The Sound of Seas

by Gillian Anderson

  Mikel replied thoughtfully, “This enterprise with Galderkhaan—it started that way. But the more relics my colleagues and I found, the more we learned of their language, it seemed as if they were shaping up to be a sad microcosm of all humanity: roughly one hundred thousand people who could not get along without dividing into factions. And I have since learned, from my excursion underground, that it wasn’t just something that caused the Source to turn on its creators. There was a Dr. Frankenstein, someone who unleashed it.”

  “Mass homicide?”

  “Unintentional, perhaps, but yes . . . the destruction of this entire civilization was spurred by sociopolitical, possibly romantic, fractures that would be all too familiar to any modern human.”

  Dr. Cummins considered this new information. “Entire,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said it destroyed the entire civilization,” Dr. Cummins said. “Are you sure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ancient peoples were remarkably mobile across vast stretches of ocean,” she said. “The Vikings, Kon-Tiki, even Columbus and Magellan . . .”

  “That’s true,” Mikel said.

  “Surely you and your colleagues have considered this.”

  “We have,” he admitted.

  Dr. Cummins regarded him. “Radio silence again,” she said. “So you do have evidence of some diaspora.”

  “We have words and claims, not evidence,” he told her. Once again, he didn’t want to say any more. It was one thing to ruminate about a dead culture. It was another to confide in her that hostile agents were trying to finish a struggle they started millennia ago. That might be far, far more than she had bargained for.

  The two fell silent as the truck purred across the ice. Mikel thought back to the conversation he had just had with Casey Skett, about the Group having an origin other than the one Flora had told him. This shift from seeking knowledge to seeking power was disturbing. It was fascinating, even compelling, certainly logical to think the Group had been founded by refugee Galderkhaani. It was frightening, however, to imagine these people, and Skett’s people, still seeking to control the tiles. The stones were an incredible source of information. Yet they were also a source of great destructive power. Bringing just one back to New York had caused Arni’s brain to liquefy. It had caused Mikel to hallucinate severely or, briefly, to time travel—he still didn’t know which. In the lava tube to which they were returning, a wall of tiles enabled him to communicate with Galderkhaani dead—and for them to enter his mind from miles away. It had driven animals mad along lines of force that extended halfway around the globe.

  Though he was headed back to the site as Casey Skett had commanded, Mikel wondered what kind of experiment the man had in mind . . . and whether he could actually go through with it. He did not know enough to bounce that off Dr. Cummins.

  They crossed the partially drifted-over tracks of their previous transit, when they had been relocating the Halley VI modules from the compromised ice shelf. The rest of the ride continued to pass in silent reflection. For his part, Mikel was imagining a thriving civilization on the wastes across which they traveled. On ice? On clear plains? He didn’t know. He pictured airships in the sky, vessels on the sea, animals long-since extinct like the one he’d seen below, the “guardian” of the chamber. It was not just an exponential Pompeii. In AD 79 when Vesuvius buried that port city, the vast bulk of the Roman Empire and its citizens, its diverse culture, survived. Galderkhaan and its people were obliterated. He did not know the degree to which any refugees may have maintained a pure form of the language, the arts, the faith, the technology.

  But there is that magnificent library, he thought covetously. And there were ascended and transcended souls. To be able to talk to them, debrief them—it would be like being able to talk to the monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten, who some archaeologists believe was one and the same with Moses, or Alexander the Great, or even just a vegetable vendor from Nero’s Rome.

  Mikel shivered, and not from the cold. Perhaps, he thought, right now, he was surrounded by ascended souls he could not see or hear. Regardless, the sadness of their loss was suddenly palpable, their trauma felt immediate as if it had just occurred. It was as real and as current as any he had ever known.

  It may be that Pao and Rensat are watching, he thought. Perhaps spirits have always been watching.

