Deep Storm

by Lincoln Child

  Crane was stunned. “One hundred and three? My God, that’s—”

  “A quarter of the population, Dr. Crane. And far, far too large a number to be coincidence.”

  And she stuffed the paper back into her pocket with something almost like triumph.

  7

  Crane stood in the silence of his quarters on deck 10, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. The room was small, and—like the rest of the Facility—softly lit. There was a narrow bed, two chairs, a walk-in dressing alcove, and a desk with a terminal that was linked to the Facility’s central network. Beside the desk, a comm unit set into the wall allowed Crane to dial the Medical suite, reseve a lane at the bowling alley, even order a pizza delivery from Times Square. Save for a large flat-panel television, the light-blue walls were devoid of prints or decoration.

  There were two doors of the same strange platinum-hued metal he’d seen elsewhere, but here they were tastefully edged in blond wood. One led to the outside corridor, the other to the bath he shared with Roger Corbett. The mental health officer had offered to take him to lunch at Top, the prosaically named mess on deck 11. Crane said he’d meet him there. He wanted a few minutes alone first.

  A sealed folder lay on the desk, his name and a bar code imprinted along one edge. Crane picked up the folder, broke the seal with a fingernail, and dumped the contents onto the desk. Out fell a bulky name tag with a magnetic stripe and pocket clip; another copy of Code of Classified Naval Conduct; a two-page bibliography of books on Atlantis, all available in the library or for download to his terminal; and an envelope that contained a list of temporary passwords for the general and medical computer networks.

  He clipped the ID to his pocket. Then he sat down at the desk and stared a moment at the blank screen. At last, with a sigh, he booted up the terminal and logged on with his temporary password, pausing to massage the spot on his upper arm where the radio tag had been inserted a few minutes earlier. Opening the text editor, he began to type.

  Non-specific symptomology:

  physiological—& neurological??—deficits

  & psychological—detachment / dissociation

  Check clinical presentations

  Look for index case?

  Atmospheric / environmental?

  Poisoning: systemic or general?

  Preexisting condition(s)?

  He pushed back from the desk and glanced at the screen. Caisson disease? Nitrogen narcosis? he’d asked Asher from the Storm King oil platform. More the former than the latter, had been the reply. Crane was only now beginning to understand just how evasive that answer had been. In fact, Dr. Asher—as affable and open as he appeared to be—had so far told him next to nothing.

  This was annoying, maybe even a little alarming. But in one respect it didn’t really matter. Because, at last, Crane was beginning to understand why Asher had so specifically requested him—

  “Is it all becoming clear, then?” asked a voice at his shoulder.

  Crane almost leapt out of his seat in surprise. He wheeled around, heart racing, to see a rather astonishing sight. An old man in faded bib overalls was standing there. He had piercing blue eyes, and a shock of silvery hair stuck up, Einstein-like, from his forehead. He was very short—no taller than five feet—and gaunt. For a moment, Crane wondered if he’d come to repair something. The door to the room was closed. There had been no knock, no sound of entry. It was as if the man had materialized out of thin air.

  “Excuse me?”

  The man looked over Crane’s shoulder at the screen. “My, my. So few words, so many question marks.”

  Crane cleared the screen with the touch of a key. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting,” he said drily.

  The man laughed: a high, piping sound like the twitter of a bird. “I know. I came to make your acquaintance. I heard there was a Dr. Crane on board and that intrigued me.” He held out his hand. “The name’s Flyte. Dr. Flyte.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  An awkward silence followed and Crane sought a neutral, polite question. “What’s your role here, Dr. Flyte?”

  “Autonomous mechanical systems.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Spoken like a true newcomer. The Facility is like a frontier town—and, if you’re a fan of Western movies, as I am, you would know that in a frontier town there are two questions you don’t ask: Where do you come from? And: Why are you here?” Flyte paused. “Suffice to say, I’m indispensable—more’s the pity. My work is highly classified.”

  “That’s nice,” said Crane lamely, at a loss for a reply.

  “You think so? Not I. This is no happy assignment, Dr. Crane, here so far beneath .”

  Crane blinked. “Beg pardon?”

  “Bless me, not another!” Flyte raised his eyes skyward. “Does no one speak the mother tongue anymore? There was a time when ancient Greek was sung upon every civilized lip.” He wagged a finger at Crane. “‘Ocean, who is the source of all.’ Homer, you see, was a countryman of mine. You would do well to read him.”

  Crane resisted an impulse to glance at his watch. Roger Corbett was waiting for him in Top. “It was nice meeting you—”

  “And you,” Flyte interrupted. “I am a great admirer of any practitioners of the noble art.”

  Crane began to feel a swell of annoyance. He wondered how a man like Flyte had managed to slip through the vetting process everyone must have undergone before being admitted to the Facility. The best way to handle things, he decided, was to cut short any attempts at friendship on his part.

  “Dr. Flyte, I’m sure you’ve got as busy a day ahead as I do—”

  “Not at all! I’ve all the time in the world…at the moment. It’s only when the drilling resumes that they might need me and my artistry.” He held up his small hands and wiggled his fingers as if he were a concert pianist.

