She wished she could identify the feeling. She could not. The engines revved to life, jerking the boat. The boat began to return to dock.
Jennifer turned to face the prow. She wanted the wind to play her hair. The gulls headed back out to sea, seemingly to the far horizon; then, all of a sudden, they turned. Together in formation and synchronized in wing stroke, they followed Jennifer and her crew in to shore.
3
Deeptide
The Starr with the retrofitted Ex-Gee lay upon the mostly calm waters, as Deeptide remained oblivious to the intrusion on her surface. Indeed, slowly she stirred, propelled by heat waves from one fiery chamber into another. Then, almost guiding herself with nearly a voluntary movement, she entered the cool chamber, the wet one. It was a new sensation. As much as she was able to, she basked in its novelty. Had she been more able to comprehend its matter, she could have reveled in its degrees of suspension of weight, its allowances of freedom of movement; but then, most of these she had already experienced for a time beyond record or any being’s comprehension. She survived the coolness of the waters as she survived the heat of the fires. Always she survived.
In a time almost to the horizon of infinity had she drifted in this fashion; she could not fathom it, nor comprehend lesser concepts. Eon past era, worlds and stars created and destroyed, all so far in the distant past that what semblance of awareness she might have had was lost in stardust of fire-rock and water courses, and something else which the sentient ones had never been able to define. For them, it remained a factor undetected, unsuspected, as yet unknowable.
In the near semblance of a particle of a micron of memory, she almost knew there had once been a time of near nothingness and then she was. The cosmos transcended time. Time transcended her. She transcended time. A moment could be an era. Eras drifted by her, drifted as flame borne bubbles and fire smoke mists gurgled and wafted by her always as always she floated, propelled by the fire, and now the water, currents.
As the eons and eras passed, somehow she grew almost aware others existed and that they had emerged from her. Some floated by her on their way to disappear from her chambers. Some re-entered her to be absorbed internally for what she could not comprehend was to her benefit. Others would become and remain and flow with the fiery flow as she had always flowed. She never wondered. She never questioned. She could not.
Yet, as a degree of awareness unfolded, dimly, she nearly became aware that she was almost aware. She almost knew she could only float within the channels and caverns, not out to where the bubbles escaped. Something different lay out there, though this complete thought she could not have generated; nor, once nearly generated by random chance, certainly she could not have entertained or maintained it. Once, her semblance of thought produced, in what had become, in a most primitive sense, her nerve spot, a hint of memory that she had been able to float through all the channels, not just the large ones. Had she the power of reasoned thought she might have intuited she grew in size. She, however, was not so blessed nor so cursed. She was only dimly aware she was aware and that the fire bubbles and steam hisses compelled her undulating definition of form to flow as streams extruded through filters, whisked about.
Over the eons she became nearly aware there was fire and light and eruption of fire, that she was impervious, that others seemed to emerge out of her, that they were impervious. Even this vestige of awareness could not comprehend that in a different place, fire was harmful to life. In her world, all was simply as it was, as it had always been. So long past, even a semblance of a memory could not grasp the distance in time, some of the others that had come from her had been drawn into the places wherein the fire bubbles and steam hissed and escaped. This was of no concern nor consequence to her; indeed, it could not be construed that it ever should be. Still she was almost aware that it had started and had gone on over the eons. It never occurred nor could it occur that something existed beyond the fiery and fire cloud realm, that great transformations seemed to be happening there.
Great white sheets of individuals so numerous like a snow blanket against the red-fire caverns floated in the bubbles of flame and air. These, too, she almost became aware, emerged from within her somehow. They also re-absorbed into her and gave her something and then left her again. Some of these blankets also vanished in the escaping channels.
Currents of cool and heat expelled her again into the channels of fire. She was almost aware that this new blue green elemental had only recently invaded the fire and steam channels. She could not consider this to be for ill nor for good.
She was.
It was.
Is.
Be.
Only the near-memories in the vague near-quality of stirring thought almost let her know it was something different, unique. There were floating, shimmering things in its quality also, but different somehow. Propelled down through a huge channel by a great fire-cloud hiss, she nearly could imagine these were from her also and had also returned. But they were different from that which she had known somehow. They re-entered and gave her something. But they did not go out from her again.
Somewhere, in the deepest darkest recesses of what almost begins as consciousness, there was a dim, vague near-sense that more and even stranger ones would soon be coming. The cosmos spun. Time and timelessness passed with no commencement other than what was and what will be. Only now, she almost felt an indefinable sense that her existence was not eternal, that she sensed the unfamiliar sense of fear. Or so she might have, had she been able to. As always, she floated and stirred wherever the fire currents took her. Now, however, she almost sensed a different concept. Had it been possible to sense it, she’d have known it as this:
She waited for them.
4
Coasttide
Off to the port side of the ship a pod of whales surfaced. Almost at once, they dove in a rolling pattern more like porpoises or dolphins. Their flukes, out of the water low, waved calm, relaxed against the sky and the sea. He heard the basso Tibetan monk-like chanting of their songs. Hodges always listened for the songs of the sea. At times, he hearkened, to believe he discerned meaning. Over time on the waters, he came to comprehend they used tones and length of tones in an auditory glyph-system not unlike rudimentary symbolic vocabulary. He squinted. He peered through his binoculars. Grays, heading back to the Baja bays, probably. Found some squid out here perhaps.
