The Descent Part 56

In effect, the refugees were camping not in but atop the old city. He couldn't make out individual figures from this distance, but he guessed there had to be thousands down there. Tens of thousands. He had been right about the sanctuary.

They must have come from throughout the planet to this single place. Even though Ike had guessed they were migrating to a central location, their numbers astounded him. Haddie was a solitary race, as willing to demolish one another as their enemy, p.r.o.ne to wandering in small, paranoid packs. He'd decided there were probably no more than a few thousand left in the entire subplanet. There had to be fifty times that right here. For them to have gathered this way, and in apparent armistice, it had to be like the end of the world.

Their abundance was good news and bad. It all but guaranteed that Ali would end up in the refugee horde, if she was not already among them. Ike had devised no specific gambit, but had been relying on a much smaller mob to deal with. Finding her from a distance was going to be impossible, and infiltrating them a lengthy nightmare. Just locating her could take months. And all the while he would have to tend the hostage, his daughter. The prospect threw him into a downward spiral. He looked at his watch - Troy's watch - and noted the time and date and alt.i.tude.

He heard the pad of feet, and started to rise up, knife in hand. He had time to see a rifle b.u.t.t. Then it axed into his face, he felt it clip his temple, and all the brawl went out of him.

By the time Ike revived, he was bound hand to foot with his own rope. He pried his eyes open. His captor was waiting, seated five feet away, barefoot and in rags, sighting on Ike's face through a US Army night-vision sniperscope. A pair of binoculars hung from his neck. Ike sighed. The Rangers had finally hounded him to earth.

'Wait,' Ike said. 'Before you shoot.'

'Sure,' said the man, his face still burrowed behind the rifle and sight.

'Just tell me why.' What had he done to deserve their vengeance?

'Why what, Ike?' The executioner lifted his head.

Ike was thunderstruck. This was no Ranger.

'Surprise,' Shoat said. 'I didn't think it was possible, either, an ordinary joe trumping the great Ike Crockett. But you were easy. Talk about bragging rights. I mug Superman and get the girl.'

Ike couldn't think of what to say. He looked across at his daughter. Shoat had tightened her bonds. That was significant. He hadn't shot the girl outright.

Bearded and emaciated, Shoat had not lost his daft grin. He was very pleased with himself. 'In certain ways,' he said, 'we're the same guy, you and me. Bottom feeders. We can live off other people's s.h.i.+t. And we always make sure we know where the back door is. Back at the presidio, I was ready, just like you.'

Ike's face ached from the rifle b.u.t.t, but what hurt most was his pride. 'You tracked me?' he said.

Shoat patted the rifle with the sniperscope. 'Superior technology,' he said. 'I could see you from a mile off, clear as day. And once you netted our little bird, things were even easier. I don't know, Ike, you got slow and you got sloppy. Maybe you're getting old. Anyhow' - he glanced behind him over the precipice - 'we've reached the heart of the matter, haven't we?'

While Shoat talked, Ike gathered the few clues. A rucksack sat against the wall, half empty. Over near the watchful girl, Shoat had scattered the plastic refuse from a single military rations packet. It told Ike he had been unconscious long enough to be tied, and for Shoat to finish a meal. More important, the man had come alone; there was just one pack and the remains of one MRE. And the MRE meant he was not feeding off the land, probably because he didn't know how to.

Obviously, Shoat had foraged through the destroyed fortress and found a few essentials: the rifle, some MREs. Ike was mystified. The man had his ticket home; why pursue the depths?

'You should have taken a raft or just started walking,' Ike said. 'You could have been partway out of here.'

'I would have, but someone took my most vital a.s.set.' He lifted the leather pouch that hung from his neck like an amulet. Everyone knew it held his homing device. 'It guarantees my exit. I didn't even know it was gone until I needed it. When I opened the pouch, there was only this.' He unlaced the top and shook out a flat jade plate.

Sure enough, Ike saw, someone had stolen his device and replaced it with a piece of antique hadal armor. 'Now you want me to guide you out,' he guessed.

'I don't think that would work very well, Ike. How far could we get before Haddie found us? Or you did me in.'

'What do you want then?'

'My box. That would be nice.'

