Vostok (46 page)

“C’mon, Zach, wake up!”

I floated in a pool of warmth and serenity, my consciousness gazing down upon the Manta, adrift in the crystal-clear water. Through the cockpit glass I witnessed Jonas straddling my vacant body, pushing against my chest until—

—Gravity gained a foothold, dragging me back into my flesh-bound prison.

Registering the blood rushing into my face, I opened my eyes.
“Sorry. Did I oversleep?”

“Oversleep? Jesus … ” Jonas climbed off me, falling back into his seat. “According to the bio-sensors built into your harness, you all but died.” He pointed to a flashing screen showing my steadily rising vitals. “At one point your heart rate dropped below ten beats a minute, and your blood pressure hit goose-eggs. What the hell happened?”

I adjusted my seat, sitting up. “I don’t know. I mean, I know what happened, only it wasn’t me doing it. I was just sort of along for the ride.”

“Try speaking in coherent sentences.”

“I had an out-of-body experience, and instead of sticking around, my consciousness was in another time and place. It had slipped inside another being’s body. And then I was back in
my
body, in my father’s resort. Seven years ago.”

Jonas just sat there and stared at me like a guy who realizes—too late—that he’s hitched his mule to the wrong wagon.

“Something big is happening here, J.T. Get us going and I’ll try to explain.”

Jonas shook his head, then buckled his harness and powered up the engines, reengaging the autopilot. “I’m listening.”

“There’s a big piece of the puzzle still missing, but I’m beginning to grasp what’s going on. At first I thought this entity had selected me to disseminate its zero-point energy technology to mankind because, well—”

“Because you’re smart.”

“More like intuitive, but, yeah. Then I started having these really lifelike dreams, like this one and the one on the plane. In these dreams I’m living on another planet during another time period.”

“Past or present?”

“To be honest I’m not sure, but I’m leaning toward the past. The planet—it’s called Charon and it’s in big trouble. Something devastating is going to happen and this guy, the one I share my
consciousness with, is trying to figure out a way to save his people. By reentering the E.T.’s ship and accessing the portal, I think I might be able to help him.”

My analysis did not sit well with Jonas. He stared at the portside wing, his mind grappling with this new information. Glancing at his bio-sensors, I watched as his blood pressure climbed.

“Jonas, you okay?”

“You said you were back at your father’s resort seven years ago. You realize that none of this would be happening if you hadn’t come to me back then, asking me to invest in your company? Your son would be safe, and David would be alive.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Yeah, we do. Because if David hadn’t died, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting in this sub with you. So why do I get the distinct feeling that these extraterrestrials are manipulating events in order to make sure you get back to Lake Vostok to save their sorry asses!”

Jonas was livid, but I understood where he was coming from. David Taylor had been an experienced pilot. Out of all the possible multiverses that could have been realized from his recent encounter with the
Liopleurodon
, my guess was that only a few would have actually resulted in his death.

Was Jonas right? Was I being maneuvered into a specific reality that served the E.T.s?

It made me wonder how many cause-and-effect dominoes had to tumble into place just for me to be en route to Vostok. Big Oil conspiring to subvert new energy systems, MJ-12 burning my assembly plant to the ground, William and Brandy’s kidnapping, Susan’s murder… Was I living out this specific multiverse of eventualities through free will, or was I following a course of the entity’s choosing?

“Jonas … ” I turned to console him, only to realize he had fallen asleep.

The farther we traveled inland, the deeper our underwater passage descended, reflecting the thickening ice sheet overhead. Donning a headset, I passed the hours switching back and forth from the white noise of sonar to a classic rock CD.

We had closed to within fourteen nautical miles of the Amery Ice Shelf’s intersection with the Lambert Glacial Basin when I heard a faint rush of water over sonar. Disengaging the autopilot, I altered our course and honed in on the sound, which was originating from the southeast.

The horizon of water sandwiched between the bottom of the ice sheet and East Antarctica’s ancient geology was changing rapidly, the dark silt below yielding to patches of brown sea grass, the width of the passage narrowing quickly, forcing me to reduce our speed. Once placid waters became a minefield of eddies, each invisible swirl of current threatening to drive the Manta into the ice sheet.

Jonas awoke on our second collision, the submersible pilot disturbed to find our passage reduced to a ten- to twelve-foot-wide divide. “Where are we?”

“We’re nearing the glacial basin, the very beginning of the ice shelf. The subglacial river’s close. You can hear it on sonar.”

Jonas took over command. Guided by sonar, he directed us farther to the south.

We felt the river before we saw it, the current pelting us with watermelon-size ice cubes too clear to see and too numerous to dodge. Fifteen million years ago, the waterway had been as wide as the Amazon, twisting across East Antarctica to empty into the enormous delta now occupied by the ice shelf. We only realized the extent of the river’s boundaries when Jonas dived the sub to escape the current and found that the bottom had dropped nearly one hundred feet.

