“Susan. There’s something else. Allen, Hodges, the investigators. They’re trying to put something else together.”
“Carstairs?”
“Yes. And the others. I’m afraid his group, whatever it is, knows what the army is up to.”
“Well, military people know the truth of the matter: Military secrets are the most fleeting of all. The misguided genius bastard. Damn him. The son of—”
There was a long pause. She was talking too much, expending too much energy. She was becoming agitated. Jennifer knew she needed to rest. She shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have said—”
“Oh. Oh my. I don’t feel well. Ring for the nurse.”
“Here. Lie down. No, not, wait, let me get this sorted out. OK. There. Lie down. Easy, now.”
Jennifer rang for the nurse. She brushed Susan’s hair back from her face. Susan somehow managed to brush Jennifer’s own long blond hair behind her ears. Then her arm fell back for she was a woman fully exhausted.
“You have such beautiful hair, Jennifer. I’ve always admired your hair. Like flax. Like waving wheat on a sunny autumn da—what was I …”
“Susan. Please. Rest now. The nurse will come. Don’t speak. Just rest.”
There was a pause, then, as the teacher tried to follow the student’s instructions. Jennifer kept speaking, as much to keep her friend from speaking as to indicate what it was she wanted to say. She knew at once she had chosen the wrong subject. Susan suddenly had a little energy, and answered her clearly and cogently.
“Susan, I’m sorry the specimen was lost.”
“It’s all right. I knew it would be burned up or drowned. I somehow thought we’d be OK when things turned to steam. That meant we were into the water of the sea. If I could have brought it into the lab hold of the ship at that point. But impossible. I was half dead. Cooked into oblivion.”
“Susan.”
“No Jennifer. It’s all right. Really. I saw the sweet blessedness of nothing, and the sweet blessedness of beginning. I’ve been reborn, you see. Reborn from the sea. Next time though, a slower ascent. The bends really take it out of you.”
Despite themselves, they laughed. Jennifer winced.
“Damn, Jennifer, it wasn’t that funny, to split your sides.” And she suddenly lapsed into sleep. Just like that. One moment she instituted her wry wit; the next instant, her eyes rolled under her lids in deep REM patterns.
Jennifer held her friend’s hand. She would tell her the good news later, when she, when they both were much better, and could walk and hug and laugh in joy without concern for the other’s welfare.
She gazed out the window. The sun reached toward noon. The palm trees rustled in a slight breeze. A gull landed onto the windowsill for a moment, then headed back out to the ocean. She could almost see it, if she stretched up a bit, a thin blue line a hint of the great mass of the moving firmament waters upon the earth.
Susan stirred a bit. Out of her drugged-sleep state, she managed to barely call out, “Jennif—?”
“It’s all right, Susan.”
“Funniest thing.”
“It’s all right,” Jennifer said. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.” Jennifer pressed the call button again.
Together they waited for the nurse to come.
9
Epiloguetide
The waves washed in foam caressed her feet gently. She now loved the more gentle rush, the soft entrance of the predictable waves, the way they felt upon one’s feet, one’s precious skin where cool water and gentle caresses were gifts, astonishing gifts she had only realized but never fully attained in fullness.
The water is warmer here, she thought, as she remembered thinking it a short time ago, eons ago, millennia past days of her years.
She heard the unmistakable footfalls in the softness and hardness of the sand, the footfalls of her friend behind her. Without turning, she said, “You took a bit longer than I thought you would.”
Jennifer Littleton approached her friend, her colleague, her mentor, who was barefoot in the sand-water of the Gulf waters. “I can say you’re just about cured. Back to your old self. He was in a conference. He’ll see us at seven. Seven after, he said.”
“Seven after seven, I know. He has time down to the minute. Next time I think he should go with us. To see time begin, end, and stand still,” Susan said.
“I think he wants to actually. For now he expects his full report. I told him that your idea of scraping every millimeter of the Ex-Gee paid off. Some of the DNA of the creature or creatures was found. Enough for some genome investigation. He sounded like he thinks there may be some pharmaceutical breakthroughs and chemo-energy breakthroughs .. and … It think he’s going to throw us a party of congratulations. A celebration. And he asked that we bring our videos. I think he thinks we’re heroines.
“I asked him if Hodges and Allen could come. I know Hodges just received his orders. They’re tracking some ISIS terrorists I suspect. But I thought some strings could be pulled. Susan?”
