Vostok

by Steve Alten

  “Captain, any response from the Manta?”

  “Nothing but static, Mr. Mackreides.”

  “Shut down your engines. Full reverse. Mr. Al Nahyan, you may begin transmitting the message.”

  The radio man spoke with an urgent British accent. “Mayday, mayday. This is the United Arab Emirates research tanker Tonga. Our rudder is badly damaged. We cannot navigate. We strongly advise you to move your ship or risk a collision.”

  Mac stared at the steel vessel growing larger in his binoculars. “Angus, I believe it was Robert Burns who once said, ‘No man can tether time or tide. Time is short and the tide is out.’”

  Angus grinned. “Those tha’ cannae be counseled cannae be helped.”

  “Who said that?”

  “My father, before he’d beat my arse with a hickory switch. Jist a wee love tap, he’d say.”

  “What say we give MJ-12 a wee love tap?”

  We were powerless, our sub lying on the floor of Prydz Bay, weighed down by our two lasers. Silt had buried all but the Valkyries and the top of our cockpit dome. The Tortuga’s keel was just visible in the distance, anchored in 320 feet of water.

  We felt the rumble of the steel beast before we saw it, its 300,000 tons displacing the surface while vacuuming up the bottom, its presence causing the ice sheet to reverberate.

  Then I saw the 1,100-foot supertanker’s bow converge upon the Tortuga’s starboard flank, and for the second time that morning I prepared to meet my Maker.

  The process of slowing a supertanker must be initiated miles in advance using a braking pattern called a slalom, which veers the ship back and forth from starboard to port while her engines run full astern. Mac had either seriously miscalculated Newton’s Law of Conservation of Momentum, or he simply didn’t give a damn.

  The prow of the supertanker struck the exposed flank of the Tortuga like a steadily moving train plowing through a double-decker aluminum bus, crushing the starboard infrastructure while its submerged bulb-shaped bow scooped up the vessel’s disfigured hull and carried it away with hardly a drop in speed or forward momentum.

  Passageways crumpled. Water blasted through shredded steel plates. Internal pipes and cables ruptured. From Angus and Mac’s perspective, it must have appeared as though the supertanker had bitten off a chunk of the Tortuga’s ribs. From our perspective, it looked like a megalodon had snatched an orca in its jaws and was carrying it off to be consumed.

  And then an unseen force swept us off the bottom into the eye of a hurricane.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and held on as the vortex created by the two passing ships inhaled us, spinning us end over end toward the supertanker’s propeller shafts, the blades churning in reverse.

  Jonas was a rock. Knowing the Tonga’s impact would shut down power to the Tortuga’s sonar array, he focused only on his command console. The moment the lights powered on he jammed the controls hard to port and pulled us away from the spinning blades into a steep dive.

  Moments later a submerged wall of ice materialized into view. Jonas quickly honed in on the Loose Tooth Rift’s jagged chasm, which harbored the cavernous opening created nearly six hours earlier by the Tethys.

  The borehole was now a clogged artery of white ice. Powering up the Valkyries, Jonas pressed the Manta’s nose to the frozen gauntlet, which quickly liquefied and inhaled us into its dark, widening orifice.

  We were on our way.

  36

  “How puzzling all these changes are!

  I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another.”

  —Lewis Carroll

  The sub’s lights illuminated a near-vertical shaft of ice so crystal-clear that Jonas struggled to discern the boundaries of the funnel. After the Manta’s fifth collision with the borehole’s walls, he shut down the exterior lights and relied strictly on the cockpit’s night-vision glass, which generated a view that reminded me of a miniature medical camera plunging down an olive-green esophagus.

  After descending nearly six hundred feet, the passage leveled out, depositing us in a shallow sea of meltwater that separated the bottom of the ice sheet above our heads from the floor of Prydz Bay. Squeezed between these two titanic forces, the water pressure within this narrow, seemingly endless cavity registered an eye-popping 12,656 psi, the weight above us muffling everything but the sound of our breathing.

  Visibility was limited to an olive-green patch that extended ten to twelve feet in every direction. For several minutes we maintained a snail’s pace through this vast, dark, liquid space, until the overwhelming sensation of claustrophobia sent Jonas fumbling for the lights. He flipped the switch, and our beams illuminated a hidden chamber of breathtaking beauty.

