Part 21 (2/2)

'We'll be the first.'

Spurrier was no longer resisting. 'We won't go thirsty, then.'

'Don't you see?' Shoat said. 'It means we can float.'

They were dazzled.

'What about supplies? How can we hope to carry enough for a year?'

'We start with porters. Every four to six weeks thereafter, we will be supplied by drill hole. Helios has already begun drilling supply holes for us at selected points. They will drill straight through the ocean floor to intersect our route, and lower food and gear. At those points, by the way, we'll have brief contact with the World. You'll be able to communicate with your families. We'll even be able to evacuate the sick or injured.'

It all sounded reasonable.

'It's radical. It's daring,' Shoat said. 'It's one year out of your lives. We could have spent it sitting on our b.u.t.ts in a hole like this. Instead, one year from now, we'll go down in history. You'll be writing papers and publis.h.i.+ng books about this for the rest of your lives. It will cement your tenure, gain you chairs of departments, win you prizes and acclaim. Your children and grandchildren will beg you for the tale of what you're about to do.'

'This is a huge decision,' a man said. 'I need to consult my wife.' A general murmur agreed.

'I'm afraid the communications line is down.' It was a blatant lie, Ali could see it. But that was part of the price. He was drawing a line for them to step across. 'You may, of course, post mail. The next train back to Nazca City leaves two months from now.' Helios was playing hardball, a total embargo on information.

Shoat surveyed them with reptilian coolness. 'I don't expect everyone here tonight to be with us in the morning. You're free to return home, of course.' In two months' time, on the train. The expedition would have a tremendous head start on any leaks to the media. He looked at his watch.

'It's late,' he said. 'The expedition departs at 0600. That leaves only a few hours for you to sleep on your choices. That's enough, though. I'm a firm believer that each of us comes into this world with our decisions already made.'

The lights came up. Ali blinked. Everywhere, people were leaning forward onto seatbacks, rubbing their hands, making calculations. Faces were lit with excitement. Thinking fast, she looked for Ike's reaction to judge the proposition. But he had left while the lights were still off.

10 - DIGITAL SATAN.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Beyond Good and Evil Health Sciences Center, University of Colorado, Denver

'She was caught in a nursing home near Bartlesville, Oklahoma,' Dr. Yamamoto explained to them. Thomas and Vera Wallach and Foley, the industrialist, followed the physician from her office. Branch came last, eyes protected by dark ski goggles, sleeves b.u.t.toned at each wrist to hide his burn scars.

'It was one of those homes that give adult children nightmares,' Dr. Yamamoto went on. She couldn't have been more than twenty-seven. Her lab coat was unb.u.t.toned. Underneath it, a T-s.h.i.+rt read THE LAKE CITY 50-MILE ENDURANCE RUN. She exuded vitality and happiness, Branch thought. The wedding ring on her finger looked only a few weeks old.

They took an elevator up. A sign, supplemented with Braille, listed the floors by specialty. Primates occupied the bas.e.m.e.nt. The upper floors were Psychiatry and Neurophysiology. They got off on the top floor, which bore no t.i.tle, and started down another hallway.

'It turns out the administrator at this Bartlesville scam had served time for a variety of frauds and forgeries,' Dr. Yamamoto said. 'He's back in, I guess. I hope. A real prince. His so-called facility advertised itself as specializing in Alzheimer's patients. Behind the scenes, he kept the patients just barely alive in order to keep the Medicare/Medicaid checks coming in. Bed restraints, horrific conditions. No medical personnel whatsoever. Apparently our little intruder was able to hide there for over a month before a janitor finally noticed.'

The young doctor halted at a door with a keypad. 'Here we are,' she said, and gently entered the code. Long fingers. A soft, sure touch.

'You play violin,' Thomas guessed.

She was delighted. 'Guitar,' she confessed. 'Electric. Ba.s.s. I have a band, Girl Talk. All guys, and me.'

