Deep Storm (18 page)

Exactly. Whatever it is thats transmitting the signal we didnt put it there. Someone else did.

Chapter 20

For a moment, the stateroom was quiet. Crane sat motionless, struggling to absorb what he had just heard, as the meaning of Ashers words worked its way through him.

Take a minute, Peter, Asher said kindly. I know its a hard thing to get your mind around.

Im not sure I believe it, Crane replied at last. You sure theres no mistake?

No mistake. Mankind has no technology capable of inserting a mechanical device beneath the earths crust let alone a device that can emit such a signal. Because of the natural phase change that occurs at the Moho, listening devices on the earths surface are neither sensitive nor technologically advanced enough to pick up certain kinds of waves from below the crust. But because of the mid-Atlantic ridge, the Moho is unusually shallow here. That along with the depth of the Storm King well holes led to the accidental discovery of the signal.

Crane shifted in his seat. Go on.

Of course, the governments immediate goal became to excavate to the source of the signal, determine what it was. It took quite some time to get the project ramped up, the necessary equipment in place. The depth were operating at makes things extremely difficult this Facility was built for other purposes and was not meant to operate anywhere near this deep. Hence the surrounding dome.

How long did the preparations take, exactly?

Twenty months.

Thats it? Crane felt stunned. General Motors cant even design a car prototype in twenty months.

That shows you just how seriously the government is taking this project. In any case, the excavation has been online for almost two months now, and the pace is frantic. Significant progress has been made. A vertical shaft has been dug beneath the Facility. Were excavating toward the source of the signal.

How is that possible? Isnt the rock molten at that depth?

The crust is relatively thin, the geothermic values are low, and radiogenic heat production is far less than it would be in the continental crust. P-wave and S-wave readings indicate the lithosphere is only about three kilometers beneath usonly being a relative term, of course.

Crane shook his head. There must be some logical, some terrestrial, explanation. Some Russian device, or maybe Chinese. Or some naturally occurring phenomenon. If I learned anything from that marine geology course, its that we know precious little about the composition of our own planet, save for the thinnest outer layer.

Its not Russian or Chinese. And Im afraid there are too many things that dont add up for it to be naturally occurring. The geology of the impact, for example. Normally, for something to be embedded so deep in the earth, youd expect to find a serious geologic disturbance the undersea equivalent of Meteor Crater. But in this case, the layers of sedimentation above the anomaly are in almost perfect synch with the surrounding matrix. Think of a child digging a hole on the beach, dropping a shell into it, and putting the sand back in place. Theres no earthly phenomenon to explain that.

But there has to be, said Crane.

No. Im afraid the true explanation lies beyond. You see, certainartifacts have been retrieved. And at this, Asher nodded to the silent man in the lab coat. The man walked toward a far wall, knelt, and opened a plastic locker that sat there. He withdrew something, rose, and handed it to Asher.

Crane looked on curiously. It was a cube-shaped object, encased in some kind of metal shielding. Asher glanced toward him, met his eyes.

Remember what I told you, Peter, he said. About the threshold. And then, gently, he pulled away the shielding and offered the cube to Crane.

It was hollow, made of transparent Plexiglas. Every edge was carefully sealed. Something was inside. Crane took it from Ashers hands, drew it close then gasped aloud in surprise.

Floating in the dead center of the cube was a small object, no larger than a domino. It emitted a laserlike beam of light, pencil thin and intensely white, toward the ceiling. Impossibly, the object itself was of no single, definable color, but rather a coruscation, shimmering and rainbow hued: gold and violet and indigo and cinnamon and other colors Crane had never imagined, all in a constant state of change. The colors seemed to come from deep within the object, rising outward from some central core, as if the little object burned with some strange inner fire.

He turned the Plexiglas cube over and over, staring at the thing within it. No matter how he turned it, the object inside stayed dead center. He peered at the makeup of the cube itself, searching for hidden wires or magnets. But it was a simple cube of clear plastic there were no tricks.

He shook the cube, first gently, then with severity. The glowing, pulsing thing at its center bobbled ever so slightly up and down at this treatment, always coming to rest in the exact center, where it continued to float serenely, its thin beam of white light pointing straight upward.

He brought the cube up close, staring at the object with openmouthed curiosity. He noticed the edges of the domino-sized thing were not, in fact, exactly defined. Rather, the object seemed to pulsate faintly: edges grew sharp, then softened again. It was almost as if the objects mass and form were in continuous flux.

He looked up from the cube. Asher was standing there, smiling, hand outstretched. After the briefest hesitation, Crane reluctantly handed him the cube. The chief scientist replaced it inside the shielding and gave it to his assistant, who returned it to the storage locker.

Crane sat back, blinking. What the hell is it? he asked after a moment.

We dont know its purpose is, exactly.

Whats it made of?

Unknown.

Is it dangerous? Could it be the source of the problems here?

