'That some kind of helmet?'
'He got snakes. Snakes growing out his head.'
'Nah, look. That's dreadlocks. Full a' mud or something.'
The long hair was indeed tangled and filthy, a Medusa's nest. Hard to tell if any of the muddy hair-tails on his head was bone or not, but he surely seemed demonic. And something in his aspect – the tattoos, the iron ring around his throat. This was taller than those furies he had seen in Bosnia, and immensely more powerful-looking than these other dead. And yet he was not what Branch had expected.
'Bag him,' Branch said. 'Let's get out of here.'
The Spec 4 stayed as jumpy as a Thoroughbred. 'I ought to shoot him again.'
'What you want to do that for, Washington?'
'Just ought to. He's the one running the others. He's got to be evil.'
'We've done enough,' Branch said.
Muttering, Washington gave the creature a tight kick across the heart and turned away. Like an animal waking, the big rib cage drew a great breath, then another. Washington heard the respiration and dove among the bodies, shouting as he rolled.
'He's alive! He's come back to life.'
'Hold your fire!' Branch yelled. 'Don't shoot him.'
'But they don't die, Major, look at it.'
The creature was stirring among the bodies.
'Keep your heads on,' Branch said. 'Let's just walk in on this, one step at a time. Let's see what we see. I want him alive.' They were getting closer to the surface. With luck, they might emerge with a live catch. If the going got complicated, they could always just cap their prisoner and keep running. He watched it in their light beams.
Somehow this one had missed the massed headshot woven into their ambush. The way Branch had set his claymores, everyone in the column was supposed to have taken it in the face. This one must have heard something the slaves hadn't, and managed to duck the lethal instant. With instincts this acute, the hadals could have avoided human detection for all of history.
'He's the boss, all right, he's the one,' someone said. 'Got to be. Who else?'
'Maybe,' Branch said. They were fierce in their desire for retribution.
'You can tell. Look at him.'
'Shoot him, Major,' Washington asked. 'He's dying anyhow.'
All it would take was the word. Easier still, all it would take was his silence. Branch had only to turn his head, and it would be done.
'Dying?' said the thing, and opened its eyes and looked up at them. Branch alone did not jump away.
'Pleased to meet you,' it said to him.
The lips peeled back upon white teeth. It was the grin of someone whose last sole possession was the grin itself.
And then he started laughing that laughter they had heard. The mirth was real. He was laughing at them. At himself. His suffering. His extremity. The universe. It was, Branch realized, the most audacious thing he'd ever seen.
'Shoot the thing,' Sergeant Dornan said.
'Don't,' Branch commanded.
'Ah, come on,' said the creature. The nuance was pure Western. Wyoming or
Montana. 'Do,' he said. And quit laughing. In the silence, someone locked a load.
'No,' said Branch. He knelt down. Monster to monster. Cradled the Medusa head in both hands. 'Who are you?' he asked. 'What's your name?' It was like taking confession.
'He's human? He's one of us?' a soldier murmured.
Branch brought the head closer, and saw a face younger than he'd thought. That was when they discovered something that had been inflicted on none of the other
prisoners. Jutting from one vertebra at the base of his neck, an iron ring had been affixed to his spinal column. One yank on that ring, and he would be turned into a head atop a dead body. They were awed by that. Awed by the independence that needed such breaking.
'Who are you?' Branch said.
A tear streaked down from one eye. The man was remembering. He offered his name like surrendering his sword. He spoke so softly, Branch had to lean in.
'Ike,' Branch told the others.
First you must conceive that the earth... is everywhere full of windy caves, and bears in its bosom a multitude of mirrors and gulfs and beedling, precipitous crags. You must also picture that under the earth's back, many
buried rivers with torrential force roll their waters mingled with sunken rocks.
– LUCRETIUS, The Nature of the Universe (55 BC)
6
DIXIE CUPS
Beneath Ontario
Three years later
The armored train car slowed to thirty kph as it exited the wormhole into a vast subterranean chamber containing Camp Helena. The track arced along the canyon's ridgeline and descended to the chamber floor. Inside the car, Ike roamed from end to end, stepping over exhausted men and combat gear and the blood, tireless, shotgun ready. Through the front window he saw the lights of man. Through the rear, the strafed, fouled mouth to the depths fell behind. His heart felt pulled in two, into the future, into the past.
For seven dark weeks the platoon had been hunting Haddie, their horror, in a tunnel spoking off the deepest transit point. For four of those weeks they'd been living by the trigger. Corporate mercenaries were supposed to police the deep lines, but somehow the national militaries were back in the action. And taking the hits. Now they sat on brand-new cherry-red plastic seats in an automated train, with muddy field gear propped against their legs and a soldier dying on the floor.
'Home,' one of the Rangers said to him.
'All yours,' Ike replied. He added, 'Lieutenant,' and it was like passing the torch back to its original owner. They were back in the World now, and it was not his.
'Listen,' Lieutenant Meadows said in a low voice, 'what happened, maybe I don't have to report it all. A simple apology, in front of the men...'
'You're forgiving me?' Ike snorted. The tired men looked up. Meadows narrowed his eyes, and Ike pulled out a pair of glacier glasses with nearly black lenses. He hooked the wings on his ears and sealed the plastic against the wild tattooing that ran from forehead to cheekbones to chin.
He turned from the fool and squinted out the windows at the sprawling firebase below them. Helena's sky was a storm of man-made lights. From this vantage, the array of sabering lasers formed an angular canopy one mile wide. Strobes twinkled in the distance. His dreadlocks – slashed to shoulder length – helped shield his eyes, but not enough. So powerful in the lower darkness, Ike shied here in the ordinary.
In Ike's mind, these settlements were like shipwrecks in the Arctic with winter closing in, reminders that passage was swift and temporary. Down here, one did not belong in one place for long.