The Exorcism
VI: Caucus
caucus: noun (pl. caucuses) 1 derog. a small dominant group of people taking independent decisions within a larger organization. 2 North Amer., esp. US a group of members of a political party, or a meeting of such a group for some purpose. - Chambers Encyclopedic Dictionary
"Gentlemen, we are preparing for an invasion upon unknown forces at the Pole."
There were ten men, sitting on the bench like ten inordinately stuffed penguins – and doing no better than an ordinary, live one with the cold for all their stuffings – in the shelter at Camp Ohio. Before them was a hardened general from the days of hand-to-hand combat, when stratospheric pinpoint laser satellites were just the stuff of paranoid sci-fi writers' nightmares. The US military needed him because they didn't want to just splash the area with hard radiation, the way they had won the last two global wars within the century's turn. They wanted to grab all the technology they could before throwing the nuke.
Camp Ohio was ordinarily a research station, and the closest one to the Pole, at 560 km. Of course it would have been a lot better if it had been a lot closer, but with temperatures below negative 40 degrees Celsius and wind speeds of over 100 kilometers per hour, nobody hears complaints about having to commute 10 hours from workplace to bunk and bath. The bath water wasn't warm either, by the way, but these were men who had touched more solid than liquid water in their lives.
And still, they were shivering. Not a good omen. The general clenched his teeth.
"Did you hear me, gentlemen?" he fairly roared. "We are invading unknown forces at the Pole! We don't know what exactly they have, except that they have some form of electromagnetic jamming that is screwing up our stratospheric satellite cameras. Damn bird pictures so screwed that their maximum resolution is 50 by 50 kilometer patches. You get an idea what we're up against?"
Faces as blank as the tarp that was the wall of their camp. This was not good.
"You little... never mind. Your orders, whether you like it or not, are to go there, covertly, and observe. Understand? Covertly. Don't go running in like those damn desert troops tried in Gulf War II. Know what happened?"
They didn't. It was hard to keep books from falling apart in Arctic training environments.
"Damn troops thought they kicked Saddam's ass. The next year, without warning Saddam throws a monster EMP. Every circuit in Iraq fried, from the fuzes in their bombs right down to the relays in their washing machines. Idiots surrendered in 36 hours." The general paused for effect. He got none besides the shimmering aura of boredom. "The Americans blew their asses open to all sorts of surveillance, intelligence, sabotage. I don't want you doing that. We don't know the technological capability of these... people. All we can predict is that they have a conventional carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen based biology. That's it.
"And, for crying out loud, observe. I don't want you going in bang-bang-bang the way you damn Americans do, and then rush in and realise they've destroyed everything of value. Stay on the perimeter, concealed, recording everything visually, and then try to commence intelligent discourse. Knowing you soldier types, intelligent may be a lot to ask, but for friggin' please try, OK? Fire only on firing back, and you have strict authorization to kill only – and only if – a comrade is wounded. Breach of these guidelines will result in military trial, a definite demotion and a likely dismissal altogether. Understood?"
Silence. Then, among the men, a morose nod of heads spread like a zombie's idea of a Mexican wave. The general slapped his head. Maybe the damn apartheids would never get used to being ordered around by an Asiatic.
"Whatever. Gentlemen, pack up. We leave within the hour."
They got up with a half-hearted "Yes, sir" between shivering teeth. The general clenched his teeth again. This was not going to go well.
They were halfway there when Foaly picked up their heat signatures and informed the Council. There was a brooding silence, the air coiled with inertia like a python encircling her brood.
Then Cahartez spoke up. "Gentlemen, this greatly changes our situation. How long will it take us to pack up?"
"Six... sixteen hours," Councillor Fracine Rose said timidly.
"Commander Root, I presume that renders your plan inviable."
"The spells are fully pumped at Mount Erebus and the other resonators are firmly in place. Actually, we could complete terminal-stage explosion within two-and-a-half hours," Vinyaya said coyly.
At this, Root's skin turned its deepest shade of purple yet.
"Let's put it through a vote, shall we? All in favor?"
