The Third Gate Part 25

"What?" Stone said, his voice sharp with anxiety. "Why?"

Kowinsky shook his head. Fear was written clearly across his face.

"You said valves. How many? More than one?"

"At least three. In Red, White, Maroon."

"That's impossible," Stone went on. "The safety protocols--"

"They've been compromised somehow. That's why it was discovered only now. Fires are breaking out in the crawl s.p.a.ces beneath the wings, there've been explosions, flames are beginning to reach up into the Station itself. And if they're unable to get to those valves in order to shut them off--"

Stone jerked a thumb in the direction of the tomb exit. "Everyone out, get topside. Now!" He took the radio from Kowinksy, snapped it on. "This is Porter Stone. Who am I speaking to?"

"Menendez, sir, in the Staging Area." In the background, Logan could hear shouting, what sounded like the rus.h.i.+ng of a blowtorch. "We're sending a team down to you with emergency ropes now."

"We've got close to a dozen people down here," Stone said. "You're going to need to--"

But he was interrupted by a frantic series of cries on the radio, voices overlapping each other, cutting in and out.

"What's that she's got? Nitroglycerin?"

"Get back! Get back!"

"Don't let her near the Maw, she'll--"

And then there was a brilliant light from the direction of the Umbilicus, like the flare of a hundred suns--an explosion that pierced Logan's ears and knocked him to the floor of the tomb--and then all went dark and his world ended.

53.

Logan didn't know if he'd been out for an hour--didn't know if he'd been out for a day. But as he opened his eyes and tried to rise to a sitting position, shaking his head to clear it, he realized it could only have been a few seconds. The tomb was full of raised voices and the sound of running feet. A handful of tiny emergency lights had come on, bathing the chamber in a sepulchral crimson glow. Rush was bending over him, ma.s.saging his wrists and trying to get him on his feet.

"Come on, Jeremy," he said. "We've got to go."

The tomb was beginning to fill with choking, acrid smoke. There was a strange smell in the air: a combination of burning rubber, ozone, and--ominously--methane.

"What's happening?" one of the roustabouts was shouting, in a ragged, hysterical tone. He had a gash on his temple that was bleeding freely. "What's happening?"

What's happening? The words of Narmer's curse came into Logan's mind. Any man who dares enter my tomb will meet an end certain and swift. The hand that touches my immortal form will burn with unquenchable fire. Should any in their temerity pa.s.s the third gate, then the black G.o.d of the deepest pit will seize him, and his limbs will be scattered to the uttermost corners of the earth.

"It's Narmer's queen," he said. "Niethotep. She's trying to preserve her immortality by burying her tomb--the tomb she stole from her husband--all over again. Killing all who would attempt to despoil it--who might attempt to wield the crown. It's the queen--with a little help from Jennifer Rush."

Logan realized that, in fact, he had only thought these words, not spoken them aloud. Ethan Rush was still at his side, urging him to stand. With an effort, he rose to his feet; the world swayed around him, then slowly righted itself. Rush looked intently into his eyes, grunted, then began leading the way out of the tomb.

They left the ebony nightmare of chamber three, pa.s.sed through chamber two and into the larger s.p.a.ce of chamber one. Here, the entire team was cl.u.s.tered around the Lock and the platform that lay beyond. There were no emergency lights here, and several people had their flashlights out, the yellow beams lancing through the thickening air. Numerous radios were chattering, filling the background with a steady, electronic din. Logan could make out the figure of Stone, standing on the air lock platform, starting to direct people up the sloping tunnel of the Umbilicus. One of the security guards urged Stone to make the climb himself, and after a moment Stone relented and went next in line. He was followed by two of the technicians. Then one of the grunts, the one named Kowinsky, forced himself to the head of the line and began climbing frantically, despite the angry shouts of Valentino, who was standing at the rear, urging everyone else on before him.

And now, shuffling forward with the others, Logan found himself ducking through the heavy door of the Lock, past the dressed granite that made up the entrance to Narmer's tomb, and onto the thick metal grating of the air lock platform. Tina Romero was directly in front of him; she looked back, gave him a wan smile, and started to ascend. And then it was his turn. He grabbed the first handhold, looked up in preparation to climb--and stopped dead.