  Angels and devils. Many survivors of the cataclysm may have lost their roots over generations. The idea of Transcendence may have morphed, via Galderkhaani expatriates, into Valhalla, the Elysian Fields, heaven, and other versions of an afterlife. It could be that Candescents became the earliest gods.

  “By coming here, we may be returning to God,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I was just thinking,” Mikel said. “What if it’s the tinsel that’s fake, but the tree is real. What if all the trappings of religion were created to keep wandering minds engaged.”

  “I’m not following,” Dr. Cummins said.

  “I’m not sure I am either,” Mikel admitted, smiling and once again falling silent.

  Dr. Cummins slowed the truck and raised her goggles slightly. The insides of the lenses were misty and she wiped them with the side of her thumb. It could just be humidity. Or maybe she had felt something emotional here and shed a few tears. She said nothing as she replaced the dark glasses and urged the Toyota across the last, smooth leg of their journey.

  As they neared the mouth of the round pit, Mikel saw that it was nearly perfectly round, about one hundred feet in diameter, with a shadow just below the lip that was as flat black as the snow was brilliant white. The edges had been melted unevenly by the flame then refrozen, creating the illusion of a small, circular waterfall stuck in time. The hairline fractures had also been filled in with melted ice and covered with windblown flecks. Dr. Cummins pressed on cautiously, both of them listening for any sound that could suggest the ice had weakened. The external thermometer mounted to the hood showed no discernable rise in temperature as they approached. There were no sudden dips in the ice field.

  “I don’t see any steam out there,” Dr. Cummins said. “How deep were your tunnels?”

  “The crevasse I descended was maybe a hundred feet,” Mikel said. “I can’t be sure. I fell some of the way.”

  “It was artificial?” she asked.

  “A lava tube, as I assume this one is, since the fire was able to shoot through rock,” Mikel said.

  “We should go the rest of the way on foot,” the glaciologist suggested. “Reconnoiter only. We can break out the gear when we know what we’re looking at.”

  Mikel agreed, though at some point very soon he was going to have to tell her his assignment and contact Casey Skett and find out exactly why the man wanted him out here.

  Dr. Cummins reported back to the communications center at Halley VI and after suiting up for the cold they hopped from the cab to the surface. The desolation was not as profound as it had been when Mikel first arrived in Antarctica. Dr. Cummins obviously felt it too: when she climbed from the cab she was not just looking at the pit, she was turning around.

  Mikel walked over. “Anything wrong?” he asked over his muffler.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “But you feel something different from before.”

  The woman nodded.

  Mikel didn’t have to ask what that was. The Old Woman of the Moors was here—at least, her presence and mystery were.

  Mikel moved first and Dr. Cummins followed. The crunch of the ice under their boots was muted by the drifted snow. Their toes kicked up little puffs that swirled in unseen eddies of air. The winds were calmer out here and everything else was quiet, save for something they noticed as they neared the pit: occasional, echoing raps.

  “What’s that?” Mikel asked, hesitating as he tried to make out the sound.


  “Icicles falling,” Dr. Cummins said. “It probably looks like a long white beard down there with the fast-frozen drips and runoff.”

  “The Old Woman has a companion,” Mikel quipped.

  Dr. Cummins flashed him a thumbs-up that relaxed them both. Mikel hadn’t realized how on edge he was until then.

  Walking almost shoulder to shoulder so that one could help the other in case of uncertain footing, they approached the pit with the same gingerly steps they would take approaching a fissure or crevasse. Along the opposite rim of the pit, Mikel saw only the fast-frozen ice, not ground. There wasn’t a single visible crack in the deep cover here; it was like vanilla frosting laid on with a thick spatula.

  “I’ve seen geothermal heat generate melting like this on the Amundsen Sea, but not here,” Dr. Cummins said, leaning toward him as they trudged across the ice.

  “That’s quite a distance away.”

