Submerged

by Alton Gansky

  Perry stood and faced the trio. Fury boiled inside him, but he forced himself to remain calm. He glanced at Jack and could see the same emotion on his friend’s face.

  “I take it the vest saved the pretty deputy’s life,” Finn said.

  “She’s unconscious but alive,” Perry shot back. “That was uncalled for.”

  “She was reaching for her gun,” Lloyd said. “I had to defend myself and my team.”

  “That’s enough, Dean,” Finn warned.

  “So your name isn’t Lloyd,” Carl said. “At least I got that right.”

  Dean smiled and bowed his head. “Colonel Ryan Dean.”

  “I’m surprised that you’d tell us your name,” Perry said.

  “Why? I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m here in service to my country.” Dean took a step forward. “I want everyone against the back wall. Drag her with you.” Perry and the others did as ordered. “Sit down and cross your legs. You will not move until we tell you to move.”

  Again, they did as ordered. Perry sat in the middle, his back against the sloping wall. Jack was to his right and Gleason to his left. Carl sat next to the unconscious Janet, and Zeisler sat to Jack’s right.

  Finn shook his head. “There are always people like you, people who can’t stay away from trouble. I told you that you were interfering in a mission of national security. Now I have to figure out what to do with you.”

  “We could all go for pizza,” Jack said.

  “Very funny, big man,” Finn said, but he didn’t laugh. He looked at Zeisler and furrowed his brow. “I don’t recall seeing you before. You weren’t on the road at our last . . . meeting.”

  “I was relaxing in the Hummer,” Zeisler explained, “watching your men being shut down by unarmed engineers. It was very entertaining.”

  “What’s your name?” Finn demanded.

  “Dr. Victor Zeisler.”

  “Well, Dr. Zeisler, you have hooked up with the wrong people because . . .” Finn’s words faded. “The Victor Zeisler.”

  “I’m a legend in my own time.”

  “Who is he?” Colonel Dean asked Finn.

  “He’s one of the original consultants. He was here thirty years ago.”

  “You’d think the years would have made him smarter.”

  “Stand, Zeisler,” Finn ordered.

  “That’s Dr. Zeisler.”

  “Very well,” Finn said. “Stand up, Dr. Zeisler.”

  Zeisler did.

  Finn scrutinized the electrical engineer from head to toe. “You look pretty good, considering.”

  “I maintain a steady diet of junk food. It adds years to a man’s life.”

  “What do you mean, considering?” Perry asked.

  Finn narrowed his eyes in disdain. “I do my research, Mr. Sachs. I know who was down here three decades ago and what has happened to them. Only Zeisler remains alive.”

  “And my father.”

  “The CDC people tell me he doesn’t have long.”

  “You’ve been following my father’s case?” Perry said. The thought angered him all the more. Having strangers peeking in on private lives was abhorrent.

  Finn walked to the ring. “I have to admit, after reading Ed Sanders’s report from 1974, I expected much more. It seems he exaggerated things.”

  “Time changes things,” Jack said. “I used to be young and good-looking, but now I’m just good-looking.”

  “You’re starting to irritate me,” Dean said.

  “Really? Usually people get irritated with me much sooner.” Jack smiled.

  “Why do you have to antagonize people with guns?” Gleason asked.

  “It’s a gift,” Jack said.

  “This is where the column of light appeared?” Finn asked Zeisler.

  “That’s right.”

  “And the shiny disks?”

  “Right again.”

  Finn peered down into the pit and scowled. “Can you make it work?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a long time, and the place looks a little worse for wear.”

  “Try.”

  Perry watched Zeisler as he neared the ring and looked in. He studied it, then took a step back. From his seated position, Perry could see the man’s face. It was drained of color.

  “I said, make it work,” Finn ordered.

  Zeisler stepped closer and extended his hand over the sand. “We think it senses the presence of life and responds.”

  “I know. As I said, I read the report.”

