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.
37
“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.