Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales

by Simon Strantzas

  Linden was still as jubilant as ever, thank heavens, but for all his optimism that drat hydrothermal vent still remained elusive. We have the coordinates charted and stuck to them to the letter, yet nothing emerged. At one point I was certain we were driving in circles, but Linden assured me that wasn’t the case.

  “And even if it were true,” he reasoned, “how would you know? There’s no land anywhere within sight. Just water, water as far as the eye can see.”

  “You are aware we have more instruments on this boat than eyes, aren’t you?” I chided him. “The GPS alone is worth four of your eyeballs.”

  He laughed, then eased himself back on his chair. “Well, at least we have the birds to tell us we’re on the right track.”

  He was right. The one sure way to find underwater hydrothermal vents is birds. The gulls are attracted to them. Sulfur, carbon dioxide, all sorts of other gases get released from an active site; mixing with the water above it forms a dead zone in the water. These are cleverly called “plumes” and are regularly noted when discovered. They show up on satellite imaging as large black masses, and no life can survive within one. Invariably, fish try to pass through and are instantly killed, poisoned to death by the deadly discharge from the vent. They float to the surface, easy pickings for the circling gulls. Except for the poison, of course.

  The birds are indeed flying, and we can see them out farther in the water, circling like the scavengers they are. All we need to do is follow them. Perhaps tomorrow will yield better results.

  August 13th

  The fellow at the marina asked after the equipment we’d loaded the Oregon with. He was a crotchety old one, that’s for certain, with a weather-beaten face and a distinct lack of dental care. His mustache was yellowed from far too many cigarettes, and so long and thick at first I mistook it for a beard. He seemed quite bemused by our electronics, both impressed and mocking at once. I tried explaining a few of the machines to him—most specifically the sonar system—but he either didn’t understand English well enough or didn’t care. The only piece that struck his rheumy eye was the submersible.

  “What’s that? Like a submarine?”

  “Yes, quite.”

  “What’re you looking for? You want to do some fishing?”

  “In a manner of speaking. We’re looking for the Onkoul Vent, sort of like an underwater volcano.”

  His face betrayed a moment of intense emotion, one that his crotchetiness buried before I could think to reassure him. In truth, I was taken aback.

  “Those things—those grietas—those vents—they are all over. My father said to keep away. You should listen to him.”

  “I’m sure he knew what he was talking about,” I said, struggling for a way to end the conversation, but the fellow wasn’t so easily dissuaded.

  “Sí, they are very dangerous. You should stay away. Tell your friends, too. Que son malo.”

  I nodded, and wished I knew how best to extricate myself.

  I might still be on that dock had Linden not stepped in. I’m quite horrible with confrontation, but Linden seems to harbor no such foible. I suppose that’s the youth in him. When I was that young, I doubt it was much different for me. Linden stepped between us with the sort of presence only the broad-chested can manage.

  “We need to get going, Doctor. We have a tight schedule.”

  “Yes, of course, Linden. If you’ll excuse me, sir?”

  The fellow nodded, but his eyes remained screwed fast to me.

  We headed for the coordinates we’d been searching the day before, a good four hours out. As we travelled, I had Linden taking notes on his laptop and checking the diving equipment and submersible again to ensure they were ready to be deployed at short notice. Most of the trip was made in silence, the only sound the buzz of the engine. I must admit I rather enjoyed it: being out in the sun after so long under the fluorescents of the lab, the mist of the water on my face. It’s true what they say: the sea air really does wonders for the lungs. My breathing has never been better. In some ways, if we never find the Onkoul Vent, I wouldn’t mind. But of course Linden can think of nothing but his career.

  “Thank you again for choosing me for the excursion, Dr. Markowitz. I know both Randal and Olivia would have been just as excited as I am to be here. I’m really excited about his project.” Linden had finished his prep and had joined me at the wheel. “I just wanted you to understand that.”

  I waved him off.

  “You deserve to be here, Linden. I wouldn’t have brought you otherwise.”