The yellow length of the Umbilicus tube--normally so orderly--was a shocking mess. The heavy cabling that ran down its length had come loose and was hanging limply across the span, like so much viscera. The wooden framework of skeletal bracing was crushed in several places, the overlapping hexagonal beams now just a labyrinth of lumber, and the climbers above him were being forced to thread their way arduously through the planking. Ropes had been dropped by those in the Staging Area above, but in the ruined jumble of cabling and cracked wood they were of little help. In the distance--at the top of the Umbilicus--Logan thought he could make out the Maw itself; but it looked blackened and distorted, its metal edging strangely petaled, as if from the force of some great explosion. But the distance was too great, and the air too thick with smoke, for him to be certain.

But it was the Umbilicus itself that stopped him in his tracks. Its yellow skin, normally so smooth and regular, was distorted into an ugly ma.s.s of runaway wrinkles and bulging concavities. At the points where the wooden bracing had partially collapsed, the Umbilicus walls pressed frighteningly in on the half-dozen people overhead, moving one after another like mountain climbers, heading for the surface. The great weight of the Sudd was squeezing in on them from all sides, probing the damaged tube, searching for a way, any way, to ...

Logan felt a pressure on his shoulder. "Come on, man!" he heard the voice of Valentino say. "Climb! Sbrigati!"

Romero was now several feet above him. Logan forced himself to look only at the hand and footholds, to ignore what was above, and to begin the climb. He resolutely refused to look up again, concentrating on putting one hand above the other, first the left, then the right. Below, at the edges of his vision, he saw another technician mount the lowest step, begin to climb....

And then he felt Romero's foot graze the side of his head. Without thinking, he glanced up to see what had stopped her ascent.

As he did so, he heard gasps--and curses--from the climbers above.

He glanced past Tina--and his heart sank. About twenty feet over his head, near the top of the Umbilicus tube, one of the wooden supports--broken in two, its edges like sharp stakes--was being pressed against an inward bulge in the Umbilicus wall, its material weakened by whatever explosion had caused this devastation. Even as he stared in horrified fascination, the yellow fabric met the sharp edges of the wood. A tear formed; first small, then quickly growing, as the external pressure of the swamp found the weak spot and exploited it.

"No!" the grunt overhead, Kowinsky, screamed. "Jesus, no!"

And then, with a strange sound that was half a sigh, half a shriek of rending fabric, the wall of the Umbilicus gave way. And instantly the Sudd poured in: a vomiting eruption of quicksand. Like water traveling the length of a garden hose it came down toward them. Under its irresistible pressure the Umbilicus began to unravel, from top to bottom, a long seam of black that began tearing itself apart with alarming speed, the foul sludge thrusting inward and downward. Cries and shrieks arose from the climbers above--a cacophony of mingled dismay and terror.

Logan did the only thing that came to mind. Instinctively, without thinking, he reached up, put his hands around Tina Romero's feet, then let go of the ladder, sliding down past the climbing tech and falling heavily onto the floor of the air lock platform.

She struggled against him. "What are you doing?" she cried.

"Tina!" he shouted over her protests. "Close your eyes!"

There was a rus.h.i.+ng sound; a strange tremor, like an approaching earthquake; a chill puff of cesspool wind--and then they were enveloped in cloying, suffocating, disorienting blackness.

54.

In the sudden dark, there was a confusion of sensations: cries; screams of pain and fear; slippery, struggling limbs; the cold, fetid grip of the vile muck as it began piling up in all directions around them. Logan wasn't sure why he'd dropped back to the floor of the air lock platform, the very base of the Umbilicus. A galvanic burst of self-preservation had told him to run from the onrus.h.i.+ng foulness of the Sudd, to keep ahead of it at all costs. But almost as quickly as this thought had come, he realized it was madness: they were forty feet below the surface, there were no air tanks or scuba gear at hand, the irresistible submarine pressure of the swamp would quickly fill the tomb, one chamber after another, like a colostomy bag.... He quickly shook away this horrible image, as he also did the image that immediately followed it: running, with a half-dozen other panicked people, back to the rear of the tomb, there to wait as the rotting filth came roiling toward them, rising, rising....

