by Jeff Long
“I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. “I was rude.”
“He’s used to it. Every now and then I catch myself staring, too.”
Rebecca was pale. “Is that happening to Sam?”
“Not yet.”
“I want the truth.”
“It didn’t happen to me,” Ali said. “It doesn’t happen to most of the colonists, not to this extent.”
“But it happens. It happened to Mr. Li.”
“John was out in unmonitored zones, much deeper than people have gone in the past, and for a much longer time. We’re just starting to understand how much the gases and radiation belts drift around down there. Clearly John was exposed to them. But it doesn’t mean Sam will be. The good news is that some of his traits are reversing now that he’s resurfaced. His heart is returning to normal size. It actually shrank underground. His red-blood-cell count is almost normal again. And those cysts on his arms? It turns out that they contain pollen.”
“Like in flowers?”
“We’re still trying to figure out what kind of vegetation he brushed against. The interesting thing is how its pollen causes a skin irritation. At first it was just a low-grade acne. Recently it began to itch. Itching tears open the cysts, releasing the pollen. In other words, the host can carry the pollen for months and potentially hundreds or thousands of miles before discharging it in another part of the Interior.”
“And his horns?”
“A plastic surgeon is working with him. The problem is, the horns are living tissue, with a blood supply. You can’t just lop them off.”
“What else will happen to Sam?”
“Might happen,” said Ali, “not will happen.”
“I want to know when these creatures will rape her.” It was a whisper.
Ali didn’t quibble with the “rape” or the “creatures.” “From the captive accounts we’ve gathered from years ago, the children are treated very well. The girls are separated from the boys and held in isolation with something like hadal nannies. They’re shielded from any contact with men. Their privacy is guarded through the first years of puberty. Marriage doesn’t occur until thirteen or fourteen.”
“Why, though? I thought we were two different species.”
“Lions and tigers are two different species. In the wild they never breed with one another. But in captivity, in zoos, you can get hybrids like ligers and tiglons.”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
Ali considered. She could describe the array of subterranean diseases, or their primitive rites of passage, the ritual mutilations, the branding and tattooing, the slave collars, the crippling of runaways, the punishments, the tortures. But those were all part of the lore by now, and this unhappy woman didn’t need more nightmares. She tried to recall something positive.
“As you might imagine,” Ali said, “your sight adjusts. I wasn’t down there long enough for it to happen to me. But John reports that by the end of two years, he could smell and feel colors. He could hear distances. It might be explained by chemicals in the water. His brain changed.”
“Sam’s brain will change?”
“The frontal lobe and the limbic system get switched on. The parietal lobe switches off.”
“You’re losing me.”
“We’re starting to get reports from certain regions of people having visions. John claims it happened to him. He heard voices. Disembodied voices.”
“Are you talking about dreams, or nightmares?”
“It’s similar to deep meditation,” Ali said, “except you don’t have to meditate. You experience rapture. You lose your sense of self. You feel connected to the universe. To God. John says he almost didn’t return to the surface. One of his expedition partners stayed down. He refused to exit. He turned around and went deeper by himself.” Ali understood. She hadn’t been in the depths long enough to feel rapture, but she still had waking dreams of the beauty down there.
Rebecca pulled her chin back. “Religious visions.”
“Something like that.”
“Like prophets.”
“Or poets.”
“That will happen to Sam?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca was quiet a moment. Then she said, “I need her back.”
“I know.”
In her former life, back when she was a nun, Ali would have said, Let us pray. But prayer was not in her anymore. She had left the Church and God for a reason, to find a larger truth. If Satan and the demons were simply a wilder version of man, then God and angels must be, too. Salvation—real deliverance—lay in the Word. Not in the Bible, but in language. In that first spark of fire, somehow, somewhere, in consciousness uttering its first words, lay the way back to Eden.
“Lead me to the city,” said Rebecca.
“The military is taking care of that.”
“I have to see for myself. I need to be there.” Rebecca stood. “If she were yours, you’d be down there.”
“Yes.”
“Why won’t anyone help me?”
Because we’re afraid. “We want to.”
“The city.”
“I’m sorry,” Ali said.
Rebecca left. Ali watched through the window as she sank away toward the Bay full of fog. Ali reached for the framed photo of her own daughter. Then she returned it to its quiet place on her desk where Maggie would never grow old and nothing could ever harm her again.
ARTIFACTS
Internal Revenue Service
Department of the Treasury
Seize the Night, Inc.
c/o Rebecca Coltrane
Re: application for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status
Dear Ms. Coltrane,
We are pleased to inform you that, at the personal suggestion of the president of the United States, we have expedited your request for nonprofit status in record time. Based on information you supplied, and assuming your operations will be as stated in our application for recognition of exemption, we have determined you are exempt from federal income tax under section 501(a) of the Internal Revenue Code as an organization described in section 501(c)(3). All contributions to your organization will be tax deductible.
