“I could love you, Eli…” came Britton’s last call to him, but he ignored her—and then she disappeared.
Her body had been found in the electronics hub of the ship; Garza guessed she must have been trying to bypass the codes and trigger the dead man’s switch from there.
I could love you, Eli. My God. Garza had had no idea. He hadn’t known just how much Glinn held back from him—just how much he’d been keeping bottled up all these years. No wonder the man had fallen apart on the bridge at the sight of Britton’s body.
As he watched, the ship continued its long roll. And there was Glinn, climbing on top of the rock itself, holding a wrench, attempting to tighten the chain bolts by hand—a completely insane undertaking. He straddled the massive rock, crisscrossed with ropes and chains, like Captain Ahab astride Moby Dick, wrench in hand, desperately flailing and struggling with a massive chain shackle.
There was a tearing sound as the meteorite shifted and the tarps rent, the meteorite now almost completely naked, its strange, crimson surface practically glowing. Hull rivets began popping. And still the ship yawed on its side, more and more steeply. There was an almost bestial sound of rending metal, a shower of sparks, a ratcheting of chains…and the web unraveled. The meteorite rolled out of its cradle, almost leisurely, Glinn atop it; the rock impacted the web of struts and beams, splintering wood and pushing steel aside like butter, descending slowly but inevitably in the inexorable pull of gravity. The ship was now canted almost on its side. The hull began to unzip and the sea came roaring in, white with fury. As Garza watched, the meteorite came in contact with the seawater.
At this point, Nishimura had slowed the video. It now progressed frame by single frame. As the water hit the surface of the meteorite, it seemed to froth or boil, and the meteorite’s skin appeared to split apart and contract, exposing a glassy interior. It reminded Garza of a chrysalis splitting to release a butterfly.
Now the video slowed even more, one frame every second. The boiling of the water around the meteorite intensified, and the red skin of the rock peeled away explosively as the translucent insides appeared to swell; the water rushing into the hold frothed around it; a rippling flash of white light erupted from the interior of the meteorite; Glinn disappeared—and then the video froze.
“That,” said Nishimura, “is the last frame before the feed went dark. I’ve enhanced it as much as possible.”
The image showed the interior of the meteorite, filled with light; and there, suspended in the middle, was the brown, ropy, engorged, melon-shaped thing resembling a brain that they had seen encased in the trunk of the Baobab.
After lingering on this final image, the monitor went dark and the lights came up. After a moment, Glinn rose and, at last, faced the others. Garza was bathed in sweat, profoundly shaken by what he had seen. Reliving the nightmare had been bad enough, but witnessing the unexpected profession of love on the part of Britton, and the callous rejection by Glinn…It was too much.
Glinn was standing before them, silently. A strange expression was on his face. For a moment, Garza worried he would collapse again. A single shudder passed through his frame. And then the moment, whatever it was, passed. His look became as cool, as detached, as unreadable, as always.
He cleared his throat. “Dr. Nishimura and Dr. Sax are analyzing that final image, but it appears that on contact with salt water, the object, which as we now know was not a meteorite, underwent an explosive sprouting or hatching event.” He glanced around. “We hope these last few seconds of footage will provide some insight into the creature’s life cycle and vulnerabilities. In particular, whether that object inside the creature, visible in the final frame, is in fact its brain.”
Glinn looked around. “Are there any questions?”
Total silence. People were too shaken up to ask questions now, although they would surely have some later. Having seen what happened, Garza marveled that Glinn had survived at all; the explosion, evidently tamped by water, had blown him free with just enough force to propel him beyond the sinking ship but not enough to kill him. Many others hadn’t been so lucky; and some, like Britton, had refused to abandon ship.
“If anyone has any insights or theories,” said Glinn, “please bring them privately to me. Recall that the details of what you have just seen should be kept confidential—for obvious reasons. And now, good morning.”
And with that he turned and left the forensic lab without another word.
29
ROSEMARIE WONG WAS used to working in labs full of male jerks, but Prothero really took the cake. He was a jackass—a brilliant jackass. And not just brilliant, but a truly creative scientist, something as rare in science as it was in music or literature. He was someone who habitually thought outside the box, whose mind made startling connections across entire categories, who cleaved mundane reality to find the gem within, and whose acidic skepticism ate away at even the most universally accepted truths. Many of his intellectual leaps were crazy, but once in a while they were not. When she had started working with him two years ago, he had just gone through a string of lab assistants, one after the other, nobody lasting more than a few months. Wong had decided that, come hell or high water, she was going to get along with this prize ass because she believed he was a great scientist who, someday, was bound to go somewhere unusual. Somewhere important. And when that day came, she would be there with him.
In this, she had been spectacularly correct. This secret mission to the South Atlantic was giving Wong a chance to do science beyond her wildest dreams. Just to be part of humanity’s first encounter with an alien life-form was mind blowing. If it meant she had to put up with world-class asininity, juvenile crudeness, and preteen temper tantrums on a daily basis, that was the price to pay. As a protective carapace, she had developed a sort of sarcastic, bantering relationship with him that seemed to earn at least a modicum of his respect—and kept his nasty temper at bay. She also had come to realize the vulgar nastiness was a form of respect: it was Prothero demonstrating to her that he wasn’t going to treat her nicely or gently, because he considered her his equal.
“Wong, where the fuck is my hat?”
Prothero came around the corner of her work bay, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a motherboard in the other.
“It’s on your head.”
Prothero clapped his hand to his head—his bare head—and then grimaced. “Ha, ha. Where is it?”
“Probably in the bathroom, where you always leave it.”
Prothero went out the door and came back a moment later, wearing his hipster hat. “Here’s what I’ve been thinking: we’re going to translate that whale signal.”
“Translate it? As in, decipher whale-speak?”
“Exactly.” He pulled up a chair backward and sat down. “And I know just how to do it. I’ve got the world’s biggest collection of blue whale vocalizations, here in this lab. We’re going to reverse-engineer it.”
“So you think the Baobab is trying to talk to us?”
“That thing’s been sitting there on the seafloor for, what, five years? Listening. And what does it hear? Well, two miles down there isn’t much sound. The only sounds that carry that deep are whale vocalizations. Whale-talk is damned loud. It carries a hundred miles. You following me?”
“Yes.”
“All right. So the Baobab is listening, listening, listening…and maybe it starts to figure out what the whales are saying. And now it’s trying to communicate with us in the only language it knows.”