by Jeff Long
Ali was relieved to see that the people of Nazca City looked normal and healthy. Indeed, because the subplanet attracted younger, stronger workers, the population abounded in good health. Most of the station cities like Nazca had been retrofitted with lamps that simulated sunlight, and so these bicyclists were as tan as beachcombers. Practically everyone had seen soldiers or workers who had returned to the surface several years ago suffering bone growths and enlarged eyes or strange cancers, even vestigial tails. For a while, religious groups had blamed hell itself for the physical spoliation, calling it proof of God’s plan, a vast gulag where contact meant punishment. But as she looked around, it seemed the research labs and drug companies really had mastered the prophylaxis for hell. Certainly these people exhibited no deformities. Ali realized that her subconscious fears of turning into a toad, monkey, or goat had been for nothing.
The city was a vast indoor mall with potted trees and flowering bushes, clean, with the latest brand names. There were restaurants and coffee bars, along with brightly lit stores selling everything from work clothes and plumbing supplies to assault rifles. The neatness was slightly marred by beggars missing limbs and sidewalk merchants hawking contraband.
At one intersection an old Asian woman was selling miserable puppies lashed alive to sticks. “Stew meat,” one of the scientists told Ali. “They sell it by the catty, 500 grams, a little more than a pound. Beef, chicken, pork, dog.”
“Thanks,” said Ali.
Obviously it intrigued him. “I went exploring yesterday. Anything that moves goes into the pot. Crickets, worms, slugs. They even eat dragons, xiao long, their snakes.”
Ali peered out. A long gossamer sausage stretched beside the road, twenty feet high, a football field in length. The plastic had bold hangul lettering along the front. Ali didn’t read Korean, but knew a greenhouse when she saw one. There were more, lying end to end like gigantic plump pupae. Through their opaque walls she saw fieldworkers tending crops, climbing little ladders propped in orchards. Parrots and macaws soared alongside the convoy of buses. A monkey scampered past. The subsere—the secondary population of invader species—was thriving down here.
In the far distance a detonation rumbled gently. She’d felt similar vibrations through her bedsprings all night. The incessant construction work was evident everywhere. It didn’t take long to detect the man-made edges of this place. The neat right angles abutted raw rock. Pressure fissures spiderwebbed the asphalt. A patch of moss had grown heavy and peeled from the ceiling, exposing mesh and barbed wire and surging lasers overhead.
They reached a newly cut ring road girdling the city, and left behind the traffic jam of cyclists and workers. Picking up speed, they gained a view of the enormous hollow salt dome containing the colony. It was life in a bell jar here. The entire vault, measuring three miles across and probably a thousand feet high, was brightly lit. Up in the World, it would be approaching sunset. Down here, night never came. Nazca City’s artificial sunlight burned twenty-four hours a day, Prometheus on a caffeine jag.
Except for a catnap, sleep had been impossible last night. The group’s collective excitement verged on the childlike, and she was caught up in their spirit of adventure. This morning, exhausted with their imagining, they were ready for the real thing.
Ali found her fellow travelers’ last-minute preparations touching. She watched one rough-and-ready fellow across the aisle bent over his fingernails, clipping them just so, as if his mortal being depended on it. Last night, several of the youngest women, meeting for the first time, had spent the wee hours of the morning fixing one another’s hair. A little enviously, Ali had listened to people placing calls to their spouses or lovers or parents, assuring them the subplanet was safe. Ali said a silent prayer for them all.
The buses stopped near a train platform and the passengers disembarked. If it hadn’t been brand new, the train would have seemed old-fashioned. There was a boarding platform trimmed with iron rails painted black and teal. Farther along the track, the train was mostly freight and ore cars. Heavily armed soldiers patrolled the landings while workers loaded supplies onto flatcars at the rear.
The three front cars were elegant sleepers with aluminum panels on the outside and simulated cherrywood and oak in the hallways. Ali was surprised again at how much money was being plowed into development down here. Just five or six years ago, this had presumably been hadal grounds. The sleeper cars, on glistening tracks, declared how confident the corporate boards were of human occupation.