  For millions of years the ice sheet had surfed this watery conveyor belt as it inched its way across East Antarctica before slaloming along the Amery Basin into Prydz Bay. Perpetually melting and refreezing, the bottom of the glacier appeared a rich azure-blue, its sculpted patterns and textures creating a three-dimensional mosaic so mesmerizing I was tempted to ask Jonas to direct a light at the ceiling, just so I could absorb its incredible details.

  Complementing this chapel of art was a boundary of fresh water so pure and clear it actually magnified our twin beacons of light, extending visibility for miles. As for what resided below, for now it was dark silt. But that would change.

  Jonas was still too overwhelmed by grief to allow himself to be dazzled. “Zach, this subterranean waterway seems to run forever. How do we know which direction to go?”

  “We need to follow the Amery Ice Shelf inland about 340 miles, where it will meet the Lambert Glacial Basin. A subglacial river with a northern outflow should merge with this meltwater. We follow it southeast into Lake Vostok.”

  “Not exactly navigating by the stars, is it?” Jonas typed a search command over his computer’s keyboard. The GPS finder zoomed in on East Antarctica, honing in on the Loose Tooth Rift. “Here we are. Here’s where the ice shelf meets that glacial basin. That’s a huge expanse. How the hell are we supposed to find a river amid an ocean of meltwater?”

  “I don’t know, Jonas. Maybe we’ll be able to hear it on sonar.”

  “So that’s 340 miles to the north and at least another five hundred to the southeast. At our best speed, it’ll take us eleven hours just to hit the river, assuming this meltwater remains stagnant. Traveling another five hundred miles into a head-current—that alone could take twenty-four to thirty-six more hours.

  “When I was an undergrad at Penn State, my roommate and I would drive down to Fort Lauderdale over Christmas break. We’d take two-hour shifts, twenty hours straight. We were so wiped out by the time we arrived that we’d have to sleep all day. And we were nineteen.”

  “Is there any way you can program the autopilot to at least get us to the river?”

  “The GPS navigator isn’t functioning with that ice sheet over our heads. What I can do is program the autopilot to remain on a solitary heading. It’ll use the Manta’s sonar to navigate around perceived obstacles, but one of us should still stay awake to monitor our surroundings. I’ll take the first shift while you sleep.”

  I reclined my seat, removed my shoes, and covered up with a wool blanket. I was exhausted, having barely slept since arriving in Antarctica. Lying back, I looked up through the thick cockpit glass, gazing at the bottom of the ice sheet.

  Jonas accelerated to thirty knots, turning the glacier’s artwork into a blue blur.

  Within minutes I was asleep.

  I awoke as Avi Socha.

  I was in a cave close to the ocean. I could hear the echo of the sea and feel the pounding surf through the rock upon which I sat. The night howled at my back, glistening with stars. Berudim shone brightly in the northern sky, a cloud-covered world orbited by a solitary moon one-ninth the mass of Charon.

  I was anxious to begin; the alignment of Berudim with Charon was a powerful cosmic antenna that facilitated the best reception with the upper worlds. Closing my eyes, I r
ecited my mantra, tapping into the universal consciousness.

  ANA BEKOACH… GEDULAT YEMINECHA… TATIR ZERURA …

  My consciousness was moving through the void, passing over a dark sea.

  KABEL RINAT… AMECHA SAGVENU… TAHARENU NORA …

  The sea moved inland, becoming a twisting river that separated a rift valley.

  NA GIBOR… DORSHEY YICHUDCHA… KEBAVAT SHOMREM …

  Mountains rose along either bank as the river emptied into a vast lake, its waters dark and forboding…

  BARCHEM TEHAREM… RACHAMEY ZIDEKATCHA… TAMID GOMLEM …

  On the western bank appeared an alien dwelling that was somehow familiar…

  HASIN KADOSH… BEROV TUVECHA… NAHEL ADOTECHA …

  My consciousness hovered over the center portion of the dwelling until it was drawn through a glass partition.

