Wong felt a strange sensation, like ice, creeping down her neck. This was, without any doubt, a stunning moment.
“Then, there’s this third one. It sounds like the warning sound whales make upon encountering a fishing net or a trawl line.” He paused. “‘Net.’ I’m not a hundred percent sure about that one. And it doesn’t seem to fit the other two, but…” Prothero grew animated. “You realize what we’ve done?” he crowed, as if the magnitude of it had just burst over him. “We’re the first human beings to actually communicate with an alien intelligence! Holy fuck! It’s telling us it came a long distance over an extended period of time. Just like the Star Wars opening crawl, A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
The cold feeling spread. Wong had no idea why she suddenly felt this way, but it seemed to her that buried in the message was something unutterably lost and lonely. Long ago, far away…That didn’t feel like a message: it was more like a cry for help. And then how did that other word fit in, net?
Her thoughts were interrupted by Prothero. “Let’s keep going. Let’s see what else we can ask it—and get answers to.”
But there was nothing. They broadcast sounds for another hour, but there was no reply. It was as if the entity—for whatever reason—had gone abruptly silent.
43
GIDEON WAS DAMNED glad he was in mission control this time, instead of down in the DSV. He stood at his usual console, watching the main screen along with everyone else in the room. McFarlane stood beside him, a silent, focused presence. McFarlane had rapidly integrated himself into the project, seemingly managing to be everywhere on the ship at the same time, intruding into every lab and machine shop and work space, making plenty of enemies in the process. Gideon had noticed that many on board ship not only disliked McFarlane but were, apparently, afraid of him. He was like a man who had gone through fire, been burned to the bone, and survived, leaving behind a scorched, skeletonized intensity; a being who followed none of the usual pleasantries and mannerisms that normally governed human interaction; a man who stated the truth as he saw it, in a way so stripped of social niceties that it was raw and offensive. Only Prothero seemed amused, even charmed, by his off-putting manner.
They watched as the remotely controlled Ringo hovered along the seafloor, a quarter mile from the Baobab, laying a line of charges and seismic sensors. The Baobab itself seemed to have gone somewhat quiescent as soon as the DSV arrived.
“The thing’s like a cat,” said McFarlane, who had taken on the task of overseeing the operation without being challenged. “Gone still. Waiting for the bird to hop a little closer.”
Again, Gideon was surprised at the insight, which was not so far away from the lines along which he’d been thinking. But the plan was for the DSV not to get any closer; it would remain—or so they hoped—beyond reach of the grotesque, sucking mouth. Fortunately, the charges didn’t need to be placed that close. The idea was to map the outer edges of the creature’s underground presence.
It was a long process. There were few people in mission control; the operation had been last-minute. Glinn had decreed that, going forward, information was to be more compartmentalized, in an effort to put a lid on the crazy speculation and wildfire rumors. The ship was like the worst kind of a small town. It amazed Gideon how otherwise normal, educated people could be transformed into poisonous, vicious gossips, repeating and exaggerating every little thing, getting into petty disputes and absurd controversies. It was a measure of the toxic levels of anxiety and stress currently on board ship.
“You say you learned this roughnecking?” Gideon asked McFarlane.
“Yes. And then I tried the technique meteorite hunting. I figured it would be ideal for finding a large, heavy object underground.”
“Did it work?”
“No. I tried it on the Boxhole Crater near Alice Springs in Australia. There was no main mass to find. The impactor must have vaporized on impact. Threw away forty grand. Left me bankrupt.”
“So how did you get involved in the Rolvaag project in the first place?”
“You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I was once the world’s most successful meteorite hunter. My former partner, Nestor Masangkay, found a gigantic meteorite in the Cape Horn Islands. He died before he could recover it. Palmer Lloyd got wind of it and hired me, along with Eli and his engineering company, to dig it up. I went down there on the Rolvaag with Eli’s big team to recover it. I’m sure you know the story. Through criminal hubris, the entire ship went to the bottom—planting that son of a bitch right where it wanted to be.”
“So why did Lloyd hire you to ride shotgun on this expedition? Since it’s not a meteorite, where do you come in?”
“You heard what I said, back in Glinn’s cabin. Lloyd observed my comportment during the last hours of the Rolvaag. He decided, with good reason, that I was better qualified to handle a challenging situation than the two G’s.”
“That would be Glinn and Garza.”
“Yes.” McFarlane turned his blue eyes on Gideon. “And now I’ve got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“How did Glinn heal up? The last I heard, he was a cripple, all hunched over in a wheelchair. Blind in one eye and barely able to move a finger.”
The unexpected question threw Gideon for a moment. “He’s had some…good medical treatment.”
“Good? More like a miracle. If he weren’t a hard-core atheist, I’d say he must have been praying awfully hard to Saint Jude.”
Gideon changed the subject. “I didn’t know Glinn was an atheist.”
“Are you surprised? He doesn’t believe in any power greater than himself. And we all know he’s God-like anyway—in his own mind, at least.”
The DSV Ringo had finished laying the charges and seismometers, and now it was starting to ascend. As soon as it had reached a thousand meters, the plan was to detonate the charges, then measure the results: Glinn hadn’t wanted to take chances that the creature would grow active again, or that the cables connecting the seismometers to the surface might become disconnected.
Now the chatter in mission control increased as the countdown toward the seismic test started. Detonation time approached, and the level of tension rose accordingly.
Gideon turned to his control screen. “We’re ten minutes from detonation.”
“The reaction of the creature should give us valuable information,” McFarlane said. “If we survive its reaction, I mean.”
That very thought had been going through Gideon’s head.
“Five minutes,” came the announcement.
“Understood,” said McFarlane.
Suddenly Gideon heard a commotion at the main entrance to mission control. A man was shouting hysterically. Gideon looked over and saw another one of Sax’s lab assistants, Craig Waingro, arguing loudly with security. He was gesturing wildly, screaming with almost inhuman intensity.
“Stop the explosions!” he shouted. “Stop them—now!” His voice sounded hoarse and muffled, as if he had swallowed sand.
The two security officers tried to restrain him, but Waingro started swinging at them. They both drew their guns. One tried to tackle the man; there was a brief struggle, and then suddenly Waingro wrenched free, the guard’s gun in his own hand. He waved it about and it suddenly went off, the report deafening in the room. There were screams and shouts as people took cover.