All the strangeness came after the ROV had gone missing, he noticed, but it was a minimal discrepancy, so he shifted it from his mind for the moment. Two days after the boss left on his adventure, that little discrepancy became an undeniable anomaly, but oddly he was the only one to realize that suddenly nature had a habit.
Not one to make alarm for nothing he had kept to himself that the sudden gathering of clouds was unnatural, that such a possession of the sky and surroundings had each time been followed by a severe storm. Because of his reputation for being superstitious and believing in sea gods and so on, the mechanic put off remarking on the phenomenon. However, after the second accident he was convinced that he needed to bring the subject under some scrutiny. Two men were badly injured being struck from their posts by a tidal wave that came from nowhere, after the skies darkened too rapidly and lightning whipped at the radio tower.
Tommy was off-duty this week and he stood in for him, assisting in whatever Darwin needed him for as engineer.
"Looking for a kraken?" he heard Darwin's mocking voice behind him.
"If I find the monster, I'm puttin' a leash on it and the first one whose balls I'll have it go after will be yours," Liam said dryly without looking at the engineer. "Have you noticed that we cannot predict the weather conditions lately?" he asked and coughed heavily. Darwin gave it some thought, rummaging through his weary memory, and then replied, "Yes, but it has never been an accurate science. It's always a bit off by a day or so . . ."
"No, Darwin, I mean minutes. Within minutes the environment changes completely. Haven't you noticed? I checked the computer. I even staked it out all night a few days ago, but there is nothin' wrong with the hardware. Still," he sighed and looked at the sea, "it changes rapidly and violently and I don't like it one bit."
Darwin detected the sincerity in his colleague's tone and for once elected to give him the benefit of the doubt. He joined Liam on the small iron steps where he stood vigil.
"I have to admit, I have noticed that the happenings here were a bit strangely timed," he jested, "but that is hardly a cause for concern. What is your theory, then?"
Liam stood pondering, his eyes floating continuously over the heaving water. He slowly shook his head from side to side.
"I don't have a theory. All I know is that 'tis not normal and it worries me, man," Liam answered. "An' I s'pose that doesn't make for a good argument, but just . . . just pay attention in the next few days. I'd wager me pay on it that it'll swing again to somethin' not on that monitor."
"Hmm, all right then. I'll pay attention. You have been known to have moments of uncharacteristic perspicacious vision after all. I need you to help me with the last hydraulic switch on Drill 2. You coming?" Darwin nudged him.
They walked toward the eastern point where Drill 2 was situated. No words were exchanged between them, but the subject of the recently ended conversation lingered in both their minds. It was indeed an odd occurrence for storms to rise without warning at this speed, but usually Darwin's first safe assumption was fatigue. Paranoia born from long days and nights and the surreal surroundings they found themselves in warranted a little skittishness every now and then.
"I want to get the toolbox, hang on," Darwin said and made his way toward the tubular Perspex elevator Purdue frequently utilized for his own comfort. Adjacent to it was the storeroom where the tools were kept for repairs and basic construction. Liam waited for him in the mating illumination of the dead yellow security light and the rays of the full moon hovering above them in the cloud riddled sky. Most of the crew was asleep already, well after dinner, and he could feel his eye lids growing thick and sandy from a long double shift.
He rubbed his eyes so hard that his vision was blurred when he was done. Darwin came from the dark, but he ignored Liam and headed straight for the technical office.
"Hey! Where you goin'?" he shouted. He took a good look at Darwin's silhouette, which appeared to have suddenly grown a few inches in height and girth. But soon, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized that it was not Darwin after all. The figure stood still, looking in his direction, and then lifted his open hand in a wave. As the man was about to turn, Darwin emerged from the storeroom with his monkey wrench and some rope. They met face to face in the distance in front of Liam. Now he could clearly discern their differences and saw that the stranger was unusually tall with a powerful build.
