Return to Atlantis: A Novel (36 page)

“We’ll keep it to three, then. The only person who should put up with Eddie’s armpits is his wife. And even then …”

“Oi!” protested her husband.

Hayter was still displeased with the prospect. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Nina?”

“This won’t be my first time underwater, Lewis. And if you’re worried about having your boss looking over your shoulder, don’t be. Until we uncover the last of the Atlantean text I’ll only be there as an observer, and even then it’s still your dig.”

That mollified him, however slightly. “Well, I suppose that if Matt’s happy to have you as passengers …”

Matt shrugged. “No problem for me.”

“Excellent,” said Nina. She got to her feet. “In that case, let’s go and find out the fate of Atlantis.”

It took more than the predicted hour, the safety procedures being slowed by the
Gant
’s wallowing, but eventually both submersibles were descending toward the ruins of Atlantis.

Even though she knew there would be nothing to see until they reached the ocean floor eight hundred feet below, Nina nevertheless leaned around Matt in the central pilot’s position to watch their descent through the large acrylic bubble window. The light from the surface faded surprisingly quickly, the cold blue of the ocean outside becoming darker and more ominous before ultimately turning to darkness.

Matt switched on the sub’s spotlights. Nina experienced an oddly vertiginous feeling; the intense beams picked out particles in the water as the submersible dropped past them, the effect making it seem as though they were plunging like a falling elevator.

But she knew they were perfectly safe. Nothing might be visible through the viewport, but Matt’s sub was
equipped with a LIDAR laser scanning system that swept the ocean around them far beyond the range of the human eye. The engineer had used similar systems in his previous craft, but this went a step farther by covering a full 360 degrees.
Sharkdozer II
was an odd-looking vessel: Its main hull was a fairly standard cigar shape, but protruding from each side like the steroidal limbs of a bodybuilder were huge mechanical arms, almost comically out of proportion with the rest of the sub. Making them even stranger were the tool-equipped secondary arms sprouting from behind their wrists, designed for more delicate work than the brute-force claws of their parents. The whole submersible was mounted upon four helicopter-like skids, each of which could be independently adjusted hydraulically to give it as much lifting leverage as possible against the ocean floor. The LIDAR scanner, allied with the cameras on each of the four “hands,” meant the arms could be operated even if they were out of direct sight of a viewport.

The only thing currently on the LIDAR display was the expedition’s other sub.
Gypsy
was some thirty yards to their right, the spears of its own spotlights visible through a small secondary porthole. It was a much more conventional vessel, equipped with a single, far smaller manipulator arm and numerous camera mounts and sample racks. Hayter’s voice crackled over the radio. “Passing three hundred feet, confirm.”

“Confirm,” Matt replied. Radio communications were possible underwater, but only at very limited ranges, and the message was already distorted.

Eddie examined the controls for the arms. Rather than being simple joysticks, they were also able to bend and twist. “How much can these things lift?”

“If the sub’s properly braced on the seabed, up to three tons,” Matt told him. “If I’m free-floating and holding it on the thrusters, about half that.” He activated the autopilot to hold
Sharkdozer
on its descent and took one of the arm controls. “Here, check this out.”

The submersible tipped slightly on its port side as he
moved the left stick to swing the corresponding arm outward. A turn and twist, and its claw came into view through the forward viewport, steel glinting in the spotlights. He worked a smaller videogame-like thumbstick. “Wave hello to Nina and Eddie!” The claw obediently waggled up and down.

“Cute,” said Nina.

“Wait till you see this.” A flick of a switch, and he worked the smaller control again. The secondary arm unfolded and reached out to tap gently on the thick bubble with a rubber-tipped “finger.” A computer graphic superimposed over the LIDAR display showed exactly where both arms were positioned relative to the sub. “That’s some real precision engineering there. I could sign my name at a thousand feet down with that.”

“I think it’d ruin your pen, though,” said Eddie. The Australian grinned and returned the arms to their original places.

“Typical guys,” Nina scoffed. “We’re on our way to one of the most important archaeological sites in the world, and all you care about are your big-boys’ toys.”

Matt laughed, then took back the main controls. Both submersibles continued their long fall into the cold, dark void.

After some time, an electronic chirp from the instruments told the trio that something had changed. “What is it?” Nina asked. “Are we there?”

“Nearly,” said Matt. “Look at that.”

He pointed at the LIDAR display. Something had appeared at the bottom of the screen, a tangled, twisted mass that at first glance resembled some sort of seaweed. But it was no plant. A grid overlaid on the image showed the scale: It was hundreds of feet across, and growing larger as the sub’s descent brought more of it into LIDAR range. “What is it? It can’t be the wreck of the
Evenor
, it’s too big.”

“No, but it is a wreck,” Matt told her. “It’s the SBX.”

Nina felt a chill at the realization that she was looking at a mass grave. Before Atlantis’s existence had been officially
revealed to the world, the IHA had been secretly exploring the ruins under the cover of SBX-2, a giant American floating radar platform ostensibly deployed to monitor the threat of missiles being fired into Europe from North Africa. It had been sabotaged and sunk, with the loss of over seventy lives. The mangled state of the wreckage meant that some of the bodies had still not been recovered.

“Jesus, look at that,” Eddie said quietly as more of the sunken station was revealed. SBX-2 had capsized, landing on the seafloor with its six great pontoon supports sticking up like the legs of a dead insect. The superstructure had been crushed beneath them by their weight, girders jabbing outward from the rusting ruins.

“We’re about four hundred meters from the main dig site,” Matt announced solemnly, making a course adjustment. The ghostly wreckage on the display slowly disappeared behind them. It was replaced by the contours of the seabed as
Sharkdozer
neared the end of its journey.

