Was this the bewitchment Sinclair experienced? God knows, it was cogent enough to be mistaken for divine guidance.
A grin tugged at his lips. You're enjoying this, you idiot.
A glimmer of light was shining out of the crevice ahead of him. He pulled his dissipater-suit hood off, initially confused by the monochrome gloaming he found himself immersed in. A swirl of air cooled his sweaty face. The light coming from the crevice was blocked out as Sinclair moved into it. Greg hurried after him.
There was a horizontal oval passage leading away beyond the entrance, its sides crimping together. Biolum globes dangled on slim chains from the roof. Their radiance was decaying into greenish blue, giving the wrinkled passage a biotic appearance, as if it had been grown, the inside of a giant root. Sound would carry here, Greg knew, the rough clanking of the crash team's boots against the rock rolling on ahead of them.
"Is it worth it?" he asked Sinclair. "Living like this, hiding in caves?"
"Well now, Captain Greg, we walk the park in the day, sun ourselves, dance in the rain, take our children to the beach. Nobody starves; to be sure, I even weigh in a little over the odds meself. And here we are, with Miss Julia Evans herself coming to see what it is that attracts us here. 'Tis only due to people like you that we can't live in the southern endcap. Men and women have a right to live in space. We shouldn't be persecuted for exercising that right."
Greg grunted and gave up.
There was another cave at the end of the passage, a big lenticular bubble of air. They came out halfway up one side, looking down on a forest of sharp conical outcrops. Someone had left a cluster of biolum globes sitting on the top of the spires near the centre. Sinclair led them down to the bottom on a path which had been hacked into the rock, then straight into another passage.
"Christ, Julia, this is one badly fucked asteroid," Suzi said. "This many catacombs, it's gotta be leaking air all over the shop. Did you know it had so many busted rocks?"
"Seismic analysis showed there were eight major fault zones," Julia answered. "All of them occur where different strata intersect. There were five deep in the interior, two of those got excavated to make room for Hyde Cavern. This is the third, the fourth will be excavated for the second cavern, and the last is down at the northern end of the second cavern. We had to vitrify a square kilometre of Hyde Cavern's floor after it was excavated, because it bordered on an external fault zone. And we'll have to do the same thing to the second cavern when it's finished. But New London's integrity is sound."
And Royan would know about all the seismic analysis and the fault zones, Greg thought, probably more than the Celestials did.
He heard the water when he was still twenty metres from the end of the passage, a suckling sound that grew with each step. The passage opened out into a cave about fifty or sixty metres across. Greg thought it must have had a deeply concave floor, the surface of the dark lake which filled it possessed the kind of stillness which he associated with depth. On the other side, a streamer of water oozed out of a fissure near the roof, slithering down the wall, making the sounds he'd heard. Ripples spread out from its base, dying away before they reached the middle of the lake.
"We're below the Cavern level," Melvyn said. "There must be a leak in the freshwater streams."
"Integrity, huh?" Suzi murmured.
Greg trailed after Sinclair along a crescent-shaped shelf of rock that served as a shore, running three-quarters of the way round the side of the cave. A row of bright biolum panels on the wall above him fired harsh pink-white beams out across the lake. Serpents of reflected light twisted over the damp black walls.
A flick of movement caught his eye, and he turned in time to see a ring of ripples out on the lake accompanied by a quick chop as the water came together.
"Hey, it's got fish in it," Greg said.
"Indeed there is, Captain Greg, some of the finest rainbow trout this side o' heaven. I thank the Lord for his providence every night." Sinclair stood right by the edge of the water, and crossed himself. The darkness of his thought currents were a clue to just how seriously he meant what he said. "I found this lake, Captain Greg. It was shown to me, like Moses and his burning bush. I heard the call, and brought me friends down here to sanctity and solitude where we wait for the new dawn."
"Tomorrow?"
"Don't mock me, Captain Greg," Sinclair said smartly. "You know it's truth as much as I do. All of us are guided, one way or another." He raised his voice. "Isn't that right, Miss Julia?"
The crash team had been filing out of the passage behind. Greg saw Rick and Julia emerge, both pulling their hoods off.
Julia took in the cave with a stoic glance. "I came looking for my husband," she said, "Nothing more."
"And yet this edifice you call New London cost you billions. More billions than you'll ever see returned to your corporate balance sheet. Now why is that, I wonder? Do you see beyond the physical, Julia Evans?"
She shrugged.
Sinclair carried on round the shore towards a brightly lit archway. This time the passage was much shorter, ten metres, with a sharp right-angle turn at the end. A wave of warm humid air blew straight into Greg's face as he turned the corner, bringing a thick, living smell of vegetation with it. Bright, hazy red light dazzled him.
When he blinked the moisture from his eyes, he found himself standing on the top of a broad stone staircase, looking down on the biggest cave yet, easily eighty metres across, twenty high. A village of reed huts was clumped together on the far side. A ring of ten big Solaris spots on the ceiling shone with a strong gold-pink light, fluorescing the thin water vapour around them into hemispherical nimbuses. A Hollywood sunset, Greg thought.
The floor had been levelled and covered with gene-tailored arable moss, reminding him of Greenland. Rows of circular troughs had been built around the huts for more substantial plants, young fruit trees were already flourishing, trellises supported grape vines, yellow melons hung over the edges. A herringbone network of irrigation hoses lay on the floor between the troughs, the pattern barely visible under the tide of moss.
A broad square pedestal had been set up in the centre of the village, supporting six large flatscreens in a hexagonal arrangement. The two facing Greg looked almost completely black, though they could be showing some tiny silver smudges, he was too far away to be certain.
Children were playing around the pedestal. Adults walked about, tending to the troughs, working in an area that was obviously a communal kitchen, with aluminium tables and benches. Greg guessed at about a hundred and fifty people all told. He wasn't prepared for it. Commune-mentality. Greens in sleeping bags, candles and camp fires, huddled into dark clefts, chewing cold fruit, zombie pupae. That was the theory he'd built.
But this… This was designer underclass. Or perhaps not. Perhaps New London's innate perfection carried on even down here, a natural extension of the philosophy which suffused Hyde Cavern. Julia's principle of success with style.
The Celestial Apostles did believe in the future, after all, however it diverged from the mainstream. And some of them were tech-types.
Sinclair started to descend the stairs, stretching out his arms, laughing wildly. "I'm back. I'm back. 'Tis me returned to you all."
The Celestials nearest the staircase turned to look, smiles turning to alarm as armour suits clumped out of the passage. Yells and cries went up.
"No, no," Sinclair shouted. "You've nothing to be afraid of. Tomorrow is come. I've brought it to you."
He reached the floor of the cave and started to gather Celestials to him, ruffling the heads of the children, embracing the adults. An archetypal tribe father.