Echoes of the Well of Souls watw-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  “We’ll try not to land if we can avoid it,” she assured him. “What do you think the effect will be of the meteor hitting there?” She knew he’d heard all about it. Everybody had, and it was all anybody was talking about.

  “They will think it a god, or a demon, or both. They will be very afraid.”

  She nodded. “Good. They will avoid the impact area, then. It might actually be safe to at least inspect the area afterward.”

  “What you say is true of the natives, senhora, but I still would not land there or even fly a small plane there.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “Ah—how to put? There are certain people just over the border there who also do not like strangers.”

  He would say no more, but she got the idea. What a place to be heading for! One of the wildest jungles left in the western hemisphere, with snakes and dangerous insects, fierce natives who would see any stranger as a despoiler of their land, and not far away revolutionaries, drug lords, or worse seeing strangers as spies or narcs.

  She went on down to the business center to see if any new information had come through. Terry was on two phones at once but looked up when she saw the scientist walk in.

  “Hold on a minute,” she said into both phones, then said to Lori, “Pick up that line over there—three, I think. You can get more than I can from him.”

  She wanted to ask who “him” was, but the producer was back on the phones again, so she went over, punched line three, and said, “Hello, this is Dr. Sutton.”

  “Ah! Somebody who speaks English, not telebabble!” responded a gruff voice at the other end, a voice with just a trace of a central European accent.

  “And who am I speaking to?” she asked.

  “Hendrik van Home.”

  She knew him at once by reputation. Van Home was something of a living legend among near-object astronomers. “Dr. van Home! It’s an honor. Where are you? Chile?”

  “Yes. Things are going quite crazy here. We’ve had to get the army up to protect us.”

  “You’re under attack?”

  “From the world press, yes! It’s insane! Those people— they think they own you! I am told you are going to try to track it down by air.”

  “If we can, more or less. I doubt if we can be there when it hits, but we should be first over it after it does, I would think.”

  “Ah! I envy you! No one in living memory has seen such a sight! Your account will be very important, Doctor, since you will be first on the scene. By the time that bureaucracy over there gets things set up, the trail will be days or weeks old. You must record everything— everything. Get a dictating recorder.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. “I will. I think I can get one here in the hotel. But—I have no instruments. I’m with that same press, you know, and they’re only interested in the story for the television.”

  “Yes, yes. They said they didn’t have room for such things since they had to have all their own equipment,” he responded with total disgust in his voice. “Nevertheless, the Institute for Advanced Science in Brazil is sending over a basic kit. Get it on board if you can and use it. Tell them it’s a condition of their permission to go. Lie, cheat, steal. They deserve it, anyway. Do whatever you can.”

  “I will,” she promised. “Do you have any hard data on the meteor, so I can know a bit more what to expect?”

  “Not a lot. It is crazy. The spectrum changes almost as you watch. Whatever it is made of defies any sort of remote analysis. It drives our instruments crazy! That is why we cannot even estimate its true mass. Assuming it is very hard mineral, though, we estimate that the object when it hits will be at least a hundred or more meters across. A hundred-plus meters!Think of it! There will be no doubt when this one strikes. It will shake every seismograph in the world. The impact site should be at least the size of Meteor Crater in Arizona, perhaps larger and deeper. There will be a tremendous mass expended into the atmosphere by its impact, so be very cautious. It will also be quite some time cooling, which is just as well. We are all dying to know what its composition is that can give these insane readings.”

  “What do you mean by ‘insane readings’?” she asked him, curious.

  “I mean that from scan to scan, from moment to moment, the instruments start acting like there are shorts in the systems. They’ll give you any result and any reading you want if you just wait. It is almost as if the object is, well, broadcasting interference along a tremendous range. Satellite photos, radar, and laser positioning seem to be the only reliable things we can use. We know what it looks like, more or less—and it’s unexceptional in that regard—and its size, speed, trajectory, and so on, but as to its composition—forget it.”

