Part 41 (2/2)

In mortal terror, he howled. And the image howled.

Vertigo toppled him.

He writhed upon the cleated gra.s.s like a salted leech.

'For the love of Christ,' General Sandwell said, turning from the stadium screen. 'Now he's dying. We're going to end up with no males.'

It was three in the morning and the air was rich with sea, even indoors. The creature's howl lingered in the room, piped in over an expensive set of stereo speakers.

Thomas and January and Foley, the industrialist, peered through night-vision binoculars at the sight. They looked like three captains as they stood at the broad plate-gla.s.s window of a skybox perched on the rim of Candlestick Park. The poor creature went on flopping about in the center of the arena far below them. De l'Orme politely sat to one side of Vera's wheelchair, gathering what he could from their conversation.

For the last ten minutes they'd been following the hadal's infrared image in the cold fog as he stole along the grid lines, left and right at ninety-degree angles, seduced by the linearity or chasing some primitive instinct or maybe gone mad. And then the fog had lifted and suddenly this. His actions made as little sense magnified on the live-action video screen as in the miniature reality below.

'Is this their normal behavior?' January asked the general.

'No. He's bold. The rest have stuck close to the sewer pipes. This buck's pushed the limit. All the way to the fifty.'

'I've never seen one live.'

'Look quick. Once the sun hits, he's history.' The general was dressed tonight in a pair of pressed corduroys and a multi-blue flannel s.h.i.+rt. His Hush Puppies padded silently on the thick Berber. The Bulova was platinum. Retirement suited him, especially with Helios to land in.

'You say they surrendered to you?'

'First time we've seen anything like it. We had a patrol out at twenty-five hundred feet below the Sandias. Routine. Nothing ever comes up that high anymore. Then out of nowhere this bunch shows up. Several hundred of them.'

'You told us there are only a couple dozen here.'

'Correct. Like I said, we've never seen a ma.s.s surrender before. The troops reacted.'

'Overreacted, wouldn't you say?' said Vera.

The general gave her his gallows dimple. 'We had fifty-two when they first arrived. Less than twenty-nine at last count yesterday. Probably fewer by now.'

'Twenty-five hundred feet?' said January. 'But that's practically the surface. Was it an invasion party?'

'Nope. More like a herd movement. Females and young, mostly.'

'But what were they doing up here?'

'Not a clue. There's no communicating with them. We've got the linguists and supercomputers working full speed, but it might not even be a real language they speak. For our purposes tonight, it's just glorified gibberish. Emotional signing. Nothing informational. But the patrol leader did say the group was definitely heading for the surface. They were barely armed. It was almost like they were looking for something. Or someone.'

The Beowulf scholars paused. Their eyes pa.s.sed the question around the skybox room. What if this hadal crawling across the frosty gra.s.s of Candlestick Park had been embarked on a quest identical to their own, to find Satan? What if this lost tribe really had been searching for its missing leader... on the surface?

For the past week they had been discussing a theory, and this seemed to fit. It was Gault and Mustafah's theory, the possibility that their Satanic majesty might actually be a wanderer who had made occasional forays to the surface, exploring human societies over the eons. Images - mostly carved in stone - and oral tradition from peoples around the world gave a remarkably standard portrait of this character. The explorer came and went. He popped up out of nowhere and disappeared just as readily. He could be seductive or violent. He lived by disguise and deception. He was intelligent, resourceful, and restless.

Gault and Mustafah had cobbled the theory together while in Egypt. Ever since, they had carried on a discreet phone campaign to convince their colleagues that the true Satan was unlikely to be found cowering in some dark hole in the subplanet, but was more apt to be studying his enemy from within their very midst. They argued that the historical Satan might spend half his time down below among hadals, and the other half among man. That had raised other questions. Was their Satan, for instance, the same man throughout the ages, undying, an immortal creature? Or might he be a series of explorers, or a lineage of rulers? If he traveled among man, it seemed likely he resembled man. Perhaps, as de l'Orme had proposed, he was the character in the Shroud. If so, what would he look like now? If it was true that Satan lived among man, what disguise would he be wearing? Beggar, thief, or despot? Scholar, soldier, or stockbroker?

