Riptide (30 page)

“Why, Kerry,” said Bonterre teasingly. “For the first time, you look like a
man.
”

By now, much of the crew still on the island had gathered behind the staging area. A cheer went up. Hatch looked around at
the elated faces: this was the critical moment they—and he—had been waiting for. Bonterre was grinning widely. Even Wopner
seemed affected by the growing excitement: he arranged his equipment and tugged on his harness with a self-important air.

Neidelman took a last look around, waving at the assembled group. Then he stepped to the rim of the staging area, buckled
his line to the ladder array, and began to descend.

H
atch was the last to set foot on the ladder. The others were already stretched out for twenty feet below him. The lights on
their helmets played through the murk as they descended hand over hand. A sense of vertigo passed over him, and he looked
up, grabbing at the rung. The ladder was rock solid, he knew; even if he fell, the lifeline would keep him from tumbling far.

As they went deeper, a curious hush fell over the team and among the Orthanc crew, monitoring the mission over the live channel.
The incessant sounds of the settling Pit, the soft creakings and tickings, filled the air like the whispered teeming of invisible
sea creatures. Hatch passed the first cluster of terminal hubs, electrical outlets, and cable jacks that had been set into
the ladder at fifteen-foot intervals.

“Everyone all right?” came Neidelman’s low voice over the intercom. Positive responses came back, one by one.

“Dr. Magnusen?” Neidelman asked.

“Instruments normal,” came the voice from inside Orthanc. “All boards are green.”

“Dr. Rankin?”

“Scopes inactive, Captain. No sign of any seismic disturbances or magnetic anomalies.”

“Mr. Streeter?”

“All systems on the array are nominal,” the laconic voice replied.

“Very well,” Neidelman said. “We’ll continue descending to the fifty-foot platform, placing sensors as necessary, then stop
for a breather. Be careful not to catch your lifelines on any beams. Dr. Bonterre, Dr. Hatch, Mr. Wopner, keep your eyes open.
If you see anything strange, I want to know.”

“You kidding?” came Wopner’s voice. “The whole place is strange.”

As he followed the group, Hatch felt almost as if he was sinking into a deep pool of brackish water. The air was clammy and
cold, redolent of decay. Each exhalation condensed into a cloud of vapor that hung in the supersaturated air, refusing to
dissipate. He looked about, the light on his helmet swiveling with his head. They were now in the tidal zone of the Pit, where
the water had formerly risen and fallen twice a day. He was surprised to see the same bands of life he’d observed countless
times among rocks and tidal pools at the sea edge: first barnacles, then seaweed, then mussels and limpets; followed by a
band of starfish; next, sea cucumbers, periwinkles, sea urchins, and anemones. As he continued to descend, he passed strata
of coral and seaweed. Hundreds of whelks still clung pitifully to the walls and beams, hoping in vain for a return of the
tide. Now and then a whelk would at last lose its grip and fall into the echoing vastness.

Though an immense amount of flotsam and jetsam had already been removed from the drained Pit, an obstacle course of ancient
junk remained. The ladder array had been deftly threaded through rotting beams, tangles of metal, and discarded pieces of
drilling apparatus. The team stopped as Neidelman tapped a sensor into a small opening on one side of the Pit. As they waited
for Wopner to calibrate the sensor, Hatch found his spirits beginning to flag in the mephitic atmosphere. He wondered if the
rest of the team shared the feeling, or if he was simply laboring under the additional knowledge that, somewhere in this cold,
dripping labyrinth, lay his brother’s body.

“Man, it
stinks
down here,” said Wopner, bending over his handheld computer.

“Air readings normal,” came the voice of Neidelman. “We’ll be installing a ventilation system over the next few days.”

As they descended once again, the original cribbing in the shaft became more clearly defined as thick layers of seaweed gave
way to long hanging strings of kelp. A muffled rumble came from above: thunder. Hatch glanced up and saw the mouth of the
Pit etched against the sky, the dark bulk of Orthanc rising in a greenish glow. Farther above, lowering clouds had turned
the heavens iron gray. A flicker of lightning flashed a momentary, ghastly illumination into the Pit.

