Deeptide Vents . . . of Fire Read online

  Jennifer waited. Susan waited. Then they received the answer they had only dreamed of.

  “Delores Hundley is an ex-Coast Guard Cutter captain. She used to ply the waters off the Alaska coast. She’ll be your captain. Her men are still loyal to her. Practically her entire old crew has agreed to sign on. One of these, Delores tells me, is the best pilot in the business. She’ll hand-pick others for back-up. I want one of my own microbiologists along, probably in the secondary sub. With some later adjustments that should make out your crew. Well, that’s it then, ladies. Mrs. Perkins will show you out. She will be in touch. To the other side.”

  “To the other side.” They drank their drinks.

  Mrs. Perkins showed them out. Again Jennifer thought of the stupid old joke: Walk this way …

  In the hallway, they embraced. They punched the air. They gave high fives. They held hands and did a little dance.

  Sooner than it might seem possible, they were about to be the first people to go inside the deep mysterious interior of the earth.

  2

  Coasttide

  They waited six months for their vessel. Barnstone had been true to his word. He had pulled out all resources. He found an engineering firm to drop everything, to go on twenty-four hour shift to retool, and to give this project clear and uncontested priority. By now Susan and Jennifer had Dolores’s men and Barnstone’s scientist. The crew was motley, as the saying goes, Jennifer thought. But, in spite of herself, she couldn’t help looking at the pilot, Josh Margule, in a certain way. Allen Johnstone, an African-American was also quite attractive to her. She thought of doing both of them, first the joy of some Norwegian or Swedish hot blood, then the contrast of her light-toned skin against the other man’s brown flesh. It amazed her that she could work and contribute at this level, and still thought of men as some high school or college conquest. Well, she was who she was and it was all a heady atmosphere and thrilling. Hodges, a large hulking man, perhaps an ex-football player, seemed curiously interesting as well.

  Honestly, how did she get any work done at all? The microbiologist, with an odd name of Samson Magruder, filled out the crew of the compact explorer.

  Names came into focus. There would be many others in the surface crew she would have to learn besides the Ex-Gee and the secondary sub. It was starting to emerge as a significant project indeed.

  It turned out to be Allen who first girded up the courage to ask her out for dinner. She was beginning to wonder about Josh. She had given him enough to look at, but he seemed more interested in one of the surface crewmen. Once she turned a corner and thought she saw them holding hands. Well, she probably had caught the better man after all.

  Susan was preoccupied with the design and building process. She wanted Jennifer to spend more time at the CAD to design the adjustments and re-designs; daily they increased. They worked fourteen hours a day; soon, she knew, the woman scientist would forget to eat and barely sleep altogether, if she didn’t look out for her.

  Allen emerged easy to talk to. He liked to walk along the beach with her at sunset. He laughed at her jokes. She expected he would eventually tell her about emerging from a poor background. But it hadn’t been so. When she found out, she cursed herself for holding onto the stereotype.

  One night, during a delicious fresh fish dinner, he told her his father had been a doctor. They had always done well, and he, a young man, wanted to be a doctor too. But he had met Delores at the Coast Guard Academy. There was something about her; she had a commanding presence. He put his career on hold to follow her on this adventure. Then of all things he met this astonishingly beautiful and intelligent woman.

  Jennifer blushed. He was charming. She looked at him. She smiled. She knew this was the night he would get lucky. Yet, there was something he said that wasn’t quite right, something nagged at her mind … her perfume and the scent of the ocean, the washing of the waves, the man-scent from his desire for her, the foods and the breezes, it was too much, she couldn’t think straight.

  It was the night they agreed the explorer sub would be dubbed, “Stanley.” They had considered “Nautilus,” or the Pequot;” but Stanley – the journalist in search of the missing English explorer in Africa – seemed a more viable choice. Ships received feminine names, usually, or triumphant ones, but it seemed deep sea explorer subs were dubbed according to male nomenclature.

