“You didn’t anticipate any of this?” Dr. Cummins asked.
“I didn’t know about any of this,” he said. “Look, we’ll do this, then take stock of where we are. We can always remove the ice to get back in there.”
“I have to notify Halley,” she said as Mikel began waddling ahead with two of the heavy cans. “They may not approve of you setting fire to the ice.”
“No, this has got to be done,” he said over his shoulder. “Quickly. We are not in a good place if those tiles become active. For all I know the entire ice shelf may be in danger, to Halley and beyond.”
The woman took two cans and looked over at the pit as she followed Mikel. She shook her head. “I don’t see anything that—”
There was a rumble that caused the fuel in the cans to slosh audibly. Dr. Cummins stopped suddenly. So did Mikel.
“You felt that, right?” he asked.
The ground continued to vibrate slightly, as if a subwoofer were turned on nearby.
“That could just be recracking caused by our truck, our activities here,” the glaciologist said.
A low hum rose up through the ice. The piled, windblown shavings jiggled like metal filings on a snare drum.
“That could be an echo from somewhere else,” she said. “Those can move every which way for several minutes.”
“It’s coming from the pit,” Mikel said as he hurried ahead, half walking, half stumbling. He stopped about ten yards from the edge. The ice particles and dead bugs continued to vibrate and move in response to the hum.
Mikel unscrewed the cap of one of the two containers. He pushed it on its side then opened the second one and did the same. The overhang of ice was the greatest here, on the western side.
“Mikel, wait!” Dr. Cummins said as she reached his side. “Shouldn’t we wait a few minutes, just to see?”
“I’m afraid to,” he admitted. “Very afraid.” He ran back to get the last two cans.
His urgency was enough to spur Dr. Cummins on. “Where do you want these?” she asked.
“Make it about twenty yards to the north, half as close,” Mikel said, shouting back after watching the way the petrol flowed. “We’ve got a downward slope of about five degrees here… it’s straighter there.”
Dr. Cummins acknowledged with a big nod then hurried off. She did her work quickly as the ground continued to vibrate. They could both see little ripples in the slightly yellowish fuel that pooled on the ice.
Mikel poured gas on the south side. When they were finished, they carried the containers back to the truck and Mikel got a flare pistol and cartridge from the equipment locker in the rear.
“Back the Toyota away,” Mikel told her. “We don’t want to risk igniting the gas in the truck.”
“Way ahead of you,” she said, getting back into the cab. “You watch yourself—stay low, the heat will rise as it rolls out.”
Even as she spoke, the ground began to shake more violently. It wasn’t sound. Mikel couldn’t be sure what it was, whether it was the tiles themselves, the fracturing result of the tiles, or both. As she backed the truck up, he crouched with a knee on the ground well away from the gas and to the west. The wind was blowing east so there wouldn’t be any superheated fumes.
The gun was a single-shot twelve-gauge pistol. Mikel loaded it and, checking that the Toyota was a safe distance off, he fired at the edge of the nearest pool. The gas went up with a soft whoosh, the six-foot-high flames following the flow of the gas and bending immediately in the direction of the wind. After just a few seconds the surface of the ice began to pock and large chunks began to crack, sink, and melt, pouring streams of water and gas toward the pit. The heat and hot water melted more ice and soon large slabs of ice were snapping and sliding toward the edge and over the side, sending a spray of water and flaming fuel into the air. They came back down like the hail of Jehovah.
Mikel rose and backed away, toward the truck. He was surprised to find the vibration continuing to increase, actually shaking loose more and more of the weakened ice.
“Dr. Jasso, hurry!” Dr. Cummins cried, leaning out the door of the truck.
He nodded and ran toward her. The smell of the burning gas was strong, despite the wind blowing away from him. Within moments steam was rising from the pit as water met fire. The heat caused ice on all sides to break away, and he could hear the ice splitting and popping inside, cracking like rifle shots, a symphony of destruction. The long flutes fell with eerie whistling sounds until they knifed into the slush at the bottom.
Or are those ascended spirits, Mikel could not help but wonder, the dead somehow trapped in the tiles?
Suddenly, the vibration stopped. Mikel wasn’t expecting that to happen until the water froze. Had the water itself quieted the tiles?
He stopped a few steps shy of the truck and turned, waited, looked across the smoking, malodorous expanse.
No, he thought with a chill that managed to run up his spine even in this cold. The vibration hasn’t stopped. It’s just gotten lower and more stable.
Something caught his eye to his right, far away, an area free of smoke, on the western horizon where blue sky met the ice. He raised his goggles and peered toward it where he saw a faint glow. Just then he noticed—through the smoke and flame—that the pit he had just inundated was also domed with a hazy yellow light.
“Dr. Jasso?” Dr. Cummins was leaning from the truck.
Mikel was looking at the distant glow. The light here and the light there appeared to be the same color.
Christ, he thought with awful horror. Is this column talking to another buried column?
“Dr. Jasso!” he heard Dr. Cummins yell.
He turned around, toward her, saw her pointing with agitation to the area behind the truck, to the east. There was another dim light on the horizon. This one was in the direction where he had seen the airship crack free of the ice before sinking just days ago.
Mikel started back toward the cab. “It has to be,” he muttered.
“What?” she asked.
“The towers of the ancient Source network are waking,” he said. “They’re… talking to one another.”
“Because of the fire?”
“I—I don’t think so,” he said. “This has to be what Flora was afraid of! We appear to be too late.”
“I’ve got Halley on the radio; they aren’t reading anything, no geologic activity except the thermal signature you created.”
“It isn’t seismic and I don’t think it’s the magma,” Mikel replied as he reached the cab. “Hell, it may not even be just now.”
“What?”
“I opened a path to the past,” he said. “But I’m sure it’s the olivine tiles. They’re awake, they’re linked, and they’re communicating.”
“How is that possible? Magnetically? Electronically? How else would stones ‘talk’?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “When I was below, they were sharing information. Maybe they share the same data pool or—”
He stopped.
“What is it?” Dr. Cummins asked.
“Not a pool,” he said. “Living images.”
“Again?”
“I assumed that what I saw were images. What if they weren’t… aren’t. These tiles may not be storage systems—they could be windows!”
“Powered by what?” she asked.
“We’re at the pole—magnetism?”
She checked her analog compass, saw no deviations, went to check the digital device, and the Toyota fell instantly, ominously quiet.