Somehow he had to find a way to do things differently from the others, quickly and as often as alternatives, no matter how seemingly illogical, occurred to him, or he would surely die like them, and at the moment the only thing he could think of to do that the amateur and professional cavers and team of Army Rangers had certainly not done during their descent down the glacier wall was to turn off the powerful light mounted on his helmet, and the instant he did so he was enveloped in a darkness so complete and almost palpable, and he felt so alone, that it paradoxically reminded him of the shimmering light on the surface of the glacier he now embraced and the scene of spiritual and physical chaos that had greeted him when he had arrived at the site the day before, parked his rented snowmobile at the edge of a sort of improvised “lot” filled with other snowmobiles, dogsleds, cross-country skis, and snowshoes, and then climbed up the polar white and emerald green face of the glacier on crude steps that had been cut into the ice.
At the top he put on his sunglasses and scanned the area, which was littered with garbage, portable toilets, multicolored pup tents, rough wooden crosses mounted on tripods, scattered urine and feces stains, improvised lean-tos, three igloos, and even a large, prefabricated aluminum Quonset hut he presumed had been erected by the missing five-man team of Army Rangers that had disappeared a week before into the cave that so far had claimed seventeen lives.
After forty-five minutes of walking around the campsite, occasionally peering into sleeping bags, he had not found the boy, which disappointed and surprised him, but he did find Dylan Parker. The tall man with the full head of bushy white hair and piercing blue eyes swimming with madness was standing at the head of a knot of his followers staring, transfixed, at the entrance to the cave, a secret tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of years old finally revealed, millimeter by millimeter, by the eonslong whisper of a receding glacier. The opening in the stone—merely the top of an ice-blocked cave entrance estimated to be upwards of two hundred feet high—was perhaps two feet at its highest point, twenty-five yards long, as black as a stain of India ink splashed against the gray-brown rock of the mountain that erupted like a great god’s tooth from the bluish-white gum of the ice sheet that encased it.
As if sensing Brendan’s presence, Dylan Parker suddenly wheeled around, and his eyes with their gaze that was slightly manic even when he was calm suddenly glittered with excitement. He threw back his head and shouted like a man in the throes of ecstasy, “Priest!”
“Hello, Dylan,” Brendan said, and winced when the tall man threw his long arms around him and squeezed.
“Even you know it’s true this time, don’t you?” Parker shouted hoarsely in Brendan’s ear. “It’s why you’ve come to join us!”
“Take it easy, will you, Dylan?” Brendan said not unkindly, extricating himself from the cult leader’s grip and stepping back. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m here on business.”
Dylan Parker shook his head determinedly. “God’s business. The fact that you’re here is one more sign.”
“I gave up the presumption of trying to know God’s business ten years ago, Dylan. It’s the same situation as when I met you the first time. I’m looking for another kid.”
The big man in the silver and orange parka spread his arms in a gesture that seemed at once benediction and supplication. “Why bother? In a very short time you’ll be reunited with everyone you’ve ever loved or looked for, have everything you ever wanted or thought you wanted. We all will. We’re going to heaven.”
“His father doesn’t want him going to heaven just yet, at least not without his medication. I was certain he’d be with you, and if he’s not, I’ve wasted a lot of my time and his father’s money. He’s a nineteen-year-old boy by the name of Hector Martinez. Is he here, Dylan?”
“Yes,” the other man said simply.
Brendan let out a deep breath he had not even been aware he was holding. The simple affirmation meant he had not traveled more than six thousand miles by jumbo jet, bush plane, dogsled, and snowmobile for nothing. “Thanks, Dylan. I appreciate it.”
“What are you thanking me for, Priest?” Parker asked, a slight edge to his voice. “My telling you that Hector is here? You know I don’t ask anyone to follow me against his will. People who are with me are free to come and go as they wish. I don’t hide things, and I don’t try to brainwash anybody.”
“I’m aware of that, Dylan. Where is he?”
“In town getting supplies. He should be back in an hour or so.”
“I hope he took a barrel of cash. The Indians in that native village are having a field day, thanks to you. It’s costing me two hundred dollars a night to stay in a tool shed with a kerosene heater, and that snowmobile I rented must have been the last one in town because it’s costing me three hundred and fifty dollars a day. The Indians should give you a cut, or at least make you an honorary tribal chieftain.”
