Whitney stood up, eliciting a sharp glance from Wright, but she ignored him and strode across the room. She felt the eyes of the four guards following her. In fact, all eyes in the room watched her, burrowing in to her skull. She ignored the urge to return to her seat and approached the bowling alley. She picked up one of the balls and felt its weight in her palm. Not too heavy. Stepping back, she raised the ball to her chin just like her father had shown her. After two quick paces forward, she let the ball fly. Her right leg slid out sideways and her left bore the weight of her leaning body. She held the position as the ball roared down the alley. Pins exploded into the air as the ball made contact, clearing the left side and leaving the outer four pins along the right.
“The four horsemen,” Whitney said, repeating the name her father had given the four-pin arrangement that could run from center to the left corner or center to the right.
Whitney picked up a second ball and, forgetting the watching eyes, took aim and sent it rolling toward the pins. The three pins to the right of center spun into the air with a crackle of wood. “Damn it,” she muttered.
Quickly taking aim with a third ball, Whitney flung it down the alley, letting her arm fall directly over the center arrows. The ball spun forward and struck the center pin, sending it spinning through the air. A perfect ten.
Whitney turned around and came face to face with James. He was smiling. “Not bad,” he said. He leaned over and pushed the reset button. The remaining pins were swept away and set back in place.
James picked up a recently returned ball, stepped back, and let his hands hang next to his hips. He rolled the ball down the alley. It struck the pins and cleared eight. The ninth and tenth pins wobbled for a moment but settled into an upright position. The remaining pins were the front center pin and the back left—two of the four horsemen. A hard shot.
Without pause, the president took his second roll and clipped the right side of the center pin, sending it tumultuously back and to the left. The pin swiped the other and both disappeared into the collection bin.
James turned to Whitney and raised his eyebrows in triumph.
“Show-off,” Whitney said.
“I don’t like to lose,” James replied.
Whitney stepped past the president and pushed the reset button. Ball in hand, she took the president’s position while he sat down behind her. She felt the ball in her hands, the smoothness, the weight, and spun it around. She felt a tiny notch, which she positioned beneath the tip of her middle finger. Placing the ball to her chin, she took aim, stepped forward, and flung the ball forward. At first the ball appeared to be severely off course, but it curved back in. Striking the center pin at a slight angle caused the pins to burst into the air with amazing energy. When the pins were done rolling and clacking about, not one remained standing.
Whitney turned to the president. “Neither do I.”
James clapped his hands. “Well done, young lady!”
Whitney took a seat next to the president on the seventies-era bench that gave the area a traditional bowling alley air. “Mind telling me what all this is about?”
James ran his hand through his hair. “I’ve found that prolonged silences can reveal people’s weaknesses . . . or, as with you, their greatest strengths. I now know you are determined, resourceful, strong-willed . . .”
“And?”
“Impatient.” He smiled. “Miss Whitney, I’m the President of the United States. The longest anyone has ever gone without saying a word was five minutes. You just bowled a nineteen in under four.” The man laughed loudly.
“With all due respect, sir, I think four minutes spent in silence, even bowling, is a monumental waste of time right now.”
“Too true, Miss Whitney. Unfortunately, your departure from here is set in stone. We have some time to kill, I’m afraid. And if I’m putting the fate of our country in your hands, I need to get to know you a smidge.” Whitney sensed the seriousness that lingered just beneath the man’s pleasant expression.
“Yes, sir,” she said, remembering that this man was the president. She met his eyes again. The edge was gone. “Sir, I would be grateful, to say the least, if you would tell me what you need with Dr. Clark, and why you need my help to find him.”
The president stood and headed for the kitchenette. “Of course, of course. You must be as confused as a fly in a spider’s web.” He opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water and tossed it to Whitney. “I don’t mean that metaphorically, of course. Take a seat back with your friends.”
Whitney looked back to the office area where Wright, Cruz, and Ferrell were all still seated and waiting.
