“Don’t you see,” Susan said. “This will make possible a unified field theory of the most powerful of all forces known to sentient existence. For good … and, alas, but hopefully not soon, for evil. And we don’t have to go out there to find it: Not to Mars nor to Venus nor to Titan nor to Io. It is here, burning deep in the soul of our planet earth. It waits for us to come to it. It calls us to come to it, calls over the eons of time. At last we are ready.”
Susan hurled the last marker over her shoulder while looking triumphantly at her students. As if with unerring precision and not random chance, the cylindrical object click-rattled-landed in the board tray. Jennifer wondered how many hours alone she had practiced to perfect that impressive skill.
Susan’s eyes glistened. She experienced a slight tremble or spasm. Jennifer had been noting it for a while. It was growing worse. It grew worse when she was excited. Then, suddenly, in one of her mind’s saber flashes, she knew the entire story. She said nothing now, however. It was Delores who first spoke.
“It is a doorway and it swings both ways.”
“Yes,” Susan said. “If we find the birthing place, we’ll have the basic pattern that started it all.”
There was a pause. No one moved.
“We can save the world. Don’t you see it? We can save the world.” Jennifer looked at Susan. The scientist looked like never she had looked before. Her arms spread upward again. A grin, more of a grimace than a smile, shadowed her lips. Shadows seemed to cross her face. Her eyes waxed wide and wild. Her voice reverberated.
Most of all, the frail, thin boned woman seemed larger, huge, puffed up was all Jennifer could think of. She seemed almost mad with ambition and delirious with the potential of her discovery. She repeated her penultimate statement, her voice a voice echoing itself as if generated from a deep hollow vent. All stared at her, as disciples must stare at their cult’s leader.
“We can save the world.”
Considerable murmuring and talking broke out about the confines of the place. Everyone seemed to jump up and about and talk in little groups all at once. Jennifer went to Susan to congratulate her. It had been a brilliant lecture after all, one in which complex terms were handled in reducing language and understanding to lay terms and facility. Still, Jennifer knew that Susan had purposely omitted or briefly covered the more complex terms, as well as some significant items of information.
The two friends and colleagues hugged. Delores spoke to Wells. Jennifer still tried to get a read on him. He acted even more mysterious than the small group which had preceded him. Hodges, Magruder, and Allen formed a group. Susan stood just outside this latter circle.
Jennifer realized Susan wasn’t finished yet. Still, the scientist tried to compel errant strands of hair back into her bun. For the twentieth time, or fortieth time, Jennifer long ago lost count, in her presentation the scientist pushed her glasses up her nose. They soon fell down. Unable to get her class’s attention, she took the green marker and struck the board. She needed to strike three times before the excited murmuring died down, then ceased.
“Now, Delores. I don’t suppose you’d care to inform us of the military’s interest in this.”
“You know I can’t do that, Doctor.”
“No, I suppose not. Still, I’ve been developing some suppositions. Care to hear them? Well, one of them, I suppose, I have already—”
Delores’s troops protested. The commander raised her hand. They quieted down. Jennifer stood by her friend-colleague’s side, realizing Wells stood at Delores’s right hand seemingly ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. She noticed that the military group and the science group were divided. They faced each other over a gulf, not merely a geographical lacuna.
“Go on, Doctor.”
“At first I worked two premises, both of which seemed a bit far-fetched, but these days one doesn’t know.”
“Please. Continue.”
“I thought the pressure and temperature seemed inviting, perhaps the development of some sort of fantastic Flash Gordon type Heat Ray; then the theory of the infinite intertwining labyrinth, inter-connecting caverns: that disreputable theorem that all caves and fissures in the earth are somehow connected. Well then, a troop ship could enter off the coast of Hawaii and emerge in the middle of the Black Sea somehow, or a cave in Iran or Iraq. It might need a little help of an earth digging device or laser ray, but the element of surprise would be maintained.
Then I realized my best supposition yet, which I should have at once. You’re after some horrible biological weapon. With the potential knowledge gained within the site, as I have indicated, there’d be no antidote. But there might be a vaccine. Your soldiers—”
“Our soldiers, doctor. Yours as well as mine.”
“— could destroy the health of an enemy force while remaining free of symptoms themselves. The perfect battlefield weapon. In fact, the perfect weapon that military minds have been seeking since Alexander. Do you know what Aristotle answered him when he asked his teacher for such a weapon to conquer the world?”
“My God,” Jennifer said.
All were silent now. The silence was deafening.
“This is nonsense,” Delores said. She turned away, as if to go somewhere, though it was clear there was nowhere to go. The soldiers began to murmur in agreement. They died down when they noticed Susan was going to speak again. She still looked taller, Jennifer thought.
“The answer lies within you, my son.”
“How does any of this make me any different from you, Doctor? Your desire to see how we got here, how it all began, to validate actually new energy sources that can move directly into a food supply, the secrets to the universe. How am I any different from you?”
“You want to destroy the world. I want to save it.”