  YAHID GE’EA… LEAMECHA PENNE… ZOCHREY KDUSHATECHA …

  I was inside a dark chamber, the only light coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offered a view of the lake and the snow-covered peaks of the mountains rising above the far eastern bank. An extraterrestrial being was seated before the glass, its demeanor melancholy as it stared outside at the weather.

  SHAVATENU KABEL… USHEMA ZAKATENU… YODE TA’ALUMOT… I had moved to hover over the life-form when my consciousness was suddenly drawn into its aura by a magnetic force, inhaling me into a vortex of physicality. And I could hear!

  “Zachary, this woman is here tae speak with you. Are ye sober?”

  I stood, my temper flaring. “Of course, I’m sober. Hi, I’m Zachary Wallace.”

  “C’mon, Zach, wake up!”

  I floated in a pool of warmth and serenity, my consciousness gazing down upon the Manta, adrift in the crystal-clear water. Through the cockpit glass I witnessed Jonas straddling my vacant body, pushing against my chest until—

  —Gravity gained a foothold, dragging me back into my flesh-bound prison.

  Registering the blood rushing into my face, I opened my eyes. “Sorry. Did I oversleep?”

  “Oversleep? Jesus … ” Jonas climbed off me, falling back into his seat. “According to the bio-sensors built into your harness, you all but died.” He pointed to a flashing screen showing my steadily rising vitals. “At one point your heart rate dropped below ten beats a minute, and your blood pressure hit goose-eggs. What the hell happened?”

  I adjusted my seat, sitting up. “I don’t know. I mean, I know what happened, only it wasn’t me doing it. I was just sort of along for the ride.”

  “Try speaking in coherent sentences.”

  “I had an out-of-body experience, and instead of sticking around, my consciousness was in another time and place. It had slipped inside another being’s body. And then I was back in my body, in my father’s resort. Seven years ago.”

  Jonas just sat there and stared at me like a guy who realizes—too late—that he’s hitched his mule to the wrong wagon.

  “Something big is happening here, J.T. Get us going and I’ll try to explain.”

  Jonas shook his head, then buckled his harness and powered up the engines, reengaging the autopilot. “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a big piece of the puzzle still missing, but I’m beginning to grasp what’s going on. At first I thought this entity had selected me to disseminate its zero-point energy technology to mankind because, well—”

  “Because you’re smart.”

  “More like intuitive, but, yeah. Then I started having these really lifelike dreams, like this one and the one on the plane. In these dreams I’m living on another planet during another time period.”

  “Past or present?”

  “To be honest I’m not sure, but I’m leaning toward the past. The planet—it’s called Charon and it’s in big trouble. Something devastating is going to happen and this guy, the one I share my consciousness with, is trying to figure out a way to save his people. By reentering the E.T.’s ship and accessing the portal, I think I might be able to help him.”

  My analysis did not sit well with Jonas. He stared at the portside wing, his mind grappling with this new information. Glancing at his bio-sensors, I watched as his blood pressure climbed.

  “Jonas, you okay?”

  “You said you were back at your father’s resort seven years ago. You realize that none of this would be happening if you hadn’t come to me back then, asking me to invest in your company? Your son would be safe, and David would be alive.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Yeah, we do. Because if David hadn’t died, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting in this sub with you. So why do I get the distinct feeling that these extraterrestrials are manipulating events in order to make sure you get back to Lake Vostok to save their sorry asses!”

  Jonas was livid, but I understood where he was coming from. David Taylor had been an experienced pilot. Out of all the possible multiverses that could have been realized from his recent encounter with the Liopleurodon, my guess was that only a few would have actually resulted in his death.

  Was Jonas right? Was I being maneuvered into a specific reality that served the E.T.s?

  It made me wonder how many cause-and-effect dominoes had to tumble into place just for me to be en route to Vostok. Big Oil conspiring to subvert new energy systems, MJ-12 burning my assembly plant to the ground, William and Brandy’s kidnapping, Susan’s murder… Was I living out this specific multiverse of eventualities through free will, or was I following a course of the entity’s choosing?

  “Jonas … ” I turned to console him, only to realize he had fallen asleep.

