Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  “But surely this is of a different order entirely,” Chiffrey protested.

  “Just because it seems to have capabilities beyond ours, does not mean that it can’t be part of the natural world.”

  Malcolm was dying to speak, so Bell gave up the floor with a wave of an open hand.

  “I’m not a physicist, but I read a lot…” Malcolm prefaced.

  Penny readied herself for another of his rambling monologues by slumping back against the only free bit of bulkhead in the cramped lab.

  Malcolm looked around as if he didn’t completely believe everyone would listen, but went on. “Well, at one point, I considered going into physics. I was interested in the implications of quantum mechanics, where it might go. This stuff sounds completely crazy to most people, I mean parallel worlds, entanglement…”

  “That’s great,” Chiffrey said, “but where are you trying to point us?”

  Malcolm’s face scrunched up for a moment, then he moved his hands as if he were trying to mold the perfect words from the air itself.

  “Okay,” he said, “I don’t know what we saw on that video any more than you do, but what if it is the source of an intelligence that is not only able to perceive how things really work in the universe, but can manipulate those forces as well? I’m talking the whole enchilada, you know, what underlies all energy and matter, stuff we can’t even conceive, right? And what if this intelligence is able to manipulate those forces as easily as we use the principle of leverage to open a can of soda?”

  Penny stood upright and took a small step forward. “Then what about the people on the Honey Pot and Matthew’s fishing boat? And the Navy divers? For that matter, why have so many of the people on this ship been affected the way they have?”

  Malcolm pointed at her and nodded in agreement, as if she had just solved a charade. “Because we were caught in a lens effect. You know, the way a star can bend light because of it’s massive gravitational field.”

  Chiffrey arched his eyebrows.

  “It is like we’re under different laws now,” Malcolm continued. “Deeper, more foundational laws. Closer to the way things really are.”

  “I don’t think so,” Penny said. “More like we’ve been caught up in the wake of something powerful and churned about. Maybe there is something to what you’ve suggested but, if so, it seems more to me like some people here have been besotted with imagined insights and a sense of meaningfulness and connection where there is none. That could be simply a side effect, and I don’t see any reason to believe any of it is real.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Becka asked. “And aren’t you the one who used to tell us we should be willing to discard outgrown beliefs and assumptions?”

  “I didn’t mean we should replace them with fantasies. But perhaps Jack could set me straight.”

  Malcolm waved his hands like a referee. “Hold it, please!”

  Her father held up his hand just enough to gain attention. “At this point, we can’t really step outside it all and make an accurate observation to determine the truth. A pity to be sure.”

  “I’ve only been theorizing,” Malcolm said.

  “Had a go at quantum mechanics once,” Chiffrey added. “No matter how hard I tried, it remained just a scribble of Greek on a whiteboard.”

  “I didn’t say it was quantum mechanics,” Malcolm said. “I only used that as an analogy. I mean, physicists hate it when people who don’t know what they’re talking about—”

  “I’m sure they do, but some of my people are quantum physicists, and they’re looking into that aspect. Has to be some explanation, after all.”

  “Great,” Malcolm said nodding. “And I know you have a highly qualified science team that you consult with but, since your having trouble, I’m sure I could help you get a grip on the essentials.”

  “Later might be good, Malcolm.” Chiffrey covered a yawn. “Really.”

  Her father stood up. “We’ve probably got enough to digest for now.” He looked around the lab, taking his time. “When we get to the site, we’ll have a more thorough look at whatever is down there and, hopefully, have much more to go on. At some point, we may even have the opportunity to go down and have a look.”

  He glanced at Penny and said, “But only when—and if—we’re sure it’s the right time, so no worry.”

  “Yes, because you’ve already decided,” she added.”

  He smiled but didn’t reply.

  CHAPTER 41

  Just before dawn, the Valentina arrived at the perimeter of the Honey Pot site, and a Navy sub chaser simply passed them through. There was no outward sign that things were different after they crossed over into the circle.

  Matthew was back in Penny’s cabin, dead asleep. She had considered rousing him, but he still seemed to need more rest. Almost everyone else was awake and working in quiet anticipation. No one spoke to her or even seemed to notice her as she walked the decks. It was as if she were looking at it all through a window with glass so thick that nothing would ever touch her.

  They had entered the circle obliquely and now turned east. The rising sun illuminated the radar mast behind her, then the length of the bridge, like a slow moving fire. The first rays finally reached her on the foredeck and cast her shadow backward, like a giant compass needle telling them to turn back. Only three days before, she had picked out a circle from a few discrepancies in a pile of sonar scans. Now, she wished she hadn’t.

  No one else seemed to think much about the danger they might be sailing into. Well, Chiffrey did, thought Penny, but he always framed the risks as potential threats to national security, not as the immediate perils of closing in on something they knew nothing about. Nothing, except that it had touched most of them in ways they could not fathom.

  To calm herself, she gazed out on the endless water of the Pacific Northwest. The waves moved like grass rolled by a gentle wind across a prairie. For a moment she let herself forget everything and become lost in the spell of the undulating sea. On that prairie-sea, it was as if the tales of far-off hills and mountains were only fables for the easily deceived.