“No. You’re wrong,” Delores said. “You see Doctor, we’re the same you and I. That’s the key. That’s what you can never understand. With all your brains and knowledge, you still don’t get it. If we don’t now, some evil ones will. We have to be the first and the best. We both want to save the world. We just want to do it in different ways. And who is to say that whatever lurks down there, once unleashed, whether from science’s viewpoint or the geo-political viewpoint, that anyone will ever be able to put that genie back in the bottle?”
They were quite close. They stared at each other. Jennifer felt a chill carry up and down her spine. She started to take Susan’s hand. She noticed it once more experienced a tremor. Susan broke off. She retreated to behind a column. Jennifer followed, though at a distance. Susan reached in her pocket for one of her pills. The capsules fell over one another in the yellow-opaque bottle, rattling. She twisted the cap. She lifted a capsule out. It was yellow, with tiny black lettered writing on it. She replaced the round white top of the bottle. She downed the capsule with the last dregs of her soft drink, tipping the can high and her head back to catch it all.
The compressor was off-line. Susan returned to Jennifer’s side. Coming to her, she looked in her eyes, then looked away. She said nothing. The two groups stood gazing at each other for a long time, in silence, before they returned to work.
The remainder of their time passed quickly. With the new security personnel and measures, no further security breaches occurred. The codes were changed. No one worked alone in the command center. “Task on target, deadline on target,” Jennifer heard Susan tell Barnstone, whenever he called her or she called him on his personal secure line to report.
Jennifer deduced the reasons. Since the security breach and the night of enlightenment (as she secretly called it) there had been little or no social life. All had bent to the tasks before them with new found industry, fervor, purpose. Jennifer attributed it to any number of things—a clarity of purpose, greater understanding of what lay before them and its significance, the odd sort of paradox, a renewed camaraderie albeit infiltrated with an inherent disli
ke of their seemingly polarized mission.
They worked together. Left to their own devices, without security distractions or lusts after the flesh, they soon caught up. In fact, if anything, they emerged a few days ahead of schedule. For Susan, Jennifer now knew, an additional, more personal incentive floated under the waters far off any chartered coast.
One fine autumn day, a day of clouds and blue sky, a last gasp day of incredible beauty before winter’s onslaught, the thing, the first module, this ship which had been designed and constructed for an environment never before seen, was ready. It had been nine months. Nothing like it had ever been made nor seen.
They went down to the docks and launched it. Seagulls and cormorants flew overhead, occasionally diving into the water. The waves were becalmed and, in this inlet bay, lapped the shore. The East coast ocean always seemed calmer to Jennifer than the West coast. The Atlantic could be terrible and violent and cold, she knew, but the Pacific always seemed wilder, more untamed. Jennifer knew she was just a west coast type of gal. Well, they’d soon be returning to their part of the world. She had, for some time, been looking forward to it.
The maiden voyage proceeded with little difficulty. A few warning lights appeared. Pressure and depth indicators. They realized they were attempting too much too fast. After troubleshooting, with some adjustments in mechanics, hardware, software, they tried again. There were clearly further adjustments needed; all in all, things proceeded well enough.
There was a cove with some rocks and caves located about twenty miles south and a few miles out. The depth was nowhere near what they required but they would test it at those depths on their way west from their secret Washington state station. For now, a detail on a scouting mission found this aperture was about the right size.
They needed to see how the verniers would maneuver the craft in tight spaces, spaces as closely aligned as possible to their mission. The tension mounted, conjoining in an amorphous unseen entity; each person knew it, this cloud, dank, grey, heavy, the fog of mutual trust and distrust, that the group had been working under since that eventful week. It was a tight space they found themselves in. Somehow, they had to wiggle a way out ensuring they all survived.
Stem to stern, she was forty feet. She looked like she had a semi-circular outrigger, that being the first line of defense against the gargantuan heat and pressure. The engines appeared oddly insufficient as those of commercial jet airliners sometimes seemed to its boarding passengers. But, once in, it was felt, they did not need to generate much more than a few hundred pounds of thrust. The shields covered over the windows smoothly, within seconds.
Inside, deep in the bow, Susan and Magruder sat side by side at a console. Delores sat beneath them at another control panel. To their right Hodges sat low with about two feet before him; to her left, Susan sat monitoring a control panel. The panels all looked different. When Jennifer saw them before returning to the control boat, she was struck again with the odd combination of twenty-first century technology and 1960’s and 70’s technology. The upper panels had a triangular, flat surface, sensitive to touch and roll-ball control. Susan’s panel, completely push-button laden, had little window clasps over a few of her buttons. It was, she knew, the control of their weapons array, and no mistake of firing could be made. A key sat in a lock above the panel. Clearly the weapons systems could only be activated upon a direct command. Magruder and Susan could peer out the upper window, as well as regard the four television monitors in front of them. Delores and Hodges could peer out the lower window; they also had redundant monitors in an array between their own. Susan could gaze at a panel above her, at an angle. Here she relied on thermographic and telemetry readings from an array of encased electronics in the titanium needle poking out from the front of the ship. From her perch on the bridge of the support vessel, Jennifer thought it looked like a thin dugong, with a bat-wing front, accented narwhal. For a moment, she had a thought of Noah’s ark, so vibrant to her was the animal imagery. Allen sat with his back to the others, a little below Susan and behind her, but not as low as Delores and her group. He had a little window as well, but his monitors had a more panoramic view of the rear. Allen’s panel had many redundancies so he could match telemetry and operate weapons from his position.
