“I don’t know what it is, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “Let’s go back to the truck.”
She started to move but Mikel stayed where he was. He had an idea what it was… and what might stop it.
“Dr. Jasso?”
“Something may be trying to communicate.”
“That is an optimistic take on a mass moving beneath the ice!”
The shadow rolled toward them unevenly, like an incoming tide, until Mikel could see for certain what it was made of.
“Goddamn him,” Mikel said.
“What?”
“Get back in the truck.”
“What is it?”
“Please go!” Mikel yelled. “They’re being controlled by a tile in New York!”
Dr. Cummins did not need to be told again. She backed away then ran as fast as her boot-heavy feet could take her.
Snatching off his glove, the archaeologist grabbed his cell phone from the pocket of his parka and punched a button.
CHAPTER 10
In New York, at the subdued headquarters of the Group, the call came as expected.
Downstairs in the laboratory, Casey Skett winked at Flora, who was seated in a folding chair, her hands tightly knit on her lap. Adrienne Dowman was on the other side of him, in an old, thickly cushioned chair, sitting supernaturally still and just staring. Skett had one hand on the keypad controls of the acoustic levitation device. He had his eight-inch knife in the other. He slipped the blade into a sheath attached to the back of his belt. “I can get to it quickly,” he cautioned Flora.
“I have no doubt,” she replied.
Skett answered the phone. “Hello, Dr. Jasso. I’m glad to see you made it.”
“I said I would!” he yelled. “Now call them off! You didn’t have to do this!”
“I was testing the acoustic suspension,” he said. “Consider it a dry run and also a little bit of insurance.
“They are Belgica Antarctica, flightless midges. On average, only a sixth of an inch long… but there are a lot of them, eh? They were awakened from hibernation by a frisson of ancient Galderkhaani power, following the arc from here to there.”
“I know the mechanism, damn you, Skett. Cut it. Now!”
“But they’re harmless,” Skett assured him. “Unless they gum up your engine or crawl up your pant legs, nibbling and nesting. Which they will do, seeking the warmth they’ve been deprived of.”
“I swear to you—”
“What, Dr. Jasso? What will you do?” Skett’s tone lost its affected bonhomie. “I know—perhaps you’ll keep in touch with me instead of hopping about on your own, leaving me blind?”
“Yes, fine. We just got here by truck and were reconnoitering the pit.”
“We?”
“Myself and Dr. Victoria Cummins.”
“The glaciologist?”
“That’s right! Now cut the link!”
“How did you get there?” Skett asked.
“Toyota Tacoma.”
“Excellent,” Skett said. “Very good. Makes things easier.”
Skett was facing the monitor that controlled the acoustic levitation waves. He punched the numbers up. In front of him, the stone Mikel had recovered from the Falklands was crushed by sound, its energies dampened.
“Back the truck away roughly ten meters,” Skett said. He glanced at a laptop on the laboratory table. “The insects won’t come any closer as a group… the line vectors off there. Unless I amp up the power.”
Mikel’s voice was muffled, no doubt shouting instructions to his companion. The scientist was definitely outside the truck; Skett could hear the wind’s raspy brush against the audio.
After a moment Mikel came back on the line. “Is that why Flora screamed, Skett?” Mikel asked. “You were flexing your long-distance muscles?”
“Poor dear overreacted,” Skett said. “I think she thought that allowing the tile to power up, you would be attacked by penguins or whales.”
“How did you know I wouldn’t be?”
“You’re well enough inland,” Skett replied. “There are two tiles—I brought one to the party, you see. Two tiles, two separate but proximate lines of power, one weak, one stronger—the stronger one being the one I presently control. Sections of the coastline may be covered with penguin feathers thanks to the other… a whale or two might have butted a ship… and I think I heard some dogs baying on this end. But that’s all. The arcs from here to there are very precise. You will notice, I think, that the insects left their nesting ground and lined up pretty much in a southwesterly direction, well, westerly to you, since south has little meaning where you are. Are they disbursing?”
Mikel was silent for a moment. “If you could call being buried by icy snow disbursing.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Skett said. “Most will get away. They are very, very hardy. They will dig down and hibernate. It is remarkable though, isn’t it? The fact that the slightest variation in the acoustic modulation being employed here can impact a life-form at the end of the earth. It’s a shame Arni didn’t know that, eh?”
“We’ve all had a very steep learning curve,” Mikel replied. “All right, Skett, it’s cold where I am. What am I doing here?”
“You’re going down into the pit.”
There was a brief silence. “With a broken wrist?”
“I didn’t say you were going to climb,” Skett said. “Good God, I’m not a lunatic. The Tacoma must have a winch and you can rig a sling. In any case, you are going into the pit.”
“And once I’m there?” Mikel asked.
“You will send me video of whatever is there as you see it.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Mikel said.
“Oh?”
“That one’s not me being obstinate, Skett. I could barely get a signal the last time I was there. I’ll record images and send them later.”
Skett considered that. “As insurance for you, no doubt?”
“That too,” Mikel said. “If anything happens to me, to any of us, you get nothing.”
“That’s not true, you know,” Skett said. “All it means is that I’ll have to send someone else, and that will mean a delay. And Flora will be dead: I will kill her and burn her with my various rodents and pigeons. Anyway,” Skett went on, “I don’t think you’ll be uncooperative.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I am,” Skett said. “You can stonewall and posture all you want, Dr. Jasso, but you want to probe the knowledge of that civilization. Why else would you be in the South Pole? Why did you risk death?”
Skett had a point. Mikel did not answer.
“To do all that before you freeze, you will need my help,” Skett went on.
“Skett, you do understand what you’re playing with?”
Skett snickered. “Do you understand who you’re talking to? Dr. Jasso, I’ve spent decades studying this subject… waiting for global warming to catch up to my needs, to show me what hacked satellites and outpost communications could not, to reveal Galderkhaan. I have waited patiently for this moment. I need eyes on—now, if you please.”
There was another short silence on Mikel’s end. Skett’s careful eyes slid toward Flora. He was accustomed to watching everything from the shadows: studying the reactions of people on the street to the dead animals he collected for the city, watching how other animals responded to death, even watching how people responded to their own death, like Yokane and the others he had been forced to murder for his people. He knew fear and defeat, compliance and docility, when he saw it. All those qualities were present in Flora Davies. It hadn’t been necessary to restrain her: as long as he controlled the acoustic monitor, he controlled the two tiles and their fearful power—even the near-dormant artifact in the freezer. Flora knew what his colleague Eilifir Benediktsson and the team in Connecticut knew. They had all seen what those unbridled forces did to poor, fumbling Arni Haugan in this very room… and to Caitlin O’Hara in the park. The reason she hadn’t perished was not known to Skett. That too was something he needed to uncover.