Then she laughed.
They gazed at her again, again wondering if they should trust this crazed woman scientist. Then she told them the joke. “A silicon creature we created entrusted to get us out of a silicon trap, with her allies sulfur and manganese.”
Now it was Delores’s turn to put it together at once. “The verniers, if they work, we can cut them in the final seconds, hell they won’t last anyway, and hopefully be directly over it when it blows, expelling us and everything in its path out of here. You mean for us to ride the wild volcano. We’ll probably be torn apart. But you’re right. We’re going to die anyway. It’s worth the risk.”
They panted. They sweated. Deep dark-eyed gazes. They were three desperate people and one unconscious in a desperate struggle to the end time of their lives, twixt heaven and hell and earth.
“Lots of if’s, Susan.”
“Yeah, Hodges. A bunch. Like thee and me.” They laughed again, this time carrying the laughter for the first time in a long time. A scared nervous ongoing laugh; and it brought them around just past the edge of the madness and unto the wonder and the joy and the hope of their lives. For, whether for a few moments or for fifty more journeys of the orb about the star, they were alive and they knew it.
“All right, this is it,” Susan said. “Hodges.”
“She’s knocking at our door. She can’t seem to make it in. She’s disintegrating.”
“Damn. Any array energy left?”
“We’ll see. Charging. Yes! She’s in with us! She wasn’t and then she was! Just like you said. Just in time, too, by the looks of her. Off to port, make it fifteen meters.”
Magruder, for the first time in long time, moaned. He shifted his position. He moved his head up, then bent it down again.
“Strap him in good. You two as well. Mama’s got that sucker now. Those poor bastards are in her womb. To our womb. And we’re heading out. Hang on. Here we go.”
They waited for him. They always waited. They looked at him. It was his decision. He had made a wrong one earlier. He would not make another. He needed updated information. He requested the latest radar and sonar. Olgelby asked Egerton. No sign of their being spotted. Nothing from below either.
The three attack crafts carried 12 person teams each plus the equipment of water, plastique explosive, light charge grenades, ammo, radio, contingency supplies. One of the rafts carried a thirteenth man or woman, a medical corpsman. Thirty-seven rescuers, 25 highly trained and valorous men; 12 highly trained and valorous women. All on their mission to save over 50 brave men and women, a good ship, and her scientific-military holdings and discoveries.
The two-cycle engines on the Zodiacs hummed. They started on the first ignition. The group was ready. Coordinates locked on by navigation.
“Radio. Notify fleet of our situation. Request support vessels Thompson and Llewellyn. Attack helicopters. On my mark: 1340 hours.”
“Copy that, Bridge.”
“X0.”
“Aye Captain.”
Corvales looked out off the coning tower into the distance. To Olgelby, it seemed as if his captain could see the enemy at this distance, over the horizon. He knew the skipper was looking into himself equally as deep.
“Launch! Launch! Away all boats!”
“SEAL Commander. Green light. Attack plan alpha Charlie away.”
Three two-cycle engines revved. Thirty-seven intense people stormed across the sea. They were five miles away from engagement. They didn’t know what they’d find. But they knew it was going to be a blazing white-hot fire-fight above the cool green ocean water.
He uncovered a first aid kit. It was old. The bandages and gauze would do. He pressed the wound to stop the bleeding. He cleaned it. He found rubbing alcohol.
“Baby, I’m sorry. This will hurt. Hell, it’s going to hurt like hell. And you can’t scream. You can’t. I’m sorry, baby.”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I love you.”
“Kiss me.”
He kissed her.
“OK. Pour it on. Look in my eyes. Hold my hand. Pour it on. What are you waiting for? I’m a woman. I can take it like a man. Damn it, Allen, pour it on and let’s get it over with. Wait! Not yet. Wait a minute. OK. Now. Do it!” He poured it on.
Out of the jar, it poured smooth. This was deception.
