Deeptide Vents . . . of Fire Page 4

  “Jennifer, don’t stand there staring. You’re needed in the center of things. Come on. You know the clock is our enemy.”

  Jennifer hated that shrill brittle tone to the woman’s and scientist’s voice. Her eyes never looked so myopic, peering over those damn glasses, rubbing her left hand over and over her right, then reversing the process. She stood by the chair.

  Behind Susan’s console, Jennifer’s CAD computer sat. Jennifer sat in her chair. She looked out at a huge glass enclosure. Through the looking glass, at an odd angle, like some exposed ant colony of which half the side visible to the world, workmen at all hours tended a bulky gray-white object, seemingly suspended in space, a ten foot by five foot teardrop or whale outlined blobby mass. It was taking shape, Jennifer thought. Just like her drawings. But now something was wrong.

  She began to enter index codes, matrices, nexus-limits. Soon she saw the problem. Her insight had been right. And, almost at once, she thought she knew what needed to be done.

  “It’s the tiles—”

  “We know that, Jennifer,” Susan said.

  Delores picked up the criticism. “We’ve run that sequence three times, Jennifer. If you and some other party which I won’t mention his name had been here like the rest of us you would have known that also.”

  So the woman was not just a man after all, but just another bitchy woman. She knew what they really meant, the bitch-scientist, and bitch-engineer. Jealous they were, jealous of another woman-competitor because they hadn’t had a hunk in their bed tonight. She was the artsy-fartsy-craftsy-touchy-feely one. What did she know of thermodynamics, and geomicrobiological statuses and sequences? Six years she worked with that woman, her friend, and she still would turn to show her scientist’s arrogant know-it-all ass face and shrill voice. Well, if they knew so much, why were they watching her as she worked the three dimensional design in front of her breaking it into fractoids, redefining our own plane of reality?

  Her graduate instructor had once told her she reminded him more of a geneticist, a genome worker splicing recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid than a commercial design specialist. Marcus was his name. He was great. They had spent long languid dissolute afternoons on another beach, with Brie and Chardonnay There was something about him, and he was the one man she had been fully submissive with, for some reason. A warmer beach, a longer time, a time far away yet captured in dream moments of our memories …

  “When the shuttles re-enter, there is a finite time, usually not much more than twenty minutes until the known time ends. The specs call for more than that, of course, but even at a stretch, they wouldn’t experience the practically constant thermos-pressure that our ship must endure. Therefore the failure of the tiles is inevitable.” Jennifer cleared her throat. She downed a sip of the diet Dr. Pepper she had been nursing since she purchased it topside and came down to enter the room. She waited.

  Grim silence stalked the room. Someone coughed. Someone shuffled papers. Susan looked up. She and Jennifer caught each other’s eyes as they always did when they had the same idea.

  “We need to cool them,” Susan said. Jennifer nodded.

  “Cool them?” Delores said. Her men shuffled uncomfortably. Jennifer noted that when she was unhappy they were unhappy.

  “Or, more accurately, displace the heat. Air condition— no, more like …”

  “. . . a refrigerator,” Jennifer said.

  “A small compressor.”

  “That’s nonsense. It will add too much weight,” Delores said.

  “Not necessarily. We could get a small one. It doesn’t matter if it burns out in six hours or so. Heck, two or one, even.”

  “And, as you see here,” Jennifer was working furiously at her keyboard. Tiles were flying off the unit and returning at different patterns. The model in the large glass enclosure changed angles. “We could cross-patch the design. Remember now, the one advantage we do have in our equations, our heat is constant, in fact a constant for a formula we could employ in our work could probably be derived; we could call it Hc.”

  Jennifer was enjoying herself now. They could all see at last she wasn’t just an artsy-fartsy good looking broad. Uh-huh. She could spin out a scientific query or hypothesis as well, well, almost as well as they could. She continued. She observed they were all listening to her, intently.

