stream of feed data surveying the surface of the Earth as well as providing almost instantaneous communication with its agents across the globe, wherever they might be, and it was this stream of data that provided Mariah with cause to investigate further.
Mariah traced the tip of her index finger across her computer screen, which was located in a small, rectangular office with off-white walls and harsh lighting, and set in a large rig that hung from the high ceiling. She was alone, a cup of coffee beside the computer screen.
“A blip,” she muttered to herself, frowning, “a definite blip.”
She cross-referenced the blip with the location coordinates and satellite feed data from Cerberus’s mighty data banks, tapping commands into her computer keyboard. She reached for her cup as the computer whirred, bringing up the data she had requested. It took just a few moments for Mariah to confirm the location of the blip: it was in the North African territory that was still called Libya on her maps.
“Lakesh is going to want to see this,” Mariah muttered, tapping the command key to print off the data. As the printer rumbled to life, Mariah swigged from her cup and grimaced, discovering that her coffee had gone cold. Ghastly. Still, if cold coffee had been the worst of her worries today, she could have rested easy.
* * *
THE CERBERUS OPERATIONS ROOM was abuzz with activity as Mariah brought her findings to the attention of the founder of the organization. It was an environment where many highly educated personnel operated in harmony, plotting out field missions and surveying data. Mariah had not always been confident here, feeling somewhat intimidated by the array of physics and chemistry degrees possessed by the on-call staff. In the past two and half years, however, she had grown in confidence, beginning with a relationship with an oceanographer called Clem Bryant. Clem had encouraged Mariah to be more involved in the fieldwork that was crucial to her discipline, something she had at first shied away from when she had been faced with this dangerous new world. But Clem had been killed during an enemy infiltration of the redoubt base, and he had died protecting Mariah from attackers. She still thought of him often, a year after his death, and she regretted that their relationship had not developed further, that he was no longer with her to help guide her and assist the Cerberus operation.
The ops room was a huge space with a high roof and two aisles of computer terminals, lit indirectly so as not to distract their operators. Carved from the inside of the mountain itself, the ceiling looked like the roof of a cave. Within that space, twenty-four computer desks ran from left to right, facing a giant screen on which specific findings could be highlighted.
A giant Mercator map dominated one wall—it was dated, still showing the world before the nukecaust had reshaped the coastlines of North America and other locales. The map was sprinkled with numerous glowing locator dots, which were joined to one another with dotted lines of diodes, creating an image reminiscent of the kind of flight maps that airlines had given to passengers in the twentieth century. Those highlighted routes were not flight paths, however, but the locations and connections of the sprawling mat-trans network that the Cerberus redoubt had originally been tasked to monitor over two hundred years ago.
Developed for the US military, the mat-trans network was primarily confined to North America, although a few outposts could be found farther afield at US air bases in Germany, Scotland and other parts of Europe.
A separate chamber leading off from one corner of the operations room, far from the wide entry doors, contained the Cerberus installation’s mat-trans unit along with a small anteroom that could be sealed off if necessary. The chamber had reinforced armaglass walls tinted a coffee-brown color.
Lakesh studied Mariah’s findings with an inscrutable gaze. “What am I looking at here, Mariah?” he asked. More formally known as Mohandas Lakesh Singh, he was a man of medium height with dusky skin, vivid blue eyes and black hair threaded with gray who appeared to be in his midfifties. His hair was slicked back from a high forehead, and he had an aquiline nose and refined mouth. A highly skilled cyberneticist and theoretical physicist from the twentieth century, Lakesh had been cryogenically frozen and endured organ transplants to survive well into his two hundred and fiftieth year. He led the Cerberus operation, albeit as more of a manager than an active investigator, guiding its fifty-strong complement of staff in the protection of humankind from threats outside and within. Lakesh wore a white jumpsuit with a blue, diagonal zipper running up its front, as did Mariah and the other people in the room. This outfit was the standard uniform of the base, although some chose to augment the look with their own accoutrements, giving them an air of individuality amid the vast operation.
“I think it’s a sinkhole,” Mariah said a little timidly. “It’s opened up in the Libyan territory, roughly sixty miles south of Tobruk. I found it after we recorded some seismic activity in the area.”
Lakesh nodded, comparing the close-up image to a wider map of the area. “And why do you feel this should concern us?”
“Because there’s a parallax point at that location,” Mariah explained, “or at least very close to it.”
Still holding the printed-out sheet of data, Lakesh stroked his chin sagely. “That is certainly a worry.” Although Cerberus had originally been dedicated to the use of the man-made mat-trans network, in recent years Lakesh had helped construct the interphaser, which tapped into the ancient parallax-points system to enable instantaneous travel across the globe. Changes at the location points were not unheard of, but changes on a geological level could mean something more significant was occurring there. “Could you explain to me what a sinkhole is?” he asked.
Mariah smiled her sweet smile, comfortable at last to be able to discuss something within her specific realm of expertise. “Sinkholes are depressions in the ground caused by a collapse of the surface layer,” she explained. “This can be through human activity—such as mining. Or it may occur through natural changes to the environment, as with suffusion where a buried cave may be revealed due to problems relating to water drainage, for example—the water weakens the rocks over the cave until they collapse, revealing the cave beneath.”
“And how large might such a sinkhole be?” Lakesh asked.
“They have occurred at sizes from a couple of feet to over two thousand feet wide,” Mariah told him, “and with the same depth variables.”
“So this thing in Libya,” Lakesh mused, raising his eyebrows in surprise, “might be two thousand feet deep?”
“The data shows it’s significant,” Mariah said, “which is to say it’s deep, but we’d need to put someone on the ground to measure that with any level of accuracy.”
Lakesh nodded thoughtfully. “The parallax points frequently occur at sites of specific religious significance,” he said, “but they have become so because of their earlier purpose as sites used in alien transportation. If a sinkhole has opened a path into one of those sites, then...” He trailed off, but his meaning was clear enough.
“Precisely,” Mariah agreed.
Lakesh turned to a man stationed at a nearby desk who was currently poring through screen after screen of computer language, checking each line for a bug in the program. The man had ginger hair that was wild and tangled in front, where he kept unconsciously running his fingers through it, and he wore a permanent expression of worry on his face. This was Donald Bry, computer expert and Lakesh’s right-hand man.
“Donald,” Lakesh began, “how soon can we scramble CAT Alpha for a recon mission?”
“CAT Alpha,” Bry repeated, looking away in recollection. “They’re all on-site right now, Dr.
