Steve Alten - Vostok

The sea moved inland, becoming a twisting river that separated a rift valley .

NA GIBOR… DORSHEY YICHUDCHA… KEBAVAT SHOMREM …

Mountains rose along either bank as the river emptied into a vast lake, its waters dark and forboding…

BARCHEM TEHAREM… RACHAMEY ZIDEKATCHA… TAMID GOMLEM …

On the western bank appeared an alien dwelling that was somehow familiar…

HASIN KADOSH… BEROV TUVECHA… NAHEL ADOTECHA …

My consciousness hovered over the center portion of the dwelling until it was drawn through a glass partition .

YAHID GE’EA… LEAMECHA PENNE… ZOCHREY KDUSHATECHA …

I was inside a dark chamber, the only light coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offered a view of the lake and the snow-covered peaks of the mountains rising above the far eastern bank. An extraterrestrial being was seated before the glass, its demeanor melancholy as it stared outside at the weather .

SHAVATENU KABEL… USHEMA ZAKATENU… YODE TA’ALUMOT… I had moved to hover over the life-form when my consciousness was suddenly drawn into its aura by a magnetic force, inhaling me into a vortex of physicality. And I could hear!

“Zachary, this woman is here tae speak with you. Are ye sober?”

I stood, my temper flaring . “Of course, I’m sober. Hi, I’m Zachary Wallace.”

“C’mon, Zach, wake up!”

I floated in a pool of warmth and serenity, my consciousness gazing down upon the Manta, adrift in the crystal-clear water. Through the cockpit glass I witnessed Jonas straddling my vacant body, pushing against my chest until—

— Gravity gained a foothold, dragging me back into my flesh-bound prison.

Registering the blood rushing into my face, I opened my eyes. “Sorry. Did I oversleep?”

“Oversleep? Jesus … ” Jonas climbed off me, falling back into his seat. “According to the bio-sensors built into your harness, you all but died.” He pointed to a flashing screen showing my steadily rising vitals. “At one point your heart rate dropped below ten beats a minute, and your blood pressure hit goose-eggs. What the hell happened?”

I adjusted my seat, sitting up. “I don’t know. I mean, I know what happened, only it wasn’t me doing it. I was just sort of along for the ride.”

“Try speaking in coherent sentences.”

“I had an out-of-body experience, and instead of sticking around, my consciousness was in another time and place. It had slipped inside another being’s body. And then I was back in my body, in my father’s resort. Seven years ago.”

Jonas just sat there and stared at me like a guy who realizes — too late — that he’s hitched his mule to the wrong wagon.

“Something big is happening here, J.T. Get us going and I’ll try to explain.”

Jonas shook his head, then buckled his harness and powered up the engines, reengaging the autopilot. “I’m listening.”

“There’s a big piece of the puzzle still missing, but I’m beginning to grasp what’s going on. At first I thought this entity had selected me to disseminate its zero-point energy technology to mankind because, well—”

“Because you’re smart.”

“More like intuitive, but, yeah. Then I started having these really lifelike dreams, like this one and the one on the plane. In these dreams I’m living on another planet during another time period.”

“Past or present?”

“To be honest I’m not sure, but I’m leaning toward the past. The planet — it’s called Charon and it’s in big trouble. Something devastating is going to happen and this guy, the one I share my consciousness with, is trying to figure out a way to save his people. By reentering the E.T.’s ship and accessing the portal, I think I might be able to help him.”

My analysis did not sit well with Jonas. He stared at the portside wing, his mind grappling with this new information. Glancing at his bio-sensors, I watched as his blood pressure climbed.

“Jonas, you okay?”

“You said you were back at your father’s resort seven years ago. You realize that none of this would be happening if you hadn’t come to me back then, asking me to invest in your company? Your son would be safe, and David would be alive.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Yeah, we do. Because if David hadn’t died, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting in this sub with you. So why do I get the distinct feeling that these extraterrestrials are manipulating events in order to make sure you get back to Lake Vostok to save their sorry asses!”

Jonas was livid, but I understood where he was coming from. David Taylor had been an experienced pilot. Out of all the possible multiverses that could have been realized from his recent encounter with the Liopleurodon , my guess was that only a few would have actually resulted in his death.

Was Jonas right? Was I being maneuvered into a specific reality that served the E.T.s?

It made me wonder how many cause-and-effect dominoes had to tumble into place just for me to be en route to Vostok. Big Oil conspiring to subvert new energy systems, MJ-12 burning my assembly plant to the ground, William and Brandy’s kidnapping, Susan’s murder… Was I living out this specific multiverse of eventualities through free will, or was I following a course of the entity’s choosing?

“Jonas … ” I turned to console him, only to realize he had fallen asleep.

The farther we traveled inland, the deeper our underwater passage descended, reflecting the thickening ice sheet overhead. Donning a headset, I passed the hours switching back and forth from the white noise of sonar to a classic rock CD.

We had closed to within fourteen nautical miles of the Amery Ice Shelf’s intersection with the Lambert Glacial Basin when I heard a faint rush of water over sonar. Disengaging the autopilot, I altered our course and honed in on the sound, which was originating from the southeast.

The horizon of water sandwiched between the bottom of the ice sheet and East Antarctica’s ancient geology was changing rapidly, the dark silt below yielding to patches of brown sea grass, the width of the passage narrowing quickly, forcing me to reduce our speed. Once placid waters became a minefield of eddies, each invisible swirl of current threatening to drive the Manta into the ice sheet.

Jonas awoke on our second collision, the submersible pilot disturbed to find our passage reduced to a ten- to twelve-foot-wide divide. “Where are we?”

“We’re nearing the glacial basin, the very beginning of the ice shelf. The subglacial river’s close. You can hear it on sonar.”

Jonas took over command. Guided by sonar, he directed us farther to the south.

We felt the river before we saw it, the current pelting us with watermelon-size ice cubes too clear to see and too numerous to dodge. Fifteen million years ago, the waterway had been as wide as the Amazon, twisting across East Antarctica to empty into the enormous delta now occupied by the ice shelf. We only realized the extent of the river’s boundaries when Jonas dived the sub to escape the current and found that the bottom had dropped nearly one hundred feet.

Hazards were everywhere. The riverbed was littered with vortex-channeling boulders and petrified tree trunks as wide as redwoods. Chunks of ice gouged out of the bottom of the ice sheet soared past us like miniature comets.

“Activate the sonar, Zach.”

I pinged, sending sound waves reflecting off objects both stationary and propelled by the current. It was impossible, similar to driving a racecar down a crowded speedway — the wrong way.

Then a different blip appeared on sonar, and I knew this one was going to be trouble.