Exodus 2022 (31 page)

She was aware of the new tremor in Joe’s hands. She’d seen him struggling with it in the restaurant, trying to hide it from her. Trying to put on a brave face. She’d kept quiet, aware of his desire to get to Dieturlund. But she wouldn’t stay silent much longer. She was terrified. Wanted answers.

She couldn’t bring herself to interrupt just yet, however. There was something happening between the two men. Something building. A sort of energy flow she could feel.

Joe spoke again, abruptly, sounding surprised by his own words. “They’re spiritual creatures.”

Dieturlund nodded. Smiled. “Yes.”

Joe’s gaze shifted to the windows, to some distant point light-years away.

The seconds ticked by.

“They can see into it,” Joe said, “can’t they? Something, at least. More than we can.”

“A great deal more. Yes.”

“See into what?” Ella asked.

The old man looked at her, like he’d forgotten she was there. “Why, the mystery, of course.”

Ella raised an eyebrow. Started to ask what the heck he was talking about, but Joe spoke first.

“What is the Dream Realm?” He said the name as if it had only just surfaced in his mind. “I heard them talking about it. Mia’s family, I mean.”

“‘Dream Realm’ is my term,” said Dieturlund. “There’s no translation for the song they use to describe it.”

“But what
is
it?”

Dieturlund shrugged. “A place. A place in the deep. Far from here. Whether they ever journey there in physical form is a riddle I could not decipher. Regardless, it is there that they meet.” He laughed. “A white paper on the idea ended my career. Not that I give a shit.”

Joe leaned forward. “But
why
do they go there? I caught a glimpse of it, when I was with the pod, but…” He shook his head, straining to remember. “What is it they find there?”

Dieturlund smiled and looked at the young priest. “Understanding. A peek behind the door, as it were.”

It seemed to Ella then that the energy in the room had shifted, coalescing around the old man as he spoke.

“Our forebears knew how to find the Dream Realm,” Dieturlund whispered. “How to visit. Look inside. Gain sustenance. A talent we have lost.”

He hesitated. “Mia uncovered a secret there, after her baby died. Something sacred. Something old beyond reckoning.”

He looked at them. “Something to change the world.”

Neither Joe nor Ella spoke.

“Things are in motion now. Whether Mia actually started it, or is merely the bearer of the news, I cannot discern. But change is coming. Assuming she can send her message, say what must be said.”

“The sonar,” said Joe.

Dieturlund nodded. “Yes. If the sonar goes off—”

“But why is that so important?” said Ella. “If the orca can communicate via thought, why is sonar even an issue?”

“There are many species of whales,” Dieturlund replied, “And countless other creatures. A very few of them are telepathic. Very few indeed. Sound is critical. Sound is key. Sound is the way they’ve communicated for time out of mind.

“Did you know,” he said, sounding every bit the college professor, “that before the noise of ships and sonar, whales routinely communicated across vast distances? The low-frequency sounds they emit—in the sixteen to forty-hertz range—can travel twenty five hundred miles or more. Or
could
. In quieter seas.”

Joe stepped to a chart on Dieturlund’s wall. Big and colorful, it showed the undersea topography of the Pacific. Mountain ranges and valleys, towering peaks and bottomless chasms. A vast swath of the planet most humans know nothing about.

Joe touched the map with his fingers as another “memory” unfurled in his mind.

“The message will begin with her,” he said quietly. “But others will repeat it. Carry it far and wide.”

Ella said, “
What
message? What does she need to say?”

Joe shook his head in frustration—like he wanted to remember but couldn’t manage it. He said, “I don’t know.”

The room went quiet once more. Completely still save for the sporadic, muffled boom of fireworks outside. In the distance.

The old man’s head sagged to his chest, and he shut his eyes. His breathing grew heavy. Joe and Ella exchanged looks.

Has he fallen asleep? Just like that? Now what?

And then they both felt it: a tiny, almost imperceptible jolt, like a mild electric shock.

They froze as a wash of color exploded in their minds. Bursts of reds and greens, violets and yellows, jets of color electric and unstable.

The kaleidoscopic display disintegrated like confetti in the wind, leaving a single, potent image hovering in their brains.

