Polar Shift (27 page)

“Then I'd better get going,” Margrave said.

Gant walked his guest to his car. They shook hands and agreed to stay in touch. He was on his way back into his house when the groom came up to him.

“How is the new horse?” Gant said.

“He's lame, sir.”

“Shoot him,” Gant said. Then he went back into his house.

T
HE ROOMS AND PASSAGES
of the cavern were like a dreamscape. Mineral curtains of soft orange and yellow draped the walls and the stalactites that ranged in size from pencil-thin rods to tall cascading columns as thick as a man's waist hung from the ceiling.

The ethereal beauty of his subterranean surroundings was lost on Schroeder. The bruise on his forehead throbbed like a tom-tom, and walking on the uneven floor of the cave aggravated his swollen ankle. He was struggling up a natural staircase when the exertion triggered a dizzy spell.

His vision swam and he began to see double. The loss of equilibrium made him nauseous. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead even though the air was cool. He stopped and pressed his head against the cave wall. The cold rock had the soothing effect of an ice pack.

Karla was right behind him. She saw him falter and went to his aid.

“Are you all right?”

“I cracked my head back there at the cave entrance. Probably suffered a slight concussion. At least it takes my mind off my sore ankle.”

“Maybe we should stop and rest,” Karla said.

Schroeder saw a low ledge. He sat down with his back against the wall and closed his eyes. He felt as if he had aged twenty years. The dampness was working on his joints, and he was having a hard time breathing. His ankle was swollen so much that he couldn't even see the bone.

For the first time in his life, he felt like an old man. Hell, he
was
an old man. He glanced at Karla, who sat beside him, and he was awestruck at how the baby he had awkwardly held in his arms on their first meeting had become a lovely and intelligent young woman. How sad he had never allowed himself to have a family. He consoled himself. Karla
was
his family. Even if he had not made a pledge to her grandfather, he would have done everything in his power to keep her from harm.

Their respite was short-lived. Muffled voices could be heard coming from the passageway they had just passed through. Schroeder was on his feet instantly. He whispered to Karla to turn the flashlight off. They stood in the darkness and listened. Distorted by the twists and turns in the cave, the echoes were like the mutterings of some troll-like creature. As the voices grew louder, they became more distinct. Men could be heard speaking in Russian.

Schroeder had hoped that he and Karla would not be pushed deeper under the mountain. He had been worried about finding their way back. Apparently, he had underestimated the determination of Grisha and his murderous band of ivory hunters.

Putting his aches and pains aside, he took the lead again. The passageway went down at a shallow angle for a few hundred feet before leveling out. The trek had taken its toll on Schroeder's ankle, and he had to lean against the wall a number of times to keep from falling. They were in danger of losing the race with their pursuers.

Karla was the first to see the cleft in the wall. Schroeder had been so intent on putting distance between them and their pursuers that he had walked by the wrinkle in the limestone where the wall folded in on itself, creating a narrow opening little more than a foot wide and five feet tall.

Schroeder's first instinct was to keep going. The hole could be a death trap. He stuck his head through and saw that the tunnel actually widened after a few feet. He told Karla to wait and he walked for fifty paces or so along the main cave. He placed his flashlight on the floor as if it had been dropped in haste.

The voices got louder. He went back to where Karla was waiting, squeezed his tall body through the cleft, then helped Karla through. They kept moving until they found a place where the cave curved slightly. He slipped the rifle off his shoulder and flattened his back against the wall. The first man through the hole would be dead.

They could see the ghostly glow of lights from the main tunnel. Grisha's harsh voice was clearly identifiable as he urged his men on with threats and jokes. The ivory hunters passed the crevice, and there was an excited yell. They had seen the flashlight. The voices receded.

Schroeder's intention was to slip back into the main tunnel and backtrack, but Grisha was no fool. He must have assumed that the flashlight's placement was too convenient to have been accidental. He and his men turned around and came back to the cleft in the wall.

Schroeder whispered in Karla's ear to get moving. As they hurried through the winding passageway, Schroeder decided their only course of action was to remain on the run. The flashlight beam was growing dimmer, indicating that the batteries were weakening. He would have to pick an ambush spot before they became lost or found themselves deep in the mountain with no light to show the way.

