Paradeisia: The Complete Trilogy: Origin of Paradise, Violation of Paradise, Fall of Paradise

by B. C. CHASE

  Aubrey felt the cold, firm grip of soldiers on her arms. Their skin felt smooth and scaly, snakeskins.

  Doctor Pearce was sweaty, though he regarded Bridges with calm in his eyes. “You know, there is a much easier way for you to get what you want.”

  “What’s that?” Bridges said, withdrawing the knife.

  “To get on your knees,” Doctor Pearce said, his lips curling, “and pray for mercy.”

  Flashing with anger, Bridges plunged the knife deep into Doctor Pearce’s abdomen. Pushing him down to the ground, he shrieked in Doctor Pearce’s ear, “I DON’T NEED MERCY!” Trembling with fury, he said, “Last chance.” Blood was trickling down the knife hilt and onto his hand.

  Doctor Pearce grabbed Bridges’ shirt and intonated with effort, “I was already born again.”

  The monitor suddenly started beeping. Bridges dropped Doctor Pearce to bleed out and casually wiped his blade on the moss. He examined the monitor. Looking up, he said in a hushed voice, “Andrews is here. He’s right here.”

  Everyone looked around, but there was no sign of Andrews.

  “Well where is he?” Bridges exclaimed, then froze.

  Standing on the lake, shrouded by mist, was an emaciated figure. He surveyed the scene with wild eyes, and Aubrey thought she saw a distinct pleasure in them as he took in Doctor Pearce’s struggling breaths.

  “Doctor Andrews?” Bridges questioned.

  Andrews did not even blink in response, merely staring at the spectacle with chillingly aloof inhumanity. Then he stepped forward, appearing to increase in size as he did so. He walked toward the shore and onto the ground.

  Bridges said with an awed tone, “It pleases you. Death pleases you.” Bridges’ grossly lesser height became obvious as he neared Andrews. Or Andrews was getting larger, like some kind of optical illusion, Aubrey thought.

  Once he was directly in front of Andrews, Andrews did not glance down at him, but stared ahead. As if insulted, Bridges intoned, “I’m talking to you!”

  Andrews slowly cast his gaze down to the small-looking man before him. His thin lips did not part as a spine-tingling voice said, “I am greater than him.” Then he raised his face directly up, exposing the underside of his jaw which, with his neck, immediately took the form of a colorless face with gaping, malevolent eyes and a narrow chin. In the same instant, the shoulders grew wider, the waist slimmer, and all hue was lost. Each hand had six long fingers.

  Bridges, cowered before this suddenly ominous figure and, backing away on all fours, exclaimed with a shaky voice, “Are you one of the gods? The Aztec gods? I came to please you! I brought sacrifices!” He motioned to Aubrey and Adriaan with his knife.

  Aubrey felt the soldiers tightening their grip around her arms. They walked her to Bridges and shoved her down to her knees. Bridges withdrew a knife and pushed her head down to her chest far as it would go, causing a spark of pain to shoot down her spine.

  She heard Adriaan shouting, “Bridges you’ve lost your bloody mind!” He screamed, “BRIIIIDGES!”

  She didn’t see her life flash before her eyes. She didn’t have time to think what might happen after the end. The knife was slicing through her neck. She felt it dislocate her vertebrae, painlessly. In the split second she had, all she felt was guilt.

  She hated herself.

  She had failed her sacred charge.

  Lake Vostok, Antarctica

  It had taken nearly twenty hours of continuous travel to reach Lake Vostok from Beijing, scarcely any time of which Doctor Ming-Zhen had been able to apply toward the sleep debt he owed his body. The grief he felt at the loss of his wife and daughter was overpowering, and the anticipation that there was some hope of meeting them in this strange world beneath the ice sent his mind reeling. The fact that he was able to bring Gary and Stacy who had only just lost their own son and Donte (who had lost his mother on the ship and had received word that his brothers and sisters had been claimed by a virus that was wreaking havoc in Baltimore) seemed propitious.

  Of course, how he was going to try to summon the spirits of his wife and daughter he had no idea. But more people whose souls were connected to the lost surely couldn’t hurt the quest.

