The Spawning

by Tim Curran

  “Why?”

  Coyle swallowed. “Because I knew Hayes. I’d wintered with him at Palmer Station and summered with him at Pole. Hayes was a tough, capable sonofabitch, Locke. He was sturdy stuff. If anybody else had been saying stuff about aliens, I wouldn’t have believed it. But Jimmy Hayes? No, he was the real thing.”

  “Nobody knows where Hayes and that doctor are now, do they?”

  “Nope. Word has it they went into hiding to avoid all the newspaper people and weirdos that wanted their story. I heard they went to Mexico, but who knows?”

  Locke pulled off his joint, roached it when Coyle said he’d had enough. “Now you know, of course, what Hayes and Dr. Sharkey were saying?”

  “Yeah, I remember their original statement. They said they found everyone dead at Kharkov. They didn’t know why.” Coyle laughed. “Nobody bought it, of course. With all those wild emails and radio transmissions coming out of there, it all seemed too pat. Nobody was buying it.”

  “Then, Hayes and Sharkey retracted that and wrote a statement,” Locke said. “And that statement landed like a bomb. You remember what it said?”

  How could he forget?

  It was heady enough stuff for the rest of the world and absolute nectar for the conspiracists, but for the people who lived and worked in Antarctica it was dynamite. And especially those who knew Hayes and Sharkey. Knew they were solid and practical people. That’s what was so damn hard about it. Their statement confirmed that Dr. Gates and his team had indeed found a gigantic series of ruins in a massive subterranean chamber. That those ruins were not of human origin. That there were alien beings there. Some of them were mummies and some of them were very much alive.

  That, of course, was enough to kick the legs out from everyone, but then Hayes and Sharkey said they’d found evidence that Antarctica was the cradle of all life on Earth. That these aliens had engineered life in the primeval oceans of Earth during the Archeozoic Era, some three-to four-billion years ago. And more startling, that they created life and seeded the planet with the sole purpose of bringing forth intelligent life.

  Intelligent life that they could exploit or harvest. Crazy shit.

  And what was the aftermath?

  Well, on a worldwide scale it went from panic to outright dismissal. There was no evidence, so Hayes and Sharkey were written off as cranks. Hayes said he had blown up the cavern leading to the ruins. If there had been an opening, it was now under a mountain of rock and ice. And the NSF stated clearly that there was nothing at the bottom of Lake Vordog but some simple life forms, all very terrestrial in origin, but certainly nothing from another world. After that, investigators of every stripe swarmed to Antarctica and found nothing that would support the claims of Hayes and Sharkey.

  “When it all came out, you told people you worked down here, they made alien jokes and said take me to your leader. All that fun stuff,” Coyle admitted.

  “People believe what they want to believe, don’t they? As you may recall, Nicky, organized religion refuted all of this outright. And why not? It destroyed the very basis of a superior being, a god-like creator. Politicians didn’t care for it much either. Nor did your average Joe on the street. And you couldn’t blame them really. Who wants to think that everything we are has been engineered? That even our culture and gods are just based on archetypes those aliens imprinted in our minds? I don’t care for it much myself and neither would any other rational person.”

  Coyle just sat there, staring at the UFO and megalith posters on the walls, the books on the shelves: Arktos: The Polar Myth, Bernard’s The Hollow Earth, Kafton-Minkel’s Subterranean Worlds, and Farrell’s Reich of the Black Sun. All of these and more sandwiched in-between books on alien abduction, extraterrestrial intelligence, life on Mars, and UFO studies.

  Usually, he got a big kick out of Locke, but today he found him depressing. Science fiction and scary stories and weird urban legends were all fun, but when they started becoming real the fun definitely ended. Locke liked to talk about offbeat Antarctic myths and tales and theories: alternate civilizations beneath the ice caps, the Nazis building fortresses under the ice, hollow earth theories, or even Admiral Byrd’s supposed claim of seeing an ice-free land peopled by primitive humans and huge shaggy prehistoric mammals during a solo flight over the Pole.

  “But the megaliths . . .” Coyle said, not wanting to really proceed with any of it.

