Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  He squinted and rubbed his eyes, covering a yawn. “You couldn’t really call what I described an interrogation, could you?”

  She held her tongue. This was not the time to start sniping again. “Okay, but them believing it doesn’t make it the truth.”

  “Ain’t necessarily so, agreed. However, there is the video, which we do believe is real, that is, not doctored.”

  “What do you think we were looking at?”

  “Easier to say what it wasn’t. No blast outward. More of a…well, one lab rat I spoke to said it was like a tornado rotating in both directions at once. All that plus extremely high intensity light coming from some as yet unknown source.”

  “Both directions?”

  “I know. We’ve got some good people trying to model it. They keep coming up with stuff like ‘five dimensional inverse vortex muffins,’ or some such gobble. Sorry, not my field. I can give you their report, but it’s heavy lifting.”

  “What about unusual atmospheric conditions?”

  “Ah, you mean ‘energetic ethers,’ and their like. Typically, ball lightning—if it exists at all, and most people who study such things are not convinced—is twenty centimeters in diameter. There have been rare reports of up to twenty meters.”

  “Well, twenty meters is in the ballpark,” Penny said.

  “Not really. Our estimate put it at six to eight hundred meters. Must have really been something, being there, experiencing it. We haven’t completely ruled out ball lightening and the like, but it seems highly doubtful.”

  “What about gas eruptions?” Andrew asked.

  “Apparently, they leave plenty of traces of something in the water that can be tested, even weeks later. We found no indication of a deep-sea eruption, or volcanic activity, either. No evidence, not a shred.”

  Penny paused, then said, “I know you say you could tell a fake, but isn’t it possible to produce something that looks completely real? Special effects. CGI. Maybe someone is a step ahead of you?”

  Chiffrey shook his head. “You’d have to have access to the best hardware and software to come close to fooling an expert, and we have the best experts. Even then, our people still feel there are always ways to tell. Analyzing the scanning lines of the picture, for instance. Heck, even we couldn’t do that good a job. Not that we would usually have a legitimate reason to, of course. Anyway, it would cost a fortune and still not work. I’m satisfied that the video is genuine.”

  “Any ideas at all what it was?” Andrew asked.

  “Not really. There was an early theory that a nuclear submarine exploded.”

  “Did you account for all of yours?” Penny said.

  “The Navy has just completed that.”

  “What took them so long?” she asked.

  Chiffrey sighed. “Normally, these subs are out of contact for long periods of time. The whole point of that kind of operation is to keep their exact location a secret.”

  “You don’t always know where they are?”

  “Correct. Sometimes the commander just tosses dice to decide where to go. That’s not classified, by the way”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “After they leave port, they let the dice pick the route. That way, there is no possibility that someone not on the sub can know where it is, at least by espionage. I’m talking about the subs that carry missiles, of course. Tridents and the like.”

  “Yes, but dice?”

  “Gambling with death, yes, I get that metaphor thrown at me several times a year, so I’ll save you the trouble of belaboring it. They rarely surface, but we do have a communication system that can reach them even when they are underwater, but it’s slow and we have to wait for them to initiate contact.”

  “All accounted for?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Could it have been someone else’s?”

  “We don’t think so. A nuclear accident, again, there would be abundant evidence. Radiation, for instance.”

  Penny was getting tired of her own voice but kept asking questions.

  “Could it have been some other kind of accident?”

  “What kind of accident leaves no trace?” Chiffrey said. “No debris, not a stick. And remember, we’ve scanned top to bottom. Nada. We didn’t have anything at all until this little side trip of our own through the Northwest’s version of the Bermuda Triangle.”

  He laughed softly. “That’s what Doris Glister called it, come to think.”

  He got off the stool he had been perched on and moved around the small lab, stretching. He noticed something and walked over to the porthole, smiling. “Well, finally the tugs have got some tow lines on the ships. But what do you think?”

  “Good that they’re getting towed back, I guess,” she answered.

  “No, I mean…listen, I got nothing more than a big fistful of air as far as explanations for what’s happened here. Let’s see, the behavior of the whales, but especially their sudden disappearance, the transceiver glommed into the floor up there on the bridge like a tick on a hound, four props falling off two Navy ships at the same time —all that’s substantial and can’t be explained.”

  “And your divers,” Andrew said.

  “Plus something damn strange going on with the drive shafts of those ships,” Chiffrey continued. “None of that makes sense, plus we have a mass of anecdotal incidents, and this bizarre video. Well, it’s just not coming together for me. By the way, anything new on the transceiver?”

  “Nothing definite,” Andrew said.

  “But?” Chiffrey’s instincts were good.

  “Watching it, testing it, but being careful.”

  “Well, fine,” Chiffrey said, then he laughed. “Especially since it’s the only one we have. But look, there has to be a reason why the Valentina continues to run clean and free while the Navy got skunked. And what I need to keep you all in this game is a reason.”