  That was weird. “What’s the estimated impact time?”

  “If it acts like a conventional meteor and stays true, and if our best guess on mass is correct, and if it remains relatively intact, it is likely to impact at about four-forty tomorrow morning.”

  She nodded. Still in the darkness. If the sky was even partially clear, it should be one of the most spectacular sights in astronomy.

  She thanked van Home and hung up, then turned to Terry. “What’s the weather supposed to be over that area in the early morning hours?”

  “Hold on,” Terry said into the single phone she was now using. “What?”

  “The weather over the region we’re going to. They say impact before dawn, about four-forty.”

  “Scattered clouds, no solid overcast at that hour.”

  “Good. Then we should be in for quite a show.”

  Lori was really getting into it now, the excitement of the event overtaking her fear. This, after all, was the kind of thing that had brought her into the sciences to begin with. Unlike some of the small number of other women in her field who’d studied with her, she hadn’t gone into physics to prove any points. She had gone into it because, as a child, she’d stared up at the Milky Way on cloudless summer nights and imagined and wondered. She had glued herself to televisions during every space shot and had dreamed of becoming an astronaut. She had even applied for the program, but competition was very stiff, and so far NASA hadn’t called.

  NASA and the U.S. Air Force, of course, were tracking the meteor with satellite monitors and airborne laboratories with all the most advanced instruments, but they wouldn’t be allowed in until well after the impact. Lori’s news crew was going to be close, the first ones in, and they would, as van Horne reminded her, have the all-important first impressions. A grandstand seat for the cosmic event of the century.

  Terry hung up the last of the phones. “That’s it,” she said flatly. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “We’re leaving now?”

  “Take your smallest suitcase and just pack three days worth, including some tough clothes just in case we can get down near it.” She looked at her watch. “My God! Three o’clock! Let’s go! We’ve got to be in the air in an hour!”

  They went back up to the room quickly. “What’s the rush? It’s still thirteen hours away,” Lori pointed out.

  “We’re shifting our base for the evening to a private ranch closer to the fun. Took one hell of a lot of work to get permission from them, but they’ve got the only airstrip in the entire region.”

  “I didn’t think anybody civilized lived up there.”

  “Well, ‘civilized’ is a matter of opinion. Francisco Campos isn’t exactly a great humanitarian. More like a cross between the Mafia and the PLO.”

  Lori gave a low whistle. “How’d you ever get him to agree to help us?”

  Terry grinned. “You’d be surprised at the contacts you have to develop in this business. Truth is, he’s so afraid of the inevitable army of media and scientists and government officials, he’s allowed us to be the initial pool while he treads water and tries to figure out how to handle what might be coming. It’s one reason why we’re exclusive in the area. He’s been known to shoot down jet planes with surface-to-air missiles.”

  �
�And they let him just stay there?”

  “He’s inches over the border. He’s worth more than the entire Peruvian treasury and has better arms and maybe a larger army than the government. The Peruvians also have enough trouble with their own revolutionaries, the Shining Path. Sort of a Latin American version of the Khmer Rouge. Compared to them, Campos is a model citizen.”

  In the lobby Lori met the man Terry always referred to as Himself for the first time. He looked tall and handsome and very much the network type; in his khaki outfit, tailored by Brooks Brothers, he looked as if he’d just stepped off a movie set.

  “Hello, I’m John Maklovitch,” he said in a deep, resonant voice that made Terry’s parody seem right on target. “You must be Doctor Sutton.”

  “Yes. Pleased to meet you at last.”

  “Had a problem getting in,” he explained to them. “I wound up having to get here from Monrovia via England, Miami, and Caracas.” He turned to Terry. “Everything set with Campos?”

  She nodded. “As much as can be.”

  “Let’s get cracking, then. It’s going to be one of those long, sleepless nights, I’m afraid.”

