Neal Stephenson - Zodiac. The Eco-Thriller

We did most of this without lights, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. So when I was standing thigh-deep in the water, lifting our old ten-horse off the transom, I could tell that the bottom half of the motor was greasy and slippery, but I didn't know why. When we dumped it into the bottom of the other boat, Boone checked it over with his flashlight and whistled.

Our motor was splattered with a lot of gore that had been thrown up by the propeller. Wet, fishy-smelling gore. Chopped Up fish, as a matter of fact.

Once we got it running, we took the Zode around to a deserted stretch of beach and left it there. No point in allowing

these people a glimpse of a free, fast ride. We went slow, and aimed our lights into the water, which was full of dead fish. HARBOR OF DEATH. It made sense. The fish would get the PCB bug in their guts just like humans did, and they'd get sick and die in the same way.

Boone and I hiked back across the island toward the northern shore, toward the party. Bart and Amy were already there. It would be impossible to find them again, but that was okay. Bart was a survivor.. Finding a way back to Boston would be as easy for him as getting out of bed in the morning.

We walked slow; on Spectacle Island you never knew what was going to poke up through the sole of your shoe. Eventually, though, we crested a junk-heap ridge with a smokey, fiery halo and looked down on the festival.

Three hundred people, give or take, twenty bonfires and a dozen kegs. There was also a garbage party-someone had brought a garbage can and people had dumped into it whatever alcoholic stuff they'd brought with them, creating a mystery punch. And a fire hazard.

And I finally got to see the Satan worshippers. A dozen of them. Their black leather was somewhat more bizarre and expensive than that of the average fan. They were up on the hillside, standing in a circle, working their way through some kind of ritual that involved torches and large knives.

The big knives weren't too dangerous compared to the cheap revolvers that half of the guys on the beach were probably carrying, and a few spells and incantations didn't worry me as much as the Basco Explorer. But we swung around them anyhow, since a few grams of PCP could make anyone feisty.

Sometimes, they said, drugs led to possession. Then you had to get yourself an exorcist. The exorcist would come and call out the name of the evil spirit, and that would scare it away. This was all it took-no surgical operations, no chemicals, not even much of a ritual. I figured I was in a similar business. I stood in front of the TV cameras and called out the names of corporations. I lacked the power to do much more than that, but it seemed to be pretty effective.

Dolmacher had called out fiasco's name earlier today. If I could find some kind of evidence under this barge, it would establish a link in my theoretical chain of events, and I, too, could call out their name. It wouldn't bring down Basco, maybe, but it would probably ruin Alvin Fleshy. And Laughlin would really be pissed.

BOONE AND I WANDEREDstraight through the party and over to the barge. Down by the shoreline, Boone kicked a couple of dead fish out of the way to establish his footing. Then I climbed up on his shoulders and got a handhold on the top of the barge. That got me over the top and then I helped him in.

There wasn't much here. The barge was made to carry some kind of dry, bulk cargo-coal or corn. It was divided up into garage-sized compartments that were open on top, and you could get around between them on catwalks that ran on top of the partitions. The Satanists had been here with their goddamn spray cans and labeled the whole thing with various kinds of nonsense; there was a HEAVEN sign with an arrow pointing toward the bow, and a HELL sign pointing to the stern. Right now we were in the middle, and it was labeled EARTH. Different compartments had been labeled with the names of different demons, or something, and little shrines had been put together in some of them, using household junk gathered from the island.

EARTH or HELL was the place to look. I didn't expect the transformers to be located in HEAVEN. When Basco had dumped them back in '56, they wouldn't have had any reason to drag them way up the slopes of the island. They'd have dropped them at the waterline, or below it, and covered them up. The impact of the barge might have dragged a few of them uphill, but not far.

We gave it a once-over to begin with, walked down all of those catwalks and aimed our flashlights into the compartments. If we were lucky we'd find something obvious. The Poyzen Boyzen cult had made a mess of things, covered up a lot of shit, but this was a big barge and a small cult and they couldn't screw up the whole thing.

A whiff of cool wind came in from the north, bearing that nauseating smell. I hadn't smelled it since we'd landed. Apparently it wasn't coming from the island at all. Maybe it was coming from the reactions going on in the Harbor: rotting fish added to its usual delicacies. There was a strong overtone of putrescine, which I hadn't noticed before; maybe someone had found my cache of the stuff and poured it into the sea.

Actually, it came from the compartment below my feet, where three mutilated corpses were sprawled on the floor.

They'd been there for a few days. The blood was brownish-black, and they looked a mite puffy, about to burst the seams of their black leather pants.

"Boone!" I said. He was with me in a few seconds. We squatted, like archaeologists looking into a burial pit, and observed in totally rude fascination. But after a couple of seconds, he began shining his flashlight on the walls of the compartment.

"Fragged," he concluded. "Check out the walls."

A lot of shrapnel had gone into those walls. The impact points twinkled on the rust like stars in a shit-brown sky. "Fragmentation grenades," Boone continued, "or maybe Claymores."

We started beaming our lights at the trash strewn around on the floor. This wasn't random garbage; it was bright, colorful and interesting. The remains of a shrine. And a big, rust-free, stainless steel pipe, maybe six feet long, was toppled across one of the bodies.

"That pipe's weird," I said.

"There's all kinds of shit on this island," Boone said. "Check that out."

He was shining his light near the feet of a corpse. A wire was glinting in the light and at one end was a metal ring.

"Grenade."

After that he led the way. Boone knew more about booby traps than anyone. He searched the barge, one row of compartments at a time, and I tagged along behind to make sure he hadn't missed anything. When he said, "Shit!," I hit the catwalk. When he laughed, I got up.

We were a few yards past the shoreline, out in HELL. The compartment below had been dedicated to some demonic force named Ashtoreth. I'd already checked it out. There was a shrine here, basically a pile of junk-the obligatory toilet, some dolls' heads, wind chimes manufactured from old brake drums, rotating candelabras built on bicycle wheels. Boone had noticed something I'd missed. The shrine was built around an axis, a vertical pipe that rose from the floor of the compartment. The pipe was brand shiny new, not rusty, and it had a valve on the top. A padlocked valve.

"Laughlin's been prospecting," I said. "Digging down into the PCB deposits. The Poyzen Boyzen devotees build shrines around the pipes. Or maybe he built them himself, as camouflage. And then he came around and booby trapped them."

"Because he was afraid of you."

"Maybe he knows I'm not dead?"

"No," Boone said, "you died a week ago. Those corpses were at least that old."

"I'll take your word for it. But I know why he was worried. This is great evidence, man."