  He smiled broadly. I must admit it felt good to be needed.

  August 18th

  A disastrous day! I’m still shaking and, for a while, I was worried Linden would not make it. Our morning began as usual, with the fellow from the marina watching Linden and me load the boat and test the equipment and submersible. He didn’t say anything this time, but it was clear we were wearing out more and more of our welcome. Linden laughed about it as we drove out, but it didn’t seem as funny to me.

  We reached the coordinates again, and though the GPS said we were exactly where we’d anchored the last time, still the water looked different to me. I know that’s a strange thing to say—water never looks the same twice, especially without land to mark it—but there was something. The sky perhaps wasn’t as clear as it ought to have been, or the color of the waves duller than before. Something was off, and my instinct told me that it was not the right day to be out there, not the time to be diving for hydrothermal vents. But Linden was eager, and had his wetsuit on before my concerns had fully solidified.

  “I’ll follow the same grid we’ve been using,” he said, “and patch the info up to you.”

  I checked the seismograph and thermograph, and everything checked out. There were some artifacts on the sonar, but they were small and could have been caused by anything. We tested communications again, then his halogen lamp and air tanks. Once we were both sure everything was working, we calibrated our GPS coordinates and Linden slipped into the water. He stayed at the surface long enough to rub spit in his mask and wave three fingers at me to indicate he was ready. Then he donned his mask and dove, the off-colored water bubbling around his flippered legs.

  I knew something was wrong after ten minutes, once he lost the uplink connection with the LSC. Or perhaps I merely suspected it, somewhere in the depths of my brain. Not enough, it seems, that I recall panicking, or acting in any way concerned. I was too engrossed in parsing reports, checking maps, verifying equipment. At the back of my mind I wondered, but the distraction of the immediate tamped down my fear. After all, despite checking and rechecking the equipment, it was not the first time a glitch occurred. The preliminary exploration was not scientifically relevant, so accidents could safely occur. Accidents—Perhaps I should have chosen a different word. . . .

  I heard a noise I initially mistook for gulls squawking, and it barely registered in the periphery of my consciousness. It was only when it continued unabated that it sounded strange to me. I looked up from my work to see Linden at least two hundred feet away, splashing and coughing in the water. He looked to be in the throes of some kind of spasm, and I rushed to get the engine started and drive over to his side. He was beginning to bob in the water, and I fear had I arrived a single second later he would have sunk irrecoverably into the depths. As it was, with great effort I was able to pull him onto the deck and turn him on his side to help drain the water. His face, though, was what troubled me. It was bright red, as though it had been burned, and covered in tiny white marks I first took for blisters before I realized they were something else, some organic material that had become lodged in his skin. I was at a loss as to what to do, so I simply stood for a moment watching him heave an opaque mucous onto the deck of the boat. Once it was clear, between the heaves, that he was breathing, I got back behind the wheel and pushed the engine as fast as I dared toward the shore.

  Linden was still unconscious when we arrived at the marina, and I yelled for help ge
tting him off the boat. Some of the weekend boaters came to help me get Linden to shore, and one called an ambulance while we verified Linden’s life signs. At one point I remember looking up from where I knelt to see that craggy old fellow watching from behind the crowd, not saying a word.

  They kept Linden in that emergency room for hours, while I sat like an ineffectual fool in the waiting room, wringing my wool hat in my hands and wondering what I was going to do if Linden did not survive the ordeal. When the doctor finally emerged from behind the closed doors, I studied his inscrutable face in vain. I wanted to see him happy, would have understood if he were somber, but instead it was something far different. He seemed puzzled, enough so that his confusion penetrated the mask of professionalism he had no doubt fostered and perfected over the years. He approached me, glasses riding low and heavy on his nose, and quickly scratched his head, stalling before he had to speak.

  “Your friend is out of danger. You may see him if you’d like.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” I nearly cried. “Do you know—”

  “It’s best you see him,” he interrupted curtly, then turned to the nurses’ station, filed away his clipboard, and strode away. The nurses started at me.

