Part 20 (1/2)

Shoat was annoyed. Maybe this was supposed to have been a freak show. 'How about questions. Any questions?'

'Mr Crockett,' a woman from MIT started. 'Or is it Captain, or some other rank?'

'No,' he said, 'they busted me out. I don't have any rank. And don't bother with the ”mister,” either.'

'Very well. Dwight, then,' the woman went on. 'I wanted to ask -'

'Not Dwight,' he interrupted. 'Ike.'

'Ike?'

'Go on.'

'The hadals have disappeared,' she said. 'Every day civilization pushes the night back a little further. My question, sir, is whether it's really so dangerous out there?'

'Things have a way of flying apart,' Ike said.

'Not that we'll be going out in harm's way,' the woman said.

Ike looked at Shoat. 'Is that what this man told you?'

Ali felt uneasy. He knew something they didn't. On second thought, that wasn't saying much.

Shoat moved them along. 'Question?' he said.

Ali stood. 'You were their prisoner,' she said. 'Can you share a little about your experience? What did they do to you? What are the hadals like?'

The dining car fell silent. Here was a campfire story they could listen to all night. What a resource Ike could be to her, with his insights into the hadals' habits and culture. Why, he might even speak their language.

Ike smiled at her. 'I don't have a lot to say about those days.'

There was disappointment.

'Do you think they're still out there somewhere? Is there any chance we might see one?' someone else asked.

'Where we're going?' Ike said. Unless Ali was wrong, he was provoking Shoat on purpose, dancing on the edge of information they were not yet supposed to have.

Shoat's annoyance built.

'Where are we going?' a man asked.

'No comment,' Shoat answered for Ike.

'Have you been in our particular territory yourself?'

'Never,' Ike said. 'I used to hear rumors, of course. But I never believed they could be true.'

'Rumors of what?'

Shoat was checking his watch.

The train gave a soft lurch. They braked to a slow halt. People went to look through the small windows and Ike was forgotten, momentarily. Shoat stood on a chair. 'Grab your bags and personal effects, folks. We're changing trains.'

Ali shared an open flatcar with three men and freight, mostly heavy equipment parts. She sat against a John Deere crate labeled PLANETARIES, DIFFERENTIALS. One of the men had bad gas and kept grimacing in apology.

The ride was smooth. The artery was man-made, bored to a uniform twenty-foot diameter. The trackbed was crushed gravel sprayed with black oil. Overhead, bare bulbs bled down rusty light. Ali kept thinking of a Siberian gulag. Wires and pipes and cables veined the walls.

Cavities opened to the sides. They didn't see any people, just crawlers and loaders and excavators and pipe layers, piled rubber tires, and cement ties. The track made a slithery sound under their wheels, seamless. Ali missed the click-clack of rail joints. She remembered a train journey with her parents, falling asleep to the rhythm while the world pa.s.sed by.

Ali gave one of her fresh apples to the man who was still awake. They'd been grown in the hydroponic gardens at Nazca City. He said, 'My daughter loves apples,' and showed her a picture.

'What a beautiful girl,' Ali said.

'Kids?' he asked.

Ali pulled a jacket over her knees. 'Oh, I don't think I could bear to leave a child,' she answered too quickly. The man winced. Ali said, 'I didn't mean it that way.'

The train was relentlessly gentle. It never slowed, never stopped. Ali and her neighbors improvised a latrine with privacy by pus.h.i.+ng some of the crates together. They had a communal supper, each contributing some food.

At midnight the walls brightened from cinnamon to tan. Her companions were all sleeping when the train entered a band of marine fossils. Here exoskeletons, there ancient seaweeds, there a spray of tiny brachiopods. The bore-cutter had sheared the rich find with impunity.

'Did you see that, Mapes!' a voice yelled from a car ahead. 'Arthropoda!'

'Trilobitomorpha!' Mapes shrieked in ecstatic response from behind.

'Check those dorsal grooves! Pinch me!'

'Look at this one coming up, Mapes! Early Ordovician!'

'Ordovician, h.e.l.l!' Mapes bellowed. 'Cambrian, man. Early. Very early. Look at that rock. s.h.i.+t, maybe even late Precam!'

The fossils jumped and writhed and wove like a miles-long tapestry. Then the walls went blank again.

At three in the morning, they came upon the remains of their first ambush. At first it seemed like nothing more than a car accident.

The clues began with a long sc.r.a.pe mark on the left wall where a vehicle of some sort had struck the stone. Abruptly the mark leaped to the right wall, where it became a gouge, then ricocheted to the opposite side and back again. Someone had lost control.

The evidence became more violent, more puzzling. Broken fragments of stone mixed with headlight gla.s.s, then a torn section of heavy steel mesh.

The gashes and sc.r.a.pes went on and on, left, then right.

Miles farther, the crazy bounce ended. All that remained of the reckless ride was a tangle of metal. The destroyed backhoe had been torn open.

They drifted past. The stone was scorched, but furrowed, too. Ali had seen war zones in Africa, and recognized the starred splatter print of an explosion.

Around the bend, they came on two white crosses planted Latino-style in a grotto carved into the wall. Tufts of hair, rags, and animal bones had been nailed to the stone. The rags, she comprehended, were leather hides. Skins. Flayed skin. This was a memorial.

After that, miles pa.s.sed in silence. Here it was at last - all their childhood legends of desperate fights waged against biblical mutants - before their eyes, unintended, where fate had given it. This was not a TV report that could be turned off. This was not a poet's inferno in a book that could be put back on the shelf. Here was the world they lived in now.