Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  Malcolm had been trying to plug some diagnostic equipment into an electrical port on the Bluedrop but, after half-stumbling over a cable while lugging a tool box, had suddenly dropped it and run over to the railing, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. He gazed out to sea, shielding his eyes with cupped hands until he noticed some binoculars that had been left nearby. He brought them up to his face as if trying to screw his eyes directly into the lens casings. “It’s smooth and shiny,” he said. “Purplish red, shot through with green.” He put down the binoculars and turned to face the others, a triumphant smile playing on his face like that of a truant.

  Penny could make it out now, although not in such detail. It was about a hundred and fifty meters away, bobbing in the waves.

  “A whale carcass?” Chiffrey asked. “The color and all, maybe we’re just seeing the top?”

  “Don’t think so,” Becka said. She twisted around toward the bridge and shouted, “Over there!” to Emory, who was behind the wheel. Andrew gave a confirming hand signal to the bridge and the Valentina began coming around to the new heading.

  As they got closer, Andrew motioned Emory to slow down, then gave him the thumbs-up sign. “Get the Zodiacs in,” he said to Becka. “And bring your diving gear. We’re going to get wet.”

  Penny insisted on being in one of the boats, and no one protested. Andrew sat in front of her. Mateo was piloting, and as she briefly wondered why, the cook nodded his head at Andrew to indicate that he had been asked.

  They motored over slowly, keeping the bulbous shape to their starboard. It bobbed up and down with the waves, buoyant enough to float half out of the water. They came alongside, and found the surface of the thing to be as smooth and perfect as blown glass. It was a slightly elliptical sphere, almost two meters long. The violet-tinged surface was translucent to a depth of several centimeters. The thin veins of green that spidered through this outer layer and into its depths reminded her of nerves. When she looked closer she saw other colors embedded in the green: warm blues, intense yellows, and a little film of fiery red here and there that seemed to disappear when she looked directly at it. Then she remembered where she had seen this before. Of course. The tendrils that emanated from the transceiver on the deck of the Valentina’s bridge.

  Andrew, in his diving gear, was sitting so still that he might have been meditating. Then, without a word, he tipped backward into the water and immediately went under.

  Mateo cut the engine. “She is an egg. I see before.”

  “What?” Penny asked.

  “In a dream. Long time ago. I was child. Yes, same dream every night until I forget. Only till now, I remember.”

  Mateo returned her steady gaze without a hint of self-consciousness. He was telling the truth. Memories of her own dream came back to her, the apparition, the colors…

  Malcolm was directly opposite the object, at the helm of the other Zodiac. Becka was with him, pulling on the rest of her gear. “I’m going in,” she said to Malcolm. “Be ready to power us out of here if necessary, please.” He vigorously nodded his agreement, yet smiled at her as if the most wonderful thing was happening.

  Perhaps it was.

  Penny couldn’t help getting her hopes up and was suddenly envious of Becka, who was preparing to go in with snorkel and mask. Becka pulled on her fins, spit in the mask and rinsed it out, then strapped it to her face and flipped over the side. Penny could see her orienting under the water and then kicking over to the mass before coming to the surface. Andrew must be on the other side, judging by the bubbles, but she couldn’t see him.

  “What do you think?” Malcolm asked. “The crane with a sling? We’ve used it to bring up small whales, so it shouldn’t have any problem with the weight. The egg wanted to be found.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked, but he said nothing. “Listen, Malcolm, listen to me. It may lack an internal support structure. More than anything else, it looks like a jellyfish to me not an egg. If we try craning it into the holding tank, it may not be able to support its own weight out of the water.”

  Malcolm idled down the engine to its lowest speed, and said, “It wants to be taken. You know that.”

  “A little patience is all I’m suggesting.” She peered at it, trying to focus on every detail, but could see no sign of movement. “If it’s alive, it may need to remain right where it is to stay healthy.”

