Vostok

by Steve Alten

  “It’s here because I am here. You knew I’d be here, which means you need me for something.”

  “Correct. And that need begins after you survive Vostok.”

  “Then I guess I’ll be on my way. The sooner I get out of this freezer, the sooner I see my family… and a good psychiatrist. Not that anyone would believe this. Hell, I don’t believe it.”

  “Unfortunately, Zachary, you have yet to experience a multiverse where you survived.”

  The blood rushed from my face. “What does that mean? Did I fall into another crevasse? Did another bear-dog get me? Give me a mulligan, Alien Joe, a do-over.”

  “As I said, everything that follows has already occurred numerous times before, all with varying results but similar outcomes. In the end, you never made it out alive.”

  I stood, unable to contain my anxiety. “Are you here to save me?”

  “That is something only you can do.”

  “All right, whoever or whatever you are, you must have a good reason for arranging this little rendez-vous. So tell me, Alien Joe, what’s your end game?”

  The entity stopped rocking. “The end game, Zachary Wallace, is the survival of your species.”

  19

  “Well that was the silliest tea party I ever went to.

  I am never going back there again!”

  —Lewis Carroll, author - Alice in Wonderland

  My heart pounded with adrenaline as I moved through the ice tunnel, my eyes darting from the pulsating blue light ahead to the Geiger counter in my hand.

  Just a quick look. One quick look and I’ll have enough information to theorize cause and effect. Then I’m up the rope and climbing out of the chasm, and we’re back in the sub and en route to the north basin. Up the ice sheet and I’m done. Done with Vostok, done with Antarctica and its insane cold. Then it’s home to Brandy and William.

  Wary of the time, I started to jog, counting each ice-crunching stride to gauge the distance back to the rope.

  Twenty-one… twenty-two… twenty-three…

  It was a surreal feeling, the deepening blue light fading to indigo, reminding me of my descent into the Sargasso Sea three years ago, a dive that had ended badly.

  Eighty-six… eighty-seven… eighty-eight…

  The tunnel dead-ended ten paces ahead, the indigo glow originating from sapphire formations embedded in the volcanic rock. Using my climbing axe, I chipped loose some of the zinc-laden ore and examined it in my gloved palm.

  Sphalerite. Just as I thought.

  Angry at having wasted so much time and energy, I jogged the quarter of a mile back down the tunnel. By the time I reached the rope, I was light-headed and dizzy, the stench of the dead bear-dog by my feet nauseating me.

  Don’t stop now. You can rest in the sub.

  I don’t know why I moved just then. Perhaps it was my proximity to the animal’s mouth, perhaps divine intervention, but when the creature snapped at my right ankle it missed. By the time it had pulled itself up on its forelegs to pursue me, dragging its broken hip, I had the climbing axe in my hand.

  Swinging the handle like a baseball bat, I sliced open the bear-dog’s throat, splattering blood across the far curved wall.

  Wasting no time, I reached for the highest knot on the rope I could grab onto and fought my way up arm length by arm length, clenching my spiked boots around the nylon cord for some kind of leverage. My limbs were shaking by the time my head poked above the fractured ceiling into the crevasse’s frigid darkness.

  Crawling out onto my belly, I rolled onto my back, panting as I adjusted the night-vision goggles over my tear-filled eyes. Snot froze on my upper lip as I gazed up at the steep chasm walls and the climb that awaited me.

  How easy to just close my eyes and disappear.

  Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, William…

  No!

  Grunting back to life, I forced myself onto my knees and crawled over to where the rope was anchored. I tugged repeatedly in an attempt to free the knot, only to grow frustrated.

  Screw it, you don’t need it. Leave it for the next schmuck.

  Regaining my feet, I removed the climbing axe from my backpack, squeezed myself between the chasm walls, and set my spiked boots, pushing my way up the parallel rockfaces.

  Grunting, wheezing, leveraging myself up three feet at a time.

  Keep your moaning to a minimum. If one bear-dog was out there, then there must be others.

  I reached the summit more quickly than expected and listened before I climbed out.

