Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  “If you’re thinking Matthew is some kind of lucky rabbit’s foot,” Penny said, “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “I’m far from certain, but going back to the Eva Shay, he certainly has the longest history with this and seems to have a connection of some kind. And where he is, things happen.”

  “That’s why you’ve been so accommodating and helpful. You think Matthew, along with the Valentina, is the key, and when you have the only key, you don’t want to lose it.”

  “What’s the beef?” Chiffrey said. “You wanted a piece of the action, and I just scored you season passes.”

  He looked at the scans again and traced the circle with his finger. “If we work together, we may be able to sort this out on our terms, which just might mean avoiding any unfortunate repercussions. We have a responsibility, and everything I have heard from you all since I got here tells me this is exactly what you most want.”

  “But not with you waiting in the wings to swoop in anytime and hijack whatever we discover.”

  “I’d suggest just dealing with what is, but listen, what if it turns out to be a threat of some kind? I’m sure you will agree it would be good to have some backup.”

  Penny shook her head. “You’re jumping your guns yourself, as usual. This could easily still be a natural phenomenon with no malice behind it at all.”

  “I don’t know where you get ‘easily’ out of this. But I hope you’re right about ‘no malice,’ because if there is any, we just might be the ones outgunned.”

  CHAPTER 38

  That evening, Penny met up with Andrew and her father in C-lab. Andrew gave her the gist of the conference call to the board at the Point. There was, at best, a mixed level of support. The board wanted them to cooperate with Chiffrey, but her father and Andrew would be held accountable for anything that went wrong. “It’s always been this way,” her father said. “Don’t waste any energy on it.”

  Emory came in to ask Doctor Bell something about the Bluedrop, their minisub. As if on cue, Chiffrey entered not long after and, overhearing, said, “Yeah, the Bluedrop. Had a look at her innards this morning with Becka. One sharp piece of tech. Can’t wait to see it in action.”

  “We have ROVs,” Penny said. “It’s too risky, at least in the beginning, to go down in the Bluedrop.”

  “That’s what Becka told me, but wouldn’t being there in person be better?”

  Her father gave no indication that he wanted to voice an opinion, but Emory said, “I seem to notice more sitting here on the ship, to tell you the truth. High def cameras catch it all, and we have the same access to instrumentation, manipulator arms, remote sensors, as we do in the Bluedrop.”

  “Well,” her father finally said, “I would not altogether agree, although I know I am in the minority these days. But, yes, we will start with ROVs. We can get a lot with them, certainly.”

  “One last point,” Chiffrey said. “We’re the main act now, so they will clear the way for us. Can’t get their minds around what is going on, and they are not taking that well. Before, it was ‘no target, no mission.’ Not anymore. They won’t give us forever.”

  “Got that message a while back,” Penny said.

  “Just time to tree this possum,” Chiffrey said laughing. “Which you should be thrilled about. You’re going to get first crack.”

  “Yes, if your idea of thrilling is the privilege of being the first one to stick your head down a deep dark hole with no idea what’s really down there.”

  Andrew caught her eye, and she backed off. He addressed everyone in the lab. “Our gear needs to be operational when we reach our destination. Make sure it is. Can’t be sure how much time we’ll get once there. But first, a mid-sea fueling tomorrow noon and departures for some soon after. Be ready.”

  CHAPTER 39

  The next day, Penny was too busy to worry about events moving too quickly. Chiffrey, like everyone else, had come around to believing it best not to bring on new people. “Don’t mess with success,” he had said. That meant they wouldn’t bring over anyone from the Navy tanker to help with refueling. The Valentina’s crew had to manage the hookup on their own, and they had never done it before. That, along with connector incompatibilities, resulted in the operation taking longer than expected.

  But they managed in the end. It was hard for Penny not to admire how they worked so well together. What had changed? Maybe they were just more aware of those around them.