“. . . and I’ll fill you in on the details,” he continued. “Then we can finally get you folks out to the starting line.”
Chapter 22
The president sat across from Whitney with his fingers pressed so tightly together that she could see the color draining. The playful tone in his voice had disappeared. His stature seemed somehow diminished. And his strength seemed to dwindle as he sat in his plush chair.
Whitney wondered how the burden of what had happened could be affecting the most powerful man in the world. If anyone could be held responsible for predicting and preventing whatever had happened, it was he. It seemed that the destruction of forty out of fifty states had stolen just as much of his inner strength.
The president’s voice cracked as he finished recounting the global destruction that had already been explained to Whitney by Wright. Hearing it all again brought the direness of their situation to the forefront of her mind. The world was screwed.
“And I’m afraid that with Canada, Japan, and most of Europe out of the picture, we’re left to deal with more foes than friends.” The president shook his head.
“But how?” Whitney asked. “I understand the end results, but I can’t understand how this happened. Meteorite? Volcano? What?”
“From what I understand”— the president looked at Wright—“and correct me if I’m wrong…”
Wright nodded.
“. . . the earth’s crust is an average of twenty miles thick on the continents; an average of six miles thick under the ocean. Forget what you know about tectonic plates, we’re talking about the earth’s crust as a whole. It’s not several separate slabs; they’re all connected and floating on the earth’s mantle, which is composed of molten layers all the way down to the core. The crust literally floats on the mantle. We are all adrift on a sea of lava, Ms. Whitney. And sometimes it shifts. This theory was first proposed by Dr. Charles Hapgood in 1958. He suggested that the earth’s crust had survived several displacements. That’s what he called them ‘earth crust displacements.’ Some of his evidence included a frozen mammoth in Siberia that crystallized so quickly it still had a mouthful of vegetation.”
“I saw that happen to my hometown,” Whitney said, remembering Portsmouth and her now-frozen friend Cindy. Morbidly, she wondered if, five thousand years from now, some archeologist would dig them up and discover what they had been eating.
“Other evidence includes coral found in Newfoundland and evidence that swamp cypress once flourished within five hundred miles of the North Pole. Further evidence, of which you’re well aware, has been found on Antarctica itself. Fossils of ferns, tree stumps, even dinosaurs remains have been found. This all indicates the world was a much different place at one time, more different than tectonic shift can account for. And more than all that, there is something else . . .”
Whitney found herself on the edge of her seat. She’d heard all this before, but heard it now with fresh ears. This was real. Not theory.
“We have a map,” the president said. “The original is not complete right now. We have yet to retrieve the missing portion, but for all intents and purposes, it fits our needs. It shows the coastline and much of the interior of Antarctica in great detail, but—”
“You have the Piri Reis map?” Whitney’s eyes were wide. She had heard of only a small piece of the original having ever
been found. The map was created in 1513 by Piri Reis, an admiral in the Turkish fleet who had access to ancient documents kept in the Imperial Library of Constantinople. Some of the original documents, now lost, dated back to the fourth century BC, and even earlier. It depicted the Antarctic at a time when there was no ice on the continent’s surface. Its detail was greater than even modern maps had achieved.
The president smiled. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Anyone who has set foot on Antarctica has heard of it. The map is legendary!”
The president nodded and rubbed his nose. “And your Dr. Clark based an entire chapter of his book on the map. I reckon he’d like to get his hands on it.”
Whitney felt compelled to ask about Clark, to discover what he had to do with all this, but kept silent.
“What we’ve done,” the president said, “is combine our map with high resolution images of the Piri Reis fragment. We now have a complete, accurate map of the continent. I imagine poor Dr. Hapgood would have killed for the entire map. It would have done wonders to support his earth crust displacement theory.” The president shifted his weight. “Most scientists have shunned the notion since Hapgood first theorized it, but the doctor has been proven correct. Of course, the recent devastation wasn’t as bad as Hapgood predicted.”