  “Yes, the megaliths.”

  “Give me your take on them. Did these aliens build them?”

  Locke considered it a moment. “Yes and no. The ones on Callisto, surely, and the ones in the Beacon Valley without a doubt. But Stonehenge and the others? No, I don’t think so. We built them. But I think we built them because they wanted us to. They implanted something in our minds that came to the fore at a particular moment in our intellectual development, roughly ten-thousand years ago. The megaliths were erected by Neolithic peoples who no doubt thought they were building them for religious reasons. And, in a way, they probably were.”

  “But what is their purpose?”

  “I don’t know.” Locke was silent a moment and unlike other times when he talked about these things, he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself at all. “Remember what Hayes and Sharkey said? That some of what they knew came from firsthand experience, but the majority was from Dr. Gates’s laptop? The NSF confiscated that. If there was anything on it, it was never made public. But according to them, Gates believed that there were things these aliens—which he called the ‘Old Ones’ or the ‘Elder Things’—buried in the human race, controls or mechanisms, that would awaken at the proper stages of our mental evolution. Some of these would have been to build the megaliths. Another, Gates believed, was that we would be drawn to Antarctica, drawn to our makers, drawn to the last surviving colony of those things. And we have been. He believed none of it was accidental, all was design. That when our populations achieved a suitable size and complexity and intellectual level, they would awaken other imperatives within us. Imperatives they would unlock on a global scale. Imperatives that would make us like them, psychic brothers, and allow them to harvest us.”

  “And?”

  Locke licked his lips, looked Coyle dead in the eye. “I think it’s beginning now. We saw a stirring of it at Kharkov five years ago. The beginning of it. A trial run, so to speak. But now it’ll be the real thing. A global awakening. You can think that’s hoodoo bullshit if you want, but what’s happening at megalith sites around the world confirms this. Something is about to happen, Nicky, something immense and ugly. And when it happens, the human race as an independent body will cease to exist. The Old Ones will own us. We’ll be pulled into the greater whole of them and I don’t honestly believe there’s a fucking thing we can do about it.”

  Coyle didn’t speak for a moment because his breath didn’t want to come. It was like the world was unraveling around him. “You know what, Locke? You sure know how to ruin a good buzz.”

  “Enjoy your buzz while you can,” he said with all due seriousness, “because by this time next year, human things like getting high and screwing for pleasure rather than stock and even freewill itself will be a thing of the past.”

  8

  MARCH 5

  COYLE DID NOT SLEEP well that night.

  Every time he closed his eyes he had images of those aliens. He’d never actually seen one, but he’d heard enough descriptions and had seen Slim’s drawings so the images of those hideous things leaped into his mind quite easily. And he had to wonder, with what Locke told him, if those images had not been there all along . . . just waiting to surface.

  Regardless, they haunted what little sleep he did get.

  Gwen showed up around midnight, but even spending the night with her did little to ease his mind.

  The next morning the temperature was a balmy 30 below with a shrieking wind that made the windows rattle. Nothing special there. As he made breakfast for the crew—fried bacon and stirred a cauldron of hash browns and whisked pan
cake batter—he watched them come in, wondering if they were feeling any of what he was feeling.

  But it didn’t seem so.

  The Beav was doing her weekly inventory in the freezers, singing along to “Groovin’” by The Young Rascals which she had playing on the CD player, reminding one and all of those carefree days of ‘67. Ida was still lazy. She was only cutting up fruit because The Beav was there making her do it. Gut came in from her morning snow removal duties bitching about her daughter who had apparently gotten back together with her carny-ex. Hopper breezed through, exclaiming how he loved the smell of bacon in the morning. Special Ed sat by himself in the corner, eating toast and drinking coffee and going over his reports. Horn didn’t show at all for breakfast, but that wasn’t unusual. He was probably out in the Heavy Shop or garage working on the Sno-Cats or the Sprytes. He never showed until lunch. Likewise for Locke. As winter advanced, Locke became more obsessive about his generators, nursing them like an overprotective mother. Stokes, Hansen, and Koch, the FEMC crew, had been up all night running piping for the boilers so they were sleeping in. Gwen came in with Zoot, and Cryderman was too hung-over most mornings to do anything. Same went for Doc Flagg. And Eicke rarely left Atmospherics.

