“Does that give me license to spy on him?”
“Say I hadn’t asked you to do this. If you were to catch him doing anything that might compromise the expedition, you’d have told me without a second thought. All I’m asking you to do is formalize the process a little.”
Amira flushed and was silent.
Glinn gathered up his papers, and they swiftly disappeared into the folds of his suit. “All this may be moot if the project turns out to be impossible. There’s one little thing I have to look into first.”
Lloyd Museum,
June 7, 3:15 P.M.
MCFARLANE PACED his office in the museum’s brand-new administration building, moving restlessly from wall to wall like a caged animal. The large space was half filled with unopened boxes, and the top of his desk was littered with blueprints, memos, charts, and printouts. He had only bothered to tear the plastic wrap off a single chair. The rest of the furniture remained shrink-wrapped, and the office smelled raw with new carpeting and fresh paint. Outside the windows, construction continued at a frantic pace. It was unsettling to see so much money being spent so quickly. But if anyone could afford it, he supposed Lloyd could. The diversified companies that made up Lloyd Holdings—aerospace engineering, defense contracting, supercomputer development, electronic data systems—brought in enough revenue to make the man one of the two or three richest in the world.
Forcing himself to sit down, McFarlane shoved the papers aside to clear a space, opened the bottom desk drawer, and pulled out Masangkay’s moldy diary. Just seeing the Tagalog words on paper had brought back a host of memories, almost all of them bittersweet, faded, like old sepia-toned photographs.
He opened the cover, turned the pages, and gazed again at the strange, crabbed script of the final entry. Masangkay had been a poor diary keeper. Exactly how many hours or days passed between this entry and his death was impossible to know.
Nakaupo ako at nagpapausok para umalis ang mga lintik na lamok. Akala ko masama na ang South Greenland, mas grabe pala dito sa Isla Desolación …
McFarlane glanced down at the translation he had written out for Lloyd:
I am sitting by my fire, in the smoke, trying to keep the damned mosquitoes at bay. And I thought South Greenland was bad. Isla Desolación: good name. I always wondered what the end of the world looked like. Now I know.
It looks promising: the reversed strata, the bizarre vulcanism, the satellite anomalies. It all meshes with the Yaghan legends. But it doesn’t make sense. It must have come in damn fast, maybe even too fast for an elliptical orbit. I keep thinking about McFarlane’s crazy theory. Christ, I find myself almost wishing the old bastard were here to see this. But if he was here, no doubt he’d find some way to screw things up.
Tomorrow, I’ll start the quantitative survey of the valley. If it’s there, even deep, I’ll find it. It all depends on tomorrow.
And that was it. He had died, all alone, in one of the remotest places on earth.
McFarlane leaned back in his chair. McFarlane’s crazy theory … The truth was, walang kabalbalan didn’t precisely translate as “crazy”—it meant something a lot more unflattering—but Lloyd didn’t need to know everything.
But that was beside the point. The point was, his own theory had been crazy. Now, with the wisdom of hindsight, he wondered why he had held on to it so tenaciously, for so long, and at such a terrible price.
All known meteorites came from inside the solar system. His theory of interstellar meteorites—meteorites that originated outside, from other star systems—appeared ridiculous in hindsight. To think that a rock could wander across the vastness of the space between the stars and just happen to land on Earth. Mathematicians always said the probabilities were on the order of a quintillion to one. So why hadn’t he left it at that? His idea that someday someone—preferably himself—would find an interstellar meteorite had been fanciful, ridiculous, even arrogant. And what was more to the point, it had twisted his judgment and, ultimately, messed up his life almost beyond redemption.
How strange it was to see Masangkay bringing up the theory now in his journal. The reversed strata were to be expected. What was it that didn’t make sense to him? What had been so puzzling?
