by John Farris
PART TWO
THE CATACOMBS
May 23
Chapter 30
Erika was standing less than ten yards from the helicopter, which Tiernan Clarke's men had finished unloading, when the small plane appeared overhead, its engine sputtering. She looked up, a hand shielding her eyes from the brassy glare of the sunset, and saw the pilot dip his wings as if he were in trouble. Then the left wings dropped precipitously as the engine quit. Although he seemed to be attempting to glide down to the moor nearly three thousand feet below, where he had some hope of landing without cracking up, he abruptly lost control.
The plane struck the mountain and blew apart, a flashless, almost noiseless explosion of metal fragments, pieces of trees that were in the way, and human remains; some of the fragments had a momentary brilliance as they carried into the light sea from the west.
She turned; she was already pale and gulping from altitude sickness, and shaky on her feet. Clarke had come up behind her in time to witness the accident. He put out a hand to steady her.
"My God! What can we do?"
"Nothing, Erika. There's no hope for anyone who was in that plane."
"But what was he doing up here?"
"Having a close look at the volcano, I suppose," Clarke said, barely concealing his indifference. He brushed at the tephra collecting in his hair, and hers, looked up at the mushrooming cloud over Kibo. There was a deep rumbling from inside the mountain, which was trembling slightly again.
"That can't be good," he said forebodingly of the cloud. "You'd better lead us inside, Erika. Is it far?"
"No . . . just there, through the gully. A hundred yards or so." She licked her lips. Her eyes looked vague. He saw she was going to faint and bellowed for oxygen. The two black men he'd brought with him, Simon Ovosi and Ned Chakava, came running with a big cylinder between them and Clarke placed the transparent cone over Erika's nose and mouth. A few deep breaths, and some color seeped into her cheeks.
They went then into the Catacombs, Erika leaning on Clarke's right arm, Simon and Ned bent over with the weight of the packs and cylinders of oxygen which they would all need from time to time at this altitude, even inside the Catacombs.
Soon the walls of the gully rose steeply above their heads; the path at the bottom, worn smooth by the feet of the explorers less than a year ago, wound tightly between outcrops of rock and occasional stunted groundsels that had somehow taken root and refused to die despite the near absence of sun during the day.
On the walls black markings appeared, randomly at first. They seemed to be cracks in the granite, but the light from Clarke's powerful flashlight bounced back dazzlingly.
"It's obsidian," Erika explained. "Volcanic glass, and nearly as hard as the rock itself. In a few moments you'll see that it hasn't occurred naturally–we think the obsidian was placed here by artisans."
She aimed Clarke's flashlight beam for him; a wall on their left, chiseled nearly smooth over an area ten feet square, was like a mosaic, the space filled with bold curving strokes and geometrical figures.
"Those are pictographs; what do they remind you of?"
"I don't know." Clarke looked more closely. "That one is almost a face–an animal's face."
"A cheetah, to be exact. The black arabesques and spots are simply the facial markings of cheetahs, which emphasize their everyday expressions and facial moods. The people of Zan, you see, were part cat."
"For the love of– What is this, Erika, your little initiation joke? New boys at the digs, and all that?"
"Not at all," Erika said, with a broad smile. "We're part ape, aren't we? You'll soon see for yourself what I'm talking about. This is how their written language evolved, pictographically, from the numerous subtle differences in mood that all faces, animal and human, express. Their ability to evolve symbolic notation came much later, of course."
Erika was feeling stronger, Clarke noted with satisfaction. She went on eagerly a few steps ahead of the others and came to another, large pictograph, some vertical slashes in the stone which also appeared to be obsidian. But one was not: It was a dark cleft only three feet wide. Erika simply walked into it and was swallowed up.
"Hey, Erika!"
"No need to yell," she said calmly, her voice sounding as if she were still standing next to him. "Even if we were a hundred yards apart I could hear every word you say. The acoustics are uncanny. It has to do with the placement of the clefts in the walls of the gully. Come on, we're wasting time."
