Secrets of the Deep (38 page)

Last, he entrusted Jake with his subcompact camera, with orders to snap a few photographs of whatever happened.

Dani stood near him, holding Teddy in her arms, as she always did when she was nervous. The carrot-head was the only one who’d brought an umbrella.

“Just in case,” she had said, and Lil stood under it with her, wide-eyed.

Red sat on the beach, wings folded, his golden eyes observing all with placid interest, while his long, tufted tail slowly swished back and forth across the sand.

“For the record, I don’t like it,” Maddox said, hands on hips.

“You don’t like anything,” Isabelle said under her breath, pushing the goggles up higher onto her nose.

Archie turned to her, the ends of his lab coat flapping a bit in the light breeze as the surf rolled on just a few yards away. Farther out from the shore, the
Turtle
dozed on her moorings, with only the upper curve of her hull visible above the waves.

“Let’s be sure and take down baseline readings on all the instruments,” said Archie.

“Done,” Isabelle reported.

“Good! Then we’re ready?”

“Ready, Doctor.”

“Sapphira, please come forward.” He beckoned her over and lifted the orb. “Try to remember exactly what you did to activate it.”

The elder mermaid reached for it. “Well, I started twisting it—”

“Ah, ah!” Archie stopped her. “
I’ll
do it. Just tell me. Did you begin by turning it on the horizontal or vertical planes?”

Sapphira looked at him, then gazed at the orb and shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just playing with it…at random.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Very well. Please watch carefully in case it does anything you remember.” Archie then made the first cautious twist of the orb’s segments, but he didn’t get far. They all waited silently while he struggled to get the segments to twist, to no avail. “The dented side is blocking parts of it from turning.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Jake suggested, glancing over at Dani.

“Humph. You would say that, coz. Thing survives unscathed for thousands of years, then you get your hands on it, and look what happens.”

“Ha ha,” Jake retorted.

“Here.” Nixie picked up the hammer she had seen fit to contribute—she did like bashing things, after all—and handed it to Archie.

“Oh, very well. So much for finesse!” He set the orb on the table and gave it a few cautious taps around the edges of the dent. “That should at least loosen it up a bit.”

Isabelle diligently recorded the changes made to the surface of the orb.

Then he tried again, and gasped. “It went! Izzy: center section, one hundred eighty degrees positive rotation on the X plane. Next, let’s try the vertical. Ninety degrees positive rotation of the right-hand section on the Y plane. Now the top section on the X plane. Let’s go ninety degrees negative turn this time.”

Izzy made a note, then looked up attentively. Still nothing happened.

“Two hundred seventy degrees negative rotation of the bottom section now. X plane.”

“Very good,” said his assistant.

Sapphira folded her arms across her chest, peering at his progress. “I thought you didn’t like random.”

“This isn’t random, Your Highness. I’m trying to line up these squiggly hieroglyphs here, with the triangle on the end.”

“Aha.” The mermaid took a cautious step backward.

“Ninety degrees negative rotations now of the left-hand section, Y plane…”

They looked on as this process was repeated again and again, Archie choosing his twists of the orb segments carefully, trying to line up the symbols that had struck him as important. Occasionally, he had to give sections of the orb a gentle tap of the hammer to persuade them to turn.

Maddox sat down cross-legged on the sand, bored.

Jake waited with the camera. Red lay down under the table with the instruments, napping in the shade.

“Science is boring,” Jake mouthed silently at Dani a few minutes later.

She grinned.

But it didn’t stay boring very long. After all, the boy genius never took no for an answer when it came to his unending quest for knowledge. Obviously, he possessed more patience than the rest of them put together, and, Archie being Archie, he eventually got his result.

“Hullo,” he murmured as the little chips of glasslike rocks around the rim of the orb suddenly started flickering. “Sapphira?”

“Yes?” She rushed over to him. “Yes, that’s what it did for me!”

“Isabelle: notate lights flashing around the edges in a definite pattern, but it’s too quick for me to follow.”

“Lights,” she echoed. “Noted.”