  Chiffrey caught Penny’s look and replied to the unasked question. “I think you’ve already figured that out. They won’t hesitate to take you out unless we can show them why they should leave you in. Is the transceiver still growing? The roots or whatever they are?”

  Andrew shrugged. “They slowed down when they reached our instruments. Not much happening now, and nothing of ours affected adversely as far as we can tell. No detectable signal going out, either.”

  “At some point, we need to let the really good people get a firsthand look at it.”

  “Unlike the knuckle-draggers out here,” she said.

  He gave her a tired smile and said, “Have mercy. I meant specialists who might have some insights as to whatever is really going on here.”

  She didn’t answer. Andrew picked up the slack by simply saying, “The Air Force radar problem.”

  “That alone wouldn’t have been enough to bring me here. If that were the only thing that had happened, we might have just investigated it and finally dropped it as NRII—Not Resolvable, Insufficient Information.”

  “Then the video turned up.”

  “We couldn’t ignore the connection with the Honey Pot and later, the whales. The similarities in behavior of both crews and the same general location brought me here, and there’s no going back. Everything I am telling you is strictly confidential, of course. It is now a matter of national security, and I expect you to take that seriously. Hope you read the fine print before you signed that agreement.”

  Penny didn’t want to dwell on the agreement she had reluctantly signed and pushed it out of her mind.

  “You need to tell us what exactly happened there,” she said. “At the Air Force radar installation.”

  “Hard to explain, but it’s not something anyone had ever seen before, and we never could trace it to any kind of malfunction in the system. A few other stations picked it up as well, so there had to be some external cause.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “A large pattern of total interference, circular, symmetrical. Like there was something saturating
the whole area, covering hundreds of square kilometers. The gear is hardened and the best there is. Not easy to jam. And there’s the Honey Pot.”

  “Their radar also caught it?”

  “No. Well maybe, but they weren’t watching if it did. My point is the incident on the yacht matches ours to the minute. How could they have known? If it isn’t obvious, that’s also another reason I don’t believe the Honey Pot crew faked the video. And after what’s happened since, it’s clear to me that we are up against something of an entirely different order. Be sweet if I could pull all this together, and I’m convinced that those whales—and Matthew’s purple whale in particular—are the key. That’s our lead.”

  Andrew glanced at the monitor screen as if visualizing what they had seen. “Don’t understand how your radar incident and the whales are connected, but I agree. Somehow they are.”

  Chiffrey sat back down on a stool and gazed intently at a place about three feet in front of his eyes. “Where do you think the whales are now?”

  “Normally I’d start looking north as that’s where they were headed. Their migration routes are fairly predictable. Or were until now.” He smiled, but barely.

  “Who do you have up there?”

  “People at counting stations on some islands. Volunteers overlooking straits and channels where they pass.”

  “Maybe you should alert them.”

  “Already have.”

  Chiffrey nodded. “Of course. Anyone have any next steps in mind? Now’s the time.”

  “I’d like to see the bottom scans you did,” Andrew said, “Anything you have, really. You do any visuals of the bottom?”

  “No. Kind of deep there and that is time-consuming. The sonar equipment we have is more reliable than any camera, and we have really good people for this, as good as any anywhere. Trust me.”

  “Still like to check,” Andrew said.

  “I’ll get right on it, then. I’ll have to go over to fetch them. By the way, it would be great if we could establish a dedicated downlink here so we could send information back and forth to our people. For now, is tomorrow soon enough?”

  “Like them printed.”

  “Well, it will be faster if I just get the files, and then you can print it all out on your own plotter. How’d that be?”

  “Fine. Your Navy friends?”

  “They’ll follow at a discreet distance. And how about the Valentina?”

  “The whales could be anywhere. The Honey Pot location is where I believe we should go next.”

  “But there really doesn’t seem to be anything there.”

  “It’s a possibility of a wild goose chase wherever we go.”

  “I take your point, but—”

  The engines suddenly powered up, the hull of ship resonating like a contrabass in its lowest registers.

  “Hear that?” Andrew said. “We’re on our way again.” Andrew went to the hatchway and listened. “They’re still meeting, but there’s work I need to do.” He left without a word or a glance back.

  The tiredness that had been dogging her for the last hour suddenly overtook her. Penny went back to her room and lay down next to Matthew who was sound asleep. When she awoke, it was late evening, and he was still sleeping peacefully like some enchanted prince in a fairy tale. Should she wake him, she wondered? No, just let him crash.

  The crew had taken several breaks from their meeting but, unbelievably, they were still not finished. She was on the late watch and headed to the bridge, thinking to herself that tomorrow was sure to be another long day. Then, out loud, she said to no one but herself, “All the days will be long.” She didn’t know why but recognized the words, as they sounded in her ears, as truth.

  CHAPTER 30

  When Penny arrived on the bridge for her shift at the helm, Emory was yawning, but he cupped his mouth when he saw her.

  He answered her unasked question. “Malcolm and I have decided to stay. Becka, too. Jack is going off as planned, with Mary to look after him. Dirk and Lorraine are leaving together. Daryl the cameraman, and the helicopter pilot, they’re leaving, of course. Most of the core crew is staying, including Mateo, thank God. We’ll still eat well. A Navy ship should be coming soon for all who are leaving.”

