by Greg Bear
Alice is speaking on her cell. Something’s up. She sounds energized, but I can’t quite hear what she’s saying. I swallow the vitamins and scoop water from the tap to chase them. Then I emerge. The food in my belly is behaving. My legs are behaving. My vision is clear. I feel stronger.
Alice stands on the step up to the hallway, smiling a very odd smile. “That was Joe,” she says. “He wants you out of here.”
“And go where?”
“He didn’t say, and I don’t think we want to know—not yet. Get your stuff together.”
“Moving out? Where?”
“I do not know. Honest.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Alice—the same Alice who walked me around the market and made cioppino, who’s listened to everything with sympathy and firm understanding—glares at me, brooking no dissent.
“It’s Joe,” she says.
“Why doesn’t he come here?”
“I didn’t ask! Let’s move.”
She helps me put together a packet with pills and fills a bottle of water from the tap in the kitchen. Somehow, I have run out of questions.
But she tells me, “Keep talking,” as we take the elevator. “Keep your mind on what happened. Don’t lose any details.”
DEEP PRIDE
At the bottom of the spiral stairs, three tunnels run straight outward like spokes for as far as we can see; DJ has led us to a circular chamber at the center of a perfect shooting gallery. No star lights in sight. I signal for us to take positions away from the tunnels, close to the chamber wall.
But there’s only darkness and silence.
Out on the Red, there’s always the faintest hiss of ghostly breeze, almost inaudible except during a sandstorm, but down here, there’s only a muffled hint of withheld human breath, the superlight scuff and rubbery tap of boots, and beyond that—beyond these very thin noises—
Nothing.
We switch on our helm lights. We can all see that the main trail of prints and streaks in the dust leads down one tunnel. The dust in the other tunnels is almost undisturbed—except for some tiny pocks and thin lines, which I ignore, because I can’t explain them and my head is already overloaded.
DJ bends to draw a map in the dust. He lifts his forefinger to his lips as if to taste the dust on the tip, then catches me watching and drops his hand. “There are sixteen main levels connected by twenty-one shafts—right down to the torso. Most of the levels were closed due to flooding before the Voors packed up, I think—but they’ve drained now. All but the deep hydro.”
“We should go back,” Ackerly says, kneeling by the human tracks. “They’re ahead waiting to ambush whoever follows.”
DJ has an odd look. “Okay. This tunnel goes to the eastern gate—but that one does not.” He points to the well-traveled tunnel and taps the middle of his map, then draws a staggered cascade of lines down through the Drifter’s long axis. “It drops at a shallow angle and then intersects one side of a ring. Go halfway around the ring, and you’ll meet the first of a series of shafts descending to a tall cavern—a big void. Right now, we’re only in the neck—”
“What?” Brom asks.
“This whole Drifter thing is like a big swimming guy, trying to stay afloat, isn’t it, Master Sergeant?” DJ says. I nod. “We’ve only gone down as far as one side of the neck.”
“I do not get that swimmer shit,” Ackerly interrupts.
“Try to imagine something for once,” Brom tells him.
Ackerly frowns. “Backstroke or crawl?”
“Just the upper head and forearms and part of the neck reach above the sand,” DJ says. “It’s kind of like a giant doing a backstroke, I suppose. Head and shoulder, the harbor of one arm, thrust out in front—the northern gate. Another out behind, the southern gate. Yeah, backstroke.”
Brom laughs. “Fuck,” he says. “I can see the arm now. Big elbow. Hand below the sand. So what’s down there—way down in the belly?”
“The big cavern. A void. The console labeled it the Church.”
“Why the fuck is there a church down here?” Ackerly asks.
“It’s what the Voors called it. Down in the gut.”
“If this tunnel goes to the eastern gate,” I point, “nobody’s used it. These thin tracks could be pebbles falling from the roof or something, but there are no boot prints around here.”
DJ absorbs this but looks stubborn. “Well, I’m fucking solid this goes to the eastern gate.”
“Up in the booth—were some of the digs marked in blue and red?” I ask.
“Yeah. Way below, lots of red—mostly around the Church.”
