Mel knelt beside him with tears streaming down her face, kissing his forehead.
“Mommy, I’m hungry!” he said again, his little eyes darting around the cave. “Are we home now?”
“Yes, baby, we’re home now!” she said, then she jumped to her feet and turned to Warren . Openly sobbing, she embraced him. “Thank-you for saving my little boy. Thank-you, thank-you…”
Wattenbarger knelt beside Alex. “Want some eggs? D’ya like beans?”
“Beans for breakfast? Yuck!” Alex responded with disgust.
“Looks like the lad’s already about fully recovered,” Warren said to Mel with a wide smile. “But don’t thank me.”
“Then who do I thank?” she asked, wiping the tears away from her face.
“Well, from the looks of it, I’d start up there,” he said, his eyes shifting heavenward.
52
Serea knew that she had to act instantly if she were ever to see her husband alive again. She jammed the stick hard right and slightly up to circle back and gain a little altitude. Her altimeter told her she was right atop the ocean’s surface and a single black wave could swat them out of the sky like an insect.
She began to cycle the VTOL engines and change her wing angle to hover closely above the water. With any luck she could spot them and haul them back onboard with a line.
“Commander,” Serea screamed into her mic, but it was not necessary as he had somehow leapt into Seven’s seat and faced her.
“What happened?” he asked urgently.
“Luci fell out and Aaron followed her. Find a line, we’re going to recover them!”
Serea flipped the switch that illuminated the wing mounted lights. Suddenly the ocean surface was bathed in a pair of brilliant beams.
The Commander fumbled beneath his seat and came up with a relatively thin, white nylon line that appeared to be a length of parachute cord. “This’ll have to do. Looks like it may be about 50 feet or so.”
“Get ready for the pickup,” she said confidently and stubbornly as the craft’s engines now screamed in vertical flight, kicking up a cloud of ocean and rain across her windshield. She felt a panic rise in her throat, but then saw her side window was clear.
“You watch out your side,” she screamed at the Commander. “If you see them, let me know!” Her eyes frantically searched the frothing water below for any sign of them.
gh
When Seven struck the water, fortunately he hit the crest of a wave about 15 feet below and had not fallen into its trough. But, from the combined motion of the fall and the pitching of the waves, he was completely disoriented. All he knew was that he was under water that was very cold and very black. He struggled to reach the surface and finally did, sucking salt water into his lungs. But his first sight was most fortunate, he saw Luci’s head bobbing atop the opposite crest some 40 feet distance.
With inhuman strength, he body surfed down the wave into the trough and made up half the distance between them in a few seconds. But, unfortunately, he had now completely lost sight of her from this position.
The water was numbingly cold, but he willed a kind of super-human swim toward the place where he thought he had last seen her, just before another huge wave crashed down on top of him.
At the same moment he was covered by the wave, he saw the aircraft fly over his position in a slow crawl that his analytical mind interpreted as vertical flight. The light from the aircraft swept over him just as he surfaced. He waved his arm at the craft, but he was now behind it. Then he saw Luci not 10 feet from his position. The last wave had providentially forced them together.
When Luci saw Seven, she, too, began to frantically swim toward him in the bitterly cold sea. In but four seconds, they grabbed one another and held tightly just as the VTOL hovered above their position in the sea. He could see Serea’s face looking down at him.
“Whatever you’re going to do, baby, do it fast,” Seven thought hopefully as he clutched the now unmoving Luci who was as cold as a corpse. Then he said, “Hang on Luci, we’re almost home.” In his heart of hearts, he actually nurtured some small hope.
gh
Serea saw them outside her window. She could clearly see Seven clutching Luci and staring up at her, his left hand raised in the air.
“Joseph, I see them! I’m going to spin you around so you can drop the line.”
The Commander had quickly fastened a loop in the end of the line, using up a precious six feet of its already short length in the process. But he clearly had no choice. No one could possibly grip or crawl up such an insanely thin line without a loop.
Serea could see the line dangled in his hand and worried whether even a man with as much physical strength as the Commander could possibly haul someone Seven’s size out of the water. And in the back of her mind, she also silently worried if they had not already used too much fuel to make it to Pacifica even if they were successful.
Then she rotated the aircraft to bring the pair in the water in sight of the Commander. As she did a rain squall began to descend upon them and another giant wave crushed Seven and Luci under its massive weight.
When the foam cleared, they were gone.
gh
With open eyes, Seven could see the lights from the aircraft bathe their position beneath the waves. In the clear, cold waters he could see Luci before his face, eyes open but terrified. She was holding her breath, but she looked like she had reached her limit.
His mind raced at the greatest speed of its life. Now the calculations were all critical and the time grew increasingly short. It had all the effect of a slow motion image, unnervingly expanding mere seconds into an awful, alien time that seemed to go on and on. Finally, Aaron Seven’s mind reached the end of the calculations that resulted in the inevitable conclusion. All his genius and all his nearly supernatural powers of reasoning had reached the end point. It was over; death was now a certainty.
