The Sound of Seas (22 page)

CHAPTER 19

M
ikel Jasso pulled the muffler from over his mouth. He didn't bother with the radio.

“I need fuel!” he yelled at Dr. Cummins.

She rolled down the window. “I don't understand.”

“I need petrol—gas—all that we can spare.”

The glaciologist looked down at him as he neared the driver's side of the truck. “To do what? We may need those reserves to go farther or go back.”

“This is more important,” Mikel said, breathless as he reached the cab.

“Than getting back?”

“We can radio for help if it comes to that,” he panted. He jerked a thumb toward the pit. “We have to melt the ice around that, flood the hole, and let it freeze.”

Dr. Cummins's eyes reflected shock. “You want to cover up the very thing we came out here to study?”

“I do,” Mikel replied. “Quickly.”

“Why?”
she asked. “Is it deteriorating or are you afraid of something else?”

“The latter,” Mikel said. “Something happened in New York, something that may set these things loose. As far as I know, cold is the only thing that can stop them.”

“Dr. Jasso, you've quite lost me. ‘Loose'?”

Mikel motioned for her to follow as he started toward the back of the truck. She thumped down onto the ice.

“I'm not sure what I mean myself,” he admitted. “These stones obliterate time and distance. I've only experienced their ability to create or re-create images, but not to destroy, as I just saw.”

“I'm not even sure what you saw,” Dr. Cummins said, perplexed.

“A forty-thousand-year-old girl and a woman in New York burned to death simultaneously,” he said. “The linked tiles appear to be the cause. We opened a portal. My superior there was screaming for me to shut them down and she is not a screamer. We have to dial this back, quickly.”

Mikel had already begun hauling the spare cans of gas from the back. Dr. Cummins joined him. Her movements were mechanical. She was still trying hard to understand what he was saying.

“You didn't anticipate any of this?” Dr. Cummins asked.

“I didn't
know
about any of this,” he said. “Look, we'll do this, then take stock of where we are. We can always remove the ice to get back in there.”

“I have to notify Halley,” she said as Mikel began waddling ahead with two of the heavy cans. “They may not approve of you setting fire to the ice.”

“No, this has
got
to be done,” he said over his shoulder. “Quickly. We are not in a good place if those tiles become active. For all I know the entire ice shelf may be in danger, to Halley and beyond.”

The woman took two cans and looked over at the pit as she followed Mikel. She shook her head. “I don't see anything that—”

There was a rumble that caused the fuel in the cans to slosh audibly. Dr. Cummins stopped suddenly. So did Mikel.

“You felt that, right?” he asked.

The ground continued to vibrate slightly, as if a subwoofer were turned on nearby.

“That could just be recracking caused by our truck, our activities here,” the glaciologist said.

A low hum rose up through the ice. The piled, windblown shavings jiggled like metal filings on a snare drum.

“
That
could be an echo from somewhere else,” she said. “Those can move every which way for several minutes.”

“It's coming from the pit,” Mikel said as he hurried ahead, half walking, half stumbling. He stopped about ten yards from the edge. The ice particles and dead bugs continued to vibrate and move in response to the hum.

Mikel unscrewed the cap of one of the two containers. He pushed it on its side then opened the second one and did the same. The overhang of ice was the greatest here, on the western side.

“Mikel, wait!” Dr. Cummins said as she reached his side. “Shouldn't we wait a few minutes, just to see?”

“I'm afraid to,” he admitted. “Very afraid.” He ran back to get the last two cans.

His urgency was enough to spur Dr. Cummins on. “Where do you want these?” she asked.

“Make it about twenty yards to the north, half as close,” Mikel said, shouting back after watching the way the petrol flowed. “We've got a downward slope of about five degrees here . . . it's straighter there.”

Dr. Cummins acknowledged with a big nod then hurried off. She did her work quickly as the ground continued to vibrate. They could both see little ripples in the slightly yellowish fuel that pooled on the ice.