  And yet, he also wondered if he had lost his mind. Though there was some amount of logic to the idea that the apparition that had taken over Doctor Ivan Toskovic’s submarine must have been his very spirit, there was certainly no scientific evidence for this. On the other hand, science had failed him in the past. Without any other line of reasoning to follow, there was no reason not to follow this one. Something told him he was on the right path. A voice.

  The fact that the being that had taken Doctor Toskovic’s place was so distinctly deceptive and apparently nefarious in its intentions was disturbing, but, in Doctor Ming-Zhen’s mind, attributable to the fact that Doctor Toskovic himself was so. Diyu was, after all, a place of purgatory for the dead to make good on their sins before reincarnation. At any rate, his wife and daughter were not evil people like Doctor Toskovic had been, and therefore, he reasoned, if they were down there in some form, they would be much more amorous.

  He had been awestruck by the giant armada of military ships that were patrolling the sea surrounding China’s Antarctic base. A new dome which had been constructed 140 miles from the original site was equally well guarded. He was now riding a helicopter from the entrance of the dome to the location in its center where the borehole to the lake was located. Lines of military vehicles were making their way through, and on the ice he saw a mass of vehicles, buildings, and people he would never have thought possible. Then, ahead, he saw something else he did not expect to see. Instead of the tower that had housed the drilling apparatus the last time he was here, there was a gaping, oval hole in the ground the length of a jumbo jet and nearby, a looming mountain of ice.

  He looked questioningly at Zhang, “That’s the borehole?”

  Zhang smiled, “Yes.”

  “But the water pressure…”

  “There is a door at the base. And the pressure is inconsistent, as it turned out. It ebbs and flows. We only enter when the tide is low.”

  “How did you make it so large?”

  “We used the power of light.”

  “Light?”

  “High powered laser light. The heat melted the ice and pumps brought the water to the surface.”

  “Why did you need such a large hole?”

  “Suffice it to say you won’t find the transport so confining, this time around. Things have come a long way since you were last here.”

  As the helicopter descended toward an enormous warehouse of corrugated steel some distance from the hole, Zhang said, “The video of your original trip into the lake was indeed interesting. But I must prepare you not to expect to see some of the more supernatural things that you saw then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean do not expect to see now what you saw then.”

  “You said that the video was just as I had described—that everything I said had happened and was captured.”

  “I didn’t say that. What I said was that we did see Toskovic outside his submersible, drowning. We saw the marine organisms. But there were things from your testimony that we did not see. A fire-breathing dragon—excuse me, plesiosaur—is one of them.”

  “So,” Doctor Ming-Zhen folded his arms, eyeing his superior with cynicism. “You lied to me in an attempt to make me willingly return. I truly did hallucinate.”

  Zhang nodded. “I do not doubt that you saw what you say you saw, hallucinations or not. No one does. The cameras did not record everything that you saw. But to be clear, what I told you when I asked you to come is that this is of great importance to our national security. We must stop at nothing to protect our interests. That,” he grinned facetiously, “is the only truth that matters.”

  After the chopper landed, Doctor Ming-Zhen, Donte, Zhang, Jia Ling, Gary, Stacy, their monkey, and a host of others disembarked into the cold. A vehicle with tracks for
wheels was waiting for them near the building. The vehicle had a ramp at the rear with two doors. Zhang led the way, and as they approached a giant door on the warehouse swung open with a resounding groan.

  Inside the warmed vehicle were four lengthwise rows of seats and a high windshield on a second level where an operator stood. Soldiers slammed the doors shut behind them as they sat. Doctor Ming-Zhen braced himself when the vehicle jolted forward. The cool interior lights flicked on as the vehicle traveled into the warehouse. Everyone leaned as the nose of the vehicle dove and they plunged down a steep slope. When they leveled, all that could be seen out the high front windows were the steel struts and panels of the warehouse ceiling with large People’s Republic of China flags draped from the largest beams.

  After they had gone some distance, the vehicle lurched to a stop and shuddered as the operator switched off the engine. The doors swung open from the outside and Doctor Ming-Zhen waited his turn to disembark. When he did so, he was astounded.