  Before me were my own snowprints, matched by those of the bear-dog. I followed them to the remains of the rope, then pulled myself up the incline through the waist-deep snow until I was again standing at the base of the mountain.

  Checking my GPS to make sure I was heading southeast, I set off at a steady pace, my toes aching with the cold.

  How much time had elapsed since I activated the sensory device? Twenty minutes? An hour? Was the damn thing even working, or had it been swallowed by the crevasse?

  Vostok rumbled overhead, startling me.

  I picked up my pace.

  I limped the last half-mile. The first sensory device was there, but no Ben. Without waiting, I worked my way down the slope to the white fog bank.

  Able only to make out the tracks directly in front of me, I made my way slowly through that blinding mist, each step bringing me closer to the warmth of the sub, making me want to run. I held each breath in anticipation, knowing that another bear-dog could be locking onto my scent and sounds, stalking me through the fog.

  I listened for its telltale growl and heard only the ice sheet crackling. And then a yellow mist blossomed into a humid, sulfurous belch, and I froze.

  It was the crevasse. The opening encircled the entire base of the mountain. Had I not smelled the sulfur, I surely would have fallen in.

  I backed away and followed the chasm until I located a narrower gap that I could safely leap over. Then I continued down the snow-covered slope, wary of each step.

  Another fifty paces brought me beyond the fog. Before me were the ice-laden waters of the bay. My spirits rose when I saw the Barracuda’s external lights on the shoreline, my homing beacon. Detouring around a herd of sea elephants, I darted from one rock formation to the next, doing my best not to stir the four-ton beasts.

  And then I stopped. Not far from the sub was a figure, waiting in ambush by a snow-topped boulder. From this distance I couldn’t be sure what it was.

  Slowly, quietly, I removed the flashlight from my backpack and aimed the beam.

  “Ming?”

  She was on the ground, leaning back against the rock. I shone the light in her face and saw open eye slits behind the goggles. I shook her, feeling the stiffness of rigor mortis.

  There was no telling how long she had been dead, but from the tracks in the snow it appeared as if she had been dragged.

  A flashlight beam danced on my jacket, beckoning me to the sub.

  I hurried over as the cockpit dome popped open.

  Ben looked up from the center seat. “Where the hell have you been?”

  He was ghostly pale, his eyes wild from loss of blood. His lap was covered in it, the wound gurgling beneath the jumpsuit’s torn left pant leg where he had attempted to tie a tourniquet.

  “What happened?”

  “I set my device, then waited for you where we left Ming. When you didn’t show, I headed down the slope. I heard this growling, only I couldn’t see anything because of the fog. So I started running. Something chased after me. It knocked me down from behind. The snow was deep, and that saved me. As it rolled over to come after me again, I swung the climbing axe with both hands and split open its skull.

  “It wasn’t until I left the fog behind that I realized the bastard had bitten me on the leg. Must have gotten my femoral artery. Tried to make a tourniquet, but all I had were shoelaces. Can you find something?”

  I pulled off my scarf. Trying my best to be gentle, I worked the lengt
h of wool beneath Ben’s leg as he moaned, his eyes rolling up as he passed out.

  I tied a knot and then searched the sub for something resembling a stick. Finding Ben’s backpack, I opened it—

  —and found the sensory device, still in its lead case.

  “Lying bastard.”

  Discarding the plutonium device, I slid the narrow length of lead between the wound and scarf and twisted it tight, eliciting a grunt from my patient. Locating his scarf among a pile of discarded clothes in Ming’s seat, I secured the tourniquet in place.

  I glanced back at Ming’s remains. Taking her body back with us was a sentimental gesture, but served no purpose. The sub would be lighter without her.

  Moving to the bow, I pushed the Barracuda backward down the shoreline and into the icy waters, and I climbed inside the cockpit. I sealed the dome and attempted to start the engine.

  Nothing happened.

  It must still be on remote pilot.

  The radio crackled. “Vostok Mobile Command to Barracuda, Colonel Vacendak here. Report, gentlemen.”