  Linden was not asleep when I entered his room, but his face was bandaged fiercely. I asked if he could speak.

  “Of course I can. I didn’t forget!”

  I found myself fighting to hold back tears.

  He did not have much to tell me about what happened. He remembered the instruments telling him he was close to the underwater vent, but his memory grew hazy after that. He did have some recollection of the water heating and of dead fish suspended before him before everything went dark. He confessed some astonishment he resurfaced at all.

  “And your face? What happened to your face?”

  “The doctors aren’t sure. They think I was stung by a school of jellyfish, or perhaps an anemone of some sort. I should only be here a day or two, just enough time for the swelling to subside and whatever poisons there are to work their way out of my system. Don’t worry: we’ll be back on the Oregon as soon as I can manage it.”

  “Please, Linden. Your health is most important.”

  “The only way I’m going to get healthy is to get back on that boat. We were so close—I’m not going to let us miss our chance!”

  August 22nd

  I’m not . . .

  I don’t know how to describe . . .

  Linden wasn’t himself today. He looked . . . puffier . . . than I was used to, which I can understand, given his accident, but even so his demeanor was off. The accident must have had more of an effect than I’d thought, as he seemed positively withdrawn when I knocked upon his motel room door to resume our expedition. Nothing he said was strange, let me be clear, and were I to have transcribed his reactions today and any day previous, nothing on the page would indicate a difference. And yet, his manner . . .

  I asked him before we launched, once the gear had been checked and re-checked, if he was up to returning to the water. He did not look directly at me. Instead, he looked out across the ocean at the clear blue sky. “There’s a storm coming. We have to hurry.”

  The trip across the water was smooth and quiet as the dead. Linden did not utter a single word, and rather than prompt him I kept my distance, going over the charts again. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I needed to distract myself from the funereal atmosphere on the Oregon. It did not take us long to arrive at the coordinates where I had lost Linden the day before, as though he were able to home in on them instinctively, and when he called me up to the deck I found the wind over the water was chillier than it had been on land. I tilted my head back to see where the thinnest sliver of darkness edged the horizon.

  The doctor had warned me that Linden would not be in any condition to dive for some time, and judging by his lack of expression I wondered if what we’d already done had been too traumatic for him. Linden dismissed my concern perfunctorily by claiming he simply missed Olivia, and made a suggestion I’d been contemplating since I pulled him from the churning waters a few days before.

  “Maybe it’s time to unleash the submersible.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  In happier times, we both loved the submersible; me most especially. There’s no reason for it, of course. The thing is quite cramped to drive and difficult to maneuver. Perhaps it goes back to the child in me, mesmerized by everything I had read in National Geographic about deep-sea exploration. Or perhaps I simply like toys. Regardless, though I was excited, we still had to go through proper procedures to ensure it was safe to operate. The sea air makes short work of even the best mechanics. Sure enough, some of the wiring had corroded and needed to be fixed. Linden worked on that while I prepared the rest of the necessary gear.

  By the time we were ready to go, clouds had rolled in to the west, dark enough that Linden questioned whether we should continue. I waved him off; perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I was worried that any storm would knock us too far off the mark. The GPS anchor would help, but I did not want to take the chance.

  The submersible was as cramped as I remembered it, if not more. I folded myself in and looked up at Linden as he sealed the clear portal. The water had already began to chop, albeit slightly, yet it was enough to draw concern on my first mate’s face. I assured him it would be fine and told him via the radio to warn me if things became too violent on the surface. Then I filled the tanks with water and slowly descended into the briny depths.