"Amen to that," Clarke said, and followed her. Without the flashlight beam he would have found himself, within a few steps, in complete blackness. The walls on either side were rough but not jagged, and inches from his shoulders. He felt uncomfortable in such close quarters; he began to sweat. His heart thudded from the exertion. He looked back with a sweep of his light to the entrance, where Ned and Simon were squeezing in with the packs and tanks. "Erika?"
"I'm up here." Her voice was just a whisper.
It was a bit of a climb, and the ceiling soon dropped, forcing him to hunch along. No wonder the Catacombs had remained inviolate for so many thousands of years. In modern times Kilimanjaro had been climbed only since 1889. The way up from Nyangoro was not difficult enough for serious alpinists, who preferred to inch their way up Mawenzi, and too tough for the ordinary run of tourists.
Clarke negotiated a tight turn, his mouth open as he struggled to breathe. Behind him he heard the other men panting, and a canister of oxygen rang against one wall.
"Careful, you bloody idiot!" he shouted, and pressed on.
Another, hairpin turn to the shrinking passage; he was forced, cursing, to his hands and knees. As he rounded the bend he lifted the flashlight in his hand; light was reflected back brilliantly from obsidian strips along the walls of a small chamber. All but one. Erika stepped into view, beckoning to him.
"This way."
Another ten yards and there was head room. As he got to his feet, the mountain shook and rumbled. He braced himself, a hand against each of the side walls. The tremor lasted twelve to fifteen seconds, but it seemed much longer as he considered the possibility of the passage collapsing on him. He tried to be realistic. This couldn't be the first time in ten thousand years there had been serious seismic activity on Kilimanjaro. And he wasn't planning to stay around for very long.
When the tremor ended he made his way to the cleft where he'd seen Erika and aimed his flashlight beam through it. The beam picked up a gruesome sight; some sort of gargoyle on the wall of a cave. He went in, and felt Erika's hand on his arm.
"Is this it?" he said, casting the light around. The room had a low ceiling. It was about thirty by twenty feet. There was a crude stone altar of some sort, and more of the dark, fierce-looking creatures that at first glance had seemed to be carvings, leaning down at an angle from the walls. They were mostly feline, but they had certain human features: claw-like hands instead of forefeet, for instance.
"What are they?"
"Mummies, but nearly hard as stone. They're remote ancestors of the people of Zan. They had language, rudimentary skills with simple tools, a culture of sorts. From carbon dating we estimate their ages at about one hundred thousand years."
Clarke whistled.
"Don't do that!" she said sharply.
"What's the matter?"
"And keep your voice low. I told you about the way sound carries, from the top to the bottom of the Catacombs. That's a distance of almost a thousand feet."
"What difference–"
"Look at this," she said, and directed the beam of his flashlight to the small cylinder of oxygen she was holding in one hand. "It's empty. Someone just threw it aside."
"One of your own explorers, more than likely."
"Not at all," Erika said, sharp again. "We were here for months. Have you seen one scrap of trash, one stone out of place anywhere? No archaeologist or serious explorer will leave debris at a valuable site. It's a cardinal sin; unforgivable."
"How did y
ou find the cylinder, Erika? Can't see a thing in here without my light."
"Yes, you can. Switch it off."
Clarke did so. For nearly half a minute the chamber was in darkness. He heard his men stumbling up the passage behind them and, speaking quietly, his voice carrying, he told them to freeze in place. He put an arm around Erika, felt her heart beating savagely.
And then he discovered he could see her face very well, as if it had developed its own source of light. The floor, which had seemed to be made of solid rock,' was now translucent. Every object in the chamber stood out in the shadowless illumination.
"Amazing," Clarke murmured.
"The light is from the solid central core of the Catacombs. You'll see it in a few moments."
"Central core? Just where are we?"
"In the first of two antechambers which represent the dawn of their culture. We're just above the first level of the Catacombs. There are seven circular levels in all, seventy huge chambers like slices of–angel cake, I suppose. But each slice is nearly a hundred feet high, measuring two hundred feet around the circumference of the wheel. There's no way to describe the immensity of the Catacombs. You have to experience it. And then you won't believe your eyes. But there is something we should take care of first."
