The Sound of Seas (11 page)

“Let's talk after we see the physician,” she suggested.

Qala hesitated. It was a look of a woman who was not accustomed to having her orders replied to with an alternate suggestion.

“The boy first,” Qala agreed. “Then you will share what you know.”

“Even what you might not believe?” Caitlin asked.

“Everything,”
the
Standor
said, strongly emphasizing her words with a movement of her hands.

Caitlin nodded firmly.

Draped over Qala's shoulder, looking at Caitlin, Vilu responded by signing at her. Caitlin's heart began to rise in her chest: once again, the gestures were not Galderkhaani.

“This is not the
Nautilus
?” he said. “Am I dreaming?”

“You are awake, sweetheart,” Caitlin replied.

“I can hear,” the boy continued, in signed English. “I know it's you—but why don't you look like you?”

“It's . . . complicated, baby,” Caitlin replied in English. She suddenly felt her grasp of the Galderkhaani language slipping, and not because she was communicating in English. The tingling had suddenly returned to the back of her neck.

“Kuvez ma tulo
?” Qala asked, turning the boy's face from Caitlin.

She looked at Qala sharply. “I . . . understand . . . not,” she said in broken Galderkhaani, her arms fumbling with gestures that had been so easy a moment before.

“
Buz eija
lot
?”

“Christ God, no!” Caitlin responded in English, grabbing for Vilu.

But her fingers found no purchase, either falling short or else she had turned—she couldn't be sure, for at the same time Caitlin's vision grew misty, as if she were seeing through tears. And then she
was
seeing tears, weeping and screaming inside and out as the world swirled away and she fell to the floor of the airship gondola and found herself once more in blackness.

The last word she heard was “Mother!”

• • •

“Mother?”

Caitlin awoke looking into her mother's eyes. They were framed in a familiar, worried face that was barely visible against a bright overhead light.

“Doctor!” Nancy O'Hara called.

Caitlin heard her mother, heard her own voice through the folds of a stiff pillow that was bunched up against her ears. There was something in her nose, something in her arm, something on a finger—

“Ja-Jacob,” Caitlin rasped. Her throat was raw, sore, not at all like it felt in Galderkhaan. The air was machine-blown, unnatural, unhealthy. Everything around her reeked of illness. Her shoulders ached as though her arms had been pulled at, hard. When she opened her eyes she had to blink several times to clear away a thin film of gunk that was on them. Her face smelled of rubbing alcohol, beneath which there was a hint of—ash? Smoke? In her hair?

Why was that there?
she wondered. The last thing she had felt was clean air and tears. The last thing she had smelled was the strong smell of hemp. The last thing she had heard, and the last thing she had seen—

“Vilu . . .” she wept softly. “Jacob.”

Nancy O'Hara had turned away and didn't hear her daughter. Caitlin heard her calling for someone. She tried to get up, felt—

That isn't the handrail of a gangplank
, she thought with horror that made her recoil. They were the aluminum bars of the hospital bed. Her eyes coming into focus now, she became aware of the equipment blinking and humming to her left. She saw her mother, but did not recognize the figure moving toward her through the open door.

A man in a lab coat bent over her, looked into her eyes. They still felt gummy; the tears she had felt had belonged to Bayarma, in Galderkhaan, not to her. The white light of an ophthalmoscope seemed to pin the back of her skull to the bed. She fell back as though she'd been shot. She tried to blink but two fingers firmly held one eye open, then the other. The man said something she couldn't quite make out.

“. . . haf pen anywar?”

“S-sorry?” Caitlin said. “I don't . . . don't understand.”

“Do you have pain anywhere?”

“I—I don't know . . . arm . . . IV?”

“Yes.”

“No . . . I'm numb. Shit, I'm back.”

“Just rest,” the man said as he killed the light. The hospital room came into clear focus. Caitlin saw an Asian man and her mother's face.

“Jacob,” Caitlin said to Nancy O'Hara. “Where is he?”

“Honey, Jacob is home, with your father,” Nancy assured her.

“No!” Caitlin cried. “I mean—his soul. His spirit.
Him
. Where is he?”

“Where? Caitlin, I promise you, he's home, he's all right,” she insisted.