“It could have been worse?” Whitney was stunned.
“Much worse,” Wright said, nodding. “By all rights, every volcano on earth could have blown. Earthquakes could have been so violent that every structure on the planet would have been destroyed. And vast underground stores of water, combined with the melt from the poles, could have swept over every continent on earth.”
“A global flood. The promise was kept,” Whitney murmured.
“What was that?” the president asked.
Whitney felt embarrassed. She didn’t buy into that stuff, but she answered anyway, “Noah. The flood. God promised not to completely deluge the earth again. I’d always believed the flood was a regional event, but based on what you’re saying, it could have been global.”
“Here I am a churchgoer, and that never crossed my mind,” the president said. “Tell me, when was Noah’s flood supposed to have happened?”
“Some say five to six thousand years ago; some as much as twelve thousand years ago. I’d say closer to twelve, but that’s just an opinion.”
The president slapped his knee. “Mystery solved!”
Whitney looked at him quizzically.
“Hapgood hypothesized that crust displacement events took place every twelve thousand years or so. The biblical record could very well be accurate.”
Whitney shook her head. For so long she’d written off the Genesis accounts as ancient fiction. The events described were so fantastic they defied logic. But here she sat, a survivor of the very same event that caused the biblical flood. Science was proving the Bible correct. “Why wasn’t the effect the same? Why weren’t we completely destroyed?”
“You mean other than God sparing us?” Wright said.
“I don’t believe in God,” Whitney said. “Why did the earth spare us?”
“The shift was relatively smooth,” Wright said. “The whole crust came loose and shifted in tandem. Only a few volcanoes erupted. Earthquakes were severe in some locations, but only near larger fault lines. It was the dramatic temperature shift that got most people: freezing instantly or burnt alive by the severe heat. The floodwaters came in only because as the earth moved, the water wanted to stay still. It was swept away to the south in this hemisphere and to the north on the other side of the planet. Later, after it began moving as well, the water caught up with the continents and swept over them. The melt from the north and south poles refroze at the new poles, and the water level never rose too high; it is currently almost back to normal.”
“But how does the crust displacement happen in the first place? How can the crust come loose?”
“According to Hapgood, as the earth rotates in orbit, there is a slight wobble to its movement caused by accumulation of ice on the poles.”
Whitney caught on quickly. “Especially in the south, where ice covers Antarctica, making it heavier than the ice over the north pole. It would throw the balance off.”
The president stabbed a finger at Whitney. “Precisely. But this wobble has remained constant, only fluctuating slightly every once in a while.”
“Until now?”
“Picture the earth’s crust and core as a large tangerine. Detach the skin from the fruit without peeling it, and you have an approximation of what earth’s crust is like. Now attach off-centered weights to the top and bottom, more on the bottom, and spin it. What do you think will happen?”
“It will slip.” As the words escaped her lips, Whitney understood what had happened.
“Mm,” the president agreed.
“Where are the new poles? How far did we shift?”
The president looked at Wright. “Stephen, would you mind . . .?”
Wright stood, walked across the long room, picked up a map from the communications area, and returned it to the president’s desk. He unrolled it and held it open for them all to see.
Whitney recognized the continents, though the shapes of many had changed, and some smaller island nations were missing altogether. But this map was odd. It was as though the cartographer had drawn it from the southern pole looking up. Antarctica was just below the equator. “Oh . . .”
“‘Oh’ is right,” the president said. “The crust shifted by forty degrees, making the new north pole somewhere around North Dakota. This is most likely the largest shift in history, we assume, because it was so smooth. Other shifts were more violent and probably stopped moving sooner.”
“Then the United States is—”
“Gone,” the president said. “Unless the crust shifts us south again, the northern states will be forever frozen over—a northern version of Antarctica.”
Whitney began to suspect what the president was getting at. “But not anymore. Antarctica must be thawed.”