"What?"
She held up the tapped-out oxygen bottle, the dangling inhaler.
"I think I know who discarded this. He's totally indifferent to everything but his own greed. That's why he came back. He may still be in the Catacombs. If so, his greed has trapped him."
"Who are you talking about, Erika?"
Her voice thinned as she tried not to sob. "Henry Landreth. He's responsible for the deaths of more than thirty of my colleagues and friends. He'll be in the Repository, of course. Stealing all the stones he can carry."
"The red diamonds?"
"Yes. How did you know–?"
"Oliver mentioned them to me. If we find Henry Landreth, Erika, is he worth taking alive?"
Her fingers gripped his arm with surprising strength.
"No. But I want him to live, long enough for the rest of the world to get a good look at him, to hear about his treachery."
"Where is the Repository?"
"On the lowest level."
"Is there a way out of the Catacombs from that level?"
"The only way out we could find is the way we came in," Erika said.
"Suppose I leave Simon here with our equipment and one of the guns. Ned will come with us. How long does it take?"
"Half an hour going down; much longer coming up, of course. It would be wise to carry a cylinder of oxygen."
"Why don't we get started, then? If you're sure you're up to it."
"Meeting Henry face to face will make it all worthwhile."
In the bungalow on the Ugalla River, Raun Hardie had been asleep for only a couple of hours when Jade shook her awake. She rolled over and looked up hazily at him from the borrowed bed. The only light in the room was the light of the moon.
"Matt?"
"Sorry, Raun."
She smiled, thinking he had come to sleep with her. She was much too tired to do anything other than close her eyes and snuggle against his body and fall hard asleep again, but he was certainly welcome . . . She blinked and realized he was fully dressed, and not doing anything about it.
"Oh no!" she groaned. She pulled the pillow over her face.
"We've gassed up the helicopter. I want to leave right away."
"You said–in the morning!"
"Raun, listen to me. The news on the radio isn't good. Kilimanjaro is blowing its stack, a cloud of gases and ash thirty thousand feet high. Seismic activity has picked up again. It might be the prelude to a cataclysm."
"And you want to go up there? In the dark? That's crazy!"
"There's a full moon. If the fallout from the volcano isn't too heavy you might be able to locate the entrance to the Catacombs tonight. I could be in and out of there in a few hours. And I have a feeling tomorrow will be too late."
"You could be in and out–? What are you saying?"
"There's no need. for you and Lem to gamble your lives on the timetable of a volcano. You'll drop me and take off again. Lem can pick me up at dawn. Pull your pants on, and let's get going."
There was something almost jaunty about him, she thought, with a dismal sinking feeling. He was manic. The nearness of death was the only thing that really mattered to him, the touch of a bony finger was like a needle loaded with heroin. Dear God, he hadn't had enough yet, he couldn't get enough.
In the Repository of the Catacombs Michael Belov stifled his own anger and marveled at what the tonic of rage had done for Henry Landreth.
For the first time in more than a day the desperately ill man was on his feet, suffused with a glow of false vitality. He stood in the hollow core of one of the three rock-crystal diamond vaults on the floor of the Repository, each a transparent replica of the Catacombs. The vault had been all but emptied of bloodstones. His howls echoed.
This chamber of the Catacombs was, in general dimension, exactly like the others Belov had explored and photographed. It had the height and breadth of all but the largest cathedrals of Europe. It was a tomb, immaculate despite its antiquity, without the dust of millennia lying thick on the floor. The rock walls and floor had been fired by some mysterious means and finished to a dull tan glaze. The inner walls of all the chambers, nearly eight feet thick, were perforated like Swiss cheese, allowing for a draft-less circulation of fresh air.