  They sat at a poolside table not far from the beach and the ship works. Barnstone had built a facility up the northeast coast, off the Maine shore at a secret location. The ancient wild woods rose in mystery behind them. Perhaps Massasoit of the Wampanoags or the woman chief of the Pequot and their warriors had roamed these woods.

  Barnstone had explained how he came by this retreat. He had built it as a power training facility for his executives.

  During their intense time here, the resort served as sleeping rooms for the crews of boat builders, dock workers, depleted uranium experts, and legions of other experts, welders, computer experts, and service and support staff. She tried to calculate the investment, but wearied at the impossible changing and challenging figures. She wondered why they hadn’t built their facility on the west coast. Susan had explained that the skilled help and this facility were on this coast. Later they would fly the prototype to an undeveloped sound at the western edge of Oregon. From there, after some fine tuning, the final stages would be accommodated from the modules, they could set out, the Ex-Gee on board the Parsonage, the old freighter Barnstone was having retrofitted on the opposite coast.

  So the plan went. Later, even as the project unfolded, events led to a different ship awaiting their arrival at Pacific port.

  Something nagged at her. It seemed when they arrived the facility was already laid out, or nearly so. That would have had to have been done very fast, indeed. Then, she had turned a corner once, and saw a strange yet familiar marking on the side of one of the buildings. She had seen it before, but couldn’t quite place it.

  They heard a shout. They glanced out toward the ocean. The crews were running some practice programs down by the beach. No doubt they had just been dismissed for the day.

  “I hope that means things are going well,” Jennifer said.

  “There have been glitches. But by and large …”

  For a few moments they were silent. He poured her some more wine. She drank half the glass. They looked at each other.

  “I don’t think we have much time left. We’ll be leaving for the coast soon. Would you like to come up to my room tonight?”

  “I’ve been hoping you would ask,” Jennifer said. Stupid schoolgirl heart racing, she thought.

  They kissed for a long time, Jennifer adoring being submissive and seduced, at least for the moment, feeling his rough-gentle hands over her. Women never quite got it right. They were always so gentle, so considerate. Men were gentle then rough as well. At just the right moments, if they sensed their woman. She felt his desire rise up against her, a wonderful feeling.

  She could never help herself. In an instant her whole flesh seemed alive, pulsating, and full of desire. Her tell-tale breasts were as swollen as they had ever been, but this was no embarrassment this time. When they found themselves in bed, she acted as she always did, suddenly turning with a near growl into the aggressor, more like a man than a woman, compelling him over on his back and mounting him almost violently. Allen took it like a submissive woman. She liked that, watching them submit beneath her. He almost moaned and begged and cried out like a woman. And she, finishing as she did ahead of the man, more like a man really. Whatever could she do, such a hopeless case?

  They lay entangled in each other’s arms, as usual finding it nearly impossible to get all four arms and legs in a position that inflicted no nerve damage. The cuddling was the one feminine moment she held onto. She knew men only cuddled for the benefit of their women. Alas, poor men: They always had to do things they would rather not do, go
places they would rather not go to, simply to make us, their women happy. They always seemed to want to do anything to make us happy. And we are never quite satisfied. What a strange coupling our species is.

  It was nice, laying here like this against him, feeling his smooth flesh, the sound of the ocean not so far off. She became aware she was no longer certain she was awake or asleep.

  She had an odd thought, one of those halfway to sleep, when the dream-mind attempts to make illogical sense from logic, or logical sense from illogic; they lay there, the two of them, spent, but not gone, like used-up uranium. She saw herself and Allen as spent uranium, their light and dark naked bodies glowing, in the sea-dark, extruded and stretched over a ship’s bulkhead. Something was wrong. Something was tearing at the fabric of their being. They were being torn apart. If she could find him, if they could find one another … a warning bell sounded. She saw it as well as heard it, a huge fire alarm bell. Down they plummeted through a vortex into the deepest oceanic void, the whirlpool’s depth defined by a giant maw of some horrible enormous creature, their extended naked bodies spinning like a fantasia … the bell rang again and again … above her, way above her, she saw or thought she saw another Allen, a whole man, flesh and blood, holding something, a large black dumbbell-shaped club, or, wait, was it blue? Had he turned? That bell! No, the bell stopped ringing. As at a distance she heard him.