  “About two thousand kilometers,” she said. “To be honest, we don’t know the extent to which subaerial volcanism may be responsible for any of that. Even so, to have reached this far? That wasn’t even part of the most ambitious thinking. Dr. Jasso, is it possible that your ancient civilization covered the entire continent to the western region? It was pretty icy there during the period you indicated.”

  “I don’t believe so,” he said. “From the research, I believe there were densely populated pockets across the continent. I would imagine that population, if not controlled, was strictly determined by the food supply.”

  “Obviously, they would have had fish, sea mammals, birds—”

  “Possibly each other,” he added. “I know nothing about their interment practices.”

  “That’s an unpleasant thought, though you’re right. I have heard about isolated pockets that practiced cannibalism along the Amazon.”

  “The Galderkhaani were big on jasmine,” Mikel said. “Drank a lot of warm tea, I’d imagine.”

  “I like that better,” Dr. Cummins said. “The practice, not that flavor of tea. Dr. Jasso?”

  “Yes?”

  “Am I whistling past a graveyard?” she asked.

  “It’s quite possible,” he said. “I’m uneasy here too. I would be interested in going back through reports from this region, see if other researchers have experienced anything—” he stopped as he sought an appropriate word.

  “Off? Ripe? Gray? Oppressive?” Dr. Cummins contributed.

  “All of that,” he said.

  There was a high, warbling rush of sound. The two of them stopped at the same time. Dr. Cummins pulled her parka from one side and turned her ear toward the pit.

  “That’s not the wind,” she said. “Did you hear anything like that below?”

  Mikel shook his head. Whatever it was, the sound came from inside the pit, soft and melodious, modulating slightly and echoing on its way up and down.

  “It could be an ice flute,” she suggested. “Wind through a hollow icicle—”

  “That’s not whistling,” Mikel said. He had heard those in Norway, frozen “panpipes.” Wind passing through a hollow tube of ice has a shriller quality. “That’s humming.”

  “Can’t be,” Dr. Cummins said. “Can it?”

  “I have learned to dismiss nothing where Galderkhaan is concerned.”

  Dr. Cummins shook her head as if to say, I’m just not ready for that.

  They started walking again, cautiously, when the frozen water on the lip of the pit nearest them, the northeastern rim, began to darken. It was like watching bread turn moldy in time lapse: something unhealthy was moving toward them.

  “Doctor?” Mikel asked.

  “I don’t know what it is, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “Let’s go back to the truck.”

  She started to move but Mikel stayed where he was. He had an idea what it was . . . and what might stop it.

  “Dr. Jasso?”

  “Something may be trying to communicate.”

  “That is an optimistic take on a mass moving beneath the ice!”

  The shadow rolled toward them unevenly, like an incoming tide, until Mikel could see for certain what it was made of.

  “Goddamn him,” Mikel said.

  “What?”

  “Get back in the truck.”

  “What is it?”

  “Please go!” Mikel yelled. “They’re being controlled by a tile in New York!”

  Dr. Cummins did not need to be told again. She backed away then ran as fast as her boot-heavy feet could take her.

  Snatching off his glove, the archaeologist grabbed his cell phone from the pocket of his parka and punched a button.

  CHAPTER 10

  In New York, at the subdued headquarters of the Group, the call came as expected.

  Downstairs in the laboratory, Casey Skett winked at Flora, who was seated in a folding chair, her hands tightly knit on her lap. Adrienne Dowman was on the other side of him, in an old, thickly cushioned chair, sitting supernaturally still and just staring. Skett had one hand on the keypad controls of the acoustic levitation device. He had his eight-inch knife in the other. He slipped the blade into a sheath attached to the back of his belt. “I can get to it quickly,” he cautioned Flora.

  “I have no doubt,” she replied.

  Skett answered the phone. “Hello, Dr. Jasso. I’m glad to see you made it.”

  “I said I would!” he yelled. “Now call them off! You didn’t have to do this!”

  “I was testing the acoustic suspension,” he said. “Consider it a dry run and also a little bit of insurance.

