by Alten-Steve
“Iz wants you down in the lab. SOSUS located something.”
Adrenaline pumping, she kicks off the blanket and follows Edie down the back staircase to the acoustics lab.
Iz is seated at his SOSUS terminal, headphones on, his back to her. Dominique notices the sound system is recording data.
He swings around in his chair to face her. She sees he is dressed only in a bathrobe and slippers. Tufts of his thinning charcoal-gray hair stand wildly on end around the headphones. The serious expression on his face stifles her laugh.
“I checked the system last night before I went to bed. The only unusual thing SOSUS had located was what we call a ‘dead zone,’ an area devoid of marine life. This in itself isn’t that unusual. The Gulf experiences annual dead zones every summer when plankton blooms created by fertilizer runoff deprive the water of oxygen. But those dead zones usually occur off the coast of Texas and Louisiana, and never in water this deep. Anyway, I reprogrammed SOSUS to concentrate on this area and left the system on search mode all night. The alarm went off about fifteen minutes ago.” Iz removes the headphones and hands them to her. “Listen to this.”
She hears static, like the zapping sound a fluorescent tube makes before it shorts out. “Sounds like white noise.”
“That’s what I said. Keep listening.” Iz changes the setting to a higher frequency.
The white noise disappears. Now Dominique hears an incessant, metallic thumping sound. “Wow. It sounds like hydraulics.”
Iz nods. “Ask your mother, I said the same thing. In fact, I thought SOSUS had picked up a submarine resting on the bottom. Then I rechecked the location.” Iz hands her a computer printout. “The acoustics aren’t coming from the seafloor, they’re coming from below the seafloor. Four thousand, six hundred and eighty feet below the seafloor, to be exact.”
Dominique’s heart is thumping like a kettledrum. “But how’s that possible—”
“You tell me! What am I listening to, Dominique? Is this a joke, because if it is—”
“Iz, stop talking nonsense.” Edie places a reassuring arm around Dominique’s waist. “Dom had no idea what you’d find. The information was given to her by, well, by a friend.”
“Who’s this friend? I want to meet him.”
Dominique rubs the sleep from her eyes. “You can’t.”
“Why not? Ead, what’s going on here?”
Dominique glances at Edie, who nods. “He’s—he’s a former patient of mine.”
Iz looks from Dominique to his wife, then back to Dominique. “Your friend’s a mental patient? Oy vey—”
“Iz, what difference does it make? Something’s out there, right? We need to investigate—”
“Slow down, kiddo. I can’t just contact the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and tell them that I located hydraulic sounds originating a mile below the Campeche shelf. The first thing they’re going to want to know is how I discovered the acoustics in the first place. What am I supposed to tell them—that some looney-tune gave my daughter the coordinates from his cell in Miami.”
“Would it make a difference if Stephen Hawking gave you the coordinates?”
“Yes, actually it would; it would make a huge difference.” Iz rubs his forehead. “The old bull in a china shop routine doesn’t work anymore, Dominique, at least not when it comes to SOSUS. About three years ago, I used the system to detect vibrations originating from beneath the Gulf floor that sounded exactly like a sea quake.” Iz shakes his head at the memory. “You tell her, Ead.”
Edie smiles. “Your father thought we were minutes away from getting hit by a major tsunami. He panicked and ordered the coastguard to evacuate all the beaches.”
“Turns out I had the system set too high. What I thought were sea quakes was actually the phone company dredging cable sixty miles offshore. I felt like a goddam moron. I called in a lot of favors to get our station hooked up to SOSUS. I can’t afford another screwup like the last one.”
“So you’re not going to investigate?”
“Now, I didn’t say that. What I’ll do is start a bible and continue to record and monitor the area closely, but I’m not going to contact any federal agency until I’m absolutely certain that this discovery of yours warrants it.”
Miami, Florida
10:17 p.m.
Mick Gabriel is sitting on the edge of his bed, rocking silently. His black eyes are vacant, his lips slightly parted. A thin string of saliva drools from his unshaven chin.
