The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

  She opened the raft packet and thumbed the button at its top, then waited as it inflated. As soon as it was sturdy and sealed, she tossed it over the lip of the cenote, backed up a few steps, then took a running start and leaped into the air. For a few breathless moments she was weightless, and she tucked her limbs in against her chest, fighting off the panic that flared inside her. Then she hit the water, sending a huge plume upward, and sank down as her suit switched effortlessly over to diving mode. The sudden change in state left her almost euphoric, and she broke the surface half smiling, swimming over to the raft. A few minutes’ work was all it took to secure it to the wall with a short line, to account for some rise and fall of the water level, and then she clambered onto it and began hauling up the boxes.

  They broke the surface, and she held her breath as she checked them over. Still sealed. A few quick movements and she had one of them open, and she sagged with relief as she saw fresh nutrition canisters and batteries, the latter wreathed in a soft glow. The second had line and bolts. She quickly began reloading her stashes, exchanging the scrap of line left over from the Long Drop for fresh spools, wishing her hands would stop shaking.

  She was safe.

  Safe.

  The thought reverberated through her, the first time she’d felt anything better than uneasy and exhausted in days.

  This wasn’t the best place to haul gear to and from, and she wasn’t sure she was prepared to make that ascent two, three, maybe even four times, but that argument could wait until Em came back.

  What mattered was that the cache was here; nobody had snuck in and taken it. The cache was here, and she would have enough time to record Em’s lies. The cache was here, and she could . . . rest, bobbing gently on the surface of this small, sunken lake. She looked out at the water, its surface smoothing out now that she wasn’t disrupting it.

  As she glanced over the readouts on her screen, now settling in the absence of the spores, her gaze dropped to where the videos were stored. Was there any point to watching the other ones? Maybe the last—that way she could see what was coming, just in case she had to go all the way to the final camp. Or was there a video of the sump attempts? She scanned through the list, right hand fiddling in the air as if it were controlling the motion. Finally, she opened the last video, dated several months after the others.

  It was time to see how the cave had killed its explorers before Em had decided to help.

  Chapter Eleven

  Em’s mother looked directly at the camera, but she was unfocused, listless. Her hair was long and unkempt, hanging in lank tendrils around a thin, worn face. The circles under her eyes were dark and swollen and her lips were cracked. There was no trace of the exuberance Gyre had seen in her in the first video.

  “Isolde Arasgain, age twenty-six by Earth reckoning,” said a woman’s voice from off camera. “Formal debrief after Oxsua Mining expedition seventeen, second attempt on location at 40.3719, -82.3983, outside of Hebron Township on colony Cassandra Five. Local date June thirty-third, galactic year twenty-two thirty-two.”

  A shadow shifted on the table in front of Isolde as the interviewer moved away from the camera. She didn’t come into shot.

  “Expedition seventeen consisted of five adults: Halian Foster, Laurent Okeke, Yao Hanmei, Julian Flores, and Isolde Arasgain. Ms. Arasgain is the only member of the expedition to return as of this date. The other four members are reported dead.”

  Isolde’s brow furrowed in pain, but then slackened into exhaustion.

  “Ms. Arasgain, please state for the record your relationship with Laurent Okeke.”

  “Married. Father of my child,” she responded, her voice clipped.

  “How old is your child?”

  “She’s six.”

  “That’s a fun age,” the interviewer said.

  Isolde’s expression didn’t change.

  The interviewer waited a moment longer, then cleared her throat and said, “Please state for the record how long it has been since you emerged from the site outside of Hebron.”

  “A month, give or take,” Isolde muttered.

  “Please speak up and give as exact a number as you can.”

  “Thirty-two days,” Isolde said, her gaze flicking to what Gyre thought was the interviewer. “Give or take.”

  “Thank you. Ms. Arasgain, please describe in your own words why this debriefing has been put off for this long.”

  “I’ve been in treatment for severe dehydration and shock, as well as five broken bones,” she said, then gestured to her left arm. It was in a sling, Gyre realized. She said nothing for a moment, then sighed and looked away. “As well as psychiatric review for—post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “Caused by?”

  “Do I really have to spell it out?”

  “For the record, Ms. Arasgain.”

  Isolde scowled and then shoved her hair out of her face with one shaking hand. “Caused by the deaths of my team. Including Laurent.”

  “Please describe for the record what led to the deaths of Mr. Foster, Mr. Okeke, Ms. Yao, and Mr.—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Ms. Arasgain, we went through this—”

  “Turn off the damn recorder,” Isolde snapped.

  The image lingered for a moment. Then it cut to Isolde in different clothing, her hair scraped back into a bun, sitting in the same room.

  “Resuming debriefing,” the interviewer said. “Ms. Arasgain, please describe for the record what happened leading up to your evacuation from expedition seventeen.”

  Isolde didn’t look much happier this time around, but she looked more in control of herself. Her gaze was focused. “Our team encountered a large sump, the second we had needed to traverse since we’d begun exploring the site. Underground scans had indicated pockets of water, so we had brought in diving equipment, but the second sump appeared to be much larger than the first, which had been more or less a straight shot through a tube. We contacted mission control and they requested that we go ahead and begin mapping the new sump, to see if there was an accessible way through.