Hazards were everywhere. The riverbed was littered with vortex-channeling boulders and petrified tree trunks as wide as redwoods. Chunks of ice gouged out of the bottom of the ice sheet
soared past us like miniature comets.

“Activate the sonar, Zach.”

I pinged, sending sound waves reflecting off objects both stationary and propelled by the current. It was impossible, similar to driving a racecar down a crowded speedway—the wrong way.

Then a different blip appeared on sonar, and I knew this one was going to be trouble.

“I am the captain of my soul.”

—William Ernest Henley

Jonas read the incoming data as it crawled across his sonar screen. “Range: twelve kilometers and closing. Still too far out to gauge its size, but it’s way too quiet to be that other sub. Maybe it’s an alien vessel, come to collect you and save me the trip.”

“Jonas, I think it might be a life-form.”

“A life-form? Come on. What kind of life-form could survive down here?”

“Vostok’s rich in geothermal vents. There’s a thriving food chain that dates back to the Miocene. How close do we need to be to get a size reading?”

“On a biologic? Less than six kilometers. What are you afraid of, Zachary? Don’t tell me a Meg—”

“It’s not a megalodon.” I tapped my index finger repeatedly on the sonar REFRESH button until new data scrolled across the monitor.

RANGE TO TARGET: 5.78 KILOMETERS.

TARGET SPEED: 8.3 KNOTS.

TARGET SIZE: 18.89 METERS

TARGET COURSE:
INTERCEPT
!

Jonas swore. “The damn thing’s over sixty feet long, and it’s headed straight for us. Speak to me, Wallace. What’s out there?”

“There’s a species of Miocene sperm whale inhabiting Vostok. Ever hear of
Livyatan melvillei
?”

“That whale with the big teeth and the lower jaw of an orca? Damn it, Zachary. Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”

“I didn’t think they could follow the river this far from Vostok. Once we were in the lake, I figured you’d be able to outmaneuver them in the Manta.”

“Not with these lasers strapped to our wings—Geez! There it is.”

A dark mass appeared in our starboard headlight’s periphery some two hundred yards ahead. Jonas was about to make an evasive maneuver when we both realized something was wrong. The whale’s movements seemed erratic, the tip of the creature’s box-shaped head scraping the bottom of the ice sheet. As we halved the distance, we could see the fluke hanging motionless below the leviathan’s body.

It wasn’t swimming; it was dead. The current was propelling its carcass along.

Jonas banked into a tight turn and brought us up beside the whale. Along its right flank was a fresh wound scorched ashen-gray, a twelve-foot-wide crater of blubber corresponding to the approximate dimensions of the bow of Colonel Vacendak’s submarine.

The next twenty-seven hours were maddening—the equivalent of flying from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, and back again, in heavy turbulence, while being forced to remain seated. Under its best behavior, the subglacial river ran deep over stretches of flat bottom. Under the worst conditions, it was a twisting vortex with rapids that caught the Manta’s wings and threatened to flip us head-over-tail—which happened twice, the last time sending us tumbling like a pinwheel a half-mile back from whence we’d come.

Then there were gaps where the river simply stopped flowing, walled off by a dam of ice. The first time this happened left us both disoriented and unnerved, and too mentally exhausted to reason. A twenty-minute yelling match ensued, after which we decided to shut
down the engines and get some much-needed sleep.

The thought of having another out-of-body experience didn’t bother me as much as it did Jonas. The last thing he wanted was to awaken beneath the Antarctic ice sheet next to my cold, lifeless corpse. Not that a part of him didn’t want to strangle me, but I was no good to him dead. And so he kept vigil until he was convinced I had entered R.E.M. sleep.

Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take
.

Brandy woke me
.

I was sneaking in a nap, sequestered in my study in our home in Solihull, a quaint town in England’s West Midlands. The window was partially frosted, our garden blanketed by last night’s snow. The air inside my office was tinged with the scent of a basting turkey and the dying embers from my fireplace
.

Life was good. I had retired seven months earlier, having served the last nine years as the Dean of Solihull College. With pensions coming from Cambridge and S.C., along with royalties generated from three patents, we were well-off financially and able to assist our three children and their families
.

The boys had arrived last night: William, his wife, Jackie, and their two girls from London, and Andrew, his wife, Rachel, and the baby from Drumnadrochit. Claire and her fiancé were due in, their plane arriving from Boston later this evening. I heard the boys playing ping-pong in the basement and the grandkids playing with their Christmas presents in the den
.

Brandy’s dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun, revealing a few gray roots, her apron tied around her torso. Feeling slightly guilty over having fallen asleep while she cooked, I feigned innocence. That’s when I noticed that my wife’s blue eyes were red-rimmed and frightened
.

“Zach, something terrible has happened.”