In this case, she had to.
Jacob’s safety might well depend on it.
She wrote to Ben: I’m awake. Thanks for all. Barbara coming for hypnosis. Anything?
It took several battery-sapping minutes for Ben to text back: I arranged for Technologists to take Haitians to CT HQ. Don’t ask. Plus new twist. Halley VI reports there was massive fireball yesterday. Vibrations under ice, suspected drilling. Brit ambassador told Security Council that Royal Navy and RAF sending assets south. Suspect Russia of military ops out of Vostok Station.
Caitlin wrote back: What will UK do?
Ben answered: Land troops. Investigate.
Caitlin wrote: Flora has a man there.
Ben texted back: Will tell US reps. Gotta go. Love you.
Oddly, the last comment didn’t bother her like it used to. Maybe she wanted it—or maybe she was troubled by this new development and desperately needed a partner. She actually felt violated by all the attention from London, as though her private world were about to be invaded.
Which it was.
The tiles might be active down there, energy that was being picked up at Halley or by satellite but wasn’t giving her “juice.” That was worrisome enough. But the thought that the military, any military, might obtain the power of the Source was more frightening still.
Sneaking out of bed to get her lunch tray, Caitlin ate—something she hadn’t done for too long. Then she lay back on her fresh pillow, tried to clear her head, and awaited Barbara Melchior’s arrival.
CHAPTER 14
Lowered by the growling winch of the truck, showered by chips of ice and dead bugs that were being cut from the lip over which he’d been suspended, Mikel Jasso descended slowly into the pit. His goggles were around his chin, his eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness. As the rope-sling was lowered into the pit, twisting slightly from side to side, the archaeologist had time to think. And as he thought, one phrase kept running through his tired, overworked brain:
One day, Dr. Jasso, your rope will fray. One day the hastily crafted sling or raft or ladder will fail you.
Mikel was one of those who believed it was better to die in the saddle than on the sidelines, but that came with an acute awareness that the thick of things was never the safest place to be.
From his early childhood in Pamplona, through his years in Harvard and his adventures with the Group, Mikel had relished any and all physical challenges, especially those that logic told him were beyond his means. Going underground, into the ruins of Galderkhaan… soaring through a wind tunnel on a sled made of millennia-old animal hide… that was madness. Communing with the souls of the dead was not exactly reckless, but believing in them lacked the kind of empirical science in which he was schooled. But in every instance, the rewards had been vast. There was rarely a middle ground when it came to risk-taking in his field: either you squandered years or risked your life, but that was how you located King Tut. Or Amelia Earhart’s airplane.
Or Galderkhaan.
But now he was sitting in this makeshift support, descending into a dark pit that had been newly cut by a flaming—what? An eternally burning soul, a soul that might still be down there, angry as hell and looking for lost Galderkhaani souls?—doing all this with a broken wrist; that was new, even for Mikel.
Fortunately, he thought, curiosity still slightly—very slightly—trumped fear. He wanted to know more about the phenomenon, and also what Casey Skett had planned.
When light from the outer world no longer reached him, Mikel pulled a flashlight from the shoulder bag slung over his bad arm. He threw a cone of white light against the wall to his right. Here and there midges still clung to the stone walls, walls that revealed dark stone beneath serpentine, fast-frozen mounds of ice. Dr. Cummins had reported that the remainder of the insects, those which hadn’t frozen where they last stood, had wandered aimlessly from the truck, a strange column of brownish black crawling along the ice as if they were disoriented, no longer stuck between the two powerful tiles. Like the other animals Mikel had witnessed or been told about, some herding quality in their brain—an atavistic version of cazh?—had been revved by the tiles.
Which is probably why the Technologists thought the tiles were all that was required to join souls, Mikel thought with sudden clarity.
Physically, the pit itself was a chimeric thing. On closer inspection, not only ice but what looked like shale had been flash-molten and quickly hardened, like melted ice cream. Here and there were large stone bubbles where air had been released then quickly trapped by fast-hardened rock. Ice, melted from above, was frozen in sheets across large areas. They reminded him of a Japanese waterfall by Hokusai, thick rivulets of water stiff at the end of the floes, slender and reaching. He angled the flashlight down. Below was flat, silent darkness, save for what appeared to be a large, inexplicable bulb of opalescent white that sat at some distance below. It reminded him of a pearl seen through seawater. It rested in the center of the darkness, with fuzzy edges that blended slowly into the blackness. The deeper Mikel went, the pit became wider and less light fell on the surrounding walls. Yet the milky hue remained constant, glowing, growing slightly in diameter but not luminosity as he descended.
The cooing that Mikel and Dr. Cummins heard had ceased as soon as he began his descent. He still didn’t know what it had been. The only constant sounds were the distant drone and squeak of the winch, the jostling of the shoulder bag he carried, and the wind that rose and fell in volume as it swept across the opening or rushed down at him with sudden, brief enthusiasm. Those sounds and Mikel’s heartbeat and breath created quite a strange symphony. His cold-weather gear kept that sound close to his body, the drumming in his ears in tune with the physical sensation of blood pumping to his extremities. He would occasionally report what he was seeing to Skett, though the man on the other end made no comment and asked no questions. Mikel was certain he was there, however: there was a very dull, low hum from the phone, just as there had been when they spoke back at Halley VI. No doubt Skett was focused on the experiment, not on communication. Now and then Mikel would also check in with Dr. Cummins over the radio that was hooked to the cable just above his head. When she spoke—letting him know how far he had descended—she had to shout, since the winch was complaining, loudly, as it fought the icy cold.
For a place that was alive with surreal imagery and borrowed sound, the pit itself was not like a living cave with active water dripping or flowing and a feeling of flora, fauna, and biota all about. The place seemed—it was—quite still and dead. There did not even seem to be any Galderkhaani spirits in residence: Pao, Rensat, Enzo, and Jina had all had a palpable presence, a spiritual substance that registered as chill or warmth or low pressure or flame. They were immaterial but the ripples they created were real.
Not here.
And yet Mikel felt certain he was not alone. At first he suspected it was the natural fear of the unknown, where imagined dangers caused people to hallucinate spirits or predators, to self-generate hysteria. Then he began to suspect that the pit could be like the lava tube he had entered before, with an adjacent channel or tunnel that contained something alive. For all he knew, there could be tiles below him or somewhere else nearby.
Mikel got his answer after about five minutes of the slow unraveling of the cable. The ivory-like glow below him was no longer just a globe: there was a shape, a mass below it. Perhaps it had always been there, just not visible from so high up. At first glance it reminded him of Michelangelo’s Pietà but seen from above, the covered head of Mary rising from her shoulders. But the shroud was not fabric: as he neared he saw that it was long hair hanging in graceful waves over the figure’s shoulders.