Though only slightly.
“My furnaces,” says Sarmax. “We’ve reached rock bottom.”
And yet they’re still rushing downward. Now the Operative can see that the lights are really incandescent lines strung here and there, glowing through the dark. More infrastructure appears out of that gloom: more ramps, more chutes. More machinery.
“So simple,” says Sarmax. He sends a jet-powered glove at the Operative’s helmet—who pulls his head out of the way, grabs Sarmax’s arm, desperately tries to keep the jets off his visor. “This cavern must be one of the wonders of this world. It harbors the mother lode. We hammer off the ice. We shove it up against the wires. We pipe the water back to Shackleton. They ship it all the way to Congreve. We keep this rock running.”
“And it’ll keep on running long after you’re buried,” says the Operative.
They slide writhing to a halt on the cusp of another edge. Lights glow all around. Water’s dripping down everywhere.
“Long after we both are,” says Sarmax. He pulls himself free of the Operative’s grip, leaps to a standing position—and is immediately tripped by the Operative. The momentum of his fall carries them both over the new edge. They hurtle downward once more. Both their suits are pretty much wrecked beyond repair. Neither has any functioning weapons save his own fists and feet. Neither has any power. In this manner they set about bringing the struggle to a finish. Each pays particular attention to the areas of the other’s armor that appear to be most damaged. Each does his utmost to shield those areas on his own suit from his opponent. Each strives desperately to use the other as shielding from the next impact. Each strives desperately to gain the upper hand.
They run headlong into the base of the lowermost lamp. The blow knocks them apart. For a moment the Operative lies stunned. Red-orange glow looms above him. Now that he’s up close, the Operative can see it’s really more of a giant filament wire, curled in upon itself. Ramps jut up around it. Some of them contain ice. Water falls down in a steady trickle upon his face, pours away in narrow channels situated for that purpose. But now his view is blotted out by Sarmax—who’s bending over the Operative with a half smile.
“Carson. You always knew it would come to this.”
“I guess I always did.”
“Then why did you come here in the first place?”
“What choice did I have?”
“You know I wasn’t dealing with the Rain.”
“But she was,” says the Operative.
Sarmax turns. He pivots forward. He looks for a moment like he’s going to put his boot straight through the Operative’s visor. But at the last moment he steps aside.
“You didn’t have to say that,” he says.
“They didn’t have to kill her.”
“No,” says Sarmax. “But I did.”
The Operative’s got such a head start on the afterlife that he’s almost beyond surprise. But he’s speechless anyway. He stares as tears well in the eyes of the man who was once his mentor.
“As you said,” mutters Sarmax. “She was dealing with the Rain. Didn’t mean I didn’t love her. She was…she was my Indigo. She was my everything. But she was dead set to join them. She was dead set to have me go with her.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Maybe I should have. I’d still have been with her. But she wouldn’t have been with me. That’s the truth of the matter, Carson. I’d like to tell you I killed her because I was loyal. Because I was a Praetorian. Because I stood at the Throne’s right hand. But I’d be lying. I killed her because she loved the Rain more than she loved me. Time was I couldn’t imagine a world without her. Now I live it every day—this rock on the edge of existence, this mountain that might as well harbor all the souls of the ones who died that night.”
“Which is exactly why you can’t stay,” says the Operative softly.
“No,” says Sarmax. “And you can’t either. I can’t put you beneath this ground, Carson. I can’t add your name to the ones who went before us. And I admit it—I can’t stay out of it either. You’ve made me realize that. You come to me with this scheme for subverting the Rain and all of creation into the bargain. There’s no way I can look into your eyes and tell you I’m a party to it. But there’s no way I’m going to stop short of a chance to take care of the Rain once and for all. And after that we’ll see what the new world looks like.”
“So help me up,” says the Operative. “And let’s talk about the most immediate problem.”
“You mean the Rain?”
“I mean Lynx.”
They make their way back up into the upper reaches of that mountain.
T hey’re slowing down. The tunnel’s leveling out. The water’s draining out—conveyed through sluices that lead down even farther. The ship decelerates through the diminishing flood. It keeps on losing speed as the water lowers past the windows. It slides along in darkness. It slows still further.
And stops.
“Zone’s gone entirely,” mutters Spencer.
“Does that surprise you?” says Linehan.
“Not in the least.”
Which doesn’t mean he’s come to terms with it. It’s all he’s known all his life. Now suddenly it’s vanished, leaving him alone in the midst of endless tunnels. All the interstices upon which his mind abutted have faded from existence. He’s been reduced to just himself.
It’s going to take some getting used to.
“So what now?” says Linehan.
“Now we keep moving,” says Spencer.
He reactivates the ship’s power and switches on the headlights. They show tunnel stretching into dark. He fumbles with the ship’s controls, fires up its rockets. The headlights vanish in the reflected light of flame. The ship lurches, starts to move, starts to accelerate. Spencer calls up the map of the tunnels once again and pinpoints their position as best as he can. He no longer has the zone to moor him, so he has to extrapolate precisely what shaft they’ve been swept into, has to line it up against the map that gleams within his head.
Even as that map starts changing.
Lines start to expand through Spencer’s mind. What’s dark is suddenly being thrust into light. What were edges are fast becoming core. The whole of the old map becomes the center of the new one. And what the new represents is no longer just the corridor that surrounds the main line from Mountain to London. It’s the whole of the North Atlantic. Spencer watches as it keeps on growing. He realizes that if he isn’t crazy yet this map will probably take over his mind and make him so. Because it’s Control’s creature. He sees that now. He gets it. Control’s given him autonomous software able to adapt to the situation—able to help Control’s razor to assess that situation correctly. The zone’s gone. Spencer’s in the dark. But the lights of the map within him play upon him anyway. He reads the riddle embedded in their shifting patterns. He sees the route that’s tracing itself through them. He sees what Control wants him to do.
He starts discussing options with Linehan.
“What’s there to discuss?” says Linehan. “We’re ten minutes out from border.”
“What’s to discuss is that we’re not going there,” says Spencer.
“What?”
“I said we’re not going there.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“What the fuck’s your problem?”
“There’s no problem,” says Spencer slowly. “There’s just logic. And logic says that we aren’t going to try to run the border.”
“We almost have!”
“Linehan. We’re still almost two thousand klicks west of where the Euro Magnates take over.”
“So?”
“So our chances of doing a stealth run have basically dropped to nothing flat. We were running beneath the radar before the zone went. We still are. But now it’s for a different reason. And it’s a safe bet that somewhere in the next couple thousand klicks the zone reasserts itself. Which means we’re essentially hiding in what amounts to a local disruption. Let’s hope that means that they can’t see what’s going on within it. But let’s not make any plans that don’t presume that they’re sending craft in right now. And let’s not kid ourselves for a moment that they aren’t waiting with all forces they’ve got for whatever comes out.”