Beneath the Ice

by Alton Gansky

Hairy was six feet long and wide enough to hold a man. The front of the cylinder sported a shining copper cap. The rest of the device was bright orange.

  “You were going to send that to Europa?” Larimore asked.

  Sarah laughed. “No. The space-traveling version is much smaller. I was told that we needed a big hole, so I brought this pup.”

  “Why a big hole?” Griffin asked.

  “I’ll hold that answer until later, Dr. James,” Perry said. “Just know that I’m the one who asked for it.”

  “Figures. More secrets,” Griffin snapped.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Larimore said to Griffin. “This is going to happen whether you like it or not.”

  “I may not be in the U.S., but I still have the right to express myself.” Griffin turned to Perry. “How are we supposed to contribute when you keep so many secrets?”

  “Trust,” Perry said, knowing that it would do nothing to alleviate Griffin’s suspicion. “Soon you’ll know everything, but not now.” He paused and looked at his team. They were an odd mix, and he was asking them to trust someone they’d never met to do something that had never been done. Perry couldn’t blame the man. The truth was, he was having trouble trusting Griffin.

  “How does it move?” Gwen asked, filling the sudden silence.

  “Gravity,” Sarah answered. “There is no motorized drive for the descent. It is, however, equipped with various sensors and water jets for maneuverability.”

  “Camera?” Gleason asked.

  “Several,” Sarah replied. “Real-time video and digital stills. We control everything by cable and joysticks.”

  “Do you have any experience doing that?” Griffin pressed.

  “Yes. I’ve controlled this unit and others like it in a pool and in open sea. I also practice with a computer program that throws variables into the formula. It keeps me on my toes. It’s very much like a video game.”

  “I’ve never played a video game,” Griffin said. “Waste of time if you ask me.”

  “That explains a lot,” Larimore said.

  “Enough bickering, gentlemen,” Perry ordered. He started to speak again when a rumble vibrated the Chamber’s dome. Powerful propellers thrummed the air, shaking the arched structure. Perry grinned. “Last plane in and out, folks. Let’s go see what Santa has brought.”

  Chapter 4

  Perry pulled on his parka, slipped on his shaded goggles, cinched his hood around his head, and stepped out of the protective dome onto the dim, cold, eerie ice. He rounded the Chamber in time to see the same C-5 aircraft that had chauffeured them to the barren ice taxi to a stop.

  “The limo’s here,” Jack said. “Do you suppose anyone thought to bring pizza?”

  “More gear and supplies,” Perry replied. “Oh, and one other important addition.”

  Larimore’s Seabees and Perry’s work crew trotted out to the mammoth plane as its tail ramp descended. They disappeared up the ramp in a line. They waited for no orders. They knew the task before them. Perry marveled at the crew’s dedication.

  As the propellers slowed, a stepped ramp lowered, and a man emerged. He wore a bright blue parka and the same cold-weather garb that hung from Perry’s frame, but unlike Perry, this man was short and round. He waddled down the stairs, awkwardly creating a drama with each step.

  “That kinda looks like . . .” Jack began. “You’re kidding.”

  “No humor here, buddy,” Perry said. “And I don’t think Dr. Curtis will find any joy in this.” Dr. Kenneth Curtis packed 250 pounds in a five-foot-nine-inch body. He moved slowly but always with purpose. While his rotund shape and balding head might have kept him from appearing on the cover of a fitness magazine, his mind had earned him several mentions in scientific literature.

  Perry walked toward his friend, a wide smile on his face. Jack and Gleason followed. Dr. Curtis wore no smile. “Welcome, Professor,” Perry said. “Glad you could make it.”

  Curtis huffed. “There is now a standing order at my house. ‘If a man named Perry Sachs calls, I’m not in.’ ”

  “But then your life would be dull,” Perry said. “You’d spend all your time in a safe Boston classroom teaching fresh-faced students who don’t appreciate your true genius.”

  “Smack-dab in the middle of nowhere and he’s still trying to play me like a violin,” Dr. Curtis grumbled. “You may have killed me this time, Perry. I can’t breathe, my head hurts, and I’m losing all sensation in my extremities.”