  Zeisler extended another hand, and a shaft of light beamed down from the inverted wineglass opening in the ceiling and touched the dark spot on the sand. The light thickened, growing wider until it reached the edge of the ring. Four disks appeared at the bottom of the pit and rose, their surfaces parallel to the floor. Then, in a blink, they turned on their sides and began to orbit around the vertical axis of the column.

  “Whoa,” Dean said. “Am I really seeing that? Tell me you see that, Tuttle.”

  “Sir, I see it all right. Yes, sir.” The man called Tuttle paused. “To be honest, sir, I don’t know what I’m seeing.”

  “It’s a type of computer,” Zeisler said. “It runs this place.”

  “This is how it looked thirty years ago?” Finn demanded.

  Zeisler shook his head. “Yes . . . well, no.”

  “Which is it, Dr. Zeisler? I’m in no mood for games.”

  “It was brighter then and faster. The disks, which I think are like our computer monitors, were shinier and had lights around the edge.” He glanced back at Perry. “Before you crashed our party, we were talking. I think this place is dying.”

  “Dying? Machines break down, Dr. Zeisler. They don’t die.”

  “Zeisler believes the base has artificial intelligence and enough self-awareness to know that its death is near,” Perry said.

  “It’s a living computer, and you think it’s dying.” Finn frowned. “You’ve been watching too much television.”

  “It’s not a computer as we think of one,” Zeisler said. “It wasn’t designed to surf the Internet or retrieve e-mail. It must be the heart and soul of this place, of Mishmar.”

  “Ah, Mishmar,” Finn said. “You don’t know this, but Sanders recruited a team of linguists and foreign-language specialists to analyze the terms you heard. What were they? Mishmar . . . ker . . . kar . . .”

  “Mishmar, keroob, ophawn, and kahee,” Zeisler explained. “It referred to itself as Mishmar.”

  “Well, whatever the words were, they didn’t make sense. The report states that the specialists’ best guess was that the words were similar to some Semitic language but couldn’t be precisely identified with any known language. Their best translation was just nonsense, just a string of unrelated words.”

  “What words?” Perry asked. As long as Finn was talking, he and his men weren’t shooting.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Finn said. “Nonsense is nonsense.”

  “One man’s nonsense is another man’s . . . ,” Jack began, “is . . . sorry, I got nuthin’.”

  “Insight,” Gleason suggested.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Jack said. “One man’s nonsense is another man’s insight.”

  “Shut up,” Colonel Dean said.

  Jack raised his hands. “Just trying to be an encouragement.”

  Finn studied the disks as they moved. “They thought kahee might mean ‘living thing,’ and ophawn might mean ‘wheel.’ ” He studied the floating disks. “I suppose these disks could be called wheels.”

  “What about keroob?” Zeisler asked.

  “They came up empty on that. The best they could do is associate it with either an Egyptian word that refers to a chariot or to an Assyrian word meaning ‘to be near.’ Not much help.”

  Something stirred in the back of Perry’s mind. Gleason leaned over to him. “Does this sound familiar to you? I feel like I should know this.”

  “Did they come up with a translation for Mishmar?” Zeisler asked.
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  “It’s the only word that came close to making sense,” Finn said. “There’s a similar word in ancient Hebrew that refers to a guard or to a ward or prison.”

  “This can’t be.” Perry’s mind was spinning.

  “What can’t be?” Finn said. “You know something I should know?”

  Perry reached for his vest pocket. Finn, Dean, and Tuttle all raised their weapons. “I’m just reaching for my handheld computer.”

  “Do it slowly,” Finn warned.

  Perry pulled up the Velcro flap that held the safari vest pocket closed and removed an HP iPAQ handheld computer and turned it on. He removed the stylus from its holder and began tapping on the screen.

  Finn frowned. “You want to let us in on your little secret, Sachs?”

  “I’m looking at a Bible program,” Perry said. “I think all those words are connected.”

  “Bible?” Finn laughed. “You should have started your prayers sooner.”

  Perry ignored him. “This concordance program lets me search for particular words and shows me where they appear in the Bible.”