"Can I help you?" Darwin asked, surprised by his own uttering, as he was familiar with most of the men on the oil rig and this was an almost absurd thing to ask. It was unlikely someone could just arrive there by speed boat or trawler, park his vehicle and walk around. This was not a factory on land; it was a place well into the wild ocean where radar and permissions dictated all arrivals, therefore rendering the presence of an unknown visitor quite precarious.
"Yes, you can direct me to the main docking bay, please. I am new here and I left my tool belt there today. Don't know the place too well yet, you see?" the man replied with an awkward rubbing of hands and a dumb smile. He was wearing a hard hat, which in itself was cause for distrust. Those were only worn during work hours, which had been over for hours.
"Sure, but I would need to see your clock card," Darwin lied, while Liam walked up to them. The stranger removed his hard hat to shake Darwin's hand.
"Johann Storhoi," he smiled.
The engineer was quite taken aback by the stranger, who boasted shorn white hair and equally fair facial hair and eyebrows. Even in the dark his sharp blue eyes were visible, piercing Darwin as the engineer introduced himself as the shift boss.
"I work out the shift rosters, Johann. How come I have not seen you before? What is your position here?" Darwin asked, his tone firm but polite. He was not really the shift boss, of course, and if the man accepted it he would know he was an intruder. Still, how could an intruder get on the platform without being noticed?
"He is a freelance subsea engineer I am using for this month, Darwin," said a voice from the shadows. Peter Hall was, among other things, a metallurgist and the real shift boss of Deep Sea One. He strode hastily toward them.
"Johann, I need you to go downstairs and check the pressure on the A24 and the cylinders. Been looking everywhere for you," Peter said abruptly while tapping Johann's arm to hurry.
"Good to meet you," Johann told Darwin and reluctantly went back to work with Peter in tail.
"Why would he need another subsea engineer? What the fuck am I?" Darwin ranted.
"I don't know. Funny that Peter didn't mention him or introduce us when he arrived," Liam replied, watching the two men disappear sublevel.
"No, Liam, something is off here. I wonder if Mr. Purdue knows about this guy. Peter doesn't have the authority to employ people, so where does this idiot come from? Wearing a fucking hard hat in the middle of the night, no less. He is as much an engineer as I am a fucking beauty queen," Darwin sneered under his breath, determined to investigate further in the morning.
Liam chuckled, "But you have such great legs. He might just be an engineer!"
"Blow me," Darwin retorted dryly, his eyes still wandering where the two men had descended the iron stairs.
Thunder roared from the thick black clouds that smothered the moon and left the oil rig lit only by the security lights. Darwin and Liam started. They looked up at the swirling grey, holding on to their jackets from the sudden violent gale that rode in on the gaining swells of furious foam. In astonishment they stared at the irrational weather above, then at each other.
"Believe me now?" Liam shouted in the whistle of the gusts.
"Come, let's get inside!" Darwin bellowed over the gaining chaos and the two ran into the radio room to check the monitors.
"Restore point at ten minutes ago! And print it out!" Liam exclaimed, fascinated and delighted that Darwin the cynic was with him when it happened again. He pushed against Darwin, who was busy recalling a recent satellite map of the area and printed it out.
When the paper slid through the
slit in the printer, both men grasped it and waited impatiently for the machine to completely spit out the paper.
"There it is, old boy!" Liam screamed with excitement. His concerns were proven valid and he panted from the fascination he felt for the strange phenomenon. Darwin simply stood frozen, scrutinizing the coordinates to ascertain that it was indeed their location where, ten minutes before, there was minimal cloud cover and steady temperature.
"What did I tell ya?" Liam kept on and on, like a child who just convinced his father that there are monsters in the closet.
"This is insane. How is this possible?" his colleague muttered, still frowning, unable to peel his eyes from the image. "Liam, these are our coordinates. This is the platform and here is the temperature, ten minutes ago!" Darwin still moved his index finger along the longitude and latitude lines to make sense of it, yet sense eluded him. Now he envied Liam for his belief in the more mysterious things of life—then at least he could wrap his open-minded head around what just happened. But for him it was utterly frightening to consider.