“The gut,” Brom says.
“Bowels of Mars,” Ackerly says. “Love it. Love it. We are heading into the shit for sure!”
“When Teal saw the red and blue traces on the larger diagram, she seemed to think the digs continued after the Drifter was abandoned,” I say.
“Who’s Teal?” Brom asks.
“The ranch wife who saved our bacon,” DJ explains. Then he catches on and squinches one eye. “Still mining—even in deep water? Who would do that? What would do that?”
Brom and Ackerly look between us, blank-faced. We’re talking way above what they’ve managed to understand.
“Let’s get to the eastern gate,” I say. “First order of business is figuring out where the Voors might have come in, and how vulnerable the upper works are to Antags.”
DJ shrugs and heads down the tunnel he thinks—or remembers—leads to the eastern gate. “These are old digs,” he says. We can hear him clearly enough, even above the scuff of boots, because his voice is naturally high-pitched, penetrating.
“How can you tell?” Brom asks.
“The grooves. Dig marks. When I went back and forth between the gates, I could see some were a lot older than the Voors.”
“Really? How old?”
DJ flashes us a weirdly chipper look. “Millions of years, maybe. The marks here,” he brushes one with his glove, “these are softer—they’ve been eroded by lots of flowing water, you know, the hobo, the underground river. And that must have taken millions of years, because, right? It doesn’t flow all the time, it just hobos around under the surface, coming back every few million years, flooding, withdrawing…”
He keeps walking, throws out his right arm, and we all turn right. “This is newer, less erosion,” he observes in the next tunnel.
I honestly don’t know what to think. The tunnel excavation marks back there do look worn compared to these. But that could be a difference in machines, mining tools, techniques…
“Head and neck and shoulder,” Brom murmurs. “Belly below. What’s below that? How far down does this fucker go?”
“Maybe two or three dozen klicks,” DJ says. “Based on the pictures I saw.”
He has also neglected to reveal that, until now.
“What in hell is this place?” Ackerly asks.
“God’s candy bar,” I say. “Dropped it on His way to Earth. Creamy nougat center, I hear.”
Ackerly thinks that over. “Really?” he asks with a boyish innocence you got to love.
The tunnel curves and then rises, and in a few minutes we’re at the eastern gate—another hangar-sized cavern, completely dark—no star lights, nothing but our helm lanterns flaring through the cold, clear air. We’re the first to disturb the green dust on the floor.
We wander around the cavern. No buggies, no wagons, no vehicles whatsoever—and no equipment. I approach the inner lock hatch, shining my light from top to bottom—pretty big, at least as big as the southern gate lock. The lock has been welded shut, then completely blocked by cross-welded beams and a big pile of basalt boulders—mine tailings, probably. Closed long ago, undisturbed since.
Nobody has been here for a very long time.
Ackerly sneezes and picks at his nose. His finger comes away green. “This ain’t Mars dust,” he observes, then wipes his finger on his forearm. “It’s the green shit that’s all over. We�
��re sucking it in. What is it?”
“Algae, maybe,” DJ says.
“What if I’m allergic?” Ackerly says.
“Not even a control booth,” DJ says, standing beside an old, rusted frame that might have once supported such a structure. “I’ll bet when they sealed it off, they covered the outside with rocks, too. So’s nobody would even know it was here. Paranoid bastards, but smart, right?”
“No Voors came in through here,” Brom observes, turning, his light sweeping around the walls of the garage. “How’d they overpower Skyrines without help?”
Then my own beam returns as a glint—back in the tunnel that led us here. A little speck of reflection that almost instantly seems to be obscured, as if by a shutter, a blink, then jerks aside—and vanishes.
“Did you see that?” I ask, retreating to the center of the hangar.
“See what?” DJ says.
“An eye,” Brom says, throat tight. “I saw it, too—a blinking eye. Just one.”
Ackerly bumps up against us and we’re a tight square, facing outward, sidearms at the ready. “I didn’t see anything,” he insists. “Are we going back that way?”
“Only way out,” DJ says.