“Yeah. That, that will be fine. I miss him, that’s all. I just miss the big lug. But when a woman falls hard for a military man, she has to take the times she can see him. Or if a man should fall for a, well. That will be fine, Jennifer. Satisfactory.”
She peered out to sea, as women and men had been doing for centuries and eons. Gazing out into the great wonder and mystery, as they peered out into the oceans of space and upon the stars. There was a connection between the two, but only hints and glimmers of understanding washed briefly of a moment into even the most brilliant minds, and then, like a spring which bubbles up only at random, uncertain times, the clue, the insight, almost gained, was lost again.
“It’s still out there. The answer to the mystery. Somewhere. Deep down under. Fire and stardust under the coolest of deepest waters. We came up from there. And we keep trying to go back. Back down there; back out there.”
Jennifer put her arm about the shoulders of her friend. Together, the two women stood upon the shore, the foam of the surf dancing about their feet.
A Gulf breeze rose up. It blew their hair.
The sun descended deep into the horizon, far away yet seeming quite close. The bright red-yellow star cast a sparkling glow upon the dancing waves of the waters of the earth.
Suggested for Further Reading
The following list is only a suggested beginning: Innumerable books, articles, and on-line resources abound for those interested in microbiology, the phenomenon of ore-centered DNA life at the vents, commitment to scientific discovery, or in American military strategy and its ongoing ability to ensure and to conduct the political will of the people of the United States.
Books:
Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
Lynes, Barry. The Cancer Cure That Worked! Fifty Years of Suppression (The Rife Report). Mexico: Marcus Books, 1992.
Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Touchstone Books, 1995.
Articles:
Gold, Thomas. “The Deep, Hot Biosphere.” @www.people.cornell.edu. July, 1992.
Jannasch, H.W.; Mottl, M.J. “Geomicrobiology of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents.” Science, 229: 1985, pp. 716-725.
“Ships, Navel Surface.” Compton’s Encyclopedia; Encyclopedia Americana.
Stover, Dawn. “Creatures of the Thermal Vents.” Popular, Science, html, “Ocean Planet,” 1998.
USS Nebraska (SSBN 739) website. @www.subaseckb.navy.mil
Levin, L.A. et al. “Hydrothermal Vents and Methane Seeps: Rethinking the Sphere of Influence.” Frontiers in Martine Science, 19 May 2016.
Donald Ray Schwartz
Donald Ray Schwartz has published nearly 200 works, including articles, reviews, a novella, and non-fiction works. Lillian Russell: A Bio Bibliog
raphy, with Anne Bowbeer, is considered the definitive resource on the late 19th, early 20th centuries chanteuse. Noah’s Ark: An Annotated Encyclopedia of All the Animal Species in the Hebrew Bible was a Jewish Book Club Selection of the month and is the definitive resource for that subject.
His play, Review, won the Sarasota (Florida) Theatre National Playwriting Contest. His epic poem, The Cross Country Run of Jennifer X Dreifus, won the Mellen National Epic Poetry Contest. Professor Schwartz has directed and/or produced over 40 stage productions and television commercials. He has cameo roles in two major movies. Professor Schwartz is Associate Professor of Speech, Theatre and Mass Communication (retired) at CCBC. He had also been a Major in the USAF reserve – Intelligence, during the Viet Nam War. He currently resides in Baltimore with his wife, Ann.
Steven Evans
Some still remember Steven Evans because he appeared on the cover of the Sunday paper magazine insert, commemorating his role as a rocket scientist at NASA for the earliest manned flights. Others know him for his wide-ranging research while on the faculty of the Carnegie-Mellon Business School. In Omaha, he is known by some for his 15 years as Director of Instructional Science for the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy. There are nursing researchers that recall his designation in Beijing as one of the world’s eight experts in nursing informatics. Some focus on his years as a Senior Research Scientist for the Hereditary Cancer Institute in Creighton’s School of Medicine and still download his free eBook on Cancer Control. For the past 40 years, tens of thousands have interacted with him as he provides Protocols of Care across all of Internal Medicine as Senior Research Scientist for the Therapeutics Research Institute. A few know him for his contributions of the application of quantum physics to the exegesis of Torah [such as in his published volume Lifting the Veil…]. The parents of thousands of children will recognize him as the Project Leader for an ongoing autism clinical trial that is substantially reversing this syndrome nationwide. With this novel, there will be a whole new audience that will know him by this action thriller and the cutting-edge genetics research horizons he has integrated into this story. He is still not sure what he will be when he grows up.
Deeptide Vents . . . of Fire Page 23