Gillian Anderson - The Sound of Seas

But her fingers found no purchase, either falling short or else she had turned—she couldn’t be sure, for at the same time Caitlin’s vision grew misty, as if she were seeing through tears. And then she was seeing tears, weeping and screaming inside and out as the world swirled away and she fell to the floor of the airship gondola and found herself once more in blackness.

The last word she heard was “Mother!”

“Mother?”

Caitlin awoke looking into her mother’s eyes. They were framed in a familiar, worried face that was barely visible against a bright overhead light.

“Doctor!” Nancy O’Hara called.

Caitlin heard her mother, heard her own voice through the folds of a stiff pillow that was bunched up against her ears. There was something in her nose, something in her arm, something on a finger—

“Ja-Jacob,” Caitlin rasped. Her throat was raw, sore, not at all like it felt in Galderkhaan. The air was machine-blown, unnatural, unhealthy. Everything around her reeked of illness. Her shoulders ached as though her arms had been pulled at, hard. When she opened her eyes she had to blink several times to clear away a thin film of gunk that was on them. Her face smelled of rubbing alcohol, beneath which there was a hint of—ash? Smoke? In her hair?

Why was that there? she wondered. The last thing she had felt was clean air and tears. The last thing she had smelled was the strong smell of hemp. The last thing she had heard, and the last thing she had seen—

“Vilu…” she wept softly. “Jacob.”

Nancy O’Hara had turned away and didn’t hear her daughter. Caitlin heard her calling for someone. She tried to get up, felt—

That isn’t the handrail of a gangplank , she thought with horror that made her recoil. They were the aluminum bars of the hospital bed. Her eyes coming into focus now, she became aware of the equipment blinking and humming to her left. She saw her mother, but did not recognize the figure moving toward her through the open door.

A man in a lab coat bent over her, looked into her eyes. They still felt gummy; the tears she had felt had belonged to Bayarma, in Galderkhaan, not to her. The white light of an ophthalmoscope seemed to pin the back of her skull to the bed. She fell back as though she’d been shot. She tried to blink but two fingers firmly held one eye open, then the other. The man said something she couldn’t quite make out.

“…haf pen anywar?”

“S-sorry?” Caitlin said. “I don’t… don’t understand.”

“Do you have pain anywhere?”

“I—I don’t know… arm… IV?”

“Yes.”

“No… I’m numb. Shit, I’m back.”

“Just rest,” the man said as he killed the light. The hospital room came into clear focus. Caitlin saw an Asian man and her mother’s face.

“Jacob,” Caitlin said to Nancy O’Hara. “Where is he?”

“Honey, Jacob is home, with your father,” Nancy assured her.

“No!” Caitlin cried. “I mean—his soul. His spirit. Him . Where is he?”

“Where? Caitlin, I promise you, he’s home, he’s all right,” she insisted.

“No, please listen,” Caitlin said. She tried to rise again from her pillow, from the bed. “Something has happened to him!” she said, her fingers fumbling with the bedrail. “He needs me!”

There was talk, there was movement, there were hands on Caitlin’s shoulders and legs. Caitlin struggled against all of it.

“Let me go! Ben? Ben!”

“Calm down, Dr. O’Hara,” a male voice said soothingly. “You’ve inhaled a lot of smoke and were nonresponsive—”

“Dammit, I’m fine! Fine! ” Caitlin yelled. “I am not suffering from disorientation, confusion, delirium, or any goddamn thing else!”

“… five milliliters,” she heard the doctor say over his shoulder.

“Mom, call Dad—ask him to check on my boy!”

There was a pinch, an injection of diazepam, and Caitlin stopped struggling almost at once.

“Goddammm,” she slurred. “Please! No! Must… get… back…”

And then she slept.

Mikel Jasso couldn’t believe his good fortune—or his bad luck.

Casey Skett, master of dead things, apparently knew people better than Mikel did. It was too early to say how any of this would turn out but, against the odds, the archaeologist had gotten more than he asked for. Indeed, now that Mikel thought of it, Skett was more artful and clever than any of them: he had fooled Flora Davies for years. That took skill.

As he and Dr. Cummins made their way through the station to where the truck was parked, the scientist was busy checking the latest images of drifts and ice cracking along the proposed route to the pit.

“The fractures don’t seem to have made it this far,” she said. “Readings from our remote automated systems say the heat has quite receded.”

“It’s fickle,” he said.

“You talk as if it has consciousness,” Dr. Cummins remarked. “Does it, Dr. Jasso?”

“Thoughtful fire? What would Dr. Bundy say to that,” he answered without answering.

Dr. Cummins hmmmed as they walked on in silence.

Mikel was peering ahead, through the alternating light and dark of the interconnected modules, his mind back on Skett… and Flora. He was not sure how he even felt anymore about Flora and the Group. He did not believe it was incumbent on any employer to keep employees informed on the inner workings of the firm. Either you trusted your superior or you did not.

But this withholding… that’s a big one , he thought.

Mikel had trusted Flora and now he did not, and he wasn’t sure where that left him. If she didn’t know everything about the Group’s past, she had to have known—and withheld—at least some vital information about why they were seeking Galderkhaani artifacts. That was a dangerous secret to keep from agents in the field. Mikel and the handful of others should have been given the option of whether to risk their lives to obtain and turn over such powerful tools for something other than pure research.

What was more troubling was that he couldn’t even be sure she was not playing Casey Skett or both of them playing him. Bad cop, worse cop.

Nonetheless, he had no choice but to let this play out as Skett had laid things out. At the very least, Mikel told himself, he would learn more about the power of the stones.

The truck assigned to Dr. Cummins was a Toyota Tacoma. It sat hefty and fat on the ice just outside the exit of the central red module.

“I was hoping for a dozer,” Dr. Cummins said. “The treads are good for getting over small crevasses, the plow for filling them in.”

“Maybe Dr. Bundy doesn’t want us to get where we’re going,” Mikel suggested.

The woman shook her head as she pulled on a wool cap then tugged her parka over it. “He’s a snob, and gruff, but he’s devoted to science and learning and, believe it or not, to this evolving mission.”

Mikel would have to take her word for that. He found it appropriate that while he had lost faith in one woman, he did not hesitate to trust the judgment of another. That was the bequest of his grandmother in Pamplona, a borderline mystic who knew her Bible inside out and also read everything she could find about obscure religions, talked to every priest she ever met, bounced new ideas, strange ideas, off her only grandson. Her interest in the arcane was what spurred his own fascination with ancient civilizations and set him on his career path. Even if his father hadn’t been in prison for armed robbery, Mikel couldn’t have had a more compelling and substantial role model.