Far From The Sea We Know (45 page)

The railing was lined with the entire crew
staring down at them, including Chiffrey who was scanning in all
directions with binoculars. Looking for others, no doubt, but she
had a feeling this would be their only Easter egg today.

Becka had climbed onto the dive platform and
was now waiting with a stethoscope around her neck for the mass to
drift a little closer. Crewmembers passed down other testing
instruments, and Penny arranged them as best she could. Becka
ignored them all and simply placed the receiving end of her
stethoscope on the form’s surface.

“I can hear something, a heartbeat maybe,
but more complicated. Okay, now we try this.” She motioned Penny to
slide over a small EEG unit, and started to stick on its
sensors.

“Well, that is quite a catch,” Chiffrey said
from the rail. He was not smiling. “Your holding tank will be
plenty big enough.”

“Not bringing it up, Lieutenant,” Andrew
said.

“This is the most valuable specimen on the
planet. We can’t risk losing it.”

“Which is why we don’t want to be hasty,”
Penny said over her shoulder. “Haven’t you learned anything?”

“Captain, I have gone along with you on most
things, but we can’t play the long game here.”

Penny glared up at him. “You don’t know what
you’re talking about, and the Captain does, so shut up and
listen.”

“Wait,” Becka said, holding a hand up for
attention. “Something’s moving.”

“Get back from that thing!” Chiffrey yelled.
“Becka!”

Instead, Becka cautiously moved in closer
and had both hands on the now slowly pulsating form when it
suddenly flexed. She was thrown back onto a coil of line, her head
just missing a steel handhold. Then the crane suddenly started. The
tightening lines quickly closed the net.

“Stop that crane now!” Andrew ordered.

“You’ll hurt it!” Penny shouted.

But the machinery drowned out her voice and
the net continued up. She could see the object clearly distort
under its own weight as it was lifted. She edged out as far as she
could and looked up to see her father arguing with someone out of
her line of sight. She scrambled up the ladder.

“Dad! What’s going on?”

“It was me,” Chiffrey answered. Operating
the crane, he lowered the net into the tank with surprising
skill.

“You had no right!”

“Between the hook and your plate, a fish can
be lost.”

“This is not some trout for the pan, you
idiot!”

“Easy there, just looked like we were in
danger of losing it, and there wasn’t time for discussion. Whatever
this is, it will receive the best of care. That is now my top
priority.”

“What have you ever cared for?” she said as
she ran to the tank and up the steps to the attached observation
platform, then began to loosen the lines.

“That might surprise you.”

“Then give it more slack!”

“Lieutenant, get over here.” Andrew said.
Mateo ran up and took over the controls of the crane as if he did
this every day.

“Believe me, this is really going to save
our bacon with the brass,” Chiffrey said. “I need to call this in
first if you wouldn’t mind—”

“I do mind,” Andrew said. “Get over here, or
I will haul you over.”

Chiffrey froze. “Yes, sir,” he said a moment
later and followed Andrew to the unoccupied foredeck.

Penny stayed on the top of the platform even
after she loosened the net. Some evidence of Chiffrey having his
ears pinned back flew by, carried by the wind. Given the
circumstances, he would likely get away with what he’d done, but
Chiffrey was no longer her main concern. With help from Becka and
Malcolm, she hauled the purse net out of the tank. The huge
egg-like sphere floated free, but now seemed as lifeless as a beach
ball.

Penny stayed on the tank’s observation
platform all morning and remained there after the others left for
lunch. She had wanted some time by herself with the form floating
in the tank, but now she had suddenly become tired. Not sleepy,
just tired. The bottle of scotch under her bunk beckoned, but
instead she headed to the galley to see if there was anything to
eat. She salvaged enough leftovers from lunch to satisfy her
immediate hunger, then made a strong cup of coffee and drank it
down black in one gulp when it was cool enough.

A shadow fell over a porthole for an instant
as someone went by. A few seconds later, she looked up to see
Chiffrey march in. Good news, she could tell right away.

“Your subs turned up,” she said,
guessing.

