Deep Storm

by Lincoln Child

  “Yeah, fine,” Loiseau said. Once Tanner had moved on, he wiped his face again with the towel and went immediately back to whisking: if he stopped now, the sauce would scorch and he’d have to begin all over again.

  Thing was, he hadn’t counted on missing sunlight and fresh air quite so much. And at least aircraft carriers moved. Loiseau had never thought of himself as being claustrophobic, but living in a metal box, with no way to get out and all that ocean pressing down on your head…well, it got to you after a while. Whoever had designed Deep Storm had done an ingenious job of miniaturization—and at first, when he was working in Top, the galley on deck 11, he hadn’t noticed it so much. But then he’d been transferred to Central, the deck 7 kitchen. And things down here were a little more cramped. When it got busy, when the flour really started to fly, so many bodies were packed in you could barely move. And that was when, these last few days, Loiseau had felt the worst. Waking up today, the first thing he’d thought about was the dinnertime crush to come. And the sweats had kicked in, right there in his own damn bunk…

  He gripped the stainless-steel range handle tightly as a spasm of indigestion lanced through his stomach. The dizziness returned and—with a faint sense of alarm now—he shook his head to clear it. Maybe he was getting sick, after all. Maybe he was coming down with the flu. When he went off shift, he’d stop by Medical. Either way, nerves or illness, they could help.

  With an effort he went back to whisking the sauce, backing it carefully off from the boil, trying to concentrate as he checked it for color and aroma. As he did so, he noticed a “runner”—one of the workers assigned to Bottom, the mess located in the Facility’s deepest depths—heading out with a tall stack of prepared dishes. Bottom had only a small galley of its own and frequently used runners—who worked and lived in the classified section of Deep Storm and had the necessary clearance—to bring dishes prepared in Central down to the lower levels.

  That was something else that bothered Loiseau: all the security. It was a lot more noticeable down here than it had been in Top. He could always tell the ones who worked in the classified areas: they huddled together at a table away from the others, heads together, talking in low tones. Why did a scientific expedition have to be so hush-hush, anyway? With all the secrecy, he had no idea how the expedition itself was going or what kind of progress they were making. And that meant he also had no idea when he would be able to get out of here and go home again.

  Home…

  Suddenly, a stronger wave of dizziness washed over him. Loiseau staggered, grabbing for the range handle again. This was no fit of nerves: this was something else. Something serious. Fear stabbed through him as he fought to keep upright.

  Abruptly, his vision began to dim. Around the kitchen, people were pausing their work, putting down their knives, spatulas, and wooden spoons to stare at him. Somebody was speaking to him, but sound had attenuated to a murmur and he couldn’t make it out. Reaching out to maintain his balance, Loiseau grabbed for the heavy pot full of béchamel but just missed, slipping off its side. He felt nothing. Yet another wave of dizziness, even more overpowering. And now an unpleasant scent rose to his nostrils: the smell of singed hair and overcooked meat. He wondered if it was a hallucination. People were running toward him. He glanced down and noticed, with a distant curiosity, that his hand had pushed the béchamel pot aside and fallen over the open range. Blue flames licked up between his fingers. Still he felt nothing. A curious blackness enfolded him like a blanket—and then to Loiseau it seemed the most natural thing in the world to sink to the floor and slip into dark dreams.

  16

  “Are you almost done, Doctor?”

  Crane turned to see Renault, the executive chef, hovering nearby, arms crossed, a look of strong disapproval on his face.

  “Almost.” And, turning back to a rack holding at least a hundred small tubs of butter, he selected one at random, peeled the plastic wrapping from its top, and scraped about a teaspoon into a small test tube.

  The walk-in cooler of Central had been a revelation. It was stocked not only with typical restaurant fare—poultry, beef, eggs, garden vegetables, milk, and the like—but also ingredients that would be more at home in three-star establishments on the Continent. Black and white truffles; near-priceless aged balsamic vinegar in tiny glass bulbs; pheasant, grouse, goose, plover; large tins of Russian and Iranian caviar. And everything was packed into a space no larger than ten feet by twenty. Given such an embarrassment of riches, Crane had been forced to limit his samples to the most common items that most people were likely to ingest every day. Even so, almost all the two hundred test tubes of his sampling kit were now full—and the hour-long process had strained the patience of the executive chef to the breaking point.