  “Anyway, the heat in and around, and probably within the vents will not change very much, will not increase. (At least we hope not, she thought.) That means less tiles are necessary, compensating for the compressor unit addition. And we already have—”

  “—We already have coils in the design for the electric charge. We just piggy-back through a generator’s switch-gear. A small one, of course.”

  Jennifer said nothing about the interruption. Susan had always interrupted her, often finishing her sentences for her. It was a damn irritating habit. She had it right, though. That was what she was going to say. She simply wasn’t that convinced it would work. She looked around her. Oddly, for the first time, for the second time tonight, something that had been nagging at her connected and was revealed.

  It had struck Jennifer as odd before, but now in her mind it coalesced, the eclectic manner the equipment was laid out, computer control drawers from the 60’s and 70’s console and chip equipment from the 80’s and 90’s and some of the panels looked colorful and flat of a contemporary design; somehow it all worked. It was as though this facility had been here for a long time and upgraded, refined, remodeled in stages. Susan continued.

  “It should add little, if any significant weight. We can run the transform projections and polar coordinates later. For now, Jennifer, design … Jennifer! Design the model and run it through the scenario. We’ll try three different sequences. Even three hours will do if it must.”

  Jennifer noticed Susan was starting to bark orders like Delores. She felt like saying, “Aye, running sequences, Aye, ma’am.” She looked over to catch Allen’s eye, but Delores had him occupied with a chart. She turned and began to design and run programs.

  She ran nine sequences and it was only then they realized it was morning, that there might be light in the sky. They knew at once, like a boulder suddenly falls from the face of the mountain, after being perched in one position for so long, they were exhausted. It hit them like that. It slammed into them. Bit by bit, product moment by product moment, they found the weight and distribution of the new equipment and design down to less than one per cent differential.

  Again and again the three women and the three consoles tried varying tangents of degrees less than .02%. The men watched the sequences on the control computers or read ocean charts to determine that the thing could move through tight spaces. The model beyond turned this way and that sometimes propelling through a red laser lit faux-opening slit the smallest size which Susan had proposed the vent might be when they realized that they had reached a realistic probability and could possibly crystallize it later. They decided to get some breakfast and rest until the afternoon.

  Then a blare of blares blared forth!

  The klaxon blasted their ears! Lights flashed all over Delores’s screen. Jennifer covered her ears. She couldn’t imagine the horn was so loud. Susan looked like a deer caught in headlights. She didn’t know what was occurring.

  “Intruder. Perimeter A-1. No, wait. A-2. Damn, they’re fast. A-4 Heading out to sea. Jennifer barely heard the women’s voice.

  “Turn the damn thing off!” Jennifer said.

  Allen went to a near wall and interrupted a circuit by tripping a circuit breaker. To the great relief of all the horn, a great fog horn but at a higher decibel, went silent. Susan looked around for instructions. Jennifer went to her and held her. It never ceased to amaze her how fragile the woman’s bones seemed to be. Jennifer noticed the platoon running to a wall cabinet behind Delores’s console. Suddenly AR15’s, M-16’s, and clips emerged from the cabinet expertly l
ocked and loaded by the troop. A gun belt and Glock 9mm for the commander. She snapped the clip, pulled the bolt, knocked off the safety, brought the first of 15 into the chamber, expertly slid her finger out of the trigger casing and rested it along the barrel. It seemed it was all done in a blur, 8 seconds or less. They were already headed past the large blast door and up the steel frame stairs, their boots metal upon metal.

  “Jennifer, what’s happening?”

  “Let’s go up. It will all be clearer up there.” It occurred to Jennifer as they followed the unit up the stairs that their roles were reversed. She was the one who was leading and taking care of the needy one. Halfway up, she stopped and faced her friend.

  “Susan. I want you to know something. Barnstone, he, things are not what they seem.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Only earlier tonight. I suspected—only earlier tonight.”

