A Dream of Ice (13 page)

Mikel lowered his goggles and squinted. There appeared to be a surface he could stand on about twenty feet below him. He couldn't be sure; it could have been just a shadow. But if he hesitated, if he started to think, he would be paralyzed. Finding cracks in the wall of ice that he could fit his fingers into, he unhooked from the rope and slowly, very slowly, climbed by hand and spiked foot down the wall. Then he hit a spot where there was nothing to grip. Mikel closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the ice. He had to continue, no matter what the cost. He jerked one foot out of the wall and, gripping his last handholds, jerked the other foot out. Lowering himself by extending his arms, he let the spikes on the soles of his feet search for purchase—

Suddenly, he lost his grip and with the claws on his crampons screeching against the ice, he slid. The drop lasted no more than two or three seconds, though it felt like ten and ended with him landing hard on solid rock. His ankle twisted beneath him. Whether it was a ledge or the bottom of the crevasse didn't matter so much in that moment.

I'm breathing
, he thought.
Why the hell am I breathing? This should be ocean down here.
He didn't even hear the sea.

Gingerly, he curled over and got up on his hands and knees. He looked around, no longer damning his head lamp, and froze.

The gray-black rock he was on looked
tiled
. It was all hexagons fitted perfectly together. His mind leaped to ancient peoples, their carvings, but reminded himself more rationally that, under certain conditions rock could form hexagons by itself. Slow lava could harden and fracture into six-sided columns if it was cooled by contact with ice, and if ice sheets moved across the surface for years it could smooth the rock to this even expanse. He would begin with that sensible assumption—well, it was sensible if he conveniently forgot the fact that there are no volcanoes on the east side of Antarctica.

He was kneeling on a long lump of rock. He paused, questioning his judgment—was this really a lump of rock? He searched through his pockets for the first expendable item he could find, which turned out to be a pencil. He placed it on the rock and it rolled haltingly to the left. There was a slight curve here. Could he be on top of a lava tube?

He then cast his light over the ice above him.

There were moving water droplets here too. Could something have melted all the ice that once filled this space?

Mikel noted the direction the water droplets were blowing and began to crawl toward whatever was blowing them.
Could something have melted all the ice that once filled this space?
he wondered. He had not moved more than half a body length, before his hand knocked against something. He backed up and pivoted his neck so that the head lamp hit the spot.

A human fist was protruding from the rock.

With a stab of horror, Mikel scuttled backward but kept the light on the hand. The fist did not move. Finally he crawled close again, taking off his head lamp so he could direct it more easily. To his relief, the fist was not human. It was rock, purposely sculpted to look like a human hand. And it was not the only sculpture—adjacent was another wrist that ended in a differently shaped hand, one with two fingers pointed outward, the other fingers curled in. A bar, like a scepter, was in another hand, pointing up. Mikel was too stunned by
his finding to think about what it was he was seeing, to process the enormity of the discovery. He tugged on the object but it was stuck fast.

Edging forward, Mikel stopped again almost immediately. This time he swept the light over the whole surface. What he saw did not seem possible.

It was like finding Pompeii. The basalt rock held dozens of objects. He recognized a knife, bizarrely twisted; a bowl; a carving of the face of a baby. A huge rock thrust from the surface was in front of him and it was tessellated with a mosaic of olivine-green crystals. The archaeologist in him trumped all else and he pounced forward. He approached it with joy bordering on rapture. When he touched the stone he felt it vibrating.

No. Humming.

Mikel yanked off his glove, and as he gripped the stone, a wave of red broke across his mind. The world skewed, exploded, filled with a sulfurous smell like he was back on the airplane at Montevideo—

Then a weight fell on his left shoulder. Mikel screamed, turned, and skittered backward. When his light finally landed on his target, and a string of curses flew from his mouth with the speed and duration that only a Basque could deliver, there was Siem kneeling on the rock next to him, stunned and shaking. He was still reaching out with the hand he'd placed on Mikel's shoulder, but his gaze was on the protruding objects all around them.

