Pandemonium (9 page)

Geoffrey scanned the surface of a lake below. He saw creatures snaking over the water, visibly breaking into pieces and rejoining as they swam like the centipede Maxim had shown them. Bioluminous hordes of gammarids darted over glowing patches on the lake’s surface.

All the scientists were pressed against the window, cupping their hands to both sides of their heads as they peered through the thick glass. Nell looked up at the cavern’s ceiling, which was coated with a shaggy pelt of stalactites. An island of stalagmites the size of buildings soared from the center of the lake with columns reaching all the way to the ceiling at its highest point, six hundred feet above. And every spire was dusted with rainbowfire.

Purple globes the size of beach balls dangled red tentacles like levitating Portuguese man-of-wars. A faintly illuminated organism like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float moved languidly over the lake in the distance, extending long feathery plumes at one end that fanned cyclones of orange and pink bubbles into its whale-sized mouth.

Nell sighed, holding on to Geoffrey. “What in the hell are we looking at?”

Maxim pointed to a plaque centered on the bottom frame of the window.

“‘Hell’s Window,’” Maxim translated. “That’s just what Stalin thought he was looking at as he sat in this very chair. I imagine he felt right at home. As for me, I call it Pandemonium.” He spoke in Russian to one of his men to the right of the window, who nodded as he pulled down a heavy switch.

The chandeliers dimmed to a flicker, and a rack of locomotive headlamps mounted inside the cavern ignited above the window and flooded the chasm with beams of light. The patches on the lake’s surface now appeared to be gray masses like shingled lily pads over which yellow and orange gammarids scrambled. Along the shore, more of the amphipods flowed in herds, ranging from the size of mice to hippos. More poured down over the window from above and across its lower ledge.

Overcoming their initial shock, the scientists began exclaiming all at once, each reacting to something else as they pointed in different directions.

One of the yellow and pink striped blimps drifted toward them under the spiked ceiling. Spiraling feathers recoiled one by one from the air as they snagged swarms of orange and pink balls like the specimens in the tank on the table before them.

“Fuck me!” Otto laughed, delirious as he hung on the window like a boy at the monkey enclosure.

“Sky whales,” Nell breathed.

“Good!” Maxim approved.

“Could it be some kind of medusae or mollusk?” Geoffrey wondered, gripping Nell’s hand. He realized, as did the rest of the scientists, that not only hundreds of millions of years but also a truly vast environment would be required to produce such a variety of life and all these complex interrelationships.

“The gammies are all over the ceiling, too!” Otto pointed up at the cavern’s vault, which was overrun by amphipods grazing on the stalactites.

“Look at that nearest herd, crossing the lake,” said Dimitri. “The ones at the perimeter have
mandibles
.”

“Maybe it’s another antlike adaptation,” Nell said. “Some gammies might be specialized to defend the colony.”

“Maybe they’re predators, stalking the herd,” Katsuyuki said.

“That layer on the lake looks like the bacteria–fungus mats in the Movile cave in Romania,” Nell said. “It grows chemosynthetically and is the base of the food chain for thirty-three endemic species.”

“Interesting,” Maxim said.

“Everything seems to eat the rainbowfire on the walls and ceiling, too,” added Geoffrey.

“And everything glows,” Katsuyuki said. “Maybe there is a connection!”

“I don’t know,” Nell said. “Digestive enzymes would pretty quickly denature the luciferase that makes the fungus glow.…”

“Most things down here are probably transparent,” Geoffrey said. “So their food would glow at least partway down even if the luciferase were hydrolyzed by digestive enzymes.”

“Maybe,” she considered. “Or maybe the organisms are simply coated by glowing spores.”

“Both, I think,” said Dimitri. “And they must produce their own bioluminescence, as well.”

“Are we going to glow now, too?” asked Otto.

Everyone laughed nervously.

“You already are, I think!” Maxim smiled in satisfaction as he watched the enraptured scientists admiring his world.