"It is as if there is some intelligence behind it," he marveled, as he looked out from the large rectangular window. "Call me crazy, but I can feel it. Whatever is going on out there right now is driven by some deliberate force, something otherworldly that possesses purpose. Something that thinks like we do, only . . ." he gasped a little, "it has the stupendous power of a . . . a . . ." he stopped speaking, unable to find the words.
"god?" Liam finished his sentence in a calm revelation as he joined his colleague at the window to admire the storm, his one-word contribution sending shivers through Darwin's skin.
☼
Chapter 22
Carefully, Nina decrypted the grid cipher by using the dots and corners as reference to the letters randomly written inside the nine squares. One by one she added letter after letter until she had a line of gibberish with spaces between. It did not make sense—in English. However, in the local dogmas of deities this particular collection of letters represented a mantra recited by followers of Mañjuśrī. Its giant face enthralled Sam, but Calisto avoided its countenance now, for the sake of composure. She was nauseous and her head throbbed like a bass drum, forcing her to sit in the dirt while Dr. Gould was arranging the spaced words and the men huddled around her to watch. Finally she had it done. They all frowned.
"Oṃ a ra pa ca na dhīḥ."
"Seriously?" Gary asked, trying to pronounce the grotesque alien phrase he was convinced was incorrect.
"I think so," she said almost imperceptibly, slightly uncertain herself.
"Well, we won't know until we actually read it out loud, so let's get to it," Sam suggested. He could see the group growing tired and leaking morale in copious amounts.
"How the hell are we supposed to know how to pronounce that last word?" Gary said with a miserable scowl on his face.
"Just say it until it has the right sound, damn it," Calisto chimed in from the discomfort of the gravel and thorns.
Nina and Sam tried the mantra. Starting slowly, they read each word not to confuse the consonants that followed consecutively.
Nothing.
"Pfft," Purdue puffed from the rock he was seated on. "It's not working. Now what?"
He felt utterly miserable for having come so far, enduring such peril and reaching the fabled shrine only to be locked out by a grinning god with weather cracks and a bad case of obesity.
"Try again. We must be saying it too slow," Sam urged and Nina nodded in agreement.
Again they began chanting the words over and over until they became familiar with the sequence and before long they started feeling the rhythm of the mantra. It was quite simple once they got used to the sound of it and eventually Purdue joined them. Calisto also said her bit from where she was struggling to keep her equilibrium in check. Gary just watched. He was not the eloquent type and enjoyed being a Canuck so much that he did not care to try and take in the culture.
Blots of dark sand appeared all around their feet as the giant raindrops commenced their pelting. Above them the swiftly floating clouds had now calmed and hovered in their place to accommodate the coming downpour. Instinctively the group sought shelter under the trees surrounding the shrine, but they kept at the mantra until the four of them found their unison, even throwing in a tempo as they grew comfortable with the words. The thunder growled so loud that the mountain shook under them and sent them cowering in fear of a rock fall. But the party soon realized that the thunder did not come from the heavens above them, but emanated deep from the bowels of the mighty peak that towered so high that optical illusion provided a terrifying impression of it falling forward over them.
"Oh my God, we're going to die," Sam shouted at Nina and grabbed her arm firmly against him. Calisto lowered her head to avoid any injury she might sustain from whatever the earth had planned for them. Purdue hid behind a tree trunk nearby, waiting it out.
In front of them the gargantuan face began to move, not as a face should, but instead rearranging its features by shifting the marble blocks that it consisted of into some portal or doorway. Moving simultaneously by the hand of some ancient engineering genius, the giant slabs of white stone parted. Purdue and his group stood in dumbstruck awe and no small amount of fear, beholding the wondrous transformation without a thought for the Spear they had come to find.
"I told you its face changed," Calisto shouted with newfound vigor, as she moved forward to where Nina and Sam stood to fully regard the majestic event. Nina was mute, not in awe, but in concern for not knowing if she would have to face a cramped dark space again. Behind the open doorway it was black as coal. There could be nothing but a constrictive chute to usher her inside and who knew what was waiting there? What if she got stuck in a confined doorway and found herself unable to breathe properly? All these intimidating notions swam through her mind, but only the thought of the money and academically kicking Matlock in the balls drove her to cultivate some emergency courage. Sam had his high-definition camera out and recorded every shift in the slabs as it happened.
