, to help make his finds. Logan wondered if he should feel insulted that his own office was located here.
As he made his way down the corridor, he stopped before a room whose door was ajar. Although Maroon seemed to hold very few people at present, this particular room was occupied. It was dimly lit. Logan could make out a hospital bed, from which dozens of leads snaked down to various monitoring devices at its foot. It reminded him of the setups in the vacant rooms he’d seen back at the Center for Transmortality Studies.
The bed in this room, however, was not empty. Logan could see that a woman was lying on it: perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Something about her-some quality he could not quite analyze-made him stop, rooted in his tracks. Her hair was a very unusual color, a rich, dark cinnamon. Her eyes were closed. Probes were set at her temples, and others were fixed to her wrists and ankles. On the wall beside her was a very large mirror, brilliantly polished. The faint lights of the medical devices were reflected in it in myriad points of tiny color.
Logan stood there, mesmerized by this unusual sight: the woman, almost ethereal looking in the faint light of the vast arsenal of instrumentation. She lay absolutely motionless; there was not even any indication of breathing. She almost seemed to have passed from life into death. He had the distinct feeling he’d met her sometime in the past. This feeling was not in itself unusual; with his unusually sharp perception, Logan found deja vu to be a frequent companion. This time, however, the sensation was unusually strong.
There was motion by the monitors at the foot of the bed. Logan glanced toward it and was surprised to see Dr. Rush. He adjusted a dial, peered at a gauge. And then-as if with some sixth sense-he turned toward the doorway and saw Logan.
Logan began to raise his arm in greeting. But he could tell from the look on Rush’s face, from the man’s body language, that this was not the time to linger and that his presence was not welcome. So instead Logan turned away and continued down the hallway, in search of his own office.
14
Logan found his office in a far corner of the Exotic Sciences wing. It was modular, like the others, and contained a desk, two chairs, a laptop computer, and a single empty bookcase. He noted-with faint amusement-that there was no other equipment.
Placing his large duffel bag on the guest chair and opening it, he put a dozen or so books in the bookcase. Then he removed several pieces of equipment and placed them on the desk. Next, he removed two quotations in small frames and hung them on the wall with pushpins. Then he closed the duffel and turned to the laptop.
He logged in with the password and ID he’d been given during that morning’s processing. The site’s network was relatively easy to navigate, and he immediately saw there were three e-mails awaiting him. The first was a generic welcome, explaining the layout of the Station and the whereabouts of important locations (Medical, cafeteria). The second e-mail was from the HR woman who had processed him, laying out a few ground rules (no straying from the site, no unauthorized sat-phone communications). And the third e-mail was from a person who identified himself as Stephen Weir, assistant to Porter Stone. It was essentially an aggregation of all the strange, unanticipated, or unfortunate events that had occurred since the site went live two weeks before-in other words, the reason he was here.
Logan read over the list twice. Many of the items could be immediately discounted-lights flickering, systemic effects like nausea or dizziness-but several others remained. Firing up the laptop’s word processor, he began to make a list.
Day 2: On a routine reconnaissance, the engine of one of the Jet Skis abruptly went wild and refused to cut