  “That should be possible to check,” Malcolm said. He looked over at Becka who was swimming around looking very closely at the surface. “Hasn’t eaten her yet. Good sign.”

  “Mateo,” Penny said, “could you move in just a little closer?”

  He didn’t hesitate, but first stopped the engine, then stood up and used an oar to scull his way over. She stretched out her hand and touched the surface of Mateo’s ‘egg.’

  “It’s warm. Somehow, no surprise.”

  “Like just cooked,” Malcolm answered, nodding casually.

  Malcolm had also moved in closer and, after simply gazing at it for a moment, touched the surface.

  “Yeah, warm like a great lovely soft-boiled egg.”

  She was staring at him, wondering exactly what he was thinking, when Andrew broke the surface near Becka. He pulled the mask away from his face. “We’ll need the net.” He saw the concern on her face and added, “A purse net, much larger than this. Close it on the bottom and keep it open on top. Containment in the sea.”

  “The net has floats along the edge,” Becka added, “and we can keep it loosely alongside the ship as if it were in its own lagoon.”

  After some back and forth discussion, Emory maneuvered the Valentina around so its stern was pointing to their new arrival and then slowly backed toward them using only the forward maneuvering props. The net was rigged to the crane and lowered down to Becka and Andrew who were still in the water. With help from those in the Zodiacs, they managed to slide the open net over the silky shape and close off the bottom. They placed extra fenders around to prevent scraping against the dive platform. Andrew then signaled to slowly move the ship into a slightly better position with respect to the prevailing wind. Emory gave a little reverse and rudder and they drifted around, then he reversed the process until they came to a dead stop.

  The railing was lined with the entire crew staring down at them, including Chiffrey who was scanning in all directions with binoculars. Looking for others, no doubt, but she had a feeling this would be their only Easter egg today.

  Becka had climbed onto the dive platform and was now waiting with a stethoscope around her neck for the mass to drift a little closer. Crewmembers passed down other testing instruments, and Penny arranged them as best she could. Becka ignored them all and simply placed the receiving end of her stethoscope on the form’s surface.

  “I can hear something, a heartbeat maybe, but more complicated. Okay, now we try this.” She motioned Penny to slide over a small EEG unit, and started to stick on its sensors.

  “Well, that is quite a catch,” Chiffrey said from the rail. He was not smiling. “Your holding tank will be plenty big enough.”

  “Not bringing it up, Lieutenant,” Andrew said.

  “This is the most valuable specimen on the planet. We can’t risk losing it.”

  “Which is why we don’t want to be hasty,” Penny said over her shoulder. “Haven’t you learned anything?”

  “Captain, I have gone along with you on most things, but we can’t play the long game here.”

  Penny glared up at him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and the Captain does, so shut up and listen.”

  “Wait,” Becka said, holding a hand up for attention. “Something’s moving.”

  “Get back from that thing!” Chiffrey yelled. “Becka!”

  Instead, Becka cautiously moved in closer and had both hands on the now slowly pulsating form when it suddenly flexed. She was thrown back onto a coil of line, her head just missing a steel handhold. Then the crane suddenly started. The tightening lines quickly
closed the net.

  “Stop that crane now!” Andrew ordered.

  “You’ll hurt it!” Penny shouted.

  But the machinery drowned out her voice and the net continued up. She could see the object clearly distort under its own weight as it was lifted. She edged out as far as she could and looked up to see her father arguing with someone out of her line of sight. She scrambled up the ladder.

  “Dad! What’s going on?”

  “It was me,” Chiffrey answered. Operating the crane, he lowered the net into the tank with surprising skill.

  “You had no right!”

  “Between the hook and your plate, a fish can be lost.”

  “This is not some trout for the pan, you idiot!”

  “Easy there, just looked like we were in danger of losing it, and there wasn’t time for discussion. Whatever this is, it will receive the best of care. That is now my top priority.”

