Subhuman

by Michael McBride

  “That can’t be right.”

  “Why not?” Richards asked. There was a note of amusement in his voice.

  “Because that would change everything we think we know about the history of our species.”

  “It would, wouldn’t it?”

  “What evidence do you have to support your theory?” Roche asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that the theory was mine. The credit belongs to a professor named Charles Hapgood, who first put forth the idea of crustal displacement some sixty years ago. It was so well received at the time that Albert Einstein wrote the foreword when he published and then-President Dwight Eisenhower instructed the Strategic Air Command to provide him with any and all relevant scientific data to support his assertion that an abrupt shift in the Earth’s crust caused the sudden movement of all of the continents on the planet at once.”

  Kelly rolled her eyes.

  “Continents don’t suddenly do anything,” she said. “Even the Cascadia Subduction Zone—one of the most active fault lines in the entire world—only moves at a rate of a few centimeters a year.”

  “Ah, but take a step back and look at it from an overall macroscopic perspective. What are fault lines?”

  “Areas where two tectonic plates physically interact.”

  “And what are tectonic plates?”

  “Pieces of the hardened outermost layer of the lithosphere—a combination of the crust and the upper mantle—that fit together like a broken egg shell.”

  “What causes them to move?”

  Kelly sighed.

  “The intense heat produced by the Earth’s core makes the molten rock in the mantle churn, taking the plates along with it.”

  “What is the mantle?”

  “None of us are in the mood for a geology lesson,” Roche said.

  Kelly agreed. If Richards was trying to lead them to some kind of epiphany, he certainly wasn’t taking the most direct route.

  “Just hear me out,” Richards said. He gestured for Kelly to proceed.

  “The mantle makes up more than eighty percent of the Earth’s interior. It’s predominantly solid, but at such high temperatures behaves like a liquid.”

  “How so?”

  “This molten material rotates around a solid iron core, which actually revolves at a different rate than the planet’s surface.”

  “So we have a thin outer crust spinning around an inner core a fraction of its size on a thick cushion of fluid,” Richards said.

  “Which is exactly what caused the continents to drift apart in the first place,” Kelly said.

  “Precisely.”

  “But that process took hundreds of millions of years.”

  “Because the Earth’s rotation is constant?”

  “Relatively so. As a whole, it seems to be slowing down. There are certain times in the year when its rotation changes slightly due to the physics of the conservation of angular momentum. The angle of the Earth’s axis doesn’t perfectly match its angular momentum because the planet is somewhat lopsided and subject to the gravitational forces of the sun and the moon.”

  “And those forces aren’t always constant.”

  “Right. Since the orbits of both the Earth around the sun and the moon around the Earth are elliptical, the gravitational forces they exert are constantly changing, causing the Earth to precess on its axis, like a top wobbles as it spins.”

  “So—to use your top analogy—what happens when those external forces continue to increase that wobble to the point that it falls?”

  “That can’t happen. The core exerts a much stronger gravitational force than any external influence.”

  “So it would correct its own rotation.”

  “It’s not really as simple as that. You have to take into consideration the strength of the magnetic field it produces and the velocity of the rotation at a given point in time.”

  “But it would, wouldn’t it? Or else it would be thrown out of orbit and across the galaxy.”

  “Something like that.”

  “What would then happen to the crust, which is more heavily influenced by these external forces, during such a correction?”

  Kelly paused to consider the implications. Such a correction was indeed possible—in theory—but there were so many contributing factors that she could only speculate. She weighed her words carefully, knowing that she’d fallen into Richards’s verbal trap.

  “The mantle’s rotation around the core would accelerate at a rate exponentially proportional to what would essentially be a minor decrease in the rotational velocity of the iron core.”

  “Causing all of the tectonic plates to suddenly shift like a driver going through the windshield of his car in a head-on collision.”

  “That’s a bit extreme. I would say more like the ball bearings surrounding the axles in the car’s wheels as it brakes.”

  “It’s a fine theory,” Roche said, “but without anything resembling concrete evidence, that’s all it is: a theory. It’s no different than an ancient society believing this place was frozen by an ice god.”

  “Maybe it was aliens,” Evans said.

  “Funny.”

  “Here it comes,” Anya whispered from behind her.

  Kelly glanced out the window, then back at Richards, who swiveled in his seat to face them. He could hardly contain his excitement.

  “If it’s proof you want . . .” He toggled a switch and spotlights burst from the sides of the stabilizers, illuminating the walls of the lava tube as they fell away and the submersible drifted into a larger body of water. “. . . then it’s proof you shall have.”

  Kelly’s breath caught in her chest. She hit her forehead against the glass in an attempt to better see.

  “Oh, my God.”

  16

  ROCHE

  The lava tube opened into an underwater canyon that branched in multiple directions. The gray rock was stratified and eroded into shapes reminiscent of the sandstone formations from the old Road Runner cartoons. Ripples formed where they broke the surface, maybe fifteen feet overhead. The sediment was the color of ash and billowed in the submersible’s wake, revealing jagged rocks riddled with what at first appeared to be veins of some dark mineral. It took Roche a moment to realize that they were actually the fossils of some sort of plant. If he looked closely, he could clearly see the stems and the feathery wisps of foliage.