  “The sump was larger, but relatively easy to navigate. Not as simple as the first sump, but nothing—concerning. Wide passages, no currents. It took us seven days to find a passage through to a chamber not reachable on foot, mapping as we went and taking precautions to avoid equipment damage. We also found several exits onto pools that were within walking distance of our camp. On the tenth day, we began ferrying the team and our waterproof equipment through the sump to the new chamber. Lau—Mr. Okeke’s rebreather began to malfunction, but we were carrying O2 tanks. We got him through the sump.”

  Isolde stared directly at the camera as she spoke, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She had her arms drawn in tight against her sides, protectively, and her voice was almost robotic. “We decided to stop and repair Mr. Okeke’s rebreather at that point.”

  “Were you carrying any extras?”

  “Yes, two.”

  “Who made the decision to fix the malfunctioning equipment?”

  Isolde’s gaze darted to the interviewer. “We all did,” she said, frowning. “It looked like it could be fixed. No reason to take one of our emergency replacements out of commission when we didn’t know what else was ahead.”

  “Ms. Arasgain, I’m not questioning your judgment,” the interviewer said, her voice softening.

  “Like hell you’re not. I know Oxsua thinks that if it can prove it was—was—human error,” she snarled, “then they can get out of making this right, but—”

  “Isolde,” the interviewer said firmly. “That’s not going to happen. I’ve told you, the families of your team will be compensated—”

  “What about the bodies?”

  “By your own account, we can’t get them back.”

  Isolde said nothing for a long moment, then in a sudden explosion of movement, she unclasped her hands and slammed her fists into the table. Then she shoved her hands into her hair
, clawing at her scalp, and took several deep breaths.

  The interviewer didn’t turn off the camera.

  “So you stayed to fix the rebreather,” the interviewer said after nearly a minute had passed.

  “Yes,” Isolde replied, her shoulders sagging. “Hanmei was familiar with the—the equipment. She’d done the most cave diving out of any of us. Her last job had been on Tullius Twelve, on another Oxsua job.”

  “Was this your first Oxsua job?”

  “No. My third.”

  “Had your previous jobs been on Cassandra Five?”

  “The one before had, but it hadn’t gone very deep—we didn’t find an entrance into the lower caverns. The first one was back home, on Yulo Prime.”

  The diversion made Isolde relax somewhat, and she sat back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Was Ms. Yao able to fix the rebreather?”

  “Yes, though she insisted on using it herself instead of letting Laurent use it again.” She’d abandoned any pretense of formality, her eyes going distant, her mouth tightening. “Said that if it went bad, she’d take responsibility.” Her voice hitched on the last word.

  “How long were you in camp on the other side of the sump?”

  “Three days, maybe four, while she worked on it,” Isolde said.

  “What did you do next?”

  “We decided to explore further. We had about half of our gear through the sump, but we didn’t want to spend time ferrying the rest until we were sure we wanted to keep going.”

  “Your map showed three exits from the chamber reachable without going through other sumps. Is that right?”

  “I . . . Yes, that’s right. We started with the north one.”

  “At what point did the tremors begin?”

  “Weeks before that,” Isolde said. “Though they weren’t as bad.”

  “And after the sump?”

  Isolde shook her head, tapping her fingers on the table. Her sling was gone now, Gyre noted. How far apart had these been filmed?

  “I . . . I don’t remember. Maybe four days after we got through the sump. Sometime around when we started exploring.”

  “Please describe them.”

  “Like an earthquake, I guess. Or the vibrations of loud machinery. It was . . . It was really low, infrasonic maybe. Made your heart—wiggle. Shiver, I guess.” She hunched up in her seat again, pulling one leg up onto the chair. She was wearing loose, nondescript clothing. Hospital issue? “Like strong bass. Up earlier in the cave we’d been able to hear it, like a rumbling sound, but down there we felt it.”

  “And did you see anything?”

  “Not at first.”

  “How often did you hear—or feel—the noise?”

  “A lot. I don’t remember.”

  “Was it constant?”

  “By the time the tunnels came down, yeah. It was.”

  “You’re jumping ahead,” the interviewer said.

  Isolde swore softly but didn’t do anything more than wrap her arms around herself and look away. Gyre watched as minutes ticked by in silence, the interviewer not pressing this time. At last, Isolde shrugged and said, “I guess we’d feel it . . . maybe once every few hours at first. But by the end of that week, when we’d turned back from the last tunnel—the one to the northeast, that led up and around; it dead-ended in a drop-off and breakdown pile, leading to a sump pit that we were planning to explore the next day—when we started coming back, Ha—Mr. Foster, Ms. Yao, and me—by then it was getting close to constant.”

  “Did it get louder?”

  “Are you asking if that thing got closer to us? Yes. It did. Obviously, it did.”

  “But did the noise get louder?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. It got stronger. The night before, I woke up with my chest seizing up. Halian had a coughing fit. Sorry. Mr. Foster.”

  “Refer to them however you’re comfortable with.”

  “Right.”

  “What happened on the day of the event?”