They walked for another ten minutes. The air was musty but it was still breathable, indicating that there was a flow coming in from the outside. The cave narrowed, and Schroeder saw a narrow fissure ahead. He stepped through the breach and his foot came down on thin air. He crashed down onto a slope and rolled several feet.

He crawled over, picked up the light and pointed it at Karla, who was peering from the fissure. The opening was about six feet above the floor. She looked bewildered. One second, Schroeder had been there, leading the way. The next, he had dropped out of sight, the flashlight had gone flying, and she had heard a thud.

“I'm all right,” he said. “Be careful, there's a drop.”

She eased out of the hole and picked her way down the slope. Schroeder tried to stand. The fall had aggravated his injured ankle even more, and shards of pain shot up his leg when he put weight on his foot. He leaned on Karla's shoulder.

“Where
are
we?” she said.

Schroeder explored their surroundings with the flashlight. The tunnel was around thirty feet wide and thirty feet high. A section of the wall collapsed to uncover the hole. The ceiling was vaulted, and, unlike the cave they had come through, the floor was as level as a pancake.

“This isn't a cave,” Schroeder said. “It's man-made.” He aimed the light at the opposite wall. “Well, it seems we have company.”

Life-size figures of men and women adorned the wall. They were painted in profile, as they marched along in a procession, carrying flowers, jugs and baskets of food and herding sheep, cows and goats with the aid of large, wolflike dogs.

The women wore long, diaphanous white dresses and sandals. The men were dressed in kilts and loose, short-sleeved shirts. Trees and other greenery made a backdrop for the parade.

The people had medium complexions, high cheekbones and raven hair worn in a bun by the females, cut short for the men. Their facial expressions were neither solemn nor happy, but somewhere in between; they could have been out for a Sunday stroll. The colors were brilliant, as if the paint had only been applied the day before.

The murals covered both walls. No figure was repeated. Most were young, in their teens and twenties, but there was a scattering of children and old people, including gray-haired men who wore ornate headgear and could have been priests.

“It looks like a religious procession,” Karla said. “They're carrying gifts for a god or a leader.”

Schroeder leaned on Karla's shoulder as he limped beside her. As they continued through the tunnel, the figures began to number in the hundreds.

“It's good to have company, in any case,” Schroeder said. “Maybe our new friends here will show us the way out.”

“They're definitely headed somewhere. Look!”

The mural had changed in nature. There were new animals in the mural—large, lumbering creatures that resembled elephants except for the shaggy, grayish brown fur covering their bodies. Flowers had been twined into their fur. The animals had high-peaked heads, and trunks that were relatively stubby. Some had tusks, almost as long as their bodies, that curved like the runners on an old-fashioned sleigh. Men rode on the animals like Indian mahouts.

“Impossible,” Schroeder said.

Spellbound, Karla stepped closer for a better look. In her eagerness, she forgot that Schroeder was using her for a crutch. He went down on one knee.

“I'm so sorry,” she said, seeing his predicament. She helped him up. “Do you know what these pictures mean? People of an advanced civilization lived on this island thousands of years before the Egyptians built the Pyramids. Probably back when the island was connected to the mainland. That's astounding enough on its own. But the fact that they had domesticated wild mammoths is just stunning. My paper on man's exploitation of the mammoth is trash! I had primitive man depending on mammoths as a source of food, and utilizing bones and tusks to make tools and weapons. The reality here is that they had learned to use these wild creatures as beasts of burden. This is the scientific discovery of the century. We'll have to rewrite all the textbooks.”

“I share your excitement,” Schroeder said. “But I think we have to look on the practical side. No one will ever know of this discovery unless we get out of this place.”

“I'm sorry, this is just so…” She tore her gaze away from the stunning murals. “What should we do?”

Schroeder flashed the light along the wall. “We will let our friends tell us. The pretty young ladies up there are carrying flowers
into
the mountain. I propose that we determine where they came from and see if this tunnel leads outside. As you can see, I'm not ready to run in the Olympics, and our flashlight is dimming.”