  Replacing the tub of butter, Crane moved to the next rack, which contained the basic liquids for the house vinaigrette: fine old French white wine vinegars and cold-pressed olive oil.

  “It’s from Spain,” Crane said, picking up a bottle of the oil and glancing at the label.

  “The best,” Renault said simply.

  “I would have thought that Italian—”

  Renault made a half-scornful, half-impatient sound with his lips. “C’est fou! There is no comparison. These olives are all hand picked, from first-growth trees planted no more than thirty to an acre, sparsely watered, enriched with horse manure—”

  “Horse manure,” Crane repeated, nodding slowly.

  Renault’s face darkened. “Engrais. The fertilizer. All natural, no chemicals.” He had taken Crane’s approach as a personal affront to the quality of his kitchen, as if Crane were an inspector from the board of health and sanitation instead of a doctor tracking down a medical mystery.

  Crane pulled the top from the bottle, drew out a fresh test tube from his kit, poured in a dram, then stoppered the tube. He replaced the oil, drew out another bottle from another row. “So much of the foodstuff here is fresh. How do you keep it from spoiling?”

  Renault shrugged. “Food is food. It spoils.”

  Crane filled another tube. “What happens to it?”

  “Some gets incinerated. The rest is packed up with the other waste and gets sent up in the Tub.”

  Crane nodded. The Tub, he had learned, was a large, unmanned supply module that made daily shuttles between the Facility and the support station on the surface. Officially known as the LF2-M Deeply Submersible Resupply Unit, it was a prototype of a Navy design to provide crippled subs with emergency supplies. It had gotten its nickname from its ungainly oblong shape, highly reminiscent of a monster bathtub.

  “And your fresh provisions come down on the Tub, also?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  Crane filled another tube with vinegar. “Who orders your new supplies?”

  “Food Service Purchasing, based on inventory control and advance menu planning.”

  “And who physically moves the supplies from the Tub to the kitchens?”

  “The inventory officer, under my direct supervision. Today’s shipment is due shortly. In fact, we should already be on our way to Receiving.” Renault frowned. “If you are suggesting, Docteur, that—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Crane replied with a smile. And, in fact, he wasn’t. He had already spoken with the nutritionists and dieticians, and their voluntary meal plans seemed healthful and sensible. And although Crane had taken the time to carefully sample dozens of items from the pantries of Top and, now, Central, he didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything harmful. It seemed unlikely anything was being introduced into the food, either accidentally or deliberately. More and more, his suspicions were settling on heavy metal poisoning.

  The symptoms of heavy metal toxicity were vague and non-specific, just like those cropping up all over the Facility: chronic fatigue, gastrointestinal upset, short-term memory loss, joint pain, disorganized thought processes, and a host of others. Already, he had two members of the medical staff investigating the work and leisure envir
onments of Deep Storm for the presence of lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and a host of other heavy metals. Meanwhile, all those patients who had complained of symptoms were being asked to return to Medical to provide hair, blood, and urine samples for testing. The exposure would naturally have to be acute, not chronic: people hadn’t been on the Facility long enough for anything else…

  Crane stoppered the final test tube, then placed it in the portable rack and zipped up his analysis bag with a faint sense of satisfaction. If heavy metal poisoning or mercurialism was found to be the culprit, strong chelators like DMPS and DMSA could be used not only for challenge testing but also for treatment. No doubt he’d have to request the necessary quantities be sent down in the Tub: there wouldn’t be enough in the pharmacy to treat all patients on the Facility.

  He turned around to find that Renault had already left. Picking up his analysis bag, he stepped out of the cooler and closed the door behind him. He found Renault on the far side of the kitchen, talking to somebody wearing chef’s whites. As Crane approached, Renault turned toward him.

