Gillian Anderson - The Sound of Seas

The truck had been refitted for driving across the uneven Antarctic terrain. Resting atop forty-four-inch wheels with thick axles to absorb the rugged thumps and dips, the truck had an indomitable suspension system, side skids to prevent the truck from rolling over into a crevasse or sudden break in the ice, thirty-two gears for shifting out of almost any landscape, and a reinforced passenger cabin to protect the occupants against unlikely falls and landslides. There were also forward and rear winches, solar panels to supplement the 2,200-liter fuel tank, several additional tanks of gas, and a powerful V6 engine. On the roof rack were two insulated cases. One was filled with bottled water, oxygen, first-aid supplies, and battery-powered heaters. The other carried shovels, axes, ropes, pitons, blankets, flashlights, flares, spare clothing, and other gear.

No one had bothered to unload the truck from the last move; station personnel were still busy restoring communications and restarting the electrical systems that had been shut down during the unexpected transit. Dr. Cummins brought along a backpack filled with extra water and snacks; as soon as the vehicle was fueled, it was ready to go. Siem was busy taking care of that from a tank that was still attached to the skis that had been used to haul it here. He waved as the two scientists boarded.

The truck’s solar panel had been left on and the inside was warm when the occupants settled in. The parkas, gloves, and scarves came off immediately. Though the gear had been needed for the fifteen-foot trek to the Tacoma, their skin would heat very quickly inside the truck. They didn’t want to perspire, since sweat would heat and chill their flesh to dangerous extremes.

Dr. Cummins raised her sun goggles just long enough to poke on the GPS. The coordinates had been entered from inside the radio room; the truck could practically drive itself. Before they got underway, the scientist looked at Mikel through her dark-tinted goggles.

“You are preoccupied,” she said. “With the mission?”

He nodded unpersuasively.

“But also by something else.”

He nodded again. “Political stuff at the nonprofit where I work,” he told her.

“Ah ha,” Dr. Cummins replied. “You know, Dr. Jasso, it’s dangerous out there—”

“I’m focused, Dr. Cummins. Believe that. I won’t do anything to jeopardize this mission.”

“I’m glad of that,” she said. “However, there’s one more thing. How to put this?” She stopped everything for a moment and looked at Mikel. “As I indicated back there, I’ve been on many, many expeditions with fellow scientists. All ages, all nationalities, all kinds of temperaments, all kinds of agendas . I know when not to press a colleague for information. Many of them—and you too, I believe—are often uncertain about what they are about to undertake. They might be concerned about a vague goal, worried about censure for a radical idea, afraid because they flat-out lied to get funding, said they knew more than they did. That’s Fieldwork 101. So all I’m going to ask is this: Which of those has caused you to clam up?”

She put a little extra burr on the last two words so they came out “clahm oop” and added a touch of levity to a serious question. Mikel smiled a little, then exhaled and stared out the window at the jagged expanse that headed to a rolling horizon.

“All of the above?” she prompted.

“That’s a very fair analysis,” he admitted. He looked back at the weathered but compassionate face. “Dr. Cummins, I don’t like clamming up. I don’t learn anything when I can’t share. So now that we’re alone—we are, aren’t we?”

“No hidden mics or open lines,” she assured him.

He nodded once. “Here’s what I can say with certainty. I have spent my professional life studying a human civilization that, as I began to tell you, thrived approximately thirty or forty thousand years ago,” he said. “But it’s possibly older than that. Much older, if they went through an evolution similar to our own.” He shrugged. “Even that may not be the case. I know absolutely nothing of their origins.”

He paused to let that sink in. Dr. Cummins needed the respite: she said “hmmm” three times before she nodded for Mikel to go on.

“My colleagues and I, and those who came before us—at least four centuries of researchers—thought the occupants of this land might have been protohumans of some kind,” he continued. “Recent experiences I had out there—” he pointed almost accusingly toward the ice, “have proved that idea to be incorrect. These people, the Galderkhaani, were modern in every sense of the word, with sophisticated structures and language, with ships that sailed in the air and sea—”

“Galderkhaani,” she said, making sure she got the name.

“Yes.”

“How?” she interrupted, “How?”

“You mean, what was the scientific mechanism that created ancient technology, or how did we not know an advanced civilization was out there?”

“All of that!” she said. She switched on the ignition and the truck hummed loudly, a fine vibration tingling through the seat, as she put it into drive and set out. “For starters, just biologically speaking, there is no model of evolution that places modern humans in that time ­period.”

“I am very aware of that,” Mikel said.

“Have you seen a likeness? A carving.”

“I have seen… yes. They had ruddy, exotic eyes, but… well, they were groomed, clothed in togalike garments. They had a complex language. They were not Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon. They were Homo sapiens .”

“Dr. Jasso, are there remains out there?”

“There is so much out there,” he answered. He needed to lay a little more groundwork before diving into the spiritual nature of his contact with the Galderkhaani. “As I sit here, looking out at the world, our world, I can hardly believe the things I’ve seen and heard. But it’s all real. More to the point, that explosion we saw, it is linked to ancient conduits that ran beneath the cities, powered by various mechanisms using the heat and flow of deep pools of magma. Something caused the prime conduit, what they called the Source, to overload and destroy the entire civilization. Pompeii writ very, very large.” He nodded ahead. “The pillar of fire we saw was a surviving part of that.”

“And the face within?”

“A surviving spirit,” Mikel told her.

That stopped her, again. After a long moment she asked, “You’ve seen it?”

“Yes,” he said. Then went on: “And others.”

“Living Galder… Galderkhaani?” she asked, pressing him.

“No,” he said. “They were spirit.”

Now she made a face. “That’s just great.”

“I didn’t imagine it, hallucinate it, or make it up,” he said.

“You broke your wrist, bruised your face. You appear to have taken quite a beating—”

“So I could have hit my head and imagined everything I just told you? Yes. That is possible,” Mikel said. “Only that isn’t what happened.”

He held off telling her about the olivine tiles that were like sophisticated living neurons. He didn’t want to hand her so much seeming fantasy that she turned back.

“Fine, Dr. Jasso, you didn’t dream these things and they’re not the result of a concussion. But what evidence do you have for any of it?” Her expression, like her voice, was suddenly very dubious.

“It’s all out there,” he gestured ahead. “If you go down into that pit, enter the tunnels, I have no doubt you will see ruined structures under the ice. You may see conduits that were used to transport the ancients via wind—”

“Wind?”

“Incredible wind generated by the heat of the magma,” he said.