“No, please listen,” Caitlin said. She tried to rise again from her pillow, from the bed. “Something has
happened
to him!” she said, her fingers fumbling with the bedrail. “He needs me!”

There was talk, there was movement, there were hands on Caitlin's shoulders and legs. Caitlin struggled against all of it.

“Let me go! Ben? Ben!”

“Calm down, Dr. O'Hara,” a male voice said soothingly. “You've inhaled a lot of smoke and were nonresponsive—”

“Dammit, I'm fine!
Fine!
” Caitlin yelled. “I am
not
suffering from disorientation, confusion, delirium, or any goddamn thing else!”

“. . . five milliliters,” she heard the doctor say over his shoulder.

“Mom,
call
Dad—ask him to check on my boy!”

There was a pinch, an injection of diazepam, and Caitlin stopped struggling almost at once.

“Goddammm,” she slurred. “Please! No! Must . . . get . . . back . . .”

And then she slept.

CHAPTER 9

M
ikel Jasso couldn't believe his good fortune—or his bad luck.

Casey Skett, master of dead things, apparently knew people better than Mikel did. It was too early to say how any of this would turn out but, against the odds, the archaeologist had gotten more than he asked for. Indeed, now that Mikel thought of it, Skett was more artful and clever than any of them: he had fooled Flora Davies for years.
That
took skill.

As he and Dr. Cummins made their way through the station to where the truck was parked, the scientist was busy checking the latest images of drifts and ice cracking along the proposed route to the pit.

“The fractures don't seem to have made it this far,” she said. “Readings from our remote automated systems say the heat has quite receded.”

“It's fickle,” he said.

“You talk as if it has consciousness,” Dr. Cummins remarked. “Does it, Dr. Jasso?”

“Thoughtful fire? What would Dr. Bundy say to that,” he answered without answering.

Dr. Cummins
hmmmed
as they walked on in silence.

Mikel was peering ahead, through the alternating light and dark of the interconnected modules, his mind back on Skett . . . and Flora. He was not sure how he even felt anymore about Flora and the Group. He did not believe it was incumbent on any employer to keep employees informed on the inner workings of the firm. Either you trusted your superior or you did not.

But
this
withholding . . . that's a big one
, he thought.

Mikel had trusted Flora and now he did not, and he wasn't sure where that left him. If she didn't know everything about the Group's past, she had to have known—and withheld—at least some vital information about why they were seeking Galderkhaani artifacts. That was a dangerous secret to keep from agents in the field. Mikel and the handful of others should have been given the option of whether to risk their lives to obtain and turn over such powerful tools for something other than pure research.

What was more troubling was that he couldn't even be sure she was not playing Casey Skett or both of them playing him. Bad cop, worse cop.

Nonetheless, he had no choice but to let this play out as Skett had laid things out. At the very least, Mikel told himself, he
would
learn more about the power of the stones.

The truck assigned to Dr. Cummins was a Toyota Tacoma. It sat hefty and fat on the ice just outside the exit of the central red module.

“I was hoping for a dozer,” Dr. Cummins said. “The treads are good for getting over small crevasses, the plow for filling them in.”

“Maybe Dr. Bundy doesn't want us to get where we're going,” Mikel suggested.

The woman shook her head as she pulled on a wool cap then tugged her parka over it. “He's a snob, and gruff, but he's devoted to science and learning and, believe it or not, to this evolving mission.”

Mikel would have to take her word for that. He found it appropriate that while he had lost faith in one woman, he did not hesitate to trust the judgment of another. That was the bequest of his grand
mother in Pamplona, a borderline mystic who knew her Bible inside out and also read everything she could find about obscure religions, talked to every priest she ever met, bounced new ideas, strange ideas, off her only grandson. Her interest in the arcane was what spurred his own fascination with ancient civilizations and set him on his career path. Even if his father hadn't been in prison for armed robbery, Mikel couldn't have had a more compelling and substantial role model.

The truck had been refitted for driving across the uneven Antarctic terrain. Resting atop forty-four-inch wheels with thick axles to absorb the rugged thumps and dips, the truck had an indomitable suspension system, side skids to prevent the truck from rolling over into a crevasse or sudden break in the ice, thirty-two gears for shifting out of almost any landscape, and a reinforced passenger cabin to protect the occupants against unlikely falls and landslides. There were also forward and rear winches, solar panels to supplement the 2,200-liter fuel tank, several additional tanks of gas, and a powerful V6 engine. On the roof rack were two insulated cases. One was filled with bottled water, oxygen, first-aid supplies, and battery-powered heaters. The other carried shovels, axes, ropes, pitons, blankets, flashlights, flares, spare clothing, and other gear.

