Deep Fire Rising

by Du Brul, Jack

  Tisa tugged at her robe. He knew. “No, I came right here. I’m going to Greece in a couple of days and wanted to wait in New York rather than L.A.”

  “Because I was in Las Vegas with some of our people and someone swears they saw you at the wheel of a BMW with Philip Mercer.”

  “How could I do that?” she protested too quickly. “I’ve never even met him.”

  Luc laughed, all pretense of civility gone. “I think you have met him. I think you followed me to Las Vegas and helped him escape. I think if I could prove it, I’d have you killed for interference.”

  “Interference?” Tisa shot back, ignoring his empty threat. “Interference with what? You weren’t authorized to go to Las Vegas in the first place.”

  “I don’t need authorization.”

  “When you wear the Lama’s blue robe, you can make decisions, Luc. Until then you are under his authority.”

  He threw himself onto the futon. “Screw the Lama. I don’t need him anymore. None of us do. Watchers stuck on the sidelines. That’s all he wants us to be. We should help shape the world. That is our true destiny.”

  “We are watchers. That is what we’ve been for a hundred and fifty years. Even you must see the consequences if we change our role.”

  “And you didn’t try to change your passive role when you contacted Mercer in Las Vegas?”

  “What were you doing there?” Tisa dodged.

  “Investigating a seismic disturbance,” he said smugly. “Same as you do all the time.”

  To confront her brother further, Tisa would be forced to admit her efforts at the Luxor Hotel. “You weren’t supposed to be there,” she said lamely. “We have chroniclers in California that could have gone to the epicenter.”

  “The epicenter was in the middle of a secure government facility, dear girl. They wouldn’t have gotten close. This is one I had to do.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. And I’m not your ‘dear girl.’ ”

  “You were once.”

  “Stop it,” she spat. Her hair was plastered to her head and her temperature was rising. She felt uncomfortable in her own skin. She wiped moisture from her glasses. “Tell me why you’re here.”

  He stood, his tone turning sharp, his volatile temper showing through. “To give you a warning. You just reminded me about noninterference. I think you’d better take your own advice. I know it was you at the hotel. You had better not try to warn Mercer about what is going to happen. Not that there is anything he can do to stop it, but we’ve survived for a century and a half by not telling the world what we know. You don’t have the right to do it now.”

  “And you have a right to try to kill him?” she shot back. Then softly, trying to calm him, she said, “That’s not in our power.” Her words only enraged him further.

  “It will be!” He was screaming now, almost out of control. “That’s what you and the rest never understood. We’ve watched the planet tear itself apart when we could have stepped in and prevented it. We have the power of life and death over billions of people, only we’ve been too timid to use it. No more. Very soon the world will know what we know, and they will give us whatever we want to protect them. Millions are going to die, but afterward we will reveal the truth and how the survivors can be saved. Don’t you understand? We will be the prophets of a new religion. We will be worshipped.”

  “Then we should tell them now,” Tisa pleaded. “You want to be worshipped? Help me tell the world what’s coming. We can prove it to them before so many die needlessly. You will be given all the power you want.”

  Luc dropped his head, his body rigid. Tisa could sense his indecision. He wasn’t an evil person. He was simply torn between what they’d been taught and what they knew was right. He didn’t want those people to die, but he needed a grand gesture so those left behind would believe him. He was acting out of fear that if there wasn’t a significant demonstration he’d be ridiculed. It was the same reason she wanted Mercer with her on Santorini—so he could witness what she’d known for years.

  “We can do it,” she cajoled. “There are other ways, other scientists we can approach. We can show them our evidence, the chronicles. We can save millions of innocent people.” She swallowed her revulsion. “You and I together, Luc, just like you’ve always wanted.”

  He looked up. She’d gone too far. She was trying to use his unnatural attraction to seduce his emotions and it had backfired.

  His eyes burned. “Bitch.”

  “No, Luc, just your little sister.”

  This time he turned away. “It should have been, Tisa, but it’s too late. I came to tell you to drop it. Don’t contact Mercer again. I’m letting you live because I love you. I mean I really love you.”