It takes a few minutes to get these exhausted and thoroughly unhappy men to see clear reason. We cannot finish our mission without retracing our steps—following our boot marks. I look down at the green dust and our own tracks with obsessive interest, trying to make any sense of where we are, what’s happening. What we’re seeing or not seeing.
DJ takes the lead again. I take the rear. We’re all in stealth mode, moving with as little sound as possible, trying not even to breathe loud.
Then Brom gives a little grunt. “Look at this,” he says, bending, moving his light along our tracks. There’s a very clear boot print, fresh, in the dust. One of ours, doesn’t matter whose. Pointing to the garage.
Someone or something has planted an even fresher pockmark, and pushed aside a little line of green dust, right across that print. A few minutes before.
Without leaving any other sign.
“Ants!” Brom says, his voice rising. “They’re already inside. We are truly fucked!”
“I don’t think so,” I say, mind working so fast my thoughts feel like sparks. No panic. Draw them back from panic. “We’ve all seen Antag tracks on the Red. Individuals leave bigger marks—double circles, side bars. Bigger boots than ours.”
“Not Ants, then,” DJ agrees.
“Calm down,” I say. “Mission first. We have to get back and report.”
We return to the radiance of tunnels at the bottom of the first spiral staircase. Alone, unmolested.
“Something with one shiny eye,” Brom says thoughtfully. “If not Ants, then what?”
“Let’s finish this level and see if there’s something we need to know,” I say.
We’ve gone on for a few hundred meters and it’s becoming obvious that DJ no longer knows where we are.
“We’ve walked too fucking far,” he says. “I’m turned around.”
“Lost?” Ackerly asks.
“No, man, just turned around. Put me right and I’ll find the way. We can follow our tracks.”
We’ve made a wrong turn, it’s dark—no star lights hang on these walls, and the grooves seem fresh. DJ is silent for a while until we stop again and he turns and looks back at us. “These digs weren’t on the map,” he says. “I think we’re nowhere near where we’re supposed to be.”
“Then we just go back, right?” Ackerly asks.
“Green dust will show us the way,” Brom says.
“If you’ll notice,” I say, pointing to our feet, “no green dust.”
“Shit,” Brom says. “It’s supposed to be everywhere, it clogs my nose like snuff—why not here? Why not when we need it?”
“Because it’s not funny,” DJ says. “There’s only green dust when it’s funny.”
But we’re not going to let him off easy. We group around him, tight, as if we can squeeze out a better answer. Not threatening, mind you—we’d never threaten a fellow Skyrine. More like we’re really strung-out chain-smokers and we know he has a pack of cigarettes on him somewhere.
“Give me room to think, goddamn it,” he says, head low, eyes shifting in our beams. Which are, of course, slowly dimming. At least the air is fresh—fresher than ever, I think, like a slow, continuous mountain breeze way down here. “There was a side tunnel back about a hundred meters,” he finally says, and pushes through our pack. “We’ll try that one.”
“I did not see it,” Ackerly says. “Did you?” he asks Brom.
None of us saw it except DJ, and he’s murmuring, “I didn’t think it was the one, not right. Didn’t feel right.”
I have nothing against Corporal Dan Johnson—really. Decent tech, dedicated Skyrine, sometimes tries to be funny. But the thought that our lives depend on DJ’s self-described perfect memory brings no joy. Ackerly and Brom are stoic. I think they made their peace out on the Red, running before the Antag wall of dust, and the rest has just been prelude to a foregone conclusion.
I’m trying to figure the lack of dust and the walls’ fresh grooves. Recent digs?
Even after the water receded?
Slowly it’s beginning to dawn on me that we might be dealing with another kind of participant in our weird game—a third party or group of parties, origin unknown, nature unknown.
But carrying a camera.
“What the fuck are you laughing at?” DJ asks me. “It’s not funny, man.”
“Find that side tunnel,” I tell him.
“Yes, sir. What if it’s not there anymore?”
“Find it.”
Ten more steps and DJ spins around, shining his beam right at us. He points to his right, our left, face bright but damp. “There, just like I saw.”