  It did not take long to find the Onkoul Vent. Linden’s coordinates were exact, and even if they weren’t, once I came close enough I noticed the precipitous increase on the thermosensors. I switched on the submersible’s halogens to see what might be before me, and saw the strangest creatures moving past the small beam of light. That far down, the sun could not fully penetrate, and I could not direct the beam quickly enough to follow everything that skirted by. There were cephalopods of different sizes and colors—one going so far as to extend its tentacles toward me, trying to pry the light off the roof. It was unsuccessful, but for a few minutes it pressed its body against the bulb’s housing, blocking anything from showing the way, and instead making its gelatinous body glow as though phosphorescent. Part of me was glad for the momentary darkness, as it hid some of the stranger, more disturbing creatures that swam through my narrow field of view. But once I fully experienced the darkness and knew what had been there, previously unseen, I realized which was the greater evil.

  The Onkoul Vent was spitting up a solid plume of carbon dioxide and hydrosulfuric acid as I approached it. In the depths, it was as dark as smoke, and it did not stop or waver for an instant. It was a marker, and a distinct one, and yet it was amazing how quickly it dissipated into the vastness of the ocean. I would have at least expected a microbial algae plume at the surface, but there was nothing. No sign of the hydrothermal vent beneath. The temperature sensors on the submersible’s surface heated considerably, well into the supercritical range, but from within I felt none of the effect. I was close enough by this time that the halogen light had lit the plume’s originating crevasse, that crack in the earth’s surface from which lava pillowed, bringing the hydrothermal vent fractionally closer to the light of the world. But for the time being it would remain a hidden secret.

  I moved closer to the opening of the crevasse, taking care to remain out of the way of the supercritical expulsion. The rock around the opening was dark and jagged, volcanic glass formed by the intense heat. Upon its surface, however, just where the hottest, most sulfuric water would be spewing, I could see the thin smear I had travelled so far and so deep to find. Even under the halogen light it was clear the bacteria were luminescent, and I hoped that they would be the key to my research. All I needed was a sample to return with to Sandstone, where Randal and Olivia would help me analyze its makeup and discover how it could survive such inhospitable conditions. Would it be a silicone-based life form, hitherto unknown to us? Would it be the key
to detecting life on other planets? Help us to colonize other worlds? There were so many possibilities I felt myself turning giddy within the craft, and I had to force myself to remain calm and conserve my oxygen. I tried to radio Linden at least to let him know what I’d found, but no signal could be transmitted. Instead, I alone was able to witness the beginning of the world’s future.

  I extended the submersible’s arm and used it to break a piece of the glass rock free. It came apart much easier than I expected, and I was careful not to disturb the colonies that might be living on its surface. The arm was then retracted, along with a few gallons of surrounding water in order to properly preserve the sample. A few further photographs of the site were all that was required before I backed the submersible away. I could see the façade of the Onkoul Vent fading into the dark once again as I turned the submersible and headed back to the coordinates of the ship before I resurfaced. It would have to be slow to avoid causing decompression sickness, and my impatience would be excruciating, but I knew it was but a small price to pay for what was to come.

  Upon surfacing, I nearly recoiled from the look on Linden’s face. It had swollen again, though he seemed unaware, and it gave him the appearance of an angry Chinese spirit come to haunt me. His pale complexion only magnified the illusion.

  “The storm,” was all he said, and I removed my mask to see the dark clouds had proliferated across the sky in my absence, and the water itself had already begun to chop.

  “Let’s get the submersible secured,” I said with haste, motioning for him to lower me the ropes so I might prepare it to be winched up. We both rushed to get everything in place and locked down while the light was still with us, but it was quickly draining from the world as we worked. We managed to get the boat ready for departure as the first cracks of lightning lit the western sky, and before the thunder rolled over us Linden was already throttling the engine. With a cough of black smoke we moved, faster and faster, the sound of hissing rain behind us intensifying like the sound of the ocean boiling. We narrowly escaped the looming clouds as the boat bounced across the water toward the marina and our motel rooms. There was a tension in the air due to more than our narrow escape from the looming clouds. In our haste I had forgotten about the sample I had managed to retrieve of that strange glass. Had I recalled I might have mentioned it to Linden instead of here for the first time. Still, he seemed uncharacteristically in no mood to listen, so I said nothing on the subject. I suspect now in hindsight that was for the best.