Earth Cult (9 page)

Lee Merriam was the first to arrive. He led a party of men through the main tunnel and gave a shout of jubilation when he saw the light. He came splashing across the chamber and climbed the stairway, the smile lingering on his face for several incredulous moments when he saw who was seated at the desk. It was evident that he couldn't take it in; the fact had registered but he found it hard to believe.

He said, ‘We thought you were dead.'

Frank said, ‘So did I.'

‘Is there anyone else …?'

Frank shielded his face from Lee Merriam's flashlight. ‘Over there.' He nodded into the darkness. ‘The water level must have gone way above the gantry, almost to the roof.'

Lee Merriam was still staring at Frank as if he might not really exist. ‘The rest of your party made it back to the surface, but after the tremor they reckoned you were—'

‘Then there was an earth tremor? I didn't imagine it?'

‘You sure didn't imagine that last one. Shook the entire mountain. They were waiting for you to come back when everything started shaking. The entrance to the tunnel you were in collapsed and they had to beat it out of there fast. Craig said that you wouldn't have stood a chance. There was nothing they could do, not a thing. How in hell did you get out? And how did you get down here?'

‘How in hell is right.' Frank stood up and looked down at his boots. ‘I got my feet wet and that's about all. You can take it from me, as a confirmed atheist of twenty years' standing, I'm beginning to have serious doubts.'

It was no answer at all but the only one he could give. He didn't believe in black, glasslike, vibrating rocks any more than Lee Merriam did: probably less, because he prided himself on being the calm, rational man of science. To
explain it away by the convenient use of the supernatural would have been too easy – and he doubted whether he could live with the look of mocking scepticism that would surely have been Lee Merriam's first reaction. He knew that it would have been his.

It took an hour and twenty minutes to return to the surface with the four bodies. Frank was amazed that it was still daylight. He seemed to have been underground for a long time, certainly longer than the five hours that had actually elapsed. But it was only mid-afternoon and the world seemed remarkably clean and new after the foul-smelling tunnels a mile below, the dirt and dampness and mouldering decay.

Yet even now the mysteries of the mountain still hadn't finished with them.

When the bodies of the four men were examined by the medical orderly he could find no trace of water in their lungs. He admitted that he wasn't a qualified doctor and therefore might be mistaken about what had, or hadn't, been the cause of death. But in his humble opinion they most certainly hadn't died from drowning.

Professor Edmund Friedmann smiled hesitantly and held out his long pale hands as if in a gesture of conciliation. His thin, rather austere face was a study in guarded amiability, rather like that of an uninvited guest at a party, unsure of his welcome. And yet, Frank reflected, it was he who was the ‘guest' – he was on Professor Friedmann's home territory. The scientist's mood had definitely changed.

Dr Leach was also present, but he hardly acknowledged
Frank's presence, sitting hunched in the chair, his large powerful hands clasped in front of him in the manner of someone waiting for a lecture to begin.

Professor Friedmann said, ‘You know Dr Leach, of course.'

‘We met yesterday,' Frank said. ‘Briefly.'

‘Remarkable,' said Professor Friedmann, shaking his head in wonder. ‘When Craig and the others returned we really had given you up for dead. It's a miracle you survived.'

‘For once I wouldn't dispute the choice of that word. I still don't know what happened, but miraculous is as good an explanation as any.' Frank lit a cigarette and sat back. He felt that he had the psychological advantage. There were secrets on both sides and he wasn't prepared to reveal his until Friedmann and Leach felt an obligation to confide in him.

‘We're most grateful for your efforts,' said Professor Friedmann. ‘As you'll have gathered we hadn't made adequate preparations for an underground rescue operation; to be honest with you, Kersh, the possibility of something like this happening had never occurred to us.'

‘There's always a risk involved when men are working underground. But I can understand that as a scientific research establishment the thought of some natural disaster was the last thing on your minds.' He wondered whether he had sufficiently disguised the implied irony so as to make it a statement of fact rather than criticism.

