Catacombs

by John Farris

  Oliver carried the bedroll, with three plastic water bottles inside, across his back. Without the ice ax, which he had lashed to one wrist–his miner's habit that had proved worthwhile already on the slippery peak–he could not have gone any distance at all.

  But four hours of clawing, groping, and inching hand over hand toward the top had exhausted him. He crammed the sleeping bag into a space between some boulders that he hoped would not crush him if an especially strong tremor hit. There was no other way to anchor himself on the steep incline. He crawled, shivering, into the bag and rinsed his mouth, having inhaled more fine ash than he thought, then drank as much of the water as he could retain with his stomach cramping from nausea. He lay down on his side, gulping air, hands thrust deep into the bag to find warmth. They hurt him ferociously. In spite of his discomfort and altitude sickness, he dozed.

  Something awakened him a little later; perhaps it was only a lessening of the volcano's amplitude as it rested between eruptions of steam and ash. The freight trains were rolling to a stop and he heard a different, reverberating sound: a helicopter beating its way up the slope. It seemed to be only a few hundred feet overhead.

  Oliver sat up in time to catch a glimpse of the copter's running lights as it hovered in a dense cloud from the crater. The moon's light had been dimmed by the same murky cloud. Oliver couldn't make out the helicopter, which seemed to be dropping slowly to land beside the other one he knew was up there, beneath the sheer rock face by which he had guided himself since the beginning of his climb. Then, in a brilliant blue-tinged flash as lightning arced dramatically out of the fulminating cloud and struck the tip of a rotor blade, he saw the copter and everyone in it clearly.

  Four seconds later, after the helicopter had fallen out of sight, he heard a crash.

  Erika, Tiernan Clarke, and Ned Chakava were on Level One of the Catacombs when they heard Henry Landreth screaming dementedly in the Repository far below.

  They were still in one of the diorama chambers they'd had to pass though in order to reach the pathway that spiraled around the central core. It was a typical room of the Catacombs, familiar to Erika; but the two men, of course, had never seen anything remotely like it. They couldn't be budged for more than half an hour, although the black man at first was in great fear of the creatures that stood, fixed for the ages in lifelike death, in upright tombs of rock crystal which were pure in their transparency but so hard the faceted surfaces couldn't be scratched with a knife. These men, more catlike in appearance than human, were among the elite of the early civilization of Zan, which had stretched in a wide belt across what was then the fertile heartland of Africa. They had flattened but shapely skulls; large, rounded, upstanding ears; blunt noses; and beautiful, yellow-gold, sensitive eyes.

  Erika warned both men not to gaze directly into the eyes of the cat people, and explained why.

  "How did they get this way?" Tiernan Clarke asked. "How did jungle cats turn into men?"

  "I don't know yet. But the answers are here; all that's needed is the time to do the research. The civilization of Zan lasted for a thousand years. Everything they learned and experienced during that time is stored here in the Catacombs. This is more than just a burial place; it's a complete time capsule. Look at that diorama."

  The diorama, a convex three-dimensional mosaic of colored crystals, took up all. of the back wall of the chamber, about a hundred fifty feet from where they were standing. It depicted, with startling clarity and attention to detail, an entire city on a tropical seacoast, the center of which was a plaza composed of numerous platforms of smooth white stone, pyramidal and arrowhead-shaped buildings–also in white–and extensive terraced gardens. The plaza was well populated, and the people, if observed long enough, seemed to be moving. So did men flying above the great plaza in what looked like horseless chariots.

  Other men and women, at a construction site, controlled with beams of light from headdresses huge dressed blocks of stone suspended in the air.

  The effect of the diorama, of a world slowly in motion as it had been ten thousand years ago, was hypnotic.

  "If you watch long enough," Erika said, "it changes from day to night and back again, over a period of about two of our weeks. We decided that the crystals are activated by vibrations from the central core, trillions of vibrations a second, too fast for any of our instruments to detect."