He closed the diary and stood up, returning to the window. He remembered Masangkay’s round face, the thick, scruffy black hair, the sarcastic grin, the eyes dancing with humor, vivacity, and intelligence. He remembered that last day outside the New York Museum—bright sunlight gilding everything to a painful brilliance—where Masangkay had come rushing down the steps, glasses askew, shouting, “Sam! They’ve given us the green light! We’re on our way to Greenland!” And—more painfully—he remembered that night after they actually found the Tornarssuk meteorite, Masangkay tilting the precious bottle of whiskey up, the firelight flickering in its amber depths as he took a long drink, his back against the dark metal. God, the hangover the next day … But they had found it—sitting right there, as if someone had carefully placed it on the gravel for all to see. Over the years, they had found many meteorites together, but nothing like this. It had come in at an acute angle and had actually bounced off the ice sheet, tumbling for miles. It was a beautiful siderite, shaped like a sea horse …
And now it sat in some Tokyo businessman’s backyard garden. It had cost him his relationship with Masangkay. And his reputation.
He stared out the window, returning to the present. Above the leafy maples and white oaks a structure was rising, incomprehensibly out of place in the upper Hudson Valley: an ancient, sun-weathered Egyptian pyramid. As he watched, a crane swung another block of limestone above the treetops and began lowering it gently onto the half-built structure. A finger of sand trailed off the block and feathered away into the wind. In the clearing at the base of the pyramid he could see Lloyd himself, oversized safari hat dappled by the leafy shade. The man had a weakness for melodramatic headgear.
There was a knock on the door and Glinn entered, a folder beneath one arm. He glided his way among the boxes to McFarlane’s side and gazed at the scene below.
“Did Lloyd acquire a mummy to accessorize it?” he asked.
McFarlane grunted a laugh. “As a matter of fact, he did. Not the original—that was looted long ago—but another one. Some poor soul who had no idea he’d be spending eternity in the Hudson River Valley. Lloyd is having some of King Tut’s golden treasures replicated for the burial chamber. Couldn’t buy the originals, apparently.”
“Even thirty billion has its limits,” said Glinn. He nodded out the window. “Shall we?”
They left the building, descending a graveled path into the woods. Cicadas droned in the canopy over their heads. They soon struck the sandy clearing. Here the pyramid rose directly above them, stark yellow against the cerulean sky. The half-built structure gave off a smell of ancient dust and limitless desert wastes.
Lloyd caught sight of them and came forward immediately, both hands extended. “Eli!” he boomed good-naturedly. “You’re late. One would think you were planning to move Mount Everest instead of a lump of iron.” He took Glinn’s elbow and steered him toward a set of stone benches on the far side of the pyramid.
McFarlane settled on a bench opposite Lloyd and Glinn. Here, in the shadow of the pyramid, it was cool.
Lloyd pointed at the slim folder under Glinn’s arm. “Is that all my million dollars bought me?”
Glinn did not reply directly; he was gazing at the pyramid. “How high will it be when completed?” he asked.
“Seventy-seven feet,” Lloyd replied proudly. “It’s the tomb of an Old Kingdom pharaoh, Khefret II. A minor ruler in every way—poor kid died at thirteen. I wanted a bigger one, of course. But it is the only pyramid outside of the Nile Valley.”
“And the base, what does it measure?”
“One hundred and forty feet on a side.”
Glinn was silent for a moment, his eyes veiled. “Interesting coincidence,” he said.
“Coincidence?”
Glinn’s eyes slid back to Lloyd. “We reanalyzed the data on your meteorite. We think it weighs closer to ten thousand tons. Same as your pyramid over there. Using standard nickel-iron meteorites as a basis, that would make your rock about forty feet in diameter.”
“That’s wonderful! The bigger the better.”
“Moving the meteorite will be like moving this pyramid of yours. Not block by block, but all together.”
“So?”
“Take the Eiffel Tower, for instance,” Glinn said.
“I wouldn’t want to. Ugly as hell.”
“The Eiffel Tower weighs about five thousand tons.”
Lloyd looked at him.
“The Saturn V rocket—the heaviest land-based object ever moved by human beings—weighs three thousand tons. Moving your meteorite, Mr. Lloyd, will be like moving two Eiffel towers. Or three Saturn V rockets.”
“What’s the point?” Lloyd asked.