Other shapes appeared, not the smooth curves of current-swept silt but the angular outlines of human constructions, standing out where the sediment of millennia had been cleared from around them. Nina couldn’t help but draw in an astounded breath.

Atlantis.

She had discovered its location, overseen its exploration by the IHA. But this was the first time she had ever visited the ruins in person. She leaned forward again, shoulder to shoulder with Matt. “How long before we can see it for real?” she asked, excited.

“A little room, please?” the Australian asked, nudging her with his elbow as he tweaked the controls. She reluctantly retreated—about three inches. “Give us thirty seconds, and the first thing we’ll see will be the Temple of the Gods.” He pointed it out on the LIDAR screen. “Then after that, we’ll be at the Temple of Poseidon.”

The wait was almost intolerable. Nina moved forward again, not even another nudge from Matt sufficient to
move her back. She stared intently into the darkness outside. Then …

“There!” she cried. “There it is!”

Her first true sight of the ruins of Atlantis hazed into view through the murk. It didn’t appear particularly impressive, just the collapsed remains of a building—but to her it was utterly breathtaking. A civilization lost for eleven thousand years, discovered through the work and dedication of first her parents and then herself … and now she was finally seeing it firsthand. “Oh my God. That is incredible …” She felt as though she was about to cry.

Eddie punctured her bubble. “Great. We’ve come to the bottom of the Atlantic to look at a building site.”

“Shut. Up!”

They approached what was left of the Temple of the Gods. Compared with some of the other majestic structures the expedition had unearthed, it was not particularly big—an oval perhaps seventy feet across at its longest. Large sections of its walls had toppled outward, giving the impression that it had exploded from within.

“So that’s where they kept this sky stone?” Eddie asked.

“That’s right,” said Nina. “It’s quite an unusual place, actually. Atlantean temples are usually devoted to a single god, but this was dedicated to … well, dozens of them, as far as we can tell. Although now that we know about the sky stone from the rest of the Kallikrates text, there might be an explanation. Nantalas said that it contained the power of the gods—plural. So the Atlanteans made sure to honor them all.”

“If they knew there was something special about the meteor, enough for ’em to build a temple to put it in, why didn’t they use its power right away?”

Nina looked out at the broken building as they glided past. “There could be any number of reasons. They might have been afraid of it; the text said that some of the royal court were opposed to using its power. Or maybe they didn’t originally have all three statues—or
anyone who could use them. It was obviously a big thing for Nantalas to be able to channel earth energy, so it could have been as rare an ability then as it is now, even among Atlanteans.”

“Maybe you’re her great-great-great-great-et-cetera-granddaughter,” Eddie suggested.

Nina treated the jokey comment with more seriousness. “Maybe. I’m descended from
someone
from Atlantis, so who knows?”

The collapsed temple disappeared from view. Beyond it, something far larger came into sight.

The Temple of Poseidon.

Even after the destruction wrought upon it by the impact of the sunken
Evenor
, it was still an imposing structure. The submersible was approaching its northern end, where Eddie had first entered the temple five years earlier. An enormous wall of dark stone rose out of the sediment, stepped in tiers like a ziggurat near its base before curving smoothly inward to form a great arched roof.

Nina noticed a sudden tension in her husband at the sight. “Hugo?” she asked quietly. Eddie gave her a silent nod; one of his closest friends had died here. Matt also became uncharacteristically somber for a moment. Eddie had not been the only one to suffer a loss at Atlantis.

The submersible drew closer. “That’s the tunnel,” said Eddie, pointing at a small hole in the wall. The shaft had been constructed by the Atlanteans as a secret passage leading directly to the altar room.

“You don’t need to crawl through a little hole to get inside now,” said Matt as he guided the
Sharkdozer
toward the roof. The wreck of the
Evenor
came into sight, a long white ax that had sliced the four-hundred-foot-long temple in two. Something bright flickered in the gloom atop the rubble. “There’s the altar room.”

He brought the sub into a hover near the object, a marker pole covered in reflective material that caught the spotlights. Not far from it was a twisted mass of metal—part of the
Evenor
’s superstructure. The excavated
sections of the altar room were visible before it, orichalcum sheets glinting on the walls.

Gypsy
moved ahead of them and came to a stop above the dig site. “
Sharkdozer
in position, confirm,” said Matt over the radio.

“Read you,
Sharkdozer
,” Hayter’s crackly voice replied. “
Gypsy
also in position.”

“Roger that.” Matt turned to Nina and Eddie. “This is the boring part, I’m afraid.”

“That’s okay,” said Nina. “I want to watch the whole thing. You never know what might turn up.”

“I’ll give it a miss,” Eddie said. He took a creased paperback thriller from inside his leather jacket and thumbed it open. “Been meaning to finish this for ages. I got interrupted by the whole wanted-for-murder business. I’ll just read it while you’re telling Matt how to dig.”

“I’m not going to do that,” she assured Matt.

“Too bloody right you’re not!” the Australian replied with mock offense as he took the manipulator controls. “Okay,
Gypsy
, I’m ready to start.”

The other submersible moved closer, spotlights and cameras panning for a clearer view as Matt began the long and involved task of removing the debris covering the altar room. The first priority was the wreckage from the
Evenor;
even though most of it had already been cut away, it was still a hefty chunk of steel heavier than the
Sharkdozer
could lift using its thrusters alone. It wasn’t until the sub touched down on top of the temple and used its skids to brace itself that the arms could apply enough leverage to start raising the broken section of superstructure.

It took the better part of an hour to get it safely clear. Once it had been dumped in the silt away from the building, work began in earnest. None of the fallen slabs was as heavy as the ship debris, but they were still fairly massive in their own right.