  "How in hell," Clarke wondered, "did they excavate a room this size from solid rock?"

  Then his head shot around at the first scream.

  He thought immediately of the man they had left behind in the antechamber, Simon Ovosi–it was impossible to tell where the sound had come from. Ned Chakava dropped the rifle he was carrying, as if his hands had turned to stone.

  "For Christ's sake!" Clarke said angrily; Ned retrieved the weapon immediately and cocked it. There was another scream, and another, abruptly choked off.

  "Something got him, Guv," Ned Chakava muttered. "Something in this evil place got that man!"

  Clarke shook his head. "Don't be a bloody fool! That wasn't terror we heard. It was–" He glanced at Erika, who looked horrified herself, drained of color in the eternal moonglow of the Catacombs.

  "Rage," she said holding her head. "Frustration? He sounded as if–he were about to go mad."

  "If that was your colleague Henry Landreth," Clarke said, "then he may not be alone. I think we should play your hunch, Erika, and search this Repository you told me about."

  "We don't know–what's going on here–"

  Clarke was wearing a .44 magnum revolver in a shoulder holster. He patted the butt with his right hand.

  "We can take care of ourselves, Erika. Let's all have a whiff of oxygen before we start down–my head is splitting."

  They were still gulping the much-needed oxygen when the second volley of screams reached them. This time the tone was unmistakable, and even more chilling: There was howling murder in his voice. Erika's eyes grew big above the clear plastic mask of the inhaler. Clarke got up restlessly from one knee, lips clamped on an unlit cheroot, and motioned to her.

  The three left the chamber through one of the round ports, about five feet in diameter, that opened directly onto the central core. The path between the great core and the wall was about seven feet wide, spiraling at an easy angle down to the six remaining levels of the Catacombs. The path was not stone but made of a synthetic material that gripped the soles of one's shoes or boots. Yet it was hard enough to resist a knife point.

  As for the core, the faintly blue-tinted energy source which Ned Chakava eyed with suspicion and avoided, pressing close to the wall as they descended, Erika was unable to say what it was or how it was charged. You could touch it, embrace it, fall asleep against it without ill effect. There was no measurable electromagnetic pollution inside the Catacombs, ruling out any known type of generator–except, possibly, the human mind. The core seemed inert, but it provided illumination for many thousands of square feet of chamber on each level; it also provided, mysteriously, for the circulation of the air. And it produced fireballs, attracted them. Again Erika was unable to say how or why.

  They were halfway to the sixth level when an earth tremor jolted the Catacombs. A bad one; unlike other tremors this one seemed to be centered very near the core.

  There was a sound of stress in the rock walls, and the core helix appeared to twist and stretch like ropy candy. They were thrown against one another, against the wall, against the core, then to the path where the tremor sent them bowling. Ned Chakava, who was carrying the bulky oxygen tank on his back, cried out in pain. There was a blushing red shadow deep within the core, pulsing swiftly from bottom to top and back again. It was like a convulsion.

  When the tremor ceased, Clarke pulled Erika to her feet. Ned Chakava had a bleeding head where the oxygen tank had banged against it. He pressed a sodden handkerchief against the wound.

  "Be all right," he said. "But I want to get out of here, Guv."

  "So do I. After we visit the Repo
sitory." He glanced at Erika, who was studying a long crack that had appeared in the wall. Her expression was grim. He cocked his head and smiled tensely.

  "Are you thinking there's a chance the Catacombs could collapse around our ears?"

  "That's the first crack I've seen anywhere, but there must have been earthquakes in the past as powerful as this one. Their entire civilization vanished in a cataclysm, yet the mountain–and the Catacombs–survived."

  "What sort of cataclysm?"

  "A violent change in the earth's electromagnetic field resulted in a shift of the poles about ten thousand years ago. But they had no choice, really. It was that or–"

  The crackling sound of a fireball interrupted her.

  Erika looked around and saw it bounding slowly down the path toward them.