  The man’s bright eyes began to wander and fell once again on the open duffel. “What have we here?” he asked, reaching down and picking up a couple of books peeking out of the open duffel. He held up one of them, An Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the man demanded crossly.

  “What does it look like?” said Crane, exasperated. “It’s a book of poetry.”

  “I have no time for modern poetry, and neither should you. Like I said: read Homer.” The man dropped the book back onto the duffel and glanced at the other volume, Pi: Its History and Mystery. “Aha! And this?”

  “It’s a book about irrational numbers.”

  The man laughed and nodded. “Indeed! And how appropriate, no?”

  “Appropriate for what?”

  The man looked up at him in surprise. “Irrational numbers! Don’t you see?”

  “No. I don’t see.”

  “It’s so obvious. A number of us here are irrational, aren’t we? If we’re not, I fear we soon will be.” He extended a wiry index finger and tapped Crane on the chest. “That’s why you’re here. Because it’s broken.”

  “What’s broken?”

  “Everything is broken,” Flyte repeated in an urgent whisper. “Or at least, will be very soon.”

  Crane frowned. “Dr. Flyte, if you don’t mind—”

  Flyte held up one hand. The mood of sudden urgency seemed to pass. “It hasn’t occurred to you yet, but we have something in common.” He paused significantly.

  Crane swallowed. He was not about to ask what it was. But it seemed that Flyte needed no encouragement.

  The man leaned forward, as if to share a confidence. “Our names. Crane. Flyte. You understand?”

  Crane sighed. “No offense, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I have a lunch appointment I’m already late for.”

  The tiny old man cocked his head to one side and grasped Crane’s hand. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Dr. Crane. As I said, we’ve got something in common, you and I. And we need to stick together.”

  With a parting wink he ducked outside, leaving the
door open. A moment later Crane went to close it, and he glanced curiously down the long corridor. It was empty, and there was no sign of the strange old man. It was as if he’d never been there at all.

  8

  Howard Asher sat at the desk in his cramped office on deck 8, staring intently at a computer screen. The wash of color from the flat-panel monitor turned his silver-gray hair a strange, ethereal blue.

  Behind him was a metal bookcase stuffed with technical manuals, textbooks on oceanography and marine biology, and a few well-worn collections of poetry. Above the bookcase were several framed etchings: reproductions of Piranesi studies taken from Vedute di Roma. Another, smaller bookcase, this one with a glass door, held a variety of maritime curiosities: a fossilized coelacanth, a battered handspike from a clipper ship, a tooth from the impossibly reclusive Blue Grotto shark. Neither the diminutive size of the office nor its eclectic collections gave any evidence its occupant was the chief scientist of the National Ocean Service.

  Faintly, through the closed door, came the sound of approaching footsteps. Then a face appeared in the glass window of the door. Glancing over, Asher recognized the red hair and freckled face of Paul Easton, one of several marine geologists at work on the reclamation project.

  Asher swiveled in his chair, leaned over, opened the door. “Paul! Good to see you.”

  Easton stepped in, closed the door behind him. “I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time, sir.”

  “How often do I have to tell you, Paul? My name’s Howard. Here at the Facility, we’re on a first-name basis. Just don’t tell Admiral Spartan I said so.” And Asher chuckled at his little joke.

  Easton, however, did not laugh.

  Asher regarded him carefully. Normally, Easton was a puckish fellow, fond of practical jokes and very dirty limericks. Today, however, he was frowning, and his youthful features looked somber. More than that: Easton looked worried.

  Asher waved a hand at the lone empty chair. “Sit down, Paul, and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Although Easton sat down immediately, he did not speak. Instead, he raised a hand to his forearm and began rubbing it gently.

  “Is something wrong, son?” Asher asked.

  “I don’t know,” Easton said. “Maybe.”

  He was still rubbing his arm. Some people, Asher knew, had minor skin reactions from the RFID chip implantation process.

  “It’s the vulcanism,” Easton said abruptly.

  “The vulcanism.”

  “At the burial site. I’ve been working with several samples of basalt from the sea floor, trying to get a firm date for when the burial event occurred.”

  Asher nodded in encouragement.

  “You know how it is.” Easton seemed to grow flustered, or maybe defensive. “Because the undersea currents in this region are so strong, the sedimentation of the ocean floor is all messed up.”

  “Is that the technical term for it?” Asher said, trying to lighten the tone.

  Easton didn’t notice. “There’s no layering, no stratification. Core sampling is virtually useless. And you can’t get any kind of clear dating from visual examination, either. There isn’t the kind of weathering or erosion you’d find on land. So I’ve been trying to date the basalt formation by cross-comparison with known samples in our geological database. But I couldn’t get any definitive match. So then I decided to date the sample from the decay of radioactive isotopes within the basalt.”

  “Go on,” Asher said.

  “Well.” Easton seemed to grow even more nervous. “You know how we’ve always put a rough estimate on when the burial event took place. It’s just that…” He faltered, started again. “I made the same assumption in my tests. I never checked for magnetic field reversal.”

