Genesis Plague (4 page)

T
he
Wavecutter
wasn’t too bad off, considering the
research yacht just had a large piece of its backside ripped out. It looked as
if an oversized shark popped up and took a bite out of its hindquarters. A jagged,
half-moon sized chunk was missing right between the dual outboards on the back,
where the winch had been bolted to the deck.

Ocean water sloshed
over the ragged hole as two of the divers worked frantically to patch a leak in
the hull below the waterline. The rest of us, having earlier flopped onto the
deck like so much fish, now sat rejuvenating with a bottle of champagne each,
scattered about a small lounge area near the prow.

Flint soaked in a hot
tub, his eyes closed, bottle of champagne half-clenched in his hand, muttering
a steady, contented sigh. At his request, we phoned the mainland as soon as we
were aboard, reporting the scale of the tremors and warning about potential
tsunami activity. He seemed to relax a bit more with that out of the way.

 Flint’s long gray hair
was fanned out on the edge of the hot tub behind his head. His injured hand was
resting out of the water, wrapped in thick gauze. As he lay dazed on the ocean
floor, that hand had been too close to the fissure and suffered second-degree
burns. I told him not to go in the hot tub because of it, but he stubbornly
reminded me how burn victims were placed in rooms at excessive temperatures to
promote healthy blood circulation so the damaged tissue could heal. And he
would have gone in anyway, even without a good reason, so my saying anything
wouldn’t have made a difference.

Cassidy sat in a
tanning chair next to mine, drinking out of her champagne bottle and slowly
scooting toward me. She wore too-big sunglasses that were all the rage and
little specks of diamond earrings I had given her for our first dating anniversary.
I told her I didn’t know if I would ever be able to afford bigger rocks, and
she assured me that what mattered was the size of the gesture, not the size of
the diamond. It sounded like she had been practicing that line for a while.

Her shoulder-length
brown hair was in a tight bun, and she was wearing the bright pink bikini she
knew drove me crazy. I had on my flower-print Hawaiian board shorts, but they
never got as much attention Cassidy’s bikini.

She finally made it
into my chair and I moved over willingly, then put my arm around her and
clanked my bottle against hers.

Cass reached up and slicked
back my dark hair. Then I felt a pinprick of pain and she showed me a single
strand of gray she had just plucked. “Got this guy out of there before he could
infect the others.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said,
rubbing my scalp.

She took a swig of her
champagne. “This tastes expensive.”

“It is,” Pierre said as
he limped over. He had his own bottle and studied the label. Then he drained
the last few drops and tossed it to the deck. “Twelve hundred a bottle. Worth
it if you’re celebrating a treasure worth millions.”

“But the treasure is
lost,” I said.

“For today, yes.”

“So what are we
celebrating now?”

“Life!” he exclaimed
passionately. He groaned with pain as he sat on the chair Cassidy just vacated.
He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. His left foot and thigh were heavily
bandaged. Blood was already seeping through the gauze around his upper leg, but
Pierre didn’t seem to pay it any attention.

I took another swig of
my champagne. “Life might not seem so great a prize to someone who has been
looking for that treasure as long as you have, Pierre.”

“We tried to warn you,”
said Cass.

“It would have been
lost anyway,” said Pierre with a shrug. “Even if we weren’t there, it would
have fallen into the pit. But to have been so close…this is a victory by
itself! And
of course
I ignored you. I am stupid this way. But this is
also why I am very, very rich. Because of the risks I take.”

I considered it a
moment. “Perhaps I should try it sometime.”

He grinned. “I think you
would find it liberating, Dr. Nassai. Besides, I know where the treasure is
when I want to try again. That pit is over five hundred meters deep,
mon ami
.
I need different equipment, and a bigger ship. But now I have a story, perhaps
the greatest story of my life. And I have you to thank for it.”

“All I did was shoot
you in the leg.”

He thought about it for
a moment. “It could have been my face.”

There was a sharp
ringing from somewhere below deck. A moment later, a steward hurried out to the
lounge area holding a satellite phone in his hands. He babbled quickly in
French to Pierre, then handed him the phone and scampered away without looking
at the rest of us.

Pierre sighed. “My
sister’s boy. Too shy for his own good, but what can I do?” He spoke into the
phone, pulled it away from his ear to look at it with confusion, then handed it
to me. “It’s for you.”