Hodges never felt more at home, one with the world than when he was at sea immersed in the infinite Deeptide. He liked taking watch. He could stand and walk around all areas of the ship topside. He liked this ship, the Starr, this old Navy destroyer retro-fitted to carry on its once-modified deck for helicopters the Ex-Gee submersible explorer. He looked back at it now. It was small for five people, a mini-sub basically. But that strange bat-wing or whatever it resembled gave it a larger appearance, gazing up at it this way.
He walked back toward the stern. He sauntered around the entire one-of-a-kind technology that earth and sea and sky had never seen until now. He walked fully aft, then about the starboard side, as an experienced art appreciation student revered a sculpture and other three dimensional objects d’art.
On his government’s service, a secret mission. He’d been on many. They all had. The Persian Gulf mines. Forward air, a quick in and out vector directive for the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. He liked that one. He had rarely gone that far inland. But they had tracked the spy with his disks and dots for days. That bomb design would never reach Beijing. Not all of it anyway.
Once they almost had bin Laden. The damn slippery eel had zoomed through the seaside Pakistan village. He had been scheduled to stop. That was why the guy always seemed to elude them, he supposed. He regretted that moment. Now another team had been successful. He knew it was due to that Holmesian crafted woman. Beautiful and brilliant, a deadly combination, deadly at last for that bastard of bastards.
He wished now he could be in
that endless caldron, the Syrian desert area, to bring those barbarian ISIS bastards a good blow. He read the reports. Our bomb raids have killed at least 15,000, while 16,000 new recruits show up. Still, one call-in …
Now this. He had never regretted putting his life on the line for his country and his mission. But this seemed like a suicide mission and for no definite military benefit he could discern although he understood all the potential he was briefed on. After all, if there were caverns yawning to other oceans of the world of seas, how could a troop possibly get through, how could they withstand the environment for that length of time? Besides the earth under that heat and pressure was sure to shift. Channels perceived by their sensors might close up in minutes or seconds; and what sensor could hold up in such a hostile environment?
Even this thing was only going to be in and out in forty-five minutes at most, perhaps only half that to have a chance of surviving the awesome forces down there according to the description. Maybe there were scientists who knew more than he. Still …
And the biologics? Hodges knew from military seminars and scientists and his own strategic training and wealth of experience that they were the worst tactical weapons of all. Eventually they would flow back upon the perpetrators in one fashion or another. To accomplish the mission was to destroy the enemy’s ability to wage war, to demoralize the civilian population, and to occupy the soil that the enemy formerly occupied. Biologics and nukes could certainly accomplish the first two. But all three could only be said to be accomplished when the foot soldier stood without contest on that ground. And he, or she, could not do so if it was horribly polluted.
Hundreds of Saddam’s own troops and so-called scientists had been affected in their genocide attacks upon the Kurds and other ethnic villages. Parts of Khurdistan were an ecological disaster, another storied Russian area isolated from human contact because of a test gone wrong. What leaked to the world by the wretched monstrosities in surrounding areas, the Russians called it a chemical spill and radiation from nuclear testing. But it was a genetic altered bacteria with neither vaccine nor effective anti-bacterial developed. So far they had contained it to the large area within their own borders. No travel was permitted in or out. If someone should sneak out, or if it mutated and became air transmitted, the entire world could suffer, probably most horribly. It was all kept top secret, by the Russians and the US, and any other intelligence that discovered the truth of the matter.
The public should be trusted more. Citizens in a republican democracy needed to know how to act in times of high stress. Information and awareness were key. That was, after all, why he served, why he had taken his oath: To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I might disagree with what people say or think, but I shall always defend their right to speak it or think it. And the more they knew … there must be another reason for the secrecy. But his was to honor the secret, at least for now.
The Israelis were reported to know about it, as well as the toxic junk from the other mid-east nations. At their own top secret medical labs, they were reported to be developing antibodies peculiar to recognizing effects only in the bloodstream of their own citizens, but that was far too complex a dimension for him to consider. Perhaps he would ask Dr. Arthknott about that at some point. She had, after all, alluded to such a genomic possibility during that amazing lecture she gave months ago now (had it been that long?). He found he had not been able to take his eyes off her. Then, was he imagining it, she had come especially close to him, to point out her visual aids.
Increasingly, he found himself thinking of her. Well, what would she, a sophisticated scientist and doctor, that is, what chance could he have?
He returned to his consideration of the problem he could manage with his own unique background and experience. Guns, bullets, bombs, robots, explosives, artillery, air power, sea power: These could be controlled, armed, tactical strategy determined, designed, and, with the political will of the mission, the commanders, and the populace, be carried out to full effect.
That had been the policy that had guided US military might since its inception, and especially from the middle to the end of the twentieth century. Somehow, commanders of the Vietnam War had let that get away from them; and, at the end, the Persian Gulf Wars as well.