  “They are Belgica Antarctica, flightless midges. On average, only a sixth of an inch long . . . but there are a lot of them, eh? They were awakened from hibernation by a frisson of ancient Galderkhaani power, following the arc from here to there.”

  “I know the mechanism, damn you, Skett. Cut it. Now!”

  “But they’re harmless,” Skett assured him. “Unless they gum up your engine or crawl up your pant legs, nibbling and nesting. Which they will do, seeking the warmth they’ve been deprived of.”

  “I swear to you—”

  “What, Dr. Jasso? What will you do?” Skett’s tone lost its affected bonhomie. “I know—perhaps you’ll keep in touch with me instead of hopping about on your own, leaving me blind?”

  “Yes, fine. We just got here by truck and were reconnoitering the pit.”

  “We?”

  “Myself and Dr. Victoria Cummins.”

  “The glaciologist?”

  “That’s right! Now cut the link!”

  “How did you get there?” Skett asked.

  “Toyota Tacoma.”

  “Excellent,” Skett said. “Very good. Makes things easier.”

  Skett was facing the monitor that controlled the acoustic levitation waves. He punched the numbers up. In front of him, the stone Mikel had recovered from the Falklands was crushed by sound, its energies dampened.

  “Back the truck away roughly ten meters,” Skett said. He glanced at a laptop on the laboratory table. “The insects won’t come any closer as a group . . . the line vectors off there. Unless I amp up the power.”

  Mikel’s voice was muffled, no doubt shouting instructions to his companion. The scientist was definitely outside the truck; Skett could hear the wind’s raspy brush against the audio.

  After a moment Mikel came back on the line. “Is that why Flora screamed, Skett?” Mikel asked. “You were flexing your long-distance muscles?”

  “Poor dear overreacted,” Skett said. “I think she thought that allowing the tile to power up, you would be attacked by penguins or whales.”

  “How did you know I wouldn’t be?”

  “You’re well enough inland,” Skett replied. “There are two tiles—I brought one to the party, you see. Two tiles, two separate but proximate lines
of power, one weak, one stronger—the stronger one being the one I presently control. Sections of the coastline may be covered with penguin feathers thanks to the other . . . a whale or two might have butted a ship . . . and I think I heard some dogs baying on this end. But that’s all. The arcs from here to there are very precise. You will notice, I think, that the insects left their nesting ground and lined up pretty much in a southwesterly direction, well, westerly to you, since south has little meaning where you are. Are they disbursing?”

  Mikel was silent for a moment. “If you could call being buried by icy snow disbursing.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” Skett said. “Most will get away. They are very, very hardy. They will dig down and hibernate. It is remarkable though, isn’t it? The fact that the slightest variation in the acoustic modulation being employed here can impact a life-form at the end of the earth. It’s a shame Arni didn’t know that, eh?”

  “We’ve all had a very steep learning curve,” Mikel replied. “All right, Skett, it’s cold where I am. What am I doing here?”

  “You’re going down into the pit.”

  There was a brief silence. “With a broken wrist?”

  “I didn’t say you were going to climb,” Skett said. “Good God, I’m not a lunatic. The Tacoma must have a winch and you can rig a sling. In any case, you are going into the pit.”

  “And once I’m there?” Mikel asked.

  “You will send me video of whatever is there as you see it.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Mikel said.

  “Oh?”

  “That one’s not me being obstinate, Skett. I could barely get a signal the last time I was there. I’ll record images and send them later.”

  Skett considered that. “As insurance for you, no doubt?”

  “That too,” Mikel said. “If anything happens to me, to any of us, you get nothing.”

  “That’s not true, you know,” Skett said. “All it means is that I’ll have to send someone else, and that will mean a delay. And Flora will be dead: I will kill her and burn her with my various rodents and pigeons. Anyway,” Skett went on, “I don’t think you’ll be uncooperative.”