  “What have you ever cared for?” she said as she ran to the tank and up the steps to the attached observation platform, then began to loosen the lines.

  “That might surprise you.”

  “Then give it more slack!”

  “Lieutenant, get over here.” Andrew said. Mateo ran up and took over the controls of the crane as if he did this every day.

  “Believe me, this is really going to save our bacon with the brass,” Chiffrey said. “I need to call this in first if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “I do mind,” Andrew said. “Get over here, or I will haul you over.”

  Chiffrey froze. “Yes, sir,” he said a moment later and followed Andrew to the unoccupied foredeck.

  Penny stayed on the top of the platform even after she loosened the net. Some evidence of Chiffrey having his ears pinned back flew by, carried by the wind. Given the circumstances, he would likely get away with what he’d done, but Chiffrey was no longer her main concern. With help from Becka and Malcolm, she hauled the purse net out of the tank. The huge egg-like sphere floated free, but now seemed as lifeless as a beach ball.

  CHAPTER 54

  Penny stayed on the tank’s observation platform all morning and remained there after the others left for lunch. She had wanted some time by herself with the form floating in the tank, but now she had suddenly become tired. Not sleepy, just tired. The bottle of scotch under her bunk beckoned, but instead she headed to the galley to see if there was anything to eat. She salvaged enough leftovers from lunch to satisfy her immediate hunger, then made a strong cup of coffee and drank it down black in one gulp when it was cool enough.

  A shadow fell over a porthole for an instant as someone went by. A few seconds later, she looked up to see Chiffrey march in. Good news, she could tell right away.

  “Your subs turned up,” she said, guessing.

  “The scuttlebutt sure gets around fast on this ship,” he said. “Both submarines reported within ten minutes of each other, less than an hour ago. So, we have more time again.”

  “How’s the crew.”

  “Took us a while to figure out that they thought they were still on schedule. Had no idea they were missing.”

  “Really.”

  “Really, except this one junior officer who’s acting weird.” He got some orange juice and sat down. “All their clocks were telling them that only a few hours had passed since they last checked in, not the thirty-odd hours it really was. Even a windup wristwatch someone had. The mission chronometers on those submarines are extremely accurate, atomic but, unlike the ones you buy in a drugstore, they run on their own time. Accurate to milliseconds a year.”

  “How do you know it’s not our time that’s off?”

  “Whoa, don’t mess my head up any more than it already is.” He smiled. “Please. And I’m sorry about the crane, but I had to do that. We got the egg, or whatever it is, so all’s well that ends well.”

  “Being in one piece doesn’t mean it’s okay. It’s shown little in the way of life since you hauled it up.”

  “Becka told me it still has that weird double heartbeat.”

  “If it is a heartbeat.”

  “Well, we’ll see if it hatches.”

  “Will you please stop assuming it’s an egg!”

  “You’re right, and damned if I wasn’t saying much the same thing to Mateo just a few minutes ago. Everyone is looking for a simple explanation. A scientist at LaBellce Livermore we’ve been consulting with, a Nobel Prize winner, is talking about the submarines having been in a bubble of time, but I can’t really follow it. Didn’t help that he is a pompous ass who thinks he’s mankind’s gift to God. I should probably have accepted Malcolm’s offer of help with the quantum stuff. Course, he seems to believe it’s an egg, as well.” He got up and poured more orange juice in his glass. He glanced her way and nodded toward the dispenser, but she shook her head.

  “If the sub crews thought everything was normal,” she asked, “why did they launch the emergency buoy?”

  “The theory is that at the beginning of whatever befell them, one of the crew launched it, and my guess would be the officer I mentioned who is well off his toot. It came from his boat. Been babbling and euphoric ever since, you know the drill. His time is completely out of joint, from what they tell me. Thinks he’s been somewhere else for years and years. Decades. The thing is, although he can’t remember anything about where he thought he was, he desperately wants to go back there.”