  Everything seemed fine. Seemed normal.

  Frye and Danny Shin came in together arguing about modern cinema. Frye was saying that a good movie had to have guns and explosions and Shin said that was typical American thinking. That European and Asian cinema were far superior because they pretty much steered clear of violence except where it was vital to the plot.

  Frye just shook his head. “See? That’s where you’re wrong, Danny. You’re a foreigner. You don’t think like an American or you’d like explosions. Ain’t that right, Gwen?” he said, taking his seat near the table where the Coven sat. “A good movie needs explosions and tits. Right?”

  Zoot looked embarrassed. She looked to Gwen to see how she should feel about that. Gwen sipped her coffee. “Yeah, explosions, tits, and at least one hot shower screw scene. It’s not a movie without some hot shower sex.”

  “See, Danny? See how fucked-up you are?” Frye said. “It’s because you’re a foreigner.”

  “But we’re all foreigners down here,” Zoot said.

  “That’s right, sweet thing, but Shin, he’s a foreigner wherever he goes.”

  Shin sighed and toyed with his mustache. “Oh, I get it. Because my parents were Chinese that makes me a foreigner. Well, if I’m a foreigner, then you’re a foreigner, Frye.”

  “Hell, no. I’m American. I ain’t no foreigner.”

  “And what were your parents?”

  “They were English. Both of ‘em came out of Liverpool after the war. I went to Liverpool once, visited my cousin Bonnie. Me and her got pissing drunk for five days straight. That’s what I like about people from Liverpool. When it comes to drinking, they don’t fuck around. I respect that.”

  This sort of intolerant, ignorant behavior was classic Frye. He was the original blue collar hardcase.

  When Coyle rolled out of bed that morning, untangling himself from Gwen, his guts had been knotted like a corset, but now, slowly, they were loosening up. Maybe Locke was nuts. Scratch that. He was nuts. But that didn’t mean he was wrong.

  Harvey came storming in as he did most mornings, red-faced and fuming, a small, husky, and very round dynamo. He made for Special Ed with his daily list of grievances. Today it was something special. He stood over by Special Ed with his hands on his hips, grinding his teeth. “Somebody stole my piss can,” he said. “Somebody stole it and I want it back right goddamn now.”

  There were a few chuckles over that.

  Piss cans were kept in the rooms for midnight relief so you didn’t have to make that run to the latrine. Some people found them offensive and refused to use them, but sooner or later just about everyone got into the habit.

  “Your can was missing when you woke up?” Special Ed said, taking it all very seriously as he did with the most ridiculous complaints. He even had his red Bic out, was ready to log this.

  Harvey grunted. “No, there was a piss can there, but it wasn’t mine.”

  “This is getting spooky,” someone said. “A counterfeit piss can.”

  More laughter.

  Special Ed remained composed.

  This was dead serious business with possible international ramifications and you could tell that by the look on his face. Something like this needed to be logged. Special Ed was good at stuff like this. He’d been at Clime last winter, too, and Coyle remembered the investigatory zeal he’d practiced while trying to root out the infamous Mystery Smoker in the Showers and the heinous Midnight Coffee Cup Thief or how he’d settled that ugly dispute between the two GA’s. GA #1 did not like GA #2 looking at her. But since this bugged the holy shit out of GA #1, GA #2 could not stop doing it. GA #1 was reduced to tears on several occasions and GA #2 simply said, “What? I was just looking at her. God.” Since Special Ed could not catch GA #2 in the act despite his crime-fighting acumen, GA #1 took matters into her own hands and videotaped GA #2 staring at her. This was the smoking gun, GA #1 decided. But GA #2 maintained that just because she was looking into the camera while being filmed—and smiling brightly—this did not mean she stared at GA #1 when the video was not rolling. Special Ed put a restraining order on GA #2. She was not allowed to look at GA #1 or even talk to her.

