So what was he trying to say?
He opened his mouth and allowed a single globule of air to escape. As it rose into the cloud, he pointed at it.
Bubbles.
With the blowers off, their air bubbles would rise to the surface where a keen-eyed lookout might divine their significance.
Hoping that she understood what he wanted, she shrugged out of the tank harness and closed the valve on the manifold, shutting off the flow of air. Professor nodded, then pointed up again.
Duh. Of course we have to go up. But what about people up there waiting to kill us?
He must have heard what she was thinking, or read the question on her face, because he shrugged.
One thing at a time.
TWENTY-EIGHT
While half the crew scanned the murky water for any trace of Professor and Jade, the rest set about preparing for the recovery of the Moon stone. Dorion watched, not knowing whether to hope that the two lost souls would reappear. Hodges had insisted on running the engines for the full ten minutes of air that might be left in Jade’s tank, and once that was gone, they would certainly drown. But if, as Dorion suspected, time passed more slowly in close proximity to the Moon stone, then what seemed like ten minutes on the surface might only be one or two minutes on the bottom. But even if Jade and Professor did not drown, Hodges was waiting with an assault rifle from the ship’s small arms locker, ready to pick off anyone who surfaced.
“It will take about twenty minutes for this cloud to dissipate,” Nichols said. “But the package is already secured to the cable. Once it clears, we can send a diver down and hook up a floatation bag. Then we can bring it up.”
Hodges did not look particularly pleased with this assessment. Dorion recalled that the man’s mission in life was to destroy objects like the Moon stone, not bring them into the daylight. He was faintly surprised to hear Hodges say, “I don’t want to wait that long. Get your diver in the water now. He can follow the cable, so visibility isn’t a problem. I want to be underway within the hour.”
Nichols looked ready to argue, but evidently thought better of it. He turned away to give the orders.
“This is really happening, Paul,” Ophelia said, breathless with anticipation. “All our years of searching have finally brought us here. The power to see the future will be in my hands. I will be the new oracle, and I will use my sight to reshape the world.”
Dorion gave a glum nod. He understood her eagerness, indeed he had felt the same way for many years, hoping, though perhaps never really believing that they would actually find what they sought. Now that it was almost in hand, and at an unimaginable price, he found himself unable to share her excitement.
But this is the future I saw.
He recalled the old story of Croesus, who had been told by the oracle of Delphi that if he went to war, he would destroy a great empire. When he was defeated in battle, he returned and demanded to know why the oracle had misled him. ‘A great empire was destroyed,’ the oracle had replied. ‘Your own.’ The story was part of the recorded history of Delphi, but it read like a parable. Knowledge of the future was a double-bladed sword, fire in the hands of a child. Worse, it was a mirror, revealing more about the desires of the person who looked for it, than certain knowledge of what was to come. Desire was the force that shaped the future, not dark matter. Ophelia would have the future she craved, regardless of whether she possessed the Moon stone.
And what of me? What will my future be?
That was something the Shew Stone had not shown him.
It seemed only a minute or two had passed when the divers returned, their task accomplished. Even Nichols voiced amazement at how quickly they had finished, but Hodges curtailed the discussion with a terse growl. “Get on with it.”
Nichols gave the order to start the compressors.
“How long will this take?” asked Hodges.
“That depends on how heavy the package is. We probably won’t need to fully inflate the tube to see some results. Might just be a minute or two.”
Curious in spite of himself, Dorion moved back to the rail and peered down into the murky water, straining for some glimpse of the object that, even without fully realizing it, he had been searching for ever since that fateful day at CERN. The Moon stone. The original Omphalos.
He had never stopped to think about its origin. He felt quite certain that the spherical shape facilitated the accumulation of dark matter particles, pulling them in the way a black hole draws in material to increase its mass, but where had the process begun? Was it a natural occurrence, perhaps a small concentration that had been present when the earth’s crust had formed? That was unlikely; at its formation, the earth would have been molten and anything as massive as the sphere would have promptly sunk to the earth’s core. Something from a meteorite perhaps; that made more sense. The ancients of Mycenae had recognized something special about the stone globe and venerated it without really understanding what made it powerful. Perhaps they had not been the first; perhaps it had been found somewhere else, moving around the ancient world from one conquering kingdom to the next.
I wonder if Jade had a theory about that.
“What’s happening?” Ophelia’s gasp brought him back to the moment.
He expected to see the water boiling with air bubbles bleeding off the flotation bags or perhaps even glimpse enormous bladders rising into view through the silty water, but what he saw instead defied easy explanation. The water at the rear of the ship had risen up into a hump, like a wave or a swell, building but not breaking. The area of disturbance was only about fifty feet across, but already high enough that it had formed a sloping hill of water. Held in place by its anchors, the Explorer could not slide down the face of the disturbance, so instead the entire ship canted forward, nose pointing downslope. Dorion had to clutch at the rail to keep from tumbling across the deck.
Hodges rounded on Nichols. “What’s happening?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like this.” He stabbed a finger at Dorion. “Ask him. He’s the expert.”
Dorion shook his head, but even as he did, he realized that perhaps he did know. “When Alvaro and Perez removed the stone from Teotihuacan, it triggered an earthquake that collapsed the tunnel and trapped Perez.”
“So?”
“That earthquake may have been caused by a gravitational anomaly. The dark matter field created by the sphere is just strong enough that any attempt to move it upsets the local gravity.”
Nichols was dubious. “You’re saying that little ball of rock can create earthquakes?”
“Or in this case, a tidal event. It is pulling the water toward it, causing a localized high tide.”
“We caused it, just by trying to move the stone?” said Ophelia. “How is that possible?”
“The orb has been sitting undisturbed for centuries, at equilibrium with its environment. If you have scales that are perfectly balanced, even a tiny grain of sand can upset the balance.”
“Is it going to get worse?” Hodges asked.
Dorion spread his hands. “I cannot say. I have never seen anything like this.”
As if he had been eavesdropping, Lee staggered down the stairs from the bridge cursing loudly and, if Dorion was not mistaken, a little drunkenly as well. “What are you doing to my ship?”