  It was one of the largest plasmoids she'd seen, and even as she realized the potential danger she was fascinated with the glowing beauty of the yellow-orange ball. No laws of science could account for the way this one was moving, or dribbling, toward them; although it left no marks on the path or walls it was intensely hot, like the plasma of the sun.

  Ned Chakava wailed as Erika felt her face glowing from the closeness of the sphere, which had a diameter of at least three feet. It bounded over her just as Tiernan Clarke snatched her roughly to one side, and hovered several feet above their heads. Then it continued on with a sound of bacon frying and settled down, just inches from the path, a few feet below them.

  Ned backed up slowly, forgetting his pain, and bumped into Erika and Clarke.

  "Now what?" Clarke asked.

  "It's ball lightning," Erika explained. "We learned to live with them, but they are scary. This one will just float up against the core after a while and dissipate its energy."

  "What if it doesn't?" he said unhappily. "It's in our way."

  "We'll just have to wait."

  "Until another shaker comes along? I don't think so. Ned, fire into it."

  "No!" Erika said.

  "Why not? That may be a way of getting rid of the damn thing . . . dissipating it, as you say."

  "But–we simply don't know what it is. Matter in some inconceivable state. Some of us used to speculate–that they had intelligence."

  Clarke gave her a jaundiced look. "Ned!"

  The black man reluctantly raised his rifle and fired three quick shots at the fireball. There was no apparent effect as the shots echoed though the Catacombs. And there were no ricochets from the walls. The bullets just disappeared. Ned looked back slowly at Clarke, and shook his head.

  As he did so the fireball began to shrink, and its color changed from a pumpkin color to a dull red. It was a new phenomenon; Erika had never seen one of the plasmoids change shape or color. She felt her heart begin to pound, and it wasn't just the effect of the thin air in the Catacombs.

  The fireball suddenly shot toward Ned.

  There was a popping sound as it touched either Ned or the barrel of his rifle. Ned's eyes stood out in his head. A blue flame like that from a gas jet appeared momentarily around him, like a halo, then the fireball zipped away and Ned collapsed, smoking; the back of his shirt and bush jacket had been burned away, the skin and flesh were crisp. The fireball had passed through him. The barrel of his rifle had fused into a bulbous lump.

  Clarke went down on one knee and tried to find a pulse. There was none. Ned Chakava was dead.

  The trembling of the Catacombs brought Michael Belov around. As soon as he moved, he threw up. Black waves of nausea continued to roll through him even after the tremors of the mountain stopped. There was a roaring in his head that had nothing to do with the lava gases forced through subterranean crevices and into the vents of the crater.

  He didn't know where he was. His eyes wouldn't focus. He turned blindly around and around on the diamond-strewn floor like a lumpy animal trying to be born. Eventually he located the keyhole entrance to the crystal vault and crawled outside. Blood circulating in his head made it ache horribly, but his vision was improving. He sat up, fell over, sat up again.

  Belov looked around the huge chamber–like so many others he'd seen–with its moody sepulchral lighting in which all flesh was the color of bone, and the faces of entombed creatures took on a life of the imagination. His head was exploding with each convulsive breath, but still there wasn't enough air for his lungs. He thought he might be dying. Like Henry.

  Or was Henry already dead? Belov saw him lying, sprawled on his back, just a few feet away.

  Needed oxygen, Belov thought. But the oxygen was exhausted. They'd come a long way since using the last of it, Henry dying with every step. But somehow he'd made it–here.

  To the Repository.

  Belov rose on one knee and waited until a surge of dizziness receded. He wondered if he was actually hearing gunshots, or if it was just a hallucination produced by his battered brain. A clock ticked inside him, faster than his frantic pulse, urging him on; getting close to panic time. But what did it mean? There was a deadline to meet, an appointment to keep–he couldn't remember. Something big, however.

  He staggered half a dozen steps and went down on all fours beside Henry Landreth.

  There was a great deal of blood on Henry's face, his clothes, the floor. He'd been coughing and spitting blood for more than a day, fluid from the drowning lungs, bits of lung tissue as well. But this had been a catastrophe, a final hemorrhage.

