“How deep is the fissure?” Dane asked.
“Forty kilometers. It’s the deepest depression on the face of the planet.”
“We’re going down forty kilometers?” Dane had never heard of a submersible capable of going that deep.
“No,” Kolkov said. “The water only goes down a kilometer and a half. The rest of it has filled with sediment over the years. There are more than three hundred rivers and streams feeding the lake.” He indicated the imagery. “The gate is just above the sediment layer-after all, they want water, not dirt.”
The submersible rocked as the captain released it from the crane that had been holding it. The engines whined as they moved out into the lake.
“This gate has been active a long time,” Kolkov said. “We think the Shadow has been draining it for a long time, although not at the rate we see now. Just enough to keep the water level steady. Years ago scientists knew there was something strange here because although there are more than three hundred fillers to Baikal, there is only one visible outlet, the Angara River.”
Dane was looking at the muonic imagery. The circle indicating the gate was large, very large, but he had no idea of the scale. “How big is this portal?”
“Just under a kilometer and a half in width.”
Dane wondered if they could bring the sphere back through this gate-it was large enough. He knew his plan, as outlined to Foreman, was weak:, but he had to trust that if he had been “given” one piece of it, others had parts also, and everyone was working to make it happen. His experiences so far in fighting the Shadow had brought him many strange allies, from a Roman gladiator, to a Viking warrior, to a Greek Oracle.
“Another reason I think this gate has been open a long time,” Kolkov continued, “is that there are life forms here that have never been found anywhere.”
“Kraken?” Dane asked, remembering the strange squid like creatures with jaws at the end of their tentacles.
“There are legends of such.” Kolkov said. “although no one has seen any recently. The people who live around the lake, the Buryat, believe that gods dwell in the lake. They have ones they call the Doshkin-novon who steal ships and men during times of storm and fog.”
Kalansky spoke for the first time. “I made a toast to the water gods. I asked some of the locals, and they said it is what they do before venturing out onto the lake. Very good vodka.”
Dane didn’t think the Shadow cared much about the quality of vodka tossed its way. “How long until we’re at the gate?”
“Forty minutes,” Kalansky said. “We pass the point of no return in twenty minutes.”
“’Point of no return’?” Dane repeated.
“Where the flow of water into this hole will be stronger than my engines,” Kalansky said. “Once we reach that, we’re going in no matter what we do. So you have-” he glanced at a chronometer-“slightly over nineteen minutes to make sure you want to do this.”
“We’re going in,” Dane said.
“That is what I was afraid of,” Kalansky said. “You really do not need me. The current will be piloting this ship soon.” “You don’t want to go?” Dane asked.
“Oh, I’m going,” Kalansky said. “I have heard there is a place through here where there are many lost ships. Old ships. Ones of legend. I would very much like to see that.”
Dane remembered the graveyards he’d seen-one through the Bermuda Triangle gate and one through the Devil’s Sea gate-the former holding many craft lost in the Atlantic, the latter those lost in the Pacific. It was an eerie sight, seeing hundreds of craft ranging from ancient rafts to modem jet fighters drawn up on the circular shoreline surrounding the Inner Sea. Many of the craft had been scavenged, parts and material taken by the Shadow. All the people had most definitely been taken.
“1 don’t know if we’ll see one of those places,” he told Kalansky.
“But you do not know for sure where we will end up, according to the professor,” Kalansky pointed out.
“That’s true.”
“Then we shall see what we shall see,” Kalansky said, expressing the Russian sense of fatalism that had guided them through czars, Stalin, and communism.
“I have a question for you:’ Kolkov said to Dane.
“Yes?”
Kolkov tapped the side of his head. “You have the sight? You hear the words of the Ones Before?”
Dane nodded.
“And you’ve met others like you?”
“Yes. Some here, some when I pass through the portals.”
“What do you think: it is? Why do you think you, and only a few others, can do this?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Kalansky interjected.
When Dane had been recruited by Foreman to go into Cambodia to back into the Angkor Gate, he had been accompanied by a woman named Sin Fen who had explained as much as she could about the voices and visions. Ever since he was able to remember, he’d been different from those around him. He’d always be able to sense things others weren’t aware of. At first it had surprised him that he was different, then he’d learned to hide it.
“There was a woman who worked for Foreman,” Dane finally said. “Her name was Sin Fen. She was the first person I met who was like me. Foreman recruited her out of Cambodia. She was the descendant of the priestesses of Kol Ker.”
“Twelve minutes,” Kalansky announced, but both Dane and Kolkov ignored him.
“I could speak to her with my mind. She told me what she knew of our ability. She said it was a genetic aberration.” Dane shook his head as he remembered. “No, not an aberration, but a throwback to early man. Do you know of the bicameral mind, that our brain is separated into two hemispheres?”
Kolkov nodded.
Dane held up his left hand. ‘’This is my dominant hand, which means I’m right-brain dominant, as all our nerves switch sides just before — the brain stem. They say the right side of the brain is the creative part while the left is the logical. The majority of the population is left-side dominant. Only three percent of the population is right dominant.
“But Sin Fen said-” Dane paused as the submersible rocked.
“We’re close to the current,” Kalansky announced. He had his hands on the controls. “I’m just trying to keep us steady.”
“Sin Fen said,” Dane continued, “that she and 1 weren’t right dominant, but both-side dominant. Both hemispheres of our brains worked together much more efficiently than most people’s. And she said that was the way the minds of man’s ancestors worked.”
Kolkov frowned, not following. He was a physicist, definitely left-brain dominant, and this was outside his field. “Our ancestors? What do you mean?”
“When did we part ways from the other animals?” Dane asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Most people say it’s our ability to think, but that’s an abstract. As a scientist you study what you can measure, what you can see. The manifest examples of thinking are present in many creatures-the ability to learn, to conceptualize. Dogs can learn,” Dane said, thinking of Chelsea and the rescue missions he’d been on with her.
“But can they conceptualize?” Kolkov argued.
“When hunting in packs, lions can conceptualize what the prey will do. Some might say that’s a genetic trait, but each hunting situation is somewhat different, so there is some degree of conceptualizing going on. It’s an arbitrary line so we don’t know where to draw it.”
“Language then? The ability to communicate? That is what makes us different, is it not?”