  “Wallace here. Captain Hintzmann’s been seriously wounded, and Dr. Liao has died of hypothermia. I’m suffering from exhaustion and mild hypothermia. Start the engine so I can crank up the heat.”

  The sub powered on, sending a rush of cold air pouring out of my vent.

  “Dr. Wallace, what happened to the sensory devices? We’re registering Dr. Liao’s device. Your unit appears to have been activated but isn’t tracking—”

  “I lost it when I fell into a crevasse. Screw your damn instruments and get us to the extraction point before Ben bleeds to death.”

  A moment’s pause. “I’m sorry for your loss, Dr. Wallace. I’m going to turn you over to Captain Eric Schager, whom I’ve instructed to pilot you out of that maze into the northern basin. We’ll have a medical team waiting for you back in the dome.”

  “Thank you.” I laid my head back, then peeled off my gloves. Raising my dripping wet left boot, I attempted to unbuckle the straps with my half-frozen fingers.

  “Dr. Wallace, this is Captain Schager. I’m tracking your position using our SAT feed, but there are going to be biologics along the way that I can’t see. I can take you safely out of the bay and back to the main river. After that it would be best if you piloted the sub under my direction.”

  “I’ll do my best. But right now I can’t feel my feet.”

  “Acknowledged. Coming to course zero-eight-four. Dive to sixty feet and proceed at ten knots. Call out if you see anything I should know about.”

  Dark, frigid water washed against the acrylic dome as the Barracuda submerged and moved at a steady pace through a black sea.

  Locating my night glasses, I worked them into place with numb fingers that began registering pins and needles of circulatory pain.

  Blooming into view off our starboard bow was an albino elephant seal the size of a cement mixer.

  Too tired to say anything, too exhausted to care, I barely gave it a glance as I held my hands to the hot air now pumping out of my console.

  A powerful rush of current shook me awake. We had reentered the main river, its easterly flow sweeping us along at twenty knots.

  I searched my snack stash and quickly consumed an apple and a bag of trail mix between two orange juices. My bladder signaled it was back on the job, and with a bit of aim and effort I managed to relieve myself in a plastic urinal.

  “Dr. Wallace, are you ready to take over?”

  “Two shakes.”

  I took three, capped the bottle, rezipped, and adjusted my headphones. “Standing by, Captain.”

  I felt the console’s joystick come to life in my right palm, the foot pedals responding beneath my throbbing, frostbitten feet. I had managed to peel off the climbing boots, but left my socks on, afraid of what lay beneath.

  As instructed, I followed the main river, trekking east for several miles.

  “Dr. Wallace, in half a kilometer you’ll come to a tributary off your portside bow. Follow that waterway; it flows into the north basin.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The swift current bled north into a deepwater inlet, and I knew the basin had to be close. And then my headphones were accosted by clicks, the bizarre underwater acoustics coming from multiple contacts in the river directly ahead.

  I slowed to five knots, my heart pounding in my chest.

  Ben moaned something in his delirium.

  “Shh!”

  “Are we topside yet?”

  “We’re en route to the extraction point. Be quiet. Something’s between us and the northern basin. Whatever they are, there seems to be a lot of them.”

  “I’m dying back here and you’re messing with more fish? Just pound the horn and scare ’em outta the way.”

  Before I could stop him, Ben overrode my sonar control, switching from passive to active a second before he repeatedly pinged the depths.

  Ping… ping… ping…

  I unclipped my harness and leaned over the back of my seat to his console, grabbing his wrist before he hit the device again. “Are you nuts?”

  “Take me home!”

  Leaving me no option, I punched his wound, the pain rendering him unconscious. Wheeling back around, my eyes focused on the sonar monitor as my hands worked at re-securing my harness.

  They had been sleeping upright in the water like sixty-foot logs. Now, as their brains awoke, the pods of Livyatan melvillei mothers and calves began bombarding the river with bursts of echolocation that rattled the sub like a giant tuning fork.

