Beyond the Ice Limit

by Preston, Douglas

  “So if not a nuke, what?” Gideon asked with no little exasperation.

  “Before you make that decision, you need more information.”

  “Such as?”

  “Many years ago, when I was just getting started as a freelance meteorite hunter, I got a temporary job as a roughneck. Near Odessa, Texas. I was part of a team prospecting for oil. You know how they look for oil? They set an array of small explosive devices on the surface of the ground, along with seismic sensors. They detonate the explosives, which sends a pulse of seismic waves through the ground, which are then picked up by the sensors. A computer can process the information and draw a picture of what’s underground—the layers of rock, the fault lines, the discontinuities—and, of course, the hidden pools of petroleum.”

  “Are you suggesting we do that here?”

  “Absolutely. You need to map what’s underground. You need to be sure you’re going to get it all.”

  Gideon looked at McFarlane. The man was leaning toward him, his pale-blue eyes glittering in a way that made Gideon uneasy, breathing a little too hard. He was rail-thin and dressed in such a slovenly fashion he might have been a homeless person. And yet, despite everything, despite what he knew about the man and his history, Gideon recognized the suggestion was a good one. A very good one.

  “We could do that.”

  “I sensed you were a person who would listen.” He extended his hand, took Gideon’s, and shook it. “I’ll design the array. You set up the explosives and seismic sensors. We’ll work together—partners.”

  “Not partners. Collaborators.”

  42

  TWO DECKS HIGHER, in the marine acoustics lab, Wong and Prothero were monitoring an acoustic device that techs in the control center had lowered to within half a mile of the creature. Wong had on a pair of earphones and a headset in which she could hear Prothero’s nasal voice.

  “I’m ready to start broadcasting the who are you? blue whale vocalization,” he said. “It’s the sound two blue whales make when approaching each other from a distance—the whale hello, you could say. Let’s see how the Baobab responds. Are you set?”

  “Set.”

  “It’s going to sound different from what we’ve been hearing so far. Those sounds were sped up ten times for clarity. The real vocalizations are in the ten-to-thirty-nine-hertz range. A human can’t hear below twenty hertz, so it’ll sound really low, almost like a stutter, and you probably won’t catch it all.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m going to broadcast for a minute, then give it a five-minute rest.” Prothero fiddled with some dials. “Broadcasting.”

  It sounded to Wong like a series of extremely low groans and stutters. It went on for a minute, then fell into silence. Wong listened for a response. Five minutes went by. Nothing.

  “I’m going to try it again,” said Prothero. “Upping the amplitude.”

  He broadcast the whale greeting again. When it ended, there was a silence of about a minute—and then Wong heard another deep sound, very different: a long, drawn-out groan, followed by a stutter that faded over time into silence. A second sound followed, also long and low. She felt her heart accelerate. This was as unexpected as it was incredible: the thing had responded. They were communicating with an alien intelligence. Furthermore, she could hear that the Baobab was not simply repeating back what they had just played: rather, this was a new communication.

  “You hear that?” said Prothero, his voice so excited it was squeaking like a teenager’s. “Motherfucker! It’s talking to us! There goes your theory that it’s just mindlessly playing back shit.”

  “I concede the point,” Wong said. She wondered briefly what would happen if she told Prothero what she really thought of him. No…that could wait until later. When they were back in home port, maybe.

  “Okay. I’m going to repeat who are you.”

  The blue whale vocalization sounded. And the response came back, more rapidly this time.

  “Did you get it on tape?” Prothero asked eagerly.

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t know what it means, but we’ll sure as hell find out. Let’s do it again.”

  They repeated the same message, getting the same response.

  “Wong, put that sound into the acoustic database and see what matches we get.”

  “Already done.”

  It didn’t take long for the computer to find a dozen matches in Prothero’s vast database of blue whale sounds. Once again, she looked up the circumstances under which the sounds had been recorded and forwarded the results to Prothero’s workstation. He labored for a while in silence.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve sort of got a translation. The Baobab’s response was three distinct sounds. The first one seems to have something to do with time. It’s really drawn out, though; I figure that means ‘long time.’”

  More typing. Prothero was muttering to himself, a number of Jesum Crows and Fuckin’ A’s that she heard, unwillingly, broadcast through the headset.

  “Okay,” he said again. “The second vocalization involves distance. It, too, is abnormally drawn out. So it probably means something like ‘long distance.’ Or more like ‘far away.’ That’s it! We asked it: Who are you?” and it answered: “Long time. Far away.”

  Wong felt a strange sensation, like ice, creeping down her neck. This was, without any doubt, a stunning moment.

  “Then, there’s this third one. It sounds like the warning sound whales make upon encountering a fishing net or a trawl line.” He paused. “‘Net.’ I’m not a hundred percent sure about that one. And it doesn’t seem to fit the other two, but…” Prothero grew animated. “You realize what we’ve done?” he crowed, as if the magnitude of it had just burst over him. “We’re the first human beings to actually communicate with an alien intelligence! Holy fuck! It’s telling us it came a long distance over an extended period of time. Just like the Star Wars opening crawl, A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

  The cold feeling spread. Wong had no idea why she suddenly felt this way, but it seemed to her that buried in the message was something unutterably lost and lonely. Long ago, far away…That didn’t feel like a message: it was more like a cry for help. And then how did that other word fit in, net?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Prothero. “Let’s keep going. Let’s see what else we can ask it—and get answers to.”

