Beyond the Ice Limit

by Preston, Douglas

  Garza was startled; this was so very unlike Glinn. As he was about to object, Glinn’s radio crackled. Glinn listened for a moment, then turned to them. “Lispenard’s DSV seems to have reappeared—it’s in the clear, on the seabed outside the creature.”

  Gideon quickly swiveled away from the weapon. “What condition is it in?”

  “Sonar seems to indicate…smaller. Denser.”

  “Crushed,” said Garza. “Just as we thought.”

  “I’m going down to get it,” said Gideon immediately.

  Garza expected a protest from Glinn, but instead he saw the man nod. “Manuel?” he said. “Let’s prep John for another dive.”

  What is it between these two? Garza asked himself, shaking his head, as he left for the hangar deck.

  25

  ONCE AGAIN, GIDEON found himself trying to control his breathing and stave off feelings of claustrophobia as he sank into infinite black nothingness. Forty minutes later, the bottom came into sight in his lower viewport: a gray expanse of abyssal mud, scattered here and there with twisted pieces of debris, looking like a surreal landscape by Yves Tanguy. His target landing waypoint was south of the shipwreck, a thousand yards from the Baobab.

  John settled into a hover fifty feet above the seafloor. This time, the sub was wired to the surface; mission control was packed, he knew, and at least a dozen eyes were monitoring his every move. A slender steel cable for lifting the crushed DSV was attached to his mech arm, unspooling from the crane on the Batavia, and he had to be careful to move in such a way as to prevent the wire and the cable from tangling.

  “At waypoint zero,” he said.

  “Roger,” came the voice of Garza, who was manning the control hub. “Proceed to waypoint one.”

  Gideon moved forward, the low hum of the propellers reverberating through the sub. The crushed remains of Paul, at the position of waypoint three, were sitting on the seafloor about fifty feet from the trunk of the creature.

  Fifty feet. Given yesterday’s tragic, catastrophic events, that seemed way, way too close for comfort.

  Gideon headed for waypoint one. Reaching it, he moved the joystick and the autopilot made a sharp course change, heading immediately for waypoint two, where it would make another sharp change. The idea was that making a zigzag approach to the creature might confuse it. Gideon thought the plan was counterproductive and did nothing but increase the time he would be on the bottom, but he had been overruled by Glinn.

  Halfway to waypoint two, his beams began to illuminate the Baobab—and at the same moment he heard a rapid buzzing noise, rising and falling in cadence, come through the hydrophone—and the hull of the sub.

  “What the hell is that?” he spoke into the mike.

  “It appears you’re being painted with sonar,” said Garza. “Higher frequency than the usual two hertz.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Gideon could hear consternation over the channel. “Hold on,” said Garza. “Do not approach further. We need to take stock.”

  “No more delays,” said Gideon. “I can see Paul now. I’m going in.”

  More rapid discussion in the background.

  “Okay,” said Garza. “Move as fast as possible and then get out of there.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  The buzzing of the sonar sped up, slowed down, rose and fell in register. It sounded like a swarm of angry hornets and it gave Gideon the creeps.

  As he approached, his headlights fully illuminated the ruined DSV. It sat on the ooze of the bottom as if it had been placed there: a compact, neatly crumpled ball of metal with things embedded in it. It lay atop a veritable maze of the thin, tendril-like roots that extended away from the Baobab in every direction. The jagged and mashed pieces of the honeycombed titanium hull had been folded over themselves as easily as a sheet of tinfoil. It was almost beyond belief that the creature could have accomplished so easily what the weight of two miles of water could not. A faint, cloudy trail drifted downcurrent from the crumpled mass, forming a comet’s tail. In the beam of his light, reddish water could be seen seeping from a small rent in the structure.

  Gideon looked past the wreck to the trunk that loomed above: a solid, rugose wall that resembled some kind of horrible, organic skyscraper. The bloated thing was stationary, no movement or sign of life visible…save for the hideous buzz of the sonar.

  He felt apprehension mingling with fury and hatred.