Mikel poured gas on the south side. When they were finished, they carried the containers back to the truck and Mikel got a flare pistol and cartridge from the equipment locker in the rear.

“Back the Toyota away,” Mikel told her. “We don't want to risk igniting the gas in the truck.”

“Way ahead of you,” she said, getting back into the cab. “You watch yourself—stay low, the heat will rise as it rolls out.”

Even as she spoke, the ground began to shake more violently. It
wasn't sound. Mikel couldn't be sure what it was, whether it was the tiles themselves, the fracturing result of the tiles, or both. As she backed the truck up, he crouched with a knee on the ground well away from the gas and to the west. The wind was blowing east so there wouldn't be any superheated fumes.

The gun was a single-shot twelve-gauge pistol. Mikel loaded it and, checking that the Toyota was a safe distance off, he fired at the edge of the nearest pool. The gas went up with a soft whoosh, the six-foot-high flames following the flow of the gas and bending immediately in the direction of the wind. After just a few seconds the surface of the ice began to pock and large chunks began to crack, sink, and melt, pouring streams of water and gas toward the pit. The heat and hot water melted more ice and soon large slabs of ice were snapping and sliding toward the edge and over the side, sending a spray of water and flaming fuel into the air. They came back down like the hail of Jehovah.

Mikel rose and backed away, toward the truck. He was surprised to find the vibration continuing to increase, actually shaking loose more and more of the weakened ice.

“Dr. Jasso, hurry!” Dr. Cummins cried, leaning out the door of the truck.

He nodded and ran toward her. The smell of the burning gas was strong, despite the wind blowing away from him. Within moments steam was rising from the pit as water met fire. The heat caused ice on all sides to break away, and he could hear the ice splitting and popping inside, cracking like rifle shots, a symphony of destruction. The long flutes fell with eerie whistling sounds until they knifed into the slush at the bottom.

Or are those a
scended spirits
, Mikel could not help but wonder,
the dead somehow trapped in the tiles?

Suddenly, the vibration stopped. Mikel wasn't expecting that to happen until the water froze. Had the water itself quieted the tiles?

He stopped a few steps shy of the truck and turned, waited, looked across the smoking, malodorous expanse.

No
, he thought with a chill that managed to run up his spine even in this cold.
The vibration hasn't stopped. It's just gotten lower and more stable
.

Something caught his eye to his right, far away, an area free of smoke, on the western horizon where blue sky met the ice. He raised his goggles and peered toward it where he saw a faint glow. Just then he noticed—through the smoke and flame—that the pit he had just inundated was also domed with a hazy yellow light.

“Dr. Jasso?” Dr. Cummins was leaning from the truck.

Mikel was looking at the distant glow. The light here and the light there appeared to be the same color.

Christ
,
he thought with awful horror.
Is this column
talking
to another buried column?

“Dr. Jasso!” he heard Dr. Cummins yell.

He turned around, toward her, saw her pointing with agitation to the area behind the truck, to the east. There was another dim light on the horizon. This one was in the direction where he had seen the airship crack free of the ice before sinking just days ago.

Mikel started back toward the cab. “It has to be,” he muttered.

“What?” she asked.

“The towers of the ancient Source network are waking,” he said. “They're . . . talking to one another.”

“Because of the fire?”

“I—I don't think so,” he said. “This has to be what Flora was afraid of! We appear to be too late.”

“I've got Halley on the radio; they aren't reading anything, no geologic activity except the thermal signature you created.”

“It isn't seismic and I don't think it's the magma,” Mikel replied as he reached the cab. “Hell, it may not even be just now.”

“What?”

“I opened a path to the past,” he said. “But I'm sure it's the olivine tiles. They're awake, they're linked, and they're communicating.”

“How is that possible? Magnetically? Electronically? How else would stones ‘talk'?”

“I don't know,” he said. “When I was below, they were sharing information. Maybe they share the same data pool or—”

He stopped.