  But there was nothing. They broadcast sounds for another hour, but there was no reply. It was as if the entity—for whatever reason—had gone abruptly silent.

  43

  GIDEON WAS DAMNED glad he was in mission control this time, instead of down in the DSV. He stood at his usual console, watching the main screen along with everyone else in the room. McFarlane stood beside him, a silent, focused presence. McFarlane had rapidly integrated himself into the project, seemingly managing to be everywhere on the ship at the same time, intruding into every lab and machine shop and work space, making plenty of enemies in the process. Gideon had noticed that many on board ship not only disliked McFarlane but were, apparently, afraid of him. He was like a man who had gone through fire, been burned to the bone, and survived, leaving behind a scorched, skeletonized intensity; a being who followed none of the usual pleasantries and mannerisms that normally governed human interaction; a man who stated the truth as he saw it, in a way so stripped of social niceties that it was raw and offensive. Only Prothero seemed amused, even charmed, by his off-putting manner.

  They watched as the remotely controlled Ringo hovered along the seafloor, a quarter mile from the Baobab, laying a line of charges and seismic sensors. The Baobab itself seemed to have gone somewhat quiescent as soon as the DSV arrived.

  “The thing’s like a cat,” said McFarlane, who had taken on the task of overseeing the operation without being challenged. “Gone still. Waiting for the bird to hop a little closer.”

  Again, Gideon was surprised at the insight, which was not so far away from the lines along whi
ch he’d been thinking. But the plan was for the DSV not to get any closer; it would remain—or so they hoped—beyond reach of the grotesque, sucking mouth. Fortunately, the charges didn’t need to be placed that close. The idea was to map the outer edges of the creature’s underground presence.

  It was a long process. There were few people in mission control; the operation had been last-minute. Glinn had decreed that, going forward, information was to be more compartmentalized, in an effort to put a lid on the crazy speculation and wildfire rumors. The ship was like the worst kind of a small town. It amazed Gideon how otherwise normal, educated people could be transformed into poisonous, vicious gossips, repeating and exaggerating every little thing, getting into petty disputes and absurd controversies. It was a measure of the toxic levels of anxiety and stress currently on board ship.

  “You say you learned this roughnecking?” Gideon asked McFarlane.

  “Yes. And then I tried the technique meteorite hunting. I figured it would be ideal for finding a large, heavy object underground.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No. I tried it on the Boxhole Crater near Alice Springs in Australia. There was no main mass to find. The impactor must have vaporized on impact. Threw away forty grand. Left me bankrupt.”

  “So how did you get involved in the Rolvaag project in the first place?”

  “You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I was once the world’s most successful meteorite hunter. My former partner, Nestor Masangkay, found a gigantic meteorite in the Cape Horn Islands. He died before he could recover it. Palmer Lloyd got wind of it and hired me, along with Eli and his engineering company, to dig it up. I went down there on the Rolvaag with Eli’s big team to recover it. I’m sure you know the story. Through criminal hubris, the entire ship went to the bottom—planting that son of a bitch right where it wanted to be.”

  “So why did Lloyd hire you to ride shotgun on this expedition? Since it’s not a meteorite, where do you come in?”

  “You heard what I said, back in Glinn’s cabin. Lloyd observed my comportment during the last hours of the Rolvaag. He decided, with good reason, that I was better qualified to handle a challenging situation than the two G’s.”

  “That would be Glinn and Garza.”

  “Yes.” McFarlane turned his blue eyes on Gideon. “And now I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How did Glinn heal up? The last I heard, he was a cripple, all hunched over in a wheelchair. Blind in one eye and barely able to move a finger.”

  The unexpected question threw Gideon for a moment. “He’s had some…good medical treatment.”

  “Good? More like a miracle. If he weren’t a hard-core atheist, I’d say he must have been praying awfully hard to Saint Jude.”

  Gideon changed the subject. “I didn’t know Glinn was an atheist.”

  “Are you surprised? He doesn’t believe in any power greater than himself. And we all know he’s God-like anyway—in his own mind, at least.”

  The DSV Ringo had finished laying the charges and seismometers, and now it was starting to ascend. As soon as it had reached a thousand meters, the plan was to detonate the charges, then measure the results: Glinn hadn’t wanted to take chances that the creature would grow active again, or that the cables connecting the seismometers to the surface might become disconnected.

  Now the chatter in mission control increased as the countdown toward the seismic test started. Detonation time approached, and the level of tension rose accordingly.

  Gideon turned to his control screen. “We’re ten minutes from detonation.”

  “The reaction of the creature should give us valuable information,” McFarlane said. “If we survive its reaction, I mean.”

  That very thought had been going through Gideon’s head.

  “Five minutes,” came the announcement.

  “Understood,” said McFarlane.

