Warren Fahy - Fragment

“What, pray tell, are ‘triffids,’ Doctor?” Thatcher wheezed as they ran.

“Never mind,” Geoffrey answered, and a thrill swelled inside him-what on Earth had they found here?

Chlorine dioxide gas was replaced with filtered air, and the hexagonal entry hatch inside the Trigon’s germ-warfare-proof air dock swung open.

Standing before them was a slender redheaded woman in a T-shirt, jeans, and Adidas sneakers. “You can take the helmets and suits off now,” she instructed in a crisp voice.

Geoffrey pulled off the helmet and his ears popped as they adjusted to the higher air pressure inside the base.

Geoffrey cocked his head; she was not only attractive, but seemed very familiar. “Do I know you? Oh, SeaLife -of course. You were on the show! Sorry.”

She forgave him with a nod and a friendly smile. “They wouldn’t let me go home, so I persuaded them to let me hang around and help. In real life I’m a botanist, though not as esteemed as the ones they’ve shipped in.”

He extended his hand. “Geoffrey.”

“Geoffrey…?” She took his hand.

“Binswanger.”

She frowned. “Hmm.”

Geoffrey smiled. “Problem?”

“I could never marry you.” She smiled.

“Oh really?”

“My name’s Nell Duckworth. The only reason I ever wanted to get married was to change my last name.”

“Ah.”

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You could always hyphenate it,” Thatcher interposed drily, clearly unhappy at having his presence disregarded.

“That’s funny, Thatcher. You with your great name. By the way, Nell, this is Thatcher Redmond.” Geoffrey presented Thatcher with a regal flourish.

“Pleasure,” Thatcher said with a curt dip of his head, but he avoided eye contact with Nell and moved on toward a cluster of others gathered farther down the corridor.

She shook her head. “Another Nobel Prize winner, no doubt.”

“Tetteridge, as a matter of fact,” Geoffrey said. “Nobel Prize winners are much nicer. You could always just keep your own name, you know.” He winked.

She reached out to poke him in the ribs but hesitated. Geoffrey sensed that her moment of levity had passed, and her eyes drifted as some sadness caught up to her.

Geoffrey smiled, curious. “What’s going on, Nell?”

“I was hoping you were going to tell me.”

He detected a surprising fear under the irony. “Seriously?”

She sighed. “A lot of people have died here. And they were my friends.” She looked at him.

Geoffrey was alarmed, and also intrigued by the intelligence he saw working in her eyes. “I see.”

Thatcher returned, walking briskly up to them. He gave Nell an up-and-down look and then addressed Geoffrey. “I believe we’re being summoned, Doctor.”

“Don’t call me Doctor , Thatcher,” Geoffrey sighed, and smiled encouragingly at Nell. “Come on.” He gently jabbed her in the ribs with a finger. “Let’s crash this party.”

The conference room, which doubled as an observation bay when the table was pushed against the wall, occupied most of the north side of the Trigon.

The tilted window of laminated glass overlooked the lime-green slopes that rose to the straight edge of the island’s rim against the blazing blue sky.

Seated around the conference table were a scattering of military brass and about twenty American and British scientists, some quite well known, some Geoffrey did not recognize. He spotted Sir Nigel Holscombe, a favorite of his, who had hosted many a classic BBC nature documentary series.

A satellite-uplinked teleconference screen dominated the western end of the room. In the Oval Office, the President sat behind his massive desk with his advisors seated nearby, among them the secretaries of Defense and State.

“I hope we’re coming through all right,” the President began. “I apologize for the delay.”

Geoffrey glanced at Nell with wide eyes.

But Nell’s focus was on the screen, her expression intent.

Dr. Cato answered, “Yes sir, Mr. President, we hear you fine.”

“Good. As everyone here knows by now, I trust, the tragic incident on SeaLife was unfortunately not a hoax. The cover story was invented to buy us time to make an important decision. I wanted to share what we have now learned with the most distinguished scientific minds we could assemble before having to make that fateful decision. Dr. Cato, please bring us all up to speed on the situation as it now stands.”

Thatcher munched on a peanut from a bag he had stashed in pocket number eight. He observed Dr. Cato with contempt. Suffering from an apparent bout of professional jealousy, Cato had roundly snubbed Thatcher at the Bioethics Convention in Rio last winter, and Thatcher, for one, had not forgotten it.

“Thank you, Mr. President. I’m Wayne Cato, chairman of Caltech’s Biology Division and project leader of the Enterprise research team. To give us all some crucial background, Doug Livingstone, our on-site geologist, will explain how we think Henders Island got here in the first place. Doug?”

The tall geologist with a wing of salt-and-pepper hair over his craggy face rose and introduced himself in an upper-class British accent. “This graphic put together by the geologic team on the Enterprise illustrates what we have been able to reconstruct about the origins of Henders Island.”

An animation of the Earth appeared on a presentation screen behind him.

“Seven hundred and fifty million years ago, a supercontinent known as Rodinia split into three pieces. One hundred and fifty million years later, these pieces smashed back together. They formed a second supercontinent we call Pannotia.”

On the screen, the Earth rotated as a sprawling supercontinent cracked into three continents and slammed together.

“Another hundred and fifty million years passed. Then, just as the Cambrian explosion of life introduced an astonishing variety of multicellular species on Earth, Pannotia tore into four vast segments. These pieces would become Siberia, northern Europe, North America, and the supercontinent geologists call Gondwana, which included Antarctica, South America, Africa, India, and China.”

Livingstone waited as the animation caught up.

“Tens of millions of years passed as the new continents converged to form Laurasia, which slammed into Gondwana two hundred seventy-five million years ago and formed the super-continent known as Pangaea, where dinosaurs emerged. Pangaea started breaking apart a hundred and eighty million years ago into the seven continents familiar to us today, which is why dinosaur fossils can now be found on every modern continent.”

The geologist flicked through some stock images of the violent coasts of Cornwall and Alaska.

“Over the eons, landmasses continued to split and collide, dragging mountain ranges under the sea and shoving ocean beds up to create the Andes, Rockies, and Himalayas. Fragments of land continued to break off continents. Some drifted thousands of miles. We know that Alaska, for example, is a train wreck of giant chunks cast off from China and other parts of the world.”

Livingstone clicked to the next animation, which appeared to be a tighter detail of the previous globe.

“We now believe that there was a fifth fragment of Pannotia. Probably about the size of New Zealand, this fragment somehow managed to dodge the geological pie-fight for half a billion years, riding up and down the Pacific rim while being relentlessly ground down between tectonic plates. All that remains above water of this fragment today is Henders Island, which seems to have been upthrusting just faster than erosion can melt it under the sea.”