It’s a smaller, narrower tunnel, barely high enough to stoop into. DJ bends over and heads in anyway, and then pops out like a cork, arms flailing. He’s caught in a weird kind of web, pieces of thin translucent stuff, like flexible glass or cellophane noodles, that have stuck to his helm and shoulders. Grunting like a desperate pig, he plucks off the glassy fibers and flings them to the floor while Brom and Ackerly and I stand back, afraid to touch him, not at all sure what he’s blundered into. But finally he’s mostly cleaned himself off, all but for little fragments, and I tell him to stop, stop wasting energy, let me look you over.
He freezes like a statue, chin high, arms out. “Are they needles?” he asks, high and squeaky.
“Don’t think so. Hold still.”
I carefully pluck away one fiber, hold it out and up in our beams. It’s about five centimeters long, twenty millimeters across, very much like a cellophane noodle in a bowl of Asian soup, but stiffly bendy. I pinch it lengthwise, not too hard, between my fingers. It flexes, then seems to grow rigid—to actually straighten and harden. Weird material.
Pieces of the shattered web lie on the tunnel floor all around DJ. But nothing seems to have pierced his skintight.
“Fucking spiderweb,” Brom says.
“No!” DJ husks. “Fucking heavy-duty no to that shit!”
“Fine,” Brom says. “No spiders.”
“I’m cool with no spiders, too,” Ackerly says.
My turn. I bend over and shine my light directly into the cavity that was supposed to be our turning point, our salvation, if ever I trusted DJ. “Something’s jammed in here,” I say.
“Trapdoor!” Brom says.
Now Ackerly takes umbrage and cuffs him on the side of the head.
My curiosity is piqued. Really. I am not in the least afraid—not now, just feeling a weird kind of wonder. Sad wonder. I feel as if I know what I’m going to find. Or at least part of me knows. Part of me feels a separate truth, not…
Human?
“It’s not moving, whatever it is,” I call back. I’ve pushed through the rubbery, brittle fibers and found the thing that might have made them, and it, too, looks like it migh
t have come out of some crazy glass-blowing shop at a county fair. There’s the eye, like a lens all right, on a tubular kind of head, transparent and blue-green, now slumped on a short neck. Behind the head and the eye is a jumble of glassy limbs about as thick as my wrist, which might have once been flexible and tough but are now shot through with cracks, dry, brittle. Looks like I could crunch them to dust with a poke of my finger.
“I doubt it’s Antag,” I say over my shoulder. “It’s not moving. Old. Ready to fall apart. Decaying—”
Something that crawled in and died in this little hidey hole. Or just stopped working. What is it I’m recognizing, acknowledging, in this sad clump of fibers?
Brom sticks his head in behind me and shines another light down the narrow tunnel. “Looks like a dead end. What is that thing, a fossil?”
“Don’t know. But… I think it didn’t come from outside. I think it belongs down here.”
“Get out and let’s go,” DJ says, voice still shaky.
I’m becoming more and more interested. I get down on my knees, very cautious, in case any of the fragments are still sharp, and examine its shoes, pads, feet—if it’s one thing, one creature, or a creature at all!—about two or three dozen of them, at the ends of a maze of triple-and-quadruple jointed legs. I grip a pad and lift it—it’s not all that light—and then, the leg above breaks and white dust rises and okay, it’s time to back out, time to find another way, this is almost certainly not where we should be going—the hidey hole is feeling pretty tight.
I exit and hold the pad under the dimming beams proffered by Brom and Ackerly. DJ moves in to inspect with us. The pad masses about half a kilo and the bottom is hard, finely grooved in a cross-hatch pattern, but not your ordinary nail-file sort of grooves—more like the rotating cutter on a big digging machine back on Earth.
“It’s a rock grinder!” DJ says, curiosity getting the better of fear. Then our eyes meet—and I recognize something in DJ’s look. Knowing, acknowledging. I turn away before he can give me a little nod, before we join a really weird club.
“Maybe it dug these new tunnels,” Brom says. “That thing’s a fucking kobold.”
“You just make that up?” DJ asks.