  “Then we had best see what’s happening. Hadn’t we?”

  The edge to the damn bitch-voice returning. She was starting to gain control.

  They looked at each other. Jennifer saw she was disappointed with her. Like any academician a scientist’s life is full of political intrigue, careerism, innuendo, back-stabbing. Jennifer suddenly knew Susan felt she had betrayed her somehow. It wasn’t true. Damn! She should have been working with her all night instead of … She nodded. They went upstairs. They opened the door that led to the outside world.

  Delores’s merry band was using its flashlights even though grey light broke through black in the sky. Then almost at another glance, Homer’s rosy-fingered dawn stretched toward the trees at their backs as they traipsed the beach and glanced out to sea. Then, Jarrod, or was it one of the others, Jennifer could not be certain, shouted.

  They ran to the spot. It was the one known as Hodges. He was the biggest and most intimidating of all. Apparently he also had the sharpest eyes. “Out there.”

  He gave the binoculars to Delores. She peered out at the sea’s horizon.

  “Dingy. Three men, persons, possible two men and a woman. Heading out to their mother ship. Came in from the sea. They knew how to avoid the infrared trip sensors. Probably had a vis-detector to see the sequence patterns. Messed up on one when they hauled out at pre-dawn.”

  “Yep. Sums it up all right. Sure was a hole in our defensive scheme, all right.” Jennifer saw silhouettes. She could not be sure who said it. One of the guards topside, who, obviously, had been in another sector location for a while.

  “Shall we go after them?”

  “Negative,” Delores said, in command voice again. “They’re too far gone. May be a sub. Or a freighter along shore lanes. We’ll double permutations. Let’s buy some mechanical devices. They may not he ready for the simple items. It’s possible they don’t know we detected them and they might return.”

  “Jennifer.”

  “Susan, Barnstone wasn’t fully honest with you. He’s made some kind of pact with the pentagon. Delores and her cadets here never left the military. They just haven’t been wearing their uniforms is all.”

  “Why would the military be interested in this work?”

  “Why don’t you tell her, Delores?”

  “That’s classified, ladies. I suggest you stay out of my business.”

  “Why? You’re in ours. Is it biological or biothermal weapons, thermos-devices of some sort, or, oh my God.”

  “Jennifer?”

  “Don’t listen to her doctor. She doesn’t know—”

  “You want to find subterranean passages for, for, what?

  Her mind raced now. Is this how Susan often felt?

  “Espionage, sabotage, troop transport?”

  “That’s quite enough.”

  They stood facing each other. “What are you going to do, Delores? Tell me then kill me?”

  “I said I’ve had enough! I’m responsible for this mission and you’ll fall into line.”

  “Come on. You’re a big woman. You’ve got all the moves, I’m sure. Foot, hand, finger. Do me in. One less mouth to worry about.”

  “Commander!”

  “Commander, now. Even the pretense is gone. Isn’t it, Commander?”

  “Coming.”

  “Jennifer, am I to understand that the army is behind all of this?”

  “Some of it. Probably most of it. Barnstone Pharmaceuticals will still get first benevolence crack. If that means anything.”

  “Then we’ll pull out.”

  “What. This is your life’s work.”

  “I won’t be party to some new ghastly weapon design.”

  “Weapon! That’s it! They want to harness the vents’ energy transformations. Adapt their processes. And I slept with one of them.”

  “Dr. Arthknott. Could you come over here? We found something.”

  They waddled-ran the beach to a high point looking over the sand. Someone had dropped a strap of some sort. One of those extra camera straps that no one seemed to use. Susan took it from Jarrod’s hand. An etching into the strap had an unmistakable symbol of a Model-T automobile and a curving stairwell.

  “My God! Professor Carstairs,” Susan said.

  They returned to the control center. Susan sat at her console. Delores stood over her. The platoon stood around the console. Jennifer stood by her colleague-friend, her hand on her shoulder.

