Douglas Preston - Riptide

I've decided to leave Clay. It's something I can't avoid any longer. I don't want to stay here, growing more bitter and resentful. That would be wrong for both of us. I'll tell him after the protest ends. Maybe then it will be a little easier for him to take. No matter what, it's going to hurt him terribly. But I know it's the right thing to do.

I also know that you and I are not for each other. I have some wonderful memories, and I hope you do, too. But this thing we almost started is a way of clinging to that past. It will end up hurting us both.

What almost happened at Squeaker's Glen—what I almost allowed to happen—scared me. But it also clarified a lot of vague ideas, feelings, that had been knocking around in my head. So I thank you for that.

I guess I owe you an explanation of what I plan to do. I'm going to New York. I called an old friend from the Community College who runs a small architectural firm down there. She offered me a secretarial job and promised to train me in drafting. It's a new start in a city I've always longed to see.

Please do not answer this letter or try to change my mind. Let's not spoil the past by something stupid we might do in the present.

Love, Claire

The interisland telephone rang. Moving slowly, as if in a dream, Hatch picked up the receiver.

"It's Streeter," came the brusque voice.

"What?" said Hatch, still in shock.

"The Captain wants to see you in Orthanc. Right away."

"Tell him I'll—" Hatch began. But Streeter had hung up and there was nothing, not even a dial tone, on the line.

Chapter 37

Hatch stepped over the last series of ramps and bridges to the base of Orthanc. The newly installed ventilation housing rose up above the Pit: three massive ducts that sucked foul air out of the depths and ejected it skyward, where it condensed into great plumes of fog. Light from the Pit itself spilled into the surrounding fog.

Stepping forward, Hatch grasped the ladder, then climbed to the observation railing that circled Orthanc's control tower.

Neidelman was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the tower was empty of anyone except Magnusen, scanning the sensor arrays that monitored the loads on the timbers in the Pit. The sensors were banked in rows of green lights. Any increase in strain on one of the timbers, the slightest shifting of a brace, and the appropriate light would turn red to the shrill sound of an alarm. As the bracing and buttressing had continued, the alarms had steadily decreased in frequency. Even the bugs that perpetually plagued the island's computer systems had, in this case, seemingly been ironed out. The complex placement of sensors that had its beginning in Wopner's last hours was now complete.

Hatch moved to the center of the room and gazed through the glass porthole into the Pit below. There were numerous side tunnels and shafts that were still extremely dangerous, but they had been marked with yellow tape and were off limits to all but the remote mapping teams.

A gust of wind blew the plumes of fog away from the Pit's mouth, and the view cleared. The ladder array plunged downward, three gleaming rails from which numerous platforms branched. Radiating out from the array was an extraordinary pattern of titanium struts. The visual effect was breathtaking: the polished struts, struck by countless lights, threw sprays of light around the mossy shaft, reflecting and re-reflecting the welter of titanium, stretching down into infinity.

There was a complex pattern to the struts. That morning, Neidelman's crew had been hard at work replacing the missing members of Macallan's original bracing with additional titanium members, following St. John's specifications. Other struts had been added, based on the results of a computer model run on the Cerberus computer. They might be ready to begin digging the final fifty feet to the treasure chamber by the end of the day.

As he stared into the brilliant depths, still struggling with the reality of Claire's letter, Hatch noticed movement: it was Neidelman, ascending in the mechanical lift. Bonterre stood beside him, hugging herself as if chilled. The sodium-vapor lights of the Pit turned the Captains sandy hair to gold.

Hatch wondered why the Captain wanted to meet him there. Maybe he's got a canker sore, he thought bitterly. Actually, he wouldn't be surprised if it did turn out to be health-related. He'd never seen a man work so hard, or go so long without sleep, as had Neidelman during these last days.

The Captain swung up to the staging platform, then climbed the ladder into Orthanc, his muddy boots marking the metal floor. He faced Hatch wordlessly. Bonterre stepped up onto the deck, then entered the chamber behind the Captain. Hatch glanced at her, then tensed suddenly, alarmed by the expression on her face. Both were strangely silent.

Neidelman turned to Magnusen. "Sandra, may we have some privacy for a moment?"

The engineer stood up, walked out onto the observation deck, and shut the door behind her. Neidelman drew a deep breath, his tired gray eyes on Hatch.

"You'd better steady yourself," he said quietly.

Bonterre said nothing, looking at Hatch.

"Malin, we found your brother."

Hatch felt a sudden sense of dislocation, almost as if he was pulling away from the world around him, into a remote and shrouded distance.

"Where?" he managed.

"In a deep cavity, below the vaulted tunnel. Under the grate."

"You're sure?" Hatch whispered. "No chance of mistake?"

"It is the skeleton of a child," Bonterre said. "Twelve years old, perhaps thirteen, blue dungaree shorts, baseball cap—"

"Yes," Hatch whispered, sitting down suddenly as a wave of dizziness passed over him, leaving his knees weak and his head light. "Yes."

The tower was silent for the space of a minute.

"I need to see for myself," Hatch said at last.

"We know you do," Bonterre said, gently helping him to his feet. "Come."

"There's a tight drop down a vertical passage," said Neidelman. "The final cavity's not fully braced. There's a certain danger."

Hatch waved his hand.

Shrugging into a slicker, stepping onto the small electric lift, descending the ladder array—the next minutes passed in a gray blur. His limbs ached, and as he gripped the lift railing his own hands looked gray and lifeless in the stark light of the Pit. Neidelman and Bonterre crowded in at either side, while members of the bracing crews looked on from a distance as they went past.

Reaching the hundred-foot level, Neidelman stopped the lift. Stepping off the metal plate, they crossed a walkway to the mouth of the tunnel. Hatch hesitated.

"It's the only way," said Neidelman.

Hatch stepped into the tunnel, past a large air-filtration unit. Within, the ceiling was now braced by a series of metal plates, held up by a row of titanium screw jacks. A few more nightmare steps and Hatch found himself back in the octagonal stone chamber where Wopner had died. The great rock lay against the wall, seemingly undisturbed, a chilling memorial to the programmer and the engine of death that destroyed him. A twin set of jacks still braced the rock at the place where the body had been removed. A large stain coated the inside of the rock and the wall, rust-colored in the bright lights. Hatch looked away.

"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Neidelman said in a curious tone.

With a tremendous effort, Hatch willed his feet forward, past the stone, past the rust-colored stain, to the well in the center of the room. The iron grating had been removed and a rope ladder led down into darkness.

"Our remote mapping teams only started working the secondary tunnels yesterday," Neidelman said. "When they returned to this vault, they examined the grating and calculated the shaft beneath it intersected the shore tunnel. The one you discovered as a boy. So they sent someone down to investigate. He broke through what seems to have once been some kind of watertight seal." He stepped forward. "I'll go first."