  He slowed at the wreck and extended the mechanical arm, which was carrying a steel cable with an explosive anchor bolt at its end. The pre-programmed arm, acting as usual with very little operator input, held the bolt out and placed it against a solid part of the crushed mini sub; with a thud and a burst of bubbles, the bolt was anchored.

  The sound seemed to irritate the creature; the sound of its sonar rose in both pitch and volume.

  “Bolt secured,” said Gideon.

  “Ready to raise,” said Garza.

  The mission protocol was for him to wait until the surface team had begun raising the wreck, to ascertain visually that it was holding together during the lifting process. Gideon backed away, watching the slack being taken out of the cable, seeing it gradually go taut. Another moment, and then, with a puff of silt, the wreck rose like some ghastly oversize Christmas ornament into the blackness.

  “Looks good,” he said. “Paul secure.”

  “We concur,” said Garza. “Drop ballast and surface.”

  Only too happily, Gideon hit the release lever, dropping his iron ballast, and John began to rise—fast.

  At the same moment, the huge creature began to flex in the most grotesque way: the mouth emerging from the center of the stalk, swelling with water, rubbery lips quivering. Gideon felt a shudder as his sub was caught in the sudden current, and it lurched and began to spiral. There was a snapping sound that he knew instantly was the communications wire breaking free. Half of his screens went dead, the voice of Garza in his headphones went silent, and a bunch of alarms went off, warning screens popping into life.

  He jammed the joystick sideways to counteract the spinning, and the sub abruptly slowed, the nose tilting sharply up, the tail being pulled back toward the sucking, grasping mouth. Fighting against this, Gideon goosed the forward thrust and cleared the emergency ballast tanks of water, filling them with an explosive burst of air, increasing the sub’s buoyancy to maximum.

  He could feel the sub’s need to rise fighting against the down-sucking current. A vibration started, a rattling, with the thrumming sound of fast water—and then, with a sudden lurch, the sub broke free and tumbled upward, rotating head over heels like a crazy bubble toward the surface. Fighting the controls, Gideon could feel the autopilot trying to correct the chaotic motion. Sensing a rhythm to the ship’s gyrations, he rotated the joystick in the opposite direction, and, with a lurch, John stabilized.

  By the time his heart rate had returned to a semblance of normality, blue light was appearing in the viewports and, a moment later, the sub broke the surface. Through the left viewport, Gideon could see the clean, white profile of the Batavia. As soon as he was above water, Garza’s voice came from his headset radio.

  “Gideon? Gideon? Do you read?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Shaken up, but fine.”

  “We’re getting you out of the water.”

  Without his input, the mini sub headed across the smooth water toward the mother ship, half a mile away.

  26

  MANUEL GARZA ENTERED the forensic lab filled with a sense of foreboding. Half a dozen metal chairs had been set up before a large flat-panel: a movie theater in miniature, all ready for a most macabre showing.

  Garza had lived through the sinking of the Rolvaag. They say that with time, memory of even the worst experiences begins to fade, and this, in fact, was what had happened with him. He wasn’t sure if this was an unhealthy form of repression or merely a self-protective psychological reaction. All
he knew was he had spent years avoiding thinking about that terrible night, pushing away any and all thoughts of it, to the point where—he told himself—he hardly remembered what had happened. He had no interest in remembering. Maybe some people dealt with PTSD by going over the events in their mind again and again. Not him: his way of dealing with it was to repress the shit out of those memories, squash them, pretend they never happened.

  And now here he was, about to be spoon-fed all those carefully banished memories, one at a time.

  “Dr. Garza, welcome!” said Hank Nishimura a little too brightly.

  Garza silently took the proffered seat. He knew full well his reputation aboard ship was of someone rude, aloof, and taciturn. He had the same reputation at the EES home office. It had bothered him at first, but when he realized he wasn’t able—or willing—to change, he’d decided the better route was not to care. The mission at hand was all that mattered; screw the rest.

  He was early, and as he waited First Officer Lennart came in, followed by Antonella Sax, the exobiologist. Nobody spoke. Finally Glinn arrived. Nobody else had been invited: not Gideon, not Brambell.

