The Gods of Atlantis jh-6

by David Gibbins

  He turned to Costas. ‘You know my answer. I’ve taken too much of a risk with IMU’s reputation getting here to bail out now. And I want more than gold. I want to find the inner sanctum of Atlantis.’

  ‘You remember what Macalister said?’

  Jack recalled Macalister’s briefing just before they set out in the submersible. Although Jack was archaeological director of IMU, Macalister as captain of Seaquest II had the final say over anything that might affect the safety of his ship and crew, and one of those concerns was holding position over an active sub-sea volcano that might burst forth at any moment. ‘He said don’t push this place. We’ve seen what it can do.’

  ‘You remember what else he said?’

  ‘Just the usual.’

  ‘He said no frigging about. Do not let Jack Howard see something else that intrigues him and disappear off alone down some tunnel. He knows you pretty well, Jack. We go in, we take pictures, we come out. Full stop. He told me if needs be, tie a rope to your ankle.’

  ‘And you said?’

  ‘I said nobody ties Jack Howard down. I said I trusted you.’

  Jack grinned. ‘Trusted me to do what?’

  ‘Trusted you to look after me, to look after yourself and to think of your daughter Rebecca and how much she needs her dad, alive and well. Remember what happened six months ago.’

  Jack was silent. He remembered all too well. During their search for the treasures of Troy, Rebecca had been kidnapped, the worst forty-eight hours of Jack’s life. It had ended in an explosion of violence that had frightened even Jack, showing him how far he would go to protect his own. It was still unresolved business, with the mastermind behind the kidnapping still at large, but the important thing was that Rebecca was safe and being watched over by the best security people available. She had needed all her friends at IMU afterwards, but she was young enough to feel that it was also a huge adventure, and she had shown a toughness and resolve that proved to Jack that she had inherited a certain ability to look after herself.

  ‘It was hard enough keeping her from joining us. She’d have been halfway down the tunnel ahead of us by now.’

  ‘Like father, like daughter.’

  ‘Anyway, what about Costas Kazantzakis, always stuck down a hole in the seabed fiddling with some malfunctioning gadget, oblivious to the world around him?’

  ‘My gadgets don’t malfunction. And I don’t fiddle. Anyway, when have I ever let you down?’

  Jack grinned through his visor at Costas. ‘Never.’ He lifted his right hand with the palm out, and Costas did the same, pushing them together. ‘Buddies.’

  ‘Right on.’

  Jack turned back to the stone pillar, now clear of silt, with the golden disc reflecting luminously in his headlamp. He flipped up the protective cover of the pod on the front of his helmet and activated the control board on his right wrist, using the pod to take a series of flash photographs and then a video sequence panning up the pillar and focusing on the symbol on the disc. He closed down the visor and pushed himself off from the pillar, hanging in the water alongside Costas in the middle of the tunnel. Costas patted his tool belt, an impressive array of wrenches, jacks and other gear that went with him everywhere, strapped and Velcroed to the tattered grey remains of a boiler suit he wore over his spacesuit, and then gestured at the golden symbol. ‘You don’t want to grab it and bag it?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I think that thing belongs here.’

  ‘You getting superstitious?’

  Jack shook his head again. ‘You remember the golden disc from the shipwreck five years ago, how we realized it was a key to getting into the door in the rock face? It’s just a hunch, but this thing looks like some kind of opening device too. If we can make an obverse of that symbol and use it as a key, then that disc might turn and activate something else. A job for the IMU engineering lab.’

  ‘I’m on to it. We’ll need a laser scan of that symbol.’

  Jack tapped the pod on the front of his helmet. ‘Just done it.’

  ‘One of my malfunctioning gadgets?’

  Jack grinned. ‘Okay. My apologies. It’s just something for the future. We’d need another window in the seismic profile for Macalister to let us down here again.’

  ‘We’ve waited five years for this window. We can wait again.’

