Frozen Fire

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  “Hey, Vic, come over here and see what—”

  She sent Dennis a closed-mouth smile and remained where she was. He shook his head and rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the monitor he’d been studying a moment ago.

  Fascinated though she was with what Dennis envisioned and what he had accomplished by building a comfortable habitat and functional mining operation four thousand feet below the surface of the sea, her occasional visits to the habitat were trips Victoria would have preferred to miss. She knew it was a state-of-the-art structure designed by the finest marine architects in the world and that everyone on the design team had been required to spend time living in it before the mining operations began. None of that mattered to her. The few times she’d been down here, it took all of her mental energy not to focus on the fact that she was in a man-made edifice that had been placed in an environment as alien and unforgiving to humans as outer space. It wasn’t a simple thing to dismiss.

  She wished Dennis would get on point and do what he came here to do. Not that he couldn’t have done it on land. He could have. It just wouldn’t have been as much fun. For him.

  “Ready?” he asked, coming up to her and rubbing his hands together as if he were about to sit down to a long-anticipated feast.

  “Whenever you are,” she replied, and followed Dennis to the corner of the control room that was set up for videoconferencing. The small table and chairs that were usually there had been pushed to the side and a narrow green screen had been lowered from its recessed home in the ceiling.

  He came to a stop in front of the screen and turned to face the tripod-mounted camera and its operator. Victoria stopped just out of camera range. As the person who knew more about Dennis Cavendish and his secrets than anyone else alive, she avoided cameras and any other technology that might be used to publicize her existence.

  “What background do you want to show, sir?” the young man beside the camera asked.

  “External footage of the pods. Give me a countdown.” Dennis cleared his throat and stared into the camera.

  After a few taps on the keyboard, the young man looked up and nodded. “We’re ready on one, sir. Four. Three. Two.” He pointed a finger at Dennis, who smiled on cue.

  “My friends, you know by now that I was unable to join you today on your flight to my Paradise of Taino, but I am delighted that you’ve accepted my invitation to join us for the weekend. That invitation was not issued casually. Your visit is not merely a social occasion, nor is it entirely a business event.” He paused. “You have been invited to be the first outside witnesses to what is certainly the most significant achievement in my life and, I am no less certain, one of the greatest achievements in the course of human events.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, what you see on the screen behind me is Atlantis, the world’s first deep-sea habitat and fully operational underwater methane-hydrate mining operation. I am speaking to you from the command and control center, which is part of a habitat that houses a permanent staff of twenty-two and a dozen others who rotate through. Atlantis rests on the abyssal seafloor at a depth of four thousand feet off the western coast of Taino, less than fifty miles from the eastern shore of the Florida Keys. This combined structure is situated above one of the largest deposits of methane hydrate ever discovered.” He paused again and his smile widened. “Three gigatons, my friends. That is our estimate of the first deposit.”

  His enthusiasm was infectious and, watching him, Victoria felt a zing of excitement.

  I’m watching history being made.

  Not one to underplay when he had a captive audience, Dennis placed his hands on his hips, stretching the white golf shirt that accentuated both the deepness of his tan and the breadth of his well-toned chest. “I count every one of you as both a personal friend and worthy colleague, and that’s why I want you be the first people outside my organization to learn about this venture. You also represent nine of the largest, most diversified conglomerates in the world. You don’t need me to tell you that the combination of the size of this deposit and the first safe, economically feasible means of extracting methane hydrate is much more than just another business opportunity. This isn’t just another step forward for technological evolution, my friends; this is the dawn of the world’s second Industrial Revolution. That means jobs. Real jobs, and lots of them. Not just for the boys on Wall Street, not just for the accountants. But for steelworkers and pipe fitters, civil engineers and administrative assistants. There will be jobs at transfer stations, offices, and billing centers. Web sites will need to be built, prospectuses written—this is ‘trickle up’ economics, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will truly take our economy to the top of the world. There’s a new Golden Age waiting just ahead, and you, we, will be the people who introduce the world to it.”

  He stopped and stared intently into the camera. “What we’ve accomplished here means that the balance of the world’s power is about to undergo a civilization-altering shift. It means we in the West can finally achieve independence from petroleum-based fuels without irradiating the planet to do it. The success of Atlantis means affordable clean power, a surge in the development of new technologies, and the revitalization of stagnating national economies.” He leaned forward from the waist, as if he were talking to a group standing in front of him instead of a group who would be watching him on a screen.

  “I know what some of you might be thinking right now. You’re thinking about all the bad things you’ve heard about methane, how it’s the nasty cousin of carbon dioxide, that its presence in the atmosphere would speed up climate change. That a large release would be catastrophic. Well, we know all about it. We know more about it than anyone does, and that’s because we have more to lose than anyone does if something goes wrong, catastrophic or not.” He flared his hands in front of him with a half-shrug. “If you need to hear me say something negative about the project, I’ll admit that what scientists say about methane is true. Pulling it out of the seafloor could be a double-edged sword—if we have an accident. But there won’t be any accidents. Everything we’ve done has met standards set far beyond the most stringent safety regulations. We’ve looked into the probability of earthquakes, tsunamis, even terrorist activity. We rewrote the actuarial tables using Doomsday as our starting point.” He grinned and gave another shrug. “Nothing is going to go wrong.”