Suddenly, the group below him stopped. Glancing down, Hatch could see Neidelman playing his beam into two ragged openings
on either side of the shaft, tunnels that led off into darkness.

“What do you think?” asked Neidelman, tapping in another sensor.

“It is not original,” said Bonterre, bending carefully into the second opening to affix a sensor and take a closer look. “Look
at the cribbing: it is small and ripsawed, not adzed. Perhaps from the Parkhurst expedition of the 1830s,
non?
”

She straightened, then gazed up at Hatch, the lance of her headlamp illuminating his legs. “I can see up your dress.” She
smirked.

“Maybe we should switch places,” Hatch replied.

They worked their way down the ladder, placing stress sensors into the beams and cribbing as they went, until they reached
the narrow platform at the fifty-foot level. In the reflected light of his helmet, Hatch could see the Captain’s face was
pale with excitement. His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat despite the chilly air.

There came another flash of lightning and a distant sound of thunder. The rivulets of water seemed to be trickling faster
now, and Hatch guessed it must be raining heavily up top. He looked upward, but the opening was now almost completely obscured
by the crisscrossing beams they had passed, the drops of water flying down past his lamp. He wondered if the swell had increased,
and hoped the cofferdam would hold it; he had a momentary image of the sea bursting through the cofferdam and roaring back
into the Pit, drowning them instantly.

“I’m freezing,” complained Wopner. “Why didn’t you warn me to bring an electric blanket? And it stinks even worse than before.”

“Slightly elevated levels of methane and carbon dioxide,” Neidelman said, looking at his monitor. “Nothing to get worried
about.”

“He is right, though,” said Bonterre, adjusting a canteen on her belt. “It
is
chilly.”

“Forty-eight degrees,” said Neidelman tersely. “Any other observations?”

There was a silence.

“Let’s continue, then. We’re likely to start finding more shafts and side tunnels beyond this point. We’ll alternate placing
the sensors. Since Mr. Wopner must calibrate each of them manually, he’s going to fall behind. We’ll wait for him at the hundred-foot
platform.”

At this depth, the crisscrossing support beams had accumulated an incredible variety of trash. Old cables, chains, gears,
hoses, even rotting leather gloves were tangled in the crossbeams. They began to come across additional openings cut into
the cribbed walls, where tunnels branched off or secondary shafts intersected the main pit. Neidelman took the first one,
placing sensors back twenty feet; Bonterre took the next. Then it was his own turn.

Carefully, Hatch played out some line from his harness, stepping back from the ladder into the cross-shaft. He felt his foot
sink into yielding ooze. The tunnel was narrow and low, stretching off at a sharp upward angle. It had been crudely hacked
out of the glacial till, nothing as elegant as the Water Pit shaft, obviously of a later date. Stooping, he went twenty feet
up the tunnel, then fished a piezoelectric sensor from his satchel and drove it into the calcified earth. He returned to the
central Pit, placing a small fluorescent flag at the mouth of the shaft to alert Wopner.

As he stepped back onto the array, Hatch heard a loud, agonizing complaint from a nearby timber, followed by a flurry of creakings
that whispered quickly up and down the shaft. He froze, gripping the ladder tightly, holding his breath.

“Just the Pit settling,” came the voice of Neidelman. He had already set his sensor and moved farther down the ladder to the
next cross-shaft. As he spoke, there came another screech—sharp and strangely human—echoing from a side tunnel.

“What the hell was that?” Wopner said, behind them now, his voice a little too loud in the confined space.

“More of the same,” said Neidelman. “The protest of old wood.”

There was another shriek, followed by a low gibbering.

“That’s no goddamn wood,” said Wopner. “That sounds alive.”