The mixture of disinfectant and her blood, lymph, pus hissed and bubbled, as though the microbes could be heard screaming in their death throes. Coursing, oozing out of the wound, rivulets in a sick pink color found their paths down her yet undamaged flesh to the floor of the makeshift dispensary.
The malevolent artist had mixed the hues of her blood with the dilution of the alcohol. Small streams of despair and hope, seemingly almost sentient, the pink waters found their channels on the floor of the deck, or pooled, forming small ponds within which teemed myriads of life forms, given re-birth and death by the mixture within the body of the large woman screaming in silence.
“Jesus,” Allen said.
The look on the face of the woman yanked from death, out of the depths of the sea, with sea-stuff and stink about her, in an agony awesome to behold was terrible, a contorted, writhing despair. Anyone else peering in might not have seen her beauty. He knew he would always see it.
Then, she relaxed her face, her lines, her wrinkles. She gave in to the pain, sweet and horrible, horrific for its terror, joyful knowing it was temporary and sweet release would someday come, a day would one could look back and remember being in torment and alive and hoping only for it to pass, when life was reduced to no discipline, no direction, no plans, no back-stabbing, no greed, no avarice, no sexual desire, nothing except the person and her hideous pain, with only one desire, to be rid of it.
She opened her mouth to scream. Again she screamed in silence. From somewhere deep in her throat he heard a whispered yell. “Oh God. Oh God. Allen.”
“Yeah baby.”
“You came for me. You searched for me. You came for me.”
“Couldn’t let anything happen to a good scientist, right?”
“Oh God that hurts. Allen, it hurts so bad.”
“I, I’m sorry, bab—”
“No. It’s OK. It’s wonderful. Who’d ever think they would welcome pain? I know now why we have pain. We know we’re still alive. Oh sweet Jesus, Daddy Joseph, and Mother Mary.”
“Here baby. It’ll feel better in a couple of minutes. I promise. Just let me get it bandaged up here. It’ll feel better soon. You will see. You will feel better. I promise. There. There now. You will see.”
“You, you promise?”
He took her in his arms. He cradled her head against his chest. He fought against the stench overwhelming his nostrils. She beautiful. She repulsive. She his. She woman!
She smelled-stink of blood, vomit, sweat, tears, engine oil, salt spray, fish, and something else, something indefinable, something putrid-sweet from the sea, something almost but not quite recognizable and at once fully recognizable, as on the first day we know autumn is in the air, about to turn the corner, but we can’t say exactly why. Somehow he knew it was something that had existed on earth, in the ocean slime and scum long before cognizant life appeared. It would exist still even after the next extinction level event.
“Allen. I’ve, I’ve got to get to the bridge.”
“No! You’re going to rest now. They’ll come for us soon enough.”
“No. Susan. Oh God. Foxworth and Wells. Susan. Susan. Susan, I’m coming for you now. I’ll dive off again and I’ll come down for you. No. I’ve got to get to the bridge first.”
“Jennifer, calm down. You’re delirious. Probably have a fever. Damn. That won’t help. Susan is, she’s been gone a long time. I’m afraid she’s—”
“No. No. She’ll find a way. I’ve got to get to the bridge.”
“List
en to me. Listen. You’re going to tear your wound. There are about thirty men and women with guns out there. You can’t even walk. You’ll never make it. Now rest. Rest a bit. Then we’ll see.”
“Rest. Yes. That’s it. Rest. Just for a, for a, a minute.”
And the world changed at once. There was no gradual drifting or dozing off. She recognized she was of a sudden, instantaneous, in a deep sleep.
The monster was at her door. That was strange. She had closed her eyes. She was sleeping. How could he have penetrated her defenses after all these years? Had he finally broken through? Why didn’t he go away? Why did he keep coming toward her?
Suddenly the other ship was there. Susan would always remember she saw a man’s eyes filled with a terror she could never imagine. She almost knew it; but it was so horrific she could never fully imagine it.