“What is it?” Dr. Cummins asked.

“Not a pool,” he said. “Living images.”

“Again?”

“I assumed that what I saw were images. What if they weren't . . .
aren't
. These tiles may not be storage systems—they could be
windows
!”

“Powered by what?” she asked.

“We're at the pole—magnetism?”

She checked her analog compass, saw no deviations, went to check the digital device, and the Toyota fell instantly, ominously quiet.

“Did you do that?” Mikel asked.

“No. I did not.”

There was a palpable feeling of something dreadful in the vast ice fields around them. It was more than the vibration, more than the faint glow. It was a sense of something enormous.

“Big drop in air pressure,” Dr. Cummins said.

“Yeah. Like something drained it away.”

The winds died and there was only the cricketing sound of the surface ice snapping.

“Dr. Jasso, talk to me,” the woman said. “Spitball. Give me something to think about.” Dr. Cummins's voice was without fear or reproach. But there was concern in her movements as she tried to restart the vehicle, then went from button to button trying to activate something . . . anything. “Nothing,” she said. “This vehicle is dead.”

Mikel turned back to the pit. The melted ice was still dripping down. There was no steam now, so no heat. The radiance was definitely something other than dying flame. He looked across the horizon. The silence seemed almost to have weight. It was as if someone—something—were approaching. It was not something moldy and gray and dead like the spirits he'd seen below, nor a flaming demon like Enzo. This was—

An explosion of life
was all that came to mind. Something was rolling across the Antarctic expanse, possibly across time itself, filling the empty spaces with something tangible yet still elusive.

“Dr. Jasso?” Dr. Cummins said quietly.

He looked back at her, saw her pointing ahead, near the pit. He turned wordlessly.

Something was moving. It was something hazy and indistinct, like sea spray, but moving along a very narrow path, as if it were inside a tunnel. It unrolled toward them; at least, it was coming in their direction. Mikel could not be sure that they or the truck was a destination.

Nonetheless, Dr. Cummins popped the door and got out. “I don't like this,” she said.

“I don't either, but it's here,” he replied.

He watched as the misty droplets that comprised the shape darkened.

“Smoke from the pit?” Dr. Cummins asked, stepping to one side. “Is the fire still burning?”

The object seemed to widen, to expand, to include her new position. She did not bother to move again.

“I don't think it's smoke,” Mikel said, stepping toward it.

“Dr. Jasso, what are you doing?”

“It's going to reach us eventually,” he said, and sniffed. “I don't smell anything. If it were from magma or a fire, there should be some kind of noxious content.”

“And if it's not? You talked about
something
burning below.”

“She didn't smoke,” he said.

Mikel was about forty yards from the pit with the forward end of the mist about half that distance away. He stopped and studied the new phenomenon. As the shape moved, he saw that the ice softened beneath it: a slick gloss covered the surface wherever it moved.

“There's something sentient in that, isn't there?” Dr. Cummins asked.

“Why do you say that?”

“Didn't you see it move when I did?”

“Any number of things could cause that,” Mikel said. “My guess is it's moving toward the distant light. You happened to block it.”

“What makes you think
that
?” Dr. Cummins asked.

“Because there's another one forming on the other side of the pit,” Mikel replied.

Dr. Cummins spun her head in that direction. “They're both heading toward the distant glows.”

“And I'm willing to bet there are clouds heading from there to meet them.”

“Christ, what have we opened here?” Dr. Cummins asked. It was the first time she had lost her scientific detachment.

“Not us,” he said. “We were just the witnesses.”

Dr. Cummins got back in the cab of the truck and tried the engine, then the radio, then the computer. Everything stayed dead. The mist was still moving forward, a slowly surging, narrow wave. About five feet in diameter the shape was becoming round, like a pipe, yet it undulated forward almost like a worm. It continued to darken but the sunlight played against it oddly: amid the charcoal gray that comprised it were pinpoint facets of light, rippling like sun on the ocean.