  “Just like the rest of us,” Jack interjected. “It’s not that bad, Doc. It’s just like Boston.”

  Perry watched Curtis raise his head and narrow his eyes. “Boston has a symphony. Does this place have a symphony . . . or a library . . . or a decent restaurant?”

  “How about a transistor radio, Gleason’s comics collection, and a can of sardines?” Jack laughed at his own wit.

  “It’s a good thing I like you boys,” Curtis said, “or there would be real trouble.” He winked at Perry.

  Despite his bluster, Perry knew Curtis to be kind, thoughtful, and deeply spiritual. But he did love to complain. “I assume it’s warmer inside than outside.” He nodded at the Dome.

  “A little,” Perry said. “The dome on your right is called, well, the Dome. The square buildings are dormitories, storage, and the like. The larger dome on the left has been dubbed the Chamber. That’s where the work goes on.”

  “Let me guess,” Curtis said. “Jack named the buildings.”

  “It’s a hobby,” Jack said.

  Curtis shook his head. “For a big man, you have a tiny imagination. Let’s go.” Curtis took several quick steps.

  Perry looked at Jack. “Same old Professor Curtis. You gotta love him.”

  “I can’t wait until he and Dr. James butt heads. That’ll be worth the price of popcorn.”

  Perry jogged a few steps until he caught up to Curtis. “I appreciate your coming down.”

  “An archeologist in the heart of Antarctica!” Curtis said. “Makes no sense—it makes no sense at all!”

  “Then you why did you come?” Perry prodded.

  “Because, Perry, in your hands, the absurd somehow becomes real. I don’t want to miss that.”

  Enkian strode into the conference room, pushing aside custom-made teak doors. Tia was a single step behind. His entrance caused the three men and one woman sitting at the conference table to bolt to their feet. Enkian ignored them, marching to the glass wall that looked over the cityscape of Mexico City. The sun was setting, blazing bright orange as its light struggled through some of the worst smog seen on the planet. It was foul air made fouler by the repeated belching of the volcano Popocatepetl just a few miles away. It was rumbling more these days, spewing gas on a daily basis and occasionally ejecting ash into the already polluted air. To some, it was a seventeen-thousand-foot eyesore with a two-thousand-foot wide crater at its peak. To Enkian, it was the power of the earth. The sky grew darker and the air thicker. Seventeen million people lived in the city, most so poor they were incapable of dreaming of the kind of wealth and power Enkian wielded.

  Lights from the city stabbed at the encroaching darkness, but the darkness could not be dissuaded. It had come to do what it did every day—cover the city in blackness. Mexico City was a modern city—the capital of the country and its cultural heart. Its influence dominated the land. Seven centuries before, Enkian thought, the city had worn a different name, and its citizens could not trace their lineage back to Spain.

  Tenochtitlán, its name the better part of a millennium ago, sat upon an island in Lake Texcoco. Here the Aztecs found their administrative and military strength, an influence felt far into Central America. Temples and pyramids of stone, gleaming white and red in the hot sun, dominated the city.

  The city was divided among the calpulli, and these clans held sway until Hernándo Cortés lowered an iron fist upon it. Eighty-five days later, Tenochtitlán had fallen. War, conquest, and a series of epidemics from European diseases gutted the
city of its 200,000 inhabitants, leaving only 30,000. Now a great city spread out before him, but despite its size, it was a pale thing in comparison.

  Enkian turned his attention from the window to the spacious room. Dominating the area was a conference table made of Pentelic marble. From a chemical point of view, the material was nothing more than compressed limestone, but in the hands of an artist it was so much more. Phidias had secured his place in history because of what his hands could do with marble. Enkian touched its smooth, polished surface and felt its coolness creep up his fingers. This white stone had been quarried from the Penteli mountains north of Athens. He had chosen the piece himself and followed every detail of its removal, polishing, and sculpting.

  He caressed the table again. To others it was lifeless, albeit beautiful, stone. To Enkian it was more alive than those who stood around its perimeter.

  “Sit down,” he said, while he remained standing. Tia sat at his right hand. She carried nothing in her hands, yet he knew that she would recall every word spoken. “What do we know?”