A white twenty-foot-long segmented animal swam in a side-to-side motion among the gray patches. It disarticulated into forty smaller animals that raided the grazing amphipods on a fungal mat. The pieces reassembled and snaked through the gammarid herd to
ooh
s and
ah
s from the gallery. One of the mandible-bearing gammarids at the perimeter of the herd crawled over the others with long legs, chasing the centipede.

“They
are
guards,” Nell whispered. “The big ones are soldier gammies.”

The soldier gammarid seized a segment of the animal, and the other segments scattered, jumping back into the water.

“Huh! The centipedes sacrifice one bit to save the rest,” Geoffrey said.

“Like a lizard giving up its tail,” Otto said.

The segments reconnected in the water as they swam off.

“See ya later, aggregator,” Otto said.

“
Perfect,
Dr. Inman.” Maxim stamped his hand on the arm of his chair. “That is what we will call them! Aggregators!”

Geoffrey saw a band of white encrusting the shoreline below. “Is this … salt water?”

“Yes.” Dimitri nodded.

“How
big
is Pandemonium?” Nell asked.

The others turned to Maxim.

“It goes for sixty miles in that direction,” Maxim said, pointing.

“We used a high-powered laser surveyor to find out,” Dimitri said. “We think that’s how long the cavern is. It may be longer.”

“Dear God,” Reiner said.

Nell noticed a battery of light beams that penetrated the lake below the surface. “Hey!” She pushed herself away from the glass and pointed at the spiral staircase in the far corner of the room. “Can we go downstairs? Is there another window down there?”

Otto looked up and saw another phalanx of light beams above, which illuminated a pair of cables that seemed to span the lake toward the island. “Can we go
upstairs
?”

“Can we go into Pandemonium?” Katsuyuki asked.

“It’s not a good idea right now,” Maxim replied, with a deep laugh.

“Papa!”
A peal of laughter like a fanfare announced a small girl crowned with tousled golden hair as she bolted into the conservatory, charging past the scientists.

Maxim swiveled as he saw her coming and absorbed the blow as she launched into his lap. The big man grunted and hugged her. “Hello, Sasha! Everyone: let me introduce my daughter.”

“Hello to all of you scientists!” She waved. “Did you see the cherry puffs? And the Legopedes? Ha!” Sasha contorted in a snaking motion sticking her tongue out.

Maxim grinned indulgently as she shook hands with each of his guests. “Sasha has names for everything in Pandemonium,” he explained. “Some of them are pretty good.”

Sasha clasped Nell’s hand. “Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

“I’m Nell, Sasha. And this is my husband, Geoffrey.”

Maxim extinguished the lights in Pandemonium. “I think that is all for tonight.”

The others groaned in protest.

“I am sorry. But it takes huge amount of energy to keep burning these lights,” said Maxim. “Tomorrow, you shall begin cataloging and categorizing the animals of Pandemonium. In addition to being a functioning city, I envision Pobedograd as a working museum and laboratory, where scientists can study and preserve its natural wonders for all time. But tonight, please enjoy any of our three riverfront nightclubs where, if you choose to gamble, you’ll find each of you has a thousand dollars credit. We will cut you off before you lose too much! There are three wonderful restaurants, too. Cars are waiting in front of the palace to take you to your accommodations. Please enjoy! But don’t stay out too late. We will pick you up at nine
A.M.
tomorrow morning to start work.”

10:35 P.M.

Several limousines were waiting for them in front of the golden palace.

As Otto climbed into one of the cars, he called Nell and Geoffrey. “We’ll be meeting at Volya later. That’s a restaurant, if you’re interested!”

“Sounds good!” Nell said. “Maybe we’ll meet you there.”

The cars shuttled them back to Sector Six, where the city lights sparkled in the permanent night. Along the riverfront they passed nightclubs spilling raucous partiers into the street and a rooftop establishment their drivers recommended for first-class service, atmosphere, food, and even some civilized gambling. Geoffrey and Nell noticed the blue neon sign that read
VOLYA
on the side of the building, but they requested they be taken to their accommodations first.

