Monster: Tale Loch Ness

by Jeffrey Konvitz

  "We do, but—"

  "Don't but me. Just get the material here for a big workout. Then contact base and have them ship in some television equipment with extension electricals for a long drop. Say two thousand feet. Make sure base sends the right kind of TV unit ,and have it blimped for moisture protection. And it's going to need a powerful strobe. Then contact whoever you have to contact and get a descent jacket and harness here."

  "Lefebre will go down with you," Whittenfeld said.

  "No, he won't," Scotty countered. "He's going to keep his slimy ass up here."

  "I understand your feelings," Whittenfeld said. "But I suggest your feelings be placed secondary to your safety. If you encounter this beast of yours, you will be most grateful for Lefebre's well-equipped presence."

  Scotty called for the geologist again; the geologist appeared moments later.

  "Where are the seismics for this area?" he asked.

  "I have the Carrbridge sections."

  "What about the stretch between here and Loch Ness and here and the Moray Firth?"

  "I have them, too."

  Whittenfeld's expression had shifted; he was astonished. "The Moray Firth?" he asked.

  "It's just a thought," Scotty answered, turning back to the geologist. "Let's get the sections out!"

  The geologist retreated to the company office.

  Scotty looked to Whittenfeld. He'd been afraid Whittenfeld would allow Dr. Rubinstein to proceed without locating the outlet. But he was sure his fears were now moot. His gut feeling told him they were standing right over the object of their search.

  "You know, Scotty," Whittenfeld said, "it's a pleasure to watch you work. You exude confidence. You make decisions quickly. Issue orders with authority. Yet there is no condescension in your attitude. You communicate to your underlings very well. They respect you. They act quickly when you orchestrate. The demonstration I just saw was a classic example of an experienced and confident executive in action. I should have recorded it for posterity. No, I'm morally gratified I hired the right man for the job. You are definitely an asset." A smirk crossed his lips as he surveyed the well-site activity, blazed by the bright night lights. "However, I do notice a change in attitude. Only a short time ago, you were reluctant to participate in the venture. You were an adversary. Now suddenly, there's this explosion of enthusiasm and dedication."

  "You've given me no choice, you sick bastard," Scotty said.

  "I know," Whittenfeld rejoined, smirking. "But I sense some self-interest at work now, too. Something about this cavern, if it is a cavern, excites you." He started to walk to the chopper, stopping before boarding. "Or perhaps Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo have infected you," he added. "Perhaps you've sensed the thrill of the hunt. Perhaps something deep in your psyche has been energized. The human instinct for conquest of the unknown. Base desires of the hunter." He laughed. "Think about it, Scotty—think about it."

  Chapter 34

  Dr. Allen Rubinstein was a vision of excitement, his face, his voice, totally unable to constrain the emotions that had been surging through his body since he'd received the call from Scotty Bruce.

  He'd stepped off a helicopter just a short time before popping questions, aggressively seeking answers. He shared Scotty's gut feeling, too. This was it!

  Dr. Fiammengo had also been unable to restrain herself. She had hugged Scotty, kissed him, overlooking the tensions between them.

  Not even his admonition that they had yet to determine what the drill pipe had actually penetrated had been able to dampen their enthusiasm.

  And certainly the seismic evidence had only fed the growing sense of euphoria.

  "Assuming a portion of the cavern lies below us," Scotty said as he paced back and forth in the company shed in front of a series of seismic maps, "it's certainly understandable that we missed it on the wiggle traces." He pointed to a graphic; a tiny wiggle had been circled in red. "The ground is very consolidated. The soil is tightly packed. The propagation wave moved down unusually fast. The air interface was very small."

  "How wide is the section below us?" Dr. Rubinstein asked, nervously biting his fingernails.

  "It's hard to tell," Scotty replied as he pointed to several other circled wiggle traces. "The air interfaces we have located have been circled in red. We think each circle indicates a portion of the cavern. One section suggests a stretch of the cavern goes down to almost four thousand feet. Others suggest it rises up well above sea level."

  "The roller coaster," Dr. Fiammengo observed.