She held the door for them. Immediately, Branch sensed the change in light and sound. No windows in here. No spill of sunbeams. The slight whistle of wind against brick quit. These walls were thick.

To the right and left, doorways opened onto rooms...o...b..ting computer screens. A plaque read DIGITAL ADAM PROJECT, NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE. Branch didn't see a single book.

Yamamoto's voice adjusted to the new quiet. 'Lucky for us it was the janitor who noticed,' she continued. 'The administrator and his gang of thieves would never have called the police. To make a long story short, the cops came. They were suitably horrified. At first they were sure it was animals. One of the cops used to trap coyotes and bobcats. He set out some old rusty leg traps.'

They reached a set of double doors. Another keypad. Different numbers, Branch noticed. They entered in stages: first a guard, then a scrub room, where Yamamoto helped them put on disposable green gowns and surgical masks and double pairs of latex gloves, then a main room with biotechs at work over test tubes and keyboards. She led them around gleaming banks of equipment and picked up her narrative.

'That night she came back for more. One of the traps caught her leg. The cops came roaring in. She was a complete surprise. They were not at all prepared. Barely four feet high and, even with her tibia and fibula broken in half, she still almost beat five grown men. She came very close to escaping, but they got her. We would have preferred a live specimen, of course.'

They came to a door labeled NIPPLES ALERT on a handwritten sheet.

'Nipples?' asked Vera.

Yamamoto noticed the sign and s.n.a.t.c.hed it down. 'A joke,' she said. 'It's cold in there. The room is refrigerated. We call it the pit and the pendulums.'

Branch was gratified by her blush. She was a professional. What's more, she wanted to look professional to them. She led them through the door.

Inside, it was not as cold as Branch had expected. A wall thermometer read thirty-one degrees Fahrenheit. Very bearable for an hour or two of work. Not that anyone was in here. The work was all being done automatically.

Machinery susurrated, a steady rhythm. Shh. Shh. Shh. As though to quiet an infant. A number of lights pulsed with each hush.

'They killed her?' Vera asked.

'No, it wasn't that,' Yamamoto said. 'She was alive after they got the nets and rope on. But the trap was rusty. Sepsis set in. Teta.n.u.s. She died before we arrived. I brought her here in a footlocker packed with dry ice.'

There were four stainless-steel autopsy tables. Each held a block of blue gelatin. Each block was positioned against a machine. Each machine flashed a light every five seconds.

'We named her Dawn,' said Yamamoto.

They looked into the blue gelatin and there she was, her cadaver frozen and suspended in gel and cut crosswise into four sections.

'We were halfway through computerizing our digital Eve when the hadal came our way.' Yamamoto indicated a dozen freezer drawers along one wall. 'We put Eve back into storage and immediately went to work on Dawn. As you can see, we've quartered her body and bedded the four sections in gelatin. These machines are called cryomacrotomes. Glorified meat shavers. Every few seconds they cut a half-millimeter off the bottom of each gelatin block, and a synchronized camera photographs the new layer.'

'How long has it been here?' Foley asked.

It, not she, Branch noticed. Foley was keeping things impersonal. For his own part, Branch felt a connection. How could you not? The small hand had four fingers and a thumb.

'Two weeks. It's just a function of the blades and cameras. In another few months we'll have a computer bank with over twelve thousand images. She'll end up as forty billion bytes of information stored on seventy CD-ROM disks. Using a mouse, you will be able to travel through a 3-D image of Dawn's interior.'

'And your purpose?'

'Hadal physiology,' Dr. Yamamoto said. 'We want to know how it differs from human.'

'Is there any way to accelerate your inquiry?' asked Thomas.

'We don't know what we're looking for, or even what questions to ask. As it is, we don't dare miss anything. There's no telling what might lie in the smallest detail.'

They separated and went to different tables. Through the translucent gel, Branch saw a pair of lower legs and feet. There was the place the trap had snapped her bones. The skin was fish white.

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