“Who could possibly
know we’re out here?” asked Cassidy.

“Just the university,”
I said as I stood up. “I had to leave them a note in case something, you know,
went wrong.”

“You mean
more
wrong?” said Flint, smiling drunkenly.

I held the phone to my
ear. “This is Paul.”

“Paul, it’s Roger.”

I already knew some of
what he was going to say before he said it. When the regional director of one
the most prestigious university labs in the nation hunts down your research
team when you’re supposed to be on vacation, you can bet he isn’t asking for
advice on what kind of diamond ring to buy for his sweetheart.

“Look,” Roger said,
skipping right over the pleasantries, “I know I approved your days off, but I
need the three of you back in the States, pronto. The Pacific plate is shifting
and it’s playing all kinds of hell in Hawaii.”

I turned to Cassidy and
mouthed
It’s Roger
. She rolled her eyes and took a deep pull of her
champagne. Like me, she knew what a call like this meant.

“If that’s Roger, I’m
not here,” Flint said loudly, lowering himself a few more inches into the hot
tub.

I said, “I
know
the plate is shifting. Flint was damn near swallowed up as an appetizer.” Then
I sighed and switched over to my sarcastic
how-can-I-please-the-boss
voice. “What’s the issue, Dr. Levino?”

“I had to send a group
out to Mauna Loa to check some readings. Obviously you were busy or it would
have been you.”

“That sounds more like
a job for the geology department, and I don’t think you’re going to be able to
talk Flint into going.”

“I don’t want just him.
I am fully aware that you, Flint, and Ms. Baker are attached at the hip these
days. I can’t get one of you without getting all three. It’s like a damned box
set.”

I frowned. “Mauna Loa’s
been quiet for decades. Are you telling me she’s waking up?”

“Let’s not start a
panic, for God’s sake. I would just feel better if the three of you were down
there. Your team, Paul. We’re getting some big-name interest in the area after
this shake-up and I want my best people with me if the
…
well, if something happens. This recent activity is
the perfect opportunity to showcase what this lab can do. Consider it a
personal favor.”

And there was the big
red flag, waving right in front of my face. The esteemed Roger Levino didn’t
ask favors of a lowly Ph.D. like myself; he
told
you what he expected.
He also didn’t leave the lab unless it was to shake hands with a potential
philanthropist. In Levino’s lingo, “big-name interest” meant one thing: that
all-important grant money. Someone with fat pockets must have taken an interest
in the lab’s affairs in Hawaii.

“Listen,” said Levino,
sensing my hesitation. His voice quieted as he continued. “I received a call
from a very good friend of mine not twenty minutes ago. Something’s opened up
next to the volcano, Paul. Something that could get us five years of guaranteed
funding if we stake the first claim. Something big.”

My eyes narrowed. “Like
what?”

“Where’s your sense of
mystery, goddammit?!” he shouted. He was really riled up now, and I could just
imagine him standing red-faced, phone in hand, stamping his little feet. “I
can’t say everything over the phone! Are you going to Hawaii or not?”

I looked around at the
others, who were now watching me with keen interest. Even Pierre was listening
closely.

“Who’s down there?” I
asked.

“Riley and his bunch.”

“He’s not right for
that kind of fieldwork,” I said, scolding. “The ink is still drying on his
degree.”

“Thanks for stating the
obvious, Paul. You want to relieve him, or you want to keep working on your
tan?”

Pierre suddenly nodded,
as if he had heard the whole conversation. “I have a plane in Manado. You will
please take it to your next adventure.”

I looked at Cassidy,
halfway between my decision. She winked at me and finished her bottle of
champagne. I turned to Flint, who floated on his belly in the hot tub with his
arms crossed under his chin, staring at me.

“I’m in,” he said. “I
could use a vacation from this vacation.”

“You sure about this?”
I asked Pierre.

“Consider it a thank
you for saving my life.”

With one more look at
Cass, I shrugged. “Alright, Dr. Levino,” I said into the phone. “We’ll see you
in Hawaii.”

L
et me tell you a little something about private jets: take one
whenever you can.

Pierre’s Gulfstream 800
had the space for fifty people but only sat seven, so you could interpolate the
capacious amount of leg room from there. When we boarded in Manado, there was
no customs check, no long line to wait in to get your crotch sniffed and your
shoes scanned. There was just a gleaming metal albatross on the tarmac,
welcoming us for our 5500 mile journey across the open ocean. With slightly
less than an eight hour flight, I was happy to recline in a leather seat across
from Cassidy, drifting in and out of peaceful sleep, no children screaming, no
neighbors to roll over me on their eighth trip to the bathroom.

