Beneath the Ice (7 page)

Lights from the city stabbed at the
encroaching darkness, but the darkness could not be dissuaded. It
had come to do what it did every day—cover the city in blackness.
Mexico City was a modern city—the capital of the country and its
cultural heart. Its influence dominated the land. Seven centuries
before, Enkian thought, the city had worn a different name, and its
citizens could not trace their lineage back to Spain.

Tenochtitlán, its name the better part of a
millennium ago, sat upon an island in Lake Texcoco. Here the Aztecs
found their administrative and military strength, an influence felt
far into Central America. Temples and pyramids of stone, gleaming
white and red in the hot sun, dominated the city.

The city was divided among
the
calpulli,
and
these clans held sway until Hernándo Cortés lowered an iron fist
upon it. Eighty-five days later, Tenochtitlán had fallen. War,
conquest, and a series of epidemics from European diseases gutted
the city of its 200,000 inhabitants, leaving only 30,000. Now a
great city spread out before him, but despite its size, it was a
pale thing in comparison.

Enkian turned his attention from the window
to the spacious room. Dominating the area was a conference table
made of Pentelic marble. From a chemical point of view, the
material was nothing more than compressed limestone, but in the
hands of an artist it was so much more. Phidias had secured his
place in history because of what his hands could do with marble.
Enkian touched its smooth, polished surface and felt its coolness
creep up his fingers. This white stone had been quarried from the
Penteli mountains north of Athens. He had chosen the piece himself
and followed every detail of its removal, polishing, and
sculpting.

He caressed the table again. To others it
was lifeless, albeit beautiful, stone. To Enkian it was more alive
than those who stood around its perimeter.

“Sit down,” he said, while he remained
standing. Tia sat at his right hand. She carried nothing in her
hands, yet he knew that she would recall every word spoken. “What
do we know?”

“If I may, sir,” a man said. He was
rail-thin and wore tight-

fitting wire-rimmed
glasses that rested on a beaklike nose. Enkian nodded at Jeffrey
Tottle, vice president of EA Mining’s European offices.
The others around the table held similar
positions. Caesar
Rivadavia handled South
America; Rich Aldington oversaw all operations in Australia and New
Zealand; Jean Sedlar reigned over work in Asia and
Indonesia.

Tottle rose, producing a remote control from
his pocket. He pressed a button and the wall to Enkian’s left
parted, revealing six large plasma monitors. Each shone with EA
Mining’s logo, a three-row, six-block stepped pyramid. Above the
pyramid’s pinnacle was a sunburst, as if heaven were spilling
through a gash in the sky. A button-push later, the first screen
filled with the image of a handsome dark-haired man.

“Perry Sachs,” Tottle said crisply. “Senior
vice president and project manager for his father’s firm, Sachs
Engineering.”

“I know the firm,” Enkian said without
emotion.

“Yes, we used them in
South Africa when we encountered a touchy digging problem in one of
our chrome-ore extraction centers. They redesigned one of our
automated diggers. They’re resourceful.” Tottle returned his
attention to the screen. “Perry Sachs is a bit of an adventurer.
Not the careless type, but he can’t resist a good mystery.
This is well-known among military types. Sachs
Engineering does a
great deal of secret
work for the U.S. military and a few U.S.-
friendly countries. The company has deep pockets. Although
not as
wealthy as our . . . as your
company, Mr. Enkian, they have a brain trust that rivals our own.
They are formidable.”

“Go on,” Enkian said. Tottle was a superior
businessman and a loyal follower, but he did tend to ramble.

“Our investigators have learned that Sachs
is leading a team of experts in some effort in Antarctica.”
Pictures of people began to appear on the screens: two women, five
men. “These are the core operatives. They know what we know, that
Lake Vostok is growing.”

“As the prophecy said it would,” Enkian
said.

“Precisely.” Tottle
advanced the images. “There’s an interesting mix of skills present
at the site. Sachs, his partners John Dyson—he
goes by Jack—and Gleason Archer are all MIT trained.
Also
present are Dr. Griffin James, a
glaciologist; his sister Gwen
James, a
biologist specializing in extreme bioforms; and Sarah Hardy from
NASA.”

“NASA?” Enkian said.

“Robotics expert.” Tottle pushed the button
again, and a map of Antarctica appeared. He zoomed in on the Lake
Vostok area.

Enkian leaned forward. He saw something
special. It was a photorealistic map, but it showed only white ice.
In his mind, though, Enkian could see through the ice. It was
there. It had to be. Why else would such an eclectic band of
explorers be sent to such an inhospitable spot?

“They have been easy to track, but hearing
them has been

difficult. They encrypt all e-mail and
maintain nonspecific radio communications. Still, we can
assume—”

“They’re going under the ice,” Enkian
said.

“Yes, sir. Of course, that is a slow
process, so we have some time.”

“No, we don’t,” Enkian said. “We have no
time to waste.”

“It took the Russians months to core as
deeply as they did.”

“Sarah Hardy,” Enkian interjected. “She
tells us what we need to know. They’re not coring. They’re sending
a drone through the ice. It’s an ingenious idea, but they must not
succeed in my absence. Does everyone understand that?”

Heads nodded, accompanied by general
assent.

Enkian fell silent, and
the enormity of his thoughts weighed on him like the world on
Atlas’s shoulders. “The time has come. We are the blessed.
Generation upon generation of our forefathers has kept the faith,
the dream alive. You received it from your fathers as I received it
from mine, and he from his before. But now—” his voice choked—“now
the time is here. We are the chosen. We are
the six—six of the sixty-six. Nothing will ever be the same.
We will see to that. The prophecy.”

“The prophecy,” they repeated in unison.

“The prophecy.”

“The prophecy.”

