“He didn’t say, and I don’t think we want to know—not yet. Get your stuff together.”
“Moving out? Where?”
“I do not know. Honest.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Alice—the same Alice who walked me around the market and made cioppino, who’s listened to everything with sympathy and firm understanding—glares at me, brooking no dissent.
“It’s Joe,” she says.
“Why doesn’t he come here?”
“I didn’t ask! Let’s move.”
She helps me put together a packet with pills and fills a bottle of water from the tap in the kitchen. Somehow, I have run out of questions.
But she tells me, “Keep talking,” as we take the elevator. “Keep your mind on what happened. Don’t lose any details.”
DEEP PRIDE
At the bottom of the spiral stairs, three tunnels run straight outward like spokes for as far as we can see; DJ has led us to a circular chamber at the center of a perfect shooting gallery. No star lights in sight. I signal for us to take positions away from the tunnels, close to the chamber wall.
But there’s only darkness and silence.
Out on the Red, there’s always the faintest hiss of ghostly breeze, almost inaudible except during a sandstorm, but down here, there’s only a muffled hint of withheld human breath, the superlight scuff and rubbery tap of boots, and beyond that—beyond these very thin noises—
Nothing.
We switch on our helm lights. We can all see that the main trail of prints and streaks in the dust leads down one tunnel. The dust in the other tunnels is almost undisturbed—except for some tiny pocks and thin lines, which I ignore, because I can’t explain them and my head is already overloaded.
DJ bends to draw a map in the dust. He lifts his forefinger to his lips as if to taste the dust on the tip, then catches me watching and drops his hand. “There are sixteen main levels connected by twenty-one shafts—right down to the torso. Most of the levels were closed due to flooding before the Voors packed up, I think—but they’ve drained now. All but the deep hydro.”
“We should go back,” Ackerly says, kneeling by the human tracks. “They’re ahead waiting to ambush whoever follows.”
DJ has an odd look. “Okay. This tunnel goes to the eastern gate—but that one does not.” He points to the well-traveled tunnel and taps the middle of his map, then draws a staggered cascade of lines down through the Drifter’s long axis. “It drops at a shallow angle and then intersects one side of a ring. Go halfway around the ring, and you’ll meet the first of a series of shafts descending to a tall cavern—a big void. Right now, we’re only in the neck—”
“What?” Brom asks.
“This whole Drifter thing is like a big swimming guy, trying to stay afloat, isn’t it, Master Sergeant?” DJ says. I nod. “We’ve only gone down as far as one side of the neck.”
“I do not get that swimmer shit,” Ackerly interrupts.
“Try to imagine something for once,” Brom tells him.
Ackerly frowns. “Backstroke or crawl?”
“Just the upper head and forearms and part of the neck reach above the sand,” DJ says. “It’s kind of like a giant doing a backstroke, I suppose. Head and shoulder, the harbor of one arm, thrust out in front—the northern gate. Another out behind, the southern gate. Yeah, backstroke.”
Brom laughs. “Fuck,” he says. “I can see the arm now. Big elbow. Hand below the sand. So what’s down there—way down in the belly?”
“The big cavern. A void. The console labeled it the Church.”
“Why the fuck is there a church down here?” Ackerly asks.
“It’s what the Voors called it. Down in the gut.”
“If this tunnel goes to the eastern gate,” I point, “nobody’s used it. These thin tracks could be pebbles falling from the roof or something, but there are no boot prints around here.”
DJ absorbs this but looks stubborn. “Well, I’m fucking solid this goes to the eastern gate.”
“Up in the booth—were some of the digs marked in blue and red?” I ask.
“Yeah. Way below, lots of red—mostly around the Church.”
“The gut,” Brom says.
“Bowels of Mars,” Ackerly says. “Love it. Love it. We are heading into the shit for sure!”
“When Teal saw the red and blue traces on the larger diagram, she seemed to think the digs continued after the Drifter was abandoned,” I say.
“Who’s Teal?” Brom asks.
“The ranch wife who saved our bacon,” DJ explains. Then he catches on and squinches one eye. “Still mining—even in deep water? Who would do that? What would do that?”
Brom and Ackerly look between us, blank-faced. We’re talking way above what they’ve managed to understand.
“Let’s get to the eastern gate,” I say. “First order of business is figuring out where the Voors might have come in, and how vulnerable the upper works are to Antags.”
DJ shrugs and heads down the tunnel he thinks—or remembers—leads to the eastern gate. “These are old digs,” he says. We can hear him clearly enough, even above the scuff of boots, because his voice is naturally high-pitched, penetrating.
“How can you tell?” Brom asks.
“The grooves. Dig marks. When I went back and forth between the gates, I could see some were a lot older than the Voors.”
“Really? How old?”
DJ flashes us a weirdly chipper look. “Millions of years, maybe. The marks here,” he brushes one with his glove, “these are softer—they’ve been eroded by lots of flowing water, you know, the hobo, the underground river. And that must have taken millions of years, because, right? It doesn’t flow all the time, it just hobos around under the surface, coming back every few million years, flooding, withdrawing…”
He keeps walking, throws out his right arm, and we all turn right. “This is newer, less erosion,” he observes in the next tunnel.
I honestly don’t know what to think. The tunnel excavation marks back there do look worn compared to these. But that could be a difference in machines, mining tools, techniques…
“Head and neck and shoulder,” Brom murmurs. “Belly below. What’s below that? How far down does this fucker go?”
“Maybe two or three dozen klicks,” DJ says. “Based on the pictures I saw.”
He has also neglected to reveal that, until now.
“What in hell is this place?” Ackerly asks.
“God’s candy bar,” I say. “Dropped it on His way to Earth. Creamy nougat center, I hear.”
Ackerly thinks that over. “Really?” he asks with a boyish innocence you got to love.
The tunnel curves and then rises, and in a few minutes we’re at the eastern gate—another hangar-sized cavern, completely dark—no star lights, nothing but our helm lanterns flaring through the cold, clear air. We’re the first to disturb the green dust on the floor.
We wander around the cavern. No buggies, no wagons, no vehicles whatsoever—and no equipment. I approach the inner lock hatch, shining my light from top to bottom—pretty big, at least as big as the southern gate lock. The lock has been welded shut, then completely blocked by cross-welded beams and a big pile of basalt boulders—mine tailings, probably. Closed long ago, undisturbed since.
Nobody has been here for a very long time.
Ackerly sneezes and picks at his nose. His finger comes away green. “This ain’t Mars dust,” he observes, then wipes his finger on his forearm. “It’s the green shit that’s all over. We’re sucking it in. What is it?”