“I have my own money,” Dylan Parker said stiffly. “It’s given to me by my followers of their own free will, and it all flows back to them. You know that, Priest. If you thought I was a thief, I suspect your attitude toward me would not be quite so benign. I helped you find that girl; she wanted to go back with you to her family, and I didn’t object in the least.”
Brendan sighed, and then nodded in the direction of the black gash in the mountainside at the edge of the glacier. “Just what is it you think is down there?”
“The end of the world. Jesus is coming.”
“Out of the cave?”
“I’m not sure what’s coming out of the cave. Perhaps Jesus—perhaps demons, or angels. It doesn’t matter. It’s the end of the world as we know it, because Jesus is coming back to rule His kingdom.”
Brendan grunted. “You thought it was the end of the world five years ago, Dylan. You and twenty-seven of your followers, including the girl I was hired to find, went to New Mexico and sat in the desert for a month, waiting, until your food and money ran out, and you all decided that your timetable had been a bit off. What makes you so certain you’ve read the schedule right this time?”
Dylan Parker pushed a long strand of white hair out of his eyes and back under the hood of his parka, then half turned and waved his right hand to indicate their surroundings. “Look around you, Priest. There are hundreds here, camped out in the cold. They’re not here because I told them to come. They’re here because of the discovery of the cave; they’ve been called to this desolate place by God to witness the beginning of our entrance into Paradise.”
“They’re here because they read or heard news reports about the cave and your prophecy, Dylan. The entrance to a cave that’s been hidden since at least the last ice age suddenly appears and starts swallowing up people, and then somebody with your charisma starts telling everybody it’s a sign of the Second Coming. It’s powerful imagery, and it appeals to a lot of people who are miserable with the present version of their lives. They want an easy way to start over, and they think a Second Coming will give it to them. Also, it’s Millennium Fever. You’re going to see a big increase in this kind of nonsense in the next few years.”
Parker squinted. “You may call it nonsense, but the fact that you’ve come here, for whatever reason, is still a sign. It’s what God wants.”
“If you say so.”
“Why did the Church excommunicate you, Priest?”
The abrupt change of subject, and the question itself, startled Brendan, and he was momentarily taken aback. “It’s none of your business, Dylan,” he replied at last, softly, and twenty-four hours later, suspended in darkness and listening to the faint but distinct scratching sounds of moving things on the stone of the cave floor far below him, he realized that what he was feeling was the same almost overpowering sense of mystery and awe he had once experienced when entering a church and thinking it was God’s home. He was as surprised at the intensity of the emotion as he was by his lack of fear. Although he had not yet even made it to the floor of the cave, and was surrounded by clicking and scratching sounds that could signal the presence of whatever it was that had killed the others, he was not sorry he had begun this journey into a place possibly millions of years old where humans had only recently come, and disappeared. He knew what he had told Philip Imukpak, and he knew what he had told himself, but now he wondered if the real reason he had started on this journey was to experience an emotion, a kind of ecstasy, he had thought lost to him forever, as well as a kind of faith as powerful as any he had ever felt.
He could traffic in crackpot ideas with the best of them, Brendan thought as he smiled grimly to himself in the darkness; he actually believed that he was not going to die in this cave.
He estimated it had been more than five minutes since he had turned off the lamp on his helmet, and the scratching sounds in the darkness below him had become even more pronounced. When he heard something climbing up the ice wall toward him, he locked off the bosun’s chair on the line, then took his automatic and a powerful flashlight out of the smaller pack strapped to his chest. He aimed the flashlight down into the darkness, flipped the switch.
“Christ!” Brendan cried out when he saw the black, leathery thing with long fangs and claws and no eyes clinging to the ice wall barely two feet below him.
He was about to fire the gun when the thing began to thrash wildly in the bright light, then lost its grip on the ridged ice. It emitted an extremely high pitched squealing sound as it plummeted to the stone floor below, where it exploded in a burst of blood, bone, and tissue that appeared black in the beam of light. When Brendan swept the beam across the floor, two other black leather creatures shuffled away into the darkness, their extended claws clicking and scratching on the stone.
The creatures looked like bats, Brendan thought—except that they were almost the size of a man and waddled like penguins rather than flew.
And they were obviously carnivorous; as he continued to sweep the beam of the powerful flashlight across the floor he could make out bloodstains, scattered bones with pieces of flesh still clinging to them, and scraps of clothing. However, he did not see any army uniforms or equipment, and he did not see a green-checked flannel shirt or red cap.
