A Divine Madness

by Colin P. Davies & David Redd

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Part 4: Mount Etna: 2092

Diana dropped down from the access tube into the cockpit of the thermoscaphe. Ahead, the grey jump-suited form of Pokrovsky was already thumping controls. The hatch slammed shut behind Diana.

The cooling system tubes coiled and bubbled within the transparent hull. Beyond, Diana saw a flickering red glow from below, and the more ordinary yellow of evening lamps above the springboard huts. People would be gathering there, hoping to catch a glimpse of the goddess, perhaps chanting her poems together, all preparing for her midnight dive.

Humans were so easily led — so needy for a leader, for any leader. She had used her celebrity status as a word-spinner to gather an army of disciples. They were eager to witness the promised event. They wanted to see her act out the visions she had described, to see her throw herself into the volcano, to see her miraculously rise up again. Only Diana knew that she had planned something very different.

Pokrovsky was ignoring her, running pointless checks on his controls. Everything had been programmed earlier.

Before her dive, the thermoscaphe would descend from its crater-rim derrick right down to the boiling sea of molten lava, sucking in rare elements for its owners and demonstrating the lethal heat down there for her followers.

Watching Pokrovsky, Diana knew he wanted to kill her. She had met enough of the crazed to know them instinctively — the human guards did not share her ability. She was not surprised that he had slipped through the security checks. At times, sanity and insanity were only a heartbeat apart.

Although a virus had been identified as the cause of the psychopathic disorder now devastating the world, it was a virus like nothing the researchers had seen before. Its surface antigens, evolving in obscurity over centuries, now mutated too quickly for virologists to find protection. The prospect for mankind was bleak, driving thousands into the arms of anyone who offered hope — such as herself, the self-proclaimed goddess.

While never losing sight of Pokrovsky, she viewed the slopes of the volcano. Through the diamond hull, the outside world was shadowy; Diana could just make out flashes of battle at two of the guard posts. Guns and rockets were being fired — a skirmish between security and the local crazed. But minor distractions would not affect her plan. She could not be stopped now. The only constraint on her power was still herself. Was she fully mature as a goddess? The time to find out was almost here.

“Mr Pokrovsky!” she called. “When do we go down?”

“When I say so!”

He did not want to talk. No doubt he was aware of the DV link watching everything they did. Diana knew that Pokrovsky could lower the thermoscaphe and begin the harvest of minerals at any time, but his delay suited her. She needed more time. People were still arriving on the slopes of the mountain, packing the DV lounges or heading up to the rim. She desired as big an audience as possible.

“I suppose we’ll be down there for hours,” she said.

“Can’t hurry the bugs. There’ll be generations of them, breeding and dying as I reel the bastards in.”

“I can tell you’re proud of your involvement in this project.”

But why should he be proud? He was just an engineer, a volcano miner perhaps still a little awed by the twenty-first century biotech he used. She felt a moment of sympathy for the man. He talked with such ease and contempt about bugs, and yet, she felt the same about mortals.

Pokrovsky shrugged. “Once I’ve stripped the bugs and loaded up the tank, you can do your show.”

“Is that how you see my greatest moment? A show! Don’t you believe I’m a goddess?”

“I don’t care. Can’t afford to care much, working in active volcanoes.”

They descended.

Pokrovsky piloted the diamond sphere downwards. Cables of fibrous buckycarbon unreeled slowly; the long jib from which they dangled swung sideways to overhang the centre of the boiling cloud of smoke and fumes above the glowing lava.

Diana watched. That cloud was alive.

The operation mined volcanic fumes with living bacteria, tiny GM organisms bred from ancient thermophiles drilled up from deep hot strata. Pokrovsky’s bugs floated in thick shifting swarms amid superheated gases, filtering out riches from the volcanic vapours. His radar showed where the cloud was deepest and densest with rare metals. There he would descend, and suck in bacteria to claim their cargoes.

Diana smiled. Oh, these ingenious people — a pity their lives were only the briefest of sparks in the blackest of nights.

The thermoscaphe reached the centre of the cloud. Diana was conscious of hellish magma below and crumbling crater walls above. A strange twilight descended around her. Only a few LED displays shone among the controls, and perhaps there was a tinge of dull crimson in the thick boiling blackness that pressed, alive, against the hull. She was also alert to the cockpit DV link that relayed her every move to the commentators and believers above.

Pokrovsky started up something that resonated briefly and sent a slight vibration through the metal floor. “The main extractor,” he explained. “Sucks out metal from them, drops it into the cargo pod. The bugs get fried.”

Enough bacteria would survive the harvesting to go on dividing and multiplying exponentially, repopulating the entire crater in a few hours. Diana saw a parallel to the spread of the crazed across the globe.

So far, the thermoscaphe had mined the recent eruption of Mount Etna for a week, and had repaid its mobilisation costs after two days. When in time temperatures fell, the thermophiles could be left to cool and perish.

“You realise I can’t die?” she said.

“I’m not one of your gullible disciples.”

“That makes you the bigger fool!”

He slapped her cheek hard. She bit her lip and tasted blood — that same familiar taste... She thrust him backwards against the hull. “Say HELLO to Rosalita!”

Then she summoned up the whirlpool to crush his brain. Her purest mental power concentrated inside his skull — an instant of sheer force. Blood jetted out of his nose and ears.

“Smile for the audience,” she told him.

He slumped against the wall while a red torrent cascaded down his jumpsuit. His eyes rolled into white. Then he slipped to the floor, leaving the transparent hull streaked with red.

Diana touched fingers to his blood, but did not taste it. “I don’t need this anymore.” She held up her hand for the camera. “I don’t need it. Do you hear me, Rosalita, whoever you are? DO YOU HEAR ME?” She found that her tongue was licking her finger clean, despite herself. No matter; she had bigger plans now. She laughed, imagining the terror in the DV lounges. “Watch me. WATCH ME!” The denouement was upon her. She breathed deeply and felt the vortex expand, sucking up volcanic heat in an escalating feedback cascade, the energies rushing outwards and almost tearing her apart.

She clung to equipment for support, her body trembling with excitement, as through the hull she saw lava rising to her command. The volcano was obeying her! More! More! First bubbling, then a mighty surge as she drove the mountain to erupt.

Magma exploded from the crater and hurled the thermoscaphe up over the rim. A storm of death whirled through her followers.

Tens of thousands of instantly snuffed-out lives! Everything she had hoped for! Yes, she was truly a goddess with the power of life for herself and death for all others!

Diana wrapped herself in a shield of resilient energy as the thermoscaphe came down. It bounced and spun in a cloud of dust and molten rock. She caught glimpses of trees in flames, as fireballs fell.

She screamed with joy... or was it disappointment? Suddenly everything was over. The others were all dead, their corpses buried or burnt to nothing. What, after this, was left for her?

The thermoscaphe came to rest in a blackness as deep as death.

Death...? But what was this death, always for mortals, never for herself? What next for her? The only certainty was that a place, a goal, did exist. Throughout her travels she’d always believed that she would arrive somewhere, whether at some earthly place or, perhaps, at death.

Angrily, she sucked in magmatic heat, transforming the inside of the thermoscaphe into a furnace. But her divine instinct for self-preservation shielded her, and she experienced only discomfort. She could not remove the shield.

Death was not for her.

In despair, she blasted the vehicle away. Already a lava crust was cooling under her feet. She could find no relief... no escape. She wished she had never been born a goddess.

Diana dropped to her knees in the black clouds of falling ash, and wept.

* * *

Proceed to part 5...