  “You’re wasting my time,” Finn said.

  “No, he’s not,” Jack countered. “You said the experts thought the words were rooted in Semitic languages, right? Well the Old Testament is written in Hebrew and Aramaic.”

  Perry tapped “prison” into the concordance. A long list appeared. He focused on the Old Testament books and tapped on the first reference. “Genesis 42:17 is the first reference to prison. He read, ‘So he put them all together in prison for three days.’ ”

  “Is that the story of Joseph and his brothers in Egypt?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, and the Hebrew word for prison is . . .” Perry tapped the tiny screen again, and his heart skipped.

  “What?” Finn demanded. “What did you find?”

  “The Bible program has an interlinear function,” Perry said. “Do you know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “It displays the English translation of the verse in parallel with the original language and with an English transliteration of the Hebrew. In this verse the Hebrew for prison is mishmar.” He tapped the screen again, and an abbreviated definition appeared. “It means ‘a place of confinement, a jail, or a ward.’ ”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  Perry heard a soft plop but continued staring at the tiny screen. This time he did a different search. He entered “wheel” and started the concordance search. The first reference was from 1 Kings 7:32. Again, he read aloud: “ ‘The four wheels were underneath the borders, and the axles of the wheels were on the stand. And the height of a wheel was a cubit and a half.’ ”

  “I know that passage,” Gleason said. “It has to do with the building of Solomon’s Temple. The wheels are the wheels on the bronze stands, right?”

  Perry nodded. “Right. The carts that carried the bronze basins. But I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for. First . . .” He called up the interlinear and checked the transliterated Hebrew word for wheel: “Ophawn.”

  “Another hit,” Jack said.

  “How did your experts define . . . kahee?” Perry asked Finn.

  “ ‘Something living,’ ” Finn said. “And they were not my experts. I would have made sure they did a better job. When I get back, I plan to put a team on—”

  “Kahee . . . thing . . . living . . .” Perry didn’t care what Finn planned to do when he got back. His own mind was racing with different thoughts. “Living thing . . . you don’t suppose the word means ‘living being’?”

  “As in Ezekiel?” Jack asked. “The four living beings?”

  Perry searched and the handheld computer yielded another set of verses, Ezekiel 1:5: “‘Within it there were figures resembling four living beings. And this was their appearance: they had human form.’ ”

  There was another plop.

  “You guys are nuts,” Dean said. “A bunch of Bible nuts.”

  “This almost fits,” Perry said. “Dr. Zeisler, what did the entity say to you about kahee being something and something being kahee?”

  “It said that kahee was karoob, and karoob was kahee, then went around telling us that we were neither and didn’t fit.”

  “Karoob? If kahee refers to the living creatures seen by Ezekiel, and karoob refers to the same thing . . .”

  “Does anyone else smell that?” Carl asked. He was cradling Janet’s head in his lap. “It reeks.”

  Plop, plop.

  “Um, guys.” Zeisler was looking past the disks and into the pit ring. “We have a problem.”

  The light column flashed and retreated from the edge a few inches.

  Perry rose.

  “I didn’t tell you to get up,” Dean said.

  “Shoot me,” Perry said. He approached Zeisler. “What problem?”

  “Look.” Zeisler pointed at a thin layer of sand at the base of the pit. Perry looked, saw the sand, and the dark spot in the middle.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be seeing.”

  “The dark spot—the sand is wet.”

  As Perry gazed down, a drop of water fell in the center of the ring. As it did, a strand of vapor rose. The smell of it turned Perry’s stomach. Perry looked up through the light pillar in time to see another drop descend.

  “So there’s a little water,” Dean said. “You’re not going to melt.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Zeisler said.

  “Explain,” Finn demanded.

  “You’re an idiot, Finn,” Zeisler snapped. “And you brought a band of idiots with you. How much water have you seen in this place?”

  “Sanders’s report said the sand turned to sea,” Finn fired back.

  “All appearance. This isn’t pretend water. It’s reacting with the material in the pit. Now where do you suppose that water might come from?” Zeisler pointed up.