“The point is that ten thousand tons, when you actually consider it, is a staggering weight. Twenty million pounds. And we’re talking about lugging it halfway around the world.”
Lloyd grinned. “The heaviest object ever moved by mankind—I like that. You couldn’t ask for a better publicity hook. But I don’t see the problem. Once it’s on board the ship, you can bring it right up the Hudson practically to our doorstep.”
“Getting it on board the ship is the problem—especially those last fifty feet from shore into the hold. The biggest crane in the world picks up less than a thousand tons.”
“So build a pier and slide it out to the boat.”
“Off the coast of Isla Desolación, the depth drops to two hundred feet a mere twenty feet from shore. So you can’t build a fixed pier. And the meteorite would sink an ordinary floating pier.”
“Find a shallower place.”
“We’ve checked. There is no other place. In fact, the only possible loading point is on the eastern coast of the island. A snowfield lies between that point and the meteorite. The snow is two hundred feet deep in the center. Which means we have to move your rock around the snowfield to get it to the ship.”
Lloyd grunted. “I’m beginning to see the problem. Why don’t we just bring a big ship in there, back it up to shore, and roll the damn thing into the hold? The biggest supertankers hold half a million tons of crude. That’s more than enough to spare.”
“If you roll this meteorite into the hold of a ship, it would simply drop right through the bottom. This is not crude oil, which conveniently displaces its weight as it fills a hold.”
“What’s all this dancing around, then?” Lloyd asked sharply. “Is this leading up to a refusal?”
Glinn shook his head. “On the contrary. We’re willing to take on the job.”
Lloyd beamed. “That’s terrific! Why all the gloomy talk?”
“I simply wanted to prepare you for the enormity of the task you want to accomplish. And for the commensurate enormity of our bill.”
Lloyd’s broad features narrowed. “And that is … ?”
“One hundred and fifty million dollars. Including chartering the transport vessel. FOB the Lloyd Museum.”
Lloyd’s face went pale. “My God. One hundred and fifty million … ” His chin sank onto his hands. “For a ten-thousand-ton rock. That’s … ”
“Seven dollars and fifty cents a pound,” said Glinn.
“Not bad,” McFarlane said, “when you consider that the going rate for a decent meteorite is about a hundred bucks a pound.”
Lloyd looked at him. “Is that so?”
McFarlane nodded.
“In any case,” Glinn continued, “because of the unusual nature of the job, our acceptance comes with two conditions.”
“Yes?”
“The first condition is double overage. As you’ll see in the report, our cost estimates haven’t been especially conservative. But we feel that, to be absolutely safe, twice that amount must be budgeted for.”
“Meaning it’s really going to cost three hundred million dollars.”
“No. We believe it’s going to cost one hundred and fifty, or we wouldn’t have presented you with that figure. But given all the unknown variables, the incomplete data, and the immense weight of the meteorite, we need some maneuvering room.”
“Maneuvering room.” Lloyd shook his head. “And the second condition?”
Glinn took the folder from under his arm and placed it on one knee. “A dead man’s switch.”
“What’s that?”
“A special trapdoor, built into the bottom of the transport vessel, so that in the direst emergency the meteorite can be jettisoned.”
Lloyd seemed not to understand. “Jettison the meteorite?”
“If it ever shook loose from its berth, it could sink the ship. If that happened, we’d need a way to get rid of it, fast.”
As Lloyd listened to this, the pallor that had come across his face gave way to a flush of anger. “You mean to say the first time we hit a rough sea, you dump the meteorite overboard? Forget it.”
“According to Dr. Amira, our mathematician, there’s only a one-in-five-thousand chance of it being necessary.”
McFarlane spoke. “I thought he was paying the big bucks because you guaranteed success. Dumping the meteorite in a storm sounds like a failure to me.”
Glinn glanced at him. “Our guarantee is that EES will never fail in our work. And that guarantee is unequivocal. But we can’t guarantee against an act of God. Natural systems are inherently unpredictable. If a freak storm came out of nowhere and foundered the vessel, we wouldn’t necessarily consider that a failure.”