  That was classic Special Ed.

  He had a natural talent for the absurd.

  Of course, now and again a crime so villainous in nature would occur that it would simply elude even him. Such was the case with the infamous Fucko the Clown last winter. Fucko was stealing women’s underwear. Picking the locks to their doors and snatching panties off into thin air, leaving nothing but a pornographic playing card in his wake.

  Special Ed was stumped.

  To this day, like Jack the Ripper, the identity of Fucko the Clown remained a controversial mystery . . . though it did have a happy ending. At the end of winter, a lovely collage of women’s panties was found in the Community Room touched off by a few of Gwen’s leopard thongs. Gut’s extremely large “granny underwear” were the centerpiece of this decorative and artistic display. But as Frye had said, “her drawers were so big you could’ve parachuted safely with them from 20,000 feet.”

  So it was here in the ludicrous bosom of Antarctic camp life that Special Ed finally shined bright. When he wasn’t investigating grievances, he made a lot of postings. Most of them were authorized postings telling the crew not to make unauthorized postings.

  “Hey,” Gwen said, “you can use my piss can, Harv. Long as you empty it first.”

  “Ha, ha, ha. Everybody’s a joker.” Harvey’s face was getting redder now. “I know my piss pot. I don’t trust you people so I mark all my stuff with a special sign so I know. One of you went in my room and swiped it.”

  “Your special sign?” Gwen said.

  “No! My goddamn pisspot! You know damn well what I mean!” He looked at everyone suspiciously, his face so red that his thinning gray hair was whiter than the frost on the windows. “Now I want it back. Whoever took it puts it outside my door today, I won’t ask any questions. But I want that piss can back!”

  Frye just lost it. “Hey, you people!” he called out. “This is serious stuff now! Harv wants that fucking piss can back and he means business! He’s not pissing until he gets it back!”

  “Why don’t you shut up, Frye!” Harvey said.

  Frye blew him a kiss.

  Harvey couldn’t take it anymore. He stormed out of the Community Room vowing vengeance on the guilty party. “They wanna keep pushing me?” he said. “Let ‘em push me! But they’re gonna find out that I push back!”

  That’s the way it was at all the stations.

  Petty bullshit and foolish gripes and infantile whining all lorded over by a half-ass Mickey Mouse bureaucratic system that encouraged tattling and finger-pointing and would fully investigate the most ridiculous complaint instead of
telling the whiners to shut up and get back to work.

  Coyle had seen it plenty.

  They had an extremely belligerent and homophobic heavy equipment operator at Pole Station one year. He hated gays and openly called for their extermination. A guy like that was asking for it. Somebody painted flowers on his favorite shovel—pansies, of course—and a full-scale investigation ensued. But that only encouraged more of the same. Flowery love letters were slid under his door with openly homosexual romantic poems addressed to him. Then somebody hacked into the station manager’s account and sent a pornographic email to the homophobe. But it all reached a crisis point when Frye got sick of the homophobe’s whining and called him, “a fucking faggot.”

  The HR guy had to talk to Frye about anger management issues and put that in his file. Frye said that was fine, because the homophobe was “nothing but a goddamn fairy anyway.”

  Coyle was relieved to see that the crew at Clime was still a bunch of whackos. The Callisto thing and the disappearance of Cassie Malone had not disrupted that. Things seemed okay.

  Soon enough everyone was eating and joking and bickering like usual. The food disappeared fast and Coyle got his usual round of compliments. Things were absolutely normal. Nobody mentioned any of the weird things going on, at least that Coyle was able to pick up on. Mount Hobb, Callisto, the possible situation at NOAA Polaris, and even Cassie herself were not mentioned. And was that good or bad? He couldn’t be sure. He would have liked it better if these things were discussed instead of hidden away like dirty family secrets.

  But he was no psychologist. What did he know?

  From what he was able to ascertain, everything was completely normal. Relationships were the same. Plenty of off-color jokes and jibes and funny stories about other years. Just breakfast conversation: light and airy. No deep discussions. Things seemed ordinary at Polar Clime.