The source of this air and the source of the perpetual light, like moonlight, was the core, a smooth round column that rose, seamlessly, from the depths of the mountain to the roof of the Catacombs. In the farthest corner of every chamber of the Catacombs there was light from this unearthly column–nearly enough light for one to read a newspaper by without suffering eyestrain.
The intermittent fireballs also gave off light–it hurt to look directly at them. The ball lightning was unpredictable. Sometimes hours passed between occurrences. Then, with a slight crackling, hissing noise one would appear, red or orange or bluish-green, out of thin air, and hover near the floor or high above their heads. It might be the size of a grapefruit, or a beach ball.
Most of the time the fireballs drifted only a few feet, but one of them had appeared to follow Belov like a watchdog as he toured several of the chambers on other levels with his camera while Henry slept. When Belov betrayed no anxiety, the glowing plasma came within a few feet of his head. All of his hair stood on end and he received, in only a few seconds' time, a painful burn on one side of his face.
Don't worry, Henry had said. They won't hurt you. He seemed to regard them as something alive, intelligent. Belov wasn't so sure of the benign intent of the fireballs,. and hated to see them floating around, carrying power enough to light up a city the size of Stockholm, or vaporize anything they might touch.
"Robeson!" Henry screamed now. "He did this! He came here and took the FIREKILL stones! That's why he was trying to kill me!"
Belov joined him in the vault. Henry was snatching up the remaining diamonds, staring at them, throwing them down as if they were worthless glass beads when he failed to discover equations that satisfied him.
"How do you know?"
Henry stared at him, his blue under lip quivering. "Couldn't be anyone else! I brought him here, don't you see, weeks ago, to complete my translation of the essential equations. That was–Jumbe's idea. Neither of them trusted me."
"I wonder why not," Belov said with a sardonic smile.
"What? What?"
"Is it possible the stones are missing because they were never here in the first place? I've begun to think that you sold them a hoax, Henry. There is no such thing as FIREKILL. You've made the whole thing up."
Henry's rage and frustration found a new target, and with only a moment's hesitation he turned on his companion, hands shooting out to seize Belov by the throat. He had the extraordinary strength of a maniac. There was no r
oom to maneuver in the hollow center of the vault. Belov slipped on one of the stones Henry had thrown down; he fell, wrenching his knee painfully, with Henry on top of him. The back of his head hit one of the rock-crystal shelves that held the diamonds in display sockets. Cloudy red pain flared in his mind. He couldn't breathe and began to panic, tried, too late, a badly aimed blow at the nerve center in Henry's armpit, a strike which might have killed him.
As it missed, Henry screamed and lifted the Russian's head. He hammered it against the shelf, again and again. After the third or fourth repetition Belov didn't feel the impact anymore. The red pain in his head turned into a pulsating, suffocating blackness.
Oliver was halfway up a long steep pitch of Kibo, on an approach to the sixteen-thousand-foot level where he had last seen Philip Goliath's little airplane. The slope, without significant vegetation, totally open to the blasting winds, was an unstable mass of gravel and clay held partly in check by the remains of a glacier that had once extended to the saddle between the peaks of Kilimanjaro, a solid monolith of ice thirty feet deep and a thousand yards wide.
The moon was above and behind him, but a pall of ash was drifting over it, dimming the light. Soon he would be climbing in Stygian darkness and gloom. Almost directly overhead the stars already had been blotted out by the towering column of smoke and ash and bits of fiery rubble, some of which was falling out of the cloud. So far the prevailing wind had kept most of it from Oliver's side of the mountain.
But the noise, the shaking, had cost him some of his precious strength. It was like creeping in a space between railroad tracks while two endless, heavily loaded freight trains thundered by in opposite directions. He had already done some serious backsliding as sections of icy scree, shaken loose by the action of the volcano, fell apart beneath him in mini avalanches. Also it was bitingly cold on the mountain, and the wind, snapping from one direction and then another, froze the sweat on his face when he stopped to rest and lifted his hooded head more than a few inches from the ground. His hands had little feeling left, although he'd used a spare pair of socks to fashion fingerless gloves.