  Now Asher realized why Easton seemed so flustered. The man had made the one mistake a scientist should never make: he’d made an assumption, and as a result skipped a basic test. Something inside Asher relaxed.

  Time to play the frowning paterfamilias. “I’m glad you told me, Paul. It’s always embarrassing when we realize we haven’t followed the scientific method. And the dumber the mistake, the dumber we feel. The good news here is that no vital work was compromised as a result. So my advice to you? Feel bad, but don’t feel broken.”

  The worried look had not left Easton’s face. “No, Dr. Asher, you don’t understand. You see, just today, I performed that test, measured the magnetism. And there was no magnetic reversal in the sample.”

  Abruptly, Asher sat up in his chair. Then he settled back slowly, trying to keep surprise from blossoming over his face. “What did you say?”

  “The samples. There’s no evidence of magnetic reversal.”

  “Are you sure the orientation of the samples was correct?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you made sure there was no anomaly? That you weren’t using a bad sample?”

  “I checked all my samples. The results were the same in each case.”

  “But that can’t be. Magnetic reversal is a fail-safe method of dating rock samples.” Asher exhaled slowly. “This must mean the entombment happened even longer ago than we thought. Dating back two reversals, rather than just one. North to south, then south to north again. I’m sure your examination of the isotopes will confirm that.”

  “No, sir,” Easton said.

  Asher looked at him sharply. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I’ve already checked the radioactive isotopes. There’s hardly any decay. Hardly any at all.”

  Asher said simply, “Impossible.”

  “I’ve spent the last four hours in Radiography. I ran the tests three times. Here are the results.” And Easton removed a DVD from his lab coat pocket and laid it on Asher’s worktable.

  Asher stared at it but did not touch it. “So all our conclusions were wrong. The burial event is much more recent than we expected. Have you got a new date, based on the tests?”

  “Just a rough one, sir, for now.”

  “And that is?”

  “Approximately six hundred years ago.”

  Very slowly, Asher leaned back in his chair. “Six hundred years.”

  Once again, the tiny office fell into silence.

  “You need to requisition one of the rovers,” Asher said at last. “Have it fitted with an electron-phasing magnetometer, do several passes over the burial site. You’ll take care of that?”

  “Yes, Dr. Asher.”

  “Very good.”

  Asher watched as the young geologist stood up, nodded, made for the door.

  “And, Paul?” he said quietly.

  The man turned back.

  “Do it right away, please. And don’t tell anyone. Not a soul.”

  9

  Crane looked up from the digital clipboard that he’d been scribbling notes on with a plastic stylus. “And that’s it? Just some pain in the legs?”

  The man in the hospital bed nodded. Even beneath the sheet it was clear he was tall and well built. He had good color, and his eyes were clear.

  “On a scale of one to ten, how severe is the pain?”

  The man thought a moment. “Depends. I’d say around six. Sometimes a little more.”

  Nonfebrile myalgia, Crane jotted on the clipboard. It seemed impossible—no, it was impossible—this man had suffered a ministroke two days ago. He was too young, and, besides, none of the tests indicated one had occurred. There were only the initial complaints: partial paralysis, slurred speech.

  “Thank you,” Crane said, shutting the metal clipboard. “I’ll let you know if I have any more questions.” And he stepped back from the bed.

  Although termed a “suite,” the medical facility of the Deep Storm station boasted equipment that a moderate-sized hospital might envy. In addition to the ER, surgical bays, and two dozen patient rooms, there were numerous breakout areas for specialties from radiography to cardiology. There was a separate complex in which the staff had working areas and conference rooms. It was here that Crane h
ad been given a small but well-equipped office with an attached lab.

  Of all the recent complaints Dr. Bishop had described, only three had been severe enough to warrant hospitalization. Crane had already interviewed two of the patients—a forty-two-year-old man suffering from nausea and diarrhea, and this supposed stroke victim—and the fact was, neither really needed to be hospitalized. No doubt Dr. Bishop was just keeping them under observation.

  Crane turned and nodded to Bishop, who was standing well back.

  “There’s no indication of TIA,” he said as they stepped into the corridor.

  “Except for the initial presentation.”

  “You witnessed it yourself, you said?”

  “I did. And the man was clearly having a transient ischemic attack.”

  Crane hesitated. Bishop had said little during his examination of the two patients, but the hostility had been just below the surface. She wouldn’t like having her diagnosis called into question.

  “There are numerous syndromes that can present in similar fashion—” he began as diplomatically as possible.

  “I did my internship in a vascular care unit. I’ve seen more than my share of patients stroke out. I know a TIA when I see one.”

  Crane sighed. Her defensiveness was starting to wear on him. True, nobody liked an interloper, and perhaps that’s what he seemed. But the fact was the medical team here had only done superficial tests, treating each case as a separate event. He was convinced that if they dug deeper, ran more extensive tests, some commonality would surface. And despite what Bishop had told him, he was still betting on caisson disease as the main differential.

  “You never answered my question before,” he said. “There is a hyperbaric chamber here, right?”

  She nodded.

  “I’d like this man placed in the chamber. Let’s see if repressurization and pure oxygen ease the pains in his extremities.”