Hatch looked up. The programmer had frozen in the act of calibrating one of the sensors: His palmtop computer was held in
one outstretched hand, and the index finger of his other was resting on it, looking ridiculously as if he was pointing into
his own palm.

“Get that light out of my eyes, willya?” Wopner said. “The faster I can get these suckers calibrated, the faster I can get
out of this shithole.”

“You just want to get back to the ship before
Christophe
steals your glory,” said Bonterre good-humoredly. She had emerged from her side shaft and was now descending the ladder.

As they approached the hundred-foot platform, another sight came into view. Until now, the horizontal tunnels opening into
the side of the shaft had been crude and ragged, poorly shored, some partially caved in. But here, they could see a tunnel
opening that had obviously been carefully formed.

Bonterre shone her light at the square opening. “This is definitely part of the original Pit,” she said.

“What’s its purpose?” asked Neidelman, pulling a sensor out of his satchel.

Bonterre leaned into the tunnel. “I cannot say for sure. But you can see how Macallan used the natural fissures in the rock
for his construction.”

“Mr. Wopner?” Neidelman said, glancing up the shaft.

There was a brief silence. Then Hatch heard Wopner respond: “Yes?” It was a quiet, unusually subdued voice. Glancing up, he
saw the young man leaning on the ladder perhaps twenty feet above him, beside a flag Hatch had placed, calibrating the sensor.
Wet hair was plastered down the sides of his face, and the programmer was shivering.

“Kerry?” Hatch asked. “Are you all right?”

“I’
m fine.
”

Neidelman glanced first at Bonterre, then at Hatch, his eyes strangely eager. “It’ll take him some time to calibrate all the
sensors we’ve placed so far,” he said. “Why don’t we take a closer look at this side tunnel?”

The Captain stepped across the gap into the shaft, then helped the others across. They found themselves in a long, narrow
tunnel, perhaps five feet high and three feet across, shored with massive timbers similar to those in the Water Pit itself.
Neidelman took a small knife from his pocket and stuck it into one of the timbers. “Soft for a half inch, and then solid,”
he said, replacing the knife. “Looks safe.”

They moved forward cautiously, stooping in the low tunnel. Neidelman stopped frequently to test the solidity of the beams.
The tunnel ran straight ahead for fifty yards. Suddenly, the Captain stopped and gave a low whistle.

Glancing ahead, Hatch could see a curious stone chamber, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter. It appeared to have eight sides,
each side ending in arches that rose to a groined ceiling. In the center of the floor was an iron grating, puffy with rust,
covering an unguessably deep hole. They stood in the entrance to this chamber, each breath adding more mist to the gathering
miasma. The quality of the air had grown sharply worse, and Hatch found himself becoming slightly lightheaded. Faint noises
came from below the central grate: the whisperings of water, perhaps, or the settling of earth.

Bonterre was flashing her light along the ceiling.
“Mon dieu,”
she breathed, “a classic example of the English Baroque style. A little crude, perhaps, but unmistakable.”

Neidelman gazed at the ceiling. “Yes,” he said, “you can actually see the hand of Sir William here. Look at that tierceron
and lierne work: remarkable.”

“Remarkable to think it’s been here all this time, a hundred feet beneath the earth,” Hatch said. “But what was it for?”

“If I had to guess,” Bonterre said, “I would say the room served some kind of hydraulic function, yes?” She blew a long cloud
of mist toward the center of the room. They all watched as it glided toward the grate, then was suddenly sucked down into
the depths.

“We’ll figure it out when we’ve mapped all this,” said Neidelman. “For now, let’s set two sensors, here and here.” He tapped
the sensors into joints between the stones on opposite sides of the room, then rose and glanced at his gas meter. “Carbon
dioxide levels are getting a little high,” he said. “I think perhaps we ought to cut this visit short.”

They returned to the central shaft to find that Wopner had almost caught up with them. “There are two sensors in a room at
the end of this tunnel,” Neidelman said to him, placing a second flag in the shaft’s mouth.