  Jack stared ahead. For once he felt more comfortable in a tunnel than in the open sea. Years before, he had nearly lost his life diving in a mineshaft when his cylinder valve had jammed, and had only been saved by Costas buddy-breathing with him to the surface. Since then they had dived together thousands of times, but whenever they were in confined spaces that incident was always lurking just beneath his consciousness, forcing him to keep focused. Yet here the thought of the sea outside was more daunting. Below about a hundred metres depth, the Black Sea was virtually devoid of life, a toxic soup of hydrogen sulphide caused by decaying organic matter with not enough oxygen present. Thousands of metres beyond that, in the abyssal depths, the water was like brine, a legacy of the time before the Atlantis flood when the Black Sea had been cut off from the Mediterranean and had nearly dried up, leaving salt lakes in the deepest reaches. Jack had seen photographs taken by Russian deep-sea probes of ancient wrecks with human bodies encased in salt, sepulchral forms still chained to galleys half swallowed in the brine. And he remembered his escape from the wreck of the first Seaquest five years ago, his desperate climb in the ADSA advanced deep-sea anthropod pressure suit through a bed of volcanic vents spewing plumes of smoke into the darkness. He had sworn he would never dive there again, and he had meant it. He remembered what Macalister had said. Don’t push this place.

  He glanced at the digital time readout inside his helmet, and looked at the tether behind Costas. In a few moments they would be ready. He stayed calm, keeping his breathing measured, checking his instruments one last time.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Costas said. ‘You’re thinking there’s nothing to worry about. You’ve got the best possible equipment, and the best possible buddy.’

  ‘Not that. I’m imagining a tropical island, snorkelling on a reef, then cocktails on the shore.’

  ‘And women?’

  ‘All you want. Of course, I’m spoken for.’

  ‘Katya, or Maria?’

  Jack coughed. ‘Tough call. So I was thinking of taking Rebecca, for her school holiday. Last chance for some father-daughter bonding. She’ll be having boyfriends soon.’

  ‘Jeremy’s been seeing her, you know.’

  Jack turned to Costas. ‘Jeremy Haverstock? You must be kidding. You must be joking.’

  ‘He’s a good guy. The best. Helped me a lot with building Little Joey.’ He patted the bulge over his stomach again. ‘Anyway, we all thought you knew.’

  ‘I thought they were just friends. Colleagues. Rebecca stayed on at Troy to study the pottery, to help Jeremy record the inscriptions.’

  ‘Rebecca? Spending months recording potsherds? The action girl who makes Lara Croft look like a wimp? I don’t think so.’

  ‘She’s only seventeen.’

  ‘Come on, Jack. It’s all part of being a dad. Face reality. Anyway, when?’

  ‘When what?’

  ‘When am I going to this tropical paradise?’

  ‘Well, you’ll need some R and R after this.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘I promise.’

  The amber light on Costas’ wrist display changed to green. He patted the ROV pouch on his belly. ‘Time to rock and roll.’

  ‘Let topside know before you unhook the tether.’

  Costas tapped the external intercom button on his helmet. ‘Mission control. Do you read me? Over.’

  A voice crackled through the intercom. ‘This is Seaquest II. We copy you. Over.’

  ‘Houston, we are go for a landing.’

  There was a pause, and then another voice came on line. ‘This is Macalister. Gentlemen, just remember which planet you’re on. You’re
diving in the Black Sea, not landing on the moon. Acknowledge.’

  Costas grinned at Jack. ‘Houston, that’s a big wide smile.’

  The first voice came on line. ‘Repeat that. We do not copy. Over.’

  Costas raised his eyes. ‘Acknowledged. We’re divers, not astronauts. Over.’

  Macalister came on again. ‘Be safe. Remember the briefing. We’ll look out for your radio buoy from the submersible in one hour. Over.’

  ‘Roger that. Little Joey’s all juiced up. We’re going in hot,’ Costas said.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Jack replied.

  Costas turned to him, grinning through his visor. ‘Afraid of a little lava?’

  ‘Check your temperature readout. It’s already seventy degrees Celsius. You could poach an egg in this water.’

  ‘Anything over a hundred and thirty degrees, you abort the mission,’ Macalister said.