  “If you loved me, you’d stop this.”

  “I can’t. This is my destiny. I know that now. I alone understand the necessity of sacrifice. It’s been my entire life.”

  “It’s been our life. Don’t you see that? We are in this together. We always have been.” She was desperate, willing to try any lie to get her brother to stop.

  He moved to the door. “I gave you a chance to be together. You rejected it. Now I give you a warning. Don’t ignore it. I will crush you and anyone you ask for help.” He paused. “When it is over, I will try to find you.”

  She held his gaze so he’d know she wasn’t bluffing. “If it really does happen, Luc, I’ll make sure I don’t survive. There’s no place for me in the world you want to create.”

  “That’s what it is, isn’t it? Creation.”

  He closed the door. Tisa collapsed onto her yoga mat. Creation, he called it. The single greatest calamity in human history and he saw it as an act of birth. She’d known for years her brother was unstable, but now she saw he was dangerously psychotic. She thought he wasn’t evil, but she was wrong. He was and she could only pray she could stop him in time.

  She slumped, burying her face in her hands.

  Outside the apartment building, Donny Randall stood like a rock in the river of people negotiating the narrow sidewalk. With his thick arms crossed over his chest, he forced pedestrians to either skirt next to the building or step into the street, where traffic crawled bumper to bumper. He seemed to be enjoying the glares he received, but was disappointed no one tried to confront him. Luc walked past him without acknowledging the giant. Donny fell in step.

  “What happened?” Randall asked after half a block.

  “It was her, all right. I was upstairs when that car rescued Mercer at the Luxor. I never saw the driver, but Pran was certain it was her. I’m sure now too.”

  “Then we should go back and take care of her. Uh, unless you already did?”

  “Shut up, you moron,” Luc snapped. “She’s not to be touched.”

  Donny bristled. Luc Nguyen was paying him more than he’d ever made working as a miner, but he didn’t like the little half-breed and wasn’t going to take his crap. “Watch who you’re calling a moron. One phone call and I can blow your entire operation.”

  Luc didn’t change his gait, didn’t seem to do anything other than walk, but suddenly Donny was sprawled on the sidewalk, the impact with the cement absorbed by a suitcase set on legs where a grifter sold counterfeit Rolexes. The watches flew in one direction while the young Ethiopian immigrant went in the other.

  Luc paused to help the big man regain his feet. “Sorry about that, Don. That was uncalled for on my part. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Donny massaged the spot where his hip had hit the sidewalk, impressed rather than angry. “How did you . . . ? Never mind. Some of that kung fu stuff, huh?”

  “Something like that, though it predates most martial arts by centuries. My father taught it to me when I was a boy.”

  They began to walk again. “Ah, listen,” Donny said, now trying to impress his new employer with his towering intellect. “You know your sister can still be a problem. We don’t have to kill her or nothing, but maybe we should be careful about her.”

  “Don’t
worry. I know where she’s going. And I think I know who she’s meeting.” He liked the symmetry of being able to kill Mercer at the same time he took Tisa home to wait out the coming chaos.

  What would come afterward sent a shiver through his body. In the world that followed, Tisa would soon recognize the need for the sacrifice about to occur and why he’d let it happen. She would then see his greatness as he worked to save the rest of humanity from the very planet they called home. She would slowly come to worship him. And then they would be together in the way he’d wanted since childhood.

  THE PACIFIC NORTH OF GUAM

  The eruption of methane hydrate gas continued into its tenth minute. Despite Alan Jervis’s expertise and coaxing, Bob still remained negatively buoyant and sank ever deeper. Even out of the direct path of the gas plume, the water barely maintained enough density to keep the submersible from plummeting like a stone.

  “We have to drop the rest of the ballast,” the pilot said grimly. Once they did, there would be no reserves. It was a make-or-break maneuver, and if C.W. got into trouble, they wouldn’t be able to come to his aid.

  “What’s our rate of descent?”

  “Almost a hundred feet a minute and accelerating.”

  “And our distance to the bottom?”

  “Two hundred eighty feet.”