“The scuttlebutt sure gets around fast on
this ship,” he said. “Both submarines reported within ten minutes
of each other, less than an hour ago. So, we have more time
again.”

“How’s the crew.”

“Took us a while to figure out that they
thought they were still on schedule. Had no idea they were
missing.”

“Really.”

“Really, except this one junior officer
who’s acting weird.” He got some orange juice and sat down. “All
their clocks were telling them that only a few hours had passed
since they last checked in, not the thirty-odd hours it really was.
Even a windup wristwatch someone had. The mission chronometers on
those submarines are extremely accurate, atomic but, unlike the
ones you buy in a drugstore, they run on their own time. Accurate
to milliseconds a year.”

“How do you know it’s not our time that’s
off?”

“Whoa, don’t mess my head up any more than
it already is.” He smiled. “Please. And I’m sorry about the crane,
but I had to do that. We got the egg, or whatever it is, so all’s
well that ends well.”

“Being in one piece doesn’t mean it’s okay.
It’s shown little in the way of life since you hauled it up.”

“Becka told me it still has that weird
double heartbeat.”

“If it is a heartbeat.”

“Well, we’ll see if it hatches.”

“Will you please stop assuming it’s an
egg!”

“You’re right, and damned if I wasn’t saying
much the same thing to Mateo just a few minutes ago. Everyone is
looking for a simple explanation. A scientist at LaBellce Livermore
we’ve been consulting with, a Nobel Prize winner, is talking about
the submarines having been in a bubble of time, but I can’t really
follow it. Didn’t help that he is a pompous ass who thinks he’s
mankind’s gift to God. I should probably have accepted Malcolm’s
offer of help with the quantum stuff. Course, he seems to believe
it’s an egg, as well.” He got up and poured more orange juice in
his glass. He glanced her way and nodded toward the dispenser, but
she shook her head.

“If the sub crews thought everything was
normal,” she asked, “why did they launch the emergency buoy?”

“The theory is that at the beginning of
whatever befell them, one of the crew launched it, and my guess
would be the officer I mentioned who is well off his toot. It came
from his boat. Been babbling and euphoric ever since, you know the
drill. His time is completely out of joint, from what they tell me.
Thinks he’s been somewhere else for years and years. Decades. The
thing is, although he can’t remember anything about where he
thought he was, he desperately wants to go back there.”

She knew that feeling. Wanting to go back to
some place, except she could never quite remember where it was.
Something from childhood, a place where…

She couldn’t remember. Chiffrey slowly
sipped his orange juice, nursing it as if it were three-quarters
gin.

“Maybe this officer wasn’t affected as much
as the others,” she said. “Didn’t slip into whatever frame of time
the rest of his crew occupied.”

“Or into some other, like Matthew being the
last man standing on the
Eva Shay
. Or you on the
Valentina
, for that matter. Perhaps he felt something was
wrong and hit the buoy release button. He can’t tell us anything
useful at the moment. The odd thing is that I’m almost getting used
to this serial insanity.”

“It’s either that or go crazy yourself.”

He laughed. “One new idea you’re sure to
like is that the time shift could be just a side effect of however
that thing down there operates. That bubble of time idea again, and
the way it effects people may not be intentional. More like just
standing too close to a fire.” He finished the last of his juice in
one swallow and slapped the glass down. “In any case, condition red
has gone down to orange, or maybe even yellow.”

“Well, good. And that officer on the sub,
even if he sounds crazy, maybe you should listen.”

“Having everything he says recorded on video
by three cameras, but mostly he’s babbling about ‘seeing everything
all at once forever.’ And rice pudding.”

“He’s talking about rice pudding?”

“To make clear that it’s all he wants to
eat. Won’t touch anything else. With a lot cinnamon on top.”

“Are the people higher up buying the time
bubble theory?”

“We’re keeping it to ourselves for the
moment. I mean, ‘Madame President, time stopped dead for two
nuclear submarines, what shall we do?’ Need to wait until some
people catch up a little more before we cast that line their way. I
mean, it’s not a fact, only a theory, so it’s not intel.”

“Is all this a game to you?”