  Zzzzzzzzzzt… zzzzzzzzzzzzzt…

  I turned to starboard as a two-story, charcoal-gray head charged out of the murk. The creature’s ivory-colored lower jaw was stretched open, its conical teeth as big as dinner plates.

  Stomping on the throttle, I shot away from the monster’s maw a split second before it snapped shut on the Barracuda.

  The depths before me were a swirling freeway of converging masses, impossible to track on sonar or see through my night vision.

  Operating purely on adrenaline and fear, I executed a tight U-turn and raced back in the direction we had come from, drawing the chaos behind me into an angry pod of Miocene sperm whales. Sonar quickly distinguished parent from calf, and I realized the pinging had disturbed a sleeping nursery. As the cetaceans closed behind me into a protective pod, I dove straight for the bottom, executing a tight barrel roll into a 180-degree turn, slingshotting past the confused behemoths, just missing being swatted by a fluke the size of a garage door.

  With nothing but open water ahead of me, I raced over the plateau’s cliff face into the northern basin, feeling giddy over having survived yet another confrontation with death.

  “This is Schager. That was some maneuver. Now, if you are through teasing the wildlife, come to course zero-three-seven. The extraction zone is less than six kilometers away.”

  Seeking to gauge the ice sheet, I surfaced. The frozen ceiling was sloping closer to the water line, but was still forty feet overhead.

  “Schager, the ice is too high to reach.”

  “Be patient. You haven’t reached the extraction zone. Stay on course. The ice sheet will drop, and the external pressure will rise. When your gauge hits 3,100 psi, the ice sheet and the lake’s surface waters will be separated by less than five feet of air space. Dive the boat to a depth of three hundred feet, then ascend on a ninety degree vertical plane with both Valkyrie lasers on high. As soon as you pop up out of the water you’ll melt ice, and the external pressure will force the Barracuda up into the hole you’ve created and drive you straight up through the ice sheet. By the time the water freezes behind you and reseals the hole, you’ll be halfway home.”

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

  The acoustic jolt was far more powerful than the others, reverberating inside my skull and throughout the Barracuda. I searched for the source on sonar, but it was too late.

  The bull leviathan breached beneath the Barracuda and took the submersible sid
eways in its powerful jaws. I experienced the sensation of being lifted into the air as our exterior lights illuminated a pink mouth and rows of brown-stained teeth.

  And then a deafening craaaaaack popped my eardrums, and a shock of icy water blasted me in the face as I was tossed sideways into death’s crushing embrace.

  20

  “Life, what is it but a dream?”

  —Lewis Carroll

  I opened my eyes to warmth and shadows, and then a single indigo candle flickered to life, revealing a wall of books and the alien resembling Joe Tkalec.

  “Welcome back.”

  “I died again, didn’t I?”

  “A skill you have become quite adept at. So far you’ve bled to death in the ice tunnel, frozen to death resting in one crevasse, broken your neck when you fell into another, drowned twice, and now been eaten by a giant aquatic mammal. Six wavelengths, six multiverses to alter your destiny—all resulting in six deaths.”

  “Maybe if you actually allowed me to retain the slightest bit of memory … ”

  “Zachary, I’ve explained the rules regarding free will. Vostok is a test, to see if you are worthy of accessing the portal.

  “Once more into the breach?”

  “Isn’t there something you can offer me?” I asked. “The slightest clue? Even the real Joe Tkalec wouldn’t sit back and watch me suffer like this. I feel like an animal caught in a trap.”

  “Then act like one! An animal caught in a trap would chew off its leg to free itself.”

  “Is that it, then? Is that the secret to our survival as a species?”

  “No.” The entity appearing as my mentor stopped rocking. “Zachary, do you remember how you used to solve a Rubick’s Cube? Six sides, kept in flux, each move affecting at least three other sides. In every moment of existence there are varying moments within the spectrum of free will. You can remain in the mainstream or venture out into the radical, but each decision will create a domino effect upon the next. To survive Vostok’s darkness, you must figure out how to curve the elements that have brought about your death into a pathway that leads to your survival. That is the means to revealing more light, more energy. You’ll need this light to access the portal.