At the west end, they passed a row of newly refurbished apartments. The last one turned out to be their “bridal cottage.” The ornate polished brownstone was located closest to the waterfall and seemed to have been carved out of the living rock of the cave’s west wall.

The driver of their car pulled their luggage from the trunk and then hauled it upstairs from the street. He opened the front door with a plastic key card and showed them into their luxury apartment. Inside the door was a swank art nouveau entry. Upstairs the driver showed them a living room with plush white carpets and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city.

On the far side, a gray leather couch U’d around a glass coffee table mounted on a fossil ammonite. A gas-fueled fire flickered in a fireplace faced with rock bearing foot-long trilobites. The floor-to-ceiling picture window framed the luminous blue waterfall cascading down the western wall. Lit candles and fresh-cut flowers decorated the suite.

The driver showed them to their bedroom to the right and deposited their luggage. The walls of the high-ceilinged room were paneled with slabs of rock embedded with crinoid fossils like lotus flowers in an Egyptian frieze. The gleaming bed was spread with copper-colored silk and banked high with gold silk pillows. Tucked deep into one of the pillows was a box of chocolate truffles. On top of the polished stone headboard was a magnum of champagne on ice surrounded by tropical flowers. In one lonely crystal vase on the headboard stood the pink rose Geoffrey had picked for Nell in front of Brick Dorm at Woods Hole, a whole world ago.

Nell and Geoffrey both offered the man a tip, but he refused graciously and handed them a card with a number to call for assistance or room service. He informed them that the refrigerator in the kitchen downstairs was fully stocked.

Nell saw the phone beside the bed. “Can we call out?”

“Oh, no.” The man shook his head, gesturing around them. “Too deep.”

It was only after the driver closed the door downstairs that they squeezed each other in disbelief and totally geeked out.

11:22 P.M.

Nell rested her head on his chest, gazing out the window at the blue cascade. They both lay sprawled in the silken sheets, sunk deep into the Swedish mattress. “A completely new world,” she said.

“Even more complex than Henders Island,” he said.

“If not as old.”

“Much bigger, though.”

“But not as dangerous,” she said, stretching luxuriously. “I love it!”

“Species that evolved in subterranean conditions could never compete aboveground,” Geoffrey confirmed. “So there’s no risk of them taking over, I should think.”

“It’s the opposite of Henders Island: an alien ecosystem that is fragile instead of deadly.”

“Most are,” he reminded her. “We need to remember that, honey.” He squeezed her arm gently. “Henders Island was the exception, not the rule.”

“You’re right. I know. This is definitely helping me get over my post–Henders Island stress disorder, I think.”

“Good.”

“Hey, I’m hungry. Let’s go to that restaurant.”

“Yeah?”

“And gamble the night away.” She grinned, eyes wide.

“Good Lord! All right…”

11:58 P.M.

Maxim sat on a large crescent-shaped black leather couch in the dark before the wedge-shaped windows of his penthouse. From the top floor of the Star Tower, he presided over the city as the construction crews worked around the clock below. And he waited.

The magnificent lighting fixture carved into the cavern’s ceiling glowed like a glass nebula poured into the shape of a five-pointed star. Its five opalescent points flickered like lightning in clouds or a gigantic burned-out fluorescent bulb on the verge of igniting. He was waiting for the dawn.

Sasha burst into the room, startling him as she leaped over the back of the couch onto the cushion beside him. “What are you looking at, Papa?” she asked in English. His precocious daughter spoke Russian, English, and French perfectly.

She was a genius, like her father and grandfather, he realized, with some wariness. “Go to sleep, child! You should be in bed. It’s almost midnight!”

“It’s never night here,” Sasha said. “And it’s never day, either, Papa.”

“Tomorrow, it will be,” he said.