The Spawning

by Tim Curran

  But that was Antarctica.

  There were a hundred ways to go mad down there and especially once winter showed its teeth and the sun settled lower and lower each day and the darkness came, bleak and eternal. Something about the perpetual night made people want to climb the walls. Made them start imagining things and turning on one another.

  She had seen it happen plenty of times and it could make for a long ugly winter. Petty rivalries became inflamed. Minor disagreements turned into major battles. Professional jealousies amongst the scientists became blood skirmishes. Despite all the psychological profiling, it still happened with unsettling frequency on the Ice. All it took was one nut to turn an entire station into a twelve-step program.

  And that’s why she was starting to worry about Andrea.

  There was nothing there, nothing definable, yet she’d noticed a certain almost morbid shift in Andrea’s character over the past few days and it was worrying her. Andrea, despite her scientific credentials and pragmatic world view, was young and impressionable.

  “C’mon, Kim,” Borden said. “You in or out? The redoubtable Captain Starnes has just laid down a full house, Jacks over tens . . . do me a favor and skunk him with four-of-a-kind. He deserves it.”

  Starnes laughed. “Ah, the man is clearly jealous of my card mechanics.”

  “Card mechanics?” Borden said. “We used to call that cheating when I was a kid.”

  More laughter.

  “He’s still mad because we’re not getting the Callisto feed.”

  “Do you blame me?” Borden said. “The biggest thing since sliced cheese and I miss it.”

  They were all gathered at the table, supper dishes cleared, playing poker and gnawing on the cherry turnovers Dr. Bob had made. All of them . . . except Andrea.

  She was standing before the window over by the radio listening to the wind, staring out into the blackness or maybe just staring at her own dour reflection in the glass.

  The wind kicked up, shook the habitat, and the lights flickered.

  Kim frowned. “Andrea? Why don’t you come play some cards with us and have a few laughs?”

  “Sure,” Dr. Bob said. “Get over here before Doc Borden eats all the turnovers.”

  “Is that another snide remark about my weight?” Borden chuckled.

  Andrea just kept staring into the darkness.

  Kim and Dr. Bob looked at one another.

  “Andrea?” Kim said.

  “What?” she turned towards them now, her face pale and shadowy in the dimness. “The wind makes funny sounds if you listen to it.”

  “Just the wind,” Dr. Bob said. “Out here on the plateau, there’s nothing to stop it.”

  Borden nodded. “Sure, give it a month and then it’ll really start screaming. I remember one year at Pole Station it was so loud that–”

  “Come on, Andrea,” Kim said. She walked over to her and put a hand on her arm. Andrea turned around, a vicious look in her eyes like she was ready to tear out Kim’s throat.

  “Hey!” Dr. Bob said.

  “I’m all right,” Andrea said, her eyes dark and simmering. “I like to listen to the wind. It sounds like voices sometimes.”

  Andrea put some Chapstik on her lips with a trembling hand. “Come and have some fun with us.”

  “I’m fine right here.”

  Borden and Starnes exchanged looks. What they were seeing in Andrea was not making them very confident of the next five months. All it took was one bad one, one member of the team that could not adapt, and there would be trouble. They all had work to do which would not get done if they had to keep an eye on Andrea.

  She kept staring out into the night, head cocked, listening to something no one else seemed to hear.

  15

  POLAR CLIME STATION

  IT WAS SHEER CURIOSITY more than anything else that brought Coyle to the Community Room that night to watch NASA’s feed from the Cassini 3 probe of Callisto. How could you not be curious about such a thing? That winter they had Professor Eicke from MIT’s Haystack Observatory, an atmospheric physicist who spent most of his time in the Atmospherics Lab dabbling about with mid-latitude ionospheric research, magnetospheric studies and thermospheric measurements. Exciting stuff like that.

  Eicke had told Coyle that the surface of Callisto was a pretty nasty place . . . cold, dark, and uninviting. It was the second largest moon of Jupiter and the third largest in the solar system itself. Other than immense meteoric impact craters, the surface was rather smooth, covered in what might be pack ice that hid a salty ocean below.