  “Can we survive the impact?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on bottom consistency. If we hit rock, we’re finished. If we hit silt, maybe we’d be okay, but there’s a chance we might get stuck.”

  “It’s your call,” Mercer said. “You know your boat, but if you dump the last iron plates, C.W. is as good as dead.”

  Jervis was quiet for a moment, watching his dials. “Rate’s slowing. Eighty feet a minute. Damn. Okay, we’ll ride it out.”

  “Provided we survive the impact, what’s the best attitude to prevent us from getting stuck?”

  “Optimist?”

  Mercer smiled around his anxiety. “Always.”

  “Landing on our belly is standard procedure, but I’ve had a theory that if we hit on the bow at an angle, the sub would tip slowly and wrench the nose out of the mud. ’Course, if there’s something on the bottom, a boulder, for example, we’d crack the dome.”

  “We’d never know until it was too late so let’s give it a try. I’ll extend the manipulator arms to cushion the blow.”

  “Blow? Why didn’t I think of that? Mercer, you’re a genius. There are lifting bags kept in a storage tray under the manipulators. They’re filled by releasing high-pressure CO2 from a cylinder. We use them to haul artifacts and samples to the surface while we remain below. They’re not large enough to provide any buoyancy for us and they won’t inflate even halfway at this depth, but they will act like air bags to protect the bubble.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  Jervis talked Mercer through the necessary steps. Mercer’s hands were sure on the manipulator controls—tension made him forget all about the chill in the little sub. He tried not to think about the pressure either—not the psychological stress, but the tons of water pressing against the craft’s steel shell. At sea level there were fourteen pounds per square inch. That doubled at thirty-three feet, tripled at sixty-six. Quadrupled at . . . He forced himself not to run the numbers in his head.

  “Six hundred fifty psi,” he muttered without realizing he’d done the calculations.

  He’d swiveled an exterior closed-circuit video camera so he could see the equipment tray under the sub’s nose and eased one of the pincers into position to grab a deflated lift bag. It came out smoothly. The yellow balloon was neatly folded into a tight bundle. Attached to it were large clips for securing it to mesh baskets also stored in the tray. The gas cylinder was a foot long and had a lanyard that could be easily grasped with the other manipulator.

  “What’s our depth?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Alan replied. “You’ve got time. Nice and steady now. I’m about to put us on our nose.

  He used attitude thrusters to raise the stern. Mercer was forced to brace his knees against a console to keep from sliding out of his seat.

  “Okay, pull the cord.”

  Because of the gas still boiling out of the earth, the lanyard flapped like a pennant in a high wind. Mercer missed grabbing it with the left set of pincers on his first two tries and finally got it on the third. Next, he gently pulled the cord. They couldn’t hear the gas release into the balloon, but they saw it begin to expand, swelling slowly as the CO2 pushed against the crushing pressure of water. After a moment, it had filled as far as it would, about a quarter of its six-foot diameter. They wouldn’t know if it offered enough protection until the sub hit the bottom.

  “Forty feet. Our descent’s still slowing.”

  Mercer maneuvered the arm so the half-inflated bag was in front of the Lexan view port. It blocked most of his view, which in a way wasn’t a bad thing.

  “Twenty feet.” The roar of erupting methane hydrate faded as the pocket of gas was depleted.

  “Ten feet.”

  Mercer willed his body to go slack. Either they would survive the impact or they’d be crushed instantly. He thought about the wall of water that had chased him through the DS-Two mine shaft. If the Lexan shattered, at least this time he’d never see it coming.

  “Two feet.”

  At the last second, a corner of the lifting bag folded on itself. Through the turbid silt Mercer saw the bottom was flat and blessedly free of rock. The sub hit. A cloud of mud billowed from the seafloor, enveloping the small craft. Bob shuddered at the impact. A clipboard and a thermos clattered past Mercer and fell to the Lexan bubble. The sub continued to settle, but her stern refused to drop from its near vertical position.

  “Come on, Bob,” Alan whispered. “Fall, damn you, fall.”