“No.” He looked weary. “It’s just the way
things work.”

“And disobeying orders? Like out on deck
with the crane? Is that also part of the way things work?”

“Losing that thing could not be allowed to
happen. Sometimes you have to act on gut whatever the consequences.
From conscience.”

“Conscience!” She laughed. “Impressive you
can find yours without a microscope.”

“Sugar, mine’s tuned into a slightly
different frequency than yours, but I listen. Oh, and one other
thing. If not for the safe recovery of our subs and crew, this next
piece would have been my lead story. Mary Sims turned herself
in.”

“What, to the police?”

“No. To whoever runs the Point when your
father’s away. Can’t remember the name. Anyway, she told them
everything. She had the missing parts, too, the ones she lifted
from the ROVs here. They were in her knapsack when she flew away in
our chopper with Ripler! Believe that? Showed up with those and the
parts she later walked off with from the Point, as well. The only
quote in the report I received on the incident is from her: ‘It no
longer matters.’ Not sure how to interpret that. Damn shame for
her, but at least she finally did the right thing.”

Penny shook her head. “I’d say she’s a bit
more cunning than you give her credit. She realized she was being
investigated and decided to make the best of it.”

“Maybe, but she was heavily under the sway
of Jack, and he could beguile the stripes off a skunk.”

“I’m sure, but given her actions, why should
she get off easy?”

“Easy? Any chance she had of becoming a
marine science researcher is now destroyed. What’s the point of
throwing her in jail, vengeance?”

She looked away before saying, “She’s not
the Sister Mary you think she is.”

“Well, take heart.” He picked up his empty
glass and toasted her. “The news is good today. All the way to the
top, they’re elated the sub crews are safe. What’s more, whatever
happened to them is no longer clearly seen as an attack. Combine
that with the arrival of our otherworldly specimen in the tank over
here, and we’re back on the board with time to score. So, any
change at all in that thing, or any new theories on what the hell
it is?”

“They took a small scraping, as I’m sure you
know from Becka. The cell structure is similar to the sample we
found on the
Bluedrop
. We tried a sonogram, but it wouldn’t
penetrate more than a few centimeters for some reason.”

“Blocking the signal, mayhaps?” He grinned
and fake scratched his chin. “Elusive, just like its daddy.”

“Maybe, but we’re certainly not going to cut
into it to find out.”

“Of course. There’ll be time for a more
thorough investigation when we reach port.”

“We’re not heading back yet,” she said.

“No, but eventually we will be. Still,
you’re right. With this new breathing space, I’m sure you realized
that we have another chance of finding Matthew.”

“Waiting for thanks?”

“Sugar, I believe I just got all the thanks
I’m going to get today.”

The shortest night of the year. Midsummer’s
Eve. The sun was finally gone, the sunset faded down to an ember,
yet the sky still provided a subtle light. The blue hour. Dark, yet
strangely warm.

Penny stood at the railing a moment, looking
out, a welcome breeze sweeping the edge of the trouble from her
thoughts. The movement of dark waves could be seen from the few
whitecaps birthed by the gentle sea. Unhurried swells rolled up as
if bearing some portentous message, yet remained silent in the end,
their place soon taken by others, an unending procession of false
promise.

Over the last few days, she had kept as
close as she could to the tank, signing up for every available
shift. The late night to early morning hours were her first choice.
Since her first encounter with the thing they had pulled from the
sea, she had felt a special relationship with it. Yet the truth
was, she was no further than anyone else in making sense of what it
was or why it was here.

It was time now for her watch at the tank,
but she wandered over with little remaining energy, the last of her
initial enthusiasm finally gone. When she got there, she stood at
the bottom of the steps for a while, staring up at the starry
fields, now easier to see from within the shade of tarps they had
installed around the tank. To the north, a few small clouds moved
across the constellation of Cassiopeia like phantom hares.

Becka was alone up on the observation
platform, taking readings. Everyone on board seemed to be losing at
least some interest in what was proving to be a boring guest. Few
volunteered for the late-night shifts. Penny climbed the steps
slowly and stood at the tank’s edge, arms folded in front of
her.