Revelations (8 page)

The
Vengeance
burst through the ocean surface; first the conning tower appeared, the huge fin-shaped tower slicing through the water, seconds later the sleek, matt-black body emerged, water roaring from its deck, sunlight glistening off the ribbons of spray cascading from the hull.

In the belly of the submarine, Emily waited with Rhiannon for the
Vengeance
to stabilize. When the rocking finally stopped, she rolled off her cot and opened the door. In the corridor sailors were already making their way toward the upper decks, their excited chatter elevating Emily’s own sense of excitement at finally discovering firsthand what had happened to the world.

“Stay here,” Emily told Rhiannon and Thor, then slipped outside and followed the sailors.

A metal ladder ran up through the hollow center of the sub’s conning tower from the main deck of the submarine. At the bottom of the ladder Emily and the rest of the crew gathered in the corridor, milling nervously as Captain Constantine and MacAlister climbed the metal rungs to the observation deck at the top.

A few minutes passed and then Emily heard the sound of MacAlister’s standard issues against the metal rungs of the ladder as he descended.

“What’s it look like, Sergeant?” asked a crewman, as MacAlister stepped off the ladder, eager for information. Emily could not read Mac’s face; it was blank, impassive.

MacAlister ignored the sailor and spoke directly to Emily. “Come on up,” he said, offering his hand to her. “The rest of you stay here.”

“Jesus, Sarge—”

“No more lip out of you. You’ll get your turn,” MacAlister snapped. “Wait here until either the skipper or I call you up top.”

The sailor looked displeased but fell silent under Mac’s stony stare.

Emily caught the briny scent of the Pacific Ocean wafting down to her as she pulled herself rung-over-rung up the ladder then up onto the flat observation deck at the top of the conning tower. A
lthough her view was still blocked by the security wall that spanned the circumference of the tower she could still hear the
whoosh
of waves breaking over the deck of the sub below, gently rocking the vessel as it pitched and rolled with each swell.

They had surfaced a half mile offshore of Point Loma, California.

“It’s a safe enough distance for us to make a quick exit if we need to,” Captain Constantine had told Emily minutes before the sub’s ballast tanks had been blown and the sub began its ascent to
the surface. “And far enough away that we won’t appear to be a threat if there’s still anyone alive in the base. Don’t want to be sunk before we even get a chance to see what’s going on, now do we?”

Emily’s eyes squinted painfully in the bright California sunshine. She couldn’t see a damn thing after spending so long in the artificial light of the submarine. She allowed her eyes a few moments to acclimate, filtering the light through the flat of her hands while she listened to the crashing of the waves and absorbed the warmth of the sun.

“My God!” she exclaimed when her vision finally cleared enough that she could see past the scintillating crest of the breaking waves.

She was staring out over a bluff, a clutch of buildings squeezed together, too distant to make out any real detail, but she could see radio masts and satellite dishes jutting out from some of the buildings’ roofs. To the right of the buildings, the land slipped gradually down to a harbor. Another submarine was moored to a quayside; it was canted away from her, its conning tower pointed inland and its curved underbelly exposed. A long jagged crack, about thirty feet in length, zigzagged along the exposed hull. She could see waves hitting the side and flowing into the interior.

Everywhere was silent, deserted. Not even a gull riding the warm thermals rising over the land disturbed this still-life portrait of a place deserted, abandoned. Emily took it all in within the first few seconds, but beyond the waves, past the rock-strewn beach and buildings with abandoned vehicles still visible in the parking lot, lay another world: an
alien
world.

A red world.

“Here,” said MacAlister, “take these.” He handed her a large pair of binoculars. Through their powerful lenses the distant shore seemed just feet away, and with it came the realization of how profound a change had been wrought across the world.

Where once there had been palm trees, neatly trimmed stretches of grass, roads, oak and California ash, now lay an alien jungle. Giant red fronds and creepers snaked their way over every foot of exposed surface, thick lush leaves sprouting from thin stalks (if they looked thin from half a mile away, they would be anything but, she realized). They waved in the slow breeze, wafting inland from the ocean. The alien vegetation clung to every wall, wound its way over roofs and around antennas. Leafy creepers threw long tendrils across blacktop, snaked through broken windows like thieves, cracked concrete, and levered up slabs of sidewalk until the ground looked like an 8.0 temblor had rocked the coast the naval base was built upon.

The submarine she had spotted earlier had not escaped the red vegetation; although the deck was angled away from her, Emily could still see a latticework of thick ropelike feelers spilling over the edge of the quay, obscuring the front of the hull under its swaying leafy camouflage. Red vines wound up the conning tower and dripped toward the ground like lank red hair, swaying in the breeze.

Mixed with the smell of the ocean, ozone was another less inviting one. Even at this distance from shore the aroma wafted back to the
Vengeance
. It smelled like mold and burned hair. There was also another less distinct, but more easily identifiable odor of something disturbingly familiar to Emily: ammonia.

“My God,” Captain Constantine mumbled, his voice barely above a whisper, his head unable to turn away from the line of red that stretched along the coast into the distance. “We might just as well be on another world.”