“I could get used to
this,” Flint said behind me. I craned my neck to look back. He was sprawled out
in his seat, fully reclined to the point where it was almost a bed, his arms
and legs splayed out in every direction. A bag of frozen peas rested over his
eyes, and another was draped over his bandaged hand.

“Where did you get
those?” I asked.

He jerked his good
thumb toward the back of the plane. “Full kitchen.”

An overhead speaker
clicked on and Pierre’s voice drifted into the cabin. “I trust everyone is
comfortable? Don’t hesitate to ask for anything.”

Cassidy looked at the
speaker, then toward the cockpit. The door was open and Pierre sat in the
pilot’s seat, making adjustments on his control panel.

“I didn’t know he was
also a pilot,” I said.

“Pierre has a lot of
hobbies.”

“He can afford to,”
said Flint. “Imagine what I could do if I didn’t have to work.”

“What about the
Antigua
?”
I asked. “Is Pierre just giving up on it?”

“He likes to have
multiple projects going on at once, so he can bounce between them,” said Cass. “He’s
easily distracted.”

“You seem to remember a
lot about him,” I said.

Cassidy stood and
kissed me on the forehead. “I’m going to catch up.”

She walked to the front
of the plane and plopped into the copilot’s seat. Pierre handed her a headset
and soon the two were chatting and laughing like college buddies.

“There are more peas in
the freezer if you want ‘em,” said Flint.

“I don’t want any
peas.”

“They really help cool
you down.”

“
No peas
,
Flint.”

He shrugged. I stood
up, then took Cass’s empty seat, facing the back of the plane.

Far below, the Pacific
Ocean sparkled like a field of blue diamonds. Wispy clouds zoomed past, pulling
apart in the wind to reveal only more crystal blue beneath us.

Somewhere down there was
the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point on the planet. At one time it was
believed that nothing could live so far down from the surface, so far from the
life-giving sun and the multitudes of organisms that rely on its warmth. It was
quite a surprise to discover that there was indeed life, even in the deepest
part of the ocean.

Whole microsystems
sprouted up around deep sea vents, sustained by the heat they gave off, some of
it in excess of seven-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. In the deepest reaches of the
ocean, such hydrothermal vents were often populated by extremophiles – organisms
that thrived in environments that were typically fatal to all other life on Earth.
Nearer to the surface, but still in complete darkness and at such enormous
pressure that exploration had been sporadic at best, bacteria, tubeworms, and
even crabs and shrimp lived near the bubbling hydrothermal vents, converting
sulfur into energy for survival.

Some researchers
believed that life on Earth may have originated in these deep sea vents before
spreading out into the vast ocean.

I thought about the
vent we saw near the wreckage of the
Antigua
, and of Cassidy pulling me
back from the edge of the abyss that opened up to swallow the skeleton of the
ship. An uncomfortable thought occurred to me.

I balled up a napkin
and threw it at the only volcanologist I knew who still wore his hair as if he
were a roadie for a 1970’s rock band.

“Hey, Flint.”

The napkin hit the bag
of peas over his eyes and bounced off. He grunted in surprise, then settled
down.

“Go for Flint.”

“You don’t think what
happened to us could be a sign of something bigger? Like whatever Levino’s
talking about at Mauna Loa?”

“Hawaii is smack on the
middle of the Pacific Plate, amigo. We were on the edge, where the action is.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just that there is a
lot more to contend with at the edge, like plates moving against each other. It
can be a lot more unstable, kind of like being on the frontier of the Wild
West.” He grinned and made a shooting gesture with his hand.

“But volcanoes in
Hawaii still erupt.”

“Hell yeah they do.
Kilauea is going right now. Has been for years. People don’t realize that
eruptions can last for decades. Not all of the peaks blow their tops in grand
fashion. A lot of them are low-grade oozers. That’s what I call ‘em.”

“So you don’t think the
two are connected, what happened to us near Manado and what’s going on at Mauna
Loa?”

“Anything is possible.
But statistically, it’s just a coincidence. What happened back there was a
freak occurrence. I’m sure we’ll be perfectly fine.”