  “Yes. Who? Susan. Yes, she’s here. Hold on. Jennifer. Jennifer!”

  “Whe—what?”

  “Jennifer. Come on”

  “I, we’re falling, torn, Oh God, a nightmare.”

  “Come on. It’s Susan. Here. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Hello? What? Susan? What? Slo—What’s wro— slow down.”

  She motioned for Allen to gather her, their clothes together. He knew they would not be returning together tonight.

  “All right. All right. I’ll be right over.” She realized she had just popped up fully awake. “Yes, right away.” She hung up. “What, damn, what time is it?” Well, maybe not fully awake. “Co—hmmf, coffee.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “God, my head. How much wine did we drink?”

  “Jennifer?”

  “They ran a full computer simulation. Some of the tiles flew off into the ether. Temperature inside the cabin rose to 122 ̊ .”

  “Jesus. What, how – ?!”

  “I don’t know. We thought, I don’t know what we thought. Could I just have some coffee please.”

  “It’ll just be a moment.” He shouted from the other room. “I know you like it hot and, let’s see, cream, no sugar?”

  A good boyfriend. He stayed in shape. She liked his body. For a sweet moment she pondered it. The coffee would be hot, steaming even with cream in it. She laughed to herself, not knowing if the giggle was heard in the other room or not; hot tiles, hot coffee. One flies off, one goes in. It was stupid funny. She knew that. But she laughed in spite of herself, sitting dissolute in a rumpled bed, awaiting coffee from her lover, needing to get up, get dressed, and get on with her mission.

  It was the air space. It created a bubble from the inside that flared out with overwhelming heat overwhelming the tiles. The pressure built up. Then exploded off. The heat transferred to the spent uranium bulkhead. She knew it all even before getting to her design protocols. Maybe Susan was rubbing off on her after all. Or, maybe she had known all along. Damn! What possible solution could they come up with? Then she had another thought. How did Susan know where to find her?

  She padded to the bathroom. When she came out her coffee was ready. He took his turn in the bathroom. She sipped the coffee gingerly. It wasn’t McDonald’s hot. It would do. Hot enough. She would get another one at the design facility. Or maybe a diet coke would be better. She thought one of the machines had a diet Dr. Pepper. That would hit the spot. A half a cup of hot coffee and a cold diet Dr. Pepper and she could face the enemy.

  God, how to keep the pressure heat from building to keep the tiles on?

  He came out. They got dressed. From the time Susan called, it took less than twenty minutes for Jennifer and Allen to arrive at computer—command central.

  Two main consoles sat, one in the middle of the room, one angled to the side, about ten feet away at a 45° angle. Two old school-wall light green smooth metal sentries with push-button red and white lights. The facade of the consoles was beige. The lights, the push-button indicators, aligned in neat rows upon the face of the facade, with one or two alone or isolated from its fellows. The button-lights were large, about a half inch square. Large enough to allow a man’s or woman’s finger or thumb to press clearly what needed to be pressed. Jennifer liked the push-button indicators. They didn’t give too easily, but they made a satisfying clicking sound and the light came on or went off when pushed. Of course that meant a desired function was activated or turned off. There was a side panel on both. These buttons were not buttons but had the sense where simply touching them on a flat surface activated the function. However, most of these were for calculations and not for commands.

  Some of the lights held steady. Some blinked. Some were dull, off, but occasionally blinked on, then shut down again. They all had bold black block lettering names underneath their positions on their panels. Susan sat at the console in the center of the room. Jennifer noticed that Delores sat at the second console, surrounded, as it seemed she always was, by her coterie of men. Delores barked orders and they hove-to.