  Garza looked at Glinn curiously. What they were about to see was, without doubt, going to put the EES director in a very bad light. Bad wasn’t even the word: it would pretty much draw back the curtain on Glinn at his most obsessed and homicidally negligent moment. If these tapes ever made it out into the world, it was quite possible Glinn would spend the rest of his life in prison.

  And yet Glinn was wearing his usual mask—his face neutral, ambiguously pleasant, vaguely intelligent, the face of an accountant, perhaps, or a mid-level manager at a consumer goods company.

  Glinn sat down.

  And now Garza could see just how nervous Nishimura was. He was the only one who had seen the tapes so far, and what he had seen must not have been very nice.

  “Dr. Glinn, would you care to say a few words by, ah, way of introduction?” asked Nishimura, hopefully.

  Glinn waved his hand. “Play the tapes.”

  “Um, yes. Okay.” Nishimura’s eyes darted around, the rictus of an inappropriate smile on his face. “What I did—what Dr. Glinn asked me to do—was to create a composite video of the Rolvaag’s last moments, in strict chronology, highlighting the defining events. The video starts about an hour before the sinking, and continues to the point where the ship broke up and the recording systems went dead.”

  He clasped his hands, took a breath.

  “We were able to recover most of the data. There were two cams on the bridge, two in the hold, and several others scattered about the ship. Sometimes the quality of the image is degraded, and often the audio is hard to understand, unless it was an electronic communication. There are some…difficult moments in here…Obviously, all this is confidential to this room. That’s why, at Dr. Glinn’s orders, the audience has been kept small. No discussion of this is to take place beyond our circle—correct, Dr. Glinn?”

  “Correct.”

  An uncomfortable pause. “Dr. Glinn, are you sure you don’t want to say any words about what we are to view?”

  Another dismissive wave of the hand.

  Nishimura swallowed. “All right, then. I’m going to roll it with no further comment. You’ll note I’ve inserted a running time stamp in the lower right corner of the frame.”

  The lights in the room went down. The screen came up black and the time stamp began running:

  19:03.44

  Then the video began. A scene materialized. It was the bridge of a ship—the Rolvaag. The point of view was from above and to the side, showing the helm, the master’s position, the officer of the watch. The light was gray, a stormy twilight. The bridge was dark, as was normal, with only the red glow of the electronics and several low-lit screens displaying radar and chartplotters.

  Garza recognized Captain Britton at the master’s station, the figure next to her Eli Glinn. The first officer, a man named Howell, stood beside the helmsman, whose back was at present turned to the camera. In the rear of the bridge, out of the way, was the rest of the voyage’s main cast: Palmer Lloyd, the billionaire financier of the expedition; Sam McFarlane, the rogue meteorite hunter; and Rachel Amira, the chief scientist. All silent. All watching.

  Through the bridge windows was the prow of the ship and, staring at it, Garza’s heart almost stopped as the repressed memories came flooding back.

  It was the height of the storm. Enormous seas were erupting over the bow and sweeping the forward deck. Most of the containers and several davits had already been torn from their moorings and swept overboard. Beyond was the sea, a chaos of towering waves with boiling crests—waves the height of ten-story buildings. Only the sheer size of the Rolvaag was saving the vessel. If there was any talk on the bridge, it was completely drowned out by the roaring thunder of the sea. Each person was focused on his or her task, fixated on trying to keep the great tanker under control. As the ship rose on each wave, the winds climbed to a gibbering wail. At the peak of the waves the entire superstructure shook, the camera image trembling, as if the winds were attempting to rip the top off the ship. Then, as the ship sank into the trough, there would be a shudder, the howling of the wind dying off as it fell into the canyon of water—and then it would begin to roll, slowly, achingly. The view through the bridge windows would go down, down, into the looming wall of dark water, webbed by foam, and then, with agonizing slowness, it would heave up again, the view raising past the dirty water to a dirtier sky with no terminus.

  Staring, remembering, Garza tried to control a sense of unexpected, overwhelming panic. It was all he could do to maintain his composure.