  The resupply went much smoother, and it didn’t hurt that the seas were running low. Chiffrey had backed Andrew’s request for everything they might need. The Captain wanted to be ready for anything, and the Navy had come through supplying them from what was in effect a shopping plaza in the holds of the resupply ship.

  Lines with pulleys were set up between the two vessels, as they sailed into the waves on the same heading. With this simple rig, they transferred net after net of containers over the water. Almost everyone on the Valentina was needed to chain the supplies onto the deck, and later to move them down into storage spaces. The crew had formed around this task with little in the way of direction. No one told anyone else what to do, they each just flowed into the right place and did what needed to be done. It was hard for Penny not to feel good about this, and she enjoyed the movement. Matthew was cheered and so was the crew. Even Chiffrey had pitched in. Only for the last twenty minutes, true enough, but Penny counted that as a win. Everyone seemed tired but happy in the end.

  Taking people off the ship had been a different matter. Yet another Navy ship arrived and sent over a launch. One person, who originally said he would go, unexpectedly decided to stay. Andrew called him on it, but he held firm. Four others, who earlier had chosen to remain, changed their minds, most likely because of Ripler’s final apocalyptic outburst. The warm and fuzzy atmosphere on board had ebbed, and was in a far more tempered form. It was as if Ripler, even in his psychotic delusion, still had been canny enough to further his agenda.

  Those who were leaving stepped into the Navy launch as if onto a bus departing a casino after a bad weekend. Penny couldn’t really blame them. Even though she opposed Chiffrey’s tendency to play on threats, surely there was a risk of some kind for those who stayed. The smaller crew would still be enough to keep things going, but everyone would have to work that much harder.

  Daryl, the cameraman along with the helicopter pilot, Lorraine’s now-former TV crew, boarded the launch after the last of the students. The pilot looked subdued, while Daryl took one last opportunity to thank everyone, as if they had personally saved his life. Only Dirk and Lorraine seemed completely confident and at ease as they took their place on the launch, still holding hands. As Dirk had announced to Penny that morning, “The way lay not straight, but ’tis gleaming clear,” or some such nonsense. And they weren’t just happy. They were completely enthralled by their own bliss, and how delicious it must be, but joy like that could not last, could it? In spite of Lorraine’s implied skill at seeing the future, if they really did get married, the only thing that seemed certain would probably be lawyers.

  Of those who chose to stay, many seemed to believe they were under some special kind of protection, perhaps the result of Chiffrey spiking the punch with his ideas about the transceiver and Matthew. Andrew seemed to have come to similar conclusions. And the few times the subject had come up, it was hard for Penny not to feel that it made sense in some unfathomable way.

  After the launch departed, everyone who didn’t have duty headed for the galley for dinner. Chiffrey announced to them that he had at last procured the Navy ROV video from the center of the circle. In his usual annoying way, he coyly suggested that if anyone were interested in “having a look,” he would show the video in C-lab at eight o’clock. That is, he said, if someone could help him set it up.

  Malcolm popped up like a whack-a-mole, said, “On it!” and was out the door with his mouth still half-full of Navy-supplied French fries. The fast that he and Emory had undertaken was apparently over.


  CHAPTER 40

  When Penny stepped into C-lab, it was as if she had entered a completely darkened room. She’d been outside for hours, with the June sun still coming at her strong at eight in the evening. The glare from the water made her wish she had brought her sunglasses, and the double shine had contracted her pupils to pinpoints. Nonetheless, she stepped into the lab confidently, knowing by now where everything was.

  Malcolm always insisted on keeping the lights low, but her eyes were getting used to it. As she walked up behind the others, familiar details began to materialize, like returning ghosts. Nearly everyone had made this meeting except Matthew. He was taking his watch on the bridge, but could listen in by intercom if he wanted.

  Malcolm was obviously dying to get his hands on the video. He pushed his hair back from his eyes and said, “She’s all set to go, Lieutenant.”

  Chiffrey reached into his jacket, slipped out the disc and handed it to him. “Lock and load.”

