The Gods of Laki

by Chris Angus

  “No, no, you are most welcome. I love to be able to practice my English.”

  “You speak very well,” Eva said. “Much better than I speak Farsi.”

  “My husband and I lived in New York when we were younger.”

  “What does he do?”

  Paree hesitated, as though looking for the right words. “He was—is—a personal assistant for a well-to-do executive. It does not pay so well, but we have traveled all over the world. That has been very good for my children. They have much better education and more freedom than they would back in Iran.”

  The little boy came in, shyly, and held his mother’s skirt.

  “This is Amir. He is seven.”

  Eva knelt down and put out her hand. The boy looked at his mother, who nodded, and then shook hands.

  “You are a big boy for your age,” said Eva.

  Amir smiled shyly.

  “I am teaching both my children how to speak English,” Paree said. “It is the language of the world, no?”

  Eva said, “Is your daughter here?”

  “No. She is late from school. I was just beginning to worry a little. But she will be fine.”

  It was an opening Eva couldn’t pass up. “It can be difficult being in a strange country and a strange school both,” she said. “How has she been doing?”

  “She is very good student,” Paree said proudly.

  “She used to wave and smile at me when I saw her come home,” Eva said. “But lately, she seems . . . preoccupied.”

  Something passed over Paree’s face. “Yes. I think school is difficult—not the work—but the . . . social part? She has not made any friends. Though she told me the other day that one of the teacher’s aides had eaten lunch with her and asked to be her friend.”

  That had to be Margret, Eva thought. How awful for Sahar’s first friend to be a police officer.

  There was a sound from the front door and Sahar came in, carrying her book bag.

  “You are late,” her mother said.

  “I decided to walk home,” said Sahar, looking at Eva. “I walked part way with my new friend, Margret.”

  Paree said, “This is our neighbor. She said you have waved to each other.”

  Sahar came forward and put one delicate hand out. “I am sorry not to be friendly lately. School has been . . . hard.”

  “Nice to meet you, Sahar. Was it hard today?”

  The girl smiled. “It was better. Some of the . . . less friendly . . . kids were not there today.”

  “Why are they unfriendly?” asked Paree. “You must be nice to them.”

  Eva saw the haunted look cross Sahar’s face. If only her mother knew how “friendly” she had been forced to be. But it was clear the girl felt she couldn’t confide in her parents. They expected certain things of her and one of those things was to fit in and be a good student.

  Sahar excused herself and went upstairs. Eva accepted tea and sat on the couch.

  Paree looked tired. “I know it is difficult for her. I had similar problems adapting to school when I was in New York. But she is a good girl. Her father and I work long days and have little time to help with schoolwork. Still, she gets good grades.”

  Eva wondered what astonishing effort it must have taken Sahar to keep her grades up while dealing with all the terrible things going on in her life.

  “You know, they have counselors at the school. Maybe they could help her.”

  “Hassan . . . my husband . . . would not permit it. He feels it is an invasion of privacy. It is already difficult for him to accept how much learning Sahar is getting. It is much different from back in Tehran. Hassan is old school. A woman has certain duties—you understand—and is not allowed certain things. He is a man and so does not understand what this means to a woman. His employer is also very strict.”

  So that’s how it is, Eva thought. There would be little help from the parents. It would be up to Margret and Dagursson to do something about Sahar’s terrible problem.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Adrenaline still firing, they stared at the blocked tunnel. Ryan berated himself for bringing Sam along, but his companion seemed unconcerned, already assessing their predicament.

  “There’s got to be another way out,” she said confidently. “You said so yourself, remember? This place is like a gigantic Swiss cheese. All right. We just have to find another hole in the cheese. One that rises to the surface.”

  “I bow to your superior knowledge of the Laki chain. Let’s just hope our flashlight holds out.”

  “It will. Come on.” She led off down the tunnel.

  The passage still trended at a downward angle, and it was hard to imagine reaching the surface as long as they were descending. But it wasn’t as if they had a lot of choices.

  They walked a long way. It was impossible to know how far. When the tunnel ran straight, Sam turned the light off to conserve batteries, but they soon realized this might make them miss a possible branch. A venthole might even come in above them, which they would certainly miss if they had no light.

  After a while, Ryan noticed what looked like a discoloration on the rock walls.

  “Let me see that light,” he said.

  He turned the beam on the discoloration.

  “What is that?” asked Sam.

  There appeared to be lines along the rock, very thin, very fine. Almost like veins, Ryan thought. As they continued, the lines grew thicker and wandered over the entire rock face. Sam rubbed one with her finger and a fine dust rose in a cloud.

  “Don’t breathe it,” he said. “We don’t know what the hell it is.”

  He shivered. He wasn’t as warmly dressed as Sam. “Wherever we’re headed,” he said, “It doesn’t appear to be toward any thermal activity, that’s for damn sure. It’s bloody cold down here.”

  Sam unzipped her down coat and pulled him close. He sighed with the warmth but also not a little from the full body contact with her.

  “That better?” She said, rubbing her hands against his back.

  “Um, it feels great,” he said stiffly. “Maybe a little too good.” He pulled back. “I’m okay now. Thanks. We better keep moving.”