There was a violent movement beneath him; a sharp cry. He realized it was Tina Romero, trying to break free of his grip. He let go of her, s.h.i.+elding his eyes from the down-rus.h.i.+ng viscous nightmare, digging into his pocket for his flashlight and snapping it on. From their own position--where the bottom of the Umbilicus was affixed to the granite wall of Narmer's tomb--several of the supporting beams from overhead had collapsed and fallen down around them, forming a crude, jungle-gym riot of wood that rose toward the ceiling of the tomb entrance just overhead.

As he swiveled the flashlight around, he noticed that the black foulness of the Sudd was quickly pouring down the length of the ruined Umbilicus, crus.h.i.+ng beams and cabling and people alike under its weight. Somebody overhead--one of the techs--disappeared into a boiling, heaving riot of mud, shafts of wood, coilings of metal; for a minute his hands remained visible, covered in blood; then they, too, disappeared into the black storm. The Umbilicus was shaken by an intense tremor, as if the pressure of the tons of swamp roiling down through its length was twisting it in upon itself.

He looked away, started to yell to Tina. As he did so, a gobbet of flying muck hit his face, filling his mouth. He spat it out, retching at the taste--many thousand years' worth of rot and decay--then he grabbed her hand and managed to shout.

"Tina!" he cried, pulling at her and pointing at the tangle of beams directly above them. "Climb! Climb!"

Machine Specialist Frank Kowinsky had been lucky. When the Umbilicus tore apart and the Sudd rushed in, the technician climbing the rungs directly above him had slipped and begun to fall, becoming tangled in the floating entrails of cabling that hung everywhere. Kowinsky had used the man's body as part catwalk, part springboard, and he'd managed to launch himself out through the widening rend in the yellow tubing. He knew he'd never be able to climb up through the remains of the Umbilicus itself--one look at the crush of wood and tangle of bodies and oozing black filth above had told him that--but if he could force himself out into the swamp, he could swim and claw his way to the surface. He'd had to fight hard against the inrus.h.i.+ng mud, but by using the technician's body as an unwilling fulcrum, he'd managed to grasp at the torn fabric of the Umbilicus and pull himself out, kicking and struggling, into the swamp.

And now he was free. Free of the screaming, struggling death scene within. But he hadn't counted on just how thick and black the depths of the Sudd were; he hadn't paused to think of how its horrible consistency--thick as tar, yet gritty, like sandpaper--would scratch his skin, hurt his eyes. He quickly closed them, but the sharp grit was in them now and there was no way to rinse it away.

No time to worry about that--he had to get to the surface. He took a moment to orient himself in the blackness, and then he began to struggle upward.

As quickly as he could, Logan climbed up through the welter of ruined beams and supporting spars that rose to the ceiling of the tomb entrance. The wood was black and slippery with mud, and it seemed that for each beam he climbed, he slipped back at least two. Now and then he glanced down to make sure Tina was following him.

There was another dreadful shudder, and the entire ruined tube that had been the Umbilicus seemed to bow away from the tomb interface with a groan of protesting metal. The shouts, the screams, the cries for help had all ceased now--and that, more than anything, filled him with despair: there was only the sloppy, splattery noise of the Sudd as it ran down the remains of the yellow tube, quickly filling the tomb and rising around them.

Flashlight held between his teeth, he pulled himself onto the top spar, his head mere inches below the roof of the interface with the tomb entrance. The ceiling of the Umbilicus--where the tube's lowest section met with the air lock--drooped ominously overhead. At this height, the makes.h.i.+ft structure of wooden beams was precarious and unstable, but the unctuous swamp, rising within the tomb and already creeping up his calves, held it in place like black glue. Stabilizing himself against the uppermost metal pylon of the Lock, he reached down and helped pull Tina onto the spar beside him.

In the dim glow of his flashlight, she was barely recognizable, her face, hair and clothes thickly daubed with ordure, her eyes small white points in an otherwise unbroken carapace of muck.

"Now what?" she screamed. "Wait to drown in this s.h.i.+t?"