  “It’s a damned awful place by Earth standards,” Eicke said. “Over two-hundred degrees below zero and blasted by Jupiter’s immense magnetic field that creates a storm of charged particles and weird electric currents at the surface. And don’t forget that ammoniated ocean beneath the ice. Not exactly Palm Beach, Nicky.”

  “You think there’s life there?”

  Eicke just shrugged. “Could be. But if there is, it’s going to be microscopic or damned strange if it’s not.”

  The Community Room was bustling.

  Chairs had been set out and Ida had made frozen pizzas and bowls of popcorn, The Beav on her ass the whole while. Coyle kept out of it, let the girls have their fun, trying not to think of the disaster area they were making of his kitchen. Most of those present were happily drunk or at least buzzed from the drinking and debauchery segment of the Callisto Party.

  Coyle had put away a few, but he felt very clear-headed and alert as he waited for the transmission on the big plasma screen TV to begin. It had been his intention to get roaring drunk, but his heart hadn’t been in it. The tension that had been slowly building in him would not be denied. So he remained tight as a wire, thinking and thinking about what Frye and he had been discussing the night before, all the weird things around them that seemed to be building into something.

  Well, if anything’s going on, Nicky, we’ll start seeing the signs, I suppose.

  And that’s exactly what Coyle was worrying about.

  He was sitting with Frye and Danny Shin, the geologist, all three of them sipping their drinks.

  “This is pretty goddamn amazing,” Shin was saying, pulling off a bottle of Rolling Rock. “I mean, have you guys even taken the time to think about this? About what it all means?”

  “What does it mean, Danny?” Frye said. “Being a scientist and all, maybe you better explain it to a dumb shit like me.”

  Shin sighed. “It means the best part of you ran down your uncle’s leg.”

  “No shit? Well, least we got something in common, because the best part of you ran down your mother’s chin.”

  Shin laughed and stroked the mustache trailing off his face. “You know, that’s your problem, Frye. You have no interest in anything important. Just that shit you spew from your mouth. Science means nothing to you.”

  “You’re right, Danny. I have no faith in it. Ever since your mother’s birth control failed, I just don’t trust it.”

  Coyle tuned them out. Their arguments went on incessantly like a game of Monopoly. They were always picking at one another. Yet, whenever there was a gathering, they sat together. Go figure.

  He studied the tinfoil flying saucers and stars that were hanging overhead, Doc’s CPR dummies that were painted green and given big alien eyes and antennas like My Favorite Martian. The photos of bug-eyed alien monsters from 1950’s B-movies like It Conquered the World and Invasion of the Saucermen that had been printed out and pasted just about everywhere. These were only outdone by Locke’s contributions which were artist’s conceptions of other planets and various blurry UFO photographs, not to mention blow-ups of the Beacon Valley megaliths that were plastered all over the internet. One of these was nearly the size of a mural with spooky gigantic lettering over its face which asked the eternal question: ARE WE ALONE?

  Coyle pulled from his Captain and Coke, watching the people and trying to get a sense from them of what they felt about it all. How they felt
about video from Callisto.

  Horn sat by himself, looking mildly amused and mildly disappointed as he did at all gatherings. Ida and The Beav were swooping around with platters of food like mother birds looking for hungry beaks to fill. Hopper and Special Ed and Doc Flagg had taken up their spots in the back of the room. Everyone else was just loosely scattered around. The Coven—which consisted of Gwen Curie and all the other females in camp: Ida, The Beav, Gut, Cassie Malone, and a cute GA named Lynn Zutema that everyone called “Zoot”—were pretty much mixing as was Locke and his impromptu UFO conspiracy study group. Slim was cozying in with the Coven, doing shots of tequila with Cassie and Zoot. The FEMC crew—Facilities, Engineering, Maintenance, and Construction—which consisted of Koch, Cryderman, Hansen, and Stokes were at their usual table listening to Cryderman’s cynical wit and wisdom. Gwen was shaking a mixer of martinis, her breasts jiggling beneath her jersey which read: I LUV ANAL PROBES. Harvey was alone, looking around to see who the Freemasons were. Every time Coyle caught his eyes, and Coyle was trying hard not to do that, Harvey would smile conspiratorially and quickly glance at one of the crew as if to say, yeah, that one, Nicky. He’s one of them. You can tell by their eyes.

