Abaddon - Chapter 11

Penny Simpson's notes, January 11, 2011

"So that's the 'Obstacle'."

It has taken five whole days to get this far down. Sean is almost literally hopping with frustration. We have been using arrays of scaffolding winched down over two kilometres to cross gaps he could have scampered over in seconds. The US and Russian militaries, it would seem, will not be happy until it is possible to propel themselves to the bottom of the Abyss on motorized wheelchairs. Up behind us, pioneer teams are manning each scaffold over the gulf, each silvery bridge having its own non-air-breathing generator and a total of eight quartz halogen searchlights to make the dark down here as bright as a midsummer day in southern California. You could tan by these lights.

And now that all this gear, all this materiel, is down here, that tiny little hole in a tiny little wall doesn't seem so menacing at all, more of an anticlimax. More pathetic. In fact, I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor things, however murderous they might be, that lie beyond it.

Ahem.

Well, actually, it's quite a big wall. Far too high to climb. And impossible to dynamite - the suits were right. It's built a long, long way out from the face, almost certainly held together by iron pinning. To blow it would be to send the whole construction tumbling down into the deep, obstacle, path and all, necessitating another day of waiting as more scaffolding is brought down from above.

So it's a good thing the gate, a solid mass of rust, is hanging open on its hinges. There is what looks like a key mechanism, but the key it would take would surely outweigh a man. Whoever these people are, they believe in engineering in a prodigious safety margin.

We have a proper manned base camp behind and above us, with generators and enough fuel to keep the floodlights blazing into the dark till Christmas - and it's only January now. We have not just one, but a caravan of dinky little tracked vehicles with US ARMY badly painted over on their sides, plus a whole A-Team of enthusiastic young military drones in flak jackets and respirators (mostly American, with two or three token Russian observers). I've no idea how the Americans managed to swing getting a group of US troops into a former Soviet satellite nation on the White Russian border. Most likely the Russians were asked to provide the manpower and couldn't afford it.

Sean, sitting on a rock, eyes the men in masks with an unsettled expression.

"Kilo for your thoughts", I say. The Kilo is the Na currency, an oddity in European history which is actually not that odd. After all, Britain's own currency is the pound, which is also a measurement of weight - originally, a weight of silver - and the French currency, similarly, used to be the Livre, and the Italian the Lira. The Kilo became the Na currency back in the days of post-revolutionary fervour when Na was briefly the easternmost outpost of the Napoleonic empire. The Vaemna, as they invariably do, assiduously adopted all the trappings of their new conquerors, including weights and measures, and immediately and patriotically minted a new silver coin to be called a Kilo. Of course, it didn't weigh a kilo, just as a pound doesn't weigh a pound.

"I don't want to be around when one of those guys gets a whiff of Oracle Smoke and opens up on the others", says Sean.

"I know what you mean. After all, they're likely to be better shots than the Na police."

Craig and Wilson, possibly out of some deep-seated American thing in their psyche, have taken a big-eyed trip round Uncle Sam's military sweetshop with Suit 1 and Suit 2, and are solemnly standing over by the nearest scaffolding bridge discussing muzzle velocities and cavitation with one of the gasmasked troopers. Both Craig and Wilson are toting what I am sure have proper names like AR-15 and M16 and M2HB, but can also be perfectly adequately described by the catch-all term Fucking Great Guns. Not content with the industry standard Fucking Great Gun product, however, they have also attached a prodigious number of accessories to their pieces - night sights, flash hiders, and for all I know, extra ergonomic triggers for that squeezy feeling. Whatever part they can bolt a bit to has had a bit bolted to it. I shudder to think how much the weapons must now weigh. They seem not to have noticed that the army guy they're talking to is hefting a rifle considerably smaller than Craig's pistol.

Craig is, officially, our Leader. Being the official head of the Komatsu Vortox project, and being, more importantly, an American, he has been put in charge of the expedition. However, we've been issued copious documentation by the Americans regarding who is in charge of what, and Craig's actual remit seems to fall into the 'Jack Shit' category. American (and token Russian) military personnel will be responsible for getting us into the Abyss and back, defending us against 'external aggression' (I note that internal aggression seems to be OK), planning our route, feeding, clothing and watering us, etc., etc., etc. Craig has authority to decide which pretty rocks to look at under a microscope every time the military machine says we can stop and break out the scientific mumbo-jumbo.

The Dougals, Wayne and Jeanette, and the Russian, Bilibin, are fussing with their backpacks. Jeanette Dougal has refused the offer of a weapon from the military, whilst Wayne has refused to accept anything but the smallest calibre handgun possible, probably due to nagging from his wife. Bilibin has refused all offers of American hardware, plumping instead for a Russian-made AKM, which will probably still be working when all the Armalites everyone else is carrying jam into useless lumps of gunmetal. Bilibin was one of a team who explored the Nadir cave, the deepest karst cavern in the Pamirs - as no-one has ever been to the bottom of the Na Abyss, the Nadir is technically the deepest cave in the world. Yes. We all believe that, don't we.

Apart from the AKM, Bilibin seems to be filling the rest of his rucksack with meticulously-packed bars of Russian chocolate (a good choice, Novgorod dark, made by a mysterious company whose not typically Russian name transliterates from the Cyrillic as Kadbery). It seems he does need food to live after all, and not the blood of Wirgins.

Almost everyone coughing heavily since our arrival; many feeling under the weather, despite the fact that down here, there is no weather. Air quality v. bad, maybe due to the bats. Many people wearing the precautionary SARS masks issued by the paramedics. This seems to stop the coughing.

Wayne and Jeanette, amusingly, are unused to caving in the cold, and are already shivering, but are stoically refusing to complain. Maybe they think they’ll somehow grow accustomed to the cold and become like us Northern Hemispheric folk. They seem not to have realized that us Northern Hemispheric folk have all packed thermal underwear. It must also help that, unlike the tanned and muscular Greg and Jeanette, I have a solid supply of painstakingly built-up body fat. Sean, to be fair, does actually seem to thrive on cold. He seems to have evolved to live underground. I feel that if we actually get to meet any light-shunning denizens of the netherworld, Sean will be able to play a vital part in communicating with them. It is quite possible they may make him their king.