The Arctic Code (23 page)

Panic leaped through Eleanor.

Her mother swallowed.

“Do as I say, Dr. Perry.”

“Why?” Her mother's voice quavered.

“Please,” Skinner said. “Do as I—”

“Why?” Her mother's voice pitched higher. “You can't—”

“TURN AROUND!” Skinner shouted.

Her mother did what he asked, her eyes filled with fear as they made contact with Eleanor's.

“Mom?” Eleanor couldn't think of anything she could do to stop this. Was he about to—

“Please, Aaron,” her mother said. “Whatever you do to me, don't hurt my daughter, she's innocent—”

“Silence.” Skinner reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a plastic zip tie. “I won't hurt anyone unless I have to. Hands behind your back, please.”

Her mother closed her eyes and reached her hands backward. Skinner cinched them together at the wrists with the zip tie. Then he turned to Eleanor.

“Now you, Miss Perry.”

Eleanor did as her mother had done.

“Sit down,” Skinner said. “Both of you.”

Eleanor and her mother lowered themselves to the ground, backs to each other, sitting cross-legged. Skinner pulled a handheld radio out from another pocket in his suit.

The device chirped. “This is Skinner. Status update? Over.”

A staticky voice came through the radio. “The hostiles are secure. Medical attention underway.”

“Casualties?” Skinner asked.

“Four dead. Fifteen wounded.”

“Medical status of the hostiles?”

“Comparable casualties.”

“See to their medical needs as well,” Skinner said. “After that, resume preparation for drilling. There is a crevasse a quarter mile away, but I don't think it will provide efficient access.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There is a cavern directly below the station. I estimate drill penetration in less than an hour. Alert me to any status changes. Skinner out.”

The radio chirped again, and Skinner returned it to his pocket. He holstered his gun, and then he pulled a few instruments out of his suit, sensors and other devices. Eleanor recognized one of them as a telluric scanner.

“Now,” he said, “before we return to the surface, I'd like to get a better look at this thing.”

“Aaron,” her mother said, “don't do this. The Concentrator—”

“Do
not
attempt to escape,” he said, ignoring her. “Or you will force me to shoot you.”

With that, he marched back down into the crater,
toward the Concentrator. He approached it, checking his instruments, and then circled around it. Eleanor felt a shift in the telluric currents as he did so, as though the Concentrator were responding to his probing.

It seemed to be waking up.

“I
T'S OVER,”
E
LEANOR'S MOTHER WHISPERED
.

Eleanor strained a little against the zip tie but couldn't budge it. “There has to be something we can do.”

“There isn't. It's too late. I'm so sorry, sweetie. I should never have sent you those files. If I'd thought for one minute that you would—”

“It's not your fault,” Eleanor said, while below them, Skinner seemed to have become lost in his study of the Concentrator. “We know whose fault it is.”

The hum continued to build in response to Skinner's instruments. But after a few moments, Eleanor felt something else moving beneath its current, like a
squirming larva within its cocoon. Something inside the black tree. Every time Eleanor had interacted with the Concentrator, she had become more aware of . . . it. But it was hard to really grasp what it was with the hum so deafening. It felt as though it had reached her bones, and she moaned a little.

“Sweetie, what's wrong?” her mother asked.

“It's the Concentrator,” Eleanor said. “I . . . feel it.”

“What do you mean you feel it?”

“I always have. Since I came here.” Just then, Eleanor felt a tremble in the ground. A drum-like pounding, growing closer. It wasn't the humming of the telluric currents. This was something else. “And I don't think I'm the only one.” Kixi was coming their way. Eleanor thought back to the mammoth's agitation. “Skinner needs to stop. Now.”

Her mother was silent a moment but then called out, “Aaron! Please, stop this! You don't know what you're dealing with!”

“Do
you
?” he called back. “Or do you believe in your daughter's notion of aliens driving rogue planets around?” When her mother made no reply to that, he lifted the scanner. “I truly wish I could've counted on you to help me, Dr. Perry. But I am prepared to do this alone. Now if you'll excuse me, I must dial up the gain and check for subcurrents.”

As soon as he adjusted the scanner, the hum became overwhelming, just as it had when Eleanor's mother had done the same thing. Kixi bellowed from somewhere very nearby, the thunder of her approach growing louder.

Skinner looked up from the scanner. “What in God's name was that?”

In the next moment, Kixi erupted from a nearby wash, charging toward Eleanor and her mother like an avalanche of muscle and fur, tusks held high, trumpeting in anger. She charged up the hill to the crater's rim, right past the Perrys.

At the sight of her, Skinner's eyes and mouth opened wide. Kixi roared downward, right for him. He fumbled for the gun at his side but failed to pull it from his holster before Kixi reached him. A sideways swipe of her tusk sent him flying through the air. He landed in a heap, but he was still alive and struggling to get up. Kixi was on him before he could, trampling him under her massive feet again and again, rolling him and folding him, breaking him until he stopped moving.