  “We’ve gone quite a way,” Sam said as they continued. “Hard to know what direction we’re heading, but if we’re approaching Vatnajökull Glacier, that would account for the cooling temperature . . . and the lack of thermal activity.”

  The passage continued on. At least it showed no signs of petering out, which would have meant their death warrant. The strange, wavering lines on the walls continued as well. Finally, however, the passage came to an abrupt end against a wall of ice.

  “Son of a bitch!” Ryan exclaimed. He put one hand on the ice. It was cold, hard, and dry, almost like dry ice.

  “We must be at the glacial wall,” Sam said in a subdued voice. She stared at the frigid ice that blocked their passage. “I guess this is the end of the line.”

  “I don’t get it,” Ryan said. “How can a lava tube or venthole come straight out of a glacier?”

  “A number of volcanoes lie beneath the glacier. During the last Ice Age, there were numerous subglacial eruptions.”

  “An eruption beneath a glacier? Is that possible?”

  “Oh yes. When volcanic activity occurs under a glacier, all sorts of nasty things can happen. The heat causes enormous amounts of meltwater to form, which then percolates through cracks and fissures. That can lead to a sudden glacial lake outburst flood. It’s happened even in modern times.”

  She moved a dozen feet away from the ice and sat down, turning off the light. “Not a very heartwarming place to end one’s life.”

  He wanted to say something positive, but there really wasn’t anything to say. They couldn’t go forward and they couldn’t go back. They were going to die here, no question about it. He felt his way over and sat down beside her.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this, Sam. Your father was right. I should have let him kidnap you and take you out of here.�
��

  “It was my decision. You had nothing to say about it, just as my father had nothing to say about it.”

  “If this is the end of the line for us, you should try not to think bad things about your father. Everything he’s done comes out of his love for you.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? I was a wild kid, big trouble for him from the time I was twelve. As a teenager, I was completely captivated by adventure stories. Casablanca, Lost Horizon. I envied those people enduring the Blitz in wartime London or exploring the African savanna. Mogambo with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly was one of my favorites. I wanted to live in exciting times. Instead, I was completely stifled. My father did everything to see that I was protected from any danger whatsoever. And so, of course, I craved it. I was desperate for some sort of meaning in my life beyond tutors and private schools in Switzerland.

  “Even after I went away to college, my father had people watching me, protecting me. The Royal Family had nothing on me. I would have done anything to get away from that. Finally, I just blew up, told him to get the hell out of my life. I went to Europe to graduate school in volcanology and didn’t see him for three years.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “It hurt him badly. He had this thing, you know? This sort of politician thing about always being in control, in charge of any situation. He’s always had a sort of weird fixation on his health, but it got a lot worse around that time. I think it came out of his predicament with me. He couldn’t control me so he concentrated on controlling his own body. He worked out all the time, took endless vitamins, and tried every wacky health scheme that came along.”

  “Well, he’s what? In his mid-seventies? He looks to be in great shape, so maybe it’s not a bad thing.” He began to shiver again.

  “Come here.” He heard her unzip and take off her jacket. They lay down on the ground, pulling the warm down over them. Sam snuggled close to him, pressing one slim thigh between his legs.

  The warmth and closeness was intoxicating in their dark and joyless surroundings. He could feel her sweet breath against his neck. She kept snuggling, and he wished she’d keep still. He was tired and warm and . . . suddenly . . . horny. She pressed her leg against him, feeling him grow hard.

  “I guess it’s true what they say,” she said softly.

  “What?” he managed to croak hoarsely.

  “Men can get horny in any situation.”

  He tried to move. “Listen, I’m sorry, Sam. It’s not something I can control.”

  “Well, it’s not as if I’ve been trying to get you to control it.” She pressed her thigh firmly against him and he shuddered. Their lips found each other in the dark.

  Then they spread the coat beneath them and despite the cold air and the hopelessness of their predicament, spent half an hour transported to another place. When they were finished, they wrapped the coat around them as far as it would go and slept in each other’s arms.

  When he woke, Ryan lay for several minutes, enjoying the firm warmth of her skin against his. She really was tiny. Her entire body lay on top of him and felt almost weightless. He found himself wanting to see her. They’d been as intimate as two people could be, but in the blackness of the tunnel, had been unable to see each other.

  Slowly he became aware that there was some definition to their surroundings. His eyes were suddenly able to focus on something. He could see the slope of Sam’s smooth shoulders. How was that possible? He stirred and she woke, murmuring against him, then clutching him tightly.

  “Let’s just stay like this,” she said.

  But he was already sitting up, cradling her in his arms. “I . . . I can see something, Sam.”

  She opened her eyes for the first time. ‘How can you see anything? There’s no light . . .” she hesitated, then sat up. “I can see too.”

  Quickly, they put their clothes on and stood up, staring at the wall of ice in front of them. It gave off a faintly greenish glow. So dim, they hadn’t been able to see it when their light was on. But now, with their eyes totally adjusted to the dark, there was no mistaking it. They could even make out the contours of the tunnel.

  Ryan went up to the ice and stared into it. “What is that?” he said.