But it was Foaly who stepped through the door first, followed by Root. And back within the room, every right hand raised in unanimous assent.
"It's not a valid decision!" Root swore as he kicked the snow at his feet. "Entire Council isn't here! There are just five Council members here."
"What do they care? They're just a damn caucus!
"Yeah, they're dead alright."
"No, a caucus, not a carcass. A small group of people being dominant in an organization. A Mud invention. Interesting thing is, they use it as an insult." A horsy smile played on Foaly's lips.
"Well?"
"I could tell, from the moment I walked in, that there was no dissuading them. In fact, even before." A smile played at his lips.
"You were eavesdropping? Why you..."
"Just enough to know that you, or I, can't stop them. And they're going to bring disaster."
"Come on, we don't need a Foaly to know that!"
"No, it's worse than you think. Remember when I asked Vinyaya what the line represented?"
"Yes. She said they were faults where the plates slid past each other."
"That's wrong. The ones on the eastern coast are. The ones on the western coast are divergent boundaries. Along divergent boundaries molten rock, or magma, from beneath Earth's crust rises steadily towards the surface, pushing apart the tectonic plates on either side of the boundary. Now, transform boundaries – where plates are sliding past each other – don't hold any energy. But divergent plates do. They squish the plate up like so much jelly, but because rock is so hard, a part of that energy is stored in the boundary and the plate in the form of sub-bedrock pressure. Guess what happens when that's released?"
"D'Arvit. Those idiots."
"Relax, Root. It gets better. Have you ever wondered why Haven is so cool?"
"Cool? Cool? To you, maybe, because you spend all your nerd centaur life cooped-up down there in air-conditioning!"
"No, seriously. Think about it. For a place so close to the core, it could be a lot hotter. I've done sims before. 79 degrees Celsius, that's how hot it can be there. Not enough to make centaur bacon, granted, but still hot enough to disable any subterranean lifeforms made of water. Which explains, by the way, why the People who colonized the underground weren't immediately wiped out by indigenous life which would have been better adapted."
"So, tell me. Why is it so cool?"
"Because the Earth's asthenosphere – the region covering the lower crust and high upper mantle, on which the tectonic plates rest – is riddled with tunnels and cavities, some pressurized. The tunnels were produced most likely by tectonic stress, but not old enough so that life could arise underground. I've done some seismic testing, with instruments so fine you could catch a Mud Man sneezing on a rocket launch. And guess how Haven's connected to the South Pole."
"Oh, no. By the gods."
"There are four air veins between Haven and the Antarctica tectonic plate. Three of them are quite low pressure, and have been blocked up in the development of Haven. But the last one is very high pressure. Guess why the old house in the eastern sector of Haven has been cordoned off for 8000 years."
"The records say there was an outbreak there."
"Yes. Of polar gas. Did you know? I didn't until my predecessor's final breath. Anyway, guess what's going to happen when Antarctica is blown off its hinges."
"The pressure waves are going to come through there and rock Haven."
"And the three dormant veins might blow too, if you're unlucky."
"D'Arvit."
There was a low rumble at the eastern end of the horizon. "That'll be the mages pumping the spell to the penultimate energy level. Within the hour, the spell will overload and explode. Yep, you heard me right. The spell explodes first. Imagine the power!"
"In the Council's hands? That's like giving a dirty nuke to a goblin."
Foaly didn't laugh. "Whatever. I wouldn't want to be around here when Erebus blows. The first time in 700 years. I suggest you get Trouble and Holly and scram fast. I'll go get my harness and pretend again that I'm getting trussed up to be roasted."
Commander Root stalked off, angrily. When Foaly looked carefully at his footprints, he thought he could see soil under the big, deep, angry holes in the snow. He followed. "And let them retrieve their darn Original while the planet is rocking from side to side. Mages have a higher nausea threshold anyway. Though I wonder if they'd fare any better than us under a tonne's worth of avalanche snow." Foaly paused. "I think, frankly, the humans will be better prepared than the damn caucus for that."