The Third Gate

18

Jack Wildman hung suspended, thirty-five feet below the surface, as he watched his dive partner, Mandelbaum, prepare to fire up Big Bertha. “Watched” wasn’t exactly the right term, he decided: Mandelbaum was little more than the vaguest blur in the muddy horror that surrounded them on all sides, a smudge, black against black, detectable only because it was in motion.

“Able Charlie to base,” Mandelbaum spoke into his radio. “We’re ready to start scouring grid G three.”

“Able Charlie, roger,” came the squawked reply from up top. “Bubble status?”

“Eighty-nine percent.”

Wildman glanced at the digital readout on the device strapped to his forearm. “Whiskey Bravo here,” he said into his own radio. “Bubble at ninety-one.”

“Roger that,” came the response from base. “Proceed.”

There was a low drone as Mandelbaum started up Big Bertha. Immediately, Wildman felt the resulting pressure as thick muck was eddied past him by the machine’s jets of compressed air. It was like standing in a vat of molasses.

Actually, it was worse than that. Because the muck and mire that surrounded them were treacherous. He had to constantly watch his step: sticks and bracken were hidden everywhere, often sharp, ready to pierce his suit. And the Sudd was so damned thick, every move was an effort, like trying to work in an atmosphere of 10 g’s…

“Able Charlie to base,” Mandelbaum radioed. “Scouring under way.”

Now Wildman turned on the heavy spotlight fixed to his right shoulder and approached the stone face: the freshly bared bed of the Sudd, scoured temporarily clean by Big Bertha. It was Mandelbaum’s job to operate Big Bertha; his own job to examine the scoured areas it left behind for any evidence of caverns, lava pipes, or ancient construction. He felt like an astronaut on some nightmare gas planet, with his heavy wet suit and its powerful light and the helmet video camera and the bubble apparatus all conspiring to weigh him down.

Actually, he was glad about the bubble. Very glad. It kept him oriented in this soup. If not for the bubble, you could easily lose your bearings, forget which way was up. He couldn’t stop thinking about what happened to Forsythe: panicking over a blocked regulator, trying desperately to surface… The thought chilled him. If you got disoriented in this black ooze, lost your guide cable-forget it. Your only hope was that your dive buddy would find you. Otherwise, you were dead meat…

His foot slipped in the greasy muck of the bottom and he slid backward, only to feel something hard strike him in the calf. He reached down, felt it. A stick. Since he was unable to make out anything unless it was inches before his mask, he brought it up into visual range. Sure enough. Goddamn Sudd. Good thing the stick hadn’t penetrated his suit-the one time that had happened, the smell had been so awful it had taken him three showers to get rid of it.

He went back to examining the scoured area.

“Able Charlie,” Mandelbaum said into the radio. “I think Big Bertha needs another cleaning. I’m having trouble keeping the throttle steady.”

“Roger that,” repeated the voice from the surface.

Pushing mud and ooze away from his face, Wildman moved to his right, preparing to examine a fresh area. The feeling of muck streaming past his limbs in the wake of the machine’s air jets was horrible. A few days before, one of the divers on another crew had had his mouthpiece jarred loose by his partner’s elbow. The poor sap got a mouthful of the shit, started puking his guts out, and had to do an emergency surface before he aspirated…

“Able Charlie,” Mandelbaum said again, “I’m afraid we need to terminate the dive. I’m having more trouble with Big Bertha-”

As he spoke, Wildman heard Bertha’s engine suddenly roar, the throttle going wide open. Mandelbaum quickly killed the throttle, but not before an irresistible wave of black muck, thrown up by the jets, knocked Wildman back a foot into the dense soup. Again, he felt something hard prod him, this time in the lower back. Shit. Reaching around, he grabbed for it, felt his hands close over the slippery stick. He brought it around toward his mask. He ought to beat Mandelbaum over the head with it. The thought brought a smile to his face until he got a look at the thing and found it wasn’t a stick, after all.

It was a bone.