  Jennifer thought of Catherine the Great. The innocent German girl-Tsarina had usurped the crown from her husband by winning the army to her side. An army that would assassinate for her, slay for her, follow her anywhere. Every night Catherine visited a different barracks. In the morning she returned to the palace, another platoon fiercely loyal to her crown and monarchy. What army wouldn’t follow such a woman? Is that how Delores …? But she looked so strong, almost manly herself. Still there were men who …

  “Jennifer! Come on. Get to the CAD. I’ve run the damn thing three times. We’ll solve it eventually of course, but we don’t have the usual luxury of time. Damn! What did I overlook?

  “Jarrod,” Delores said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jarrod said. Like most of her men he was burly, a wrestler or a football player. He sported the standard military haircut. Come to think of it, they all …

  “Check all CB’s, fuses, light bulbs. Run a systems diagnostic on C-1 and C-2. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Jarrod crossed to the shelves of computer drawers about five feet in front of the main console. There was a Circuit Breaker panel between Computer Command 1 and 2 shelf drawers. Little light bulbs illuminated, seven rows of little lights, ten little lights in a row on each C-shelf drawer. The shelves had security handles which had to be released to pull out the drawers. Once pulled out, a chip or a circuit board could be extracted and replaced. Jennifer had heard also that a man or woman with the skill level could solder around circuits on the boards. Supposedly, this would occur only in emergency situations. This was significant, because the drawers with their logic designs and commands would store in memory what they did here, be pulled out, and installed on their vessel.

  Now, each of the 140 little lights blinked or ceased blinking, as they monitored a logic sequence or absence of one, a seemingly random sequence display. One session, they had received training on the logic sequence. They had followed the schematics through every combination and permutation of the AND, OR, and NOT logic gates. She was sure she had forgotten half of it or more than half of it already. Each of Delores’s people, on the other hand, seemed to be quite proficient in this skill area.

  Jarrod pressed a button at the bottom of each shelf. All the bulbs but for one lit up at once. He released the button. The lights extinguished, but for the continual monitoring sequences. He went across the room to a storage cabinet. He took out a small bulb. He came back. He pus
hed the same button. He replaced the burnt out bulb. Now all the lights lit when he pressed the bottom button. A small fuse box sat above the cabinet. Jarrod had a key for the latch. He flipped the latch. He opened the small metal door. With a pen flashlight he examined the fuses. He closed the door. Jennifer heard the latch yield a satisfying snap as he locked it.

  Three other men surrounded Delores, looking on. She looked up. She now saw the couple who had come in. Jennifer realized that all eyes were upon them. For an instant the men and women in the room were more concerned with gossip, than with scientific curiosity and engineering practicality.

  “Allen.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Come here. I’ll bring you up to speed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He crossed to her console. So, even her man was really Delores’ man, Jennifer thought.

  “All CB’s lights, fuses check. They’re a go, Comman—ma’m.”

  “Roger that, Jarrod. Stay your position to monitor sequence.”

  “Aye—Yes ma’m”

  Suddenly Jennifer realized another of her sudden insights. Admittedly, it now was not difficult, and required little psychic energy. Still, it made connection to that empty, disconcerting, disturbing, nagging, itch-void that had been crawling up to her thinking brain from her primitive brain, from cerebellum sparking out to the higher cortex regions, never quite getting there, until now, with the crew’s obvious slips of tongue, their own cortex circuitry betraying them, Broca’s area relaying signals before Wiernecke’s area interfered with interpretation.

  Barnstone wasn’t merely conducting scientific research, imagining scientific scenarios to be played out for the development of cures and treatments, no less a whole new chemo-energy source to drive a food supply. The money wasn’t only coming from his pharmaceutical firm’s deep pockets and stock options. This mysterious facility was a secret base for submarines, perhaps even enemy submarines captured during the cold war or even today.