The humming quieted. Only then did the mammoth stop, shaking her head and huffing, whatever spell she'd been under now broken. She sniffed and probed Skinner's body with her trunk, as if confused or surprised by it. Then Kixi turned toward Eleanor
and her mother and lumbered toward them with her usual gait.

“Eleanor,” her mother whispered, her voice terrified.

“Don't worry, Mom,” Eleanor said. “She's herself again. We're safe.” When the mammoth reached them, she gently laid her trunk on Eleanor's shoulder. “See? Now, how're we going to get free?”

“There's a knife in the left pocket of my suit, if you can reach it.”

Eleanor extended her hands behind her as far as they could go and rooted her way into the first pocket she found.

“Not that one,” her mother said. “The next one down.”

Eleanor found the right one and felt the blade, a small pocketknife. She pulled it out, managed to open it, and carefully cut the zip tie from her mother's wrists. Then her mother turned around and did the same for her.

Eleanor rose to her feet and gave Kixi's trunk a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, girl.”

Kixi touched Eleanor's cheek with the velvet tip of her trunk.

“Oh, Aaron,” her mother whispered, looking over at the scientist's body. “If only you had listened.”

“You tried, Mom,” Eleanor said.

Her mother nodded and took a deep breath. “We need to get back to the Concentrator.”

“Why?”

“When you and Skinner arrived, I had just found what I think is a control panel of some kind. I was trying to see if I could use it to shut the Concentrator down.”

“Okay, but . . .” Eleanor glanced over at Skinner's ruined body. “It's over, isn't it?”

“No. The G.E.T. will be back, and next time, we won't be able to stop them. Skinner drove the G.E.T.'s experimental energy program, but you heard what he said—this ‘Preservation Protocol,' as he called it, is UN policy now. The G.E.T. board of directors will find someone else to continue his work.”

“Who's the head of the board of directors?”

“The chairman. His name is Charles Watkins.”

Watkins? Where had Eleanor heard that name before?

“Come on,” her mother said.

They left Kixi at the top of the crater and descended to the Concentrator. Her mother led her around to the far side of the trunk, where Eleanor saw a circular panel of porous metal with a series of bumps and divots.

“I think these are buttons or switches of some
kind,” her mother said. “But I have no idea what they do or how they work.”

Eleanor didn't either, but as she approached the object, she felt the sensation from her dream return, of being cradled in its branches. She inhaled deeply to clear away the residue of fear over Skinner and tuned in to the hum, tracing the currents flowing around her into the Concentrator. She laid her hand on the panel, feeling its contours, trying to make some sense of them.

She felt the larva move in her mind, reaching back. Almost a shock, but not painful. A
force
, responding to her through her hand, climbing up her muscles.

She recoiled, yanking her hand away.

“What is it?” her mother asked.

“I— It's . . . alive.”

“What?”

“No.” Eleanor chewed on her lip. “Not quite alive. Aware, maybe.”

Her mother took a step away from the structure, casting it a wary eye. “What do you mean
aware
?”

Eleanor rubbed the hand that had touched the console. “It's what I was telling you. I can feel it. I think Kixi felt it, too. That's why she attacked Skinner. The Concentrator reaches out.”

Her mother shook her head. “I don't like this.
Perhaps this was a mistake.”

Eleanor didn't like it either. She hated this black thing spreading its limbs over her. Hated it the way she hated snakes and spiders, but magnified exponentially. It was as if the Concentrator struck the instinctual fear buried deep in her genetic memory. But fear was actually too simple a word. Fear of the unknown could be tempered by knowing it. But what Eleanor felt now was a horror at the
unknowable
.

Was this how Amarok had felt, staring at the spheres of Polaris Station in their slow march across the ice? Either way, he had decided to fight. How could Eleanor do any less? And if the Concentrator could reach out, to Kixi and her, did that mean Eleanor could reach
in
?

She laid her hand on the panel again, ignoring her mother's protests, prepared this time as the same force insinuated itself through her arm. She closed her eyes, trying to keep the presence contained, as it covered her mind like an oil slick.

Once she allowed the connection with the Concentrator, she began to glimpse a little of how it fit together, but at the deep, almost unconscious level of intuition. With her thoughts, Eleanor tugged at its roots, reaching deep into the earth like a tumor. She observed its intent, the fearful calculations of its aim.
She caressed its controls, empowered but disgusted by them, bending its function to her will.

First, she changed the alignment of its roots so that it ceased the gathering of telluric currents. Then, to shut it down, she killed the squirming, fragmentary awareness embedded in the Concentrator's machinery. It was easy, like pulling a grub out of the grass and crushing it between her fingers.

Her connection with the alien device collapsed, and the oil slick over her mind cleared away, the Concentrator a lifeless monument to the inscrutable force that had created it.