  Scotty looked out the shed window. Whittenfeld, Lefebre and Tony Spinelli were at the well site. The drill pipe had been pulled, and a new bore had been drilled. There had been no incidents. A television crew was presently lowering a camera. A monitor had been set up in the tent.

  "Why didn't we pick this up before?" Dr. Rubinstein asked; he was dressed in overalls, a flight jacket, and heavy combat boots. When he'd insisted on joining the expedition, Whittenfeld had agreed.

  "We were looking in the wrong place," Scotty said.

  Dr. Fiammengo protested. "The cavern runs eastward out of the loch and not northeastward, as we expected. But it still has to double back into the Inverness Firth."

  "It doesn't turn into the Inverness Firth," Scotty said, pointing. "It turns into the Moray."

  Dr. Fiammengo was awe struck. "The length of it. It's impossible."

  "I traced the route myself."

  Dr. Rubinstein clenched a fist. "I knew it was there. I knew it all along."

  The company manager informed them the television camera had penetrated the cavern.

  They moved to the drill floor.

  "What do you think of Mr. Bruce's conclusions?" Whittenfeld asked.

  "They're exact!" Dr. Rubinstein replied, eyeing the television cable that ran into a transit box, mounted on the new bore hole.

  They walked into the monitor tent. Whittenfeld ordered a technician to hit an activator switch. A camera monitor responded.

  "That's it!" Dr. Rubinstein screamed, pushing up close to the screen; he could make out walls, a floor, the cavern ceiling itself. "When can we go down?"

  Whittenfeld looked to Scotty. "Well?"

  "Now," Scotty said.

  They left the tent. A crew member brought the descent jacket and harness to the bore hole. The roustabouts moved a hoist into position and pulled the camera from the bore. Lefebre removed a case from the chopper.

  Scotty watched as Lefebre placed the case on the drill floor, opened the top, and removed the contents: three high-powered rifles and a closed ammunition pack.

  The claustrophobia was intense.

  Scotty had only a few inches on either side of his shoulders, and he was continuously dislodging sharp fragments from the bore wall as he descended.

  The harness fit tightly; it was painfully digging into his sides. Looking above, he could see a circle of sky. He could not see down.

  He maintained contact with the surface, describing sensations, receiving depth readings. His helmet had a communications system and a lightweight communications line.

  He would have preferred an unencumbered descent, but the helmet had been necessary. Even though there had been no trace of gas in the mud flow and no intermediate loss of circulation, there was always the chance of a bore wall fracture releasing methane from a hidden reservoir.

  "Six hundred feet," Tony Spinelli called.

  Scotty shifted his legs. They were down weighted by the hanging rifle. The feeling was uncomfortable.

  The descent slowed.

  "Seven hundred feet!"

  He reached the puncture point, turned on his helmet torch, and jerked his body down into the cavern.

  Eighty feet below was the floor.

  "Let me down," he said. "I'm inside."

  They lowered him to the basement.

  Securing the rifle and removing his stomach pack, which contained a small camera and first-aid gear, he took off the descent jacket and harness.

  The
jacket and harness quickly disappeared up the bore.

  He sat on a boulder and looked around. He was perched in a long tunnel. He could hear water dripping. There were no other sounds. It was very cold; fortunately, all three of them were wearing thermal suits beneath their outer garments.

  Spinelli notified him that Dr. Rubinstein had started his descent.

  Scotty waited.

  Pebbles fell from above. He could hear sounds in the bore. Dr. Rubinstein appeared, dangled high near the ceiling, then touched the ground moments later.

  Scotty helped the researcher undo his jacket and harness and then sent both pieces of equipment back up to the surface.

  Dr. Rubinstein vigorously attacked the cavern walls, taking samples, running a nonstop commentary with Dr. Fiammengo ,above.

  Lefebre appeared through the opening and dropped to the cavern floor.

  Scotty noted the irony; he was now locked in the cavern with the last man on earth he would have chosen as a companion, a mass murderer as well as the man who held an ax over his and Mary MacKenzie's heads.