An image.

An object.

A thought, courtesy of Professor Dieturlund.

A tunnel floating in the deep.

Big and bright, the tunnel hovered front and center in Joe’s thoughts. In his mind’s eye. In Ella’s also.

Joe felt his stomach roll again. Felt dizzy. As if he’d stepped too quickly to the edge of a cliff and stared down, then pulled back.

He steadied himself. Took a breath.

It wasn’t the strangeness of the image that confounded him, made him feel weightless. Unmoored from reality. Not the bright outline of the cornucopia shape, or the object’s stunning clarity.

It was the feeling of déjà vu.

He’d seen this all before. In his dreams. In his subconscious.

“What is that?” Ella asked, her curiosity overriding the strangeness of the situation—the fact that the three of them were sitting in a room, contemplating an image only they could see.

“An escape hatch,” Joe replied. “A way out.”

This is what it’s all about
, Joe thought, understanding flowering in his mind, everything coming clear at last.
If the sonar goes off—if Mia sends her message—the tunnels can be completed and the doors will open.

Joe said, “They’re forming all over the world. Tunnels. Passageways. Portals. Whatever you want to call them.”

Dieturlund roused himself. Nodded. “That’s right. Yes. And once Mia gives the word—assuming she
can
give the word—it will begin. Nothing to stop it after that.”

Ella said, “But I don’t understand. An escape hatch? What do you mean?”

The tunnel hovering in their thoughts drifted lazily, turning in space so that they were looking now directly into the mouth, over the gently arcing bell.

Shimmering threads of light, fine as spider silk, lined the fluid walls of the structure, receding into infinity.

Joe said, “They’ll swim into the tunnel—this one, others like it—and vanish. Disappear from the Earth. Mia will go last.”

Ella laughed. Not because she didn’t believe what Joe was saying, but because she did. Because the truth was so surprising.

When she’d touched Mia, she had established her own connection with the creature. And though the bond wasn’t as potent or powerful as what Joe and Dieturlund felt, it was there. It was real. She didn’t understand as completely as the two men—not yet—but she sensed the veracity of Joe’s statement, and found the implications alarming.

“You’re saying whales—the orcas—will leave.”

Dieturlund shook his head. “No, my dear,” he said softly. “Not
just
the orcas.”

He held Ella’s gaze, and when he spoke again, his voice was heavy with sadness. “Not just the orcas. And not just whales. Everything. Everything in the sea that can swim or crawl or walk. Predator and prey. Fish and mammal and invertebrate. Everything. In all of the seas.”

The old man’s words hung in the air, and Ella gawked at her companions, appalled. Stunned. “But the oceans will be dead.”

Dieturlund laughed bitterly, “They’re nearly dead now, child. We’ve seen to that. The oceans are terminally ill. A sickly, diseased mockery of what they used to be.”

“Yes, but…leave?” Ella couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What will happen to us? To people?”

“We should have thought of that a long time ago. Shown more restraint. Less hubris.”

Ella stared at him. “But they haven’t given us a chance! If people knew what was happening—”

Dieturlund scowled. “People
know
what’s happening, Ms. Tollefson. The ones in power. The ones who could actually do something. And they haven’t lifted a finger.” He rose from his chair and jabbed at another huge chart on the wall.

“The oceans are thirty percent more acidic now than they were a half century ago, thanks to climate change. To all the crap we pump into the air. Policy makers know this, and they have computer models that show where we’ll be in another two decades, when the acidity is fifty percent or higher. Answer: everything dies in that kind of environment. Everything except for algae, single-celled organisms. They know this and they do nothing!

 “What’s happening to the oceans, Ms. Tollefson, to the Earth, is rape on an unprecedented scale. I don’t blame Mia—I don’t blame any of them—for wanting to get the hell out!”

The room went quiet again and the tension faded. The old man shrank back into his chair, looking tired. Worn out.

Ella sat quietly. Joe held her hand.

He said to Dieturlund, “You’re worried about something, aren’t you? Something to do with Mia’s plan.”

Dieturlund sighed. Looked away.

“Isn’t that right?”

The old man nodded reluctantly. “The two men who were here earlier—”

“Beck,” said Joe. “And his cohort.”