  “We have been operational for four months. Four months. We’ve had technical and scientific teams living in the habitat in rotations, making sure it is completely safe, comfortable, and functional. We’ve had hydrogeologists and seismologists and mining experts down here. We’ve had everyone down here. And it works.” He straightened up and folded his arms across his chest, almost as if he were defiant. “My friends, tomorrow we go live. We will conduct the inaugural excavation exercise and you will be topside on Taino with me, watching it in real time. And then we’ll talk about the roles you can play in this new dawn. Until then.” He gave his customary half-salute and remained in that pose until the camera’s red light went out.

  “Thanks. When that’s cleaned up, upload it to Micki and tell her to send it to the plane,” he said to the technician, then walked to where Victoria stood. “Well?”

  Dennis was as renowned for being overbearing and cocky as he was for being a brilliant businessman, and both reputations were fully deserved. But sometimes he just seemed like a kid with more energy than he could contain. Like right now, standing before her bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, clearly delighted with himself.

  She shook her head with a grin. “You did well, Dennis, as you know.” She glanced at her watch. “The plane should be taking off from Miami soon. We should probably head up. Was there anything else you wanted to do while we’re down here?”

  His mood changed perceptibly as he shook his head and let out a deep, annoyed breath.

  “You’re transparent as hell, Vic,” he murmured as they moved toward the door that would lead them out of the operations center. �
�And you’re raining on my damned parade.”

  They departed the structure less than ten minutes later. Moving back through the same series of airlocks and comforting corridors that bisected the large modular units, they eventually arrived at the docking area where they’d left the small deep-sea submersible Rachel Carson. Four other, larger subs remained strategically docked at the habitat and ready at all times in case an emergency evacuation was required.

  Fighting the sickening waves of claustrophobia that licked at the edges of her composure, Victoria kept her mind focused strictly on the task of the moment as she strapped herself into one of the Rachel’s two passenger seats. Dennis sat comfortably in the pi lot’s seat and, as always, Victoria kept her eyes on his hands as they moved in a purposeful ballet across the controls that surrounded him on all sides.

  Minutes later, the bulbous craft detached itself from the docking pod with a loud clunk and a soft hiss, and Victoria braced herself for the split-second sensation of falling. They weren’t actually falling, and she knew it, but that instant when they were no longer attached to something earthbound always caused a burst of adrenaline to spike her bloodstream and terrorize her stomach.

  “You still with me?” Dennis asked quietly as he began maneuvering the submersible away from the modular bathyscaphic structure that shone ghostly white in the path of the sub’s lights.

  “Where else would I be?” she asked, forcing an easiness into her voice. Ease was the last thing she was actually feeling.

  She watched his shoulders move as he shrugged without looking back at her.

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d be unconscious, or immersed in one of those guided visualizations. A rose-covered cottage or something. I know this isn’t your favorite place to be, even though I’ll never understand that. For someone who swears she’s not claustrophobic, you do a hell of a good imitation of someone who is.”

  “I’m fine. Living in the present,” she said tightly, and swallowed against the mild nausea that was, for her, another routine component of these trips. It wasn’t so much the motion that bothered her, because there wasn’t much of a sensation of moving, and it wasn’t the sound. Supposedly this vehicle was quieter than most. The hum of the battery-driven motor was discernible but not obnoxious. What got to her was the sense of isolation, of containment. She’d been punished too many times as a child by being locked in a dark cabinet and told to think hard about the wages of sin and the horrors of Hell.

  In those days, she’d never considered that Hell could be underwater, but now, if she still believed in Hell, she’d be willing to consider it.

  Partially to conserve energy but mostly as an attempt to placate her nerves, Dennis turned off the lights as soon as they were clear of the habitat structure. The muted blue-white glow of the control panel didn’t do much to offset the view from the huge convex window next to her, which revealed a darkness unrivaled by anything she’d ever experienced above sea level.

  These trips, the time spent shuttling to the seafloor and back, were what Victoria least enjoyed about her job. Traversing a black, cold, deadly void in a small sphere with only a few layers of titanium, graphite composites, and ceramics between her and a psi greater than one hundred and twenty times the air pressure at sea level was a thrill she would prefer to do without. She usually kept her eyes open but averted from the window despite the darkness on the other side of it. The bizarre bioluminescent creatures that floated by only served to remind her of where she was and that it would be more than half an hour before the slightest glimmer of sunlight would be visible, and an additional fifteen minutes or so beyond that until she would be on dry land again.

  Dennis, however, came away from his every trip to Atlantis—which were far more frequent than hers—in a state close to euphoria. And why not, she thought wryly, willing her stomach into quiescence. He’d defied logic, reason, and fiscal sanity by insisting on building a habitat and mining operation on the seafloor and, in doing so, he’d pushed science and engineering to new heights, or more accurately, new depths. Eight hundred new patents had been registered to the institute since he’d begun this project, and the world’s governments and most major corporations were waging a ferocious competition for his time, his people, his results. And the application of scruples was apparently optional, which is why Victoria figured so importantly into the mix.