Sincerely yours,
Roger T. Hamilton
District Director
P.S. I would like to add a private note of sympathy for your loss, and my wholehearted support for your mission. May you be united with your daughter soon. You are in the prayers of my family, and of your nation. Please find enclosed my personal check for $1,000.00. God speed, Rebecca.
Yours,
Sam
12
DIALOGUES WITH THE ANGEL, NUMBER 3
They stand at the foot of an immense wall that rises out of sight.
“Here is my border,” says the angel. “I can go no farther than where we stand.”
The disciple glances at his teacher, suspecting a trick. The angel is full of ruses. Surely this is one of them.
“Go closer,” says the angel. “Place your hand on the stone.”
The student does as he is told. He steps forward. He crosses the supposed border. He touches the rock.
“Is it warm?” asks the angel.
“It is, Rinpoche.”
“As warm as living flesh?”
“Exactly, Lord.”
“So I’ve been told. Now climb.”
The disciple searches for holds. He climbs perhaps thirty feet. He looks down.
“Enough,” says the angel. “You can return. Or if you want, you can continue up. Escape. Be free.”
Perched on footholds up there, the disciple tries to sort out his thoughts. The angel has brought him here for a reason. Is it to release him from the abyss? Or to test his loyalty? And if the disciple does try to escape, will his teacher come rushing up the rock and kill him?
The disciple returns to the ground. He walks back to the angel. Really there is no decision to make. He made up his mind long ago when he committed life and limb to finding this creature.
“You w
ere afraid,” says the angel. “You thought I was lying.”
“Yes, Lord.”
The angel opens one hand and tries to press it against the rock. But his hand stops, or the wall recoils. The one cannot meet the other. It is an astonishing revelation for the disciple. The world refuses this creature.
The angel pulls back his hand. He looks up into the heights. “Do you really think I choose to stay inside this ball of stone?”
The disciple is too dumbfounded to answer. His captor is a captive? The angel of freedom can’t free himself? But why should this supernatural being confide his weakness to a mere mortal? It is a terrifying moment.
Perhaps he should have kept climbing while he could. Too late for that. Now he belongs to this creature who can skin a man with his fingers alone, and so quickly that his victim is still standing and alive on his feet afterward. The disciple has seen him do it.
“Why am I entombed?” the angel goes on. “What holds me here? There is nothing in this place but animals to feed my solitude. Nothing but silence to marry my songs. I am forgotten.”
I can leave, thinks the disciple. With a single pounce onto the wall, he can climb out of here. But he stays.
“Who is my jailer?” the angel continues. “Who holds the key to my door?”
“Lord.” The disciple listens.
“One day I will feel the sun on my face,” says the angel. “One day one of you will unlock my cage.”
One day, one of us. Now the disciple understands. This is why the angel took him in, him and all the others. This explains the angel’s patient tutelage of humankind over all the many centuries. We have what he wants. We inhabit the world. We are free.
The angel bends to search the disciple’s face. “It won’t be you who frees me, though. There is no freedom in your soul. Nothing but captivity.”
The disciple hears his death sentence. The angel has kept him for ten years now. Soon he will devour him. “I am here at your will, Lord.”
“My will?” The angel says it with bitterness. “My will? Tell me. If I am a prisoner, then who is my jailer?”
“I only know who it is not, Rinpoche,” the disciple answers. “It cannot be God.”
“No? Why not?”
“God is nothingness, Lord. You taught me that.”
“Who then? Come on, it’s simple. If God is not my jailer, who else could it be?”
The disciple waits in silence. He knows that his ignorance annoys the angel. One day soon it will cost him his life.
“You,” the angel answers himself. “You keep me here.”
“Me, Lord?”
“Your kind. My chosen people, if that’s what you are. And if you are not, if your race fails me as the hadals failed me and others before them, then I will wait for the next race of people to come along. Do you see what I am saying? Whoever frees me, that man or woman was my keeper. Whoever befriends me was my enemy. Whoever delivers me from the wilderness put me there. Whoever saves me, damned me.”
The disciple hears his bitterness. It frightens him. He has seen the angel’s rage in deep grooves slashed into the walls and footprints stamped into the floor. “But how can that be?” he blurts out. “Mankind is barely a child on the planet, and you have been a captive since the beginning of time. How can the captive precede his captor?”
“I will know the answer when you reveal it,” says the angel.
The disciple has nothing to lose. He knows that he is doomed by the secrets imparted to him. The angel can never let him go. So be it. In fact, his certain death liberates him. He can ask anything. “If we are your jailer, Lord, then how will you recognize us? And if we don’t know you are our prisoner, how will it occur to us to free you?”
“That is a question I cannot answer.” The angel smiles. “But someone among you will know the answer, and in that instant my door will fly open.”
“And then what will you do, Lord?”
“I will walk into the sun,” said the angel. “And then I will restore the Garden as it was.”
ARTIFACTS
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (ROES) FOR JTF OPERATION SILENT MERCY
NOTHING IN THESE ROES LIMITS YOUR RIGHT TO TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION TO DEFEND YOURSELF AND YOUR UNIT
General Rules of Engagement
This ROE takes precedence over all other rules governing the use of deadly force.
