The yellow length of the Umbilicus tube-normally so orderly-was a shocking mess. The heavy cabling that ran down its length had come loose and was hanging limply across the span, like so much viscera. The wooden framework of skeletal bracing was crushed in several places, the overlapping hexagonal beams now just a labyrinth of lumber, and the climbers above him were being forced to thread their way arduously through the planking. Ropes had been dropped by those in the Staging Area above, but in the ruined jumble of cabling and cracked wood they were of little help. In the distance-at the top of the Umbilicus-Logan thought he could make out the Maw itself; but it looked blackened and distorted, its metal edging strangely petaled, as if from the force of some great explosion. But the distance was too great, and the air too thick with smoke, for him to be certain.
But it was the Umbilicus itself that stopped him in his tracks. Its yellow skin, normally so smooth and regular, was distorted into an ugly mass of runaway wrinkles and bulging concavities. At the points where the wooden bracing had partially collapsed, the Umbilicus walls pressed frighteningly in on the half-dozen people overhead, moving one after another like mountain climbers, heading for the surface. The great weight of the Sudd was squeezing in on them from all sides, probing the damaged tube, searching for a way, any way, to…
Logan felt a pressure on his shoulder. “Come on, man!” he heard the voice of Valentino say. “Climb! Sbrigati! ”
Romero was now several feet above him. Logan forced himself to look only at the hand and footholds, to ignore what was above, and to begin the climb. He resolutely refused to look up again, concentrating on putting one hand above the other, first the left, then the right. Below, at the edges of his vision, he saw another technician mount the lowest step, begin to climb…
And then he felt Romero’s foot graze the side of his head. Without thinking, he glanced up to see what had stopped her ascent.
As he did so, he heard gasps-and curses-from the climbers above.
He glanced past Tina-and his heart sank. About twenty feet over his head, near the top of the Umbilicus tube, one of the wooden supports-broken in two, its edges like sharp stakes-was being pressed against an inward bulge in the Umbilicus wall, its material weakened by whatever explosion had caused this devastation. Even as he stared in horrified fascination, the yellow fabric met the sharp edges of the wood. A tear formed; first small, then quickly growing, as the external pressure of the swamp found the weak spot and exploited it.
“No!” the grunt overhead, Kowinsky, screamed. “Jesus, no!”
And then, with a strange sound that was half a sigh, half a shriek of rending fabric, the wall of the Umbilicus gave way. And instantly the Sudd poured in: a vomiting eruption of quicksand. Like water traveling the length of a garden hose it came down toward them. Under its irresistible pressure the Umbilicus began to unravel, from top to bottom, a long seam of black that began tearing itself apart with alarming speed, the foul sludge thrusting inward and downward. Cries and shrieks arose from the climbers above-a cacophony of mingled dismay and terror.
Logan did the only thing that came to mind. Instinctively, without thinking, he reached up, put his hands around Tina Romero’s feet, then let go of the ladder, sliding down past the climbing tech and falling heavily onto the floor of the air lock platform.
She struggled against him. “What are you doing?” she cried.
“Tina!” he shouted over her protests. “Close your eyes!”
There was a rushing sound; a strange tremor, like an approaching earthquake; a chill puff of cesspool wind- and then they were enveloped in cloying, suffocating, disorienting blackness.