  “If I may, sir,” a man said. He was rail-thin and wore tight-

  fitting wire-rimmed glasses that rested on a beaklike nose. Enkian nodded at Jeffrey Tottle, vice president of EA Mining’s European offices. The others around the table held similar positions. Caesar Rivadavia handled South America; Rich Aldington oversaw all operations in Australia and New Zealand; Jean Sedlar reigned over work in Asia and Indonesia.

  Tottle rose, producing a remote control from his pocket. He pressed a button and the wall to Enkian’s left parted, revealing six large plasma monitors. Each shone with EA Mining’s logo, a three-row, six-block stepped pyramid. Above the pyramid’s pinnacle was a sunburst, as if heaven were spilling through a gash in the sky. A button-push later, the first screen filled with the image of a handsome dark-haired man.

  “Perry Sachs,” Tottle said crisply. “Senior vice president and project manager for his father’s firm, Sachs Engineering.”

  “I know the firm,” Enkian said without emotion.

  “Yes, we used them in South Africa when we encountered a touchy digging problem in one of our chrome-ore extraction centers. They redesigned one of our automated diggers. They’re resourceful.” Tottle returned his attention to the screen. “Perry Sachs is a bit of an adventurer. Not the careless type, but he can’t resist a good mystery. This is well-known among military types. Sachs Engineering does a great deal of secret work for the U.S. military and a few U.S.-friendly countries. The company has deep pockets. Although not as wealthy as our . . . as your company, Mr. Enkian, they have a brain trust that rivals our own. They are formidable.”

  “Go on,” Enkian said. Tottle was a superior businessman and a loyal follower, but he did tend to ramble.

  “Our investigators have learned that Sachs is leading a team of experts in some effort in Antarctica.” Pictures of people began to appear on the screens: two women, five men. “These are the core operatives. They know what we know, that Lake Vostok is growing.”

  “As the prophecy said it would,” Enkian said.

  “Precisely.” Tottle advanced the images. “There’s an interesting mix of skills present at the site. Sachs, his partners John Dyson—he goes by Jack—and Gleason Archer are all MIT trained. Also present are Dr. Griffin James, a glaciologist; his sister Gwen James, a biologist specializing in extreme bioforms; and Sarah Hardy from NASA.”

  “NASA?” Enkian said.

  “Robotics expert.” Tottle pushed the button again, and a map of Antarctica appeared. He zoomed in on the Lake Vostok area.

  Enkian leaned forward. He saw something special. It was a photorealistic map, but it showed only white ice. In his mind, though, Enkian could see through the ice. It was there. It had to be. Why else would such an eclectic band of explorers be sent to such an inhospitable spot?

  “They have been easy to track, but hearing them has been

  difficult. They encrypt all e-mail and maintain nonspecific radio communications. Still, we can assume—”

  “They’re going under the ice,” Enkian said.

  “Yes, sir. Of course, that is a slow process, so we have some time.”

  “No, we don’t,” Enkian said. “We have no time to waste.”

  “It took the Russians months to core as deeply as they did.”

  “Sarah Hardy,” Enkian interjected. “She tells us what we need to know. They’re not coring. They’re sending a drone through the ice. It’s an ingenious idea, but they must not succeed in my absence. Does everyone understand that?”

  Heads nodded, accompanied by general assent.

  Enkian fell silent, and the enormity of his thoughts weighed on him like the world on Atlas’s shoulders. “The time has come. We are the blessed. Generation upon generation of our forefathers has kept the faith, the dream alive. You received it from your fathers as I received it from mine, and he from his before. But now—” his voice choked—“now the time is here. We are the chosen. We are the six—six of the sixty-six. Nothing will ever be the same. We will see to that. The prophecy.”

  “The prophecy,” they repeated in unison.

  “The prophecy.”

  “The prophecy.”

  He turned to Tia. “We have operatives in place?”

  “They have begun their work.”

  “You have reports from them?”

  She shook her head, her long black hair shuddering down her shoulders. “No.”

  “We’ve lost contact with them? Compromised?”

  “No,” she said. “They’ve been busy.”