“Where are they taking us now?” someone grumbled publicly. He wasn’t the only one. People had begun complaining that Helios was cloaking each stage of their journey in unnecessary mystery. No one could say where their science station lay.
“Point Z-3,” answered Montgomery Shoat.
“I’ve never heard of that,” a woman said. One of the planetologists, Ali placed her.
“It’s a Helios holding,” Shoat replied. “On the outskirts of things.”
A geologist started to unfold a survey map to locate Point Z-3. “You won’t find it on any maps,” Shoat added with a helpful smile. “But you’ll see, that really doesn’t matter.”
His nonchalance drew mutters, which he ignored.
Last evening, at a catered Helios banquet for the freshly arrived scientists, Shoat had been introduced as their expedition leader. He was a superbly fit character with bulging arm veins and great social energy, but he was curiously off-putting. It was more than the unfortunate face, pinched with ambition and spoiled with unruly teeth. It was a manner, Ali thought. A disregard. He traded on a thin repertoire of charm, yet didn’t care if you were charmed. According to gossip Ali heard afterward, he was the stepson of C.C. Cooper, the Helios magnate. There was another son by blood, a legitimate heir to the Cooper fortunes, and that seemed to leave Shoat to take on more hazardous duties such as escorting scientists to places at the remote edges of the Helios empire. It sounded almost Shakespearean.
“This is our venue for the next three days,” he announced to them. “Brand-new cars. Maiden voyage. Take your pick, any room. Single occupancy if you like. There’s plenty of room.” He had the magnanimity of a man used to sharing with friends a house not really his. “Spread out. Shower, take a nap, relax. Dinner is up to you. There’s a dining car one back. Or you can order room service and catch a flick. We’ve spared no expense. Helios’s way of wishing you—and me—bon voyage.”
No one pressed the issue of their destination any further. At 1730 a pleasant chime announced their departure. As if casting loose on a raft upon a gentle stream, the Helios expedition soundlessly coasted into the depths. The track looked level but was not, sloping almost secretly downward. As it turned out, gravity was the workhorse. Their engine was attached to the rear and would only be used to pull the cars back to this station. One by one, drawn by the earth itself, the cars left behind the sparkling lights of Nazca City.
They approached a portal titled Route 6. An extra, nostalgic 6 had been added with Magic Marker. In a different ink, someone else had attached a third 6. At the last minute a young biologist hopped down from the train and took a final quick snapshot, then ran to catch up again while the others cheered him. That made them all feel well launched. The train slid through a brief wall of forced air, a climate lock, and they passed inside.
Immediately the temperature and humidity dropped. Nazca City’s tropical environment vanished. It was ten degrees colder in the rail tunnel, and the air was as dry as a desert. At last, Ali realized, they were entering the unabridged hell. No fire and brimstone here. It felt more like high chaparral, like Taos.
The tracks glittered as if someone had taken a polishing rag to them. The train began to pick up speed, and they all went to their rooms. In her berth, Ali found a wicker basket with fresh oranges, Tobler chocolate, and Pepperidge Farm cookies. The little refrigerator was stocked. Her bunk had a single red rose on the pillow. When she lay down, there was a video monitor overhead for watching any of hundr
eds of films. Old monster movies were her vice. She said her prayers, then fell asleep to Them and the hiss of tracks.
In the morning, Ali squeezed into the small shower and let the hot water run through her hair. She could not believe the amenities. Her timing with room service was just right, and she sat by the tiny window with her omelette and toast and coffee. The window was round and small, like a cabin port on a ship. She saw only blackness out there, and thought that explained the compressed view. Then she noticed ELLIS BULLETPROOF GLASS etched in small letters on the glass, and realized the whole train was probably reinforced against attack.
At 0900 their training resumed in the dining car. The first morning on the train was given to refresher courses in things like emergency medicine, climbing techniques, basic gun craft, and other general information they were supposed to have learned over the past few months. Most had actually done their homework, and the session was more like an icebreaker.
