“Your request was most unusual,” O’Shaughnessy told Ariana as he led them into the exact center where a control panel was located. “We’ve always projected something from the sky. No one has ever thought of projecting from inside the Earth to the surface.”
“Were you able to do it? And use the data I sent you?” Ariana was too excited to sit down. Since leaving Berlin, she had pored through the data forwarded by Nagoya and set it onward to O’Shaughnessy to be programmed.
“Oh, yes,” O’Shaughnessy said. “I had to contract quite a few experts over the last several hours, particularly those who know about plate tectonics. It’s really most fascinating — and frightening, given the data on the Shadow’s manic probing that you forwarded to me. I took into account what happened off the coast of Chile and the eruption of Anak Krakatoa.” He reached down and typed on the keyboard. The enclosure went dark for a second, then lit up with a projection of the Pacific Rim.
“We’re looking from the center of the Earth outward, to the surface of the planet,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Here are the landmasses.” The outline of the continents bordering the Pacific appeared in green. “Here’s the Ring of Fire.” That appeared in purple, roughly following the landmass edges.
“The Antarctica plate is more interesting,” O’Shaughnessy said, pointing to one edge of the projection. “It is now relatively stable but is connected with numerous plates to the north all around. Watch.”
He used the computer mouse to rotate the entire image above their heads, and the world turned. Ariana could see what he meant, as the southernmost plate touched numerous others.
“Einstein had a theory called the crustal displacement, where he thought there was a good possibility that Antarctica was actually Atlantis,” O’Shaughnessy said.
Ariana had heard this before, but she kept quiet and listened, knowing there was a good chance she would hear something new.
“The entire plate that now makes up Antarctica might have been located — according to Einstein — here in the middle of the North Atlantic. A traumatic event, perhaps the Shadow manipulating the plates themselves, might have broken it free from this tenuous connection to the planet below, and it literally drifted over the course of thousands of years to its current location.
“It’s interesting to note that it is only very recently,” O’Shaughnessy continued, “that we have an idea of the actual outline of the continent that is hidden below the ice. It is estimated that if the ice was removed from Antarctica, the removal of all that weight would allow the land below to rise over two miles. The rift around Antarctica extends for over nineteen hundred miles, comparable to the Great Rift Valley in Africa.”
O’Shaughnessy moved the mouse again, and they went back to the view of the half of the planet centered on the Pacific. “In red is the current status of the muonic probing as you forwarded it to me.”
The red covered the entire Ring of Fire with larger, more concentrated splotches near Mounts Wrangell and Erebus.
“When I do the stars,” O’Shaughnessy continues, “there’s a technique I used called progression. What I can do is show how the sky looked in the past, rotating the star fields, or even how it will look in the future. In this case, I’ve progressed the muonic probing into the future, adding power to it.”
The read began to change to crimson as O’Shaughnessy had the computer work forward. Ariana could see it now, what had only been numbers on paper or flat, two-dimensional pictures. Erebus was the key, she realized not Wrangell. It would be the start point when the Shadow began whatever it had planned for the Ring of Fire. It could also be the junction point for the Shadow to extend the destruction to other plates in other parts of the world.
“Can you project what would happen if activity at Erebus is stopped?” she asked.
O’Shaughnessy nodded and sat at the keyboard, typing furiously for almost a minute. “All right. I’m going back to present levels. And projecting…” he hit the Enter key.
It fell apart. Ariana could see it. Wrangell still was affected, but the red lines all along the Ring of Fire gradually faded. She jumped to her feet.
“What are you doing?” Miles asked.
“Thank you, Professor,” she said as she headed for the door, pulling her SATPhone out of her pocket.
“Where are we going?” Miles persisted as they left the planetarium.
“Antarctica. McMurdo Station.” From a previous trip, she knew the research base stood in the shadow of Erebus.
“The Learjet can’t land there,” Miles said. “The landing strip is ice and snow.”
“I’ll get us a plane.” She dialed Foreman’s number.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Falco wiped sweat from his brow as Cassius signaled a halt. They were on top of a ridgeline on the west side of the Dnieper River, the XXV Legion stretched out behind them, except for a screen of scouts a half mile ahead.
They were beyond the empire’s boundaries, well into the territory of the barbarians, but that wasn’t the reason for the halt. They’d been outside the empire for four days now on a forced march north along the river. The XXV had done well, keeping to the normal legion pace of twenty-five miles a day.
Directly ahead, beyond several miles of swampy ground, was a dark stationary wall. It was very high, taller than any wall Falco had ever seen, over half a mile and about four miles wide. Whatever it was constructed of, he had never seen. The black was featureless and seemed to absorb the sunlight completely.
There was no need to ask Kaia if that was what they sought. The priestess had taken several steps forward and was staring as intently as any of them at the blackness. Falco had sensed the darkness for two days as they marched, the sense of evil growing closer. He knew Kaia had sensed it also.
“Senior Centurion Falco,” Cassius called.
“Yes, sir?”
“Make castra here. And I don’t want any slack in the perimeter.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cassius looked at sky. Clear, no clouds. “No tents.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the men swung into the practiced movements of preparing to stop for the night, fortifying their position, making it into the traditional castra, Falco kept one eye on the blackness, the other on the work. Every legion castra was to be built the exact same way. A square wall and moat surrounded the camp. Two roads bisected the camp, one called the via principia and the other the via praetorian. The names, like the camp, were always the same. The legionnaire in a camp anyplace in the world could find his way in the pitch dark.
The sun was just above the western horizon when Falco reported all was ready for inspection. Cassius walked the entire perimeter, stopping here and there to chat with the men. Not quite X Legion standard, but the troops were getting better.
“Very good, Falco,” Cassius said as they arrived back at the starting point, facing the black wall, now invisible in the dusk. Kaia was where they had left her, standing still as a rock.
“What now?’ Cassius asked her.
“I’m not sure,” Kaia said. “We have the staff and the skull, but it is not enough.”
“What more do you need?” Falco asked.
“I don’t know. I had a vision last night of a pyramid like the one we saw at Thera. But I see no pyramid here. I think I must go into the darkness.”
“A reconnaissance would be a smart move,” Cassius agreed. “But we will wait until morning.”