  “Tell me about Carstairs. Is he working for the Russians? Chinese? ISIS? Iranians? Serbs? Don’t act like you know nothing. This is my mission now. I won’t—”

  “The hell it is!” Jennifer looked down. She was once again proud of Susan. The scientist had looked up at the military officer with a deep-set glare she had not seen before, or had not seen for quite a while. She knew it because her colleague had turned to look at her immediately after, breathing hard, a muscle on her cheek twitching. Susan went on.

  “How dare you. Now you listen to me. I am certain that the reason we are able to live and work with the relative freedom we have—”

  “Relative? You don’t—”

  Susan raised her voice. Jennifer had heard the screech before. She hadn’t wanted to hear it again. Now here it was, almost a harpy-skree. It resounded in the water-chambers of her ear. Anything withered in its path when this seemingly frail scientist rose to her full height and expanded the depth of her intensity and desire.

  “I say relative. From the standards of your watch and the men and women who guard our shores and stand at the ready so we need not fear the knock at the door at midnight and for it we are all grateful.”

  Jennifer noticed the group stood a bit taller, their shoulders a bit more braced.

  “But make no mistake. This is my idea. This is my project. This is my design. This is my say-so. It is for science, and ultimately, for the good of the planet, no less for now-incurable diseases. It is not for any destructive element that could impact the world. Thus spake I!”

  “You know nothing of the workings of the world.” The military officer and the scientist stood face to face now.

  “I know about its sea-bottom. I’m the one who knows the most about it. In fact, we can settle it now. I don’t go, you can’t go. You won’t know the first thing of the geo-biological entities or movements or tracking of the vents. I don’t go, you don’t go. And I only go when I’m in charge, as from the beginning.”

  “I could command you. See about this grant money.”

  “Go to hell.” For a moment there was silence. Susan sat down. Then, looking up, she spoke. “Or rather, go ahead. Inquire. I’m sure Dr. Barnstone would like to hear about it. In fact, we’ll call him right now. Jennifer.”

  Jennifer removed her smart phone. She touched the speed dial. Delores nodded to Hodges. A big man, still she was amazed the speed of his approach. He propelled her phone out of her hand.

  Delores sighed. A crack in the armor. The first. Sm
all. But a crack, like a fissure at a vent letting off the first steam ball.

  “All right. For now.”

  Susan had called her bluff. Jennifer felt a little elation. Delores repeated herself, with a different tone. Her authoritative hum had at once returned. “For now.”

  “All right then.”

  Hodges returned Jennifer’s phone into her hand. Had he kept his hand on hers a little too long? Looked into her eyes a little too deeply? It didn’t matter. Not any more. Once she might have worked her way through the group. After all, they seemed attractive, fit, excellent specimens. Her right big toe was larger than the left, a huge toe on huge feet. Men she was with often commented on it, embarrassing her; a few great guys placated her tenderly, then turned to it with high eroticism.

  It always twitched when she had one of her insights. She realized it was twitching now; for she suddenly recognized the reason behind her promiscuity, her dissolution (albeit she was always very careful), her problem. She liked men. And more than this: She regarded them as specimens to study, to see how each new body reacted as she took it beneath her. Each new body smelling of maleness undulating and moaning beneath her, like some great mysterious tubule creature, her bedrooms and motel rooms laboratories. It was only when her experiments in her lab were complete, when her dissections and catalytic conversions could show results, when she conquered them fully, only then wouldst she explode in her own exquisite pleasure shower of release. So powerful sometimes blazes of light cascaded in the back of her brain, and, for a short moment, she lost consciousness.

  How strange she was, to want to be bound to women but to dominate men. Even her relationship with Susan might be defined that way. She had tied herself to the scientist, for she admired intelligence and hypothetical inquiry. Susan had entered her life, rescued her from the mundane of mere drawings to the adventure of discovery. She knew she would do anything for her.