Jake stepped forward with the camera. Rather fascinated now, he snapped a picture of the lights dancing around the orb, then moved back again, quickly sliding out the plate and replacing it with a fresh one to be ready for the next shot.

“Did it vibrate first before the lights started, sort of like a shiver?” Sapphira asked Archie, wide-eyed as she watched.

“Er, no,” he said while the colored crystal chips flickered all around the edges of the orb.

Sapphira gestured at it. “Give it one more turn, then.”

“Which way?”

“I don’t know! Any way. But you’re close. There should be a shiver and a hum, then it will…sort of unfold.”

“Unfold?”

“I don’t know! It’s hard to explain!” she said.

Archie cast his sister a disapproving glance at such unspecific language; Izzy shook her head, frowning discreetly.

“Very well,” the young scientist conceded, and gave the orb’s segments one last twist. “Negative one hundred eighty degrees of the center section on the X plane.” A small yelp escaped him just then.

“What happened?” Nixie demanded.

“I warned you it would vibrate.”

“Still, I wasn’t expecting that.”

Suddenly, Teddy growled, staring at the orb. Red, too, picked up his head and looked at it, his tufted ears flattened.

“The animals hear something,” Isabelle said.

“Ow! So do I,” Maddox said, clapping his hands over his ears. Guardians
did
possess supernaturally heightened senses, after all. He rose to his feet. “Turn it off!”

Still in Dani’s arms, Teddy started barking at the orb. She tried to quiet him, but a moment later, they all could hear the sound already assaulting the more sensitive ears of the animals and Maddox: a low-frequency hum pulsating out of the orb.

It was swiftly growing into a loud, horrendous whine.

Teddy was wriggling in Dani’s arms. As soon as she put him down, both he and Red ran up the beach stairs to escape the sound.

Maddox followed in obvious pain. He kept his hands over his ears. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Jake looked at him in concern, but Archie was still concentrating on his experiment.

“Isabelle, note the time the hum started.”

“Yes, doctor. Um…” She leaned closer to instruments on the table. “We’ve got a change in the barometer reading. The pressure’s dropping.”

“Is it now?” Archie murmured.

“Two point nine zero inches,” she replied.

“I don’t like that sound. It buzzes in my middle,” Lil complained, clutching her stomach.

“It’s all right.” Sapphira went and put her arm around her little sister, then glanced at Jake. “Be ready to take another picture,” she warned. “The unfolding comes next.”

Dani turned and looked after Maddox uncertainly as he ran up the beach stairs, still holding his ears, but Jake aimed the camera’s lens at the orb, ready.

“Wind speed’s picking up, nearing twenty knots,” Isabelle informed her brother as the cup anemometer began to turn faster in the rising wind.

Click!
went the orb.

“Would you look at that!” Archie murmured.

Jake snapped another picture just as the segments of the orb began flipping down one by one and snapping into place, transforming the artifact from a round sphere into a flattened disk shape.

He quickly changed out the film plate again and took another shot of the now-exposed inside portion of the object, where a whole new array of buttons and hieroglyphs had become visible.

“Well, it certainly seems to know what it’s doing,” the genius mused aloud, while Isabelle was struggling to keep up with jotting down all the changes in the orb and the instrument readings.

The brisk wind made her lab coat flap around her and riffled the edges of her notepad.

Thunder rumbled overhead just then, drawing their attention to the dark clouds that had begun swirling directly over their beach. Farther out in all directions, though, the afternoon sky was as blue as ever.

“Archie, put the thing down,” Nixie said, while Jake snapped another picture, this time of the sky.

“She’s right. Next comes the spinning,” said Sapphira. “You don’t want to be holding on to it for that—trust me.”

“Look at the waves, everybody!” Lil exclaimed, pointing at the water.

Sure enough, though high tide was hours away, the waves were gathering force, growing white-capped and agitated.

“I’ll get the reading!” Isabelle ran to squint at the wave heights on the yardstick, marking them down.

Dani backed away as Archie gingerly carried the disk over to the table and set it down. “Um, how exactly are you going to shut it off when you’re done with your experiment, Arch?” she asked.

“No idea,” he said absently.