"We're not going to drown!" Logan cried back.

As he spoke, there was another, still more violent shudder; the two clung to each other as the entire structure trembled, then sheared to one side.

Logan directed his flashlight up, at the point where the fabric of the Umbilicus met the Lock. "That's going to fail any moment!" he said. "When it does--listen to me carefully--do not panic. The swamp will come down around us. Whatever happens, hold on to me. Hold on tight. I'll be gripping this pylon, here--it's anch.o.r.ed to granite and basalt, it's not going anywhere."

He tore off his s.h.i.+rt, then undid his belt and shrugged out of his pants. Reaching over, he grasped Tina's s.h.i.+rt and tore it away as well, b.u.t.tons flying, exposing her bra.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" she cried.

"Take off your pants," he said. "Quickly. Your clothes--they'll act like weights. You'll never make it to the surface."

She understood immediately, unzipping her fly and slipping out of her jeans.

"As soon as the pressure's equalized, we'll rise. Keep hold of me. Whatever you do, don't get disoriented. Shut your eyes before we start upward--that will help you keep your bearings in the mud." He glanced down at the wooden structure beneath them, made a quick calculation. "We've got thirty-five feet of swamp to rise through. Pace yourself. Pace your oxygen. Got it?"

Tina said nothing. She was looking at the muck that was now up to their waists and still rising, thick as a foul, black milkshake.

"Tina!" he shouted. "Do you understand?"

The round circles of white in her otherwise black face turned to him, blinked, then rose up and down--a nod. Logan took tight hold of her hand, squeezed it.

"Don't let go," he said.

Just then there came a final, cataclysmic shudder--a rising squeal of metal, stressed beyond endurance--and then the ceiling above them tore away and the black heart of the Sudd descended on them, enfolding them in its noxious embrace.

Frank Kowinksy fought his way up through the muck and ooze. His eyes stung from the grit, and his ears and nostrils were filled with thick silt. The swamp seemed to pull at him, giant invisible hands that tugged at his clothes, trying to drag him down. And there were things here in the muddy blackness: sticks and weeds and softer, more slippery things he didn't care to guess at. Some he could use, like hand and footholds, and he made his way up through a slippery universe of mud.

He'd been in this s.h.i.+t now for--what, maybe sixty seconds?--and already his chest was starting to burn. He should have taken a deeper breath when he launched himself out from the Umbilicus. And then, he'd expended precious oxygen just forcing himself out into the swamp. Had that been a mistake? Should he have tried to make his way up through the ruined h.e.l.l of the Umbilicus? But no--that would have meant certain death.

Mud trickled down past the nape of his neck, down his back, under his arms. It seemed to seep in everywhere, his belly, even his groin. It was too horrible, this blackness, not knowing where he was, not knowing how much farther he had to go, and all the time slowly running out of air....

Suddenly, he hit his head against something, hard. It brought stars to his closed eyes--but it also snapped him out of incipient panic. At first, he thought--hoped--it might be one of the floating pontoons of the Station. But then as he reached out, probing at it with blind fingers, he realized it was a huge chunk of wood, a tree branch, embedded in the quicksand of the Sudd. He shook his head to clear it--shook it as much as the surrounding ooze would allow--then pushed himself away from the chunk of wood, reoriented himself as best he could, and resumed clawing his way up through the black nightmare.

Logan had been utterly unprepared for one thing: the intense, implacable pressure of the Sudd. It pressed in on him like a cold vise: from above, from behind. It squeezed his chest as if trying to force the air from his lungs. For a moment, he just hung in place, an insect trapped in amber, stunned by the overwhelming, awful, claustrophobic sensation. And then, with a mighty effort, he kicked upward, tugging on Tina's hand as he did so. He felt her hand moving back and forth as she, too, began forcing her way upward. He tightened his grip, interlocking his fingers with hers--somehow, he sensed that, if they were to get separated, it would mean death for them both.