  “You are done,” he said. It wasn’t phrased as a question.

  “Yes, except for a few questions I have about the cook who was taken ill. Robert Loiseau.”

  Renault seemed incredulous. “More questions? That other doctor, the woman, she asked so many before.”

  “Just a few more.”

  “You will have to walk with us, then. We are overdue at Receiving.”

  “Very well.” Crane didn’t mind—it would give him a chance to observe the transfer of foodstuffs from the Tub to the kitchens, set his mind at ease, remove this as a potential source of contamination. He was quickly introduced to the man in chef’s whites—Conrad, the inventory officer—and to two other members of the kitchen staff carrying large food lockers. Then Crane fell in behind the small group, and together they left the kitchen and made their way down the echoing corridors to the elevator.

  Renault was busy discussing a shortage of root vegetables with the inventory officer, and Crane had only managed to get in a single question about Loiseau by the time they arrived at deck 12.

  “No,” Renault said as the doors swept open and he stepped out. “There was no warning. No warning at all.”

  Crane had not been here since his arrival, but he remembered the way to the Compression Complex. Renault, however, struck out in the opposite direction, threading an intricate path through a maze of narrow corridors.

  “The man is still comatose; we haven’t been able to ask any questions,” Crane said as they walked. “But you’re sure nobody saw anything strange or out of the ordinary?”

  Renault thought a moment. “I recall Tanner saying that Loiseau looked a little tired.”

  “Tanner?”

  “Our pastry chef.”

  “Did he elaborate?”

  Renault shook his head. “You will have to ask Monsieur Tanner.”

  “Do you know if Loiseau abused drugs of any kind?”

  “Certainly not!” Renault said. “Nobody in my kitchens uses drugs.”

  Ahead, the corridor ended at a large, oval hatch, guarded by a single marine. Above was a sign that read ACCESS TO OUTER HULL. The marine looked at them in turn, examined a form that Renault passed over, then nodded the group through.

  Beyond the hatchway was a small steel passage, illuminated by red bulbs recessed into thick housings. Another hatch lay ahead, closed and barred from the far side. The hatch clanged shut behind them. There was the sound of retractors being swung into place. Slowly, the echoes died away. As they waited in the dim crimson light, Crane became aware of a damp chill, and a faint, briny odor that reminded him of a submarine’s bilge.

  After a few moments there was another loud scraping noise, this time from in front of them, and then the forward hatchway drew back. They stepped into a smaller chamber. Once again, the hatch behind swung shut, locking automatically. The chill and the smell were more noticeable here. At the end of the chamber, a third steel hatch—larger and heavier than the others—was set. Huge, swinging bolts anchored the hatch shut, and it was guarded by a brace of armed marines. Several signs warning of danger and listing numerous restrictions were fixed to the chamber walls.

  For a moment, they waited in silence while the marines again examined Renault’s paperwork. Then one of them turned and pressed a red button on a console. A shrill buzzer sounded. With obvious effort, the marines swiveled each of the heavy bolts half a revolution, then together turned the hatch’s massive wheel in a counterclockwise direction. There was a clank, then a hiss of escaping air, as the hatchway unsealed itself. Crane felt his ears pop. The marines pushed the hatch outward, then gestured for the group to proceed. The kitchen workers carrying the food lockers stepped through first, followed by Conrad and Renault. Crane fell into place behind them, ready with another question. But then he froze in the hatchway, staring straight ahead, question abruptly forgotten.

  17

  He was standing at the threshold of a vast, dim chasm. At least, that was his first impression. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he realized he was on a narrow accessway, bolted to the exterior skin of the Facility. The sheer wall fell away behind and below him—freckled by a latticework of rungs—plummeting twelve stories into darkness, and for a moment he felt a wave of vertigo. Quickly, he grasped the steel railing. He realized dimly that one the marines was speaking to him.

  “Sir,” the marine was saying, “please step out. This hatchway cannot remain open.”

  “Sorry.” And Crane hastily withdrew his other foot from the threshold. The two marines pulled the heavy hatch shut. From within came the rasp of bolts being fixed into place.