  The implications were staggering. For there to be plants, there needed to be exposure to the sun, which meant that at some point this area was not only above the ice, it was warm enough to sustain vegetation.

  He was held so enrapt by the fossils that he didn’t immediately realize that they weren’t the source of the others’ excitement. The massive stone formations weren’t merely the result of the random nature of geology; they were aligned in such a way as to create a veritable colonnade around the mouth of the lava tube. The rocks buried under the sediment were the remains of the megaliths that had once rested on top of the columns. In fact, now that he truly saw them for what they were, he could tell that the formations themselves were enormous slabs like those at Stonehenge, only reshaped by the erosive forces of eons of running water.

  The submersible rose from the stone forest and breached the surface. Roche practically crawled into Kelly’s lap and leaned against the glass in an effort to see the tops of the megaliths standing from the water. Even with as many as had fallen, he could still discern the outline of two concentric rings leaning toward one another. Some even touched, forming peaks like the surviving arches at the ancient ruins in Raufarhöfn, Iceland, known as Arctic Henge.

  “Have you been able to date this structure?” Evans asked. His assessment on the plane had been spot-on. This changed absolutely everything they knew—or at least thought they knew—about the origin of mankind, but how did that pertain to Roche’s work with crop circles and the picture he’d received in his email? “The oldest known megalithic structures in the world only date to the Ghar Dalam Phase of t
he Neolithic Period, maybe seven thousand years ago at the most. This henge would have to be easily twice that old.”

  “This environment makes carbon dating unreliable,” Richards said. “We’re not in any hurry to draw any attention to our findings yet, either. Hence the secrecy. The last thing we want is for the entire scientific community to descend upon our little discovery.”

  He winked at Anya, who smirked in response.

  The surface of the water was a strange shade of light blue caused by the reflection of the ice dome that had formed over the lake. There were no supports and yet the dome appeared infinite, stretching off into the far distance in every direction beyond their limited range of sight. It seemed physically impossible for such a fragile structure to support countless tons of ice, and yet here they were, cutting through the water toward Lord only knew what.

  Connor killed the headlights and eased off the throttle.

  Roche couldn’t see a blasted thing until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he was able to make out a faint glow in the distance, which resolved into several dim orbs as they neared.

  “We have to be careful not to make it too bright,” Richards said. “The organisms that live in the shallows are quite delicate.”

  “What kind of organisms?” Jade said.

  “We’ve discovered more than twenty species of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and crustacean-like os-tracods, the majority of which aren’t found anywhere else on the planet. Dr. Friden is having a field day naming them.”

  A floating dock materialized from the wan light, bobbing gently on the waves.

  Connor pulled right up to it, deftly swung around the rear end, and backed up until the pontoons grazed the top stabilizer.

  “Are you ready for this?” Richards asked.

  Roche glanced at the others, who wore mixed expressions of apprehension and impatience.

  “Are we waiting for a drumroll or something?” Evans asked.

  “My dear,” Richards said. “Would you care to do the honors?”

  “Absolutely,” Anya said. She hopped up, scaled the ladder, and popped the seal to release the hatch. The air that rushed past her was frigid and smelled faintly like the aftermath of a hailstorm. “Are you guys coming or what?”

  Roche grabbed his bag from underneath his seat and caught a glimpse of the sludge-covered rocks through the glass bottom. They looked just like those from the video they’d watched on the plane. Until that very moment, nothing about the alien-looking remains had felt real. Suddenly, his pulse raced at the prospect of at long last gaining some sort of insight into his life’s work. Crop circles historically formed in close proximity to primitive megaliths. That was the whole reason he’d moved to England in the first place, but he’d always been quick to dismiss the involvement of an extraterrestrial race in favor of any even somewhat rational explanation, even in the absence of one. Physical remains would mean that perhaps it was time to at least entertain the notion that perhaps there were factors in play beyond his ability to comprehend.

  He watched Kelly and Evans ascend the ladder behind Jade and Anya before starting up after them.

  “Wait for me, Mr. Roche,” Richards said. “I want to see your reaction.”

  Roche stopped and looked down at the older man. There was no hint of mocking or deception in his expression.

  “This is going to blow your mind,” Richards said.

  Roche climbed onto the roof of the submersible and stepped off onto the pier, which sagged under his weight. Waves sloshed against the pontoons as he followed the others toward dry land. The strange acoustics made their footsteps sound hollow. The weak lights were little better than complete darkness and made footing on the rocky shore treacherous.

  Sheer cliffs rose up into the ice, which adhered to the stone in frosted curtains. A raised platform had been erected in a natural crevice and used as the foundation for a shaft leading up into the ice. An oddly thin and elongated elevator car rested on the concrete, its taut cables seemingly too thin to bear even its empty weight.

  Connor opened the elevator door with a clang that reverberated throughout the cavern. Roche instinctively looked up, half-expecting to see cracks racing through the ice overhead.

  “Don’t worry,” Connor said. “It would take an atomic bomb to bring this cavern down.”