  Enkian nodded, then smiled. Rising, he tilted his head back and raised his arms. He could hear the chairs sliding back from the marble table as the others joined him. He began to sway like wheat in a gentle breeze. He began to hum. The other joined him until the room sounded like a hive of colossal bees. Then Enkian spoke, his eyes closed so tightly that flashes of light danced in his vision.

  “Most honored are you above all the gods. Your decree is unmatched by men and gods. You, Marduk, are the most honored of all gods. Your decrees are unquestionable. For now and forever, your declarations are unchangeable. No one from the gods can transgress your boundaries. Marduk, you are our avenger. You are our avenger. Our avenger. Avenger.”

  Chapter 5

  Sarah could not enter her room without feeling entombed. The space served as her bedroom and private office, but it was the size of a small hall bath. The builders had placed a cot to one side, and a three-foot-wide desk—little more than a flat surface on folding legs—sat next to the curved surface that formed the wall and ceiling of the Dome. A folding wooden chair was the only other piece of furniture. “I’ve seen larger graves,” she had joked when Dr. James had shown her the cubicle that would be her home for the next few weeks. The sight of it gave her a chill that had nothing to do with the cold beyond the curved wall.

  Living near the South Pole was a challenge—she had expected that, but expectations seldom measure up to reality. She spent as little time in the room as possible, preferring to sit in the larger shared area everyone called the Commons. There was one thing to be thankful for: She had a room to herself. The military workers and Sachs employees shared a dormitory space with bunks hastily made from two-by-fours.

  It wasn’t just the diminutive room that bothered her; it was the confinement. Back in her normal life she had an office and work area in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. There she could come and go as she pleased. Often she walked the tree-lined street in front of her ranch-style home, gazing at the stars that could still fascinate her. Here, she could move from room to room, building to building, but time outside was limited—especially when the wind blew. It blew a lot, roaring, squealing past, separated from her only by the wall of the Dome.

  She was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

  “This is nuts,” she said to herself as she pushed the power button on her laptop, which whirred to life. There were other taxing conditions. Water w
as available by the acre, but it was in the form of ice. The energy necessary to convert it to liquid then warm it enough so it wouldn’t freeze tender skin was costly. As a result, showers were to be taken in two minutes or less. Two minutes! That wasn’t enough time to get wet as far as Sarah was concerned.

  The computer finished its warm-up, loading all the necessary programs. Sarah moved the mouse and clicked on an icon. A new program loaded, filling the screen with the JPL logo and the words Cryobot Simulations 2.3. She pulled two joysticks from the table and set them on either side of the computer. Sarah reminded herself that she was not playing a video game but training for a mission. In a few days, she would be seated at a table in the Dome, guiding the large cryobot through the ice and into a lake that no one had ever seen.

  She would be at the controls, performing every move under the scrutiny of several pairs of exacting, demanding eyes. Millions of dollars of equipment and thousands of hours of work rested in her ability to manipulate the joysticks just the right way. “No pressure,” she muttered.

  As she thought about the watchful eyes, one pair of eyes pushed to the forefront, eyes that gleamed with intelligence and sparkled with kindness; eyes that revealed a no-nonsense attitude but were still quick to laugh. Dark eyes made light by something she had not been able to identify.

  Sarah worked with the brightest minds in the world. The JPL and Caltech were bastions of brilliance. Knowledge, skill, and superior intelligence did not intimidate her. She saw it on a daily basis. But Perry Sachs was somehow different. In some intangible way, he exuded—what? A rare confidence? That was true. A refreshing honesty? Again true, but still not on target. She shook her head. Whatever quality had caught Sarah’s attention, its definition remained a few inches out of reach. Whatever it was, it was real and . . . endearing.

  The program began to run. The display was similar to a commercial jet’s instrument panel except altitude was measured in negative numbers, speed was measured in centimeters per hour, and orientation included displays for vertical as well as horizontal bearings. Other virtual gauges indicated interior and exterior temperatures, “nose” heat—the temperature of the heating element that would melt the ice below Hairy—and a half dozen other instruments. The program was designed to create problems at random. So far, the program had won every contest, something she wasn’t willing to admit to the others.