  Once up in the air, it was easy to see why the natives would hate strangers. What once had been a solid, nearly impenetrable jungle now had vast cleared areas, and other huge tracts were on fire, spilling smoke into the air like some gigantic forest fire. It was as if the jungle had leprosy, the healthy green skin peeling away, revealing huge ugly blotches that were growing steadily. It was hard to watch, and after a while she turned away.

  Maklovitch was going over his game plan with Terry and working over some basic introductory script ideas. “The equipment already there?” he asked worriedly.

  “They flew it in this morning before coming back for us,” Terry told him. “We have a couple of local technicians from RTB in place and checking it out. When we get there, we’ll do as many standups as they want us to, time permitting, but then we fly. We’ll tape from the plane if we can and do live commentary—audio is firm and direct, and they can pick up the NASA pictures until they get our feeds. It’s the best we could do with the equipment we had available. Plan is to take off about two and take a position on the track of the meteor about four hundred miles out—that’ll be sufficient for us to link via Manaus. Then we follow it in. Plan is, if it comes down anywhere in our area, we’ll find it, circle and shoot what we can, then get back to the ranch and raw feed whatever Gus has along with your standups. Then, if it’s within a couple of hundred miles, we’ll use one of Campos’s helicopters to get in to the site. If it flattens as much of the jungle as they say it will, we might be able to land for a standup. If not, we’ll be able to get some pretty spectacular close-in pictures.”

  “I hope this won’t be like Matatowa,” the reporter sighed. “Everything set up for it to blow, half a million bucks spent, and the damned earthquake hits three hundred miles south. I’d hate like hell to have this thing drop into the lap of ABC.”

  Their attitude was reassuring to the novice scientist. No talk of danger, no talk of risks, no reservations—just how to get the story. It may have been foolish to dismiss those thoughts, but it was also infectious. Maybe one did have to be crazy to do many of the things others took for granted; maybe those who took the risks were the ones who knew how to live, too.

  “You’re going to have to be on your best behavior and bite your tongue at this ranch, Doc,” Terry said to her.

  “Huh?”

  “These are extremely dangerous guys,” she explained. “Nobody knows how many people they’ve killed or what they’re capable of, but no matter how macho or weird they are, go with the flow. I haven’t dealt with these guys face to face before, but I’ve dealt with their type in Colombia. The Nazis must have been like these guys—smart, articulate, well educated mostly, often charming and cultured, but nutty as fruitcakes in the most psychopathic way. No comments, questions, or moral judgments. We’re not here to do their story this time. Let’s just do our job, okay?”

  She nodded. “I’ll try and just stay out of their way if I can. We won’t exactly have a lot of time, anyway.”

  “We’ll probably have one of them with us,” Maklovitch noted. “I seriously doubt if they’re going to like a lot of low-level photography of that region without some controls on their part. They’ll have a man with us and another with the ground station just to make sure that nothing they don’t want seen gets out. Don’t worry too much about it, though; satellites can take better pictures of the region than Gus can.”

  “Like hell,” the photographer growled. “Give me an altitude of just a few hundred feet and I’ll tell you what’s real and what’s camouflage. Besides, we don’t have a lot of satellite coverage in the southern hemisphere. They’ll be on their toes with us. Bet on it.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t you go trying to get away with shots you know are taboo,” Maklovitch warned. “This thing’s dangerous enough as it is. It wouldn’t take much convincing if we were to wind up dead and burned from what they’ll say is a tragic accident with the debris from this meteor. There’re too many of these crackpots down here for us to cause trouble with Campos. Let the powers that be handle that. You just get the shots you’re being paid for and not the kind in the back of the head.”

  The “Seat Belt” sign went on, and they heard the engines slowing; they were coming in on the Campos airstrip.

  Darkness fell fast in the tropics, and it was difficult to see much. It was clear that the strip wasn’t commercial caliber; it was bumpy as hell, and they could hear cinders hitting the wings and underside of the plane as they taxied in and slowed to a stop.