  "What's the cavern's composition?" Whittenfeld asked, his voice crackling through the communications lines.

  "It's metamorphic and representative of the surface," Scotty replied, examining the piece of rock. "Highly metamorphosed quartz-feldspar-granulate with some evidence of igneous intrusion. However, I'm sure as the cavern heads toward the sea, it begins to pick up some old red sandstone."

  "Your intitial conclusions?" Whittenfeld asked.

  "There's no evidence of cavern formation," Scotty replied. "If I had to guess, I'd say we're inside a miracle. A cavern structured out of an inactive fault. Maybe one that intersects the Glen Markie fault. But a closed fault nevertheless."

  Whittenfeld acknowledged the message. Scotty informed him they were disattaching their communications lines and would be heading toward the northeast.

  "Let me check the rifles," Lefebre said.

  Scotty and Dr. Rubinstein handed the Frenchman the rifles, receiving them back moments later.

  "You don't think rifles will stop this thing if it appears, do you?" Dr. Rubinstein asked.

  "No," Lefebre replied. "But I have ten grenades and several packets of nitroglycerin that will!"

  Scotty pointed. "We'll start out that way."

  They began to walk.

  The cavern ran level for several hundred feet, then sloped downward. The surface was surprisingly free from debris, and it wasn't as slick as they had anticipated.

  Their torch beams danced ahead of them, crossing indiscriminately. The sound of their footsteps echoed, as did Dr. Rubinstein's voice, as he made audible notes to himself. Both were accompanied by Lefebre's high melodic whistle of recognizable operatic melodies.

  At first, Lefebre and the music seemed incongruous companions, but Scotty realized that no matter how inhuman Lefebre had become, he had still come from civilized human stock.

  They stopped several times to take rock samples, paused near a steep dropoff, listened to the trickle of moving water, then carefully moved forward, hugging the cavern wall They reached an underground lake.

  Dr. Rubinstein sampled the water. It was fresh.

  Scotty checked his watch. They had been walking for an hour. They surveyed the underground lake. They could not pass!

  "You can probably reach the next cavern by swimming down under this," Dr. Rubinstein theorized.

  Scotty suggested they rest there, then return to the bore hole and inspect the tunnel's other branch. They all sat. Dr. Rubinstein tried to speculate on the source of the cavern's oxygen supply. Lefebre finally stopped whistling.

  "We've appreciated the accompaniment," Dr. Rubinstein said.

  Lefebre removed a piece of ivory from his pocket and began to whittle the edges with a knife. "Music calms the savage beast," he observed cryptically, with the barest of smiles.

  "You' re an expert on opera?"

  "Just an aficionado. There's much to learn in musical theory. There's a great challenge."

  Dr. Rubinstein glanced at the lake; the water was almost black. "Then you're more than an aficionado."

  "Call me a student, too. A serious student. I studied opera. I learned orchestration. I'm still intensely interested."

  "Literature and music," Scotty said sardonically. "You've achieved a great deal."

  Lefebre swiveled face to face with Scotty; the mutual revulsion was intense. It was obvious both were waiting for the moment when they could shed all pretenses. "It's not what a man achieves in life. It's what he overcomes."

  "What have you overcome?"

  "A rotting, rat-infested orphanage. Poverty. Pellagra. Cholera. A bullet wound in my skull. Ignorance! Does that satisfy you, Bruce?"

  "You're a martyr, Lefebre!" Scotty said facetiously.

  "No. I'm a man. And I've ascended. What have you overcome in your pampered existence?"

  "Hatred. Bigotry. Anger. Greed. Everything despicable. Everything you represent!"

  The ripple of water in the lake became the only sound. Dr. Rubinstein sensed that only the flimsiest of gossamer strands was holding the two men apart. He could see them seething to attack. Whatever it was that held them in check held with tremendous strength. He realized, though, the restraints would not last long.

  Scotty stood, suggesting they start back.

  With Scotty leading, they reached the opening in the cavern ceiling forty minutes later, reattached their communication lines, reported their progress, then disattached the lines and started in the opposite direction toward Loch Ness. The topography was identical to the conditions they had already encountered. The route rose initially, then began to descend again. They had walked no more than a quarter mile when the tunnel narrowed considerably.

