The Sound of Seas (12 page)

“Remarkably, I'm not.”

“I mention that in light of what you said, about these ancients having had libraries, technology,” Dr. Cummins said. “Is it possible that rather than being a spirit, the fire activated some kind of recording? Because it's not as strange as it might sound. The Greeks had all the materials they required to make voice recordings: clay, a stylus, funnels—only they never thought to do it.”

“That's a smart supposition and there
are
recordings,” Mikel admitted. “But this was a spirit. She pursued me underground. She tried to kill me.”

Dr. Cummins was silent again. “Galderkhaan,” she said. “Is that their word or yours?”

“Theirs,” he replied. “From the words I saw and heard, I believe that
Galder
means an amount of some kind and that
khaan
means ‘a city.' That was actually something my colleagues and I pieced together years ago.”

“A collective of cities?”

“That seems to be the idea. It's fairly common in our world, isn't it? ‘United' this or ‘Confederation' of that. Unfortunately, there was a signing aspect to the spoken language to give it nuance, so the words alone don't tell the entire story.”

“Fascinating,” she said. “Like the click consonants in many African tongues.”

“Exactly. But there is still a big piece of the puzzle I am missing,” Mikel said.

“And that is?” she asked.

He was silent again.

“Are you thinking, Dr. Jasso, or am I going to have to pull each answer from you?” Dr. Cummins asked.

“Sorry,” he said sincerely. “I was thinking. I'm trying to clarify ideas in my mind, which isn't easy. I'm not accustomed to discussing this away from the Group in New York, where everyone throws ideas into the ring. My confusion has to do with the Galderkhaani beliefs about the afterlife.”

“Religion.”

“Broadly,” he agreed, “though I'm not sure they made a distinction between religion and everyday life. What I mean is, it wasn't so compartmentalized. Even the scientific class entertained a very strong belief in what we'd call the mystical.”

“Like alchemists or druids,” she said.

“I suppose that would be a good comparison,” Mikel concurred. “Yes, quite apt.”

“I grew up in Scotland, and it is steeped in those old beliefs, as you are probably aware,” Dr. Cummins said. “As a child I first went to the mountains known as the Old Woman of the Moors, as their shape
reminds some of a sleeping goddess. Every eighteen years, the full moon moves in such a way that a person standing with arms outstretched like Mr. Da Vinci's drawing would be perfectly framed by the moon. To those watching from one of the stone avenues constructed for that purpose, time and space vanishes and human and celestial body are one.”

“An illusion of geometry,” Mikel suggested.

“Now who is the doubter?” Dr. Cummins asked. “What you just said is quite true, but there's more. From that same vantage point, the course of the moon is such that it strokes the sides of the goddess Earth, rousing great energies. Everyone there feels it.” She chuckled. “One reason I am out here with you, Dr. Jasso? Not because
you
are especially persuasive. The earth is, however. I went back home a year ago. Even with all my mental safeguards working on behalf of scientific explanations, I couldn't quantify the feeling I got inside. It was a kind of tickling in my belly that rose and fell from my skull to my toes. It made me smile long after the moon was gone. And I'll tell you this: I do not approach any peaks here, ice or stone, without feeling some of that sensation return. The geology, the cosmos, they
waken
something. Even in scientists.” She gave him a quick look. “You too? Or are you more hard-nosed than that?”

“I was,” he admitted as they thumped across a patch of snow that was rippled like speed bumps. “My grandmother's belief in spirits was absolute, but she was very old world.”

“You say that as if ‘new' is automatically better than ‘old.' ”

“The eyes are fresher, less steeped in accepted tradition than in proof.” He looked in the direction of the pit. “I want, I
need
proof of what I experienced out there. I didn't become a scientist to disprove old ideas. Nothing would please me more than to know that what my grandmother felt was right.”

“I understand that and I respect it,” Dr. Cummins said. “Like you, I was set on this path by someone else.”

“Who?”