  The rumble of the Valentina’s engines powering down meant they were finally there: the center of the circle. A few errant sea birds wheeled overhead, but everything else seemed the same.

  CHAPTER 42

  An hour later, Penny was still on the foredeck, drinking lukewarm coffee and waiting, for what she wasn’t really sure. Malcolm rushed up with anger and despair, like siblings locked in bitter rivalry, battling for control of his face.

  “We’re screwed, that’s what!” he said, and planted himself in front of her as if there were no need to say or do anymore.

  Andrew had dropped the Valentina’s speed down to a crawl, and they had been slowly cruising back and forth, checking the bottom. The sonar gave no indication of anything unusual, but that had been expected. Penny had hoped they would be able to take their time and open the curtain on whatever was down there gradually, maybe even letting it reveal itself when it was ready. But looking at Malcolm now, she saw her hope drifting away like a toy boat on an outgoing tide.

  When she didn’t respond, he finally said, “Why would anyone want to steal…” Hands on hips, he shook his head muttered, “My fault, should have double checked…”

  “What are you talking about?” Penny said.

  Becka was nearby, checking some of the new gear. She overheard and said, “Malcolm, calm down and—”

  “Calm down? You know what this means?”

  “No,” Penny said, “because you haven’t told us what happened yet. Details, please.”

  Malcolm gazed back and forth between Penny and Becka, his brow so deeply furrowed that it appeared to have gone into permanent spasm. He let out a big breath.

  “The ROVs, okay?” he said. “Important parts have been removed. And the few spares we had, well, when I last checked them, I thought we were good, but whoever it was just stuffed the boxes with junk, so they’re gone too. I should’ve
checked. Maybe we could have gotten more on the resupply, but now it’s too late. We’re here, and the ROVs are useless, dead. Without them, we’re blind.”

  “Did you check the minisub?” Becka asked as she got to her feet. “Malcolm? Did you have a look at the Bluedrop?”

  “No, I was so…you know…Why would anyone take those parts? There are more valuable things around, I mean, if you’re going to go swipe something, there’s—”

  "Excuse me for stating the obvious," Penny said, “but that’s not why they were taken.”

  “Go tell the Captain,” Becka said to Malcolm. “Now. You have to. I’m going to have a look at the Bluedrop.” She ran toward the aft deck. Malcolm watched her go and without looking back at Penny ran off, hunched-over, in the general direction of the bridge.

  A short time later, they stood on the aft deck looking at the minisub where it rested in its cradle. The famously misnamed Bluedrop was painted bright yellow, and its design was the result of years of refinement by her father. Originally, it was to be used on this trip to shoot video of gray whales feeding on the bottom of the Bering Sea and to survey the current levels of their food source.

  “It’s okay as far as I can tell,” Becka said, emerging from the hatch. “I went through the whole preflight, twice, plus the master list from the original build. We looked at every other thing we could think of and found nothing wrong.”

  “Good to hear,” Andrew said. “Still need a sea test to be sure.”

  Her father nodded agreement. “This is encouraging. All is not lost.” He looked around the gathering. “We are now right at the epicenter. So far, no problems. Also encouraging. All seems normal except those sea birds. Wouldn’t expect to find them out here, or at least so many.” He gazed up at the sky

  “Dad,” Penny said, “you’ve got a saboteur onboard.”

  “And that is most definitely not encouraging. Does anyone know where Lieutenant Chiffrey is?”

  “He’s talking to someone on his sat-phone.”

  “I think we need to meet with him and look at how we might best continue. Becka? Can you get the Bluedrop ready for testing?”

  “Right away,” she said.

  “Get a few hands on it,” Andrew told her. “As many as you need.”

  That afternoon, after the sea tests on the Bluedrop had been conducted, Penny went to the media lab to look at the video again. She got there to find Becka and Chiffrey already watching it. Their heads almost touched as they peered at the screen.

  “Am I interrupting?” she said.

  “No, no,” Chiffrey said. “Just viewing the clip again. Becka, as you might know, has extensive experience evaluating underwater video. Join us, please.”

  “I thought you'd be working on the Bluedrop,” Penny said

  “I was,” Becka replied, “and it passed everything I could throw at it. Then Malcolm wanted to install some diagnostic gear to quadruple check something, so I decided to have another look here.” She glanced at her watch. “He must be done by now, so I should be getting back.”

  Pausing in the hatchway, Becka aimed a smile and a little wave at Chiffrey. After she was gone, he looked at Penny. “You want to see it, right? Just a sec.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  They watched the video a few times, finally leaving on the screen the enhanced still image of the final feature, the cave-like opening.

  “Going back to an earlier premise you and some others put out,” Chiffrey said, “just being undetectable on sonar does not prove hostile intent, but I am convinced the effect is deliberate, a ‘stealth’ effect if you will, to make us think there is nothing there.”

  “So what? It’s hiding, Camouflage is a common survival strategy in the plant and animal world.”

  “Camouflage can be a passive weapon.”

  “Hiding from danger is not aggression.”