'Even if we found it, what's that do for you now?' With or without his homing device, the hadals could still find the man. And Ike could, too.

Shoat smiled cryptically and aimed the jade plate like a TV remote control. 'It lets me change the channel.' He made a click sound. 'Hate to sound like Mr Zen, but you're just an illusion, Ike. And the girl. And all of them down there. None of you exists.'

'But you do?' Ike wasn't taunting him. This was a key to Shoat's strangeness.

'Yeah. Yeah, I do. I'm like the prime mover. The first cause. Or the last. When all of you are gone, I'll still be around.'

Shoat knew something, or thought he did, but Ike couldn't begin to guess what. The man had recklessly followed them into the center of the abyss, and now, surrounded by the enemy, had waylaid his only possible ally in getting out. He could have shot them from a distance at any time over the past several weeks. Instead, he'd saved them for something. There was a logic at work here. Shoat was smart and sane, and dangerous. Ike blamed himself. He'd underestimated the man.

'You've got the wrong guy,' Ike said. 'I didn't take your box.'

'Of course not. I've thought a lot about it. Walker's boys wouldn't have bothered with any tricks. They would have just put a bullet through me. You would have, too. So it was someone else, someone who needed to keep the theft quiet. Someone who thinks she knows my code. I've got it figured out, Ike. Who it was, and when she took it.'

'The girl?'

'You think I'd let that wild animal close to me? No. I mean Ali.'

'Ali? She's a nun.' Ike snorted to deride the notion. But who else could it be?

'A very bad nun. Don't deny it, Ike. I know she's been playing hide-the-snake with you. I can tell these things, I've got good people sense.'

Ike watched him. 'So you followed me to follow her.'

'Good boy.'

'I didn't find her, though.'

'Actually, Ike, you did.'

Shoat grabbed a loop of rope and dragged him to the edge. He draped his binoculars around Ike's neck, and cautiously loosened the rope binding Ike's hands to his feet, then backed away, aiming his pistol.

'Take a look,' Shoat announced. 'Someone you know is down there. Her and our two-bit warlord. His satanic majesty. The guy who ran off with her.'

Ike wrestled to a sitting position. The news of Ali energized him. His hands were numb from the ropes, but he managed to paw the binoculars into place. He scanned up and down the ca.n.a.ls and choked avenues and ruins lit green by the night vision. 'Look for a spire, then go left,' Shoat instructed.

It took several minutes, even with Shoat describing the landmarks while looking through the rifle scope. 'See the pillars?'

'Are those Walker's men?' Two men hung, slumped. Neither was Ali. Yet.

'Just taking a rest,' Shoat said. 'They've been getting some rough treatment. And there's another prisoner, too. I've seen him with Ali. They keep taking him away, though.'

Ike searched higher.

'She's there,' Shoat encouraged. 'I can see her. Unbelievable, it looks like she's writing in her field book. Notes from the underground?'

Ike went on searching. A hill of flowstone k.n.o.bbed above the ma.s.ses, enfolding all but the upper stories of a carved stone building. The walls had collapsed on Ike's side of the building, exposing to view a s.p.a.cious room with no roof. And there she was, sitting on a chunk of rubble. They had freed her hands and legs; why not? Two stories below, she was surrounded by the hadal nation.

'Locked in?'

'I see her.' They hadn't started her rites of pa.s.sage yet. The branding and shackles and mutilations were usually started in the first few days. Recovery could take years. But Ali looked whole, untouched.

'Good.' Shoat yanked the binoculars away. 'Now you've got your scent. You know where you need to go.'

'You want me to infiltrate an entire city of hadals and steal back your homing device?'

'Give me some credit, man. You're mortal. There are some things even you can't do. Besides, why sneak when you can make a grand entrance?'

'You want me to just walk in and ask for your property?'

'Better you than me.'

'Even if Ali has it, then what?'

'I'm a businessman, Ike. I live and die by negotiation. Let's see where we can get with them. A little bit of old-fas.h.i.+oned bartering.'

'With them? Down there?'

'You'll be my proxy. My private amba.s.sador.'

'They'll never let Ali go.'

'All I want is my box.'

Ike was truly mystified. 'Why would they give it to you?'