I wondered the same thing, of course. We all did. But, no: its harmless.

Youre sure about that?

The very first tests we did were to see if it was throwing off any radiation other than light. But its not. Its completely inert all subsequent tests have confirmed that. The reason I placed it inside that Plexiglas cube is because its a little hard to deal with otherwise it always finds the precise center of a room in which to hover.

Whered you get it?

It was uncovered during the excavation of the shaft. Along with well over a dozen others to date. Asher paused. Our job when we started was clear-cut: dig as quickly as possible, within safety parameters, down toward the source of the signal. He gestured toward the locker. But then, when we began to discover thosewell, things grew more complicated.

He sat down again, leaned in, and continued in a conspiratorial whisper. Theyre remarkable, Peter even more remarkable than they look. For one thing, they seem to be essentially indestructible. Theyre impervious to anything weve subjected them to in controlled environments. Some kinds of damage, like radiation, they absorb; others they reflect. And another thing: they seem to act as capacitors.

Capacitors? Crane repeated. Like batteries?

Asher nodded.

What kind of power output?

We havent been able to measure the top end. When we put conductors on them, they red-lined even our most powerful measuring devices.

And what was the measurement?

One trillion watts.

What? That little thing? Storing a thousand gigawatts worth of energy?

You could put that in a car and it would provide enough electricity to power the vehicle for its lifetime one hundred thousand miles. And theres something else. Asher reached into a pocket of his lab coat, pulled out a small manila envelope, and handed it to Crane.

Crane opened it and pulled out the sheet within. It was a computer printout, a repeating burst of short numbers:

-

Whats this? he asked.

That beam of light the markers emitting? Its not continuous; its actually pulsing, millions of times a second. The pulses are very regular: on and off.

Ones and zeros. Digital.

I believe so. Its what drives every computer on every desktop in the world. Its how neurons fire in our brains. Its a fundamental law of nature. This little device might be incredibly sophisticated, but why wouldnt it communicate digitally? Asher tapped the sheet. A sequence eighty bits long, repeating over and over. Its substantially shorter than the other message, by the way the one transmitted from beneath the Moho, the one that was initially discovered.

The other message, you say. So you think this pulse of light is trying to tell us something?

Yes I do if we can decrypt it.

Crane raised the sheet. May I keep this?

Asher hesitated. Very well. But dont show it to anybody.

Crane returned the sheet to the envelope, placed it in his desk. These artifacts

We call them markers. Or sentinels.

Why sentinels?

Because its almost as if theyve been waiting, watching, all these years, to offer us something.

Crane thought for a moment. So youre digging toward the source of the signal. What then?

There, too, things have gotten a little more complicated. Asher paused again. Ultrasonic sensors weve lowered into the shafttheyve picked up evidence of something below the artifact field. A large object, buried even more deeply than the source of the signal.

What kind of object?

We know it is torus shaped. We know its extremely largemiles across. Beyond that, nothing.

Crane shook his head. But you must have some theories.

About what its doing here? Certainly. Asher seemed a little more at ease now, like someone whod unburdened himself of a painful truth. After extensive discussion, the consensus among the scientists and the military here was that something has been left behind for humanity to discover, when sufficiently advanced.

You mean, like a gift?

You could call it that. Whos to say which discoveries mankind is responsible for, and which were given us, one way or another? Whos to say, for example, that fire wasnt a gift from beyond the stars? Or iron? Or the know-how for building pyramids?

A gift from beyond the stars, Crane repeated dubiously.

The Greeks believed fire came from the gods. Other peoples have similar myths. Maybe theres a pattern here? Once we had technology advanced enough to pick up a signal from beneath the Moho once we could actually dig down to the beacon we would be considered ready for the next leap forward.

And so this buried object youre digging toward contains useful technology of some kind? Benevolent technology we can discover once were ready to make use of it?

Exactly. Such as the technology that created the device I just showed you. Something that would help humanity to develop further, make that next leap.

There was a silence as Crane digested this.

So whats the problem? he asked at last.

At first, I was as certain of all this as the rest. But lately Im not so sure. See, everybody wants to believe theres something wonderful down there. My scientists are starry-eyed, dreaming of entire new frontiers of knowledge. The Navy spooks are drooling over the possibility of new technology that might be weaponized. But how can we be sure whats there? These markers weve found are like a trail of bread crumbs, promising tastier things. But until their signals are translated, we cant know whats really buried below them.

Asher wiped his brow again. Then something happened. Wed always assumed, Peter, that the artifact was buried millions of years ago. But a couple of days back we discovered the burial was relatively recent around A.D. 1400. Thats when I realized that sightings, actual sightings, of the burial event might be part of the written record. So I sent a researcher around the region, visiting libraries, abbeys, universities any place that might have eyewitness accounts. And at Grimwold Castle, an old monastery off the coast of Scotland, we found one. A dark look crossed his face. It made for disturbing, frightening reading.