That afternoon, Shoat escalated their teachings. Slide projectors and a large video monitor were set up at one end of the dining car. He announced a series of presentations by expedition members on their various specialties and theories. Ali was enjoying herself. Show-and-tell, with iced shrimp and nachos.
The first two speakers were a biologist and a microbotanist. Their topic was the difference between troglobite, trogloxene, and troglophile. The first category truly lived in the troglo—or “hole”—environment. Hell was their biological niche. The second, xenes, adapted to it, like eyeless salamanders. The third, troglophiles like bats and other nocturnal animals, simply visited the subterranean world on a regular basis, or exploited it for food or shelter.
The two scientists began arguing the merits of preadaptation, the “predestination to darkness.” Shoat stepped to the front and thanked them. His manner was crisp, yet random. They were here on Helios’s nickel. This was his show.
Through the remainder of the afternoon, various specialists were introduced and gave their remarks. Ali was impressed by the group’s relative youth. Most had their doctorates. Few were older than forty, and some were barely twenty-five. People wandered in and out of the dining car as the hours wound on, but Ali sat through it all, fixing faces with names, drinking in the esoterica of sciences she’d never studied.
After a patio-type supper of hamburgers and cold beer, they had been promised a just-released Hollywood movie. But the machine would not work, and that was when Shoat stumbled. To this point, his day of orientation had featured scientists who were practiced speakers, or at least in command of their topics. Seeking to enliven the evening with a change of entertainment, Shoat tried something different.
“Since we’re getting to know each other,” he announced, “I wanted to introduce a guy we’ll all come to depend on. We are extremely fortunate to have obtained him from the U.S. Army, where he was a famous scout and tracker. He has the reputation of being a Ranger’s Ranger, a true veteran of the deep. Dwight,” he called. “Dwight Crockett. I see you back there. Come on up. Don’t be shy.”
Shoat’s tracker was apparently not prepared for this attention. He balked, whoever he was, and after a minute Ali turned to see him. Of all people, the reluctant Dwight was that very same stranger she’d insulted on the Galápagos elevator yesterday. What on earth was he doing here? she wondered.
With all eyes on him now, Dwight let go of the wall and stood straight. He was dressed in new Levi’s and a white shirt closed to the throat and buttoned at each wrist. His dark glacier glasses glittered like insect eyes. Sporting that awful Frankenstein haircut, he looked completely out of place, like those ranch hands Ali had sometimes seen in the hill country, troubled in human company, better left in their remote line shacks. The tattooing and scars on his face and scalp encouraged a healthy distance.
“Was I supposed to say something?” he asked from the back of the car.
“Come up here where everyone can see you,” Shoat insisted.
“Unreal,” someone whispered next to Ali. “I’ve heard of this guy. An outlaw.”
Dwight kept his displeasure economical, the slightest shake of his head. When he finally came forward, the crowd parted. “Dwight’s the one you really want to hear from,” Shoat said. “He never got around to graduate school, he doesn’t have an academic specialty. But talk about authority in the field. He spent eleven years in hadal captivity. The last three years he’s been hunting Haddie for the Rangers and Special Forces and SEALs. Now I’ve read your résumés, folks. Few of our group have ever visited the subterranean world. None of us has ever gone beyond the electrified zones. But Ike here can tell us what it’s like. Out there.” Shoat sat down. It was Ike’s stage.
He stood before their patter of applause, and his awkwardness seemed endearing, a little pathetic. Ali caught a few of the murmured remarks about his scars and exploits. Deserter, she heard. Berserker. Cannibal. Slave runner. Animal. It was all traded breathlessly, in the superlative. Strange, she thought, how legends grew. They made him sound like a sociopath, and yet they were drawn to him, excited by the romance of his imagined deeds.
Dwight let them have their curiosity. The tracks sibilated in their growing silence, and people turned uncomfortable. Ali had seen it a hundred times, how Americans and Europeans chafed at silence. In contrast, Dwight was downright primal with his patience. Finally his reticence proved too much. “Don’t you have anything to say?” Shoat said.