“What
is
this?” whispered Siem. “
How
is this?”

“Shut up,” Mikel snapped.

Siem closed his mouth and just looked at him, scared.

Collecting himself, Mikel sat up and waited for his pounding pulse to subside. Siem had pulled him back—but from where?
Damn it
, he thought, now he had a witness. “How the hell did you get down here anyway?”

“I . . . rappelled,” Siem said, following the glow of his own head lamp. “There was an argument. Bundy didn't want me to follow you
but I made him see we couldn't let you—I mean—we already lost two people out here.”

Mikel had to make a decision quickly. If he allowed Siem to see this, then Siem had to die. Mikel could make it happen, regardless of the man's six-foot-seven frame. But he was just a kid, and scared, and he trusted Mikel. So the archaeologist moved to block further inspection with his body.

“Siem,” Mikel said, “get back up to the surface.”

“Why?”

“Somebody has to tell them to move Halley VI off the ice shelf.”

Siem started to ask why again but changed his mind.

“Because it's melting,” Mikel answered anyway. That much was true. “These objects, probably from an old shipwreck, will be gone soon. You will be too if you don't go.”

“But what about you?” Siem asked. “I saw the rip marks in the ice. It looks to me like you fell.”

“I climbed down,” Mikel answered. “Not elegantly, but I made it . . . and I'll make it back. I really have to examine a few of these objects before I follow you. But you—you might be saving some lives if you leave now. They'll need time to make evacuation plans.”

Siem almost turned to go but stopped. “Climbing down is easier than climbing up. I'm not sure you can make it.”

“I'll make it,” Mikel insisted. “Thanks for the concern. Truly.”

With a sigh, he turned to go. “I hope it's worth it,” he said as he started back up.

Mikel watched him disappear into the blackness, then looked back at the olivine mosaic and thought, unequivocally,
If anything is worth dying for, this is it.

M
ikel didn't move for at least ten minutes after the last scuffling sound drifted down from Siem's ascent. He just stared at the olivine mosaic with a feeling of almost physical hunger.

Each of the olivine tiles embedded in the rock had been etched. Each had an ethereal, internal glow that he could not explain other than through some kind of phosphorescent content. The characters showed a predominance for snakelike crescents and S-shapes, resembling those that comprised the triangular symbol on the troublesome artifact he had brought back to New York. But these were more complex and had many more variations. He was definitely looking at a written language. Seen in aggregate like this, it was obviously more advanced than the artifacts the Group had collected over the years had led them to believe.

Mikel's hand strayed to his radio. The Tac-XI unit was international, keyed to either general radio receivers or specific programmed phone numbers. His impulse was to contact Flora. But of course, the radio wouldn't work this far down. Not unless there was a direct opening to the surface. His hand dropped and he felt almost grateful. There were no hoops to jump through, insufficient explanations that would
feel like silt in his mouth compared to the magnificence of what lay before him.

Where to begin?

He moved with caution, remembering the incapacitation he'd felt on the airplane as that small artifact had hummed through the camera case into his chest, how his mind had reeled and possibly hallucinated. He could have been setting himself up for far worse than that now.

So what are you going to do?
he asked himself.
Scurry back up with Siem?

Practically in slow motion at first, then with a bold thrust, Mikel reached toward the stone, his fingers opening like fronds. His hands hovering over the stone, he felt the humming without touching it. It reminded him of a tuning fork, soothing rather than disturbing. After nearly a minute he let one hand drift down and grasp the mosaic.

A red flood rushed into his mind so vigorously that he felt as if he were falling over. He cried out and clutched at the olivine-studded stone with his other hand. A rank odor rose toward him, the smell of sulfur filling his nose and throat—making him gag. He could feel the hum of the stone growing more vibrant, as if it were using his entire body to amplify itself. Afraid that it would shake loose his grip, he leaned forward, resting his head in his hands and gripping the stone as tightly as he could. The mosaic was fading now, though it was still there, still tangible.