  It was almost seven-thirty; seven and a half hours to go.

  The door opened, and the heat and humidity streamed in. If anything, it seemed far worse than even Manaus, although climatologically there wasn’t a lot of difference. A beat-up old station wagon, a full-sized American model not seen on U.S. roads in a decade, bounced up, and several men got out. They carried submachine guns and looked incredibly menacing.

  One of the men shouted something to them in rapid Spanish, and Terry responded in kind. She turned to them and said, “Everybody’s supposed to get into the wagon and go up to the main house. Air crew, too. They say they’ll unload the rest of the gear and bring it along. I think they’re supposed to search the plane—and the gear— although they don’t say that.”

  “No problem,” responded the voice of the pilot behind them. “They did this earlier today, although Joel and I just had to stand behind the wagon.”

  Terry said something sharply to the men in Spanish, then explained, “I just told them not to touch the communications equipment and relays. If they get out of whack, we might as well not be here.”

  The Americans all squeezed into the wagon, and the driver slid in, put his Uzi between his legs, and roared off. Lori was glad to see that she wasn’t the only one suddenly holding on for dear life.

  The ride was mercifully short, and soon they were in front of an imposing Spanish-style structure that seemed out of place in the middle of nowhere. Three men were waiting, two of whom had weapons and looked like bodyguards; the third was a tall, dignified man who seemed to have stepped out of the pages of some Latin novel. White-haired, including a thick but extremely well-groomed mustache, his skin almost blackened by the tropical sun, he nonetheless was more Spanish than South American and a far cry from the Brazilians they’d been with the past day. He was also the sort of man who clearly had not only been handsome when young but had remanied so into advancing age.

  So help me, he’s even wearing a white suit!Lori thought, somewhat amused in spite of her nervousness at being around so many guns.

  John Maklovitch got out first, followed by the others. He approached the man in the white suit casually and nodded. “Buenas noches,” he said in a friendly and seemingly unconcerned tone.

  “And good evening to you, my friend,” responded the older man in a deep, rich baritone with only a trac
e of an accent. “I am Francisco Campos, at your service. I must apologize for all the guns and procedures, but this is a very dangerous area. To the west, we have some of the most ruthless revolutionaries on this continent; to the east, some of the most savage tribes remaining on Earth. We have a rigid set of precautions, and although some really are not appropriate for your visit, it is easier for my men to maintain their routine. The sort of men who are willing to live out here are not always the most intelligent, but they are good people.”

  “We understand perfectly,” the newsman responded smoothly. “We were a bit concerned that they might disturb our transmitting equipment. It’s delicate and needs to be calibrated as it was in Manaus this afternoon. If it’s thrown out of whack, we will have disturbed you for nothing.”

  “They have been alerted by your technical staff here as to what to look for and what not to touch,” Campos responded. “Please be assured that none of my men will harm your equipment in any way. Of that I can assure you. But come, you will be eaten alive by the insects out here. Come inside and relax. I can get you drinks and perhaps a light supper.”

  “Thank you. Your hospitality is most gracious. Uh—may I present my companions? The air crew you have seen, but this young lady is my producer, Theresa Perez, and this other lady is Doctor Lori Sutton, our science adviser for this story. The tall one here is Gus Olafsson, our cameraman.”

  “Delighted to meet you all,” he responded, bowing slightly. “Perez?” he said quizzically. “You are from a Latin country?”

  “Some say that,” she responded. “Miami, actually.”

  “Cubano?”

  “Partly. My father was—a Marielito. My mother was from Grenada. But I was born in Florida.” She paused. “I apologize and mean no insult, but we have to get set up and in communication with Atlanta. We’ll have to do one or two standups before we take off. They’re already running nearly continuous coverage, and they’ll be expecting us. Perhaps when we are done we can avail ourselves of your generous hospitality, but it is our job.”