'That's what I want to talk to them about.' Shoat reached over to his rucksack and pulled out a thin, battered laptop computer embossed with the Helios logo. 'Our walkie-talkies are all gone. But I've got a two-way comm device set up with my laptop. We're going to have a video conference.'

Shoat opened the lid and turned the machine on. He stepped back, plugging a portable earphone into one ear, and held a small camera/speaker ball in front of his face. On screen, his face rotated and mugged. 'Testing, testing,' his voice spoke over the computer speaker.

Against the wall, the feral girl grunted, eyes wide with fear, a stranger to such magic.

'Here's what you're going to do, Ike. Take the laptop down into night-town there. Once you reach Ali, open the laptop up. Make sure the computer's in line of sight, a straight shot from you to me. I don't want to lose transmission. Then get their presidente on the horn for me. While you're at it, give this whelp back to them. A good-faith gesture. I'll take it from there.'

'What's in it for me?'

Shoat grinned. 'That's my man. What would you like? Your life? Or Ali's? Wanna bet I know the answer?'

It was exactly the chance Ike had wanted for her. 'All right,' he said. 'You're the boss.'

'Good to have you on board, Ike.'

'Cut my ropes.'

'Of course.' Shoat wagged the knife as if Ike were a naughty child, then tossed it on the ground. 'But first we need to understand each other. It's going to take you a while to crawl over here and cut yourself loose. And by that time I'll be locked and loaded in a cozy sniper's nest not too far away. You're going to escort this cannibal down through that rabble and back to her people. And set up my link with their CEO, whoever that guy is.'

Shoat set the computer on the floor and backed toward a tall, jagged hole in the wall. Ike had his eyes on the knife.

'No tricks, no detours, no deceit. The laptop's switched on. Don't turn it off. I want to be able to hear everything you say,' Shoat said. 'And don't come looking for me. From my cubbyhole, I've got a clear shot all the way down the trail. Screw up, and the fireworks begin. But I won't shoot you, Ike. It's Ali that pays for your sins. I'll kill her first. And next, just to p.i.s.s them off, their leader. After that I'll work through targets of opportunity. But there's not going to be a bullet for you. I promise. You can live with yourself. You can live with them. h.e.l.l can have you back. Are we clear?'

Ike started crawling.

27 - SHANGRI-LA.

And in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide, To which the h.e.l.l I suffer seems a Heav'n.

-JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost Beneath the intersection of the Philippine, Java, and Palu Trenches

Ike descended into the ancient city, leading his daughter by a rope. The city loomed in the organic twilight, a puzzle of remnants, fused architecture, and eyeless windows.

On the floor of the vast canyon, at the ruins' edge, Ike slung Shoat's laptop computer on one shoulder and bent the plastic candle he had been given, breaking the vial inside. The wand came alive with green light. Even without his sniperscope, Shoat would be able to track his progress through the city.

For the first half-mile or so there was no outright challenge, although animals scuttled along the flowstone. With each step, Ike tried to piece together some alternative to what was already in motion. Shoat's spiderweb seemed unbreakable. Ike could practically see the back of his own head through the electronic scope. If only he were the prey, he thought. He could duck the bullet, or take it. But Shoat had clearly p.r.o.nounced his targets: Ali first. Ike continued through the fossilized city.

News of human trespa.s.s was rippling forward through the city. In the penumbra of his green light, shapes that normally would have appeared as silhouettes against the pale glow of stone now lurked as shadows. The candle's neon glow was devastating his night vision. Then again, from the beginning of this doomed expedition, he'd been squandering his nocturnal powers, even eating human food. There was no disguising his origins anymore.

Click language cricketed in the gloom. He could smell hadals crowding the penumbra, musky and smeared with ochre. A rock thrown from the shadows struck him on the arm, not hard, just to goad him.

Winged beasts swept inches overhead. Ike maintained his stoic gait. Several others circled out of reach. He felt warm spittle dribbling down his neck.

A monstrosity came racing from ahead and blocked the way. Squat, encrusted with fluorescent mud, he sported a p.e.n.i.s sheath and battle scars and brandished an ax. He flicked his tongue like a reptile and bulged his eyes, all challenge. Ike kept his motions pa.s.sive and the beast let them pa.s.s.