Hearing this, she glanced at Jake in alarm. Seeing the worry on her face, and having watched Red and Maddox retreat, Jake couldn’t help feeling that this experiment had gone far enough.

Especially when the first fat raindrop plopped down on the center of his forehead.

He wiped it off and looked up in surprise at the dark clouds thickening overhead.
Uh-oh.

Was this how Noah’s Flood got started?

“Rain!” Dani exclaimed, turning her hand palm up in wonder as a few large drops plunked down to the sand here and there.

“Ack!” said Isabelle, running over to Dani’s umbrella to save her notes from the isolated shower that began falling only on their beach.

Jake rushed to seal up the leather case of film plates before they got wet, then hurriedly collapsed and closed the camera.

Lil giggled riotously, pointing at the blue sky beyond the rain’s definite boundaries. Everywhere except over the Villa di Palma and their private beach, it was still a bright, balmy Mediterranean afternoon.

“Just be glad it’s not salt water, little one,” Jake teased the younger mermaid, wiping another raindrop off his nose. But he glanced again at Archie. “Well, coz, you got the thing working. That’s enough of a trial run, don’t you think?”

“Hmm, yes. For now, I’m satisfied. This has been excellent progress.”

Unfortunately, the orb wasn’t satisfied; it looked like it was only getting started. As Archie reached for it, it levitated off the table.

His cousin turned to him in surprise. “Are you making it do that?”

“No,” said Jake with an equally puzzled shrug.

“I told you!” said Sapphira.

“The lights on top are going crazy!” Dani pointed out.

The pitch of the frequency was getting higher, too. The orb now hovered about a foot off the table, giving off pulsating waves of mysterious energy.

“Marvelous,” the scientist murmured to himself, staring at it.

“Time to turn it off, Arch,” Isabelle ordered.

He glanced at her, distracted. “Perhaps you’re right.”

But just as he reached out and grasped one edge of the disk, it yanked out of his hand and began to spin. “Egads!”

“I warned you it would do that!” Sapphira exclaimed.

“Yes, but you’re a proven liar, aren’t you?” Archie said. “Now, everyone be quiet and let me think! Not exactly sure…”

He tried a few more times to grab it, but it just pulled free of his hand as it whirled in place.

“Think faster, Arch,” Dani mumbled as more thunder rumbled directly overhead. The rain gathered force and became a steady downpour.

Apparently this was not a threat to the instruments, which were made to weather the outdoors. The cup anemometer was spinning crazily now with the wind gaining speed, the barometer still dropping.

Lil left the umbrella to Dani and Isabella, leaving its cover to twirl and dance around on the sand in the rain, laughing.

The rest of them were getting drenched, as well, but no one seemed to mind, since the day had been hot and the air very dry. It felt good, as far as Jake was concerned. Still, he had no desire to be in a flood, if that was what came next.

He also noticed that the storm clouds that had gathered over their beach were now spreading in all directions and blotting out more of the fine Sicilian sunshine.

The windblown rain pelted them on an angle, but the wetness made Archie’s efforts to grab hold of the whirling disk all the more impossible.

The waves were now tossing angrily, churning white. Lil waved to her seahorse when Wallace popped his head up from the surf and looked around as if to say,
What the deuce is going on up there?

Then lightning flashed overhead.

Lil screeched and dove for cover under the instrument table, while particles of blowing sand began to sting their eyes, carried on the wind.

Isabelle did her best to protect her notes, and Dani the leather case of photographic plates even as the gusts threatened to flip their umbrella inside out.

“Isn’t this fun,” Nixie muttered.

Only the two mermaid sisters seemed perfectly at home in the rain, considering they were used to dwelling in water.

Meanwhile, the noise from the orb was growing deafening now. Archie’s wet lab coat whipped around him, while the deep, low, vibrating hum was slowly climbing to a high metallic screech, like an incessant ringing in the ears, and the disk spun faster and faster.

The colors of the whirling lights around it seemed imbued now with veiled malevolence. It seemed to be operating with a wicked mind of its own.

Archie was still trying to figure the thing out. “I imagine they must’ve had a whole array of these, not just one,” he remarked as he puzzled over it, not yet looking too alarmed.