Authors: Stuart Slade
In
the building, before the receptionist could say anything, he removed his
breathing filter and asked, “Where's the meeting?”
“Your
name Sir?” she asked.
“Dr
Surlethe,” he said.
“Ah,
welcome to Hell!” She smiled. “The department head meeting is down the hall on
the left, third door. Room 108.”
“Thanks,”
he said over his shoulder, already moving down the hallway. A clock over the
receptionist's desk read 1:02. Inwardly he cursed; damn, two minutes late. As
usual.
He
took a second outside the door of the conference room to catch his breath, and
then opened it as quietly as he could. Every eye was on him; most of the
scientists, with mild respect, but there was an air of disapproval about three
men in uniform. Dr Surlethe smiled. “Hello, gentlemen, ladies; sorry I'm
running a little late.”
“That's
perfectly fine,” said Dr Griswold. He was the head of the geology department,
his size and beard making him one of the few people who actually looked the
part. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the head of the table.
Dr
Surlethe nodded, pulled back the chair, sat, and opened his briefcase, pulling
out a tablet of paper and a pen. “Okay, let's see who's here,” he said. “Dr
Griswold, geology?”
“Here.”
Dr Surlethe nodded and made a note on the paper.
“Dr
Jamison, physics and astronomy?”
“Aye.”
“Dr
Sullivan, biology?”
“Present.”
“Dr
Fulton, geography?”
“Here.”
“And
Dr Abrams, climate science?”
“Here.”
“May
I ask who these gentlemen are?” Dr Surlethe blinked at the three military men.
“Certainly,”
said one of them. “I am Major Jim Schaeder, your liaison with the military.
These are my aides – Leftenant John Grissom from the U.K. and Captain Aleksei
Stepanovich Panasov of the Russian Army.”
“Pleased
to meet you,” said Dr Surlethe. “Now, I'm sure you all know this, but it bears
saying anyway. The goal of this advance research center is to gather as much
data about Hell as possible, as quickly as possible, and start to form a
coherent picture of the world that we've entered. We'll be sending the
information back to Earth, but, we are the scientific front line.
“Now,
let's see where we stand. You have all prepared reports as I requested?” There
were nods all around the room. “Dr Jamison, you'll go first.”
Dr
Jamison, a slight, pretty redhead, stood up and shuffled some papers on the
table in front of her. “We have not done too much. There are no obvious
physical differences between Hell and Earth; on a basic level, at least,
they're very much the same since we're all standing here.” She smiled, and
chuckles drifted around the table. “However, there is some indication that the
local gravitational field is maybe as much as 10% weaker than that on Earth;
surely you've all noticed it walking.” Nods. “Initially, this will obviously
impact friction, vehicle performance, etc. That may be why the air is so dusty
as well. Other than that, we're looking to collaborate with geology to get an
idea of what's going on under the ground.
“Putting
on my astronomer's hat, we've got no idea what's going on above this damnable
cloud cover.” Dr Surlethe noted that he might need to split the department
soon. “We'd like to get a rocket launch pad –” this was aimed at Grissom – “but
we understand we're relatively low priority here.” She turned back to Dr
Surlethe. “That's all I've got.”
“Thank
you, Dr Jamison. Next, Dr Griswold?”
Dr
Griswold stood up. “Geologically speaking, Hell is a very interesting place.
It's incredibly geologically active; the soil here, at least, is composed
mostly of broken-down volcanic materials. I won't bore you with details, but
I'll just say that as recently as two million years ago, this entire plain –”
he stretched his hands out, obviously talking about the whole of the prairie
that apparently stretched from the Phlegethon just to the north all the way to
Dis – “was under a half-mile of lava from that giant caldera to the south. When
I say giant, I mean it, We’ve got the first pictures back from the RF-111s, the
diameter of that caldera is almost 700 kilometers. It’s circumference is more
than 2,000 kilometers. It must have been one hell of a bang when it let go.
