A Dream of Ice (6 page)

All right, so what?
she thought. Then she caught herself. The Group's mansion wasn't important. It was the
stone
that was important. Quickly she looked up the e-mail from Mikel that explained approximately where the Serpent had been collected in the Southern Ocean. She expanded the map and drew a vector from the Serpent's origin point to the mansion. Next, she marked the location where Mikel said he saw the iceberg calved from the Brunt Ice Shelf, with an airship lodged inside, and connected it to the mansion as well.

What else, what else . . .
Mikel's albatrosses. Uruguay; hadn't it been near the Montevideo airport? She added that point to the map, then descended on Erika, demanding immediate research for any unusual animal behavior around the world over the previous couple of weeks.

“Whale beachings, haven't we been seeing reports on that?”

“A slight uptick—”

“Penguins leaving the Antarctic, we saw a lot of that. Look up
any other weird flocking, dog or cat attacks, maulings at zoos, anything.”

Erika's research was limited by what the media considered newsworthy, but within an hour Flora had virtual flags all across her map, with a line drawn from each to the mansion. A nexus of whale beachings in Hudson Bay. A dolphin
attack
, of all things, on a motorboat near Sea Gate. A man who lost his flock of homing pigeons when they dove, apparently in a mass suicide, into the ocean off of Breezy Point. An increase in jaguar attacks in Amazonas and parrots falling from the sky, already dead with no known cause, in Rondônia, Brazil. A sea lion reserve in Necochea, Argentina, that lost a third of its sea lions when they attacked each other.

Flora sat back in her chair. The lines drawn to her mansion were as obvious as the spokes of a fan, but she leaned forward and drew in the most important line anyway—the edge of the fan, the vector connecting all of the incidents, including the arch and the points where Mikel found the Serpent, where the iceberg broke, and where Andreas died.

Of course the line looked curved on the globe, but Flora triple- and quadruple-checked. It was a path as straight as a sword leading from the research station Halley VI to the stone's current resting place.

However, there was one giant anomaly. The albatrosses in Montevideo missed the vector by nearly two hundred miles.

She picked up her phone and dialed Mikel's number.

•  •  •

Bored out of his head at a pub in Stanley on the larger of the Falkland Islands, Mikel picked up on the first ring. His mind was foggy, directionless, wheels spinning in the mud. Two whiskeys had failed to sharpen it.

“I was just about to call,” he said. “You'll need to arrange this one.”

“Mikel—”

“Look, there are no ships going anywhere near the ice shelf and the only flight is the British Antarctic Survey. I've tried with them but they're suspicious as soon as I start talking.”

“Suspicious of you? What have you been saying?”

“No, it's got nothing to do with me. They're petrified of something.”

Flora took a restrained breath. “Mikel, what do you think it might be?”

“If you got me on that flight I'd be able to ask them, wouldn't I?”

“I will overlook your tone, Mr. Jasso.”

“Sorry, I'm tired—”

“And I will arrange your transport. It seems we've more reason than ever to get you to Halley VI.”

“Why? Something else going on?” he said, ignoring the last of the whiskey in favor of something—finally—more interesting.

Flora described the vector of animal madness.

Mikel sighed. “So you claim the stone I brought to you is interacting with something in Antarctica—never mind the total implausibility of that—but it's also affecting humans and mammals along a global route?”

“Yes. And I am extremely interested to see what is lying on the Antarctic section of that route, close up.”

“But with the ice moving up to half a mile per year now, and who knows at what rate in the past, and with Galderkhaan existing millennia ago, then—”

“Whatever the other point of this vector is, it
has
to be under the ice.” She added, “Not far from that research station.”

“As the crow flies, you mean. Halley VI is on the moving ice sheet, nearly forty miles from the coast of the mainland. And to get to the ground, I'd have to do god knows how much tunneling down through hundreds of meters of snow and ice. Dr. Davies, even if you sent me with a team of experts and the British government falling over itself with permissions and assistance, it couldn't be done.”

“That's true,” she said, “but only if you never start.”

“Don't give me that ‘every journey begins with a single step' line.”

“I'm not. I'm only asking for your best effort, Mikel.”

“Flora—”

“Your best, which I know is considerable. One other thing. Your incident with the albatrosses was not on the vector.”

“Wait,” he said, “how is that possible?”

“Precisely,” Flora said.

Mikel considered what she implied. “Your calculations must be off.”

“They're not,” Flora assured him. “I'm wondering if you actually experienced what you think you did.”

“Are you questioning what I saw?”

“That's not what I said. You told me yourself that the flight attendant didn't seem to know what you were talking about.”

“Yes, but what I said happened, happened,” he barked into the phone.

“So what does that suggest?” Flora asked.

“I don't know.”

“Think about it,” urged Flora.

“I am. Nothing's coming.”

“Now you're just being lazy,” she said. “What if you saw the albatrosses as they were, but in some other time?”

The words cut sharply through the whiskey. That was new. And a little unnerving. But remotely possible? Mikel gazed across the bar as if he were looking through the wall at the birds themselves.

“Mikel?”

“I'm here,” he said. “I think.”

“Touché,” she replied.

“But crap,” he said. “Arni.”

“What about him?”

“Maybe he got hit with the same ‘something' I did, only his synesthete's brain magnified it. Maybe I'm lucky I'm not so advanced.”

Flora let the thought sit a moment. “Look, I think it best that you keep track of what you experience
with
and
without
supporting evidence. Both are valuable but keep them separate in your reporting. Clear?”

“Very,” Mikel said, and he meant it. He felt as though the grunge had suddenly been cleared from his brain and a universe of possibilities had opened.