  Suddenly Gideon heard a commotion at the main entrance to mission control. A man was shouting hysterically. Gideon looked over and saw another one of Sax’s lab assistants, Craig Waingro, arguing loudly with security. He was gesturing wildly, screaming with almost inhuman intensity.

  “Stop the explosions!” he shouted. “Stop them—now!” His voice sounded hoarse and muffled, as if he had swallowed sand.

  The two security officers tried to restrain him, but Waingro started swinging at them. They both drew their guns. One tried to tackle the man; there was a brief struggle, and then suddenly Waingro wrenched free, the guard’s gun in his own hand. He waved it about and it suddenly went off, the report deafening in the room. There were screams and shouts as people took cover.

  “You won’t do this!” Waingro cried, waving the gun and firing randomly again. “Don’t even try! I’m warning you!”

  The other guard rushed the man; he fired, but missed, and the guard tackled him. The first guard joined in and a massive struggle ensued. It was punctuated by the loud sound of another gunshot—and then silence.

  The two guards, lying on top of the man, got up to reveal Waingro on the ground, arms splayed, gun still gripped in his right hand, the top half of his head shot away, brains sliding out into a widening pool of blood. In the struggle, he had evidently fired the gun inadvertently into his own head.

  Gideon looked on in horror. There was something wrong—even more wrong than this awful sight would account for. Just as he felt McFarlane pull him roughly back, he saw what it was; there were gasps and expostulations of horror and disgust as others saw it, too. People backed away, shouting and shrieking.

  Wriggling free of the man’s ruptured brain, covered with blood and gray matter and membrane, was a dark-gray worm-like thing. As it thrashed free, it opened a tiny mouth, exposing a single sharp tooth; cut itself free; and then began to slither away.

  44

  DR. PATRICK BRAMBELL looked down at the dead body of Waingro, Sax’s lab assistant, lying on a gurney, still dressed and bloody from the tragedy that had occurred just a few minutes earlier in mission control. Dr. Sax stood beside him. Neither had been present at the disturbance. But the word was out, and the entire ship was in an uproar. Garza had demanded an immediate autopsy and a report on the worm, or tentacle, or whatever the abomination was that had slithered out of the man’s brain.

  “Dear me,” muttered Sax, gazing at the body. “What a mess.”

  But Brambell’s attention wasn’t on the body itself; it had been arrested by the worm-like thing. Security had brought it down sealed in a stainless-steel tray with a glass top. Brambell felt a shudder pass through him as he looked at it. Following the melee in the control room, it had almost escaped, but at the last minute someone had recovered sufficiently from shock to slam a trash can over it, trapping it.

  And here it was: a gray worm-like creature, about the diameter of a pencil and six inches long. It was wriggling about in the container, methodically exploring every nook and corner, clearly looking for escape routes. The head of the organism appeared to have two glittering black eyes, and between them a round mouth with a single razor-sharp black tooth protruding, made, it appeared, of a substance that resembled obsidian or glass.

  “Dr. Brambell?” Sax asked. “Shall we begin?” Her hair was tucked under a cap and she was in full scrubs, as was he. They had established a formal relationship, which Brambell liked. Sax was both a PhD and an MD, and Brambell felt a little undereducated around her. One thing was certain—she was a lot better suited for this task, academically and emotionally, than his own lily-livered medical assistant, Rogelio.

  He glanced over the large tray standing between them, neatly arranged with autopsy tools: #22 scalpels, skull chisels, rib cutters, forceps, scissors, Hagedorn needles, a long knife, and the obligatory Stryker saw.

  Brambell did a visual inspection of the body. The video camera was running. He spoke his observations aloud, describing the head wound, the ingress and egress of the round, the state of the brain, and various other factors.

 
; “Cut away the clothing, if you please, Dr. Sax?”

  Sax began slicing off the clothes, putting them aside. Except for the mess that had been made of the head, the body was clean and in good shape. Brambell adjusted the overhead operating light.

  “There’s something odd here,” Sax said. “With the nose.”

  Brambell took an otoscope, switched it on, and looked inside the nasal cavity. “What’s this? It’s some kind of injury.”

  He handed the otoscope to Sax. She took a look. “I think this is where the, ah, worm must have entered. Look—the nasal septum is damaged and the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone has been pierced. Drilled through, almost. The hole is the same diameter as the worm.”

  Brambell took the instrument back, examined the nose more closely, and then—quite unconsciously—glanced in the direction of the worm.

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  The creature had stopped exploring the container. It seemed to have settled down, its “head”—for want of a better term—in one corner of the stainless-steel box. He heard a faint scritching noise.

  Pulling down his glasses, Brambell peered closer. The thing was using its tooth to scrape away at the stainless-steel wall of its container. It looked at first like a hopeless task—what tooth could cut steel?—but then he could see that it was, indeed, scraping tiny curls of metal from the wall. Slowly, but surely, it was making a hole.

  “Dear God,” said Sax, looking over his shoulder.

  “Indeed.”

  Without another word, Brambell grabbed the ship’s phone and called the prep lab that, for security purposes, was now housing all the other tentacle specimens—in stainless-steel cases.

  He looked at Sax. “No answer.”

  “The lab’s probably locked up. Call security.”