He turned to Tia. “We have operatives in
place?”

“They have begun their work.”

“You have reports from them?”

She shook her head, her long black hair
shuddering down her shoulders. “No.”

“We’ve lost contact with them?
Compromised?”

“No,” she said. “They’ve been busy.”

Enkian nodded, then smiled. Rising, he
tilted his head back and raised his arms. He could hear the chairs
sliding back from the marble table as the others joined him. He
began to sway like wheat in a gentle breeze. He began to hum. The
other joined him until the room sounded like a hive of colossal
bees. Then Enkian spoke, his eyes closed so tightly that flashes of
light danced in his vision.

“Most honored are you above all the gods.
Your decree is unmatched by men and gods. You, Marduk, are the most
honored of all gods. Your decrees are unquestionable. For now and
forever, your declarations are unchangeable. No one from the gods
can transgress your boundaries. Marduk, you are our avenger. You
are our avenger. Our avenger. Avenger.”

Chapter
5

Sarah could not enter
her room
without feeling entombed. The
space served as her bedroom and private office, but it was the size
of a small hall bath. The builders had placed a cot to one
side, and a three-foot-wide desk—little more than
a flat surface on folding legs—sat next to the curved surface that
formed the wall and ceiling of the Dome. A folding wooden chair was
the only other piece of furniture. “I’ve seen larger graves,” she
had joked when Dr. James had shown her the cubicle that would be
her home for the next few weeks. The sight of it gave her a chill
that had nothing to do with the cold beyond the curved
wall.

Living near the South Pole
was a challenge—she had expected
that, but
expectations seldom measure up to reality. She spent as
lit
tle time in the room as possible,
preferring to sit in the larger shared area everyone called the
Commons. There was one thing to be thankful for: She had a room to
herself. The military workers and Sachs employees shared a
dormitory space with bunks hastily made from
two-by-fours.

It wasn’t just the
diminutive room that bothered her; it was the confinement. Back in
her normal life she had an office and work area in the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. There she could come
and go as she pleased. Often she walked the tree-lined street in
front of her ranch-style home, gazing at the stars that could still
fascinate her. Here, she could move from room to
room, building to building, but time outside was
limited—especial
ly
when the wind blew. It blew a lot, roaring, squealing past,
separat
ed from her only by the wall of the
Dome.

She was beginning to feel
claustrophobic.

“This is nuts,” she said
to herself as she pushed the
power
button on her laptop, which whirred to life.
There were other taxing conditions. Water was available by the
acre, but it was in the form of ice. The energy necessary to
convert it to liquid then warm it enough so it wouldn’t freeze
tender skin was costly. As a result, showers were to be taken in
two minutes or less. Two minutes! That wasn’t enough time to get
wet as far as Sarah was concerned.

The computer finished its
warm-up, loading all the necessary programs. Sarah moved the mouse
and clicked on an icon. A new program loaded, filling the screen
with the JPL logo and the words
Cryobot
Simulations
2.3. She pulled two joysticks
from the table and set them on either side of the computer. Sarah
reminded herself that she was not playing a video game but training
for a mission. In a few days, she would be seated at a table in the
Dome, guiding the large cryobot through the ice and into a lake
that no one had ever seen.

She would be at the controls, performing
every move under the scrutiny of several pairs of exacting,
demanding eyes. Millions of dollars of equipment and thousands of
hours of work rested in her ability to manipulate the joysticks
just the right way. “No pressure,” she muttered.

As she thought about the
watchful eyes, one pair of eyes pushed
to
the forefront, eyes that gleamed with intelligence and sparkled
with kindness; eyes that revealed a no-nonsense attitude but were
still quick to laugh. Dark eyes made light by something she had not
been able to identify.

Sarah worked with the
brightest minds in the world. The JPL and Caltech were bastions of
brilliance. Knowledge, skill, and superior intelligence did not
intimidate her. She saw it on a daily basis.
But Perry Sachs was somehow different. In some intangible
way, he exuded—what? A rare confidence? That was true. A refreshing
honesty? Again true, but still not on target. She shook her head.
Whatever quality had caught Sarah’s attention, its definition
remained a few inches out of reach. Whatever it was, it was
real
and . . . endearing.

The program began to run. The display was
similar to a commercial jet’s instrument panel except altitude was
measured in negative numbers, speed was measured in centimeters per
hour, and orientation included displays for vertical as well as
horizontal bearings. Other virtual gauges indicated interior and
exterior temperatures, “nose” heat—the temperature of the heating
element that would melt the ice below Hairy—and a half dozen other
instruments. The program was designed to create problems at random.
So far, the program had won every contest, something she wasn’t
willing to admit to the others.

The descent was the easy part of the
“flight.” Hairy would melt its way down through layers of ice until
it punctured the boundary of ice and liquid water. Then the
difficult task of controlling the device began. She advanced the
program until it was seconds away from breakthrough. That was the
hard part, the challenge no one could anticipate. It was where she
always failed.

No one knew what to expect. Did Vostok have
currents? Surely it did. The temperature difference between surface
water and deep, near-thermal water would move the water in a
circular fashion, the warmer rising, the colder sinking. But there
could be other factors yet unanticipated. It was in the unknown
that danger lurked. There was the excitement and the frustration of
field science. No matter how well one planned and practiced, the
unexpected could blindside the most prepared. She was determined to
be ready for anything and everything.

I wonder what kind of
preparations Perry’s been making?
she
thought.
There’s no doubt he’s
thorough.
She could tell that just by
talking to—

The computer sounded an alarm, and the
instruments froze. “What the—” Sarah studied the readings then
realized she had let her attention wander and allowed the speed to
increase to a rate faster than the winch could handle. She had
broken the connection.