“Just me.”
“Good luck,” Siem said in earnest, then wiped his mouth. “But if you wouldn’t mind—what did cause the explosion?”
“It was an ancient power source, fueled by deep-flowing magma that’s still under the ice,” he said.
“What kind of power source?”
“A mineral,” Mikel said. “One that is extremely powerful and apparently unique to the region.”
Mikel didn’t bother adding that the blast was actually the result of an ascended soul releasing its hold on a portion of that energy. Ascribing the incident to lava was cleaner.
“A new mineral?” Siem said dubiously.
“That’s what brought me down here in the first place,” Mikel said. “A sample I found, from the waters off the Falklands.”
“You have it?”
Mikel shook his head.
“Too bad. But the other part of your theory is a problem too,” Siem went on. “Lava would be difficult to overlook, and I don’t believe anyone has found geologically active pockets out there. It would be talked about. I would have heard about it.”
“The minerals may be screwing with their instruments,” Mikel said.
“Ah.”
Mikel also did not want to explain that the magma was not active now but in another epoch. He looked over at the scientists. “I should probably talk to Bundy about this.”
“Probably,” Siem said. “And I wish you luck. I do.” His eyes held Mikel’s. “You were pretty wild down there, Mikel. Are you convinced that you didn’t strike your head when you broke your wrist? Or perhaps the air was toxic?”
“I don’t blame you for being cautious, Siem—”
“It isn’t caution,” the maintenance engineer replied. “Frankly, it’s doubt. I’m a mechanical engineer.” He rapped the table. “Reality, not speculation. Also, I have some concern.”
“For?”
“Whatever you do out here will follow you when you go home,” Siem said. “I studied Antarctica, its history, before agreeing to accept this appointment. For centuries—going back to the seventh century, if you believe some accounts—people have come to the South Pole and left with crazy ideas. I’ve read about those ideas and their adherents. Holes to the center of the earth, spaceships of ancient aliens, living dinosaurs, dinosaurs from space living inside the earth. Trust me, Mikel. Careers have been ruined.”
“But imagine the contribution to science of the first researcher to find a prehistoric beast down here—even a frozen one.”
“And, with it, an ancient bacterium for which there is no known cure,” Siem added.
“The price of science,” Mikel replied. “How do you know there aren’t any of those vessels or creatures out here? You yourself, the others—you all saw a burning face.”
“We think we did, which is my point exactly,” Siem said. “The air, the cold, the magnetic pole, the movement of vast oceans around us and under us—the isolation. I’ve listened to the scientists as I work on the gear. It all affects the mind. That’s why we rely on impartial equipment, on data, to tell us what is real and what is not. And there is nothing that confirms a jot of this right now.”
“As I said, there won’t be,” Mikel replied. He was still looking over at the scientists. Two had left, leaving Bundy and glaciologist Dr. Victoria Cummins alone with their laptops. Mikel clapped his good hand appreciatively on Siem’s shoulder.
“Thank you for your advice, my friend,” Mikel said.
“You are welcome,” Siem replied. “Good luck getting out of this with your life,” he added as the archaeologist walked away.
Mikel didn’t know whether the engineer was referring to the impromptu meeting with a hostile scientist or the mission he proposed to undertake.
Probably both, Mikel thought. Siem was not wrong. But Casey Skett had left him no other opitions.
Dr. Bundy was facing Mikel as he approached. The geologist looked drawn but his brown eyes were as lively as ever. His natural frown deepened as Mikel neared.
“Speak of the bloody bête noire,” the middle-aged scientist said.
Dr. Cummins turned. Her gray eyes were pale against skin that was still bronze from a long, very recent research trip down the Amazon River. A glaciologist, she had spent four months studying the drop of sea levels in the region during the last ice age. Dr. Cummins was in her midforties, her dull red hair streaked with gray and pulled into a single tight braid. She said she had used it in Brazil to swat flies, like a horse.
“Doctors,” Mikel said in the conciliatory tone he used when he needed something.