  Malcolm took the disc and with minimal foreplay slotted it in.

  The screen barely registered the deep blue, almost black, color, but Penny recognized it right away, having seen deep undersea images from her father’s explorations since she was a child. She looked briefly at Chiffrey, who was leaning back on a stool, a look of absorbed contentment on his face. Without bothering to look, he waved his little finger at her indicating he was not so engrossed as he seemed. Once he began to speak, however, he was fully engaged with his audience.

  “This, of course, is the video the Navy got when they were right in the middle of the circle that Penny discovered on the charts. Got it sucked down in no time with the sat-phone and new setup I got on that last resupply.”

  He winked at Malcolm. “Yes, got my own link now. I’ll let you have a look at it later.” Before Malcolm could comment, he continued. “I was given a basic explanation and read some notes that came with the download, but you’ll have to bear with me as narrator because I haven’t seen the video yet, myself. As I implied, it was taken by an ROV controlled from the surface. Pipe up if anything strikes you as noteworthy.”

  “In case it’s not obvious to everyone,” Malcolm said, “the readouts on the side are, in order, depth, temperature, and pressure. Depth is the green one on top. It’s set up a different from ours…”

  Malcolm droned on. The image on the monitor was almost changeless. There wasn’t anything for the robot’s cameras to see at this depth.

  “How’s she doing, Malcolm?” Chiffrey asked.

  “About a third of the way to the bottom, from the notes. What we are supposed to be looking for?”

  “Let’s just wait.”

  “Okay,” Malcolm continued, “we’ve still got—”

  “Stop!” her father called out.

  Malcolm instantly hit pause. “We’re only at two hundred and twenty meters, not even halfway down.”

  “That can’t be the bottom,” Becka said.

  “It’s not,” Malcolm said. “But what we are seeing from the cameras isn’t showing up at all on the basic sonar readouts to the side. See there? It shows the bottom at four hundred and seventy-seven meters. There should be nothing but water for almost two hundred and sixty meters more.”

  “Advance a little, please,” her father said. Soft circles of light from the ROV’s floodlights, bouncing off an undulating surface, became smaller and brighter. It was getting closer to something. “Again—stop!”

  “Is that coral? A reef?” Becka said. “Looks solid. And the ripples. Doctor Bell?”

  “Convoluted like coral, certainly, but I’ve never seen anything monolithic like this. Sloping down now, is it?”

  “Seems to be,” Chiffrey said. “Look at that color.”

  “Magenta,” her father said.

  The hair on the back of Penny’s neck stood up, a sensation she trusted more than words or reasoning. This was trouble. Of what kind she didn’t yet know, but trouble was looking right back at her from the screen.

  “Not the bottom,” Emory said. “Definitely not.”

  “No,” Chiffrey said, “even I can tell that. Wait. The notes say the camera moves along a tad, then sweeps across the surface.”

  Becka said, “It’s curving down now, isn’t it?”

  “Sure looks that way,” Chiffrey said.

  The ROV stopped for a while, and from the way the floodlights bounced off the imaged surface, it looked like its tethering cable was being rolled out so it could get closer again. The convolutions continued and did not seem to alter in any significant way, but the surface was beginning to slope down, steeper and steeper. The ROV glided along, until a dark opening appeared.

  “Pause,” her father said. But the video abruptly ended. “A cave? Or maybe a vent. Lieutenant, did they estimate the size of what we were looking at?”

  “The notes I have here say the operator was able to make some good estimates based on the size of the circles the lights were making on the surface and the distance covered. They think four hundred and fifty to five hundred meters across. Super-sized.”

  The convolutions fit together in an intricate way that had the feel of some complex geometry but still seemed a thing of nature. The patterns seem to be always repeating, yet never in quite the same way.

  “Does anyone have a clue what we were looking at?’ Chiffrey asked. “The floor is open.”

  Becka looked at Malcolm. “Could you play it again?”

