Message From Viola Mari (17 page)

As we kicked on our backs to the ladder on the side of the boat, Matt cast me a doubtful look. “It looks like some kind of death trap to me. I don’t think I want you going down there again.”

Hanging on the ladder, I yanked off my fins one by one and tossed them up on the boat. “It’s not a death trap—you have to trust me.”

“I wish you would let one of our other guys go down first.”

I climbed up the ladder, looking back at him. “I have to know what happened to Justin.”

He climbed up behind me and stood beside me on the deck. “Yes, I suppose you do.”

We had nothing to do now but wait for the rocks to change. I maneuvered the boat into shallower water to anchor for the night. We spent the evening feasting on freshly caught snapper. The sun transformed to a brilliant orange and stretched out on the horizon in a bed of clouds before disappearing below the watery horizon. I hoped this would be the last time I’d ever watch a sunset alone. I’d seen too many of them in Justin’s absence. I tossed and turned as I lay on one of the scanty bunks, fearing I’d fall asleep the instant the rocks transformed. I clutched the rock in my hand, hoping I wouldn’t miss the instant that it gripped my fingers. The boat rose and fell over the gentle waves. It was like a gentle lullaby urging me to sleep. Stay awake, I told myself.
Stay awake.

My eyelids drooped and dark shapes moved in front of my eyes, like patterns on fabric. And then I thought about a something, but couldn’t recall what it was a moment later. Justin’s face floated in front of my eyes and then I saw a swirling floral pattern before I drifted off to sleep.

A bright light awoke me. At first I thought it was the digital numbers on the clock radio until I noticed the light came from underneath the covers.
It’s the stone.

I leaped from bed, and ran out into the hall shouting. “It’s t—.”

“Shut up and come with me or I’ll kill you.”

“Very funny,” I said, laughing. Matt clapped his hand over my mouth. Then I knew something was terribly wrong. I turned and tried to read his expression, but his face was shadowed.

He dragged me toward the front of the boat and stuffed a gag into my mouth, tying it so tightly around the back of my head, it felt like it tore the corners of my lips. The water was illuminated only by faint moonlight, dimmed by passing clouds. Another boat had been tied to ours. A few men sat waiting. “Grab all your gear and follow me onto the boat,” he ordered.

I gathered my scuba gear and my instruments and followed him onto the boat. Raoul, Michael and Manuel were amongst the group. He pulled the gag off my mouth. I licked blood from the corners of my mouth. “How could you do this?”

“Just like everyone else, I’m after a moment of fame,” Matt said.

“Are you crazy? Your lust for fame is absurd at a time like this.” I clenched my fists, wanting to punch him.

“Could you restrain her, Raoul?”

He grabbed my arms and yanked them around my back. I grimaced as a stab of pain shot through the front of my shoulders.

“When you first brought up this subject of comets obliterating the earth, it sounded so completely absurd, I almost recommended your termination. But something stopped me. I told my superiors that you seemed somewhat unbalanced, but that I would see to it that you focused on serious research. But now that it seems that you’re right—”

“So, you want to take credit for all my hard work.” The strained tendons in my shoulder screamed louder as I squirmed to break free.

“Soon everyone will believe I’m the one who saved the Earth. Your job will be to explain my version of everything that’s happening on a live broadcast. Then I’ll see that you don’t get hurt. Otherwise a rather unfortunate accident might happen. Or when we find Justin, he might come to a terrible end.”

“How could you do this?” I thrashed and jerked to free myself from Raoul’s grasp. Just the mention of hurting Justin enraged me. The director I’d worked for all these years had betrayed me, had betrayed the integrity of our entire project.

“I’ll be the one asking the questions if you want to live,” said Matt. When he held the Glock against my temple, I had little alternative than to answer his questions when he pointed to different pages in my journal and asked me to illuminate. “I want you to take me through the crater now,” he ordered.

We descended in our diving gear in the darkness. The haunting darkness was illuminated by our lamps and the eerie green glow, which brightened as we approached the sandy bottom. Three dolphins swirled around us as we touched down. For some reason, their presence comforted me. I can survive this, I told myself.