I always have the right to defend myself, my fellow marines and sailors and soldiers, U.S. military support personnel, and settlers directly supporting U.S. operations.
I am aware of the presence of unknown persons in the field of operation. Settlers of every nation are embedded in the STZs (subterrestrial zones). I will not use force or seize property from them to accomplish my mission.
Nonhuman elements may be engaged without provocation. I will identify my targets.
Weapon will be fired at discretion to achieve mission.
Well-aimed fire will be used; weapons will not be placed on automatic, unless necessary.
Care will be taken to avoid civilian casualties.
My actions need to be quick, deliberate, accurate, and never as a result of a desire for revenge.
I will not harm, detain, or interfere with local settlers in the STZs.
I will be aware of the presence of Chinese settlers in the STZs.
13
THE GREEN BARRENS
NOVEMBER 11
Beckwith slipped his crosshairs left across the dunes. His spotter, Miggs, lay nestled to one side on the ledge. Elsewhere, in other niches on the cliff, another eight sniper pairs were glassing the same sands of this subterranean desert. They had been waiting in ambush for a week and were prepared to stay another month. At that time, if the children still hadn’t appeared, a second team would silently replace Beckwith’s group.
By now, Beckwith knew much of the surreal desert. They had lasered various landmarks to determine their range to within a yard, and recorded them on range cards for quick reference. The kill zone was obvious. All they needed was for the enemy and his young captives to show up.
While Beckwith scoured the sand, he kept an eye out for the Casper bird. Even a year ago conventional wisdom held that there were no birds down here, just as there were no snakes with magnetic sensors in their skulls or hairless lemurs, much less carnivorous ones. For that matter, “here” was not supposed to be down here either. But once discovered, it seemed hell was a nursery for the impossible.
A single bird of this new species—Erihacus caspera, named after Casper the Ghost for its colorless plumage—had been photographed for the first time only six months ago. The birding world was atwitter, though settlers and explorers had been picking up the reclusive bird’s sonar peeps and finding its droppings for much longer. Some biologists claimed it wasn’t even a bird, but some sort of reptile with wings, one more mutant spawned by the deeps. Until someone sighted another specimen, the debate was guaranteed to rage on.
As Beckwith scanned the chamber from his “hide,” as snipers called their nests, he wondered if he might be that someone. It took patience and stealth to tease out the hidden creatures, and those were two things he had plenty of.
Dry lightning snaked along the ceiling a quarter mile overhead. The green dunes flickered. Thunder rumbled through the chamber.
Beckwith twisted on his ledge and adjusted his night goggles. To his left and right, the rest of his boat crew, a SEAL term of endearment, showed as thermal fragments hidden upon the cliff face.
Like hermits primed to battle demons, they inhabited their ledges in silence, each man disciplining his needs for water and light, cultivating his field of fire, tending his weapons, cadging his rations, and sharpening his vision. Monklike, Beckwith had never felt so far from God.
Thirty-seven thousand feet below sea level, deeper than Everest was high, the unit was operating all but deaf, dumb, and blind. No maps of the territory existed this far away from the settlements. Electromagnetic forces were wreaking havoc on their compasses and watches and
bending, bouncing, or snaring their radio signals, wrecking any communication with the surface and distorting even line-of-sight transmissions between themselves.
The SEALs of unit one were profoundly isolated in these tunnels running beneath the Mariana Trench. If they ran into problems, there was no backup. If they took casualties, there would be no airlift. If they ate through their food or ran out of ammunition, they could die in this stone limbo and never be found. Beckwith took it as a creative challenge.
Eight days ago they had inserted themselves via a secret military bore-hole on Pagan Island, north of Guam. Their mission: intercept the enemy, acquire the children, and retreat to the surface. Leaving their inflatable boats and extra supplies by a river, they had set off on foot and found an old hadal caravan trail, recently used. Here they set their ambush.
Now they waited among relics, bones, and guano that had accumulated over some two hundred centuries. The dunes of the Green Barrens desert unfolded before the cliff wall. The sand gleamed green in their night goggles. Even in white light, it was green.
According to the latest intelligence derived from a hadal detainee, the enemy was retreating with the children to a prehistoric city named Hinnom. The city had been visited only twice, first by the legendary Helios expedition ten years ago, and then seven years ago by a hard-luck IMAX film crew.
There were other special-ops teams like theirs sprinkled through this far-western expanse of the Pacific Interior. Beckwith’s team had deployed the farthest west of them all. Relying on small ambushes in the few arteries known to exist in this region, military planners were gambling that the enemy—and the kidnapped children—would walk right into their hands. It was a high-stakes gamble.
Besides the hazards of combat and environment, Beckwith’s team had been cautioned about the geopolitical tensions. They had inserted deep inside territory claimed by China, meaning the American soldiers who weren’t supposed to be down here were being stalked by Chinese soldiers who weren’t supposed to be down here either.