  “The event,” she said bitterly.

  The interviewer once again said nothing.

  Finally, Isolde said, “We were climbing back down toward the camp. There was a tight passage. I’d gone through, and so had Hanmei, and we’d been hearing—feeling—the tremors all day. Halian was halfway through when the rock just—”

  She shook her head, biting at her lip and staring off into the distance.

  “Halian’s spine was broken instantly. We couldn’t see his—his—anything but his legs. I don’t—he died. The gap collapsed with him in it, the rock flowed down like it was water. One minute we could see him and the next there was smooth rock where the tunnel had been, and his legs were on the ground.”

  “Let’s take a break,” the interviewer said.

  “No, let’s not take a break,” Isolde said, her expression darkening. She glared at the interviewer. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re referring to, Ms. Arasgain.”

  “You knew something was down there. That’s why all of us were from off-planet. The locals already knew, didn’t they?”

  “Let me send for a nurse, Mrs. Arasgain. You’re clearly distressed.”

  “What, don’t want it on the record? Well, that’s too fucking ba—”

  The screen went blank.

  * * *

  The visual feed clicked on again. Isolde was standing, her back to the camera, her shoulders hunched forward.

  “Are you ready to continue?” the interviewer said.

  “Might as well get it over with. Where did we leave off?”

  “Mr. Foster,” the interviewer provided.

  Isolde nodded slowly, then turned around and went back to her seat. This section looked like it was the same day as the previous one, though Isolde’s eyes were red-rimmed, and her lower lip was swollen from being chewed on. “So . . . yeah. He—we saw him die. Hanmei and I booked it back to the others. I don’t—do you need to know what we talked about?”

  “Just what you decided to do is fine.”

  “We decided to get the hell out of there,” Isolde said. Her voice was raspy, her throat shot from crying or screaming or both. “Left the gear, suited up to dive. Everybody could feel the tremors by that point, and we could all see the sump was doing—something, but we had to get out. I guess we panicked. I mean, up until then, some of us still thought the collapses and tunnels other teams were finding were boreholes from drills that got there before us, or—or—lava tubes, even though it didn’t make sense. But down there, we knew it couldn’t be either of those things. Hanmei and I saw it happen, and we knew that it was something else, and it hadn’t gone away. So it was maybe five hours after Halian had—that we tried the sump. Hanmei had been up late the night before, and the climb back had been rough. We should’ve waited. We should have . . .”

  As she trailed off, she ran her hands along the edge of the table. Her cuticles were ragged, bleeding in places. “So we went into the sump,” she said. “There’d been a collapse, or a—a shift, and there were currents that hadn’t been there before, strong currents. We almost lost Laurent again; it was like a riptide. Only thing that saved him was that it sucked him to a crevice that narrowed too fast for him to get lodged in. I got him out. But my back was to the others, and there was silt everywhere—we’d lost half our lines, and it was all we could do to get ourselves back to the surface, back where we’d come from.”

  “You mean the camp with the three tunnels out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long did the attempt on the sump take?”

  “I don’t . . . An hour? Maybe half that. Or twice that. I don’t know. Laurent and I got out around the same time. Julian was already there; he’d broken—I don’t know, three ribs in the current. His shoulder, too.”

  “And at what point did you realize Ms. Yao wasn’t there?”

  “Immediately. First fucking thing.”

  “Did you attempt to find her?”

  Rage
passed over Isolde’s face, followed by pain. She whispered, “No.”

  “Did any other member of the team attempt—”

  “No. Laurent was freaking out, and Julian couldn’t swim anymore. We just—we decided she’d made it to the other side. We had to believe she’d made it to the other side, or that she was still down there trying, that she’d be okay.”

  “What did the team do instead?”

  “Lost our shit,” Isolde said, her elbows on the table, her hands fisted in her hair. “Yelled at each other. Julian thought he was going to die, that we wouldn’t be able to carry him out with his injuries. Laurent was spooked. He’d almost died twice in that sump.”

  “And you?”

  “I just sat there mostly. How do you . . . What do you say? When you’ve lost two people in one day? When you don’t know if you’ll make it out, but you have your six-year-old daughter waiting for you to come home? Nothing would have helped.”

  “When did you make your next attempt on the sump?”

  “Maybe a day later,” she said. “Julian wasn’t doing so well, and he was just babbling day and night about how we were going to die, about how Laurent should’ve kept his rebreather because Hanmei was the best swimmer out of all of us, and how we needed her.”

  “Mr. Flores didn’t believe Ms. Yao had made it to the other side?”

  “He thought she would’ve sent us a message. But our receivers were all screwed up, probably from the collapses and everything. We hadn’t heard from anybody since the first cave-in.”

  “So Julian was upset.”

  “Upset? Of course he was upset. I mean, wouldn’t you be? And he was in so much pain, but Laurent wouldn’t let him take any of the stronger drugs because if he passed out and there was another collapse—anyway, I needed to get away from it. I offered to try the sump on my own. Laurent insisted he go too, said it wasn’t safe otherwise. I thought maybe the silt would’ve settled, and the currents maybe would have sorted themselves out, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”