They had by chance each opened their window coverings at the same time. Then she closed hers for she realized they were at once through the membrane-like skin of the creature.
They had done nothing. It just was. But no vehicle of any comparable size closed in on the huge creature. The men left inside the hostile submersible were doomed.
However, their cells, their DNA was not doomed. They would escape some day, but not the way they were. They would slowly, in an agonizing fashion be broken down into recombinant DNA and sometime in the future they would be expelled through the vents to enter the life cycle of the upper ocean planet. Who knew? Perhaps someday she would drink them in a glass of water, or inhale them in a deep breath, or consume them in a hearty salad of vegetables.
She hoped they had enough sense to run out of air or turn off their air supply, suffocate in seconds, and not suffer a suffering terrible end beyond description.
“105°. 108. 110. Jesus. We’ll be burned to a crisp before we …”
“Fire verniers ion propulsion. Damn it, now, before they melt or blow up.”
“Firing. They worked. 112. 115. Oh God they’re gone. Refrigerator compressor gone. All systems gone. We’re on sheer momentum. Hull on fire. 120. 128 …”
“Susan. Old faithful dead ahead.”
“Dear God blessed be Thy Name, please fire the fucking fire-fucker up now.” Weeks later, it would occur to Delores that the scientist had prayed to the Divinity. Well, that is, in her fashion. And she knew that God looked down from heaven and heard the woman in the lower spheres of hell.
The volcano erupted in a huge explosion, spewing forth its magma into the upper reaches of its ecology, a mighty force, mightier, unstoppable even in the midst of mighty forces.
“Hodges, oxygen.”
“Two minute warning Susan. I can’t even think or talk. Our flesh is aflame. 131°. 139. 1,4ahohh—”
Flames sparked upon the skin of the vessel. Flames sparked upon the skin of the vessel’s inhabitants. Searing, bubbling heat and smoke and steam swirled everywhere about them.
“Steam,” Susan thought.
“Steam?”
That became her last thought. Then all she knew was not knowing, a sweet, dear, dark oblivion blackness, so void and truly void, a plane of non-existence so deep, so dark, so full in its emptiness, where nothing is, where nothing was, where nothing came into it.
She felt better. He had been right. With the cleaning, the antiseptic, the bandaging, the throbbing, unyielding, hideous pain eased. The bandage held, although blood, red oozing ocher, like ink tapped upon the old elementary school blue-lined yellow tablet paper, spread. And something else, some other bodily fluid, thick clear-green-yellow. Then, suddenly, her obsession with her wound faded, for it didn’t matter.
She heard them approaching. He told her to try to hide behind one of the cabinets. He left her to see what it was. She crawled to the door. Reports of gunfire blew about the room. Stray bullets whizzed, all quite close. She chanced to peer around the corner. Allen had shot one man. Desperate, he fought hand to hand with another. He hit the man with the barrel of his gun. He hit the man square with his right elbow. The man crumpled. But another man, another terrorist appeared at the outer door to the first deck. He drew down a bead on Allen. He would soon discharge his weapon, bringing death to her man. If only she could get her own weapon spring loaded in time.
Where had he put—there! Oh, she couldn’t move as fast as before her dive to the sea. Now, at last. She fumbled with the mechanism. She remembered the day with the damn videotape in the machine. Damn her side hurt. She had almost for a moment forgotten the pain. Be a soldier. Ignore it. Finally she loaded the device. She heard the report of the rifle again. Two more. A fourth. God she was too late. Allen was dead. She knew it. At least she could take her revenge. Payback, she heard one of the men say once. She struggled to stand. She turned the corner.
“Jennifer, no. It’s OK. Don’t shoot.”
She lowered her weapon. The man she saw at the doorway was the man she thought was lying dead on the floor. Allen stood back in the hallway. Another man, a third man in battle armor, stood in the doorway. He held a layered weapon she did not recognize. He had an earpiece. A thin but firm wire formed a microphone curved around, almost in front of his mouth. This man spoke to them.