  “Sorry, but it can be. Camouflage in one form or another, and its cousin, misdirection, is always a part of an offensive strategy. The famed element of surprise used in virtually every war. Hiding your ass until the right moment, so your enemy is caught unaware, can make the difference between victory and defeat. Sure, it could be a nicey-nicey we have down there. Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s just trying to stay out of harm’s way. Or it could be waiting for the right moment to rip our throats out for lunch. Apologize for putting it so crudely, but this is a point you really have to get.”

  “It’s much too early to be drawing that kind of conclusion.”

  “If it’s too soon for conclusions, how about we draw some inferences?”

  “Such as?”

  He held up his hand and started counting fingers. “One, there is intention behind its efforts to obscure its existence. Two, a keen intelligence is at work here, perhaps even surpassing our own, if judged by the capabilities we have witnessed. Three, the dome, or whatever it is we saw on the ROV video, is almost certainly connected to Matthew’s whale.”

  “Please stop calling it ‘Matthew’s whale.’”

  “Fine, but that connects to my final point. This dome is almost certainly the prime source for all the unusual occurrences since the Honey Pot. What happened around the dome and the whale was way too similar to call it coincidence. Sure, I don’t really have the facts behind the connection, but I’d bet my left hand on it.”

  “I won’t completely disagree with anything you’ve stated, as long as you use ‘intelligence’ in the broadest sense.”

  “As broad as the wide Missouri, if you like. But it all comes down to one question. What is the intent?”

  “It may not ever be possible to assess intent.”

  “Almost word for word what Becka said a while ago. She didn’t see any signs of malevolence, no hostile agenda at all. Sees it as beneficent until proven otherwise. Part of her rapture-of-the-whales experience, apparently.”

  “I’m not saying there is no danger,” Penny said. “Quite the opposite, but we should make no trouble where there is no trouble.”

  Chiffrey smiled and moved back to his country boy speech rhythms. “My old Grampy used to say, ‘bees are busy at their business, and if you don’t want to get stung, don’t be their business.’ Good one, huh?”

  “Life just does what it does. It’s not personal. By definition, it’s just natural.”

  “You see this as natural? Part of our world that somehow we overlooked?”

  “So far. Until someone comes up with something better.”

  “Then what sort of life? Am I supposed to accept that thing down there as just some kind of overqualified mollusk?”

  “We’re simply shocked because our conceit won’t allow us to believe that something else in our living world might equal or even surpass us. To deal with it, we’re making it some kind of ‘other.’ Either a benevolent supernatural force or a dark enemy calculating our doom.”

  “I get it,” he said, but nodded too quickly. “So tell me, why does this thing suddenly choose now to make itself known?”

  “Maybe it didn’t. It might have been around forever, but an event of some kind, maybe even something we did, low-frequency sonar or whatever, caused it stress and led it to move out of its usual territory.”

  “Attack of the Creeping Coral or something? Come on.”

  “You can be a real ass, you know? One minute you’re telling us how deadly serious this all is and the next you’re back to your lame jokes. By militarizing the situation, you’re running the risk of provoking the very thing you least want.”

  “We wouldn’t do anything without just cause.”

  “Really? You, or someone above you, are likely to create that cause, bringing in all these attack and defend scenarios.”

  “Well, it’s ‘defend and attack,’ for one thing, but as long as we are talking assumptions, we can’t assume this phenomenon is not personal. Just as we shouldn’t assume that it is hostile, we shouldn’t assume that it ain’t. I have to insist on that, especially after two Navy ships get their props sheared, and th
e power goes dead on another just when things were getting interesting. Not personal? Don’t know yet. Not dangerous? Adrift on the open sea certainly could have been for those ships.”

  “You’re just arguing against yourself.”

  Her father appeared in the hatchway. “Pardon me for interrupting,” he said, before entering. “Couldn’t help hearing the end of that. One thing to keep in mind, Lieutenant, is that we are the invaders here.”

  Chiffrey looked at him for a moment. “On that, I’ll have to disagree, Doctor.”

  “To clarify, I mean in the context of the sea not being our natural habitat, especially the undersea. The good news here has to be that no one has been hurt.”

  “Well, I hope that continues to be the case.” Chiffrey got up from his stool, walked to a porthole and looked out. “Doctor Bell, I’d like to ask you something. From what I’ve been hearing from Penny and a few others, I gather that there is a theory this phenomenon could be some kind of intelligent marine species we somehow never noticed all these years. Correct?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “What I witnessed goes way beyond what would be considered ‘possible.’ If I was just reading the reports in an office somewhere, I wouldn’t believe any of it.”

  Her father furrowed his brow. Silence hung in the air and somehow continued despite his words. “We should be open to the possibility that, though intelligent, it may not be anything like our kind of intelligence.”

  “Hard to imagine.”

  “Exactly my point. It may have nothing like the kind of agenda we can grasp. It may be so far outside our own experience that we could never understand it.”

  Chiffrey looked unconvinced.

  “Only thinking out loud,” her father said. He smiled. “Not making the case, at least not yet.”

  Malcolm appeared in the hatchway, shifting back and forth like he had to pee, hovering like an agitated moth.