The woman nodded and flashed a thin smile. Bundy looked back at his colleague as though they hadn’t been interrupted.
“Exhausting all preliminary, standard explanations for a jet of flame in the South Pole,” Bundy said, recapping, “and categorizing, for now, as a form of mass hysteria the shape that appeared to be a face of fire we all saw before that, we also happened to be talking—Dr. Jasso—about the way you hijacked my truck just before the explosion, as if you knew the bloody thing were about to happen.”
“I didn’t,” Mikel said. “Not exactly.”
“Meaning?”
“While I was in the caverns, I saw a ball of fire,” Mikel said. “It appeared to be—well, looking for a way out.”
“Consciously seeking an exit?” Dr. Cummins asked.
“It didn’t act like any flame I ever saw,” Mikel said evasively.
Bundy pinned the archaeologist with a look. “To be specific—a quality you seem reluctant to embrace—you referred to that phenomenon as being, and I quote from vivid memory, ‘What a soul looks like when it is sent back to hell.’ Since you happen to be here, despite being uninvited to my table and a private meeting—”
“In a public space,” Mikel pointed out.
“Public for members of this party,” Bundy said. “Putting that aside for the moment, would you care to explain and elaborate, Dr. Jasso?”
Before he could speak, Dr. Cummins said, “Mind you, I am very much inclined, as I just told Dr. Bundy, to ascribe the face to some version of Saint Elmo’s fire.” She tapped her laptop. “There was a coronal discharge and a very strong electric field in the region at that time. The crackling could have been mistaken for a voice.”
“Which supports my theory of collective hypnosis of a sort,” Bundy said, resuming their previous debate as if he had not spoken to Mikel at all. “We heard a voice and, therefore, we saw a face.”
“But Dr. Harvey’s point about rising gas catching and refracting sunlight must also be given consideration,” Dr. Cummins said, more to Mikel than to Bundy. “The motion of the gas and the sun itself would cause it to appear to move.”
Mikel pulled out a chair and sat easily to avoid shocking his bruised posterior. “It was not any kind of gas or luminous plasma, Dr. Cummins. The fire was not an illusion from out there.” He motioned vaguely toward the ceiling and the sky beyond. “The flame was real, it came from below.”
“Bloody rubbish,” Dr. Bundy said. “There is nothing active down there. Nothing that would have caused fire to spit up like that. We are still not reading any kinds of energy bursts, nor are any of the other outposts we’ve contacted. The RAF is looking into a possible missile strike, or space debris.”
“They can look all they want,” Mikel said with confidence that bordered on calculated smugness. “It was geologic.”
“This is not goddamn Yosemite,” Bundy said with rising anger. “We are not sitting on a bloody supervolcano.”
“Not now, no,” Mikel agreed.
Bundy exhaled, loudly. “You know, I keep hoping for bloody science from you,” he said, “and am constantly denied.” Then he spat a series of expletives. Despite his long string of degrees, the man had the mouth of a North Sea oil-rig worker, which is how he put himself through school. It
was also the reason he made a point not to mingle with anyone who didn’t have a PhD. That part of his life was done. It was the only reason Mikel was allowed at the table, despite the strikes against him. If not openly blacklisted, Siem and the other engineers were definitely graylisted.
Dr. Cummins turned fully to the new arrival. “I don’t disagree that there is some kind of latent, potential danger out there,” she said quietly. “That is precisely what Dr. Bundy and I have been discussing. But what do you mean? What do you know? As far as we and our very sophisticated, very expensive instruments can tell, there is nothing down there, no caldera, no ancient lava flows, nothing even extinct.”
There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Mikel didn’t mind; at least she was asking questions.
“The key phrase is ‘As far as we can tell,’ ” Mikel said. “There are lava tubes down there. I’ve been in them. There are massive wind tunnels. That is how I got this.” He raised his slinged arm.
“Dormant!” Bundy said. “Not presently active!”