He turned. He looked over the starboard bulwarks. The ocean breeze always made him feel at one with the sea, the land though it be far away, and the heavens. He looked up at the clear blue sky. An intuition, developed over many years of standing at ship’s railings stirred. The light was odd at an angle severe in a shaft to his right, to the east. Over there, a few days now, was California, Oregon, Washington. But the sun only came so far. He felt the ship pick up. He looked down. The waves grew to whitecaps. The wind shifted just at the moment he knew it would. Before he turned to gaze behind him, he knew what he would see. Already the gulls, too far out here, a bad omen, were turning and heading up north to the Alaskan shore and island estuaries. Other sea birds, more common out here, even they soon followed. None glided nor drafted. They were flying hard, with intent. The wind hit him, full. It would get to us, he estimated, in about four hours. He had nearly reached the forecastle at the bow. He looked up. Already in mid-afternoon he could see the lights in the bridge.
He pulled out his LF radio. He adjusted the gain. He noticed the whales began to sound. Their flukes went high in the air. They took deep dives. They would be under a good long while.
“Bridge. Watch 1. Over.” It was a long way away but he thought he could already make out lightening and the grey surge wall. The wind picked up. Static interrupted his band. He adjusted his gain. “Bridge. Watch 1. Do you copy. Over.”
Delores’s voice came through. W1. Bridge. You are 4 X 5. We copy. Can you see it? Radar shows it’s huge. Over.”
“That’s affirmative. Grey wall cloud south-south east. 50-60 miles, maybe. Estimate 15 mph. ETA our position—whoa Nelly— lightening out there. I say again, ETA our position 3 hours. She’s picking up. Does radar confirm? Over.”
“Stand by 1. Radar shows large wall cloud, wave pattern estimate at current levels 20 to 60 feet elevation 32 knots on increase. ETA 3 hours 20 minutes.” She paused. “Give or take. Any ideas? Over.”
“Head to starboard. We might make Akku. Alpha base zero.” Static. No cetaceans nor fish stirring in the sea’s waves. They were full whitecaps now. Damn, that sucker’s gathering fast. Sea birds flapped furiously now to reach any landfall.
“W1, you are 3 X 5.” Static. “—ti r-dge.”
“Roger that. I’m on my way. Out.” Hodges lurched on around to port. He gazed out. The wind hit him square. He looked to his left. There was no shaft of sun, for it disappeared in the grey throbbing cyclone of wind and whitecap and ocean surf. He heard a strange bellow he recognized, usually hearing only in the south sea. He looked up. A huge albatross flapped his wings, flying north. A long way from home and heading north. Another bad sign for a sailor. Well, any port in a storm. He reckoned it in an instant. He was a huge strong bird. He would make it. He was even less certain than before about their mission, however. The wind already started to swirl. Damn. Less than three hours. It had come up sudden. More like a storm in the Atlantic.
Already the ship cut through eight foot waves. He felt the old sea-sickness come upon him as the ship rode swell and crest. As always he took a moment and willed it away. Fresh water from the sky came down upon his face, mixed with the salt-droplets of wave crests washing over stem, bulwarks, stern.
For a moment he stopped on the companionway, attempting to gather his sea legs and get to the bridge as ordered. There he thought he saw another large shape loom before the cloud. One of the whales get lost and confused? Were those lights or—the Starr heaved. She descended unwillingly into the valley of a huge wave, for an instant the wave curling above her, her crew perceiving, not the blue-grey heavens of sky, but the temporary vault
of the waters of the ocean. She struggled to return above her water line. She rose again. Clearly, helm faced a terrible struggle. It took a strong, skilled man in such weather, he knew. He peered out again, attempting to penetrate the grey-dark clouds. Already he could not discern where sea and sky met. Whatever it was, it was gone now, lost in the gathering storm.
He turned. He found the steps to the bridge. It occurred to him someone should tell the scientists to stay below.
In the large sophisticated pilot house of the bridge, it was dry and calm. Hodges realized he was quite wet. He hadn’t thought about his rain gear. Uncharacteristically, Delores acted like a concerned mother, sister, wife.
“Take off those wet things, the shirt at least. Go below and change.” Her military bearing returned. “Wait. Come over here. Look at this.”
All about the room, men and women peered into scopes, making adjustments. The green hues reflected back in faces grim, and not merely from military bearing, training, professionalism. Delores and Hodges peered into the largest scope. The tall, lanky, light-haired man seated in front of it had been in their group on the east coast.
“Wells?”
“Aye Commander. She’s a brute. Picking up a head of steam. I think we’re down to less than three hours at this heading.”
“Hodges.”
“That’s affirm, Commander. We need to get this bucket into port. The Starr will be all right, but I don’t know about her baby back there.”
“It’ll set us back days, maybe a week.”
“We may have nothing left if we don’t. That’s some very delicate instrumentation back there.”
“I’ve been with her since the mere idea of her. She’s built to withstand tremendous pressure.”
“But not wind like that or lightening.”
Delores turned to Allen. It seemed odd he was the only one she called by his first name. Hodges wondered if he was military or …
Deeptide Vents . . . of Fire Page 10