  ‘Roger that. Houston, we are signing off. Over and out.’ Costas reached back and unhooked the tether from his suit, then let it go. They watched it snake and slither out of sight up the tunnel, towards the hazy smudge of green more than thirty metres away that marked their entry point from the sea floor, where they had left the submersible. They were now completely cut off from outside support, dependent entirely upon themselves and their equipment, facing a challenge fraught with as much risk as they had ever faced before. Jack turned and looked into the swirling darkness below them, reducing his headlamp beam so his vision was not dazzled by the reflection of light from particles in the water. He saw the hazy outlines of the tunnel walls ahead, and the blackness beyond. He felt his breathing tighten, felt the apprehension, and then took a deep breath and relaxed as the adrenalin coursed through him. He was in his element, where all his training and ambition had led him, an underwater explorer about to enter the most extraordinary archaeological site ever discovered. Right now, there was no better place in the world to be. Costas turned to him, his visor reflecting an image of Jack like a photograph of an astronaut in space, then gestured down the tunnel. ‘Good to go?’

  Jack steeled himself. They were about to dive into a live volcano . He raised his hand, then pointed into the void. ‘Good to go.’

  2

  Jack stared down into the narrowing void ahead of him, keeping part of his mind on the smudge of light he knew lay some thirty metres behind them at the entrance to the tunnel. It was like a flash imprinted on his retina, and he tried to hold it there as a reminder that they had an escape route. He looked over at Costas, remembering their shared experience in the mineshaft many years before. They had let all their training and experience kick in, working the rescue methodically from the moment he had jammed his tank valve on the timber and his air had cut off. The problem for Jack was the reflection, years later: what if Costas had not been face to face with him at that moment, when he had struck the timber and dropped their only torch, plunging them into darkness?

  Jack had worked hard to turn the nagging uncertainty to his advantage, convinced that it made him a better diver, more alert to danger, but always for a few moments before a dive like this one he had to go through a ritual. He shut his eyes tight, thinking about nothing, deliberately slowing his breathing, remaining spread-eagled and neutrally buoyant. After a moment he took a deep breath, opened his eyes and looked at his wrist readout, checking the depth and temperature. He felt a nudge beside him, and heard Costas’ reassuring voice. ‘You done?’

  ‘All set. You lead, or me?’

  ‘It’ll have to be you, Jack. I don’t think I could get around you now, with Little Joey hitched to my front. I’ll be about five metres behind.’

  ‘Roger that. I’m about to begin my descent.’

  ‘Watch your external temperature gauge. Remember, it should read no more than a hundred and twenty degrees. We have about sixty metres more in the tunnel before we reach the area we passed through five years ago, on the way up to the inner sanctum.’

  ‘You mean the magma chamber, full of red-hot lava.’

  ‘At least we won’t have to use our torches.’

  A few years before Jack had been in an IMU submersible off the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, watching lava pour over the seaward cliffs and roll down the underwater slopes in a glowing orange mass until it had congealed. He had found it a disconcerting experience, with all his instincts telling him that the water around the lava should have boiled and vaporized, and he had wanted to reverse the submersible to avoid falling into the vacuum he felt sure would appear above the flow. And now here he was, not in a submersible but in the water himself, about to swim into the same scenario. He flexed his fingers, looking at the bulbous white Kevlar that was the only barrier between himself and whatever fiery mass lay ahead. He glanced at the readout inside his helmet, seeing the green light showing that the small electric motor running the air-conditioner unit inside his suit was functioning. He pressed his intercom. ‘Cross-check internal temperature readings.’

  ‘Twenty-two degrees Celsius,’ Costas replied.

  ‘Seems a little hot. Mine’s twenty.’

  ‘You’re a Viking, remember? I’m Mediterranean. And I’m keeping myself in training for that tropical island you promised.’

  Jack glanced down at the clear plastic tube inside his helmet beside his mouth, leading to a freshwater bag inside the rebreather console on his back. ‘Just make sure you keep hydrated,’ he replied. ‘Remember, the more you sweat, the more likely you are to get the bends when we go back up.’

  ‘My thermostat’s set at twenty-two max. And I have no intention of being a boil-in-the-bag meal for whatever fiery denizen of the deep lives down here.’