Tony Barnes enters Mick’s room. The male orderly has just returned from a three-week suspension. “Trick or treat, vegetable. Time for your nightly shot.” He lifts Mick’s limp right arm from his lap and inspects the series of purple contusions appearing along the anterior forearm.
“Ah, fuck it.” The orderly jabs the needle into the arm, injecting the Thorazine into an already butchered vein.
Mick’s eyes roll upward as his body falls forward, collapsing in a heap at the orderly’s feet.
The orderly prods Mick’s head with the toe of his sneaker. He glances over his shoulder to verify they are alone, then licks Mick’s ear.
Barnes hears Marvis making his rounds. “Pleasant dreams, girlfriend.” He hurries out.
The door double-clicks shut. The lights in the pod dim.
Mick’s eyes open.
He staggers to the sink and washes his face and ear with cold water. Cursing under his breath, he presses a thumb to the bleeding, bruised vein. Then, feeling the haze closing in around him, he slumps painfully to his knees and takes up a push-up position.
For the next two hours, Mick forces his body through an agonizing ritual of calisthenics. Push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, running in place—anything to keep his metabolism racing, anything to burn off the tranquilizer before it can overwhelm his central nervous system.
Of the three, the morning shots were always the worst. Foletta would administer the dose himself, monitoring his patient as he cooed softly in Mick’s ear, taunting him. Once the drug took effect, he’d place Mick in a wheelchair and push him around from pod to pod on his morning rounds, sending a warning to the other residents that dissidence of any kind would not be tolerated.
The nightly exercises after the third shot of the day were a worthwhile struggle. By increasing his metabolism, Mick found he was able to burn off the effects of the drug faster, gradually giving him a toehold on sanity. By the fourth morning, he had regained enough of his mental equilibrium to focus on a plan.
From that moment forward he had acted the part of a mindless bag of bones. The seventh-floor orderlies would arrive each morning to find him lying on the floor of his cell in a deep stupor, totally incoherent. This angered the attendants, who were now forced to feed their incapacitated patient, and, to their utter disgust, even change his soiled clothing. After a week of this routine, Foletta was forced to cut Mick’s dosage from three times a day to just an afternoon and an evening injection.
Over the last few weeks, Foletta’s schedule had become inundated with other matters. He stopped checking in on Mick, trusting his care to the orderlies.
For the first time in his eleven years of captivity, the security surrounding Michael Gabriel had become lax.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
NASA Director Brian Dodds stares in disbelief at the immense computer printout scrolled out across his desk. “Explain it to me again, Swicky.”
Dodds’s assistant, Gary Swickle, points a thick index finger to the checkerboard pattern, consisting of thirteen square boxes across, running continuously over thousands of sheets of paper. “The radio signal is made up of thirteen different harmonics, represented here by these thirteen columns. Each harmonic can be played out over any one of twenty distinct, consecutive frequencies. This allows for a possible combination of 260 different sound bytes, or commands.”
“But you say there’s no repeating pattern?”
“Only at the very beginning.” Swickle locates the f
irst page of the printout. “When the signal first appears, the harmonics are kept very simple, several notes played out over just one frequency, yet repeated over and over again. Now look here. At the seventeen-minute mark, everything changes, all thirteen harmonics and twenty frequencies suddenly coming into play at once. From that point on, the signal never repeats itself. The remaining 185 minutes use all 260 combinations of sound bytes, indicating a highly structured communiqué.”
“You’re absolutely certain that no primer exists within the first seventeen minutes? No mathematical equations? Nothing that indicates translation instructions of any kind?”
“Nothing.”
“Damn.” Dodds rubs his bloodshot eyes.
“What are you thinking, boss?”