“That's
about as much as we can say about the geologic history of Hell; we need more
data. Hopefully, as the geography grows clearer, we'll be able to say something
about the underlying geology and start to construct a picture of the history.
And, as Dr Jamison said, we are working to get some geophysical measurements;
hopefully, that will start to flesh out our picture some more.”
Unceremoniously, Dr Griswold sat down.
“Thank
you. Dr Fulton, are you ready?”
“Certainly,”
said Dr Fulton, who unfolded himself from his chair and stood up, blinking at
the papers in front of him through round spectacles. “This is probably the most
pressing field of exploration here, since navigation and knowing what the
terrain around us looks like are the most relevant issues to the military. As
you all know, the terrain here is decidedly non-Euclidean.” More nods around
the table. “We've been taking measurements, but this is actually a math problem
and not one that any of us geographers have encountered before. So is there a
mathematician in the house?”
“That
can be arranged,” said Dr Surlethe.
Dr
Fulton continued. “Other than that, we've been putting together a temporary map
based on surveillance pictures from the recent reconnaissance flights. Here it
is.” He picked up a stack of papers and handed them out one-by-one as he kept
talking. “As you can see, we have the Phlegethon just to the north. In the
distance, there are some hills; we speculate that they are foothills to a
larger mountain range. In the other direction, it's all flat, with no major
rivers, to the city of Dis. There's Dis, and then it drops off into the pit.”
The
handout wasn't so much a map as a collage of pictures pasted together in
photoshop. The pictures seemed oddly distorted, and didn't quite match up
together at the edges, but the basic components of the terrain were still
visible.
“The
pit of hell appears to be arranged into nine concentric rings. It's eerily
similar to Dante's description, working hypothesis, a baldrick got hold of
Dante’s mind and let him know what he was in for. We don't have much data, but
we surmise that the descriptions that have been given to us by the DIMO(N)
counterinsurgency department match what is visible here, in the sixth ring.” He
tapped an area on the map that looked like nothing more than a dark coffee
stain. Through it, a river lazily wandered before apparently plunging off the
side into the next level. “We surmise that is where the insurgency is located.”
Dr
Jamison raised her hand. “Is this part of Dis, here on the fifth ring?”
Dr
Fulton nodded. “You can see that a spur of the city has been built down into
the pit itself, down this flat slope.” He indicated on his copy the extension
of the demonic capital. “The city then extends for a ways along the fifth ring
to the point where the river cuts across the ring. The spur itself acts as a
base for walls that separate the rings.
“Anyway,
that's pretty much as far as we've gotten geographically. We await more data
from reconnaissance flights. We'll take as much as you can give us. Thank you.”
He sat down.
“We
have Dr Abrams and Dr Sullivan left. Who'd like to go first?”
“I'll
go,” said Dr Sullivan, his heavy Oxford English accent being almost amusing
given the environment. . “Aside from the baldrick corpses dissected in Iraq,
and the biological knowledge that gave us, we've got very little information
about the lifeforms and ecosystem here in Hell. Because it's similar to life on
Earth, we hypothesize that there are common ancestors involved somewhere – in
fact, the data from the dissections and corpse analysis suggests that the most
recent human-baldrick ancestor dates from about one point five million years
ago. Evolution here has been pretty drastic though and followed a different
path from ours.
“But
we need more data to test this. We're planning some expeditions out to the
surrounding countryside, but if in the military advance there are any dead
animals, please have them sent back to us. Thank you.” He sat down.
“Oh,
I think we can guarantee you lots of corpses.” Panasov’s voice was almost droll
as his mind recalled the long rows of guns awaiting the Baldrick assault.
“And,
Dr Abrams,” said Dr Surlethe.
“Thanks,”
said Dr Abrams, an older gentleman with a fine Santa Claus beard. “We find that
the atmosphere here is relatively similar to that of Earth, which means that
there was either gaseous exchange or the life processes here are similar to
those on Earth. The high particulate count at this location suggests some
volcanic activity in the vicinity, or a hell of a lot – pardon the pun – of
volcanic activity somewhere far away. Other than that, we can't really do any
meaningful climate science, aside from weather observations, without getting
data from the upper atmosphere. We've sent to NASA for some weather balloons to
go up; hopefully, they'll get here in the next couple of days, and then we can
go from there.” He sat down.