Dr Leach said in his low growling voice, ‘These things happen. I don't see how we can be held responsible for something entirely outside our control. But it means months of work wasted and the programme held up while the equipment is repaired. And there's the question of cost: the Institute mightn't be prepared to invest another half million dollars to make good the damage.'

‘Or replace the men who died,' Frank said.

‘Technical staff are no problem,' said Dr Leach
obliviously. ‘There are always more than enough post-graduates eager and willing to participate in advanced research projects of this kind.'

‘Even at the risk of losing their lives?'

Dr Leach fixed Frank with his hard dark stare. ‘An unfortunate occurrence,' he said stolidly. ‘Random, unexpected, and one which could not have been foreseen.'

‘Not all that random according to the people of Gypsum. The editor of the local newspaper told me that freak thunderstorms were happening more often and with increasing intensity.' Frank looked at Professor Friedmann, and added, ‘Over the past eighteen months, that is.'

Professor Friedmann avoided his eyes and glanced for a second at his colleague. He picked up a pen from the desk and tapped out a rapid, uneasy rhythm, then needlessly adjusted his blue-tinted spectacles. He seemed to make up his mind about something and said abruptly, ‘We know very well what the local people think of the Project. We've had nothing but trouble from them ever since we arrived. They blame every calamity, every minor disturbance on the Deep Hole Project, as if our experiments could in any way affect the external world. They're ignorant and superstitious and out to cause trouble.'

‘And there isn't the slightest possibility that they could be right.'

‘Of course not, of course not,' Professor Friedmann said waspishly. ‘For heaven's sake, Kersh, you're a man with scientific training, you know enough about solar neutrino detection to realize that what we do here couldn't possibly interfere with atmospheric conditions. The experiments are carried out in a sealed self-contained environment beneath a mile of solid rock. It's nonsense to suggest that they might be the cause of these thunderstorms we've been having. Complete nonsense.'

‘At a detection rate of one neutrino per month I'd be inclined to agree with you,' Frank said. He looked from one to the other. ‘If that's actually the rate at which you've been detecting them.'

‘Has anyone said that it isn't?' asked Dr Leach. He unclasped his powerful hands and turned his dark hooded gaze in Frank's direction. It was disconcerting to see the upper half of a fully-grown man gradually merging into a foreshortened trunk and stunted legs; the effect was somehow obscene, the evil demonic trickery of a fairground freak show.

‘No, no one has,' Frank admitted. ‘But secrecy tends to breed suspicion, and neither Professor Friedmann nor yourself were exactly willing to discuss your research data in any detail. It isn't classified material, and the technique is well known to other workers in the field, so the question naturally presented itself as to whether you were hiding certain information—'

‘For what reason?' Professor Friedmann interrupted, his tone defensive and at the same time wary. It reminded Frank of a man treading cautiously through a minefield, anticipating an explosion any second.

‘I don't know.' He tried a shot in the dark. ‘Perhaps you've detected many more neutrino interactions than fit comfortably with current theories and you don't know yourselves what to make of them.' He watched Professor Friedmann carefully. ‘Or if not an abundance of neutrinos, antineutrinos.'

Dr Leach had gasped – or was it merely the bored sigh of someone running short of patience? But he was near to something; the sense of it hung in the air like static electricity.

Professor Friedmann cleared his throat nervously. He said, ‘Your assumption is partly true. The findings show that—'

‘We will not discuss our findings,' Dr Leach contradicted him flatly. ‘Kersh is a snooping journalist and we are in no way obliged to reveal
anything
of the work carried out on the Deep Hole Project. His only motive is to publish misleading and unsubstantiated reports concerning our activities and to draw conclusions for which he is unqualified and ill-equipped. I will not allow my work to be interrupted by
interfering outsiders whose knowledge of neutrino astronomy is non-existent.'