  "This is where we block it," Lefebre declared.

  Scotty did not reply. Neither did Dr. Rubinstein. Instead, they moved past the constriction.

  There was another underground lake directly ahead, also impassable. "It appears we penetrated the cavern at the top of one of its roller-coaster rises," Dr. Rubinstein said. "On either side, the tunnel sIopes down to lower-level pools."

  They examined the water margin; Lefebre, gripping his rifle tightly, split off.

  A short time later, Lefebre's voice rang out. "Here!" Scotty and Dr. Rubinstein came running.

  Lefebre pointed to the shoreline. Part of an enormous print, a flipperlike foot, was embedded in the soft water boundary.

  "My God!" Scotty said, stepping into the hole.

  It was six feet across.

  They searched for more prints. They found none. Scotty photographed the one exhibit. They returned to the well bore.

  Scotty notified Whittenfeld they had found an enormous footprint. He could hear a jabber of excitement. He then asked them to drop the jacket and harness. Both appeared soon after.

  Dr. Rubinstein was the first to be hoisted out.

  Scotty followed many minutes later, after Pierre Lefebre.

  Scotty returned to the cavern the following day with two company demolition experts and led them to the cavern constriction. The experts rigged charges to bring down a portion of the ceiling, enough to close the tunnel.

  When the job was finished, Scotty set a television camera and strobe in a safe vantage point, then accompanied the demolition experts back to the surface.

  Reaching the work tent, they joined Whittenfeld, Lefebre, Dr. Rubinstein, and Dr. Fiammengo. The demolition experts detonated their charges.

  The television clouded with smoke and dust, but gradually cleared. They had the picture they wanted. The ceiling had fallen precisely as planned. Although the tunnel was not completely closed, enough had been sealed off to prevent any large

  animal from ever penetrating.

  They were ready.

  "We sink the trap!" were Whittenfeld's final words.

  Chapter 35

  The air carried the pleasant scent of heather and mountain pine. The breeze that whisked through the shopping district w
as warm, energizing. Inverness was energetically alive beneath the northern sun. Or at least that was Mary MacKenzie's impression as she hurried about, tending to chores and a carefully constructed schedule of meetings.

  At three o'clock, she stopped by the executive offices of the Highland Regional Council. A message was waiting from Chief Inspector MacKintosh, who had obtained the information she'd asked for. She phoned constabulary headquarters, and a desk sergeant suggested she come by.

  Ten minutes later, she was in the constabulary's waiting room. MacKintosh soon appeared.

  "This is the rundown," MacKintosh declared, waving a sheet of paper in the air. "The car was leased by a Dr. Allen Rubinstein, an American citizen, residence Boston, affiliation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We checked his passport declarations. He's here as a representative of the Phenomena Research Bureau, whatever that is. We also did a back check on his previous entries into Great Britain. He's been here several times, each time as a member of the Academy of Applied Sciences."

  She felt her blood run cold. She was familiar with the academy, the council having been asked to approve academy activities in the past. Dr. Rubinstein was a Nessie researcher. He was here dealing with Scotty Bruce on a regular basis. There was the lost submersible, the web, the inconsistencies. It all indicated just one thing, and she was suddenly convinced the proof lay in Travis House.

  She drove to Old Edinburgh Road.

  Scotty's new jeep was parked in the Travis House driveway. She honked, but no one emerged from the house.

  Walking through the gate, she knocked on the front door. Nothing. She called Scotty's name, knocked again.

  No reply.

  Even though the jeep was there, he obviously wasn't home.

  She parked her car out of sight. Taking a screwdriver from the car's glove compartment, she returned to the house, walked around the side to the den, and looked through the window. The inside lights were out. The view was dark, uncommunicative. She pried open the window with the screwdriver, climbed inside, looked around, and sat at the desk, glancing through a technical book on oil-well fracture gradients. She then noticed several pictures and drawings piled on the side of the blotter.