Thomas rejected the theory. His skepticism was ironic at times like this. After all, it was he who had launched them on this convoluted whirlwind of counter-intuitions and upside-down explanations. He had enjoined them to go out into the world and locate new evidence, old evidence, all the evidence. We need to know this character, he had said. We need to know how he thinks, what his agenda consists of, his desires and needs, his vulnerabilities and strengths, what cycles he subconsciously follows, what paths he is likely to take. Otherwise we will never have an advantage over him. That's how they had left it, at a standstill, the group scattered.

Foley looked from Thomas to de l'Orme. The gnomelike face was a cipher. It was de l'Orme who had forced this meeting with Helios and dragged every Beowulf member on the continent in with him. Something was up. He had promised it would affect the outcome of their work, though he refused to say how.

All of this went over Sandwell's head. They did not speak one word of Beowulf's business in front of him. They were still trying to judge how much damage the general had done to them since going over to Helios five months ago.

The skybox was serving as Sandwell's temporary office. The Stick, as he affectionately called it, was in serious makeover. Helios was creating a $500 million biotech research facility in the arena s.p.a.ce. BioSphere without the suns.h.i.+ne, he quipped. Scientists from around the country were being recruited. Cracking the mysteries of H. hadalis had just entered a new phase. It was being compared to splitting the atom or landing on the moon. The hadal thras.h.i.+ng about on the dying gra.s.s and fading hash marks was part of the first batch to be processed.

Here, where Y.A. t.i.ttle and Joe Montana had earned fame and fortune, where the Beatles and Stones had rocked, where the Pope had spoken on the virtues of poverty, taxpayers were funding an advanced concentration camp. Once completed, it was designed to house five hundred SAFs - Subterranean Animal Forms - at a time. At its far end, the playing field was beginning to look like the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Roman Coliseum ruins. The holding pens were in progress. Alleyways wound between t.i.tanium cages. Ultimately the old arena surface and all its cages would be covered over with eight floors of laboratory s.p.a.ce. There was even a smokeless incinerator, approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, for disposing of remains.

Down on the field, the hadal had begun crawling toward the stack of concrete culverts temporarily housing his comrades. The Stick wouldn't be ready for nonhuman tenants for another year.

'Truly a march of the d.a.m.ned,' de l'Orme commented. 'In the s.p.a.ce of a week, several hundred hadals have become less than two dozen. Shameful.'

'Live hadals are as rare as Martians,' the general explained. 'Getting them to the surface alive and intact - before their gut bacteria curdles or their lung tissues hemorrhage or a hundred other d.a.m.n things - it's like growing hair on rock.'

There-had been isolated cases of individual hadals living in captivity on the surface. The record was an Israeli catch: eighty-three days. At their present rate, what was left of this group of fifty wasn't going to last the week.

'I don't see any water. Or food. What are they supposed to be living on?'

'We don't know. That's the whole problem. We filled a galvanized tub with clean water, and they wouldn't touch it. But see that Porta Potti for the construction workers? A few of the hadals broke in the first day and drank the sewage and chemicals. It took 'em hours to quit bucking and shrieking.'

'They died, you're saying.'

'They'll either adapt or die,' the general said. 'Around here, we call it seasoning.'

'And those other bodies lying by the sidelines?'

'That's what's left of an escape attempt.'

From this height the visitors could see the lower stands filled with soldiers and ringed with miniguns trained on the playing field. The soldiers wore bulky oversuits with hoods and oxygen tanks.

On the giant screen, the hadal male cast another glance at the night sky and promptly buried his face in the turf. They watched him clutch at the gra.s.s as if holding on to the side of a cliff.

'After our meeting, I want to go closer,' said de l'Orme. 'I want to hear him. I want to smell him.'

'Out of the question,' said Sandwell. 'It's a health issue. n.o.body goes in. We don't want them getting contaminated with human diseases.'

The hadal crawled from the forty to the thirty-five. The pyramid of culvert pipes stood near the ten. Farther on, he began navigating between skeletons and rotting bodies.

'Why are the remains lying in the open like that?' Thomas asked. 'I should think they const.i.tute a health hazard.'

'You want a burial? This isn't a pet cemetery, Father.'

Vera turned her head at the tone. Sandwell had definitely crossed over. He belonged to Helios. 'It's not a zoo, either, General. Why bring them here if you're just going to watch them fester and die?'

'I told you, old-fas.h.i.+oned R-and-D. We're building a truth machine. Now we'll get the facts on what really makes them tick.'

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