  “Yeah, sure.” The frames flashed by as Malcolm said, “Okay, we’re moving across, in the same direction, but I’ve slowed it down by half. It’s sloping down, looks like it’s heading toward vertical. Like half a ball and we’re almost at the bottom. It’s like a big Jell-O mold my mother had, like a giant raspberry. Sometimes it would even be that color. The Jell-O, I mean…”

  “Yes, appears to be a half sphere,” her father said, “but we’ve only seen one small part of it. Although I have no idea what it is, I can say with some certainty that it’s not Jell-O.”

  Malcolm looked hurt. “I didn’t mean—”

  “There!” Becka shouted. She pointed at what looked like a depression in the surface. It had already gone to static. “Can you back it up a little?”

  “I can do better,” Chiffrey said. “Malcolm, can you find a freeze frame of the final image somewhere on there? It’s in a separate file, if these notes are right.”

  “What happened there at the end?” her father asked.

  “That’s when the power went out,” Chiffrey answered, “but they can’t figure out why. They were able to manually haul up the ROV and once they got out of the circle, it checked out fine. They’re doing more testing, so let’s wait on that issue for now. Good, Malcolm’s found it. As you can see, this image has been digitally enhanced, so it’s much clearer than the video.”

  “Does looks like some kind of vent,” her father “but the image is still not clear enough draw any conclusions.”

  Chiffrey looked resigned. “You’re right, of course, but you know, I keep coming back to why doesn’t this thing show up on the side-scan sonar? The sonar showed nothing there, but what we just looked at is close to five hundred meters in diameter. Why didn’t it show up? Somehow, I doubt this thing being hard to find was simply a matter of chance.”

  “I agree,” her father said, “There is clearly intelligence behind all this, but we don’t yet know on what level, and we should not jump to conclusions as to motives. Whatever it is, it has abilities we can’t at the moment even begin to reckon.”

  Chiffrey rocked back on his stool until he rested against the bulkhead. “You think it’s natural?”

  Her father glanced at Andrew, who paused only a moment before saying, “Don’t know enough to say.”

  Penny could tell by the look on her father’s face that he agreed. “However,” he said, “this does look to have an organic nature. Not artificial. Coral was mentioned.”

  “It’s coral?” Chiffrey asked, incredulous.

  “No, but the immense size suggests it
could be a colony, rather than an individual.”

  “Like honey mushrooms,” Penny suggested.

  Chiffrey looked at her, slightly puzzled. “Sounds delicious.”

  “No, no, it’s a kind of wild mushroom. There’s a colony in Oregon that covers acres, estimated to weigh over six hundred tons, and to be more than two thousand years old. Some well-credentialed experts feel it is a single organism, and lately there are more scientists making the case for classifying whole groups of interdependent species as one organism, or at least something like it. The point is, the distinctions made between species in the past may be more about our need to sort things into categories than how life truly organizes itself.”

  “Imposing an order, rather than perceiving the underlying reality,” her father added. “An age-old conflict.”

  “Right,” Chiffrey said. “Run up against it everyday in my work.” He smiled, then looked puzzled. “And you think that’s what we have here? Something like a huge underwater beehive?”

  “Maybe,” Penny said, “but I wouldn’t get too fixated on that image.”

  “Okay, but I still don’t see how any kind of natural organism on its own could have the capabilities we’ve seen demonstrated. Advanced technology is surely a given.”

  “Nothing new under the sun,” Andrew quoted, with no sign of adding more.

  Her father laughed. “As true now as it ever was.”

  “I’m not much of a churchgoer anymore,” Chiffrey said, “but I know my Bible. ‘All is vanity.’”

  “Which is the point,” her father said. “Look outside any suburban window, and you’ll find tiny birds that weigh next to nothing but nonetheless manage to migrate thousands of kilometers every year, and replicate themselves, to boot. That, in its own way, is surely as amazing as anything here. We’re just too used to it. There’s an analogue in nature for almost any technology, if you look hard enough.”