“My uncle Timothy, who had a ranch in Kirkcudbright, Scotland.
The first time I saw a horse shyte, unicorns lost their magic for me. I need things that keep more than my curiosity alive. I am constantly searching for places that rekindle my sense of wonder.”

Mikel replied thoughtfully, “This enterprise with Galderkhaan—it started that way. But the more relics my colleagues and I found, the more we learned of their language, it seemed as if they were shaping up to be a sad microcosm of all humanity: roughly one hundred thousand people who could not get along without dividing into factions. And I have since learned, from my excursion underground, that it wasn't just some
thing
that caused the Source to turn on its creators. There was a Dr. Frankenstein, someone who unleashed it.”

“Mass homicide?”

“Unintentional, perhaps, but yes . . . the destruction of this entire civilization was spurred by sociopolitical, possibly romantic, fractures that would be all too familiar to any modern human.”

Dr. Cummins considered this new information. “Entire,” she said.

“I'm sorry?”

“You said it destroyed the entire civilization,” Dr. Cummins said. “Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ancient peoples were remarkably mobile across vast stretches of ocean,” she said. “The Vikings, Kon-Tiki, even Columbus and Magellan . . .”

“That's true,” Mikel said.

“Surely you and your colleagues have considered this.”

“We have,” he admitted.

Dr. Cummins regarded him. “Radio silence again,” she said. “So you do have evidence of some diaspora.”

“We have words and claims, not evidence,” he told her. Once again, he didn't want to say any more. It was one thing to ruminate about a dead culture. It was another to confide in her that hostile agents were trying to finish a struggle they started millennia ago. That might be far, far more than she had bargained for.

The two fell silent as the truck purred across the ice. Mikel thought
back to the conversation he had just had with Casey Skett, about the Group having an origin other than the one Flora had told him. This shift from seeking knowledge to seeking power was disturbing. It was fascinating, even compelling, certainly
logical
to think the Group had been founded by refugee Galderkhaani. It was frightening, however, to imagine these people, and Skett's people, still seeking to control the tiles. The stones were an incredible source of information. Yet they were also a source of great destructive power. Bringing just one back to New York had caused Arni's brain to liquefy. It had caused Mikel to hallucinate severely or, briefly, to time travel—he still didn't know which. In the lava tube to which they were returning, a wall of tiles enabled him to communicate with Galderkhaani
dead
—and for them to enter his mind from miles away. It had driven animals mad along lines of force that extended halfway around the globe.

Though he was headed back to the site as Casey Skett had commanded, Mikel wondered what kind of experiment the man had in mind . . . and whether he could actually go through with it. He did not
know
enough to bounce that off Dr. Cummins.

They crossed the partially drifted-over tracks of their previous transit, when they had been relocating the Halley VI modules from the compromised ice shelf. The rest of the ride continued to pass in silent reflection. For his part, Mikel was imagining a thriving civilization on the wastes across which they traveled. On ice? On clear plains? He didn't know. He pictured airships in the sky, vessels on the sea, animals long-since extinct like the one he'd seen below, the “guardian” of the chamber. It was not just an exponential Pompeii. In AD 79 when Vesuvius buried that port city, the vast bulk of the Roman Empire and its citizens, its diverse culture, survived. Galderkhaan and its people were obliterated. He did not know the degree to which any refugees may have maintained a pure form of the language, the arts, the faith, the technology.

But there is that magnificent library
, he thought covetously. And there were ascended and transcended souls. To be able to talk to them, de
brief them—it would be like being able to talk to the monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten, who some archaeologists believe was one and the same with Moses, or Alexander the Great, or even just a vegetable vendor from Nero's Rome.

Mikel shivered, and not from the cold. Perhaps, he thought, right now, he was surrounded by ascended souls he could not see or hear. Regardless, the sadness of their loss was suddenly palpable, their trauma felt immediate as if it had just occurred. It was as real and as current as any he had ever known.

It may be that Pao and Rensat are watching
, he thought.
Perhaps spirits have always been watching.