Purdue smiled. He felt regal and invincible now, having attained the goal of finding the shrine that was so carefully hidden in surreptitious clues. The showering rain did not perturb any of them and Gary stole closer to the others when he finally relaxed from his agitation. By the time the structure had completed its metamorphosis it looked nothing like a face, save for the glaring multicolored eyes, which remained intact with the forehead. It had formed a stunning entranceway adorned around the edges with a plethora of decorations, etched on the opposite sides of each slab, now turned to face outward.
Sam captured the detail with his extended lens and asked Nina to find his video camera in his bag. It also had an infrared/ thermal interface for filming in the dark. Purdue stepped forward where the entrance beckoned, stunned slightly by the awful stench of rotten plant matter, old air and guano released for the first time in decades. The others followed him into the rocky corridor that led into the darkness. Tapping Calisto on the arm, Sam pointed to a pile of old tarnished copper bowls and goblets, an old bent gong and a stack of folded rotten cloths, which might have been the attire of priests a very long time ago. It was all left there in an old forgotten corner of excavated rock that functioned as a small room a good century ago, by the looks of it. From inside the chamber the light coming from outside hardly illuminated more than three meters past the threshold, lending them no visibility whatsoever.
"Flashlights, people," Purdue said in a low voice. He was wary of speaking too loudly and drawing attention from whatever was inside, if anything. Also knowing how old the shrine was, and that it responded to sound to open and close, he was reluctant to tempt fate by emitting above normal sonic waves. His company was equally careful at this and within moments they were reduced to five floating orbs of light inside the enormous cavernous chamber known as the Godwomb.
"It is quite imperative that we keep our voices as low as possible. The acoustics in this cavern are ext
remely sensitive to aural vibrations. The very walls in here reverberate our energy and I don't even want to know what will happen if we speak up. So please, people, whispers," Purdue informed his party before continuing into the passage.
Nina remembered reading the same warning in the grimoire before she knew exactly what the Godwomb was. It read that the mountain consisted of various geomorphological agents, some of which were potent conductors of sound. Now she knew why the mantra was the key. Sound was the language of the mountain. In a straight line they walked behind Purdue and Nina, Sam and Gary with Calisto lagging behind. Her face was pallid and her breathing labored, but she walked on her own without much discomfort. Sam, the gentleman that he was when the mood took him, carried part of her pack with his to alleviate the weight from her weak body.
In the stale white beams of their flashlights they moved slowly, careful not to tread too loudly. Their torches explored every crevice along the walls and clay-like ceiling no more than a meter above Gary, the tallest of the group. Trying with all her will to ignore the narrowing tunnel she navigated, Nina studied the terrain on which they were walking. The cavern floor was immensely slippery, the product of guano and trapped permeating water similar to the nature of the walls. Fighting her impending claustrophobia, Nina busied her mind with thoughts of what they might discover and what it would mean to her career, but just underneath her positive aspirations lurked the constricting threat of the gradually shrinking passage of cold wet rock and infinite darkness around her. She dared not show it. Another meltdown was out of the question this time, she had promised herself before she came on this expedition.
☼
Chapter 23
Calisto kept watching their rear, as was her habit of hypervigilance when in an unfamiliar or perilous environment. Perhaps she was paranoid or maybe the altitude illness had spun her imagination into a full-force carnival, but she could have sworn she heard movement behind them. On the winding path up she did the same, taking stock of any followers, but there was no one on the higher path they were on. All the people they encountered were using the lower, broader gravel road, so there was a very slim chance that they were being trailed. Then again, she was the only one who noticed the shrine's face moving while the others remained oblivious and blamed it on her less-than-sharp perceptions. Her training and her innate distrust for everything made her an excellent sentinel.
Deep Sea One Page 13