This sealed-off, domed entrance to the cave system was the size of a massive cathedral, and tributary caves of various sizes radiated off from the stone wall in all directions, at varying heights, and Brendan knew that, even without the threat of the creatures in the darkness who viewed him as their latest entree, it was hopeless to even think of trying to explore all of them. He needed a sign—and he received it.
When he swept the beam of light across the curved wall to his Left, his heart began to pound, not with fear but with hope. At the mouth of one of the larger tributary caves, placed on top of a pile of stones as if it had been left there intentionally, was a red baseball cap.
He knew he could descend to the bottom of the hall and climb up a slope of riprap to the cave, but the stone floor, with its pools of gore, did not look like a particularly safe place to be. Consequently he pushed off the ice wall at an angle, swung out, then extended his legs and pushed off even harder, in the opposite direction, when he came back to the wall. After fifteen minutes of considerable exertion the arc of his swing carried him over the ledge that held the pile of stones and red cap. He released the safety mechanism on his rigging, dropping to the ledge. He immediately grabbed for the rope, but missed; the line swung away into the darkness, out of reach. It meant he would have to descend to the killing floor to climb back up, but Brendan decided that was the least of his worries at the moment. He picked up the cap, stepped into the mouth of the cave.
“Hector!” he shouted. “Hector, can you hear me?” He waited, listening, but heard nothing but the hollow echoes of his own voice, and then silence once more.
“Hello, Priest,” Hector Martinez said evenly as he pulled his red supply-laden snowmobile into the area near the edge of the glacier where Brendan was waiting, cut the engine, and got off.
“You don’t look surprised to see me, Hector.”
The slight boy with the handsome face and hair and eyes as black as Brendan’s merely shrugged. “My dad sent you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to try to persuade me to go back?”
“If I did try, would I have any chance of success?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t try.”
The boy looked up, fixed Brendan with his sad eyes. “It’s almost time, you know. Jesus is coming out of the cave. I want to be here to meet Him.”
“Fine. You’re of legal age now, Hector. Nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do. If you want to sit around on a glacier and wait for Jesus to step out of a cave that’s already killed seventeen people, that’s your privilege. It’s not like when you used to run away and spend time at the shelter.”
Hector Martinez raised a brown hand to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight reflected off the ice and snow around them. “Then why are you here?”
“To deliver a message.”
“What message?”
“Is there someplace we can go to sit down and talk, Hector? Maybe the Quonset hut? It looks like the state troopers have set up some kind of first aid station there.”
“I want to get back to my friends, and I have these supplies to take to them. Why don’t you just say whatever it is my father paid you to come all this way to say?”
Brendan studied the boy, felt anger and frustration rising in him. “All right, Hector,” he said abruptly. “Your mother’s dead. She died in an automobile accident three weeks ago. Your father thought you should know.”
Brendan waited for the boy’s reaction. He was prepared to take Hector Martinez in his arms to comfort him, but the boy did not seem particularly shocked, or saddened. His eyes misted, and a single tear roiled down one cheek, but that was all. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “We’ll be together again very soon.”
“Come back with me, Hector. Your father would very much like you home with him. He loves you. Nothing is going to happen here, except that you’re going to get older, wetter, dirtier, and more miserable.”
The boy slowly, firmly, shook his head. “The world is going to end. Jesus is coming. I have to be here to meet Him.”
“I’ve brought you something.”
“What?”
Brendan took the dark orange plastic prescription bottle out of one of his pockets in his parka, offered it to the boy. “Your lithium.”
Hector Martinez looked at the bottle in Brendan’s outstretched hand, took a step backward. “You know I won’t take that stuff, Priest. God doesn’t want me to poison my body with drugs. The doctors couldn’t get me to take it before, and I won’t take it now.”
“This isn’t for your body, Hector, and you know it. It’s for your mind. You’re a severe manic-depressive, and God put a lot of you on this earth. Fortunately, God also made lithium. It’s not poison; it won’t alter your thoughts, and it won’t do your thinking for you. What it will do is give you a level emotional playing field to stand on. It will help you to think straight, and you’ll feel better. You’ll know you don’t really want to be here. You’ll understand that you’re squandering your place in the world, your life, by sitting around and waiting for it all to end. People who think the world is going to end and that Jesus is coming back really want to end their own lives because they’re unhappy; they want God to end it all for them, painlessly, and then give them a brand new off-the-shelf Life that Jesus won’t allow them to foul up. I’d have more sympathy for them if they weren’t so eager for God to take everyone else’s life, too. Take the medicine, Hector. Go back home to mourn with your father, and stop all this stupid screwing around. You’ve wasted enough of your Life because you wouldn’t do what your doctors recommended, and your life isn’t going to end now just because you want it to.”
The boy stiffened. “Just because you don’t have faith, Priest, is no reason why I shouldn’t. Jesus is coming soon, and I’m going to be here to meet Him.”
“Goodbye, Hector,” Brendan said quietly to Hector Martinez as the boy snatched a box off the snowmobile, then turned and started up the steps carved in the ice, and Brendan was still haunted by the conversation as he walked through the intricate labyrinth of caverns, leaving chalked blaze marks on the walls, calling the boy’s name, and at the same time experiencing an ever-increasing sense of awe as he passed running streams and coursing rivers, night meadows of strange, dark plants, some as tall as trees, none of which had ever been exposed to a single ray of sunlight. He found the corpse of one of the black, leathery creatures that had apparently died of natural causes, examined it and knew what it was, which he could not say about the myriad other creatures that appeared in increasing abundance as he traveled ever deeper into the mountain, ever closer to the unsuspected heat source three miles to the north that gave life to this world and had sustained the Givers, whose artifacts were strewn all over the caverns. But he had not found the boy, and even in his rapt awe and astonishment he remained haunted by their last conversation, as he had been haunted the night before as he’d lain awake in the tool shed, staring at the glow of his kerosene heater and knowing that in the morning he would cancel his reservation with the bush pilot and return to the glacier and the ages-old secret it had only recently begun to reveal.
“You don’t look like the type.”
Brendan turned from the cave opening, found himself looking into the handsome, brown face of an Eskimo, one of the state troopers who occasionally stopped by and stayed for a day or two in the Quonset hut, which they had made their headquarters. “What type is that?”
“An end-of-the-worlder.”
“What does an end-of-the-worlder look like?”
The trooper casually swept his arm around to indicate the others scattered over the ice, Dylan Parker and his followers. “Like those people.”
Brendan grunted. “I’m surprised you haven’t sealed off the cave entrance, or at least posted a guard to make sure nobody else goes down there.”
The Eskimo shrugged. “This is Alaska. Here, we let people do pretty much as they please.
“Even if it pleases them to kill themselves?”
“Alaska has a high suicide rate; I suspect a lot of people come here to kill themselves, although they may not realize it. We come around to keep an eye on things, but if anybody is stupid enough to go down there after seventeen people, including expert cavers and a team of Army Rangers, have disappeared, it’s their problem.”
“Sometimes people have to be protected from themselves.”
“Not in Alaska; Alaskans don’t like to be protected from themselves, which is one reason they come to, or stay in, Alaska. Besides, these people won’t be here much longer. If they think it’s cold up here now, wait another month. Our summers don’t last long.”
“When winter comes, do you think the glacier will seal off the cave again?”
“No. It’s been slowly receding for the past seventy-five years. In another thousand years or so, the entire entrance will probably be exposed.”
“What happens with the cave now?”
“This is federal land, so it’s the Feds’ call, but the last I heard NASA is sending a team of scientists here. They’re going to try to modify one of their robot explorers, then lower it down there to have a look-around with a TV camera. I wish them lots of luck. We’ve got seismic readings showing there are hundreds of miles of caves honeycombing not only that mountain, but the two on either side of it as well, and they’re all interconnected. The system may be bigger than Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Caves combined. We may never know what killed those people. The Rangers went down there loaded for bear, with everything from gas masks and oxygen tanks to machine guns; the problem is that whatever it is down there killing people isn’t a bear.” The trooper paused, looked hard at Brendan. “You’re Brendan Furie, aren’t you? The man they call Priest.”
“I’m not a priest,” Brendan replied, making no effort to mask his surprise.
“But you used to be. You were excommunicated for some reason. I’ll bet the Church fathers are sorry about that now.”
“Somehow, I doubt it. How do you know who I am?”
“You’re very modest, Furie. There’s been a lot written about you. You work now as a private investigator.”
“I investigate sometimes, privately, but I’m not a private investigator in the usual sense. I do a lot of work for social agencies, private, state, and federal, and for a private foundation that studies human belief systems.”
“You search for troubled children.”
“Sometimes for troubled children, but there are a lot of troubled adults, too. The things that people believe sometimes get them into a lot of trouble, and I’m occasionally hired to get them out of it.”
“I’m Philip Imukpak,” the Eskimo said, removing a glove and extending his hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Furie. You do good work.”
“Not always,” Brendan said quietly as he shook the trooper’s hand, and then glanced back at the black gash between ice and rock.
“I take it you’re here looking for somebody. You need help?”
“No. I found who I was looking for yesterday—a nineteen-year-old boy by the name of Hector Martinez.” He paused, swallowed hard. “He stole some equipment, tied a rope onto one of the pitons left in the rock, and went into the cave last night.”
“Oh, Jesus,” the trooper said softly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. It’s my fault.”
“That sounds like a pretty heavy load to put on yourself, Furie.”
“But it’s a true load. We had a conversation yesterday, and it went badly. I botched it.”
“It still sounds like a pretty heavy load to put on yourself.”
Brendan took his gaze from the cave entrance and looked into the other man’s face. What he saw there was decency, honesty, and courage. He liked and trusted the face with its soulful brown eyes; it was a face to which he could confess, and so he said, “Hector’s a diagnosed manic-depressive, severely emotionally disturbed. I’ve known him for years, from a shelter for runaway children where I serve as a counselor. He always resisted taking the medication that would help him, and so he would suffer psychotic episodes and have fantasies that only reinforced his decision not to take his medication. Three weeks ago his mother died, and his father hired me to try to find him, give him the bad news, and then once again try to get him to come home and get the proper treatment. One of his strongest fantasies has always been that the world was going to end any day, and that he would get to meet Jesus. When I read about this cave, and heard that Dylan Parker was here on another one of his end-of-the-world vigils, I had a pretty good idea I’d find Hector here. I was right. I gave him the bad news, but I didn’t get him to go home. I was tired, and I got impatient. I should have handled it differently.”
“It sounds to me like he might have gone down into the cave anyway.”
“No. He was willing to wait for Jesus to come out. He’s gone down there to meet his dead mother. It’s why I have to go down after him.”
The trooper was silent for some time, studying Brendan’s face. Finally he said carefully, “You want to die because you think you made a mistake?”
“I don’t want to die; I don’t plan to die.”
“That sounds like a belief that could get you into a lot of trouble.”
“It’s something I have to do,” Brendan said quietly.
Again, the Eskimo was silent for some time as he stared into Brendan’s midnight eyes. Finally he nodded, said, “Yes. I can see that. When do you plan to go?”
“Now.”
“Have you ever done any rock climbing or caving?”
“No.”
“Do you have any equipment?”
“The rope Hector used is still attached to the piton. I was hoping to borrow or buy whatever else I might need from the other people around here.”
“Come with me, Furie.”
Brendan followed Philip Imukpak across the width of the glacier, past pup tents and sleeping bags and lean-tos and the blank-faced people who occupied them, to the Quonset hut. The layout inside the metal dome was simple, with wooden slats for floorboards, three kerosene heaters strategically placed at intervals around the perimeter, three cots draped with thick down sleeping bags, an electric generator, and a butane cooking stove on which a pot of coffee simmered. In one corner was a mound of dun-colored equipment—canvas bags, ropes, chain, battery powered lanterns and flashlights, automatic weapons.
“This is extra equipment the Rangers left behind,” the trooper continued. “I’ll show you how to use it. I don’t think you’ll want to lug everything. The Rangers went down loaded to the ears and armed to the teeth, and it doesn’t seem to have done them much good. I suggest you travel light in order to conserve energy.”
“Agreed,” Brendan said, and watched as Philip Imukpak began to remove various pieces of climbing equipment from the bags and spread them out over the makeshift floor. He was struck again by how much he instinctively liked and trusted this man, who was willing to offer so much help and ask so few questions. He continued, “I told you I didn’t handle this business with Hector well. I made a similar mistake once before. I bungled an exorcism.
The trooper stopped what he was doing, glanced up at Brendan. He was too polite to laugh, but curiosity mixed with amusement was clearly reflected in his dark brown eyes. “You bungled an exorcism?”
Brendan smiled thinly. “In a manner of speaking, yes. I agree it sounds funny; it would be funny if a woman hadn’t died as a result of things I did—and didn’t—do. It’s why I was excommunicated.”
The laughter left the other man’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Brendan nodded curtly. “The lesson is that you shouldn’t do things you don’t believe in.”
“Did you believe then?”
“No; not in demonic possession—and so I didn’t believe in exorcism.
“Then why did you do it?”
“I was ordered to. I should have refused, but I didn’t. It was Church politics. The girl I was supposed to exorcise was the daughter of a very wealthy and powerful man. She was another runaway, staying at the shelter where I counsel. The father gave a great deal of money to the Church, and played golf every week with the cardinal of our archdiocese. The girl’s story was that her father’s closest business associate, who also happened to be her mother’s lover, was repeatedly raping her. The father just couldn’t accept this; it was impossible for him to accept that all of this could be happening right under his nose, and so he decided that his daughter must be possessed in order to make up such a story. He asked his friend the Cardinal to arrange for an exorcism. The Cardinal was no fool; he knew he could never get Rome to approve the procedure and send one of their trained exorcists based on the evidence that was presented, and so he pressured me into doing it, simply to mollify the father. I investigated, determined that the girl was telling the truth, and I went to the mother to offer her my help in straightening out the mess. Big mistake. I didn’t handle that conversation any better than I handled the one with Hector. The mother ended up killing herself rather than face what she thought would be the shame and humiliation of having the truth come out.”
Philip Imukpak made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a hum. “Rome needed someone to blame, and you were it.”
“Something like that. They weren’t wrong. The point is that if that woman had disappeared into a cave instead of jumping off the roof of their mansion, I’d have gone after her, too.”
“You got the short end of the stick.”
“On the contrary. Now I consider my excommunication a great gift. It changed my life for the better, and I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to do some of the things I’ve done—except for times like yesterday. If Hector is dead, at least maybe I’ll be able to recover his body and take it back to his father.”
The trooper simply nodded, then went about instructing Brendan in the use of the bosun’s chair and other equipment laid out on the floor. When he had finished, he helped Brendan put on back and chest packs, and the rigging he would use to lower himself to the cave floor. Brendan gripped the other man’s shoulders and nodded, then headed for the door.
“You want company?”
Surprised as much by the trooper’s casual tone as by the question itself, Brendan paused in the doorway of the Quonset hut, turned back. The Eskimo had picked up a pack and coil of rope, and was looking at Brendan inquiringly.
“What?”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“I don’t understand. You’re convinced I’m going to die. Why should you be willing to die with me?”
“I’m not convinced you’re going to die. And you are a man I would go into those caves with, Priest.”
Brendan was silent for some time, staring at the other man. Finally he said, “That’s the finest compliment I’ve ever received, Philip. Thank you.”
Imukpak grinned, revealing bright, even white teeth. “Of course, I’m also curious.”
Brendan grinned back. “Well, that’s understandable.”
“My curiosity is a bit more involved than you may think. We Inuit have a very curious Creation myth. It concerns a species of godlike creatures we call the Givers. Actually, the Givers were somewhat flawed gods—not very pleasant to be around. They rounded us up, used us as beasts of burden, and even ate us. The Givers had already lived for millions of years before the Inuit came into being, building a great city inside mountains that were near a volcano—a kind of underground Garden of Eden, if you will. They survived through many ice ages inside those mountains. But then the volcano died, and the Givers died with it when the ice and snow came again. But we didn’t die. The Inuit could live in the cold, using the things we had learned from the Givers to survive right up to the present day.”
Brendan turned around, gazed across the ice sheet toward the rock face and the entrance to the cave. “That mountain’s an extinct volcano?”
“Not that one. But the one behind it is. Interesting, no?”
Brendan turned back. “Your reason doesn’t sound as good as mine.”
Imukpak thought about it, then shrugged and dropped the pack and coil of rope to the floor. “You’re probably right. Good luck, Priest.”
“I’ll let you know what I find,” Brendan said, and thought now as he walked in the direction of the boy’s answering shouts that Philip Imukpak, and not a few other people, would be more than a little interested in what was in the caves.
He found Hector Martinez in what could only be described as a chapel, sitting on a stone bench. Strewn about him were dead batteries. The faint glow from his flashlight was just barely enough to illuminate the mummified remains of what could only be a Giver priest slumped over the raised stone rectangle of what could only be an altar. Brendan went to the boy, and they embraced. Then Brendan set out four flares, which were sufficient to light the entire chamber. He turned off his lantern, sat down next to the boy, and put his arm around him. “I’m so sorry about your mother, Hector.”
Tears sprang to the boy’s eyes, rolled down his cheeks. “Yeah. Me too. I’m really happy to see you, Priest.”
“And I’m really happy to see you.” Brendan paused, smiled at the boy, and added carefully, “From the looks of all the extra batteries you brought with you, I’d say you weren’t all that certain you wanted to die just yet. Also, you left your cap to show which cave you’d gone into. Am I right in assuming that you might want to live a little bit longer—or at least not die down here?”
Hector Martinez slowly nodded his head. He seemed transfixed by the figure on the altar, and by the myriad of paintings and stone sculptures illuminated by the flares. “What were those … things … that came after me?”
“If you’re referring to those big, black, ugly critters back by the entrance, my guess is that they’re mutated bats—carnivores. They’re a hell of a lot bigger than any of the other animals I’ve seen down here, so they must be at the top of the food chain. That means there aren’t too many of them, and they’re probably normally scattered all over the place. When people started coming down here, it was like the call went out, ‘Look what’s coming for dinner,’ and they started congregating around the entrance to wait for their next meal to drop in. It’s possible you and I got through because they’re pretty full right now, and not as aggressive—or hungry, or as numerous as they were when the others went down. In any case, they can be handled if we keep our eyes and ears open. They’re blind, but they must have residual photoreceptors in their skulls because they don’t like it when you shine a bright light on their heads. If all else fails, I have a gun and lots of ammunition with me.”
The boy slowly looked around him, then again fastened his gaze on the mummified priest, shuddered. “It’s horrible.”
“Horrible? I think this is a pretty cool place.”
The boy looked at Brendan, laughed nervously. “That’s only because you’re pretty cool.”
“Hector,” Brendan said seriously, “these caves are a place of wondrous mystery, and what’s to be found here will change the world forever.”
“How could it be, Priest? How could this place be?”
“At the bottom of the ocean there are animals, giant tube-worms and blind crabs, that thrive in very small areas around volcanic vents erupting from the ocean floor. They live solely on the warmth and nutrients that spew out of the vents, without benefit of sunlight or any other food. There’s also an ancient rock structure, called the Burgess Shale, where there are the fossil remains of millions and millions of tiny, wondrous creatures that all lived, evolved, and finally became extinct, all in an area of a few square miles at most. These species existed over millions of years in that one area, and no trace of them has ever been found anywhere else. Now think of what you have down here; it’s the Burgess Shale phenomenon magnified thousands of times, and it’s still alive. You have a living ecosystem, an entire world that has evolved over millions of years and is still evolving, in the total absence of photosynthesis. That, my friend, is truly remarkable—miraculous, if you will. My guess is that the energy source for the system comes from a volcano near here that isn’t as dead as the people on the top floors think. It supplies warmth and nutrients for the creatures and plants at the bottom of the food chain, which in turn are eaten by the bigger guys. There are chemical processes down here we’ve never seen before in nature. There will be new medicines, maybe a cure for cancer—or even the common cold—derived from the vegetation that grows here.”
The boy raised a hand that trembled slightly, pointed at the dead priest on the altar. “What about that? What about them?”
“What about them?”
“They used us like animals.”
“First of all, Hector, don’t jump to conclusions about what you’ve seen down here. These caves are millions of years old, and the creatures that are going about their business now are only the latest inhabitants. There have probably been all sorts of species, including Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, and early humans, who have called these caves home at one time or another, but they didn’t all live here at the same time. Then the last ice age, or even the one before it, came. The glacier sealed off the cave entrance, and the things that are here now began to evolve.”
“But those things and humans lived at the same time. You saw the paintings and the carvings in the rock. They kept us. They ate us.”
“So what? So do lions, tigers, and sharks.”
“It’s different.”
“No, it’s not. We eat other animals, like whales and porpoise, that, in their own way, may be as intelligent as we are—or close to it.”
“But how could they have existed, and accomplished what they did, without our finding out about them before now?”
“Remember the lesson of the Burgess Shale, Hector.”
“These things had language, art, and writing. They kept us as slaves. How could they only have existed here? They walked on two legs, and they were smart.”
“Ah, but they were also cold blooded—at least the guy laid out on the stone over there looks pretty cold blooded to me. They couldn’t survive—or at least couldn’t function effectively for any extended period of time—away from the warmth that was radiated throughout those caves by the volcano. That, or they may have lacked one ingredient of consciousness that led our species to scatter ourselves all over the world: human curiosity. These caves were the entire world, and they simply may not have cared what went on beyond it. There’s no other trace of them to be found anywhere else over the tens of thousands, or even millions, of years of their existence, because they never went anywhere else. They were the ultimate home-bodies, Hector.”
The boy was silent for some time, and then asked, “What do you suppose happened to the Army Rangers?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. We may never know—or they may pop out of these caves next week, or even be waiting for us right now up above. They went a different way, and we don’t know what they found, or what found them. This is truly a different world, and there are probably hundreds of ways to die down here that we can’t even imagine; it’s no different from what could happen to some Amazon pygmy suddenly dropped into Times Square. What would he or she know about cars and trucks, or muggers, or Saturday Night Specials, or traffic lights?”
Hector Martinez looked into the face of the tall, powerfully built man sitting beside him. “None of this bothers you, does it?”
“What’s to bother me? I’m alive; even more important, I found you alive. Now, there’s a sign.”
“How could God have created Man in His image, and then created those … things to do all of the things we did, and eat us besides?”
“Let me tell you a little personal secret, Hector. I’ve always considered it a rather curious conceit for a species as brutal and cruel, insensitive, and occasionally downright stupid as humans to presume that God would create them, of all things, in His image. If that were true, then we’d really be in trouble.”
“Then why did you become a priest in the first place?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I needed to express what I’m not content merely to continue to feel—a sense of awe, of breathlessness at the world, and the gift to me of my presence in it. The basic lesson of all of humankind’s sacred texts is that humans invariably create all of our gods at least with our mindsets and prejudices, if not always in our image. They don’t glorify God, they diminish Him. God can only be an infinitely wondrous, and ultimately unknowable, mystery—like these caves.”
“Jesus looked like us; He was one of us. You don’t believe Jesus could have been God’s Son?”
“Look, Hector, I’m not going to tell you any more about what I do or don’t believe when it comes to faith in the supernatural. It’s irrelevant, and it wouldn’t do you any good. What I believe has changed before, and it will probably change again—evolving under the pressure of sunlight, rain, wind, love, hate, fear, observation, and reason. So I’m not going to tell you what to believe. But I am going to caution you to be careful what you choose to believe, because you become what you believe. What’s important is that you realize what’s being offered to you now, perhaps by God, at this moment. These caves are a tomb for a species that came before us, enslaved us when we came on the scene, and probably taught us a great deal. Let this place also be a tomb for your past life, for the beliefs and behavior that initially brought you down here to die. There’s an awesome amount of work to be done down here, and generations of scientists are going to spend lifetimes doing it, poking around and discovering the secrets of this place. Whole new sciences are going to be born. Be a part of it.”
“I don’t have any training.”
“Get some. In four years, or however long it takes you to get an appropriate degree and training, they’ll barely have scratched the surface of this world. People will want you to be a part of it. You have a franchise: a kind of spiritual survivor to religious people all over the world, of whatever faith—because I assure you there are going to be lots of folks who are going to be extremely upset by what’s been discovered down here. You can assure them that it’s not-if you’ll pardon the expression—the end of the world. You’ll be able to afford to do anything you want. There’ll be book and movie offers, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that some William Morris agent tries to book a dogsled team minutes after word of our return gets out. You’re going to be a very wealthy young man.”
“What about you, Priest?”
“I make all the money I need doing what I like to do. I don’t need the distraction. It’s your opportunities we’re talking about. You were waiting for a Second Coming, Hector; let it be yours. Be something different when you leave here.”
The boy looked at Brendan, his dark eyes now filled with hope—but also fear. “But how do we get out? How can we get past those bats, or whatever they are?”
“No problem.”
“No problem?”
“They may be a lot bigger, blinder, and meaner than your average bat, but they still must function with sonar capabilities. We’re going to scramble their screens, jam their radar. First, we’re going to load our packs with your dead batteries and lots of stones. Then we’re going to be very cautious walking back. When we get to the big dome at the cave entrance, I’m going to stay up on the ledge and throw batteries and stones all around to distract them while you climb down, scamper across the floor to the rope, and climb out. When you get to the top, you’ll return the favor. Then, when we’re out of here, you and I and a certain Alaska state trooper who’s waiting for me are going to that native village and probably spend half of your movie money for a good hot meal. Simple. You ready?”
Hector Martinez threw back his head and laughed loudly—but there was no hysteria in the echoing sound, only excitement and joy. Finally he stopped, slowly shook his head, and put out his hand. “I hope you brought my lithium with you, Priest. I’m going to be needing a little emotional pick-me-up if I see one of those black things lumbering after me, so I may as well start taking it right now.”