Emily ignored him, focusing the binoculars beyond the base, tracing the line of the coast. Wherever she looked, what should have been clear land was obscured by the same red vegetation. It covered all but a scant few buildings within the Point Loma base but seemed not to have made it to the beach anywhere along the coast surrounding the base, as though the sand-covered, pebble-strewn beaches delineated the alien world’s dominion.

Within the ocean of red flora, she could see the occasional alien tree surging into the air above the red canopy. They reminded her of the alien trees that had taken root after the red rain, but while what she looked at now were just as large, they also lacked the constructed uniformity of those first invaders; these were more natural, more recognizable as simple trees, yet undoubtedly not of this planet. They towered over the rest of the jungle. And that was
exactly
what this was, she realized: a freaking
jungle
!

Somehow, over a matter of just a few days, the red storm had raged through the old world and changed
everything
, converting it from what it had once been; reshaping, reorganizing, recreating it into everything that now lay before her.

Emily felt a bitter laugh escape her as she stared through the binoculars. Finally she understood what had occurred on their insignificant little rock: God had visited this planet and he had found it wanting, so he bent it to
His
will. And if it wasn’t God, that was okay, it might just as well have been. Because the intelligence, the technology, the sheer amount of raw power that had been harnessed to achieve this transformation was so far beyond anything imaginable it could drive you insane just thinking about it.

“Emily?” Captain Constantine’s voice sounded as though it was coming from a very long way away. “Emily!” he said again, louder this time, touching her shoulder. She allowed her arms to drop the binoculars to her waist and turned to look at him.

“It seems you were correct all along,” he repeated. “Do you have any suggestions?”

“We need to get Jacob up here to see this,” she said. “We need to get him up here right now.”

Two crewmen carried Jacob up into the sunshine of the sub’s conning tower and then supported the climatologist between them so he could get a good look over the edge of the conning tower’s observation deck.

“Ho-leee shit!” he hissed when he saw the transformation of the mainland. His eyes grew wide. Thanks to many long months cooped up in the Stockton research station, Jacob’s skin was already the wrong side of ivory, but Emily was convinced she saw him turn, as Procol Harum had so eloquently put it, a whiter shade of pale. “Holy shit! I mean…I never thought…Jesus! This is…this is just astonishing.” The sense of awe in the scientist’s voice was tangible.

“Here,” said MacAlister, handing Jacob a second pair of binoculars. The scientist glassed them back and forth over the base, then up into the jungle growing behind it. His index finger moved rapidly back and forth over the focus knob as he zoomed in as far as the magnification would allow, then out again as his head jerked, zigged, and zagged across the horizon.

“It’s everywhere,” he whispered, more to himself than the others who were watching him. He studied the coast for another ten minutes,
oohing
and
ahing,
with the occasional “Fascinating!” thrown in for good measure as his eyes caught some new feature or form within the explosion of tangled vegetation littering the landscape.

By that time the two sailors holding him were beginning to wilt in the sun.

“So, Jacob,” Captain Constantine said eventually, growing impatient for some kind of input from the scientist and his seeming obliviousness to the welfare of the sailors, “do you have
any
idea what we are looking at here?”

Jacob reluctantly dropped the binoculars and equally reluctantly ordered the two sailors holding him to turn around so he could face the others. He thought for a moment before replying, “Ideas? No, I have no
ideas
, but I do have a theory.”

“Well, what is it? Spit it out for God’s sake would you, man?” said the captain, a tight smile crossing his lips as he refused to be baited by Jacob’s truculence.

“We’ve been terraformed,” Jacob said eventually, quietly, his voice flat, as if the words he had just spoken were wrong in some way, as though they did not quite fit the space within the air they had to occupy. “Our planet has been repurposed, reconstituted, and retooled. It’s the only possibility.” Jacob’s hands swept across the red landscape. “I mean, just
look
at all of this.”

Nobody spoke.

“It was always a possibility, I suppose,” Jacob continued. “I mean, we’ve talked about it for years as a possibility for colonizing Mars and eventually other planets, but we are…
were
…nowhere near it as a possibility technologically. And this, this is light-years beyond how we theorized we could do it. I mean, it’s simply amazing.”

“Mr. Endersby,” the captain snapped, as his patience finally wore thin. “I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. So how about you explain it to us, how should I put it, less scientifically adept people: What exactly are we looking at?”

Jacob eyes fluttered to the other survivors gathered on the observation deck, moving from one to the other as though he had only now noticed them.

“Let’s get below,” he said finally, as if the words he had previously said had never been spoken. “I need a drink.”

“Good God, man. Would you just tell us what you think?” the captain said, finally beginning to lose his temper with the man.

“Captain. What I need right now is a stiff drink, and I think when I tell you what you want to know, you’re going to need one too. Besides, this is for your ears and for you to tell the crew, so just have these two oafs carry me down and I’ll be happy to explain everything. Okay?”

For a second, Emily thought the captain was going to order his men to toss Jacob into the sea. His face flushed a bright crimson. This was probably the first time anyone had spoken to him in such a manner in a very long time, if ever, and she would bet her last dollar that no one had ever spoken to him in such a manner in front of his crew before.