  The farther we traveled inland, the deeper our underwater passage descended, reflecting the thickening ice sheet overhead. Donning a headset, I passed the hours switching back and forth from the white noise of sonar to a classic rock CD.

  We had closed to within fourteen nautical miles of the Amery Ice Shelf’s intersection with the Lambert Glacial Basin when I heard a faint rush of water over sonar. Disengaging the autopilot, I altered our course and honed in on the sound, which was originating from the southeast.

  The horizon of water sandwiched between the bottom of the ice sheet and East Antarctica’s ancient geology was changing rapidly, the dark silt below yielding to patches of brown sea grass, the width of the passage narrowing quickly, forcing me to reduce our speed. Once placid waters became a minefield of eddies, each invisible swirl of current threatening to drive the Manta into the ice sheet.

  Jonas awoke on our second collision, the submersible pilot disturbed to find our passage reduced to a ten- to twelve-foot-wide divide. “Where are we?”

  “We’re nearing the glacial basin, the very beginning of the ice shelf. The subglacial river’s close. You can hear it on sonar.”

  Jonas took over command. Guided by sonar, he directed us farther to the south.

  We felt the river before we saw it, the current pelting us with watermelon-size ice cubes too clear to see and too numerous to dodge. Fifteen million years ago, the waterway had been as wide as the Amazon, twisting across East Antarctica to empty into the enormous delta now occupied by the ice shelf. We only realized the extent of the river’s boundaries when Jonas dived the sub to escape the current and found that the bottom had dropped nearly one hundred feet.

  Hazards were everywhere. The riverbed was littered with vortex-channeling boulders and petrified tree trunks as wide as redwoods. Chunks of ice gouged out of the bottom of the ice sheet soared past us like miniature comets.

  “Activate the sonar, Zach.”

  I pinged, sending sound waves reflecting off objects both stationary and propelled by the current. It was impossible, similar to driving a racecar down a crowded speedway—the wrong way.

  Then a different blip appeared on sonar, and I knew this one was going to be trouble.

  37

  “I am the captain of my soul.”

  —William Ernest Henley

  Jonas read the incoming data as it crawled across
his sonar screen. “Range: twelve kilometers and closing. Still too far out to gauge its size, but it’s way too quiet to be that other sub. Maybe it’s an alien vessel, come to collect you and save me the trip.”

  “Jonas, I think it might be a life-form.”

  “A life-form? Come on. What kind of life-form could survive down here?”

  “Vostok’s rich in geothermal vents. There’s a thriving food chain that dates back to the Miocene. How close do we need to be to get a size reading?”

  “On a biologic? Less than six kilometers. What are you afraid of, Zachary? Don’t tell me a Meg—”

  “It’s not a megalodon.” I tapped my index finger repeatedly on the sonar REFRESH button until new data scrolled across the monitor.

  RANGE TO TARGET: 5.78 KILOMETERS.

  TARGET SPEED: 8.3 KNOTS.

  TARGET SIZE: 18.89 METERS

  TARGET COURSE: INTERCEPT!

  Jonas swore. “The damn thing’s over sixty feet long, and it’s headed straight for us. Speak to me, Wallace. What’s out there?”

  “There’s a species of Miocene sperm whale inhabiting Vostok. Ever hear of Livyatan melvillei?”

  “That whale with the big teeth and the lower jaw of an orca? Damn it, Zachary. Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”

  “I didn’t think they could follow the river this far from Vostok. Once we were in the lake, I figured you’d be able to outmaneuver them in the Manta.”

  “Not with these lasers strapped to our wings—Geez! There it is.”

  A dark mass appeared in our starboard headlight’s periphery some two hundred yards ahead. Jonas was about to make an evasive maneuver when we both realized something was wrong. The whale’s movements seemed erratic, the tip of the creature’s box-shaped head scraping the bottom of the ice sheet. As we halved the distance, we could see the fluke hanging motionless below the leviathan’s body.

  It wasn’t swimming; it was dead. The current was propelling its carcass along.

  Jonas banked into a tight turn and brought us up beside the whale. Along its right flank was a fresh wound scorched ashen-gray, a twelve-foot-wide crater of blubber corresponding to the approximate dimensions of the bow of Colonel Vacendak’s submarine.