“Do you remember back in the summer of ’98 when we lost contact with SOHO? Before Arecibo relocated the satellite, we kept transmitting the same simple radio signal over and over again, attempting to re-establish contact with the satellite’s main computer. That’s what the first seventeen minutes of this signal reminds me of. No primer, no instructions or codex, just a deep-space carrier signal repeating itself like a ringing telephone, waiting for the other party to pick up so the information can be downloaded.”
“I agree, but it makes no sense. The extraterrestrials that transmitted this signal couldn’t possibly have expected our species to be able to translate all this information without a primer.”
Swickle notices that his director’s face looks pale. “What?”
“Just a crazy thought. Ignore me, I’m wiped out.”
“Come on, boss.”
“Well, I was thinking about SOHO. Our transmission obviously didn’t require a primer because SOHO’s computer was already programmed under our command. Maybe this signal contains no primer because it’s not necessary.”
“You mean, this radio signal wasn’t intended to be translated?”
“No, Swick.” Dodds shoots his assistant a worried look. “I mean, what if the signal wasn’t intended for us?”
November 5, 2012: Sanibel Island, Florida
The chant of “four more years—four more years” stirs Edith Axler awake. She sits up and checks the time, then switches off the television and heads downstairs to the lab.
Isadore is still hunched over at the SOSUS station, listening.
“Iz, for God’s sake, it’s eleven-thirty—”
“Shhh.” He removes his headphones and switches on the exterior speaker. “Listen.”
She hears a deep humming sound. “Sounds like a generator.”
“That’s nothing. Wait.”
Moments pass, and then a high-pitched whine of what sounds like a hydraulic drill whistles at them through the speakers, followed immediately by a metallic clanking that continues for several minutes.
Iz smiles at his wife. “Is that incredible?”
“It sounds as if something’s being pieced together. Probably an oil rig preparing to drill.”
“Either that, or another one of those geological expeditions investigating the crater. Whatever it is, the degree of activity has intensified over the last thirty hours. I sent an e-mail to the NOAA to check on both possibilities but haven’t heard a word. Who won the election?”
“President Maller.”
“Good. Now that that’s over with, maybe someone at the State Department will get back to me.”
“And what if they don’t?”
Iz looks up at his wife and shrugs. “No big deal. Like you said, it’s probably just an oil rig. Carl and I are planning our annual fishing trip within the next two weeks. Maybe we’ll take a quick detour out to the area and take a closer look, just to be sure.”
Miami, Florida
Dominique watches in disgust as the big redhead shovels another forkful of eggplant into his mouth. Maybe he’ll choke.
“So, Sunshine, you proud of me or what?”
A spittle of tomato sauce strikes her cheek. “God, Ray, didn’t your mother teach you to swallow your food before talking?”
He smiles, revealing a piece of eggplant caught between his yellowed teeth. “Sorry. I’ve been dieting for six months. Feels good to eat again. So what do you think?”
“I told you, I think sixth place is terrific, especially for your first contest.”
“What can I say? You inspired me.”
“Now tell me about Foletta. What we first met, you said something about the board and medical staff being upset when he arrived from Massachusetts. What did you mean by that?”
“This stays between us, right?”
“Right.”
Raymond washes another mouthful of food down with a swig of beer. “I have a good friend whose father sits on the state board. In fact, he was the one who helped me get the job at the treatment center. Anyway, the word is that Dr Reinike, Foletta‘s predecessor, will be back sometime next month to run things again.”
“Really? But I thought she retired. Foletta told me her husband had terminal cancer.”
Ray shakes his head, inhaling another bite. “It was all bullshit. My buddy told me Reinike’s been on paid leave since September. Turns out there’s a brand-new asylum opening up in Tampa in three weeks, and Foletta’s been promised the directorship.”
“Wait, if Foletta’s leaving in three weeks, then he must have known he was getting the Tampa job before coming to Miami. Why push Dr Reinike out just to take the Miami job for three months?”
Ray points his fork at her. “Because of your former patient. The asylum in Massachusetts was closing, and Tampa wasn’t ready yet. Reinike’s a stickler for detail. Apparently, somebody with a lot of pull wanted Foletta in charge so there’d be no risk of your boy Gabriel getting reshuffled in the system.”