No one had bothered to unload the truck from the last move; station personnel were still busy restoring communications and restarting the electrical systems that had been shut down during the unexpected transit. Dr. Cummins brought along a backpack filled with extra water and snacks; as soon as the vehicle was fueled, it was ready to go. Siem was busy taking care of that from a tank that was still attached to the skis that had been used to haul it here. He waved as the two scientists boarded.

The truck's solar panel had been left on and the inside was warm when the occupants settled in. The parkas, gloves, and scarves came off immediately. Though the gear had been needed for the fifteen-foot trek to the Tacoma, their skin would heat very quickly inside the
truck. They didn't want to perspire, since sweat would heat and chill their flesh to dangerous extremes.

Dr. Cummins raised her sun goggles just long enough to poke on the GPS. The coordinates had been entered from inside the radio room; the truck could practically drive itself. Before they got underway, the scientist looked at Mikel through her dark-tinted goggles.

“You are preoccupied,” she said. “With the mission?”

He nodded unpersuasively.

“But also by something else.”

He nodded again. “Political stuff at the nonprofit where I work,” he told her.

“Ah ha,” Dr. Cummins replied. “You know, Dr. Jasso, it's dangerous out there—”

“I'm focused, Dr. Cummins. Believe that. I won't do anything to jeopardize this mission.”

“I'm glad of that,” she said. “However, there's one more thing. How to put this?” She stopped everything for a moment and looked at Mikel. “As I indicated back there, I've been on many, many expeditions with fellow scientists. All ages, all nationalities, all kinds of temperaments, all kinds of
agendas
. I know when
not
to press a colleague for information. Many of them—and you too, I believe—are often uncertain about what they are about to undertake. They might be concerned about a vague goal, worried about censure for a radical idea, afraid because they flat-out lied to get funding, said they knew more than they did. That's Fieldwork 101. So all I'm going to ask is this: Which of those has caused you to clam up?”

She put a little extra burr on the last two words so they came out “clahm oop” and added a touch of levity to a serious question. Mikel smiled a little, then exhaled and stared out the window at the jagged expanse that headed to a rolling horizon.

“All of the above?” she prompted.

“That's a very fair analysis,” he admitted. He looked back at the weathered but compassionate face. “Dr. Cummins, I don't like clam
ming up. I don't learn anything when I can't share. So now that we're alone—we are, aren't we?”

“No hidden mics or open lines,” she assured him.

He nodded once. “Here's what I can say with certainty. I have spent my professional life studying a human civilization that, as I began to tell you, thrived approximately thirty or forty thousand years ago,” he said. “But it's possibly older than that. Much older, if they went through an evolution similar to our own.” He shrugged. “Even that may not be the case. I know absolutely nothing of their origins.”

He paused to let that sink in. Dr. Cummins needed the respite: she said “hmmm” three times before she nodded for Mikel to go on.

“My colleagues and I, and those who came before us—at least four centuries of researchers—thought the occupants of this land might have been protohumans of some kind,” he continued. “Recent experiences I had out there—” he pointed almost accusingly toward the ice, “have proved that idea to be incorrect. These people, the Galderkhaani, were modern in every sense of the word, with sophisticated structures and language, with ships that sailed in the air and sea—”

“Galderkhaani,” she said, making sure she got the name.

“Yes.”

“How?” she interrupted,
“How?”

“You mean, what was the scientific mechanism that created ancient technology, or how did we not know an advanced civilization was out there?”

“All of that!” she said. She switched on the ignition and the truck hummed loudly, a fine vibration tingling through the seat, as she put it into drive and set out. “For starters, just biologically speaking, there is no model of evolution that places modern humans in that time ­period.”

“I am very aware of that,” Mikel said.

“Have you seen a likeness? A carving.”

“I have seen . . . yes. They had ruddy, exotic eyes, but . . . well, they
were groomed, clothed in togalike garments. They had a complex language. They were not Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon. They were
Homo sapiens
.”