  He was very suspicious of the FEMC crew.

  “You know what your problem is, Frye?” Shin was saying. “You’re just plain ignorant.”

  “Maybe I’m ignorant, but I ain’t so ignorant that I can’t admit when I’m wrong. Like some fucking eggheads I know.”

  “Oh yes, start with that crap. Us against them. The scientists versus the workers.”

  Frye swallowed the rest of his beer. “Right there, that’s your problem, Danny. You think you beakers run the show down here. Well, you don’t. If it weren’t for guys like me keeping you warm and fed and keeping your lights working and your water running . . . where the hell would you be?”

  “I never said we run the show. I just said that guys like you are in a support position. That’s all. You keep things running so we can do our thing.”

  “You’re damn right. You should remember that.”

  “Boy,” Shin said. “This guy will argue about anything.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Again, Coyle tuned them out. That was something you learned at the stations: you kept your sanity by ignoring just about everything that went on around you. And down there, ninety percent of everything was bullshit so that made things real easy.

  He wondered if he was the only one tying up everything together, seeing wolves behind every tree. Feeling that something big and impossibly ominous was about to happen. But he didn’t think so. He knew Frye was and probably Horn, too.

  As he looked around, listening in on various conversations, he had the oddest sense that there was a tension here that was independent of him. People were laughing too loud or talking too quickly. They couldn’t sit still and when they did they smiled too much like those smiles were painted on and they couldn’t get them off. Everything was keyed-up. Now and again, he’d hear a peal of laughter that sounded almost hysterical in tone.

  Cassie Malone came over, more than a little drunk, and draped herself around Coyle. “Hey, Nicky! What say we get fucked-up before that Castini thing happens? What say?”

  Gwen came over and removed her, leading her back to her chair so she did not fall down, restraining her when she lifted her shirt and flashed her breasts at Horn.

  “C’mon, Gwenny! Not like he don’t wanna see ‘em! He’s always staring at my junk ‘n’ stuff!” She burst out laughing. “Did I say junk-stuff or stuff-junk? Woo-hoo, check out my junk-stuff!”

  Gwen got her into her seat and pretty much had to sit on her lap to get her to behave.

  And on it went.

  Hopper stood up and cleared his throat, blew his damn whistle. “Attention! Attention, everyone! Dr. Eicke would like to speak now! Let’s all listen to what he has to say! I’m sure it’s very important!”

  Shin laughed. “What’s that guy smoking anyhow?”

  “I don’t know but I want some!” Cassie Malone called out.

  “Probably the same thing your mother was smoking when she was pregnant with you,” Frye told Shin.

  Eicke walked out in front of the plasma screen that hung from the wall. He was a bespectacled, round little man with a closely-trimmed white beard that made him look like Santa Claus. Something that was accentuated by his rolling bold laughter and his habit of patting his expansive belly as he spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, nodding and smiling, “I’ve just received word from the probe team at Ames Research Center in California.”

  Gwen sipped her martini and nuzzled Coyle’s ear. “You hear that, Nicky? He just said probe.”

  “Ssshh,” he told her.

  Eicke looked around. “We can expect to get our feed within the next twenty or thirty minutes. But before we do, I thought I’d touch upon the mission of the Cassini Three itself and, more importantly, the probe it has launched at Callisto.”

  He did more than touch upon it.

  For the next fifteen minutes he went on in dusty detail about the Cassini 3 mission which was extensive reconnaissance and mapping of the Galilean moons—Europa and Io, Ganymede and Callisto. All of which were considered excellent candidates for subsurface oceans that theoretically might be teaming with life. The entire operation would lay the final groundwork for the Ice Clipper mission that would sample the surfaces of the moons using an impactor and the Ice Penetrator mission that would melt through the ice caps using a thermal probe, a cryobot.

