Suzanne leaned next to Perry’s ear and whispered: “Ask them again where Interterra is.”
Perry complied.
“Interterra is beneath the oceans,” Arak said in response. “It resides in a gap between what you people call the earth’s crust and the earth’s mantle. It’s an area your seismic scientists call the Mohorovicic discontinuity.”
“This is an underground world?” Suzanne blurted. She looked up at what appeared to be a patch of sky filled with sunlight. She was stupefied.
“Undersea is more correct,” Sufa interjected. “But please… we know you will have many questions. They will all be answered in due time. For now we graciously beg for your forbearance.”
“What’s forbearance?” Richard asked.
“It means patience,” Sufa said. She smiled graciously.
“But we do need to know how we should address each of you,” Arak said.
“I’m Perry, president of Benthic Marine,” Perry said while patting his chest. He then identified the others by their full names.
Arak stepped forward and presented himself directly to Suzanne. He was a good head taller than she. He held his right arm outstretched with his palm facing her. He gestured toward it with his other hand. “Perhaps you will do me the honor of an Interterran greeting,” he said. “Press your palm against mine.”
Suzanne hesitated and furtively glanced at Perry and Donald before complying. Her hand was a good deal smaller than Arak’s.
“Welcome, Dr. Newell,” Arak said once their hands had met. “We are particularly pleased that you have come to visit us.” He bowed and took his hand away.
“Well, thank you,” Suzanne said. She was confused yet flattered that she’d been singled out for an individual welcome.
Arak backed away. “Now, my honored guests,” he said. “You will be taken to your quarters, which I’m sure you will find agreeable.”
“Wait a sec, Arak!” Richard called. He raised himself up on his tiptoes. “There’s a gorgeous brunette somewhere around here who’s dying to meet me.”
“And there’s a raven-haired beauty that I want to meet,” Michael said.
The two divers had been scanning the crowd for the women since they’d come up the stairs. To their chagrin they’d not been able to spot either one.
“There will be plenty of time for socializing,” Arak said, “but for now it is important to get you to your rooms since you’ve yet to eat and properly wash. There will be a gala celebration for your arrival later, which we hope you will all attend. So, please follow me.”
“This will only take a couple of minutes,” Richard said. He started forward, intending to walk around Arak and Sufa and mingle in the crowd. But Donald grabbed him as hard as he had when they were downstairs.
“Knock it off, sailor!” Donald snarled under his breath. “We stay together! Remember!”
Richard glared back for a moment, fighting the urge to tell Donald to drop dead. He was so close to connecting with that beautiful woman, it was hard to deny himself. Self-restraint had never been his strong point. But once the intensity of Donald’s gaze gave him pause, he relented.
“I guess some chow’s not a bad idea,” he said to save face.
“You’d better stay in line, bro,” Donald snapped. “Otherwise you and I are going to be banging heads.”
“Just for the record,” Richard said. “I ain’t afraid of you.”
CHAPTER NINE
Suzanne put one foot ahead of the other as she followed Arak and Sufa but she felt disconnected, as if her feet were not solidly on the ground. It wasn’t dizziness that she was feeling, but it was close. She’d heard the psychiatric term depersonalization and wondered if she was suffering some variation of it. Everything she was experiencing felt so surreal. It was as if she were in a dream, although her senses seemed very tangibly engaged. She could see, smell, and hear just like normal. But nothing else was making sense. How could they be under the ocean!
As a geophysical oceanographer Suzanne was well aware that the Mohorovicic discontinuity was the name given to a specific layer within the earth that marked an abrupt change in the velocity of sound or seismic waves. It was located approximately two and a half to seven miles beneath the ocean floor and about twenty-four miles beneath the continents. She also knew that its eponymous name came from the Serbian seismologist who’d discovered it. But despite having a name, no one had any idea what the layer represented. As far as she knew, neither she nor any other geologist or seismologist had ever considered the possibility it was an enormous, air-filled cavern. The idea was too preposterous to have been seriously entertained.
“Please give our secondary humans the courtesy they deserve,” Arak called out to his fellow Interterrans as he moved forward into their midst. “Back up and give us room!” He motioned for the people to give way, and they silently complied.
“Please!” Arak said gently to Suzanne and the others as he gestured toward an open lane leading out from under the roof of the loggia. He moved ahead and waved for them to follow. “As soon as we depart the foreign arrival hall, it will only be a short journey to your accommodations.”
As if watching herself in a movie Suzanne walked between the crowds of Interterreans. She sensed that Perry was directly behind her and imagined that Donald and the divers were close as well. The situation was no longer scary. The beautiful people were full of smiles and gave furtive, almost shy gestures of greeting. Suzanne found herself unable to keep from smiling in response.
Can this truly be happening? she kept asking herself as she followed Arak. Is this a dream? Everything was certainly surreal enough, yet there was no doubt she could feel the cool marble on her bare feet and the caress of a gentle breeze on her cheeks. Never had she felt such subtle sensory details in a dream no matter how realistic it had been.
Sufa turned to Suzanne. “You’ll notice that you people are true celebrities. Second-generation humans are very, very popular. You are all so refreshingly stimulating. I better warn you that you will be in great demand.”
“What do you mean, ‘second-generation humans’?” Suzanne questioned.
“Now, Sufa,” Arak chided gently. “Remember what we decided! These guests are going to be introduced more slowly to our world than we’ve done with others in the past.”
“I remember,” Sufa replied. Then to Suzanne she added: “We’ll be discussing everything in due time, and all your questions will be answered. I promise you.”
The group soon emerged onto a spacious verandah that opened up into a stupendously colossal underground cavern so immense, it gave the impression of being outdoors. The illumination was like daylight although there was no sun. The domed ceiling was a pale blue like the color of the sky on a hazy summer day. A few thin clouds floated lazily with the breeze.
The verandah was at the side of a building located on the outer edge of a city. Stretching out from the balustrade was a bucolic vista of rolling hills, lush vegetation, and lakes with a few towns in the near distance. The buildings were constructed of black basalt, highly polished and fashioned into a mixture of curves, domes, towers, and classically columned porticos. In the far distance a series of conical mountains rose up from wide bases to fan out against the dome above to form gargantuan supporting columns.
“If you’ll all wait for just a moment,” Arak said. He then spoke softly into a tiny microphone on an instrument attached to his wrist.
The five “second-generation humans” were spellbound by the unexpected beauty and breathtaking dimensions of the subterranean paradise. It was beyond anything that their imaginations could have possibly conjured. Even the divers were speechless.