  She knew that feeling. Wanting to go back to some place, except she could never quite remember where it was. Something from childhood, a place where…

  She couldn’t remember. Chiffrey slowly sipped his orange juice, nursing it as if it were three-quarters gin.

  “Maybe this officer wasn’t affected as much as the others,” she said. “Didn’t slip into whatever frame of time the rest of his crew occupied.”

  “Or into some other, like Matthew being the last man standing on the Eva Shay. Or you on the Valentina, for that matter. Perhaps he felt something was wrong and hit the buoy release button. He can’t tell us anything useful at the moment. The odd thing is that I’m almost getting used to this serial insanity.”

  “It’s either that or go crazy yourself.”

  He laughed. “One new idea you’re sure to like is that the time shift could be just a side effect of however that thing down there operates. That bubble of time idea again, and the way it effects people may not be intentional. More like just standing too close to a fire.” He finished the last of his juice in one swallow and slapped the glass down. “In any case, condition red has gone down to orange, or maybe even yellow.”

  “Well, good. And that officer on the sub, even if he sounds crazy, maybe you should listen.”

  “Having everything he says recorded on video by three cameras, but mostly he’s babbling about ‘seeing everything all at once forever.’ And rice pudding.”

  “He’s talking about rice pudding?”

  “To make clear that it’s all he wants to eat. Won’t touch anything else. With a lot cinnamon on top.”

  “Are the people higher up buying the time bubble theory?”

  “We’re keeping it to ourselves for the moment. I mean, ‘Madame President, time stopped dead for two nuclear submarines, what shall we do?’ Need to wait until some people catch up a little more before we cast that line their way. I mean, it’s not a fact, only a theory, so it’s not intel.”

  “Is all this a game to you?”

  “No.” He looked weary. “It’s just the way things work.”

  “And disobeying orders? Like out on deck with the crane? Is that also part of the way things work?”

  “Losing that thing could not be allowed to happen. Sometimes you have to act on gut whatever the consequences. From conscience.”

  “Conscience!” She laughed. “Impressive you can find yours without a microscope.”

  “Sugar, mine’s tuned into a slightly different frequency than yours, but I listen. Oh, and one other thing. If not for the safe recovery of our subs and crew, this next piec
e would have been my lead story. Mary Sims turned herself in.”

  “What, to the police?”

  “No. To whoever runs the Point when your father’s away. Can’t remember the name. Anyway, she told them everything. She had the missing parts, too, the ones she lifted from the ROVs here. They were in her knapsack when she flew away in our chopper with Ripler! Believe that? Showed up with those and the parts she later walked off with from the Point, as well. The only quote in the report I received on the incident is from her: ‘It no longer matters.’ Not sure how to interpret that. Damn shame for her, but at least she finally did the right thing.”

  Penny shook her head. “I’d say she’s a bit more cunning than you give her credit. She realized she was being investigated and decided to make the best of it.”

  “Maybe, but she was heavily under the sway of Jack, and he could beguile the stripes off a skunk.”

  “I’m sure, but given her actions, why should she get off easy?”

  “Easy? Any chance she had of becoming a marine science researcher is now destroyed. What’s the point of throwing her in jail, vengeance?”

  She looked away before saying, “She’s not the Sister Mary you think she is.”

  “Well, take heart.” He picked up his empty glass and toasted her. “The news is good today. All the way to the top, they’re elated the sub crews are safe. What’s more, whatever happened to them is no longer clearly seen as an attack. Combine that with the arrival of our otherworldly specimen in the tank over here, and we’re back on the board with time to score. So, any change at all in that thing, or any new theories on what the hell it is?”

  “They took a small scraping, as I’m sure you know from Becka. The cell structure is similar to the sample we found on the Bluedrop. We tried a sonogram, but it wouldn’t penetrate more than a few centimeters for some reason.”

  “Blocking the signal, mayhaps?” He grinned and fake scratched his chin. “Elusive, just like its daddy.”