He kept his eyes and mouth tight shut, tried to forget the muck that oozed its way into his ears, and he allowed his body to find its own equilibrium as they struggled up toward the surface. He kept his nose clear by blowing out, gently, every few seconds--it had the effect of clearing the mud from his nostrils and also kept him from retaining too much air in his lungs. Now and again, as he flailed with his free hand, he knocked against branches and twigs, caught in the matrix of the Sudd; whenever possible, he used them as hand- or footholds to help force his way upward, all the while keeping a tight grasp on Tina's hand. Once he almost became entangled in the rotting tendrils of some submerged plant. Fighting down panic, he pushed it away, still careful to maintain his equilibrium.

Their upward struggle together, their combined momentum, seemed to make the ascent easier than it would have been for one person alone. Lack of s.h.i.+rts and pants helped coat their bodies in an oil-like slick that counteracted some of the swamp's treacherous downward pull. And yet, all too soon, Logan began to feel Tina's hand twitch and tremble. She was running out of air.

How far had they risen? Fifteen feet? Twenty? It was impossible to tell in this black oblivion. His hand encountered another branch; he used it to pull himself upward, then felt for it with his foot and forced himself up yet again. Now his own lungs were starting to burn. The twitching of Tina's hand became more urgent; he had to hold on still tighter to keep her from letting go. Another few moments and either she would breathe in or go unconscious. He would not be able to continue to lift her as a deadweight. Already, he could feel his strength ebbing. They would both sink down into the endless blackness, and their bodies would join all those of Narmer's train, who had-- All of a sudden, he felt a strange thing. His free hand was not struggling as much to force its way through the thick medium of the swamp. He interlocked his fingers with Tina's more tightly still, pulled her toward him, and then--with the last of his strength--wriggled upward in a sinuous motion, legs together, as if swimming a vertical b.u.t.terfly stroke. And then his head felt the same freedom his hand had--it could move more easily, no longer enc.u.mbered by a surrounding matrix of mud. Sputtering, coughing, spitting mud, he pulled Tina up until she, too, broke through. They were encrusted with black mire--creatures more of the swamp than of the dry land--but they could once again breathe.

They had reached the surface.

Kowinsky was beyond desperate. It had been over ninety seconds now, maybe two minutes. He was in decent shape, he worked out regularly, but even so every atom in his body was now screaming out for oxygen. He struggled ever more furiously through the muck and mire. He must be near the surface--he must. His eyes were wide open now, heedless of the pain. Surely a little light must penetrate this G.o.dd.a.m.ned h.e.l.l. Surely, any moment, the intolerable blackness around him would get a little lighter, and then a little lighter still, and then ... air.

It was all he could do to keep his mouth closed. Air, he had to have air. Every movement sent little stabs of agony shooting through his lungs. He was no longer aware of the muck or the stench or the way the swamp sneaked into every orifice, every crevice, even those he hadn't known he possessed. Air was what he needed. Air.

Oh, G.o.d, it was too terrible. Where was he? Why was it all so black? Why was he still beneath the surface?

In his frenzied thras.h.i.+ngs, his hands encountered something. Eyes wide but sightless, his nose dribbling little oily bubbles out into the mud, he probed along it. A hand--an arm--a head. It was a human body, freshly dead. But in his agony, Kowinsky didn't give it a second thought. He pushed it away and struggled forward.

Now his scrabbling hands. .h.i.t something else--something hard this time, hard and smooth. Metal. This was it--at last, he'd reached the Station! Hope, almost gone, surged in him afresh. Another five seconds, maybe ten, and he'd have been a goner. That's how close it had been. He reached out with his other hand, trying to orient himself in the blackness, preparing to heave himself up and out....

And then he noticed something. The hard, smooth piece of metal dead-ended into another--this one curved, studded with heavy rivets. What part of the Station was this? The pontoons were all smooth, and the crawl s.p.a.ces beneath the various wings had only ...

And then he felt something else, something attached to one of the rivets. A heavy piece of fabric, slippery, rough at the edges as if it had been violently ripped away.

Reality came cras.h.i.+ng down. This wasn't the Station. This was the Lock. Somehow, maybe when he'd hit that chunk of wood, he'd become disoriented in the blackness. He'd turned himself around--and headed back down to the bottom. To the tomb.