  Her nose appeared buried. The impact had driven her too deep into the mud for her to right herself. Alan fought with the thrusters trying to get Bob to move, but nothing worked. He even dumped the last ballast plate, but at their angle, the chuck of pig iron wouldn’t slip free. They’d gambled and lost, and rather than the quick death of an implosion, they were now trapped fifteen hundred feet from the surface facing the long agony of asphyxiation.

  Jervis began to hyperventilate. “What are we going to do?”

  “Stay calm,” Mercer said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Forget it,” Alan panted. “The manipulators aren’t strong enough to lift the sub clear. They won’t even move.”

  Mercer ignored the dire prediction and tried anyway. But Jervis was right. Neither of the two manipulator arms would budge, trapped as they were between the bottom and the sub. He had only a little movement on the wrist actuator on the arm holding the lifting bag.

  With the submersible pointed straight at the bottom, Mercer couldn’t even lean back in his chair to rethink the situation. Above him in the pilot’s seat, Alan used the thrusters to try to rock the sub free, slamming the lateral controls from lock to lock. His efforts did nothing but drain their precious battery reserves. After three fruitless minutes he gave up and shut down everything but the atmosphere scrubbers. He punched a console several times and kicked at another before jamming his knees against the back of Mercer’s seat and sitting quietly. Mercer was thankful for the silence.

  All but a tiny crescent wedge at the top of the Lexan dome was buried in silt, affording a narrow view of the black ocean beyond. Closer in, Mercer could see the half-inflated lifting bag wedged between Bob and the seafloor and the mechanical pincer still holding it tight. To the right of the bow, a single exterior lamp cast a sullen glow through the mud, like a flashlight through thick burlap. And then it faded as its circuit closed and the darkness became complete. A drop of condensation fell from the back of the sub and hit Mercer’s ear. His heart tripped.

  A few minutes later Alan asked, “Do you have a family?”

  “No,” Mercer said, knowing where this conversation was heading an
d not wanting any part of it.

  “I’ve got two kids. They live with their mother. She left about six years ago. Said she couldn’t stand me being away so much. She married her divorce lawyer about a year after she left me.” He chuckled without humor. “I found out later they’d been together since before we split. But my kids are something else. Two girls. Twelve and eight. Karen is the captain of her soccer team and Ashley’s learning to play the violin. She can—”

  Mercer cut him off. “Alan, stop it. I know what you’re doing and this isn’t the time. We’re not dead yet.”

  “What’s the difference? Now or hours from now when the air becomes unbreathable, we’re just as dead. And if you don’t want to hear me talk about my kids, well, tough shit. I was about to say that Ashley can already play ‘Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.’ ”

  “If you’ll stop talking and give me a second I think I might have an idea.”

  “What?”

  “I said I think I have an idea of how to get us out of here. Can you turn on that outside light again.”

  “Okay. Give me a second.” Jervis powered up the sub’s systems again. Consoles and display panels came alive. A moment later, Mercer saw the umber light diffused through the silt.

  “It’s like I remember. The air bag is trapped between us and the seafloor. It’s only half inflated, but if I release what little air’s in it, we should have a moment when the sub is unstable again.”

  “What do you need me to do?” Alan’s professional tone had returned.

  “The bag is sitting left of center. When I cut it I want you to hit the right-hand thrusters with everything they’ve got. With any luck, Bob will tip to the right enough to free us.”

  “Tell me when.”

  Mercer used the manipulator controls to open the pincer. Pressure forced the bag to shift and slide between the steel fingers. “Okay. Hit it.”

  The thrusters wound up to their maximum setting. The hull vibrated but remained stuck in the ooze. Mercer jammed the pincer closed. The serrated edges clamped tight onto the bag and he managed to twist the wrist a few degrees. The teeth bit into the rubber, tearing at it until the bag split. The gust of CO2 spewed from the cut like champagne from a shaken bottle. The sub pitched slightly, just enough to break the vacuum seal it had formed with the silt. Slowly, slowly, the bow began to slide free of the mud as the stern dropped to the right. Silt oozed across the Lexan dome to settle once again on the seafloor.