  “You’re not suggesting—”

  “I am,” Zeisler said. “What brought you here?”

  “That’s top secret.”

  “We already know the secrets, Finn.” Zeisler raised his voice another handful of decibels. “We are standing in the secret. Let me guess. You picked up some kind of signal. Radio wave or microwave. Something like that. Right? How do you suppose that signal got out after all these years?”

  Carl rose and approached the ring. He examined the brown spot, which no longer looked like sand but more like slime. “Hey, that looks like the stuff along the lakeshore. I found a couple of oars when I was looking for Barrett. They were covered in that stuff.”

  “That would mean the sand material was expelled to the surface,” Perry said. “Which means that there’s some kind of opening above.”

  “This is some kind of trick.” Dean leveled his weapon at Perry’s chest. “I know a distraction when I see it.”

  “The water has been above this site for three decades, Sachs. There’s no reason to believe that it’s crumbling now.”

  “This place is dying, Finn!” Zeisler shouted. “The message you got was a distress signal sent out to someone, probably the original team that investigated this place. Look at the exterior of this building. It’s incomplete. The sand is a different color because much of the biotronics or whatever they are, are dying, out of power, nonfunctioning—I don’t know what the correct term is, but it is bad. This place can no longer hold itself together. The dim light in here, and everything else we’ve seen, proves it.”

  “We have to go,” Perry said. “We have to go now.”

  “I’m not releasing anyone,” Finn warned.

  “At least it will be quick,” Jack said calmly. He too rose.

  “Sit down,” Finn ordered. “Sit down now!”

  Jack refused. “I’m tired of sitting. I prefer to die on my feet. Take a guess, Finny boy. How much water do you think is over our heads? Millions of gallons, and they taught me in school that every gallon of water weighs over eight pounds. You do the math. If we’re lucky, we’ll be crushed before we�
�re drowned. Of course, the result is the same.”

  “What if they’re right?” Tuttle asked. “I mean, if just a portion of the roof gives way, we’re dead meat.”

  “That’s right, pal,” Jack said. “Of course your friends won’t have to bury you since you will already be under more dirt, rock, and mud than anyone will want to dig through.”

  A few more drops fell, and the acrid smell in the room increased. “That stuff is toxic,” Gleason said. “If we’re going to leave, we might want to do it soon.”

  There was a groan, and Carl returned to Janet. She opened her eyes and looked confused. Then her eyes widened, and she reached for her chest.

  “You’re okay,” Carl said. “The vest did its job.”

  She sat up. “Ow. Serious ow. I feel like an elephant stepped on me.” She coughed, then looked around. “I see the company hasn’t improved.”

  “No, and we have other problems,” Carl said.

  “Oh, my . . .” Janet’s words failed, but her expression and trembling hand did the trick. Every eye turned to the door. The large form of Matthew Barrett filled the opening.

  Finn, Dean, and Tuttle staggered back. All three spoke and swore at the same time and pointed the barrels of their weapons at the phantasm.

  “He doesn’t look so good,” Jack said. Perry thought he heard a waver in his friend’s voice.

  Jack was right. Barrett had changed. Before, he appeared solid and wet. Now the illusion was gone. Half of Barrett’s face undulated as if oil boiled beneath it. He wore no clothing, but he was not naked. His torso and legs were smooth and gray like the belly of a fish. He looked more like a mannequin than a man. Only his face remained animated.

  “Help me. Help me.”

  Finn and his men moved back. “Stay where you are!” Finn ordered.

  The Barrett entity moved forward, and Perry’s skin crawled with fear. “Help me.”

  “Don’t come any closer!” Finn shouted. “Any closer and we’ll open fire. Do you understand? Stay where you are!”

  Barrett moved two steps toward them.

  “This is your last—”

  Tuttle opened fire, his MP5 machine gun spitting a burst of rounds at the thing trying to be Matthew Barrett. Each round hit the thing square in the chest. Barrett stopped.