Eleanor opened her eyes.

“It's done,” she said.

Her mom blinked. “How . . . ?” She looked at the console. “You were working the controls. It responded to you.”

“I shut it down,” Eleanor said.

“But how?”

“I don't know.” She didn't know why she was able to sense the hum, why she saw the dark planet, or why the Concentrator had obeyed her. But she was, she did, and it had.

A loud cracking sounded overhead, close enough to thunder that Eleanor thought of lightning. She glanced
up. A seam had appeared in the cavern's ceiling, and as she looked, it spread, like a chip in a windshield.

“Mom?” she said.

“We have to get out of here. Now.”

They ran from the crater, up the hill to where Kixi stood grazing.

“What's going on?” Eleanor asked.

“I don't know,” her mother said. “The energy from the Concentrator must have been sustaining the cavern. Now it's gone.”

A second crack appeared, larger than the first. Chunks of ice rained down from it onto the tundra. Kixi's eyes rolled, looking everywhere, her small, flappy ears twitching.

“There's nothing we can do,” her mother said. “We have to run.”

Eleanor nodded and tugged on Kixi's fur. “Come on, girl. You have to come with us.”

The mammoth took a few uncertain steps and then broke into a trot, following Eleanor and her mother as they ran across the tundra toward the canyon. Before they'd even reached the village, three new cracks had appeared, joining up with the first, dropping boulders and icebergs that shook the ground when they struck.

Kixi trumpeted, batting at Eleanor with her trunk.

“I know, girl,” she said.

They were still a distance from the canyon, and even if they made it, they would have to climb the crevasse, and Eleanor worried about its stability with the ceiling caving in.

A chunk of ice the size of a car landed on one of the mammoth-bone huts right next to them, crushing it and splintering its massive bones. Kixi bellowed but kept to Eleanor's side, even though the mammoth could have run faster. Kixi had charged Skinner with overwhelming speed, but she was staying with Eleanor and her mom, as if waiting for them.

Up ahead, the canyon opened. Next to it was Amarok's other sled. The sight of it gave Eleanor an idea, and she ran for it.

“Kixi!” she said. “Kixi, come here! You're going to help us, okay?”

The mammoth followed her, and Eleanor gathered the coils of leather cord that normally harnessed a team of ten wolves, then asked her mom to help. Together, they tied the ropes around the mammoth's waist. Kixi stamped her feet a little but let them do it, and a few moments later, Eleanor and her mother climbed onto the sled.

On the far side of the cavern, a whole section of the
wall sloughed off, like the shelf of an iceberg falling into the sea.

Eleanor grabbed onto the sled. “Okay, Kixi, run!” she shouted, but the mammoth stood rooted in place. “Kixi!”

“Here,” her mom said. She picked up Amarok's whip and gave it a swing over her head, but it took a couple of tries before it cracked near Kixi's rear end.

The mammoth's legs quivered with a startled little jump, and she lurched forward at a trot, dragging the sled behind her.

“Faster, Kixi!” Eleanor said.

Her mom cracked the whip again, and the mammoth broke into a gallop, straight into the canyon, the crevasse barely wide enough for her enormous frame.

Up they rose, climbing as fast as Amarok's wolves. Behind them, they heard the cracking and thunder continue as the cavern came down. It seemed the whole thing would collapse any moment.

“Good girl, Kixi!” Eleanor called in a voice she used for puppies. “Faster! Faster!”

The mammoth trumpeted, galloping upward, sometimes breaking right through the sides of the canyon with her broad shoulders when it became too narrow. The minutes and the distance passed slowly but steadily.

At last, Eleanor sighted a slice of sky overhead. “We're almost there!”

She and her mother put on their masks, and soon they burst onto the surface. Kixi stopped abruptly, the sled careening to the side, almost spilling Eleanor and her mom. In the distance, they saw the silver spheres of Polaris Station, while Amarok's people, his wolves, and the station crew raced toward them in an indistinct mob.

Just then, the ground shook with a tremor, and a few minutes later, the first of the runners reached them. Eleanor had to smile at the look of shock on the faces of the station crew when they passed Kixi and kept going, fleeing the weakening ground. Soon, Eleanor spotted Finn, Julian, and their dad. Between them, they supported a wounded Amarok, who could barely keep up.

“Finn!” Eleanor shouted. “Bring him here!”

“What's going on down there?” Dr. Powers asked, out of breath, as they reached the sled.

“The cavern is collapsing,” Eleanor's mother said. “Eleanor shut down the Concentrator.”

Dr. Powers nodded, appearing somewhat confused as he helped lay Amarok down on the sled. Then they all climbed on, Eleanor's mother gave the whip another crack, and Kixi pulled them forward.

“Skinner?” Finn asked.

“Dead,” Eleanor said. “He was messing with the Concentrator.”