Dwight shrugged. “You know, I haven’t had such an interesting day in a long time. You people know your stuff.” Ali wasn’t prepared for that. None of them were. This odd brute had been sitting in the rear all afternoon, deliberately unremarkable, quietly getting educated. By them! It was enchanting.
Shoat was annoyed. Maybe this was supposed to have been a freak show. “How about questions. Any questions?”
“Mr. Crockett,” a woman from MIT started. “Or is it Captain, or some other rank?”
“No,” he said, “they busted me out. I don’t have any rank. And don’t bother with the ‘mister,’ either.”
“Very well. Dwight, then,” the woman went on. “I wanted to ask—”
“Not Dwight,” he interrupted. “Ike.”
“Ike?”
“Go on.”
“The hadals have disappeared,” she said. “Every day civilization pushes the night back a little further. My question, sir, is whether it’s really so dangerous out there?”
“Things have a way of flying apart,” Ike said.
“Not that we’ll be going out in harm’s way,” the woman said.
Ike looked at Shoat. “Is that what this man told you?”
Ali felt uneasy. He knew something they didn’t. On second thought, that wasn’t saying much.
Shoat moved them along. “Question?” he said.
Ali stood. “You were their prisoner,” she said. “Can you share a little about your experience? What did they do to you? What are the hadals like?”
The dining car fell silent. Here was a campfire story they could listen to all night. What a resource Ike could be to her, with his insights into the hadals’ habits and culture. Why, he might even speak their language.
Ike smiled at her. “I don’t have a lot to say about those days.”
There was disappointment.
“Do you think they’re still out there somewhere? Is there any chance we might see one?” someone else asked.
“Where we’re going?” Ike said. Unless Ali was wrong, he was provoking Shoat on purpose, dancing on the edge of information they were not yet supposed to have.
Shoat’s annoyance built.
“Where are we going?” a man asked.
“No comment,” Shoat answered for Ike.
“Have you been in our particular territory yourself?”
“Never,” Ike said. “I used to hear rumors, of course. But I never believed they could be true.”
“Rumors of what?”
Shoat was checking his watch.
The train gave a soft lur
ch. They braked to a slow halt. People went to look through the small windows and Ike was forgotten, momentarily. Shoat stood on a chair. “Grab your bags and personal effects, folks. We’re changing trains.”
Ali shared an open flatcar with three men and freight, mostly heavy equipment parts. She sat against a John Deere crate labeled PLANETARIES, DIFFERENTIALS. One of the men had bad gas and kept grimacing in apology.
The ride was smooth. The artery was man-made, bored to a uniform twenty-foot diameter. The trackbed was crushed gravel sprayed with black oil. Overhead, bare bulbs bled down rusty light. Ali kept thinking of a Siberian gulag. Wires and pipes and cables veined the walls.
Cavities opened to the sides. They didn’t see any people, just crawlers and loaders and excavators and pipe layers, piled rubber tires, and cement ties. The track made a slithery sound under their wheels, seamless. Ali missed the click-clack of rail joints. She remembered a train journey with her parents, falling asleep to the rhythm while the world passed by.
Ali gave one of her fresh apples to the man who was still awake. They’d been grown in the hydroponic gardens at Nazca City. He said, “My daughter loves apples,” and showed her a picture.
“What a beautiful girl,” Ali said.
“Kids?” he asked.
Ali pulled a jacket over her knees. “Oh, I don’t think I could bear to leave a child,” she answered too quickly. The man winced. Ali said, “I didn’t mean it that way.”
The train was relentlessly gentle. It never slowed, never stopped. Ali and her neighbors improvised a latrine with privacy by pushing some of the crates together. They had a communal supper, each contributing some food.
At midnight the walls brightened from cinnamon to tan. Her companions were all sleeping when the train entered a band of marine fossils. Here exoskeletons, there ancient seaweeds, there a spray of tiny brachiopods. The bore-cutter had sheared the rich find with impunity.