  Now Captain Britton was speaking with Glinn, gesticulating. Glinn was on a handheld radio. “It’s Garza,” he was saying. “I can’t hear him over the storm.”

  Britton turned to First Officer Howell. “Patch him through.”

  Suddenly Garza heard his own electronic voice, calling from the hold.

  “Eli! We’re losing the primary crosspieces!”

  Glinn responded with eerie calm. “Stick with it.”

  “The whole thing’s unraveling faster than we can keep up with—” A screech of tearing metal drowned out the rest. The ship was slanting crazily, the sea boiling over the rails, the bow buried in water: it looked as if the ship were going to drive itself straight into the ocean.

  “Eli, the rock—it’s moving! I can’t—” The audio dissolved in static.

  Abruptly, the video cut to the hold of the ship—a place Garza knew well, as he’d been principal engineer of the massive web of struts and braces that held the twenty-five-thousand-ton meteorite in place. There it was: the meteorite, shrouded in canvas, nestled in its cradle, wrapped in giant rubber-coated chains and hawsers and surrounded by a forest of wooden timbers and, beyond those, steel struts for rigidity and strength. Designing that cradle had been one of the great engineering achievements of Garza’s life. And it had worked. It had worked, damn it, and it would have saved the ship, if Glinn, the bastard, hadn’t…

  Then he went stiff. There he was: his younger self, on the lower catwalk surrounding the meteorite, madly working the levers of the power-control console, which adjusted the tension on the chains and hawsers and kept the rock snug and tight in the cradle.

  Only it wasn’t snug anymore. As the ship rolled—an angle-meter in the power-control console showed the degree of pitch—the rock was moving, the chains slipping a little, the wood flexing, the iron groaning. He felt a wave of shock and nausea roll over him as he watched. And then he saw a shadow on a catwalk above, a furtive scurrying, and he suddenly remembered the Cape Horn native they’d brought on board for his local knowledge. What was his weird name? Puppup. John Puppup. There he was, staring down with a maniacal grin on his face: a grin of satisfaction, even triumph. The figure faded back into the forest of struts. And then there was so much sound in the hold, such a roaring and screeching, that nothing else could be heard. It was a mere five-second image—then the video
cut back to the bridge.

  Now Captain Britton turned and gestured, and Palmer Lloyd approached. The audio had been obviously enhanced, but it remained distorted, full of echoes and digital artifacts—the words, however, were chillingly clear.

  “Mr. Lloyd,” she said, “the meteorite must go.”

  “Absolutely not,” Lloyd replied.

  “I am the captain of this ship,” Britton said. “The lives of my crew depend on it. Mr. Glinn, I order you to trigger the dead man’s switch. I order it.”

  “No!” screamed Lloyd, seizing Glinn’s arm. “You touch that computer and I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

  “The captain gave an order,” shouted the first officer.

  “Only Glinn has the key, and he won’t do it!” screamed Lloyd. “He can’t, not without my permission! Eli, do you hear me? I order you not to initiate the dead man’s switch.”

  The argument about whether to initiate the “dead man’s switch,” which would jettison the meteorite into the sea, became increasingly heated. Garza had not been present at the argument—he had been down in the hold—and he strained to hear over the increasing roar of the sea. As the argument reached its height, McFarlane, the meteorite hunter, spoke clearly, and his sudden interjection seemed to take everyone by surprise. “Let it go.”

  Even as Lloyd was protesting, the ship began yet another roll—but this one was different. The wave lifting the ship was truly staggering in size. All talk ceased. One of the bridge windows blew out, the high-impact plastic flying away in shards as the wind shrieked through. Then a terrible sound began. The bridge slanted, slanted some more, the ship now thirty degrees on its side, while everyone clung desperately to whatever handholds were available, the vessel wallowing broadside-to. Nothing but black water could be seen through the windows. A moment of stasis—and then, with an immense shudder, the ship began to right itself.

  This was the moment that changed everyone’s mind.

  As soon as the deck leveled, Lloyd released his grip. “All right,” he said. “Let it go.”