  The true extent of the massive size of the facility, which was partially under the ice, was now evident. Various military personnel and vehicles crisscrossed the floor, with bustling activity catching the eye in all directions. Beeps, whirs, shouts, and engines echoed across the vast space. Robotic cranes on tracks suspended five four-hundred foot-long submarines in bays and surrounded by scaffolding, two on one side of the building and three on the other. Each vessel had a bright, monochromatic oriental dragon painted on it. Tracks in the ceiling diverged from each of the crane robots into a central track in the middle of the building that led down a gigantic ice tunnel at the far end.

  Zhang smiled at Ming-Zhen, “Nothing like before, is it?”

  “No,” Doctor Ming-Zhen said, taking in the spectacle, “it isn’t.”

  Zhang said, “You’ll find these submersibles slightly less claustrophobic, I think.”

  Doctor Ming-Zhen acknowledged the remark with a nod. Then he eyed Zhang closely and said, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why all this?” he swung his arm in a wide arc. “Why the PLA? What is really going on down there?”

  “A mission,” Zhang said simply. Then, in English, “This way. We ride Red Dragon,” pointing to the nearest sub. Though warmer than in the dome, the warehouse was freezing, and Doctor Ming-Zhen noticed that Gary sheltered the shivering monkey in his shirt. From the tunnel, a sixth, dripping submersible slowly emerged, carried by the robotic crane suspended from the track. Steam rolled off its enormous body as it moved up and passed above them on the way to one of the many vacant bays.

  They rode a construction elevator up the scaffolding to a door on the side of the Red Dragon. Doctor Ming-Zhen shuddered as he stepped into the, brightly lit interior, though not from the cold. Climate controlled to be warm and with pristine-white and glass walls, it was surprisingly agreeable and smelled sanitized.

  They walked down a hallway where they passed various uniformed personnel who gave way with their backs against the wall and respectfully saluted.

  A door opened in front of them and they passed into a bridge full of displays and generously sized windows in the front. Zhang took his place standing before the consoles where officers stood. He motioned to a row of seats facing the windows where the rest of the party sat.

  After exchanging some technical words with one of the officers, Zhang turned to the group. “We are in a race,” he said, “and we expect to win. You are about to witness the overwhelming might and capability of your government. The People’s Republic of China is taking its rightful preeminence, leading the way to a new world of previously unimaginable possibilities. And we are doing this because we were prepared. We took the first steps, so we were ready when the opportunity arose.” He looked up and smiled to a man who had entered the bridge, “Ah, Doctor Han. What a relief. I was genuinely concerned you would not make it.”

  Doctor Han said, “So was I. Fortunately, you were already in the area to retrieve Zhou, as I understand.”

  Zhang said to Doctor Ming-Zhen, “I think you know Doctor Han. Doctor Chao Han,” he said pointedly.

  Doctor Chao Han gazed condescendingly at Doctor Ming-Zhen. The face was instantly recognizable, though more mature than it had been in the Gobi desert. The same smug superiority was there. Doctor Ming-Zhen’s blood pressure instantly rose.

  “Chao?” Jia Ling exclaimed, horror-stricken. “What are you doing here?”

  “Doctor Han is our chief scientist for this project. He has been instrumental in making China the world leader in genetic technologies.”

  “Genetic technologies?” Doctor Ming-Zhen uttered with disbelief. “I thought paleoanthropology was your area of concern.”

  “No, not really,” Chao grinned saucily. Walking around to stand over Jia Ling, he said, “My concerns have always been elsewhere.”

  Jia Ling glared at him, “Don’t come near me.”

  Chao reached for her, but Donte grabbed his wrist. “Leave her alone.”

  Chao grinned haughtily in a failed attempt to hide his apparent trepidation and moved away. He said, “Besides, everyone knows genetics is where the future is. Paleoanthropology is of little use to someone who expected to go somewhere. That is how I convinced you to quit your major with me, Jia Ling. Didn’t I?”

  Jia Ling squirmed. Doctor Ming-Zhen stared at her, perplexed. “You quit paleontology?”

  She nodded.

  As he sat down next to her, he patted her leg reassuringly, but said nothing. Donte took a seat next to him.

  Doctor Ming-Zhen watched out the front window as the submarine slowly began to move, following the track forward, toward the tunnel.