No. No. It couldn't be true. He had to be hallucinating. It was panic--panic, and lack of oxygen. He'd ignore this illusion, pull himself up, then take that breath of sweet, sweet air.

He grasped the metal spar, pulled himself upward, until it was touching his chest. His movements were still slow, like a fly caught in gelatin, and his eyes were blind--but it didn't matter. He was on the surface now. He had to be. He opened his mouth ...

And in an instant it was filled with a mixture of mire, and silt, and particulate matter, and foul decay as old as the oldest tomb. And despite this most revolting of violations, Kowinsky--in extremis, as his last mortal act--breathed it in.

55.

They broke free from the prison of mud only to find themselves in a world of fire. Keeping Tina close, Logan swam along the perimeter of the Station, sucking in air in great heaving gasps. Four of the Station's wings--Red, Maroon, White, and apparently Yellow--were ablaze, gouts of flame licking out from below the heavy canvas tarps, eating away the mosquito netting covering the pontoon bridges as if it were strands of silk. The labs and medical facilities of Red seemed to be burning with special ferocity--the inflatable dome surrounding that wing was strangely aglow, lit from inside a h.e.l.lish orange-red. As he watched, a huge fireball erupted from its dome, peeling back the canvas covering and rising in boiling clouds of black and crimson to engulf the Crow's Nest. At least a half-dozen boats--tenders, one of the large airboats, other craft--were circling the Station, throwing tall arcs of water toward the flames. But the fire was too intense and the supply of water too limited--the Sudd itself was far too viscous to pulse through the pressurized jets. Logan felt the heat of the blaze hot on his face, baking the already-drying muck of the Sudd, and he turned away.

Now he could make out other figures, half swimming, half crawling through the swamp toward the burning Station. They were encrusted with the same brownish-black mud and impossible to distinguish, but Logan thought that one of them was Stone, another maybe Ethan Rush. They seemed to be making for Green, where Maintenance and the boat basin were located--the roaring inferno had not yet reached that wing. Still helping the exhausted Tina, Logan began to follow in their wake. A Jet Ski, circling the conflagration, spotted them and came over. The rider pulled first Tina, then Logan, onto the rear of his craft, turned, and headed back toward Green, under the protective tarp and into the shelter of the marina. Logan thanked the rider, then helped Tina off the Jet Ski and onto a jetty. He was clad only in his underwear, but with the coating of muck covering his body he could just as well have been dressed in a s.p.a.ce suit.

The marina was a scene of barely controlled chaos. The din of shouted commands, shrieking alarms, and grinding engines was intolerable. The air was dense with acrid smoke. Technicians, lab a.s.sistants, roustabouts, and even cooks were rus.h.i.+ng in from other areas of the Station, many with smoke-covered clothes and faces, carrying doc.u.ments, foodstuffs, and as many of the precious artifacts from the tomb as could be salvaged. Logan saw at least a dozen evidence containers, piled w.i.l.l.y-nilly against one wall. Even the coffinlike locker that held Narmer's mummy--Niethotep's mummy, he reminded himself--stood in a corner, listing slightly to one side. Other people were hurriedly carting objects onto the large airboat tied up to a nearby quay. Plowright, the senior pilot, stood beside the boat's forward gangplank, barking orders.

Meanwhile, a few men and women in emergency gear were running out of the marina, back into the deeper sections of the Station, apparently in search of stragglers. A man in a lab coat carrying a blue evidence container in his hands tripped over a coil of rope and fell to his knees, dropping the container. Its lid sprang open and countless gemstones, rings, trinkets, and tiny golden statuettes spilled out, each in a sealed baggie with a printed label attached. Out of nowhere, Porter Stone rushed forward, knelt, and began stuffing the baggies back into the container with fumbling, clumsy movements. He was still completely covered in mud. Sweat--or, more likely, tears--were coursing down his cheeks, leaving thin trails of white in an otherwise unbroken mask of black.

Glancing around, Logan made out Valentino. He was speaking animatedly to a knot of security guards. Instinctively, Logan stepped toward the group. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ethan Rush approaching as well. Rush, Stone, Valentino--at least three of the others had escaped the tomb.

"How many casualties?" Logan and Rush asked in unison as they came up to Valentino.