  That much was interesting.

  But when he got down to the nuts and bolts of the probe itself and talked endlessly of dust detectors and neutral mass spectrometers, heavy ion counters and plasma wave imaging, he pretty much lost everyone. Other than Shin and possibly Hopper himself, nobody really gave a damn about near-infrared mapping or particle investigation or molecular biology studies and chemosynthesis. It was all pretty heavy stuff. Like computers or cellphones, nobody cared how they worked or truly understood the engineering feats involved, so long as they did work.

  Coyle stopped paying attention about halfway through and started studying everyone again.

  He looked at the walls with their pictures of alien monsters and flying saucers and whatnot, his interest immediately captured by Locke’s photos of the Beacon Valley megaliths. These were the most recent photographs and although Coyle had not seen the structures firsthand, he knew very well what it all meant. The discovery of those things was the single biggest can of worms opened since the splitting of the atom.

  He stared at them.

  They looked somewhat similar to Stonehenge and the others that dotted the British Isles and northern Europe . . . save the Beacon Valley stones were far more complex and gigantic. Infinitely more complex: a grim collection of uprights and pylons that were tall and leaning, conjoined and free-standing. Some of which were flattened at their apexes and others supporting horizontal crossbars and still others bisecting at their tops into a profusion of sharp, gnarled spines that towered above the entire mass in spires and spokes, making the entire structure look like it had been overgrown by dead trees.

  There was something very unpleasant and disturbing about the megaliths taken as a whole. Something surreal and morbid and, yes, alien.

  Coyle didn’t like looking at any of it, but he did. He eyes roamed that monolithic forest of pillars and shafts and spidery pipes and he could not look away. His eyes were lost in their tangles and lunatic architecture, drawn to them, captured and held as something morosely black crawled in the back of his mind, in some cellar of primal shadow.

  No, he could not look away and some part of him did not want to.

  His rational brain could make no earthly sense of what that carven megalithic desolation was built to represent. But his dreaming brain, that primitive machine we all carry in the pits of our psyches, seemed to recognize what it was and understand that its purpose was both mechanistic and spiritual. A thing of dark beauty
and nameless obscenity. A very simple construction, really, with a very simple purpose–

  Yet, his dreaming and rational brains were light years apart and could not communicate or reach common ground.

  Coyle was left shivering between them, wanting to know and wanting anything but. He could only look and let his imagination tell him what he was seeing. The entire thing was quarried from some black pitted stone that made it resemble the great carbonized exoskeleton of some alien insect thawing from the ice.

  Finally, he looked away.

  “Okay, everyone,” Eicke said. “The feed is coming . . . get ready . . .”

  Coyle sucked in a sharp breath, felt something knot suddenly in his belly. He gripped the arms of his chair with everything he had, his knuckles popping white.

  Good God, he thought, here it comes...

  16

  NOAA FIELD LAB POLARIS,

  ATLANTIS ICE DOME

  ANDREA MACK DID NOT sleep.

  She did not even close her eyes.

  The others were tired from a long grueling day in the cold and drifted off almost as soon as their heads hit their pillows. Andrea could hear Kim’s breathing across the room, even and deep. In the men’s dormitory across the hall there was snoring.

  The Polaris habitat was basically a long rectangular box. A temporary shelter erected by the NOAA techs. The men slept in one room, the women in another. There was lab space with diagnostics and computer science workstations. Generator room and water plant. A coring room. A supply cabinet and food locker. The common room took up most of the structure. Here was the galley, the DVD library and TV, the workout bike, the radio, the usual amenities of camp life.

  All in all, it was silent.

  The only sound save breathing and snoring, was the wind outside, forever moaning across the polar plateau, shaking the habitat, and throwing a scrim of ice and snow against its walls.

  Andrea heard all these things.

  But she was listening to something else.