The president looked at Wright. “You did good by saving this one. She’s quick as a whip.” He looked back to Whitney. “It was a full month before we even thought of looking at Antarctica. It was another two days before one of the few remaining satellites with which we still have communication got a good shot.” The president reached inside the center desk drawer and pulled out five 8x10 photos. He threw them on top of the new world map.
What Whitney saw caused her to hold her breath. The overall shape was similar to the Antarctica she knew so well, but it was different. For one, it wasn’t white; it was green, save several blue splotches that looked like enormous lakes.
“Seems the seventh continent didn’t just thaw,” the president said. “It bloomed.”
“The shape is different, too.”
“To our eyes, yes,” Wright said, taking out another map. He opened it and placed it down next to the photos. Whitney knew she was looking at the Piri Reis map. The continent’s outline matched those in the photos perfectly. “With all the ice sheared from its surface, the continent actually rose, perhaps twenty more feet above sea level. It’s a new world over there.”
“What did McMurdo report?”
“They didn’t.”
“Vostok?”
The president shook his head. “As near as we can tell, they’re all gone. Swept away with the ice.”
“There are more than five thousand people on Antarctica at any given time,” Whitney said. “They can’t all be dead.”
“Two and a half billion people are dead around the world, Miss Whitney. Another five thousand isn’t a lot to add.”
Whitney’s head hung low. “Then why the interest . . .”
“In Dr. Clark?” The president interrupted. “Clark is one of the foremost authorities on Antarctica, followed closely by you. No one has spent more time on the continent than Dr. Clark. And while you’re a photographer by trade, you’ve spent more hours trekking across that continent than any
one else at my disposal. Clark is our best bet at leading the team to its goal. You are our backup.”
“Who will he lead?” Whitney asked.
The president swept his arm from left to right, motioning at Whitney, Wright, Cruz, and Ferrell. “The four of you.”
Whitney was becoming annoyed. “For what purpose?”
“A race,” Wright said. “Try to understand the state of the world: entire continents have become unlivable. A billion people have been displaced, and there is no room in what’s left of the inhabitable world for them. The majority of the previously northern hemisphere, whether by severe heat or freezing cold, has become a wasteland. Antarctica has become the opposite. A continent the size of North America is now lush and available.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Whitney asked. “Why aren’t we setting up the displaced people?”
“Not everyone wants to share,” Wright said. “New nations and alliances have formed, and they see this as a chance to gain control of the world.”
“Then it’s war.”
“Not quite,” the president added. “We were able to avoid war by proposing a new, less bloody solution.”
Whitney scrunched her face. “Are you saying we couldn’t win a war?”
The president leaned back in his chair and chewed on the question for a moment before answering. “We have several Navy fleets still functional. We have a limited Air Force, but our ground forces have been greatly diminished. We still have the technologic advantage, but in sheer numbers, we lose every time. It would only be a matter of time before China or the Arab Alliance took us out of the picture. If we didn’t still have enough nukes to kill the remaining four billion people left living, they’d probably already be here. Of course, if we used our nukes preemptively, you can bet every other nation on the planet with nukes would start launching. Basically, the world has reached a stalemate.”
“And this race,” Whitney asked, “how does it work?”
“After a week of international talks via satellite communications and various embassies, all overseen by the remaining members of the United Nations, an agreement was found. The only peaceful solution we could all agree on was a good old-fashioned land claim like they used to do in the old west,” the president said. “The first three nations or leagues of nations to reach the geographic center of Antarctica split the continent into three equal parts. There are eleven parties involved, several of which we simply cannot allow to win. That the Arab Alliance even agreed to this means they feel very confident, and that scares the bejeezus out of me. Imagine trying to share a physical border with the Alliance . . . or even the new Soviet Union, for that matter. There is so much bad blood in our shared histories. War would be inevitable. And we don’t expect they’ll all play nice, given the current, desperate situation.
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