  A mostly self-taught, shoot-from-the-hip security expert, she had deliberately turned years of careful, subtle observation of how people operated into something that other people didn’t want to mess with. Her appearance fed into it. Not the fact that she was rather short and small-boned. That made her fairly ordinary at first glance. But the genetic misfire that had given her, a full-blooded Japanese woman, a pair of blue eyes had always startled people.

  Throughout the history of civilization, ridiculous superstitions had been attached to children with obvious differences, and her case was no different. Because of her eyes, a lot of people had assumed she had extra abilities at her disposal. She’d never done anything to ease their minds, because in at least one way, their assumptions were correct.

  It was her eyes that had led to her abandonment as an infant in a remote and poverty-stricken village on one of Japan’s outer islands, and her adoption by an American missionary couple. Her heritage and her disconcerting eyes had also been what had gotten her placed into an out-of-the-way orphanage when those adoptive parents had died in an accident soon after returning to the United States. None of her adoptive parents’ blond, blue-eyed, God-fearing Minnesotan relatives had wanted to take her in, lest an outsider think her presence in the family bespoke a loss of morals rather than an act of charity.

  That being exotic had its benefits as well as its downfalls had been an early lesson. By the time she was six, she’d learned that the deliberate application of exquisitely patient silence was all that was usually required to unnerve even the most stoic people. Whether it was cultural heredity or the experience of having grown up as the only Asian in a sea of Teutons, the only dark-haired child among one hundred orphaned blondes, Victoria knew that her patience was her greatest asset. Things always revealed themselves to those who remained calm, who waited—and who watched. Most people, even Dennis, were too busy to do any of those.

  “A million for your thoughts.” His voice was teasing but when Victoria turned to face him in the small space, Dennis’s eyes were serious.

  “Who ever said inflation was a bad thing?” she replied lightly. “Unfortunately, what I’m thinking isn’t worth half as much.”

  He reached up to flip the switch that stopped their conversation from being recorded. “You’re clenched.”

  “Only my hands. And you should be watching the controls, not me.”

  “Not just your hands. Your whole body. And I don’t have to look at you to know it. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m thirty-seven hundred feet beneath the sea surface inside a small, hard ball. Need I say more?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Well, that’s not all of it.” She paused. “You know that we shouldn’t be here together.”

  “That’s what you were thinking?”

  “No. But it needs pointing out. You know it’s against policy.”

  Bold and brash, Dennis Cavendish had been a favored target for crime long before Victoria had started working for him. His personal history was littered with attempted kidnappings and attempted extortion. More recently, his companies and even the island—once—had been targeted by terrorists. While he took his own personal safety very seriously, he was a fiend when it came to protecting his people and his companies.

  “Relax, Vic. This was an unplanned trip. Only a few people—trusted people—know we’re here.”

  “There are no trusted people, Dennis. Besides, who knows we’re here hardly matters. You are the CEO of the company and the president of the country, and I’m your security chief, and here we sit in a battery-operated bowling ball that’s moving slowly through f
our thousand vertical feet of water, with a few miles of horizontal motion in the equation, and will be doing so for nearly an hour. We’re throwing off dozens of frequencies in every direction, and we’re making a lot of noise. Anyone out there with sonar can pick us up. We’re the epitome of a—”

  “Sitting duck?”

  “Fish in a barrel,” she finished with a raised eyebrow.

  He sat back as best he could in the contoured chair and put one hand on his hip. The other was wrapped around the joystick. He leveled a hard look at her. “Who don’t you trust?”

  “Who do I trust is the finer point.”

  “And?”

  “The answer is no one, as you well know.”

  “Not me?”

  “No, not you. You trust me, which is required to maintain the dynamic. But I mustn’t trust anyone, or the game is over and we’ve lost.”

  “Then who do you suspect, and of what?”

  She folded her arms and returned his look. “Dennis, it’s not a matter of suspecting someone of something, it’s a matter of suspecting everyone of anything.”

  “You do realize that sounds a bit crazy.”

  “Yes, I do, thank you,” she said tightly.

  “What is it you want to do?”

  “I’d like to send some people to the mainland. Business trip. I don’t know. Some excuse.”

  “Who and why?”

  “Micki and a few key managers,” she said without hesitation.

  “Oh, hell. That’s the damned continuity plan, isn’t it? You want to put that in play. Well, the answer is no. They’ve all been working as hard as you and me and they deserve to be here for the test. And the test is what’s got you all nervous. That and the guests. Well, quit it. I need you sharp, not muddled, so don’t go all woo-woo on me. That may work on some people, but not on me. As you know.”

  “I’m not woo-woo, but I trust my instinct. The test is huge, Dennis, it’s what we’ve been working toward for years and something about it has my intuition on high alert.”