Lloyd bounded to his feet. “Well, there’s no way in hell I’m going to drop the meteorite to the bottom of the ocean. So there’s no point in letting you build a dead man’s switch.” He took several steps away from them, then stopped, facing the pyramid, arms folded.
“It’s the price of the dance,” Glinn said. He spoke quietly, but his voice carried total conviction.
For a time, Lloyd made no reply. The big man shook his head, clearly in the grip of an inner struggle. At last he turned.
“All right,” he said. “When do we start?”
“Today, if you like.” Glinn stood up, carefully placing his folder on the stone bench. “This contains an overview of the preparations we’ll need to make, along with a breakdown of the associated costs. All we need is your go-ahead and a fifty-million retainer. As you will see, EES will handle all the details.”
Lloyd took the folder. “I’ll read it before lunch.”
“I think you’ll find it interesting. And now, I’d better get back to New York.” Glinn nodded at the two men in turn. “Gentlemen, enjoy your pyramid.”
Then he turned, made his way across the sandy clearing, and disappeared into the tightly woven shade of the maple trees.
Millburn, New Jersey,
June 9, 2:45 P.M.
ELI GLINN sat, motionless, behind the wheel of a nondescript four-door sedan. By instinct, he had parked at an angle that maximized sun glare off the windshield, making it difficult for passersby to observe him. He dispassionately took in the sights and sounds of the typical East Coast suburb: tended lawns, ancient trees, the distant hum of freeway traffic.
Two buildings down, the front door of a small Georgian opened and a woman appeared. Glinn straightened up with an almost imperceptible motion. He watched attentively as she descended the front steps, hesitated, then looked back over her shoulder. But the door had already shut. She turned away and began walking toward him briskly, head held high, shoulders straight, light yellow hair burnished by the afternoon sun.
Glinn opened a manila folder lying on the passenger seat and studied a photograph clipped to the papers inside. This was her. He slipped the folder into the rear of the car and looked back through the window. Even out of uniform the woman radiated authority, competence, and self-discipline. And nothing about her betrayed how difficult the last eighteen months must have been. That was good, very go
od. As she approached, he lowered the passenger window: according to his character profile, surprise offered the highest hope of success.
“Captain Britton?” he called out. “My name is Eli Glinn. Could I have a word with you?”
She paused. He noted that, already, the surprise on her face was giving way to curiosity. There was no alarm or fear; merely quiet confidence.
The woman stepped toward the car. “Yes?”
Automatically, Glinn made a number of mental notes. The woman wore no perfume, and she kept her small but functional handbag clasped tightly against her side. She was tall, but fine-boned. Although her face was pale, tiny crinkles around the green eyes and a splash of freckles gave evidence of years spent in the sun and wind. Her voice was low.
“Actually, what I have to say might take a while. Can I drop you somewhere?”
“Unnecessary, thank you. The train station’s just a few blocks away.”
Glinn nodded. “Heading home to New Rochelle? The connections are very inconvenient. I’d be happy to drive you.”
This time the surprise lingered a little longer, and when it died away it left a look of speculation in the sea green eyes. “My mother always told me never to get into a stranger’s car.”
“Your mother taught you well. But I think what I have to say will be of interest to you.”
The woman considered this a moment. Then she nodded. “Very well,” she said, opening the passenger door and taking a seat. Glinn noticed that she kept her purse in her lap, and her right hand, significantly, stayed on the door handle. He was not surprised she had accepted. But he was impressed by her ability to size up a situation, examine the options, and quickly arrive at a solution. She was willing to take a risk, but not a foolish one. This is what the dossier had led him to expect.
“You’ll have to give me directions,” he said, pulling away from the curb. “I’m not familiar with this part of New Jersey.” This was not precisely true. He knew half a dozen ways to get to Westchester County, but he wanted to see how she handled command, even one as small as this. As they drove, Britton remained collected, giving terse directions in the manner of someone accustomed to having her orders obeyed. A very impressive woman indeed, perhaps all the more impressive for her single catastrophic failure.
The Ice Limit Page 6
