Beyond the Ice Limit

50

AT FOUR IN the morning, Gideon was in his quarters, alone, working at his small desk. The simulation was almost finished. It was finally coming through after almost forty hours of CPU time on the ship’s IBM “Vulcan” Q supercomputer.

He had a bad feeling. The fundamental question was how deep and wide the nuke’s shock wave would penetrate into the seafloor. But the seafloor was composed of pelagic sediments—essentially loose, wet clay. It was like a soft blanket, the worst material imaginable for propagating a powerful shock wave. The six brains, which looked like they were being encapsulated into new seeds, were a thousand feet deep and off to one side of the creature.

McFarlane was surely right: if they could kill all the brains the creature had collected, they would certainly kill the creature itself as well. The thing was a parasite that needed a brain in order to survive—and additional brains to reproduce. Kill all of them and it would soon die—if it couldn’t get any more.

He watched the window on his computer screen, meaningless numbers scrolling by. The Q machine was still thinking. Simulating a nuclear explosion two miles below the surface of the ocean was a massive computing job, but all indications were that it was almost done.

A soft knock came at the door. Gideon didn’t answer. The door opened anyway and Glinn entered. “May I?”

“You’re already in.”

Glinn came in and eased himself onto the bed, iPad in hand. His face looked drawn, but otherwise he appeared fine—not tired, and certainly not half crazed, like so many others on board. But if you looked closely, there was a gleam in his eye that had not gone away: a gleam of deep and abiding obsession. Gideon knew that gleam, because he felt the obsession as well. It was a need, an overwhelming need, to destroy the thing, no matter what the cost.

“Where’s Sam?” Glinn asked.

“He disappeared. Said he had some thinking to do.”

Glinn nodded. “We now have a more complete report on the biology of the creature, which I want to share with you, because it may have a bearing on how readily it can be killed.”

“Shoot.”

“It’s a carbon-hydrogen-silicon-oxygen form of life. Essentially, it’s built of organic chemistry like us, but with the addition of silicon, mostly in the form of silicates and silicon dioxide. On our planet, marine diatoms seem the closest biochemical analogy. They extract silicon from water and build their bodies out of silicates. Some plant species also incorporate silicates.”

“I don’t really give a shit. I just want it dead.”

Glinn went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “And much of the carbon appears to be in pure form, in exotic allotropes—nanofibers, nanotubes, nanobuds, nanofoam, fullerenes, graphite, and diamond. It has silicon dioxide fiber-optic wires that transmit digital signals using light. The various exotic carbon fibers transmit electricity, some apparently with superconductance. Instead of muscle fibers, the entity has bundles of carbon fibers that can be contracted or relaxed. Many hundreds of times more powerful than any muscle fiber. That’s how it could crush a titanium sphere.”

“Where is all this going?”

“Patience, Gideon. The question is: Did this thing evolve? Or was it built? Is it a machine or a biological entity, or some kind of hybrid? We don’t know. But here’s what we do know.”

He laid his iPad on the bed. “The temblors in the seafloor around it are almost constant. We’ve been analyzing them. The thing appears to be extending its roots or tentacles at an incredible rate—hundreds of feet an hour. The main body of those roots are heading for the South American continent.”

“Good God.”

Glinn paused, shifting on the bed. “We are out of time. The creature is growing too rapidly, the roots growing outward at a geometric pace. And now it looks like nodes are beginning to develop on those roots. In other words, it’s getting ready to push up new Baobabs, like mushrooms after a rain. To collect more brains, more seeds. Which gives us an idea, an educated guess, about the creature’s endgame.”

“Tell me about it.”

“In short order, a network of Baobabs will circle the globe, forming, in effect, a giant fist around it. Once that happens, the fist will flex—popping the surface off the earth like a giant tomato and breaking up the planet in the process—thus ejecting the seeds into space to find other worlds to parasitize. Each seed will contain its own parasitized brain.”

“How did you figure this out?”

“Think about it. I’ve hinted at this before. Breaking up the planet is the only way for it to liberate those gigantic seeds.”

Gideon glanced at the window on his monitor. The numbers were still flashing by.

“The situation on board this ship is becoming untenable,” Glinn said. “We’re losing control. The Q machine’s Quantitative Behavioral Analysis indicates we have only about twelve hours left before discipline breaks down entirely and we have either a mutiny or chaos on board ship.”

“So your QBA is what’s been slowing down my simulation.”

“My apologies. But understanding the human factor is crucial.”

Gideon nodded.

“Despite all our precautions, other personnel have been parasitized by the worms. We know this because of the widespread sabotage—not just the CT scanner and the X-ray machine, but the ship’s surveillance cams, as well. The whole system is down, and the vessel’s intercom isn’t working everywhere. All this is slowing down our efforts to find the worms—and identify the saboteurs.”

“Again, I’m wondering where this is going.”

“We must deploy the nuke now. And I mean now—within twelve hours.”

Gideon glanced over at his workstation. “I need the numbers first. If the nuke won’t kill those underground eggs, there’s no point in setting it off.”

“And when do you expect the numbers?”

“Any moment.”

“Doesn’t the computer tell you how long the calculation will take?”

“It’s not a calculation. It’s a simulation. A much vaster scale of complexity.”

Glinn rose. “Forget the simulation. We’ve got the weapon. Let’s use it.” He looked at his watch. “I want the nuke armed and loaded in the ROV in a matter of hours.” He turned. “Can you do it?”

As Glinn stared at him, Gideon became aware—once again—of the obsession they both shared.

“Fuck, yes,” he said, almost surprising himself.

Glinn nodded. “Good.” And then he left.

Just as the door shut, as if on cue, Gideon’s monitor chimed. The window was blinking red. The simulation was complete.

Gideon rushed to the computer and, not even bothering to sit, began furiously calling up the numbers from the Q. The file came in slowly—it was fat—but in a minute it had loaded, numerical simulations made visual.

A schematic picture appeared and a slow-motion video began playing, simulating the detonation of the nuke, the expanding shock wave, the massive cavitation caused by the blast, the transitioning of seawater into steam, the effect of it on the Baobab, and the impact of the leading edge of the shock wave with the seafloor and its propagation beneath.

In a minute it was over. Still standing, Gideon now sought to sit down, placing an arm on the swivel desk chair. But something went awry; his legs were like jelly, and the chair slipped on its wheels sideways and he collapsed on the floor.