“It’s time,” Delores said.
“Remember,” Susan said, “We don’t enter the hole until I say it’s OK.”
“Of course, Doctor. It’s your project. You’re in control.”
Jennifer didn’t like the sound of the woman’s voice. She was sure she detected, what was it, deception? There’s an amazing thought for you, Jennifer pondered, a deceptive woman. I remember people saying men should step down and let women rule the world. God, you think we have politics now.
Jennifer assumed her place in front of the communications panel. Wells sat to her left. To her right the support ship looked like a fishing vessel or small freight-trawler. Inside it too was brimming with communications panels, radar, sonar, and weaponry. A small helicopter stood in a space covered by a green awning, like a car port.
“They’re beginning their descent,” Wells said. After a moment, with some urgency in his voice, he continued, pointing to the screen. “What’s that?” Jennifer gazed at the sonar screen. A white outline seemed to swim toward the ship.
“Porpoise, I think. Curious. Investigating this new creature.” In the next instant, Jennifer noticed for the first time Wells rarely spoke in sentences longer than a few words.
“We warn them?”
“I think she sees it. Look, there’s more from the pod. They’ll go away soon enough. Once they determine it’s of human origin, they’ll go to a safe distance, probably hang around just enough away to keep half an eye on things, so to spea—there, see? The scout’s returning to the entire group. Besides, they probably don’t care for the shallow depths near the cove. OK. Here we go. Descent OK. NA-1, NA-1, you’re looking good.”
“Roger that. NA-2. We are approaching target area. Releasing robots.”
From an attachment along the belly of the vessel, the navy tethered robot submersibles appeared as though shot from submarine torpedo tubes. A small submarine with flood lights, still camera and enough software to configure directional diversions, the submersible played out its tether from the “mother” robot and entered the dark opening under the sea. Soon, its flood lamps clicked on. Some fish swam by some algae covered rocks. The human observers watching their television monitors noted that past the entrance the space opened out in a few hundred feet into a fairly good sized cave.
On board the Ex-Gee, Delores made a request. “Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see what she can do.”
“Proceed.”
“Mr. Hodges. All ahead. Into, into the breach.”
“All ahead, aye.” Hodges had a stick and rudder, similar to combat pilots in high performance aircraft. Now he pulled this way and that, looking askew at the window, a small eyepiece out from his right eye. He maneuvered the intrepid vessel through the veil.
On the support ship, Jennifer’s visual signature was lost.
“Telemetry excellent. Reflection buoy activated. They’re doing great. Tight squeeze but they’re in and maneuvering within parameters.”
“Who’s giving the orders?”
“You mean who’s in command? Well, I think that’s a problem for all of us. You see, there can only be one queen bee in the hive. And man, we got us two queens down there.”
“Two queens,” Wells said. “Only one stays in the hive.”
Jennifer suddenly felt sick. She sometimes felt seasickness and nausea wave through her, but this was worse. She watched the screen. After a while, the large grey-white shape returned.
“Well, looks like she did all right. Reckon we’re in business.”
Jennifer felt cold. She shivered. She couldn’t stop shivering. No one noticed. No one
came to put a blanket on her. No one draped a coat over her. So often the center of most men’s and many women’s attention, she now knew the heartache of those who move through life as if invisible. She knew she should feel ecstatic. She felt sad, angry, confused.
She felt something else, some uneasiness she could not identify, a growing, palpable sense of something akin to the monster that chased her in her dream. She suddenly realized she remembered it, this memory so long ago lost.
She remembered that as a little girl, there was a monster in her hall. Her parents kept the bedroom doors open. Each night, before she fell asleep, a great large hairy monster would start to enter her room to do her great ill. The only thing she could do to make it go away was to close her eyes and stay awake. When she opened her eyes, the monster had returned to the hall. He entered her room again. She closed her eyes again to protect herself. Again he retreated. This approach for attack, and stratagem for defense, proceeded for some time. At last, during one of the times she closed her eyes she fell asleep.
She heard her parents talking in their room. She wondered why they did not come to her assistance. Every night the monster began its attack. Every night, through her specially designed defense, she thwarted him and sent him in retreat. After some years, it didn’t come every night. She slept better. In time, it stopped coming altogether. She forgot it. Until this moment.
She shivered, as though someone had stepped on her grave. A huge wave rose their boat high to draft. The bow came down and she tried to find her sea legs.
Some gulls drifted by, unusually high in the firmament of the heavens. They played in and out of clouds and blue sky. Then they swooped to the surface of the sea and skimmed over the waters. The sea now calm. The boat floated gently. One of the gulls turned and flew directly in front of her, his wing tip not five feet away. She gazed into his deep dark eye.
Deeptide Vents . . . of Fire Page 9