  “Really?”

  “Lieutenant Chiffrey’s idea. To speed things up and save a side trip back to port.”

  “Well, the Captain didn’t mention that the last time I saw him.”

  “Chiffrey dropped by our meeting and presented the idea. He’s going to ask the Captain about it.”

  “Then until the Captain changes the plan,” she said. “We’re headed back to Port Angeles and the Point.”

  “Lorraine dropped by the meeting, too. Just for a few minutes. She said we wouldn’t be going straight back. Said that even before Chiffrey showed up.”

  “I heard the Captain. We definitely are heading back.”

  “Lorraine seems to see things. You know.”

  “No, I don’t know. You think she is prescient? Can see the future or something? What the hell’s happened to you?”

  “More like stuff stopped happening to me. What I thought I knew. Now it’s what just is. It doesn’t have to be either-or, and arguing against everything doesn’t always make you so smart.” He yawned again. “I don’t want to debate it.”

  “Well, you are debating it.”

  “Not any more. I’m tired, and I’m going.”

  He gave her a vague smile as he left the bridge, and his heavy footsteps clanged away down the steps and companionways until she could hear them no more. It was strange that Emory was so matter of fact about his belief that Lorraine could foresee the future. He seemed oddly confident and relaxed. Thinking about it made her tired.

  She checked the heading. Dead on. All seemed well. The engines’ deep thrumming reverberating in her gut felt reassuring. There were lights off the port side, but not many. A tanker was slowly passing them to starboard, far out to sea. She enjoyed taking her turn on watch, but especially the late one. It reminded her of cross-country trips she had taken, driving nonstop coast to coast with only brief breaks for sleep. But this was easier, with the few course corrections needed spaced minutes apart.

  There was very little to see tonight. The disabled Navy ships were gone, and apart from the frigate trailing well behind, the radar showed no other vessels in the area. Usually, there was more traffic. Was that significant? She pondered the possible implications for a minute but put them aside as Jack Ripler came unwelcome into her thoughts. The last she checked, he was still in the infirmary, consumed by his own fire. Although the encounter with the whales seemed to have brought it on, he must have always been a match looking for a strike. Just too bad he had to find it here.

  Yesterday, in the early evening, Penny had come across Becka and Mary talking to Ripler’s sister on the sat-phone. Malcolm had patched it into a speaker so they could all hear. It soon became clear that Joan Ripler was not completely surprised by her brother’s breakdown. She told them that something similar had happened to their father years ago. He had become paranoid and delusional and thought the people at the investment company in Seattle where he worked were plotting his downfall. Apparently, the last part had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. After a series of outbursts laced with bitter accusations against even the head of the company, he was forced out of his job as CFO. His accumulated wealth, however, was enough to enable a retreat north to the relatively sunny shores of Sequim in the rain shadow of the Olympics. After a time, and with the help of his daughter, he began to raise strawberries and fresh herbs, most of it going to gourmet restaurants. No doubt his income from stocks and bonds made leading the simple life simpler.

  It turned out that there was an excellent private clinic in Sequim that could take Jack, the same one his father spent time in years before. It would not be cheap, but Jack’s father had the money to give his son the care he would need.

  Joan Ripler was receptive to the idea of Mary coming along. From liste
ning to them talk, Penny realized they must have met a few times. By the end of the conversation, they had concluded that it would be extremely helpful to have Mary around. A familiar face, and one Jack had trusted, could make a big difference.

  Penny made a small course adjustment.

  Since the incident, Mary gave her the creeps. She was obviously in love with Jack, though Penny had no idea why. She ministered slavishly to him, and the word was that she kept all night vigils, hovering over his bed in her own private rapture. Coming across her yesterday in one of the companionways, Mary gave Penny the impression of being well along in the process of turning into Jack’s own private Mother Teresa.

  The truth was, she didn’t really care much about Jack now. Just knowing he and Mary would soon be gone was nothing but good news, and it couldn’t happen too quickly. Penny had not voiced it, but if they decided to lock Jack away forever, she wouldn’t lose any sleep.

  Was that something off the starboard bow? The rising and sinking form of a whale, or perhaps it was just a wave that caught the dim light of the moon. She kept looking, and checking the radar and sonar, but nothing showed. A wave, most likely, but she instinctively listened hard for a moment, listened for anything: nothing but the sound of the ship. One of Andrew’s regular crew would be in the engine room and would call in if anything was amiss, but the deep thrum of the engines continued as always, sounding like a cave full of purring cats.

  The time went by slowly, as she wished. A feeling of peacefulness enveloped her on the bridge, and she nuzzled into it with gratitude. The sunrise was sharp and fast when it finally came ages later, and quickly burned from dull red into a near pure white. The shell necklace that had belonged to Andrew’s wife swayed gently above the center port window and gleamed as if it had a light of its own.