Karla cast a longing glance at the figures. “You're right. Let's go before I change my mind.”

They started back. They had only taken a few steps when they heard men speaking Russian. Grisha and his thugs had found the opening into the main tunnel. Schroeder and Karla had to turn around and go the other way.

Schroeder broke into a loping run. The maneuver put pressure on his swollen ankle, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving. Leaning on Karla helped, but it slowed them down. He suggested that they turn off the flashlight. Its light was so dim now as to be almost useless, but it was bright enough to provide a beacon for their pursuers. Schroeder used his free hand as a guide in the dark, trailing his fingers along the wall. The tunnel seemed to stretch out with no end.

After a few minutes, the voices became louder. Grisha and his band of cutthroats were in full pursuit. Schroeder tried to take bigger steps, but the effort threw him out of synch and actually slowed their progress. He would have to stop soon and tell Karla to go on without him. He was formulating a reply to her expected protests, when Karla said, “I see light.”

Schroeder blinked the sweat out of his eyes and squinted into the darkness. There was a paleness ahead that was only one shade removed from complete blackness. He was confused. Maybe he had been wrong about their direction and the wall murals had actually led them out of the mountain.

They kept on moving, and the floor sloped down in a long ramp. The tunnel fed into a vast cavern. The space was filled as far as the eye could see with two-story, flat-roofed buildings. The structures were built of material that glowed with a silvery green that cast the scene in a dusky light.

Rough voices came from behind and jerked them out of their trance. With a mixture of awe and apprehension, they began to descend the long ramp into the crystal city.

H
OUSED ON THE TENTH
floor of NUMA headquarters is the modern-day equivalent of the famed Alexandria Library. The glass-enclosed computer center that takes up the entire level contains a vast digital library that includes every book and article, every scientific fact and record on the world's oceans, all connected to a high-speed computer network with the capacity to transfer enormous amounts of data in a blink of the eye.

The center is the brainchild of NUMA's computer genius, Hiram Yeager, who dubbed the artificial intelligence entity he created “Max.” It was Yeager's idea to give Max a feminine human face represented by a three-dimensional holographic image with auburn hair, topaz eyes and a soft, feminine voice.

Paul Trout had decided to forgo the flirtatious holographic image. Rather than use Max's central control panel, where Yeager communicated with the computer by voice, Trout had taken over a meeting room in the corner of the data center. He had set up a simple keyboard to tap into Max's vast store of knowledge. The keyboard communicated with an oversize monitor that took up most of one wall. Seated with Trout at a mahogany table where they faced the screen were Gamay; Dr. Adler, the wave scientist; and Al Hibbet, the NUMA expert on electromagnetism.

Trout thanked everyone for coming and explained that Austin and Zavala had been called away. Then he tapped the keyboard. A photo of a thin-faced man with dark hair and soulful gray eyes appeared on the screen.

“I'd like you to meet the gentleman whose genius brought us here today,” Trout said. “Here you see Lazlo Kovacs, the brilliant Hungarian electrical engineer. This photo was taken in the late thirties, about the time he was working on his revolutionary electromagnetism theories. And
this
is what can happen when scientific brilliance is perverted.”

Trout changed the picture to a split screen that displayed two satellite photos. On the left was the photo of the freak waves that sank the
Southern Belle.
The other side showed the giant whirlpool, as viewed from space.

He let the significance of the pictures sink in.

“We in this room have speculated that someone might have used electromagnetic transmissions based on the Kovacs Theorems to cause these disturbances. As you know, Gamay and I went to Los Alamos and talked to an authority on Kovacs's work. He confirmed our suspicions of human interference, and suggested the type of electromagnetic manipulation we've been seeing could cause a polar reversal.”

“I assume we're talking about a reversal of the magnetic poles,” Adler said.

“I wish that were so,” Gamay interjected. “However, we may be facing a
geologic
polar reversal where the earth's crust actually moves over its core.”

“I'm not a geologist,” Adler said, “but that sounds like a recipe for a catastrophe.”

“Actually,” Gamay said with a smile as bleak as it was lovely, “we may be talking about doomsday.”