“You’re Littleton? Johnstone?”
“Yes.” Jennifer simply nodded, looking at the three dead men and the two living ones.
“Alpha TL, this Alpha 18. Blondie and Browser secured safe. Blondie requires medical aid ASAP; gunshot left side; appears clean entry, exit. Deck Level 1 secured. Do you copy?”
The commando listened, obviously receiving confirmation. She recalled then the dream with her monster. It seemed that none of her defenses worked anymore, and she was doomed. Then a soldier in battle dress had pierced the darkness of her vision, and slaughtered the mystical entity. She had seen his face twice now; for it was the man standing with them.
For the remainder of her life never again was she threatened awake or asleep by her monster. That day, triumphant, she buried her monster.
She listened. She heard. Rapid fire weapons, men and women yelling, screaming, running. More weapons fire. Explosions. Bright lights, seen even under decks. The soldier told them to stay put. Help was on the way. Then he was gone.
“SEAL team, Jennifer. Spec Ops. From the Nebraska. She’ll be along soon enough. She’ll hold back a bit. We won’t see her at first, I don’t think; I mean, she’ll come low, with decks awash. I, damn, I am tired. She won’t want to risk a torpedo launch or a missile strike from the hostile. And she can’t sink her without endangering the Starr.”
“I’ve got to get to the bridge.”
“That’s a negative. You stay here. You heard what the man said. You can’t go anywhere in your condition. You hear me?”
He wanted demure, submissive, contrite. She gave the man what he wanted from his woman.
“Yes, Allen. I hear you. I’ll do as you ask.”
“All right then,” he said, somewhat taken aback, somewhat surprised at the power of his male authority over his woman. At first he skulked. Then he dashed. He disappeared out the door, turning right, following their rescuer to secure the rear decks.
Jennifer Littleton waited. A hint of a smile crossed her filthy, bruised face, her hair flowing up and about, as Medusa’s snakes coiled and hissed. She peered out the door. With the blanket around her and the fire-fight going on above her, they might not notice her. It was a clear day. “It’s a beautiful day today,” she said aloud to herself. “It is a good day to die.”
Reports of weaponry, light grenades booming, screams and shouts above and beneath her continued. The ship might be nearly secured, but obviously it wasn’t a complete job yet.
She quit her infirmary. Suddenly she found herself in the hallway of the deck. She did not recall the three or four steps it took to get her there. Dazed. I’m dazed, she thought. Still, to press on. Susan must be avenged. She turned right.
Wait! That
was wrong. Left, yes, left.
Then her Epiphany: Her vision of light drenched her in light. The light shone down in great rays from the heavens and showed her what occurred off the ship’s starboard bow.
It was so bright, and it stayed with her throughout, she saw reality with a crystal clarity she had never before witnessed. After that day, she would never again see things so crystal clear and bright, and she knew few people even had half a day of such a gift. It was the way reality could be perceived by all of us, if we could but let go of the barriers that keep us from seeing.
She saw the movement against the shimmering waves. She gazed out to sea. In spite of her pain, in spite of the blood dripping from her side onto the wood of the floor, in spite of the fire-fight and men and women killing and being killed about her, in spite of her invincible mission, she stared for a moment in awe. The sun seemed fluorescent, radiating, the light scintillating. Ray beams glistened upon, under, and reflected off of the whiteness of the surface of the deep. In her soul, she too knew Deeptide.
Boobies dove into the water, fishing for fish. An orgy of dive after dive. Their wings outstretched until the last second, then pulling them in to their bodies, then diving 5 or 8 feet under water to get the sardines, a huge school, the school desperately but in futility attempting to escape this way and that, trying to head deeper; and if they could, it was in vain for thence attacked by sharks, whales, dolphins rising from the deep, catching the scent of terrified prey, a gathering of predators swarming from miles and fathoms abounding.
Deeptide Vents . . . of Fire Page 21