A
s Caitlin hurried from the subway to her office, she left a message for Barbara asking for an appointment as soon as possible. So much had blown in on her in the last few hours that she felt unable to prioritize which questions and feelings she should heed first . . . which were real, which were intuited, and which might be wholly imagined.

She was certain the exchange with Odilon was real. The rising power she felt in her hands, the look of amazement on his face, and the sudden well of emotion; those were all completely honest.

That's the place to start
, she decided,
the part you
know
is true.

The question she couldn't answer was how far to take it, how much to tell Barbara.

Maybe the choice wouldn't be hers. The feeling of openness and expansion had not returned since she'd seen the dark-haired woman on the subway.

What happened?

Had Caitlin shut the power down? Maybe there was a mental off switch in her brain that she'd stumbled onto blindly. Maybe it wasn't off but simply sleeping.

And then there was that woman herself. Was she just a convenient,
innocent figure? Or did she open the power? Had Caitlin's mind, overloaded, grabbed at a meaningless gesture and ascribed power to it? Was she developing paranoia? Imagining that someone was watching her was certainly a first step.

She was unclear about everything, except for the surprising but unmistakable welter of sadness that had risen since that moment on the train when Caitlin had shut the cascade of faces down. It was a form of mourning, of suddenly losing this new and frightening but
vital
window on the world . . . perhaps on several worlds. She imagined her mother chastising her, but there was no way she could let this be.

Caitlin felt suddenly, strangely defensive when she received a text from Barbara confirming an availability the next morning. What if Barbara wouldn't understand and judged her?

Caitlin was relieved to have scheduled patients that afternoon. More than once in her individual therapy sessions with the high school and college students, she longed to try a repeat of the conduit she had manifested with Odilon.

But these students didn't need a drastic assist. They were doing the long, slow slog through their psyches, identifying old patterns, accepting their entrenchment, learning and trying and failing and trying again to deprogram from the distortions, succeeding by increments. It was steady, honorable work, made possible by the relatively stable lives they were living. Odilon was different. He'd been on the edge of a cliff and unable to ask for help. These kids faced challenges but no immediate danger. To interrupt their process would have impugned their responsibility for themselves.

After Caitlin's last session, though, the grief washed back into her so powerfully she put her head in her hands. Thinking was a burden she no longer wished to bear. She needed to talk to someone who wouldn't need a preamble. It was four thirty here; in Cornwall, Ben would probably still be up.

She checked Skype first and there he was. She hesitated, wondering
if he might be talking to someone.
Ow
, she thought. And her heart floundered when the call resulted in silence. But it was only a delay, and he blipped on-screen with the biggest smile and a warm “Hi.”

“I only have half an hour before I have to pick up Jacob, I'm sorry,” she began.

“I'll take it,” he said, continuing to smile.

“But if you want to get a late dinner tomorrow, if you're not too blown out from the flight back—”

“I won't be,” Ben replied. “I want to take you out for your birthday.” She smiled, but he must have seen the hesitancy she felt because he quickly switched subjects. “Okay, half an hour, counting down. What's happening?”

“A lot,” she said, looking away from him. “I can't even begin. Can you do me a favor, Ben, would you mind going over what you've learned about Galderkhaan from your translations?”

Ben laughed, and she knew it was a “things never change” laugh.

“Caitlin, it's in the e-mails I sent—”

“Yes, I know, I read them, but I'd like to hear them from you. It's just—it's how I'm thinking these days. Human to human, not soliloquy to soliloquy.”

He grinned and said, “Firstly, that's commendable. And secondly, can I begin with some new bits first?”

“Wherever you like,” she said.

“Until last night,” Ben said, “I was focusing on the three videos we have of Maanik and the one I took with my phone at the UN when you—when you saw Galderkhaan.”

Caitlin noted his careful choice of words. Not “visited,” not “witnessed” or “experienced,” but “saw,” which could mean “imagined.” Clearly, he still didn't completely believe her about that night.

“So what've you got?” she asked, trying not to lay on the affected cheerfulness too thick.

“Okay. First, I dove into something basic: volcanoes in Antarctica,” he replied. “Galderkhaan must have been located on the west side of
the Antarctic Peninsula. Or possibly north in the Scotia Sea. Those volcanoes are submerged now and there's been quite a bit of earthquake activity there. That wouldn't be unusual but they really are very distant from the continent. So the west coast is far more likely.”

“Isn't the west coast the part that's melting the fastest?”

“Yes, several studies have confirmed that all the western glaciers are going to melt and the whole ice sheet could follow.”

“I wonder—”

“And that's a yes as well. A couple years ago they found an active volcano under the western ice sheet. If it blows a fissure, the whole area could come out looking like Iceland, all hot springs and thermal vents. Only more melty and less therapeutic. Geologists are pretty sure earthquakes around the volcano line are contributing to the big meltdown, although they're not the only causes.”

“There's also idiocy and arrogance.”

“Whether it's global warming or deep and latent magmatic activity or just a big nasty climatic cycle, the west side is our place. There are no known volcanoes around the other coast. Now, Antarctica being covered with snow and ice, that means that our Galderkhaani friends had to have some impressive tricks for making their city habitable. I've started assuming geothermal engineering to an unprecedented degree. Actually, to an unantecedented—” he stumbled over the word a few times until they were both laughing. “To a degree unmatched to the present day. They were oasis builders, Caitlin.”

“Huh, okay . . . could they have built more than one oasis?”

Ben
hmm
ed noncommittally. “That jibes with a particular word I found: ‘
ida-ida
.' Caitlin, I can't tell you how unusual this word is—half hour, you said?”

“Yes, sorry, Ben.”

“All right, then, to the chase. The word means ‘building,' but not in the sense of a single structure. It's more like building something that's ever expanding, sort of like ‘fulfilling'—dare I say, a manifest destiny.”