“All
right,” said Dr Surlethe. “Is there anything else?” Nobody spoke, so he
continued: “Excellent. Let's plan on meeting weekly from here on out and
comparing notes. Thanks, everybody!”
As
the various scientists were moving out of the room, Dr Surlethe tapped Dr
Fulton on the shoulder. “Mind if I have a word with you?”
“Sure,”
said the taller man.
“I'm
a mathematician by trade. Do you think you could email me the data? I'll see
what I can do with it in my spare time.”
“I'd
love to. Our department is all geographers; none of us really have the
experience or knowledge to deal with this sort of non-spherical geometry.”
“Thanks,”
said Dr Surlethe. “I look forward to it.” And he walked out of the room,
contemplating just what he was going to tell the president and cabinet at the
next meeting, and wondering on top of that what sort of shape could explain the
curvature that was obvious here.
(Congrats
to Jan who wrote the first part, Starglider the middle and Surlethe the end)
Chapter
Fifty One
Secure
Accommodation Block, Camo Hell-Alpha, Martial Plain of Dysprosium
The
double doors burst open and Colonel Paschal strode in, flanked by MPs carrying
menacing USAS-12 combat shotguns. The concrete room was the size of a small
hangar, but the huge demon made it look like a cramped apartment. The big
plasma screen was showing images of WWII aircraft attacking warships. The stack
of DVD cases next to it confirmed that Abigor had been continuing to absorb
military documentaries and war movies. The infernal general looked up with a
surprised expression, which quickly hardened as he saw the heavy guard detail.
“General
Abigor.” Paschal was carrying a ruggedized laptop, which he opened and placed
on a table in front of the demon. “Can you explain this?” The colonel’s tone
was not quite threatening, but clearly the humans were not pleased.
Abigor
stared in silence as the images of lava, fire and destruction played out.
“Belial” he said, in a tone of mild contempt. “This has to be his doing.”
“Belial?”
Paschal had studied Abigor’s profiles of the top demon leadership but he didn’t
recall the name. “Who is Belial?”
“A
sniveling failure. Count Belial is the ruler of Tartarus, a barren wasteland in
the part of hell furthest from Dis. Satan exiled him there many millennia ago,
after he walked right into a trap laid by Lahabiel and got his entire army
captured or killed.”
“If
he’s an exile, how did he manage to do this?”
“Belial
has been trying to regain Satan’s favor, by all means of craven and
dishonorable means. His realm survives only because he makes himself useful,
with his fancy tridents and his overgrown wyverns. His retinue is composed of
failures like himself, mostly demons that deserted their lords instead of dying
gloriously in their service.”
Abigor
paused for a moment before continuing, uneasy with how close he had come to
describing his own situation. Then he tapped the computer screen with a talon.
“I have seen this before. Belial used a similar trick to destroy two human
cities, back when we were last surveying this planet. Satan and Yahweh were
competing to visit creative forms of suffering on the humans. As I recall,
Belial’s flashy little stunt went down quite well, well enough for Mekratrig to
allow him back into his court.
Paschal
frowned. “The bible speaks of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah… by Yahweh
though, not by Satan or his minions.”
Abigor
snorted. “Well of course. The angels were always better at propaganda than us.
Whatever your books say, it was Belial’s doing.”
“Why
didn’t you tell us about this earlier?”
“It
did not occur to me that Satan would consider this a viable tactic. This is not
the way wars are fought…” The demon paused for a second, considering the things
he’d seen on the image panel. “At least, it is not the way we fight wars. Most
likely Belial is looking for another opportunity to ingratiate himself and
Satan has permitted him to proceed in the hope of distracting you while
Beelzebub moves his army up for a fresh assault.”