O'Doyle stood, slowly and stiffly. He ignored his physical pain and walked toward the professors, who were in the process of examining a dead rocktopi. They crouched over the mutilated carcass. Sanji had cut into the creature with O'Doyle's knife, then peeled the hide back. Rocks weighed down the thick skin, exposing the rocktopi's multicolored guts.
O'Doyle leaned over the body. He'd seen countless combat wounds in his day, and one way or another had seen every human organ either hanging from a dead body or laying on the ground, but he'd seen nothing like this. The guts were thick and stringy, punctuated by colored lumps still wet with the thick purple blood.
He tapped Sanji's shoulder. “Find anything interesting?"
Sanji's wide eyes never left the rocktopi corpse, but Veronica looked up to answer the question. Fatigue pulled at her face. Thick globs of goo covered her hands and forearms.
"I don't know what good this will do,” she said. She sounded beaten, both mentally and physically. He didn't think Mack would survive much longer, and he wondered if Veronica would be the next weak link.
"Every little bit helps,” he said softly. “We need to know as much as we can."
Veronica sighed and looked over at Sanji. He was oblivious to anything but the rocktopi's innards, sifting through slime and unknown body parts.
She lifted a chunk of rocktopi hide and tossed it to O'Doyle. He stared at the ragged cube of flesh. It felt thick and firm, yet pliant, like a chunk of relaxed elastic. It stretched easily, with all the resistance of a rubber band. The outer skin appeared to be comprised of many tightly packed fibers.
"They have no bones, as we guessed,” Veronica said. “Their structure is apparently supported by this cartilage-like skin. Sanji figures internal hydraulic pressure helps as well. Look at their bodies now that we've either shot them or stabbed them — they all look flat, deflated. This skin gives them the rigidity they need to stand and move, yet allows them to be pliable enough to squeeze through tiny cracks like we saw the young ones do earlier."
O'Doyle noticed a thin film on the skin, slightly sticky to the touch.
"What's this slimy stuff?"
"I think they are already decomposing,” Sanji said. “Perhaps it happens very fast for them, I don't know. That could explain how we didn't find any remains of them in the old burial site, or at Cerro Chaltel. I think they decompose so fast there's no chance for mummification of any kind that would preserve the flesh."
O'Doyle tossed the chunk of rocktopi skin to the ground. “What about internally? Is there anything there?"
"We have identified a stomach,” Sanji said. “It is full of some fibrous plant material. Via the stomach, I believe I found the equivalent of intestines, as well as an anus and a mouth, although I only know that because one orifice has what appears to be teeth. I believe I have discovered the brain right in the center of the body, and it is quite large, but I am sure you guessed that based on the fact that they use advanced weapons and have developed agriculture."
"It was the first thing that crossed my mind,” O'Doyle said.
"I am not sure about much else,” Sanji said. “We are not even sure if they have a heart or they circulate via tension from their whole body. They are basically a big bag of liquid. I am afraid most of the organs escape known classification."
"So are these aliens or something?"
Sanji stood and flung goo from his hands. “I have no idea. These creatures are something completely new. They are a monumental discovery — a form of intelligent life outside of humanity. It seems unlikely, however, that aliens would come to Earth, bury themselves three miles underground, and live like primitives."
"They've got to be aliens,” Veronica said. Her irritation palpable. “How else could they have the same culture on two continents, yet humans have no recorded sightings of these things for at least ten thousand years?"
Sanji shook his head. “It is possible that these creatures evolved along some divergent branch and we have never seen them because they live so deep underground. Remember that humans have never been this far below the surface before. However, there is obviously something else going on here, as the silverbugs and that light in the cave should tell you. And that light does more than just illuminate. It is a safe bet that it provides energy for the crops to undergo some form of photosynthesis. We have a rather complicated little ecosystem going on down here."
O'Doyle turned back to look down the tunnel, toward the cliff face, toward the light. It just didn't make sense. A light as bright as the sun shone in a cavern of immense size — if Angus's original estimates were true, the cavern measured some twenty-five square miles. He could make out crops growing in the fields below, the central village of small stone buildings, sparkles of reflecting silverbugs, and occasionally the movement of other rocktopi. The scene looked totally idyllic, peaceful.
"The light is obviously artificial,” O'Doyle said. He looked at Veronica. “So if our squiggly-wigglies didn't make it, who — or what — did?"
She thought for a second, then shrugged. “I don't know. It's obvious these things didn't build it. They charge at guns with knives and rocks, for god's sake. They show evidence of other primitive cultural behaviors — that is, if we can draw parallels between them and humans."
"What other evidence?"
Sanji answered for her. “They appear to fight among themselves. They show a great deal of what we think is scar tissue. In many places the skin, which has a rough, fibrous pattern, as you see, is crisscrossed with random straight lines."
O'Doyle knelt next to the deflated corpse and lifted a snakelike tentacle. In several places, particularly on the tentacle fingers with which they held the crescent knives, he saw the straight, discolored lines.
"If these marks are scars, that probably means a lot of infighting, perhaps even tribal warfare,” Veronica said. “That would be another indication of a very primitive culture."
O'Doyle dropped the limp tentacle to the ground. “So if these things are basically just funny-looking cavemen, who built the light? The same ones responsible for the silverbugs?"
"That would be my guess,” Veronica said. “Something is keeping things running down here, both the silverbugs and that artificial light. I think we can rule out a rival mining company now; something else may have built the silverbugs, but no technology in existence could create the rocktopi."
"Call them Reevus Haakus,” Sanji said.
"The what?” O'Doyle asked, noticing that Veronica shook her head slightly and looked away, embarrassed.
"The Reevus haakus,” Sanji said. “I took the liberty of naming them. They are a new species, after all. There is nothing like them on the planet that I have ever seen, and that includes any fossil record to my knowledge. I can't think of a single animal related to these creatures.
"I think it is important to note that whatever they are, they are far from healthy. We have identified what we think are congenital defects in almost every one or these creatures: lesions, internal growths that might be some form of cancer, probable skin diseases. Many have withered limbs similar to the ones seen on the small rocktopi we tried to communicate with."
"Congenital?” O'Doyle said. “You mean birth defects?"
Sanji nodded. “It seems that way. Of course, it is difficult to tell with a creature never before studied. The widespread prevalence of diseased traits among all the individuals here would seem to indicate excessive inbreeding."
"What does that mean?"
"They've been down here for thousands of years with no apparent contact with outside members of their species. Unless there are other populations out there, or the population in this complex is much larger than it appears, the gene pool would eventually grow stagnant. If they are at all like humans, they breed in pairs and pass combinations of their traits on to their young. Evolutionary theory would indicate that some aspects of evolution are likely universal — so I assume they've got the equivalent of genes, the things that hold those inherited traits. When a human egg is fertilized, two halves of a gene set come together to make a functioning whole. In humans, many genes that code for diseases are recessive, meaning that the other half of the pair — the healthy half — dominates, blocking out the diseased trait. But if a child receives that recessive trait from both parents, then the disease manifests itself. If you have four children, all with the recessive trait, they will likely breed with people outside your family, people who probably don't have that same recessive trait."