And then suddenly, he was looking at a room. It was all around him but he wasn't in it—his hands were still on the mosaic and his knees felt like an extension of the rock. He willed himself to look around the hallucination, the vision, whatever it was.

He saw a tall chamber with smooth but fantastically twisted walls, all dark gray.
Basalt
, he realized, but no lava flow he'd ever seen created such spirals or—his eyes traveled up—a latticework dome. The grid held glass and above that, thin smoke drifted across a bright blue sky.

This was the work of artisans.

Of Galderkhaani.

His heart pounded against his chest as he peered incredulously into the living past. The latticework, a complex of knots, had an overall counterclockwise spiral shape that was mirrored by the floor, which held an enormous double-armed spiral. One arm of the spiral was the same smooth basalt as the walls but made simply, without twists or adornments. The basalt also provided a solid center to the spiral. The other, recessed into the floor, was filled with clear water. Every few feet, a cluster of flames seemed to float mysteriously upon the water's surface with no materials or gas pipes feeding the small fires.

These fires had to be decorative he thought. Nothing about their strength or position suggested they were used for light or heat. Nor was there direct sunlight anywhere in the chamber. He believed he could make out a walkway just below the dome that sported flames dancing in stone braziers built into the wall—or did they protrude from the wall?

Everything seemed to have the same regular texture, like plastic poured in a mold. Below the walkway, the walls were sculpted in the shape of shelves. Panes of opaque white quartz enclosed the shelves, but enough of the panes were open for Mikel to see stacks of parchments, hundreds of them, piled in no particular order. This had to be a library, but the librarian would not have met Flora's meticulous standards.

Flora.

It was a real-world thought reassuring him that at least he still had some control over his own mind. And, yes, he still felt the stone in his hands and smelled sulfur. This
was
merely a projection of some kind, like a hologram. Suddenly, he was staggered by the realization of where he could go, what he might learn, if he figured out how to “drive” the mosaics.

Returning to what he could actually see with his eyes, he surveyed
the room. A second, wider walkway directly beneath the first provided access to the shelves as well as space for furniture, which seemed to bubble from the rock. Small tables held stone cups with steam rising from them. Suddenly, the smell of sulfur lessened, replaced by the gathering scent of—what was that?

It was jasmine tea.

Stone couches and chairs cushioned with bright, gem-colored pillows stood near the tea tables and as Mikel's eyes adjusted to the dimmer light here, he saw that there were a few dozen people in the room.

Not just people: citizens
, he thought. Adults, all. Proud and rich with
purpose
. They had the carriage of women and men who belonged here. He longed to catalog all the detail. He was so accustomed to taking cell-phone images that recall, mental snapshots, was a nearly forgotten craft.

Don't try, just let it in
, he told himself.

And then, curious, he lightly squeezed his fingers on the transparent tile as if on a touch pad. The flames froze. So did the people. The shadows were all locked in place.

He
could
control this. Tightening his grip froze the image. No doubt it could be rewound, replayed. He relaxed his grip and the display resumed.

On the whole, the citizens did not appear relaxed. Only a few were sitting down, their yellow and white robes draped around their feet. They were drinking tea with curiously coordinated movements: when one reached for a cup another always did the same. Then each person inhaled steam from the other person's cup while maintaining eye contact, and usually smiling, before drinking from their own. It was something like a toast but more intimate.

The more restless citizens were standing and talking urgently to parchment bearers. The parchments were changing hands with nervous movements and gestures and hastily scrawled signatures.

That's not paper or papyrus . . . it's too malleable. Vellum? No, it's too fine for animal skin. At least, the skin of animals known in the modern day. The writing implements—fish bones, possibly. Or teeth mounted in wooden or stone styluses?