“And, if I have been correctly advised, all of that seen in the dark, in the cold, by a battered and confused man in an environment where the senses might be easily confused!” Dr. Cummins said. She nodded toward Siem. “That, from a man who was with you part of the time.”
“Exactly so,” Bundy said. “Where is the bloody proof?”
“That, Doctors, is why I am here now,” Mikel said calmly, cutting through the debate. “I want to go out and get it.”
“You want to go back out?”
“I want to conduct firsthand research,” Mikel said. “That’s what archaeologists do. Research. In the field.”
Bundy laughed. “Brilliant. And you want my blessing?”
“If not that, then at least a conveyance of some kind, even a very modest one.”
Bundy was still laughing. “As much as I would love to be rid of you,” he replied, “what you propose is absurdly unsafe. Even if the winds were calm—and they’re fickle, having just today approached sixty miles an hour and climbing again—we don’t know the status of the ice cover around that crater. It may not hold a vehicle of any kind. Or even a man.”
“Better to risk that than the modules,” Dr. Cummins noted.
Bundy shot her a critical look. “You agree with this?”
“Yes, but for very practical reasons,” she said. “We may, quite literally, be on very thin ice, even here. If we don’t know the root cause, we won’t know how to prepare—or for what, exactly.”
“You’ll never know what’s out there unless I go,” Mikel added quickly. “And over days, over hours, important data may be lost.”
“Or the entire base could be lost,” Dr. Cummins added, addressing Bundy.
Bundy shook his head once. “Go out there and you may be lost,” he said. “Again. And this time Siem won’t go rushing out to save you.”
“I’m not asking him to save me, or to save anyone for that matter,” Mikel said, “except maybe the research station. Look, I’m not an official part of this team. I can walk out of here if I want.”
“And bloody good riddance—”
“Fine, I accept full responsibility for myself and for any damage or loss you may incur,” Mikel said. “Just a Ski-Doo, that’s all I want.”
“And those people who were going to pay for the last damage you caused?” Bundy asked. “The ones in New York? I suppose they will cover this too?”
“Working on it,” Mikel said.
“You’re all empty promises and hot air,” Bundy said. “That’s a boy talking, a boy caught in a half-truth, not a scientist.”
Mikel looked over at Dr. Cummins. “Do you agree with him?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “You propose to do this with one functioning arm?”
“If I have to.”
“You’ll never survive,” Bundy snapped.
“That’s my concern,” Mikel replied.
“Not when my equipment is involved it bloody isn’t,” Bundy said. “No, absolutely not.”
“I’ll go with him,” Dr. Cummins said suddenly.
Bundy fired off yet another critical look. He seemed to have a bottomless supply. “Are you bloody serious?”
“Positively sanguine,” she told him. “Look. We’ve been sitting here for hours, getting nowhere. I want to know what’s down there too. But of more immediate concern, the ice around the pit is cracked. The melted ice inside may have solidified and secured it, but we don’t know. The satellite images don’t tell us that much. Furthermore, they don’t tell us what kind of areal degradation may have occurred below the surface. That’s where melting begins, along the ground line, and thanks to that flame geyser we saw—and maybe some we didn’t see—we could be sitting on a section of shelf that is weaker than we know. There could be hairline fractures or crevasses due to oceanic erosion. We must know the cause and we must try to determine the extent.”
“Which is the reason I’m imploring you to let me go out there,” Mikel said. “If there is a ‘next time,’ we may not have time to evacuate.”
“Or a place to evacuate to,” Dr. Cummins added. “I’ll admit, Dr. Bundy, that frightens me.”
The face of the geologist relaxed slightly. Mikel could be denied; a fellow scientist was different. Especially one who voiced legitimate concerns. He looked at Mikel.
“This man frightens me,” Bundy said. “He is impetuous. And I don’t think he’s telling us everything.”