“Dr. Jasso, are there remains out there?”

“There is
so
much
out there,” he answered. He needed to lay a little more groundwork before diving into the spiritual nature of his contact with the Galderkhaani. “As I sit here, looking out at the world, our world, I can hardly believe the things I've seen and heard. But it's all real. More to the point, that explosion we saw, it
is
linked to ancient conduits that ran beneath the cities, powered by various mechanisms using the heat and flow of deep pools of magma. Something caused the prime conduit, what they called the Source, to overload and destroy the entire civilization. Pompeii writ very, very large.” He nodded ahead. “The pillar of fire we saw was a surviving part of that.”

“And the face within?”

“A surviving spirit,” Mikel told her.

That stopped her, again. After a long moment she asked, “You've seen it?”

“Yes,” he said. Then went on: “And others.”

“Living Galder . . . Galderkhaani?” she asked, pressing him.

“No,” he said. “They were spirit.”

Now she made a face. “That's just great.”

“I didn't imagine it, hallucinate it, or make it up,” he said.

“You broke your wrist, bruised your face. You appear to have taken quite a beating—”

“So I could have hit my head and imagined everything I just told you? Yes. That is possible,” Mikel said. “Only that isn't what happened.”

He held off telling her about the olivine tiles that were like sophisticated living neurons. He didn't want to hand her so much seeming fantasy that she turned back.

“Fine, Dr. Jasso, you didn't dream these things and they're not the result of a concussion. But what evidence do you have for any of it?” Her expression, like her voice, was suddenly very dubious.

“It's all out there,” he gestured ahead. “If you go down into that pit, enter the tunnels, I have no doubt you will see ruined structures under the ice. You may see conduits that were used to transport the ancients via wind—”

“Wind?”

“Incredible wind generated by the heat of the magma,” he said.

She made another face. “So now they were not just ancient humans, they had wings?”

“Sleds,” he said. “Made of a substance similar to this.”

Mikel reached into his pocket; it was time. He withdrew the
hortatur
mask he had used to help him breathe. He passed it to her.

“Lord Jesus,” she said, slowing the truck as she stared. “Is that from—”

“It's Galderkhaani, yes.”

Stopping the truck on a flat, smooth patch of compacted ice, Dr. Cummins stared at the ancient mask then started to reach for it but stopped.

“Are you sure it is safe to touch?” she asked. “Without gloves, I mean?”

He nodded. She took the mask, felt the texture between her thumb and index finger.

“You're a glaciologist, Dr. Cummins, I'm sure you've been around Arctic and Antarctic life,” Mikel said. “Tell me, what animal does that come from?”

“It feels almost like seal,” she said. “Walrus, perhaps.”

“It's from a creature called a
shavula
, a kind of sea ram with fangs,” he said.

“You know that how?” she asked. “From their writings?”

“There are libraries out there, down there,” he said evasively. “Very comprehensive. I can read them.”

“It's still oily,” she said. “How is that possible? Did you treat it?”

“No,” he said. “I don't know how it was treated—though it wasn't exposed to the elements for millennia, so that may change. Swiftly.”

She returned the mask to Mikel and started up again. “Why didn't
you tell all this to Dr. Bundy? He's rough around the hem but he's not here for his health. He has a right to know.”

“That was not the time and place to explain,” Mikel said. “There are time-sensitive reasons for going out there. And I didn't want him using it as a reason to delay. You know, sending it to the lab, waiting for results.”

“What could be that ‘time sensitive' about a dead civilization? Did you open a tomb? Are artifacts decaying?”

“It will be easier if I show you when we get there,” Mikel replied.

They drove for a short period in silence. Then Dr. Cummins said, “When we saw that pillar of fire in the air, we thought we heard a voice. Strange words. So, that might have been Galderkhaani?”

“I am fairly certain it was,” he replied.

“Spoken by—a spirit? A ghost?”

“Something like that,” Mikel told her.

“Christ in his heaven,” Dr. Cummins said. “That was the real reason Siem went back to collect you, that he was allowed to go back at all,” the scientist went on. “He said that you were the only one who might be able to explain. But then you lost credibility with Eric Trout when you commandeered that vehicle. He decided you were—‘unhinged' was the word he used.”