  Belov tried to locate the pulse in Henry's slack throat. Bad news. Henry had been about to do something vital for him. It had to do with the red diamonds. But they were all gone, at least the ones that mattered. Plenty of red stones secure in their crystal sockets, only they weren't the right stones, and this discovery had sent Henry into a rage. What a pretty picture the stones would make for the satellite if only–

  The Russian held his whirling head, and rested. It was almost clear to him now what he was doing here, but focusing precisely on his task still required too much of an effort. The odor of congealing blood sickened him. Too late for Henry, but all appointments had to be kept. Tomorrow was another day, of course, but never postpone until tomorrow what you can do today, particularly when there's only a few hundred feet of cracking, heaving granite between oneself and an unimaginable quantity of gaseous magma.

  He looked at the face of his chronometer, trying to concentrate. The dial was readable. The date was the twenty-third. Of May, he remembered, and almost grasped the significance of it. But he was distracted by another scattered piece of memory falling into place. Henry trying to strangle him, his surprise at the devastating strength of a man who should not have been able to stand unaided. The power of rage. And Henry had nearly succeeded in killing him. He'd been a total fool. Off guard.

  So if it was nearly ten o'clock at 37 degrees and 39 minutes east longitude, three degrees south latitude, seven o'clock Greenwich, then what time was it in Moscow? And what did it matter?

  The satellite, of course!

  The satellite was coming, the sophisticated Molniya with multiple antennae capable, in perigee, of scooping up the myriad tiny signals from his phototransmitter and, hours later over Moscow, in the early morning, reproducing in excellent detail the series of photos that proved the existence of the Catacombs.

  He would have, he recalled, from 1:06 to 1:18 A.M. to relay the photos. He had also hoped to send a message that he'd found the bloodstones they desperately wanted. But Kumenyere had them now, according to Henry, and Moscow would just have to pay his price.

  Belov had all of his equipment with him, and the photos he'd taken in other chambers. They were in the pack he'd carried with such difficulty down seven levels to the Repository, along with Henry Landreth. His problem now was to get out of the Catacombs in time.

  He knew he was deep in the mountain, and he had no idea of what lay beneath him. But the floor was hot. He didn't think it had been this hot to the touch an hour or two ago. The big pancake of blood Henry had spouted onto the floor had not fully coagulated.

  Overhead
three fireballs had appeared, shedding light. He was accustomed to them by now. They hovered twenty feet off the floor over Henry's body, varying in color from pale blue to red. He looked again at Henry's pinched face, at the bloody fingertips of one hand, and saw that Henry had been writing something on the floor when he died.

  Belov took a close look at the symbols Henry had scrawled, childishly large, with his own thick dark blood. Three long rows of equations which Belov was unable to decipher. But obviously Henry had thought that it was important enough, as he lay gasping and vomiting his lungs out, to get it all down.

  This had to be Henry Landreth's translation of the FIREKILL formulae.

  Belov, sufficiently excited to overcome his pain, went for his pack and took out a Polaroid SX-70 camera with flash attachment. He photographed the equations from every angle, made certain that the prints were sharp and he hadn't missed anything. Let the physicists of the U.S.S.R. figure out what was meant. But Belov had his hunch: This was Henry's ultimate vindication, and the only revenge he could take on Robeson Kumenyere.

  He had not paid much attention to the fireballs since their appearance, but their light seemed brighter. When he looked up he saw them circling each other, a display he found somewhat ominous but fascinating. He picked up his pack and put it on, adjusted the straps. This effort almost sent him reeling with dizziness again; he was in precarious shape for a long walk up and out of the Catacombs.

  He sat down until the black corona around his brain receded and the pounding of blood in his temples became bearable. But the floor was hot, too hot, he had to get up again. He knew he should rest, despite the counterurging of his internal clock; but he decided to push on to the next level, and away from the danger he sensed here.