A wave of peace flooded his mind. The water was not warm, not cold, it was just a void that held them in death’s certain, ever tightening grip. As the lights from the VTOL approached ever closer to the surface, he could feel the current pull him down. His energy was almost gone; he did not feel the need to struggle against the tight grip of death or the power of the ocean any more. He was at perfect peace. It was over, just like that.
Luci’s cotton t-shirt dress had drifted above her face and her hands struggled against it. Seven grabbed it, tore it from her body and tied it around them together in the water. Just as the VTOL’s lights moved away and thrust them into eternal night, Seven gripped Luci’s head and thrust his mouth over hers. If she were going to die, at least it would not be from drowning. He was not able to save her life, but he could at least give her the last breath from his lungs.
He could feel her body go limp in his arms. She was now unconscious, and he knew he would be as well in just a moment.
“Thank-you, oh God, for such treasures you have given to me,” he prayed, the final vision of his mind given to the face of his beloved Serea.
The last thing he saw as he closed his eyes in death were the brilliant lights of the saucer-eyed angels in this odd ocean of death as they surrounded him with strange, open arms.
gh
Serea’s hand gripped the control stick with a death grip, swinging in tight circles around the point in the ever shifting ocean where she had last seen Seven.
“Serea, he’s gone,” she heard her father say in her headset. His voice was not cold, it was not tender, it was just insanely even and emotionless. It angered her to the depth of her being.
“No he’s not! No, he’s not gone!” she raged. “He saved you and me and all of us, and he can’t be just gone…”
The Commander placed his had over hers. “Serea, I’m taking the controls,” he said firmly but with an unmistaken urgency. “Give them to me now.”
She stared at him harshly with tears streaming down her face. For the first time ever in her life, she looked at him as an outsider.
>
He gazed back at her and she expected to see his never changing face. But instead she saw a single drop slip from his eye. His mouth was set firmly, as it always was, his look hard as rock. But the inconspicuous tear belied his true heart for Serea, the closest to any family he had ever had.
“Oh my dear God! Joseph, he’s gone, he’s gone….oh dear God, he’s really gone!” she sobbed.
“Commander Blake, take the controls immediately,” her father said with no trace of emotion whatsoever.
“No,” Serea responded with a superhuman effort. “No, are you kidding? He’ll kill us all. He’s never flown any aircraft before.” With that, she inched forward on the throttle and left her beloved Aaron Seven to his final rest beneath the churning waters of the North Pacific Ocean.
53
Alex’s rebound from death’s door was remarkable. He ate a full breakfast meal and then some. Although he was still weak, he wanted out of his bed and to be able to walk about and explore the cavern. As he did so, Warren and Wattenbarger began to plan the first trek to the Leonard Mountain Geophysical Observatory. All about them lay piles of various equipment, from backpacks to ropes and a tool-box.
“Tonight’s mission’s just to scope things out,” Warren said to Wattenbarger. “We need to blaze the trail and see the lay-out at the observatory. Once we see everything, then we can plan our next moves. We’re gonna grab a quick sketch of the panels, bring the drawings back here to try and figure out the distribution network, you know, power, amplifiers and their system.”
“No need,” Wattenbarger said.
“Huh?”
“I’m bringing this,” Wattenbarger replied, unfolding a palm sized electronic camera in his hand. “We’ll photograph the place and put it up on the laptops when we get back.”
“Fantastic!” Warren responded.
“I do know one thing you haven’t mentioned,” Charles said, sitting on the sand some eight feet away, obviously eavesdropping.
Warren and Wattenbarger looked to him and said nothing, waiting for the sting of his next rebuke.
“The tornado. What if the tornado took it out, too?” Charles said with a smirk. “Then your dangerous little outing’ll be for nothing.”
“I’ve charted the path of the tornado from what I can see here on a USGS quadrangle map,” Warren responded instantly. “It missed the observatory by at least two miles.”
“Oh, and with your special x-ray vision, oh awesome, holy healer, you can see over the hills and through the trees now?” Charles replied with biting cynicism.
“Cut it out, Charles,” Wattenbarger interrupted. “You’ve made it abundantly clear that you want no part of this effort and we’ve left you out of it. So what do you achieve by your constant badgering except to make things more miserable than they already are?”
“I don’t particularly want to be left alone here with a woman and a screaming kid,” he replied quietly so Mel could not hear.
“Your choice; you get to decide,” Warren quipped, cinching the strap on his personal pack. “This hell or that hell, you get to pick.”
After several hours of preparations, their packs and equipment lay in a pile by the entrance to the outer vestibule.
“Two hours to sunset,” Warren said. “We need to rest. It’s a long hike.”
“Good idea,” Wattenbarger said, lying down on his pallet with a sigh. “But it should also be fun.”
Warren smiled. “You always were the adventurous type. I see nothing’s changed since we came here on our first hike to Concharty.”
“Some things have, some things haven’t,” Wattenbarger responded, pulling his ball cap down over his eyes. “Like back then, a cold beer tasted strange and girls were just awful.”