Angels and devils
. Many survivors of the cataclysm may have lost their roots over generations. The idea of Transcendence may have morphed, via Galderkhaani expatriates, into Valhalla, the Elysian Fields, heaven, and other versions of an afterlife. It could be that Candescents became the earliest gods.

“By coming here, we may be returning to God,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“I was just thinking,” Mikel said. “What if it's the tinsel that's fake, but the tree is real. What if all the trappings of religion were created to keep wandering minds engaged.”

“I'm not following,” Dr. Cummins said.

“I'm not sure I am either,” Mikel admitted, smiling and once again falling silent.

Dr. Cummins slowed the truck and raised her goggles slightly. The insides of the lenses were misty and she wiped them with the side of her thumb. It could just be humidity. Or maybe she had felt something emotional here and shed a few tears. She said nothing as she replaced the dark glasses and urged the Toyota across the last, smooth leg of their journey.

As they neared the mouth of the round pit, Mikel saw that it was nearly perfectly round, about one hundred feet in diameter, with a shadow just below the lip that was as flat black as the snow was bril
liant white. The edges had been melted unevenly by the flame then refrozen, creating the illusion of a small, circular waterfall stuck in time. The hairline fractures had also been filled in with melted ice and covered with windblown flecks. Dr. Cummins pressed on cautiously, both of them listening for any sound that could suggest the ice had weakened. The external thermometer mounted to the hood showed no discernable rise in temperature as they approached. There were no sudden dips in the ice field.

“I don't see any steam out there,” Dr. Cummins said. “How deep were your tunnels?”

“The crevasse I descended was maybe a hundred feet,” Mikel said. “I can't be sure. I fell some of the way.”

“It was artificial?” she asked.

“A lava tube, as I assume this one is, since the fire was able to shoot through rock,” Mikel said.

“We should go the rest of the way on foot,” the glaciologist suggested. “Reconnoiter only. We can break out the gear when we know what we're looking at.”

Mikel agreed, though at some point very soon he was going to have to tell her his assignment and contact Casey Skett and find out exactly why the man wanted him out here.

Dr. Cummins reported back to the communications center at Halley VI and after suiting up for the cold they hopped from the cab to the surface. The desolation was not as profound as it had been when Mikel first arrived in Antarctica. Dr. Cummins obviously felt it too: when she climbed from the cab she was not just looking at the pit, she was turning around.

Mikel walked over. “Anything wrong?” he asked over his muffler.

“I don't know,” she admitted.

“But you feel something different from before.”

The woman nodded.

Mikel didn't have to ask what that was. The Old Woman of the Moors was here—at least, her presence and mystery were.

Mikel moved first and Dr. Cummins followed. The crunch of the ice under their boots was muted by the drifted snow. Their toes kicked up little puffs that swirled in unseen eddies of air. The winds were calmer out here and everything else was quiet, save for something they noticed as they neared the pit: occasional, echoing raps.

“What's that?” Mikel asked, hesitating as he tried to make out the sound.

“Icicles falling,” Dr. Cummins said. “It probably looks like a long white beard down there with the fast-frozen drips and runoff.”

“The Old Woman has a companion,” Mikel quipped.

Dr. Cummins flashed him a thumbs-up that relaxed them both. Mikel hadn't realized how on edge he was until then.

Walking almost shoulder to shoulder so that one could help the other in case of uncertain footing, they approached the pit with the same gingerly steps they would take approaching a fissure or crevasse. Along the opposite rim of the pit, Mikel saw only the fast-frozen ice, not ground. There wasn't a single visible crack in the deep cover here; it was like vanilla frosting laid on with a thick spatula.

“I've seen geothermal heat generate melting like this on the Amundsen Sea, but not here,” Dr. Cummins said, leaning toward him as they trudged across the ice.

“That's quite a distance away.”

“About two thousand kilometers,” she said. “To be honest, we don't know the extent to which subaerial volcanism may be responsible for any of that. Even so, to have reached
this
far? That wasn't even part of the most ambitious thinking. Dr. Jasso, is it possible that your ancient civilization covered the entire continent to the western region? It was pretty icy there during the period you indicated.”