A heavy silence followed her pronouncement. Adler cleared his throat. “I heard the word ‘may.' You seem to be giving yourself some wiggle room.”

“I'd be happy if I could wiggle out of this situation entirely,” Gamay said. “But you're right in sensing that we've given ourselves room for doubt. We don't know how reliable our Los Alamos source is, so Paul has come up with a way to test the Kovacs Theorems.”

“How could you do that?” Adler said.

“By using a simulation,” Trout said, “much the same way you would re-create sea conditions in your lab using a laboratory wave machine or computer model.”

Hibbet said, “Kovacs only wrote of his theories in a
general
way. He left out some of the specifics.”

“That's true,” Gamay said. “But Kovacs self-published a more detailed summary of his theorems. He used it as the basis for his published writings. There is only one copy in existence.”

“If only we had it,” Adler said.

Gamay slid the Kovacs folio across the table without comment.

Adler carefully picked the papers off the table and noted the name on the cover: Lazlo Kovacs. He glanced through the yellowed pages. “This is written in Hungarian,” he said.

“One of our NUMA translators came up with an English copy,” Trout said. “The math is a universal language, so there was no problem there. Testing was another matter. Then I remembered the work being done at the Los Alamos National Laboratory where scientists have come up with a way to test nuclear bombs from our arsenal without violating international treaty. They test the bomb's components, figuring in factors such as materials deterioration, and they feed the data into a computer which runs a simulation. I propose to do the same.”

“It's certainly worth a try,” Hibbet said.

Trout tapped the keyboard and an image of the earth appeared on the screen. The globe had a section cut out like a slice of orange to expose the layers of the inner core: liquid iron outer core, the mantle and the crust. “Maybe you can explain this diagram, Al.”

“Glad to,” Hibbet said. “The earth is like a big bar magnet. The inner core of solid iron rotates at a different speed from the outer core of molten iron. This movement creates a dynamo effect that generates a magnetic field called the geodynamo.”

The picture changed to depict the intact globe. Lines looped out into space from one pole and curved back into the opposing pole.

“Those are the lines of magnetic force,” Hibbet explained. “They create a magnetic field that surrounds the earth, and allows us to use compasses. Even more important, the magnetosphere extends out thirty-seven miles. This creates a barrier that protects us from the harmful solar wind radiation and swarms of deadly particles that bombard the earth from space.”

Trout changed the computer image. They were looking at a map of the world. The ocean surface was splotched with blue and gold patches.

“In the 1990s, scientists pulled together everything known about the earth's molten core and fed it into a supercomputer,” Trout said. “They threw all sorts of stuff into the mix. Temperature. Dimensions. Viscosity. They found that the poles reversed themselves every hundred thousand years or so, usually when one started to weaken. It looks like we're in for another cycle.”

“The earth is undergoing a natural polar reversal?” Adler said.

“Apparently,” Trout said. “The earth's magnetic field started to deteriorate seriously around a hundred and fifty years ago. Its strength has waned by ten to fifteen percent since then, and the deterioration in the field has accelerated. If the trend continues, the main field would waken and almost vanish, and it would reappear with the opposite polarity.”

“Needles that point north would point south,” Hibbet added.

“That's right,” Trout said. “A magnetic polar reversal would mean a whole host of disruptive events, but the impact would be minimal. Most of us would be able to adapt and survive. Studies show that the magnetic poles have reversed many times.”

“Herodotus wrote about the sun rising where it normally sets,” Gamay said. “The Hopi talked about the chaos that comes about when the two twins who hold the earth in place leave their position. These could have been interpretations of ancient polar shifts.”

“While legend is fascinating, and often contains a grain of truth, all of us at this table are versed in the scientific method,” Adler said.

“That's why I didn't mention the clairvoyants and pseudoscientists who predicted an end of the world,” Gamay said. “The whole concept of polar shift got mixed up with theories of Atlantis and ancient astronauts.”

“As a wave expert, I deal with huge ocean forces,” Adler said, “but a shift in the outer surface of an entire world seems unbelievable.”