Or receiving a proper evaluation. God damn you, Foletta.
“What’s the matter, Sunshine?”
“I made a deal with Foletta. He promised me that Mick would be placed in the care of one of our rehab teams no later than January.”
The yellowed teeth smile at her. “Guess you got lied to, girl. In three weeks, Michael Gabriel will be long gone.”
The sleek, cherry red Dodge Intrepid ESX2’s electric motor whines as it kicks in, assisting the 1.5-liter three-cylinder diesel engine as it accelerates up the steep southbound ramp to I-95.
Dominique stares out the passenger window as Raymond whips the car in and out of traffic. She grits her teeth, angry at Foletta for deceiving her. I should have known better. I should have trusted my heart.
She closes her eyes, recalling one of her first conversations with Mick. “Pierre Borgia manipulated the legal system. The DA made a deal with my state-appointed attorney and shipped me off to an asylum in Massachusetts. Foletta became my state-appointed keeper. Pierre Borgia rewards loyalty, but God help you if you make his shit list.”
She had been manipulated, and once more, Michael Gabriel was left to suffer the consequences.
“Ray, I’m really not up for dancing tonight. Would you mind taking me home.”
“Home? We’re halfway to South Beach.”
“Please.”
Raymond eyes the tan, sculpted legs protruding beneath the black skirt, imagining them wrapped around his thrusting, muscular torso. “Okay, Sunshine, home it is.”
The Intrepid pulls into the parking lot of her high-rise twenty minutes later.
Dominique smiles. “Thank you for dinner. I’m sorry to put a damper on the evening, but I really don’t feel well. Next time, I’ll treat, okay?”
He shuts off the engine. “I’ll walk you up.”
“That’s okay, I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at work.” She opens the door and heads for the elevator.
Ray scurries after her.
Dammit. “Ray, I told you, it’s really not necessary.”
“Hey, it’s no trouble, besides, I’d love to see your place.” He waits for her to key-in to use the elevator.
“Ray, not tonight.”
“That wasn’t our deal.” He slips a thick
arm around her waist, pulling her closer.
“Don’t—”
Before she can stop him, he has pushed her against the concrete wall, burying his tongue in her mouth, his right paw groping her breasts.
A wave of white-hot panic rushes over her as a dozen childhood memories race through her mind at once.
Fight back! She gags at the taste in her mouth, then bites down on the intruding tongue, drawing blood.
“Oww. God dammit—” Raymond slaps her across the face, then pins her against the wall with one hand as he tears at her skirt with the other.
“Let her go!”
Dominique looks up to see Rabbi Steinberg and his wife approaching.
Raymond maintains a grip on her arm. “Beat it, this ain’t your concern.”
“Let her go, or we’ll alert the police.” Mindy Steinberg holds up the portable alarm.
Raymond takes a threatening step toward the couple, dragging Dominique with him.
“Don’t be foolish,” Steinberg says, pointing to the security cameras.
“Hey, Ray—”
Raymond turns.
The point of Dominique’s high heel slams hard on Raymond’s big toe. He yelps in agony, releasing his grip. In one motion, the blade of her wrist strikes the bodybuilder square on the Adam’s apple, silencing his scream.
Raymond clutches his windpipe, wheezing for air. As he drops to his knees, Dominique wheels around, preparing to drive the heel of her foot down upon the back of his exposed neck.
“Dominique, no—” Steinberg grabs her arm before she can execute the crescent kick. “Let the police handle it.”
Mindy keys open the elevator and the three duck inside.
Raymond struggles to his feet. He turns to face Dominique, his eyes crazed, his mouth gasping to form sounds. As the elevator doors begin to close, he mouths the word, “Gabriel,” and slides a finger across the base of his throat.
11
NOVEMBER 18, 2012: MIAMI, FLORIDA