  He said something else, but Roche didn’t hear him. His pulse thundered in his ears as he veered away from the others and approached the icy surface of the cliff. He thought he saw . . . No, he couldn’t have . . . could he?

  The stone beneath the ice was smooth and gray. Granite, he guessed.

  He pressed his palms against the ice. It had to be a good four inches thick. He recoiled when the freezing water ran over the backs of his hands and into the sleeves of his jacket.

  “Perhaps this will help,” Richards said.

  Roche stared dumbly at the flashlight in Richards’s hand for several seconds before taking it from him. He thumbed the switch and shined the light directly at the ice, revealing the shapes carved into the stone. He stepped back and raised the beam in an effort to gauge the full extent of the design.

  There was a solid circle inside a larger, thinner circle, which served as the center for three smaller, solid circles positioned at the points of an equilateral triangle. Each of the smaller circles was contained within a thin halo, much like the enormous one in the middle. He’d seen this design before. In fact, he had a picture of it on the wall in his garage with all of the others. It was the same design as the crop circle that had appeared in Broadbury Banks, England, nearly twenty years ago.

  He stepped back even farther and swept the light across the face of the cliff. There were similar designs as far as he could see in either direction.

  17

  RICHARDS

  The portable construction elevator was roughly the size of a walk-in closet with Plexiglas windows that offered a disorienting view of the ice and steel rigging towers racing past in a blur. The car had been designed to hold up to four tons and accommodate sixteen people. He’d had the unit customized so that it utilized two cranes on the surface and opposing mast rigs for both redundancy and speed. Even with those modifications, it still took half an hour to ascend through the two vertical miles of ice that would have sealed the shaft in a single day were it not for the warm air rising from below and the recycled hot water that coursed through the hollow framework.

  Richards had employed a team of engineers to install every possible security measure to prevent them from plummeting straight down into the earth, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was comfortable inside this cage. The lights were barely bright enough to create an aura around the car, which was exactly the way he liked it. The original lights had been so bright that in combination with the reflection from the ice he’d been able to see nearly a quarter mile straight down.

  Connor worked the controls from the operator’s room, which was little more than a bulge in the side large enough to accommodate a single person. His bodyguard was so good at unobtrusively surveilling any given situation and anticipating his movements that Richards often forgot he was there.

  Just enough heat blew into the car to keep the tips of their noses and their cheeks from turning red. He’d learned early on that you never wanted to get too warm or the shock of the cold became more than just physically debilitating; it imparted an emotional impact not dissimilar to despair.

  He talked about the logistical nightmare of getting supplies and manpower to such a remote location and the speed with which they’d been forced to work without cutting a single corner that might compromise safety. Something as commonplace as a broken bone or laceration could prove fatal so far from the nearest medical facility, which was why the early arrivals had received training in first aid, but even a skilled surgeon wouldn’t be able to repair a ruptured appendix in this environment. While his speech had been meant to set his new arrivals at ease, he could see in their eyes that it was having the exact opposite effect. He was gra
teful when the intonation of the motor changed, signaling that they were nearing the top.

  The cranking and grinding of gears grew louder above them until it was all they could hear. Richards covered his ears out of habit as they ascended into the lighted section of the shaft, and the air filled with exhaust fumes and the scent of motor oil. The car rose through the floor and into a warehouse built directly into the side of the mountain. The walls were reinforced with six feet of sound-dampening material to prevent the noise from triggering an avalanche. In addition to the massive cranes and cogs that operated the elevator, there were industrial-size hot-water heaters and generators, forced-air heaters, humidifiers, and fans that pumped the noxious fumes through miles of ductwork and filters before venting them on the other side of the mountain, where the prevailing winds carried them out to sea.

  The elevator juddered to a stop, and he opened the cage door. Richards gestured for the others to follow him and led them through a maze of heavy equipment and pipes to the pressure-sealed doorway. He pressed the button, and the overhead red light came on, producing a high-pitched alarm that he felt more than heard. The fail-safe prevented both the inner and outer doors from being open at the same time and releasing the clamor of machinery into the fragile environment.

  The reinforced steel door slid back into the wall and he led them into a bare white corridor with countless monitors and clipboards hanging from the walls. Dale Rubley, his chief engineer, seemed only peripherally aware of their presence as he entered readings into his logs. Even Richards knew better than to interrupt him while he was working. There were men who took their responsibilities seriously, and then there was Dale, who seemed to spend every waking moment averting life-and-death catastrophes, if only in his mind.

  Connor hit the button to close the door behind them, sealing off the racket. The abrupt silence always made him yawn and tug at his ears as though adjusting to a sudden change in pressure.

  He triggered the door at the far end of the hallway, which produced a flashing red light, but mercifully no siren. The adjoining building was roughly the same size, but seemed considerably larger without the heavy equipment taking up every square inch of space. Not that the tracked arctic vehicles were small by anyone’s definition of the word. A half-dozen bright red Sno-Cats with wheels and tread that looked like they’d been stolen from tanks were parked near the massive bay doors, beside which were cabinets brimming with tools of all shapes and sizes. There were rows of skis and snowshoes and a fleet of snowmobiles with deep tread, from which long metal spikes protruded.