  Still clinging to the railing, Crane looked around. Some distance ahead of him, and just barely visible in the faint light, rose a curved metal wall: the outer dome. Sodium lights were set into it at regular but distant intervals, providing the weak illumination. Looking upward, he followed the dome’s rising curve to its apex, directly above the Facility. Metal tubes rose from the Facility roof to the underside of the dome: these, he assumed, were the airlocks that provided access to the bathyscaphes and the escape pod.

  His gaze fell from the dome to the accessway on which he stood. It widened ahead of him, becoming a gentle ramp that spanned the deep gulf between the Facility and the dome. The rest of the group was already heading up it, toward a large platform fixed to the wall of the dome. He took a deep breath, then let go of the railing and began to follow.

  The air was far chillier here, and the bilge smell more pronounced. As he walked, his feet clattered against the metal grid of the catwalk, echoing dully in the vast space. For a moment, he had a mental picture of where he was—at the bottom of the sea, walking on a narrow bridge between a twelve-story metal box and the dome that surrounded it, empty space between him and the sea bed below—but found it unsettling and tried to push it away. Instead, he focused on catching up to the group, which had by now almost reached the platform.

  Conrad was behind Renault and the two kitchen staffers, and Crane trotted up beside him. “And here I thought Receiving would be some nice little room,” he said, “with a television, maybe, and magazines on the tables.”

  Conrad laughed. “Takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?”

  “You could say that. I had no idea the space between the Facility and the dome was pressurized. I figured it was filled with water.”

  “The Facility wasn’t constructed to operate at such a depth. At this pressure, it wouldn’t last a minute on its own. The dome protects us. Somebody told me they work together, like the double hull of a submarine or something. I don’t really understand it, to tell you the truth.”

  Crane nodded. The concept did make perfect sense. In some ways, it was like a submarine, with its inner pressure hull, outer hull, and ballast tanks between.

  “I noticed a series of rungs on the outside of the Facility. What on earth are those for?”

  “Like I said, it was built f
or much shallower water, where a protective dome wouldn’t be necessary. I think those rungs were meant for divers to use when moving up or down the sides of the Facility, making repairs and such.”

  Glancing back, Crane noticed two large, tube-like struts that led, horizontally, from opposite ends of the dome to the Facility, at a point just slightly above its center. These, he realized, were what Asher had called pressure spokes—tubes open to the sea that were yet another device to compensate somehow for the massive pressure. From this distance, they did sort of resemble two spokes of a wheel. But to Crane, they looked more like a rotisserie spit onto which the Facility had been impaled. Compensation or not, he didn’t like having the sea that close to the box inside which he was living.

  They had now reached the platform at the end of the ramp. It was about twenty feet square and fastened securely to the dome’s inner wall. An airlock hatch stood at one side, immensely thick, guarded by still more marines. This hatch, Crane felt sure, led to the deep ocean outside the dome. No doubt the Tub would dock itself here, and the supplies brought in through this airlock.

  There were a dozen or so people waiting on the platform already: technicians in lab coats, maintenance workers in jumpsuits. Most had brought containers of various sizes. The maintenance crew had the largest ones: black plastic wheeled containers so bulky it must be difficult to fit them through hatchways. Crane guessed these contained waste material being sent back up to the surface.

  Beside the hatch stood a control panel manned by a tall and very attractive woman in military garb. As Crane watched, she tapped a few keys, peered at a tiny display. “Incoming at T minus two minutes,” she said over her shoulder.

  There were a few impatient sighs from the group. “Late again,” somebody murmured.

  Crane’s vertigo had now receded. His eye moved from the woman at the station to the skin of the dome itself. Its curve was gentle and perfect, designed for maximum strength, oddly pleasing to the eye. Amazing to think of the terrific pressure it was under, the almost inconceivable burden of water that pressed down upon it. It was something that, as a submariner, he’d learned not to dwell on. Unconsciously, he stretched forward a hand and briefly caressed the dome’s surface. It was dry, smooth, and cold.