Professor Friedmann nodded, as if in agreement, but then surprised Frank by saying, ‘I take your point, Karl, and I sympathize with it, but at the same time we do have a wider obligation to the scientific community to publish our results, rather than holding on to them as if they were our own personal property. We are merely the custodians of the information, not its exclusive owners. It's our task to explore, to investigate, to detect and identify, to compile data – and then to divulge what we've discovered. Kersh is right in that sense, and he's also right in pressing us for information.' He set his spectacles more firmly on his nose. ‘We need outside help, you've said so yourself. We need the help of experienced astrophysicists to interpret the results.'

‘But not now,' Dr Leach said with emphasis. ‘Not yet. We're not ready. The programme has at least another year to run before we can even begin to think of consulting other people in the field. We agreed on a three-year programme and we must keep to it. I refuse to allow outside interference at this delicate and crucial stage.'

‘Even though the experiments might be having a detrimental effect on the local community,' Frank said. ‘On the babies born during the past eighteen months, for instance.'

‘I've said, and I'll repeat it,' responded Professor Friedmann heatedly. ‘There is no evidence to suggest that antineutrino events have the slightest effect on anything, animate or inanimate, outside the subnuclear region. The Earth itself produces vast quantities of antineutrinos every nano-second, they're passing through us this very instant, but because they don't interact with the atoms in our bodies there is absolutely zero effect. Look at the literature, Kersh, and you'll see. The phenomenon is thoroughly documented and proven beyond all doubt.'

After a moment Frank said, ‘Is the level of antineutrinos from the Sun much greater than expected?'

‘Yes,' Professor Friedmann said shortly. He looked at Dr Leach and held his gaze. ‘By a factor of two hundred.'

‘That's quite a jump. How do you account for it?'

‘At the moment we can't.' Professor Friedmann seemed perturbed about something. His eyes passed over the computer printout on the desk; he pressed his pale slender hands together and met Frank's look squarely. ‘You might as well know the rest of it, Kersh. The antineutrinos we've detected and identified aren't coming from the Sun. We've tried to pinpoint the source and it seems that the bulk of them are emanating from a region which corresponds to Sagittarius A, which is directly in the galactic centre of the Milky Way. We don't know why there should be an increased emission of anti-particles from the heart of the Galaxy but all our studies indicate that the Earth is receiving antineutrinos from a central region of less than 0.02 arc seconds in size. Whatever it is that's transmitting them must be the most powerful source of radiation in our Galaxy. Beyond that we enter into the realm of theory and speculation.'

‘And what's your theory, Dr Leach?' Frank asked the dark intense man sitting in the chair opposite.

‘I haven't formulated a theory. I'm not a theoretical physicist; my function is to detect and identify neutrinos and their antiparticle equivalents reaching the Earth from deep space.'

‘Which is precisely why we need to consult with other scientists whose job it is to interpret our results,' Professor Friedmann told him, continuing the argument. ‘We already have enough data for them to work from, and now that the programme is temporarily suspended we should use it as an opportunity to elicit outside help.'

Dr Leach shook his head, a stubborn child defying reason, logic and common sense. He would not be swayed. ‘When the time is
right
. The time is not yet right. We need at the very least another full year's results before we are in a position to present conclusive evidence. I will not be rushed into this, not after two years' solid work. I will see it through.'

Frank said, ‘The people of Gypsum might have other ideas.'

Dr Leach smiled, a patronizing twist of the lips. ‘The people of Gypsum interest me less than particles moving at the speed of light, Mr Kersh. And for someone with a supposedly scientific background you seem to be more in sympathy with them than the Project. You're not taken in by their childish superstitions and penny-ante religious cults, are you?'

‘I don't know if “taken in” is the right way to describe it, Dr Leach. You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know that something very strange is happening along the Roaring Fork Valley. Maybe it has nothing to do with the Project; yesterday I was inclined to believe that, but now I'm not at all sure. If what I've been told is true – about the babies born locally, for one thing – then somebody ought to investigate and find out what the hell's going on. And don't underestimate the mood of the people down there. Feelings are running high at the moment – about as high as your antineutrino count.'