The hallway led to a briefing room, dark and silent inside. She had thought the room empty. But a voice near the front said, 'Lights.' It was spoken like a warning. When the lights came on, the room was full. With monsters.
At first she thought they were hadals cupping hands over eyes. But one and all were American officers. In front of her, a captain's jarhead haircut revealed lumps and corrugations on a skull the shape and size of a football helmet.
As a congresswoman, she had chaired a subcommittee investigating the effects of prolonged tours of duty into the interior. Now, surrounded by officers of her own Army, she saw for herself what 'skeletal warp' and osteitis deformans really meant: an exile among their peers. January reached for the term: Paget's disease. It sent skeletal tissue into an uncontrolled cycle of breakdown and growth. The cranial cavity was not affected, and motion and agility were uncompromised. But deformity was rampant. She quickly searched for Branch, but for once he was indistinguishable from the crowd.
'Welcome to our distinguished guests, Senator January and Father Thomas.' At the podium stood a general named Sandwell, known to January as an intriguer of extraordinary energy. His reputation as a field commander was not good. In effect, he had just warned his men to beware the politician and priest now in their midst. 'We were just beginning.'
The lights went out. There was audible relief, men relaxing back into their chairs again. January's eyes adjusted to the darkness. A large video screen was glowing aqua blue on one wall. Maps came up, a seafloor topo, then a wireframe view of the Pacific, then a close-up.
'To summarize,' Sandwell said, 'a situation has developed in our WestPac sector, at a border station numbered 1492. These are commanding officers of sub-Pacific bases, and they are gathered here to receive our latest intelligence and to take my orders.' January knew that was for her benefit. The general was declaring that he had determined a course of action. January was not annoyed. She could always influence the outcome, if need be. The fact that she and Thomas were even in this room was a testament to her powers.
'When one of our patrols was first reported missing, we assumed they had come under attack. We sent a rapid response unit to locate and assist the patrol. The rapid
response unit went missing, too. And then the lost patrol's final dispatch reached us.' Regret pulled at January. Ali was out there, beyond the lost patrol. Concentrate, she commanded herself, and focused on the general.
'It's called a message in a bottle,' Sandwell explained. 'One patrol member, usually the radioman, carries a thermopylae box. It continuously gathers and digitizes video images. In case of an emergency, it can be triggered to transmit automatically. The information is thrown into geological space.
'The problem is, different subterranean phenomena retard our frequencies at different rates. In this case, the transmission bounced off the upper mantle and came back up through basalt that was folded. In short, the transmission was lost in stone for five weeks. Finally we intercepted the message wave at our base above the Mathematician Seamounts. The transmission was badly degraded with tectonic noise. It took us another two weeks to enhance with computers. As a consequence, fifty-seven days have passed since the initial incident. During that time we lost three more rapid response units. Now we know it was no attack. Our enemy is internal. He is one of us. Video, please.'
'Final Dispatch – Green Falcon' a title read. A dateline jumped up, lower right. ClipGal/ML1492/07-03/2304:34.
Whispering, January translated for Thomas. 'Whatever it is, we're about to see something from the McNamara Line station 1492 at the Clipperton/Galápagos tunnel on July 3, starting at fifty-six minutes before midnight.'
Heat signatures pooled out from the blackness on screen. Seven souls. They looked disembodied.
'Here they are,' said Sandwell. 'SEALs. Based out of UDT Three, WestPac. A routine search-and-destroy.'
The patrol's heat signatures resolved on screen. Hot-green souls metamorphosed into distinct human bodies. As they approached the cameras, the SEALs' faces took on individual personalities. There were a few white kids, a couple of blacks, a Chinese-American.
'These are edited clips taken from the lipstick video worn by the radio operator. They're putting on their light gear. The Line is very close now.'
'The Line' was shorthand for a robot perimeter first conceived during the Vietnam War, an automatic Maginot Line that would serve as a countrywide tripwire. Here, in remote parts of the underworld, the technology seemed to be holding the peace. There had been next to no trespassing for over three years.
The screen flared to a lighter blue. Triggered by motion detectors, the first band of lights – or the last, depending on which direction one was traveling, inward or out – automatically flipped on from recesses in the tunnel walls. Even wearing their dark goggles, the SEALs hunched and turned their faces away. Had they been hadals, they would have fled. Or died. That was the idea.
'I'll fast-forward through the next two hundred yards,' Sandwell said. 'Our point of interest lies at the mouth.'
As Sandwell fast-forwarded, the platoon seemed to speed through ribs of light. With each successive zone they entered, more lights snapped on, and the zone behind them went dark. It was like zebra stripes. The carefully woven combinations of light and other electromagnetic wavelengths were blinding and generally lethal to life-forms bred in darkness. As the subplanet was being pacified, choke points like this one had been outfitted with arrays of lights – infrared, ultraviolet, and other photon transmitters – plus sensor-guided lasers, to 'keep the genie bottled.' Evidence of the genie began to appear. Sandwell resumed normal speed.
Bones and bodies littered the deadly bright avenue, as if a vicious battle had been fought here. In full view, spotlit by the megawatt of electricity, the hadal remains were almost uninteresting. Few had any coloration to their skins and hides. Even their
hair lacked color. It was not white, even, just a dead, parched hue similar to lard.
As the patrol neared the tunnel's far end – what Sandwell had termed the mouth – attempts at sabotage became obvious. Lights had been broken, or blocked with primitive tools, or plugged with stones. The hadal sappers had paid a high price for their efforts. The SEALs came to a halt. Just ahead, where the tunnel mouth turned black, lay true wilderness.