  As they entered the tunnel, the vessel gained speed, as if it was a colossal roller coaster hanging from an oversized track. Although the angle of the descent was not steep, the sheer mass of the vessel gave way to gravity. A fierce vibration built, and Doctor Ming-Zhen found himself holding the armrests of his chair with a white-knuckled grip. Lights in the ceiling of the tunnel revealed the white ice giving way to crystal clear blue the deeper they went. It was like traveling through a giant sapphire. Eventually the tunnel leveled, and at this depth the ice was pitch black. The submarine slowed gradually, passing through a hoop of steel into a concrete chamber capped by a steel wall. Steel arms rose up from the floor to form a half-circle frame and the submarine slowly came to a stop above the arms. There was a grinding sound as the robot lowered it to rest in the arms. Then a clacking echoed in the chamber followed by a thunderous rumble.

  The chamber lights went out and there was absolute silence. Front beams popped on, revealing the steel cap before them.

  “More refined than your last trip, isn’t it?” Zhang said proudly to Doctor Ming-Zhen.

  “Yes,” Doctor Ming-Zhen agreed, though for some reason he felt no more secure.

  “Turn out the bridge lights,” Zhang commanded. In short order they were plunged into darkness, except for the view out the thick windows. This served to increase Doctor Ming-Zhen’s sense of foreboding.

  The cap suddenly began to move, slowly coming apart in sections, allowing water to jet in with tremendous force. The sections stayed partially open while the water gushed in like a powerful waterfall, and the submarine shuddered and creaked as the water pressed up around its base.

  Zhang stated, “You know none of the biology you found was native to this lake.”

  “What do you mean? It was extracted from this lake, Lake Vostok.”

  “Yes, it was. But that was not where it originated.” Zhang didn’t turn his head to look at Doctor Ming-Zhen as he spoke. His dark form was silhouetted against the view of the roaring water.

  “You mean it migrated from another lake via a subterranean river?”

  “No,” he chuckled. “Not remotely.”

  “The life migrated from the ocean, then?” Doctor Ming-Zhen said, his voice betraying his disappointment. “I don’t see how that is possible.”

  Impatiently, Zhang said, “No, the life did
not come from the ocean either. It did not come from here at all.”

  “Here?”

  “Earth.”

  Doctor Ming-Zhen’s mind spun. The water was beginning to bubble up at the window, throwing him into an attack of claustrophobic panic, as if he was drowning. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply for a moment. When he opened his eyes, the submarine was entirely engulfed in bubbling water and the cap sections were receding. Doctor Ming-Zhen strained to say, “Not from earth? What are you talking about?”

  “Like every scientist, you don’t want to hear some information that disproves your theory. No accolades for you. No peer-reviewed papers. No news articles. No grants. No more research. Scientists are all egocentrics, you included. That is why I despise them.” He seethed, “They claim objectivity but not one of them is objective. You are all hypocrites of the most deplorable kind. You, Doctor Ming-Zhen, have been on a rock-star tour of keynote addresses, book signings, photographs, and celebrity. You have been selling the latest scientific fashion that you thought you had proved. But in reality you proved nothing. Because your assumptions were wrong. Like any paleontologist, you have created your own world of conjecture, and like any artist you have painted a magnificent canvass of imagination, complete with your own prejudices and politics. But it was all a lie. The very foundation of your argument was wrong.”

  “If this is truly how you feel about scientists, Xiàozhăngii, I am surprised you chose to head up the most prestigious university in China.”

  “I ran a business, and very successfully too. It isn’t my moral concern that there was a world eager to buy what you and your scholarly colleagues were selling. And that is exactly what all of you were selling, isn’t it? Prestige! Hubris. You cannot help it, I suppose. You and all your kin are merely human. The pride of life is the pinnacle of success for you.” He turned to gaze at Doctor Ming-Zhen with foreboding eyes, “So immediately you want to question what I tell you. But, no, it is true. The biology in Lake Vostok did not originate in Lake Vostok, and not on earth, either. Not this earth, at least.” He smiled darkly, “And your PhD’s could not have prepared you for this fun new fact, could they? Try to make sense of that with your years of spurious studies, pontificating lectures, pompous papers, and ridiculous reconstructions. The simple fact of the matter is that you were not there. You are not a witness. You observed nothing that happened when it happened. So you cannot claim understanding, no matter how many fossils you examine.