The plastic slicks and mineral convolutions of the city floor began to angle upward. Ike approached that rise in the city's center which he had spied through the binoculars. The camp grew dense with refugees, and the ca.n.a.ls were fouled with their raw offal and sewage. They lay on the bare ground, ill and hungry.

In his years of captivity, Ike had never seen a fraction of the traits and styles gathered here. Some had flippers for arms, others feet that were tantamount to hands. There were heads flattened by binding, eye sockets genetically emptied. The variety of body art and clothing was wild. Some went naked, some wore armor or chain mail. He pa.s.sed eunuchs proudly scalped at the groin, warriors with hair woven with beads and horns woven with scalps, and females bred for their smallness or fatness.

Through it all, Ike kept his expression impa.s.sive. He climbed the pathway winding toward the hilltop, and the ma.s.s of hadals thickened. Here and there, stripped rib cages arched above ravaged carca.s.ses. In times of such want, he knew, human chattel went first.

Behind him, the girl kept pace. His daughter was his pa.s.sport. There were no challenges to Ike's advance, and he continued through the city. From the cliffs above, Ike had seen how the pit didn't bottom out, but only paused. And yet the entire race seemed to have rooted here. They showed no signs of taking their nomad spirit deeper. It made him want to plunge farther into the hole, to scale the inverse mountain, just to see what new sights there might be. His curiosity made him sad, because it was unlikely he'd live to see another hour, much less another land.

A pile of ruins projected from the top of the heaped flowstone, and Ike aimed for the highest structure. Climbing higher, Ike and the girl reached Walker's men. The two mercenaries were lashed to broken columns, not with rope, but with their own entrails. Seeing her enemy, the girl capered. Ike let her. One lifted his eyeless face to the jubilation. They had taken his lower jaw off, too. The tongue lay spastic on his throat.

After a minute they continued. They crested the mound. The ruins on the flat top occupied several acres. Hadals lay or sat about on the amorphous folds of stone, but, strangely, had not taken up residence in the crowning structure itself. Again, Ike was struck by their sense of waiting.

The wall on one side of the main building had crumbled, and Ike and the girl clambered up its rubble. Warriors bluffed charges and hooted threats and insults. None came closer than the edges of his light, though, and the effect was a riptide of greenish shadows.

They reached that top floor of the ruins Ike had seen through the binoculars. The roof had caved in or been peeled off, and the result was a high stage open to Shoat's sniperscope. The gallery was more s.p.a.cious than Ike had expected. In fact, he saw that it was some kind of library, dense with holdings.

Ike stopped in the center of the room. This was where he'd sighted Ali reading, though she was gone now. The floor was flat, but listing, like a s.h.i.+p beginning to sink. This was as good a place as any. It gave him a sense of s.p.a.ce, exposed to the equivalent of sky. If he had his choice, Ike didn't want to die in some little tube of a cavity. Let it be in the open. Also, as instructed, he needed to stay in Shoat's line of sight.

While he waited, Ike was furiously gathering information, patching together contingency plans and dead-reckoning trajectories, trying to locate the players and weapons in this new arena, searching for exits and hiding places. It was a matter of habit, not hope.

He found a broken stele and placed the computer on top, at eye level. He opened the lid. The screen was lit with Shoat's face, a miniature Wizard of Oz. 'What are they waiting for?' Shoat's voice spoke from the monitor. The feral girl backed away from it. Nearby hadals scurried into the shadows and softly hooted their alarm.

'There's a hadal pace to things,' Ike said.

He glanced around. Scores of stone tablets were propped side by side against one wall, codices lay open like long road maps, and scrolls and skins painted with glyphs and script lay in piles. To enhance her readings, they had provided Ali with Helios flashlights taken from the expedition. She was hard on the trail of the mother tongue. Another ten minutes pa.s.sed. Then Ali was sent out from the jumbled interior. She came to a halt fifteen or twenty feet away. Tears were running down her face. 'Ike.' She had mourned him. Now she was mourning him all over again. 'I thought you were dead. I prayed for you. Then I prayed some more, that if you were somehow alive, you'd know not to come for me.'