“Normally, I would agree,” Gamay said. “But paleomagnetists who have studied lava flows have shown that the ground has moved in relation to the earth's magnetic north. North America was once deep in the Southern Hemisphere, where it straddled the equator. Einstein theorized that if enough ice accumulated on the polar caps, a shift could result. Scientists have found that there was a major reorganization of the earth's tectonic plates about half a billion years ago. The previous north and south poles relocated to the equator, and points on the equator became the poles we have now.”

“You're talking about a process that takes millions, billions of years,” Adler said.

Trout brought the discussion back to the computer simulation. “That's why we should look closer at the present. The image on the screen shows the earth's magnetic fields. Those splotches in blue are inward-directed fields. The gold is outward-directed. The British navy kept records of the magnetic and true north for three hundred years, which means we've got a pretty good database. What we see here is an increase in the number of blue islands.”

“Which would indicate magnetic anomalies where the field is flowing the wrong way,” Hibbet said.

“That large patch of color is the South Atlantic Anomaly where the field is
already
flowing the wrong way,” Trout said. “The anomaly's growth accelerated around the turn of the century. This ties in with Magsat readings that show weak areas in the north polar region and below South Africa. The observations are consistent with computer simulations that show the possible beginnings of a flip.”

“You've made a convincing case that geologic and magnetic polar reversals have occurred,” Adler said. “But what we're talking about is the possibility of man precipitating such an event. That's a lot of hubris on our part. Man is capable of much, but our puny efforts are not capable of shifting the entire surface of the planet.”

“Seems crazy, doesn't it?” Trout said with a crooked grin. He turned to Hibbet. “You're our electromagnetism expert. What do you think?”

Hibbet stared at the screen. “I had no idea the southern ocean anomalies had grown so rapidly.” He paused in thought, then, choosing his words carefully, said, “What Lazlo Kovacs got into was the nature of matter and energy. He discovered that matter oscillates between the stages of matter and energy. Energy is not subjected to the rules of time and space, so the shift from one phase to another is instantaneous. And matter follows energy's lead. In addressing this question, we have to look at the earth's electromagnetic makeup. If the electromagnetic energy changes in a certain way, matter—in this case the crust of the earth—can change as well.”

“You're saying a geologic polar shift is possible,” Gamay said.

“I'm saying that a man-made magnetic polar shift, with its intense, short-term nature, may precipitate irreversible geologic movement, especially now with a natural shift shaping up. All it needs is a
nudge.
An addition or discharge of electromagnetic energy that changes the field could stir up changes in matter. Cyclonic disruptions of the earth's core or magnetic field may have been responsible for the freak waves and the whirlpool. It wouldn't be the slow shifting of tectonic plates. The structure of the entire planet could change in an instant.”

“With what results?” Gamay said.

“
Catastrophic.
If the crust slips around the molten core, inertial forces would come into play. The shift would create tsunamis that could sweep across continents, and winds more powerful than any hurricane. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions with massive lava flows would develop. There would be drastic climate changes and radiation storms.” He paused. “Species extinction is a definite possibility.”

“There's been an increase in violent natural phenomena over the past few decades,” Gamay said. “I wonder if those are warning signs.”

“Maybe,” Hibbet said.

“Before we scare ourselves silly, let's get back to the facts,” Trout suggested. “I've taken the polar shift simulations from Caltech and Los Alamos as a base. I fed in the report Dr. Adler compiled on the ocean disturbances and the material Al submitted on the use of electromagnetic low-frequency transmissions. We've also simulated conditions of the molten currents in the core of the earth where the magnetic fields are formed. The Kovacs papers are the final part of the equation. If we're all ready…” He tapped the keyboard.

The globe disappeared and a message appeared on the screen:

HELLO, PAUL. HOW'S THE BEST-DRESSED MALE ON THE SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS TEAM?

Max had picked up on his password. Trout squirmed in his chair, and yearned for the time when computers were simply dumb machines. He typed in:

HELLO, MAX. WE'RE READY FOR THE COMPUTER SIMULATION.

IS THIS AN ACADEMIC EXERCISE, PAUL?

NO.

Max paused for several seconds. It was an unusual response from the high-speed computer.

THIS EVENT CAN'T BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.

Trout stared at the words. Was it his imagination, or did Max seem alarmed? He typed a question: