The quartzlike hexagonal facets were incredibly regular, but the thing was not round. It might have been round once, but the part that had plowed into the ground here was irregular, jagged and misshapen, as if parts of it had been consumed and other parts had been broken off as it had made its way in. The crater should have been a couple of kilometers deep; instead, it was fairly shallow, only ten meters deep.
Looking at it from the treetops, Alama felt its energy and its life, felt its pull. Somehow she was certain that it knew she was there. And not quite on top but angled a little back was the spot that now and again turned into the deepest black, beckoning her.
She wished it were that easy. She wished that she’d been quicker recognizing it when it had struck, that she’d simply gone to it and seen it for herself before any of the scientists or military had gotten there. It would have been so much simpler.
The guards were Brazilian soldiers in camouflage fatigues, nasty-looking automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. They were a tough-looking bunch, but they looked extremely bored. Weeks, months—who could say how long it had been since the thing had hit?—of no activity and little else to do were taking their toll. Only two stood perfunctory guard, one at the camp and the other farther up at the equipment tent next to the crater, the other four playing cards and smoking cigars outside their big tent.
There seemed to be only two scientists currently in the camp, although the crater was ringed with instruments and, clearly, some effort had been made to take large samples. Probes ran from a portable generator right onto and into the meteor itself; long cables carried power to instruments guarded against rain and anchored against sudden wind. It had become routine.
There were signs all around that a near army had been there at one time, that many other tents and structures had once been set up here, and that a huge area had been cleared for such a group. Now just these few remained.
Lori in particular was somewhat shaken by the small size of the camp. How long had they been in the jungle? It had seemed weeks, no more, and the events of that frantic and terrifying night were still fresh in her mind, but mere weeks would not have reduced the world’s interest so much. The search after their mysterious disappearance would have slowed them down, and scientists the world over with visions of Nobel prizes would have been clamoring to be here—that the camp was so small and the scientific inquiry so routine meant it must have been a year . . . or longer.
It couldn ‘t be that long. Gus and Campos could not have survived their miserable half-drugged imprisonment that long. Then again, how long had it taken to build these tough, callused feet that no longer felt the jungle floor, these hard hands that did much heavy work, or the muscles she had developed? It all seemed to make no sense.
What did make sense was the two days they spent observing every move of the camp. The military helicopter came in the morning and often deposited a few people, probably scientists and research assistants, who checked the data, read out information from the instruments into their portable computers, and did a lot of routine maintenance work. They remained all day and were picked up by the helicopter again before nightfall, leaving only the guards and the two permanent party members there: an old white-haired man in khaki shirt and shorts and a young bearded man who wore boots and jeans and a kind of cowboy hat but usually went shirtless.
Terry climbed effortlessly up one of the trees and stared at the pulsing, glowing meteor during the night. She watched as the black hexagon came on and saw, or thought she saw, some kind of shimmering just above it. Then, startled, she saw a small black shape crawling on the meteor near the hole. A lizard of some kind, she realized. It reached the black area, seemed to pause for a moment, then stepped into it. For a brief second it seemed frozen, suspended in dark space, and then it winked out.
The equipment around the edge of the crater became more active, clicking and whining, then subsided. The scientists had measured the effect and the fate of the hapless reptile.
She came down the tree and stood there, chewing absent-mindedly on a finger while in thought, then sought out Lori.
“I am going to the men to see if they are able to help themselves,” Lori said. “I can carry one if I have to, but if they walk, is much help.”
“Bimi,” Terry said hesitantly, using Lori’s tribal name, “I cannot go with you.”
“You can! You have to! This life is not for you. Death comes young with the People. You belong Outside!”
“Outside I cannot go,” Terry reminded her. “And I just watch a lizard go into the black hole, and it cooked in fire!
Alama takes you all to death now, not life. Life can still be long.”
“I, too, watch things go in the hole. It is not like cooking. She says it is a door.”
“It is death! You stay here with me! For Alama, the men, it is quick and with no hurt. But not you!”
“Something says to trust Alama. I do. I must. Best take the risk than live as the People to death.”
“You are of the People! You think, speak first as one of the tribe. Have to think to speak other tongues. You are strong, tough. You know the magic of the potions. We can live happy here.”
“No. I cannot. I do not think you can, but we are not the same. Alama says the door will be no more when we go. If you do not come now, you cannot come.” She shifted mental gears, suddenly aware that Terry had a point on how they were thinking, and began whispering in English.
“Terry, I’m a scientist, not a witch or medicine woman. That is a great mystery. I’ve watched it as you have. I don’t know just what it is, but I am convinced that it is a machine, not a monster. I recognized some of the monitoring devices. They know it’s a machine, too. They’re trying to figure out what it is. They probably lost somebody to that door in the early stages, which is why they’re so low-key here. It’s too heavy to move, and I think they’re still too scared it’ll blow up. And a lot of that equipment is military stuff. Not Brazilian but American. I think they’ve evacuated the area as much as they could and are waiting until they figure out what to do next.”
“Suppose she’s right. Suppose it’s what she says. What’s it like in there or wherever you come out? You think they’ll be people, like Alama? Suppose it’s a probe or something? Poke and study and dissect you for science. She couldn’t tell you if she wanted to. Our one common tongue can’t handle it.”
“I’ll take the chance. I may not like her much, but I think I trust her. And is this life any better? No doctors, no vaccines, constant dawn-to-dusk hunting and gathering to eat? You’re an educated woman of the modern world.”
“I dunno. I spent ten years since college batting my head against the wall, getting shot at and beaten up and worse, no real home, no personal life to speak of, working sixty-, seventy-, eighty-hour weeks sometimes just to prove I was better than any of them. And what am I? After all that I’m still a line producer, no on-air anything, doing the same job they’re giving to twenty-two-year-old bimbos fresh out of school. And when I had my one shot, a year ago, a real producer’s job in Washington with ABC, I put them off because they begged me to cover fighting in Zaire. So I got stuck in this jerkwater hotel up the Congo. These soldiers came along; they shot most everybody and raped me and left me for dead. I came out anyway, but the ABC job’s gone and the rumor is that I lost my nerve! Lost my nerve! And now this happens. But, it’s a funny thing. I’m good at this. I have a family here. All women, and nobody but nobody questions my nerve! This is another planet, and I am already living on it.”
“But your family! Your friends!”
“My parents split when I was ten. My father sits in Miami, laundering drug money and dreaming of the old Cuba. My mother spends her alimony sitting in a beach house on Dominica and stuffing white powder up her nose. I don’t have a family—I have a series of Catholic boarding schools. And I don’t have friends. I thought I did, but they all started whispering about my ‘nerve’ the first chance they got. I’ve had years of one-night stands and little else. Nobody is gonna miss me, even now.”
Lori was shocked. “I—I never knew . . .”
“Well, we never had the time to get to know each other well. Go if you must—I pray that it is as wonderful as you dream. I don’t know if I can live like this forever or not, but I realized a long time ago that if anybody was to get away without all of us getting killed, I would have to stay. I accept that.”
“What? No! I want you to come!”
“You know Alama’s plan. The four of us disappeared here—who knows how long ago now, but they still have guns up there. It will be necessary to have someone who can speak with them.”
“But you don’t know Portuguese!”
“No, but it is close enough to Spanish.”
“But you can’t go up there! You know how they’re supposed to be diverted!”
“It is not the same. If it is to work, I must go with them.”
“You have spoken to Alama about this?”
“Yes. She made some of the same arguments, sort of, but she said it was up to me. She knew, though, that the plan had a much better chance with me staying behind than going with you.”
“You can still change your mind.”
“Perhaps. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I will always regret this. But the fact is, I have little choice. I really believe I might wind up thinking this was the best choice for me. Time will tell.”
Lori could only hug her and say, “I hope for your sake that it is.”
Terry shrugged. “Besides, I can always come out someday. Be the tattooed lady, the sole survivor who lived as a Stone Age savage. The Enquirer alone would pay me enough, with book and TV movie rights, for me to live out my old age.”
Lori sighed. “Then I better really see Gus.”
Gus was still drugged, as was Campos, but he was conscious. After a long period of apparent catatonia, he was able to be coaxed out on occasion, although he did not recognize what had happened to him and still seemed only vaguely aware of his surroundings. He was thin and weathered; his bindings had scarred his wrists and ankles, and he looked almost like a living skeleton. It was pretty clear that he’d need a lot of help, but he was so wasted away and Lori was in such good shape now that she found she could carry him with little trouble.
“Gus, hang on,” she said to him. “One more day and we’ll get you out of here.”
He smiled sleepily like a little child. “Big story?”
“The biggest.”
“Lots of pictures?”
“As many as you can take.”
He seemed happy at that. She squeezed his hand and went over to Juan Campos. Compared to Gus, Campos was in great shape. He was one very tough cookie, and he had eventually made the best of a mostly intolerable situation. After two early attempts at escape, when he’d shown enough strength to break the tough natural rope bonds and shake off the effects of a very mind-dulling drug, he’d accepted his punishment and the improbability of getting away and tried to make the most of it. He had begun to play up to his captors and to show unmistakable invitations and intent, and he’d been taken up on it by many, and one, possibly two, had conceived with him.
He’d still remained drugged and mostly bound and always well guarded, but he had managed by this to gain extra food and drink and, while weak for lack of any regular exercise, might well be able to make it on his own.
He had figured out who Lori and Terry were and found their transformations into native jungle girls highly amusing.
“All right, Campos. Listen up. The tribe wants to dispose of you, but the chief has other plans. Tomorrow your legs will be freed, and we’ll try and give you a little time to exercise them. You’re going for a walk, and you’ll wear a gag and have rope binding your arms. You do exactly what you’re told and you might get out of this alive. Understand? You make one funny move and you’ll be full of darts with enough curare to kill you in midstep. Understand?”
He nodded sleepily.
“Do one thing right and you’re home free. Be stupid and you’re dead. And be aware that nobody here really cares which.”
There was nothing else to do now but get some sleep and wait for the next day. It was not easy to do. Please, God! Let Terry and I both be making the right decision tomorrow!
Professor Umberto Alcazar-Diaz, visiting professor of astrogeology at the University of Sao Paulo, director general of Site A, and, not incidentally, also a research fellow at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, had just taken off his glasses and settled back for a nap. He had been working almost nonstop on the lab findings dropped off by the morning helicopter, and his eyes were killing him.
Suddenly he heard a commotion among the guards outside. He was curious but too tired to see to it. “Carlos. You want to see what that’s all about?”
“Si, Professor,” the young man replied, getting up from his bunk and putting aside the routine security report he’d been writing up in English so that his bosses at the Agency could quickly read it back in Washington. He opened the frame door on the elaborate tent with a casual air and felt something sting him in the neck. He fell back inside, out cold.
The professor couldn’t see much without his glasses, but he knew that the young man had fallen, and he jumped up and went to his aid. Seeing that he was unconscious, Umberto Alcazar-Diaz opened the door to call to the guards, but he felt a sting in his neck before he could call out, and that was the last he remembered. The door came shut again.
Outside, the guards were oblivious to the happenings in the tent some twenty meters from any of them, but the armed soldier on duty in the camp was staring at something in the evening sun and had his rifle to the ready, while the other off-duty guards stopped what they were doing and tensed, guns not far away.
“No tire! Somos amigos simpaticos!” a young woman’s voice called from not far away. It wasn’t Portuguese and was oddly structured, but one of the men at the card table made it out.
“Antonio! Hold up!” he called in Portuguese. “It’s some woman speaking Spanish!”
“Woman? Women?” the duty guard called back in amazement. “Can you understand them?”
“Let me see.” The Spanish-speaking sergeant looked out and saw a number of native women standing nervously in a clearing just in front of one of the few immediate stands of trees that had survived the blast. They were all naked and painted up, but that wasn’t all that unusual, although he’d never seen markings quite like those before.
“Habla espanol?” the same woman asked. She seemed to be the leader.
“Si. Quien es?” the sergeant called back, not too nervous but puzzled.
“Soy llamado Teysi.”
“Donde viene de?”
“Somos de la aldea.”