Matt pointed toward the crater’s rim. I pumped some air in my BCD and swam toward it, hovering over the eerie green crater that looked like glowing glass. The dolphins frolicked around me and one of them plunged nose first into the green crater and disappeared. Its two companions followed and were quickly swallowed by the green glowing mass. I said a silent prayer as we descended down the last few feet between our world and the one I was about to enter.

It felt like a rocket launched me—I travelled so fast through a tunnel of bright glowing colors. My skin and hair pulled back from my face. My regulator pulled loose from my mouth and I thrashed around trying to grasp and replace it until I realized I could breathe without the tube. Pink, green, and blue lights flashed as I soared through space. The seemingly endless roller coaster ride terrified and thrilled me at the same time. All of sudden I dropped out of the tunnel and bounced across a pad of green gel. I glanced around and saw two huge orbs of rotating light. Motors whirred and the ground under me rumbled. They had to be some kind of spaceships. I looked around to see if anyone was around. Matt had disappeared, but I sensed a presence. A familiar, comforting presence. A line of excited goose pimples rose on my arms and then a force stronger than gravity turned my head. My eyes flooded with tears as the magnanimity of the moment overtook me. Through a lens of tears, I saw my beloved Justin in the flesh—every perfectly sculpted contour of him.

Chapter Twenty One

He stood on pad of gel a distance away, his naked chest glistening under the eerie green light. “They said you would come,” he said. His voice reverberated in the cavernous chamber that surrounded us. “But I wasn’t sure how much longer I could wait.”

We ran toward each other and clung to each other in a crushing embrace. I melted in the warmth of his arms, relished hearing his elevated heartbeat against my head. “Oh, Justin, it’s really you.”

“Oh, Marissa.” His green eyes looked just like I remembered them, passionate and flecked with various shades of yellow and brown. I kissed his hair, his forehead, both of his ears, and cheeks, running my hands over the muscular contours of his shoulders and chest to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, that he was really there. He skimmed his hands over my arms and collarbone, before placing them on either side of my cheeks so he could turn my lips toward his. He kissed me at first gently and then more urgently, licking over my lips and then parting them with his tongue, making love to my mouth. “I missed you so much.”

Tears ran like rivers down my cheeks. My voice trembled. “I missed you, too. Every single hour of every day. I couldn’t believe you were lying dead on the bottom of the ocean. People told me to let you go, but I just couldn’t. I love you too much.”

He crushed me in closer to his chest, so that I felt the press of his body’s familiar sinewy hills and valleys against my chest, my abdomen, my thighs. “Oh, Marissa. I’m so sorry you suffered so much. That night of the boat accident when you held my hand, a heavy object fell on top of me and pulled me down. Before I had a chance to get out from underneath it, I blacked out. By the time I regained consciousness, I was lying down here. Every day without you felt like forever—and it was awful waking up every morning to an empty bed. I kept hoping you’d understand the message I left. When did you finally know?”

“When I saw the news report about the five people disappearing in La Jolla,” I said.

“But how did you know you could travel through the craters?”

“I’ve been carrying this NRG rock sample in my pocket for quite awhile. It transformed once in class, but I didn’t understand the full significance of it until much later.” I pulled the rock from my pocket along with the earring I’d found and held it up. “Look what I found today when I was diving.” I slipped the dangly silver earring back into his ear. I kissed him on a smooth, recently shaved cheek. His scent smelled different than I remembered, like a mingling of his normal masculine aroma with seawater and soap. He must be housed somewhere where he slept, bathed, and groomed. “Have you met the beings who created these tunnels?”

“Yes, I’ve met many of them. They first appeared looking like upright-walking sea turtles, but I’ve seen them transform into a variety of shapes. They are very soft-spoken, gentle beings—they’ve sheltered and fed me since I arrived. They say you’re the messenger they chose to save people and other benevolent beings who live on Earth.”

“How were you able to communicate with them?” I leaned in closer until my forehead touched his lips. It still felt like an amazing dream standing face-to-face with the man I loved.