Warren laughed heartily as he lay down on his own pallet. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”
54
Aaron Seven slowly and painfully opened his eyes. They did not easily focus. His breathing was labored and he hurt all over from the back of his head, to his finger tips and toes, and even his front teeth. He had a splitting headache and did not think he could move. He lay in a dark space with a single light source and attempted to focus on it. It appeared to be a small fluorescent tube perched on the inside of a small cabinet shelf. He thought he could make out some miscellaneous medical supplies on the shelf. This looked nothing at all like what he thought Heaven was going to be like.
He willed himself to turn his head and saw what appeared to be a stainless steel operating table beside him. On its surface Luci laid curled in a tight ball, covered with a while sheet up to her neck. Her eyes were closed but she was vigorously sucking on her right thumb while clutching the corner of her blanket in her tiny fist.
Seven’s first rational thought was that Serea had somehow managed to rescue them from the ocean and they were in Pacifica ’s sick bay. But he didn’t recognize this place. Then he attempted to raise himself up onto his elbow.
“Easy, ace, easy…” said a heavily accented female voice from the darkness.
“Who are you?” Seven whispered.
“The question of the day is rather, ‘who are you’?” she responded neutrally.
“Seven, Aaron Seven…”
“Okay, sure you are,” she replied skeptically. “And I’m Tokyo Rose.” She spoke into a wall mounted speaker box, “Boss, he’s awake now,” then turned to Seven. “The boss wants to chat,” she stated flatly.
“Fine,” Seven said, laying his head back down onto the table. “And who may I say I have had the honor of chatting with when I meet him?”
“My name’s Sam,” she replied with some hesitation. “He can tell you his, if he decides not to have me kill you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sam,” Seven answered, then added, “I think… And was it you who fished us out of the drink?”
“No, it’s to my brother’s little undersea robots you owe that appreciation,” said a man’s deep voice from the opened door.
Seven attempted to sit up and see the face behind the voice, but the excruciating realities of his condition forced him back to the table top. “What did they do to us, those little robots? Process us through a meat-grinder?”
“No, you did that to yourselves. What they delivered back to us were two very dead and very cold corpses. We revived you three days ago and now here you lay.”
“Dead? Revived? How?”
“You drowned. We got the whole thing on tape, actually. It was a nice touch doin’ the mouth-to-mouth thing with the little girl here. In fact, that’s the only reason both of you are alive today. Reviving the dead after 12 minutes in the cold ocean is nearly impossible if they have a lung full of seawater. But just about the time you lost consciousness, one of our Slave ROVs moved in and, with its end effector, squeezed your heads together. That would account for the bruise on the back of your head and the red lips, sore teeth and fat nose. The reviving process is quite straightforward you know. Using these little airport defribulators, you just wire the body, stand back and push the button. The little one’s heart started on the first try but yours ran the battery down. Your ticker finally started on the last bit of juice she had in ‘er. We were just about ready to wrap you up in a sheet and blow you out the hatch. But, hey, it worked and now here we are, happy campers one and all. Except for your minor case of aspiration pneumonia, it looks like you’re gonna pull through just fine.”
“And who do I have to thank, sir?” Seven responded sincerely. “My name’s Aaron Seven.” Then his voice cracked with a deep, rumbling cough.
There was a long silence in the room while Seven finished coughing.
“Not funny, mister,” the man said with a growl. “Now let’s try that again. What is your real name?”
“I know it may sound somewhat unusual, but my name’s Aaron Seven. We were returning from a rather desperate rescue mission stateside and ran into some unfortunate weather…”
“Your story isn’t so convincing, whatever-your-name is. First: the real Aaron
Seven’s holed up in a government cave somewhere in Tennessee . Second: if you were really him, I’d gladly kill ya just for starting all this mess. Third: that aircraft you fell outta doesn’t have stateside range and flies at an altitude well above 25 feet. And last: there’s no law out here except mine. I’m
about to end this nonsense by stopping the heart that I personally started if you don’t give me some truthful answers real fast.”
Seven could see the man walk slowly around to the foot of his table so that he could see his face. He was a rather large, muscular man that towered well above six feet tall, sported a long, salt-and-pepper beard and wore a colorful Hawaiian shirt. There was something Seven sensed about him, something he recognized in his personality and his bearing. If he did not have Seven’s life or death at his immediate command, he thought he might like to actually get to know him better.
Seven blinked back at him and sighed deeply. “I’d love to make up a story for you, mister, but my mother beat the living daylights out of me when I got caught in a lie. So if you’re going to kill me, then so be it. At least mother would be proud of my last effort, because God only knows she’s not very happy with me now. Besides, the truth is so much more colorful than any lie I could possibly make up.”
“Okay, let’s have the whole story, and if I catch you in a lie, even a teency weency little white one, you’ll wish your mother had cut your tongue out.”
“Can I just go ahead and kill him now, boss?” Sam asked from the shadows.
“Gee, Sam, and I thought we were just starting to become such good friends,” Seven quipped weakly.
“Get on with it mister,” the man responded.
Seven recounted the entire story from Stonebrooke and Middlearth to Pacifica and the Seattle rescue, although his tale was broken in several parts by coughing fits. The man listened in complete silence. Seven ended with the account of Luci falling out of the VTOL and his attempt to save her.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 47