54
In the sudden dark, there was a confusion of sensations: cries; screams of pain and fear; slippery, struggling limbs; the cold, fetid grip of the vile muck as it began piling up in all directions around them. Logan wasn’t sure why he’d dropped back to the floor of the air lock platform, the very base of the Umbilicus. A galvanic burst of self- preservation had told him to run from the onrushing foulness of the Sudd, to keep ahead of it at all costs. But almost as quickly as this thought had come, he realized it was madness: they were forty feet below the surface, there were no air tanks or scuba gear at hand, the irresistible submarine pressure of the swamp would quickly fill the tomb, one chamber after another, like a colostomy bag… He quickly shook away this horrible image, as he also did the image that immediately followed it: running, with a half-dozen other panicked people, back to the rear of the tomb, there to wait as the rotting filth came roiling toward them, rising, rising…
There was a violent movement beneath him; a sharp cry. He realized it was Tina Romero, trying to break free of his grip. He let go of her, shielding his eyes from the down-rushing viscous nightmare, digging into his pocket for his flashlight and snapping it on. From their own position-where the bottom of the Umbilicus was affixed to the granite wall of Narmer’s tomb-several of the supporting beams from overhead had collapsed and fallen down around them, forming a crude, jungle-gym riot of wood that rose toward the ceiling of the tomb entrance just overhead.
As he swiveled the flashlight around, he noticed that the black foulness of the Sudd was quickly pouring down the length of the ruined Umbilicus, crushing beams and cabling and people alike under its weight. Somebody overhead-one of the techs-disappeared into a boiling, heaving riot of mud, shafts of wood, coilings of metal; for a minute his hands remained visible, covered in blood; then they, too, disappeared into the black storm. The Umbilicus was shaken by an intense tremor, as if the pressure of the tons of swamp roiling down through its length was twisting it in upon itself.
He looked away, started to yell to Tina. As he did so, a gobbet of flying muck hit his face, filling his mouth. He spat it out, retching at the taste-many thousand years’ worth of rot and decay-then he grabbed her hand and managed to shout.
“Tina!” he cried, pulling at her and pointing at the tangle of beams directly above them. “Climb! Climb! ”
M achine Specialist Frank Kowinsky had been lucky. When the Umbilicus tore apart and the Sudd rushed in, the technician climbing the rungs directly above him had slipped and begun to fall, becoming tangled in the floating entrails of cabling that hung everywhere. Kowinsky had used the man’s body as part catwalk, part springboard, and he’d managed to launch himself out through the widening rend in the yellow tubing. He knew he’d never be able to climb up through the remains of the Umbilicus itself-one look at the crush of wood and tangle of bodies and oozing black filth above had told him that-but if he could force himself out into the swamp, he could swim and claw his way to the surface. He’d had to fight hard against the inrushing mud, but by using the technician’s body as an unwilling fulcrum, he’d managed to grasp at the torn fabric of the Umbilicus and pull himself out, kicking and struggling, into the swamp.
And now he was free. Free of the screaming, struggling death scene within. But he hadn’t counted on just how thick and black the depths of the Sudd were; he hadn’t paused to think of how its horrible consistency-thick as tar, yet gritty, like sandpaper-would scratch his skin, hurt his eyes. He quickly closed them, but the sharp grit was in them now and there was no way to rinse it away.
No time to worry about that-he had to get to the surface. He took a moment to orient himself in the blackness, and then he began to struggle upward.
A s quickly as he could, Logan climbed up through the welter of ruined beams and supporting spars that rose to the ceiling of the tomb entrance. The wood was black and slippery with mud, and it seemed that for each beam he climbed, he slipped back at least two. Now and then he glanced down to make sure Tina was following him.
There was another dreadful shudder, and the entire ruined tube that had been the Umbilicus seemed to bow away from the tomb interface with a groan of protesting metal. The shouts, the screams, the cries for help had all ceased now-and that, more than anything, filled him with despair: there was only the sloppy, splattery noise of the Sudd as it ran down the remains of the yellow tube, quickly filling the tomb and rising around them.
Flashlight held between his teeth, he pulled himself onto the top spar, his head mere inches below the roof of the interface with the tomb entrance. The ceiling of the Umbilicus-where the tube’s lowest section met with the air lock-drooped ominously overhead. At this height, the makeshift structure of wooden beams was precarious and unstable, but the unctuous swamp, rising within the tomb and already creeping up his calves, held it in place like black glue. Stabilizing himself against the uppermost metal pylon of the Lock, he reached down and helped pull Tina onto the spar beside him.