He massaged my neck with his thumbs. “They said they’ve studied our methods of communication for decades. They speak many of our languages.”

“What about the boy? Is he here?”

“He’s being safely housed at a different landing site—one deep below La Jolla Shores. But there are several more humans here, divers mostly, who somehow passed through the craters when they transformed. Oh, look, Blanuga and some of the others have come to welcome you.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks. “I’m so glad I found you. It was so awful not knowing if you were dead or alive. I felt like my whole life stretched out in front of me like an open ocean, where there was no land in site.”

“Don’t cry, Marissa,” he said. “I promise I’ll never leave you again.”

He wiped away a tear with his thumb. His touch felt so warm, so comforting. I never wanted to endure another day without it.

I watched, mesmerized, as the group of five alien beings approached. Justin stepped off to my side, still holding my hand. Their profiles appeared hazy, constantly changing. At first the alien creatures looked like sea turtles, walking upright like men on fins, and then they took on more human forms, with faces like turtles and clothing resembling the armor of a sea turtle shell.

“Welcome, Marissa,” said the leader. “I’m Blanuga—the emperor of the aqueous world on the planet Viola Mari. We have come from the distant galaxy of Armi di Fuoco to help your people escape.”

I shook his hand and told him how pleased I was to meet him. He introduced me to his four companions. “We have been waiting for your arrival. You were the only one with eyes to see the message we sent you. Our ships will transport your people to our planet, which like Earth, is a mixture of land and water. My people occupy the planet’s seas, but no people or creatures presently occupy the ground.”

“This took so much effort. Why did you go to all this trouble to save us?” I asked.

“Some of our people make their living traveling to doomed planets to see if those who inhabit them are worth saving. In most cases, we find them a new place to live in exchange for help accessing natural resources we can use to build space ships. There is much killing and evil mischief on your planet. But the people who are good, like you, are worth saving.”

“But why didn’t you just land your ships on the ground?”

“Because we believe many of your countries’ military personnel would have perceived us as a direct threat and attacked us. We’ve spent years using heavy-duty mining equipment to scour out these tunnels. Then we started trying to communicate with someone who would have an open mind, who would listen to what we had to say.”

“Everything about this is mind-boggling. I have so many questions, I barely know where to start. But how do you plan to get everyoneout of here?”

“We will broadcast a map of all the lakes and oceans where there are tunnels through your media. We will intercept the television communication frequencies so only our warning broadcast will be seen on every channel. We will send submersibles up through the tunnels to collect people and transport them down to the subterranean ships. Once we get people aboard, we will launch. But we don’t have much time.”

“According to my calculations, there are still forty three more days.”

“The eccentricity of the orbit has been perturbed by stars and asteroids. We now have less than twenty four hours.”

I gasped. “Oh no, that’s terrible. What about my family and friends?”

“There’s still enough time to save them, but we have to act quickly.”

Blanuga escorted us into the press room, which had been set up in a brightly illuminated tunnel sunk into one wall of the main cavern. The microphone, which hung down in front of me, had been bolted into the rocky ceiling. Justin sat beside me. “We are tapping into the communications systems now,” he said. Once he punched a series of buttons on the huge instrument panel, he came and sat on the other side of me. His companion, Tornca, gave us a countdown so we’d know when we were on the air.

“I am here with meteorite scientist Marissa Jones to give you an urgent message. The earth will be destroyed by a devastating inundation of comets in a matter of hours. I am Blanuga, emperor from the planet Viola Mari in the distant galaxy of Armi di Fuoco. My people and I have come to help you to escape. If you want to survive, you must follow our instructions.”

He nodded and asked me to proceed. I introduced myself and told them briefly about my research and how it had led me to learn of the upcoming disaster. Then I explained how Blanuga and his people had communicated with me through the ocean formations. I finished with a teary plea to my mother, my siblings and my friend Jennifer to please rush to one of the escape sites right away. I looked back at Blanuga, allowing him to explain the lake and ocean sites worldwide where people could be transported to the tunnels. And how they could thrive on Viola Mari, where there was plenty of open space and oxygen.