  “There must be light on the other side,” Sam said, hardly believing what she was saying. She put one hand on the cold, hard surface. “This can’t be very thick or the light source, whatever it is, wouldn’t come through.”

  Ryan backed away, searching the floor of the tunnel until he found a loose rock.

  “Look out,” he said. He struck the rock against the ice and they felt the greenish blue wall shake. He retreated several feet and threw the rock with all his strength at the ice.

  There was a hollow splitting sound as the ice filled with fractures. He moved in closer and thrust his shoulder against the surface. Instantly, the ice shattered into pieces and they were bathed in a soft, green glow.

  They stared at what lay on the other side. Light poured down from what must have been a crevasse far above them. But the new opening in the tunnel that had imprisoned them revealed something almost impossible to comprehend. A large space, almost cavernous in size, loomed in front of them.

  “My God,” Sam said in a hushed tone. “People have been down here.”

  That was an understatement. As they moved slowly into the space, it was like entering some sort of crystal palace. Everything dripped with stalactites and stalagmites. Several huge cones ran from the ceiling to the floor, almost like pillars. The strange veins that had appeared on the walls of the passage had grown larger and were now everywhere. They snaked across the floor and walls, crept up the sides of the ice cones, and seemed to actually penetrate objects that were in its path.

  A fine rime of ice covered everything, giving an otherworldly look to what were all too worldly things. Some of the dripping ice cones were black.

  “Lavasicles,” said Sam.

  “What?”

  “Like icicles, only they’re formed by dripping volcanic ash that freezes.”

  They passed long lines of worktables, chairs, even sinks and what looked like storage bins or filing cabinets. Walls filled with them. Everything was covered with frost. Ryan tried to open one of the file cabinets, but it was frozen shut, the vein-like tentacles swarming up and over it.

  As they moved forward, they found additional rooms carved out of the ice-covered rock. There were sleeping quarters, like a dormitory, a kitchen, even what appeared to be some sort of shower facility. A catchment system of pipes ran along the sides of the cavern, collecting meltwater from the glacier and directing it into storage tanks.

  “It’s some sort of research facility,” said Sam, incredulity lacing her voice. “People actually lived and worked down here.”

  She went over to one of the storage tanks, stood on tiptoe and peered in. Ryan heard her exclaim softly.

  “What is it?”

  “Look at this,” she said.

  He went over and stood beside her. The inside of the tank was filled with the crawling, snaking tentacles. Whatever they were, they had coalesced into a throbbing mass of gelatinous-looking . . . something.

  “What in hell . . .”?

  Suddenly, Sam shivered violently. Ryan looked at her, surprised. In her years working in frigid Iceland, she’d become inured to cold and he’d never seen her react in such a manner.

  “What’s wrong, Sam? Are you cold?” He put his arm around her.

  Slowly the shaking went away. “Th-that was the strangest thing I’ve ever felt. It—it was like something just went right through my body. I wasn’t cold . . . but I felt something cold.”

  He looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it.” She started to look around anxiously. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  “Well, I don’t particularly want to be here either. But we’ll find a way out.”

  “No. I mean, something doesn’t want us here.”

  She was
having a full-blown paranoia attack.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’ll be all right. Let’s keep moving. We’ll get out of here.”

  They moved through the space, mouths agape in wonder. The scale of whatever had gone on down here was huge. Room followed room. One contained lines of large open vats, several feet deep and connected to the primitive plumbing system. All of them contained the strange, gelatinous substance.

  “Looks like a giant brewery,” he said. “Laki Lager.” But it was here that they got their first inkling of who might be behind the vast construction.

  They’d been following the lines of plumbing and seen a system of valves. On closer inspection, they found words on one of the controls.

  “Do you know what this says?”

  Sam leaned forward and read Not-Aus-Schalter. “It’s like . . . um . . . close or shut off, maybe emergency shut off.”

  She grabbed his arm, and their eyes met. “It’s a German installation,” they said in unison.

  “And from the age, dating from WW II would be a fair guess,” Ryan said. “But how could they have carved this out seventy years ago and it’s still here? Wouldn’t the movement of the ice have crushed everything?”

  “Not necessarily, if it happened to be a very stable section of rock, perhaps locked off from the main glacier somehow. I suspect the glacier may have begun to overrun the area, which is why we see melt ice covering everything now. We need Professor Hauptmann to see this.”

  “Well what the hell were they doing down here? This can’t have anything to do with setting off a blast to cause an eruption. They wouldn’t need all of this stuff to do that. This place must have cost Hitler a pretty penny. What was he getting for his money?”

  ***

  Jon Gudnasson pulled his jeep into the small parking lot at the base of the Laki volcanic chain, got out, and considered the bleak area. There were two other 4WD vehicles in the lot.

  He walked about, trying to decide what to do. This assignment from Eva was one he actually took seriously. He knew what the others in the firm thought about him. He’d spent his whole life being put down by others. No one recognized his real talents. He was a damn good geologist. Sure, he liked to enjoy life too. The nightlife of Reykjavik had been an unexpected bonus. His family had been from Iceland and he’d heard stories about the place all his life growing up in the American Midwest. When he finally got the job offer, he leaped at it.