  Jack glanced one last time at the stone pillar to his left with the golden Atlantis symbol embedded in it, then manually expelled air from his buoyancy compensator before angling down to follow the slope of the tunnel, kicking forcefully with his fins. He could hear the hiss of the automated buoyancy control bleeding air into his suit, maintaining his buoyancy at neutral. The lamps on either side of his helmet illuminated the tunnel ahead to a distance of at least fifteen metres, showing the ragged edges of the lava where the borer had dug through and a trail of debris on the bottom where the conveyor had taken the broken material up the tunnel and out on to the flank of the volcano. Back up the tunnel the lava had mostly been p hoehoe, billowy and ropy shapes where the molten rock had quickly cooled on contact with the water, whereas in the tunnel ahead it looked like Hawaiian ‘a‘ lava, stonier and more clinky, a result of slower cooling that had left it denser and less aerated. Where the borer had cut into the harder lava, Jack could see a spiralling pattern extending down the tunnel, making it seem like a vortex. As he swam on he began to see tiny bubbles rising from the depths ahead of them, swirling up like a twisting veil.

  ‘That’s boiling-hot carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, the volcano off-gassing,’ Costas said from behind him. ‘That’s the stuff that makes it poisonous to be anywhere near an eruption like this topside without breathing gear.’

  Costas had swum up close behind him, and Jack saw his form reflected in the edge of his helmet. The glass visor was a flat surface set on a slight curve where it closed against the helmet, using external water pressure to make the strongest possible seal; after almost a decade using the e-suit, Jack had got used to the centimetre or so of distorted vision it created around the periphery of the glass plate. But now, seeing the elongated form of Costas’ helmet, it seemed like an optical illusion, as if the distorted image around his visor rim had become part of the walls of the tunnel beside him. He began to see multiple images as if he were looking into numerous reflecting mirrors, shifting as Costas moved his headlamp and the reflection changed. He closed his eyes, then opened them again, trying to focus on the tunnel ahead. ‘Tell me I’m not hallucinating,’ he said. ‘For a moment I was seeing multiple images of you on the edge of my visor, as if they were spiralling around the tunnel.’

  ‘It’s called polyapsia,’ Costas replied. ‘Lanowski’s bee
n telling me about it. It’s a common altered-consciousness vision.’

  ‘You mean a psychedelic trip. That’s the last thing I want down here.’

  ‘You were just seeing multiple reflections, set against the apparent swirl of the tunnel ahead of us. Your mind was playing tricks on you. Lanowski thinks that’s what prehistoric people were doing in places like this, in caves and tunnels: having altered-consciousness experiences. What you’ve just seen shows how easily they could have done it. And they wouldn’t have been able to rationalize it as we can.’

  Jack blinked and stared ahead, seeing the cut marks made by the titanium bit of the boring machine, then shifted his head so the reflection of Costas was no longer visible. ‘It was disconcertingly easy to fall into it.’

  ‘Look at it this way. You wanted to return to Atlantis, to get inside the prehistoric mind, right? To see what these people were seeing. Well, you’re doing it now. This isn’t exactly a time machine, but it’s a way of getting into their perceptions. Imagine we’re going through a kind of rocky interface like those Stone Age caves, towards the spirit world ahead of us. Being in a tunnel’s a common hallucination during near-death experiences, too.’

  ‘I was wondering when you were going to say that. From now on, reality rules, okay?’

  ‘Roger that. Now let’s get on. We’re down to eighty-five metres absolute water depth, and we don’t want to linger at these depths any longer than we have to.’

  Jack felt a surge of adrenalin, suddenly excited at what might lie ahead. He checked his computer readout. Sixty-seven degrees external temperature. The slew of bubbles increased to a fizzy mass, his headlamp beams reflecting off them in a confusing maelstrom of light and colour that refracted through the bubbles, creating images that folded and unfolded. There was more width to the tunnel now, and Costas edged up along his left side, just as the tunnel gave way to a wider natural opening. Costas put his hand out into the bubbles, moving it round. ‘They’re like swirling images of animals, like those prehistoric cave paintings,’ he said. ‘I wonder if Stone Age people saw something like this in pools of water above the magma chamber, bubbles that might have reflected light coming from lava.’