“They didn’t use their real names…” 

Joe waited.

The old man sighed miserably. “I fear I told them too much.”

Joe said nothing.

“One of the men is a scientist. A very smart man. He understands a great deal. More than I realized at first. I didn’t take him seriously.”

Joe waited.

Dieturlund shook his head, close to tears. “He’s going to try to stop Mia, or interfere somehow. Try to keep the tunnels open so he can exploit them.”

“
Could
he do that?”

The old man, his voice full of anguish, replied, “I don’t know.”

Ella barely heard Joe and Dieturlund’s exchange. She couldn’t get past what the old man had said. Couldn’t process it.

They’re leaving. Going away. Going somewhere else. Never coming back.

It was astounding news. Staggering news. Overwhelming. Difficult to process at the best of times. But now, after all that had transpired—

It was too much. She was so tired.

They’re leaving, and the oceans will be empty. Desolate. Barren.

Too much.

Imagine the wars…the famine…once people figure out what’s happened. It’s—

Too much.

She pushed it aside and focused on Joe—on the reason they’d come to see Dieturlund in the first place. Thought about the trembling she’d seen in Joe’s hands.

She lifted her eyes. The men were still talking, but she didn’t care.

“Excuse me. Professor.”

Dieturlund and Joe turned.

“You said earlier that Mia loves Joe. That she’s grateful for all he’s done.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Joe thinks that she’s also sad for him. Worried. Mia told him that she touched other men, before him, and that they all died. Joe said she’s sad because she thinks the same thing is going to happen to him.”

Dieturlund nodded and spoke softly, gently. “All of that is true, what you say about Mia’s concern. I can feel it as well. She is deeply troubled.”

Ella looked at him, expecting more. But he said nothing else.

She said, “But Mia’s wrong to be concerned, isn’t she?”

Dieturlund stared at his hands and remained silent.

“I mean, she doesn’t know Joe. She can’t know what will happen to him—just because of those other men.”

Dieturlund stayed quiet.

“Talk to me, please.” Her voice was trembling now.

Dieturlund sat in his chair. Sighed.

Ella looked at Joe, then at the old man, an edge of desperation in her voice. “Talk to us. Tell us what you know.”

Dieturlund lifted his head reluctantly. Looked first at Joe, then at Ella.

“Mia’s fear is well-founded. The other men
did
die, and she believes Joe will as well, that the contact they had will kill him.”

Ella glared. “That’s what
she
sees. But she doesn’t know, does she? She can’t know.”

Dieturlund muttered under his breath. Looked away.

Ella stepped from the bed and knelt in front of him.

“You survived,” she said. “You lived. You had multiple contacts with Mia and you’re still here.”

“Yes,” he replied gently, turning to face her again. “But my experience was different. Mia knew nothing of people then—when we met—and she was happy. She reached out to me because she was curious. Eager to learn. When she approached humans again—years later—everything had changed.”

Joe said, “Her baby had just died.”

“Yes. And she was full of rage. Hate. She had a goal in mind from the beginning: knocking out the sonar. But her desire went beyond that. She wanted blood. Revenge. Wanted to inflict pain and death on people. So she approached the other men—and you—violently, antagonistically, wielding her thoughts like weapons. She is filled with regret now.”

Ella lost the battle to keep her emotions—and her fatigue—in check, and tears flooded her eyes. “So that’s it. Mia did her thing and now Joe’s just…just done?”

Joe knelt next to Ella and put his arm around her waist. “Ella—listen—”

Dieturlund said, “I didn’t say that. Joe is young and strong. And Mia does not know everything. You’re right about that. There is a great deal she doesn’t understand about humans. Joe might well have a different outcome than the other men.”

Ella took a tissue from a box on Dieturlund’s nightstand and wiped her eyes. “So now what do we do? Can you tell us that? Help us?”

Dieturlund looked at them. “I know contact changes our brains.
Physically
alters our brains. But I don’t know the mechanism. I don’t have that kind of expertise.”

He sighed. “Mia wishes she could reverse what she set in motion, but she can’t. But a doctor
might
be able to. If the physical change she caused is akin to a tumor, they could treat it. Keep it from progressing.”