Dr. Cummins turned to study the archaeologist. “Dr. Jasso, I agree with Dr. Bundy. I believe you know things that we do not. Let me tell you, I have no patience for deceit. I worked with a botanist along the Amazon who sounded just like you. Same careful phrasing, same hesitation, same urgency. He said he had to take our raft, double back and study some rare flower he thought he had spotted growing near a tributary. I later discovered he had seen mud flecked with what he thought was gold. It turned out to be iron pyrite. I know because I had one of the natives watch him. He no longer had any credibility with me, and I sent him packing, Dr. Jasso.” She examined the scientist. “What is it with you, Doctor? What are you not telling us?”
Mikel was silent. But his expression registered respect for the scientist and she saw that. She fell silent as well.
“That was unilluminating,” Bundy remarked. “Dr. Cummins, I wish I shared your enthusiasm for this course of action. I do not. Dr. Jasso, since your arrival it isn’t only the ice that has eroded. My authority has gone to bloody hell. Research is—must be—systematic or it is useless.” He shook his head. “But I’m tired . . . too tired to argue about this. Until we know something about what is out there—which, right now, amounts to very, very little—I cannot and will not personally authorize an expedition.” He placed his pale hands on the table and rose. “Now, I am going to sleep. We will revisit this matter later, after we have heard from the British Geological Survey, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other organizations whose job it is—not ours—to assess the situation.”
“A situation on the ground that they will only study from outside the atmosphere,” Mikel said disgustedly.
“At last, you understand,” Bundy said.
The barrel-chested scientist departed. Siem had also left, leaving Jasso and Dr. Cummins alone.
The glaciologist rose suddenly. “Come on.”
“Where?” Mikel asked, startled from his sudden dejection. He wasn’t looking forward to trekking out there.
“To the garage,” she said. “Your friend is preparing one of the trucks.”
“My friend?”
“Siem. Good lord, I hope you read archaeological signs better than you read human ones,” she said. “Dr. Bundy is a scientist. A good one. He wants answers as much as we do, and he wasn’t saying no. He was simply abrogating responsibility for the decision I made to take you out there. Meaning, it’s my as
s if we screw up. Your friend Siem was watching, saw my eyes give the order, and left.”
Mikel continued to stare at her. Dr. Cummins was correct. He had missed every piece of that.
“I understand that you work for a woman, the head of a small research organization,” Dr. Cummins went on, rising with some effort; she too was tired. “Going forward, we are not, are we, going to have a problem as to who is in charge?”
“We are not,” Mikel said, “with one caveat.”
The woman froze, her mouth turning up in a not very surprised half-smile. “You’ve got spine, I’ll give you that. What’s the caveat, Dr. Jasso?”
“You defer to me regarding a single matter.”
“Which is?”
“The ancient civilization that once held absolute sway over this continent,” he replied.
She took a moment, just staring at him. Then she said, “A . . . civilization?”
“Yes, quite large and advanced well beyond where the Aztecs and Mayans were at their height,” Mikel said. “A civilization that is not quite dead and is definitely not quiescent.”
CHAPTER 7
Standing in the sunny but otherwise empty living room, Ben was not just tired and angry, he was perplexed. The Langloises were definitely gone; not only couldn’t he hear her jewelry here or in the hall—he opened the door to check—but he noticed Arfa emerge from under the sofa and leap gracefully onto the windowsill. The cat skillfully nestled in the small space between the flowerpots.
Against his strongest instincts, Ben Moss phoned Eilifir. He couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“Mr. Moss, what can—”
“Have you been watching the building since I went in?” Ben asked.
“Yes—”
“Did you see the Haitian couple leave?”
“No—”
Ben swore and ended the call. Eilifir called back but Ben ignored him. He tried to think of where the Langloises could have gone—and then it occurred to him: they would have followed the energy. Not that of the smoke snake, but the one Madame Langlois herself had referred to.
Leaving Anita in the apartment, Ben dashed up to the roof. Madame Langlois was now sitting on a lawn chair that was bolted to the roof and Enok was behind her. She was facing south. The smell of cigar smoke reached Ben as he approached.
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