The Ocean Dark

20

Alena Boudreau loved the silence under water, the only sound around her the steady rhythm of her own pulse inside her head. She could think down here in the gloomy depths, and so she took her time exiting the Donika Cave, swimming languorously, her gear weightless in the water. The antidote to gravity, her own buoyancy tried to force her up, and reluctantly she began to rise, swimming toward the surface, thinking about the extraordinary things she had seen in that cave.

White, eyeless spiders without webs chased their prey with deadly speed. Leeches ate worms through mouths they were not supposed to have. Water scorpions darted in the murk, bearing poison deadly to the tiny blind toads with which they shared the stagnant pools, both so white that observers could see the blood running through them. The level of carbon dioxide in the cave reached ten times the norm, so the team inside the cave had to keep their O₂ tanks on while working.

Remarkable.

Alena had spent most of her life pursuing the remarkable, and had seen things that people with ordinary lives simply would not have believed. Yet the wonder of it all never completely vanished, and the amazing never became mundane. Radioactive crystal formations in Utah caverns and giant rats in Indonesia; ancient toxins trapped in Antarctic ice and warring species of poisonous frogs; lost worlds and cryptozoology; arcane artifacts and genetic anomalies. They were all her job, and had been for more than forty-five years.

Turning toward the rock face, she angled toward the surface and came up only a dozen feet from the metal platform that the joint EU bio-science team had bolted into place. Officially, the people in charge of unlocking and studying the secrets of the Donika Cave were part of an independent organization called Alliance Européenne pour l’Exploration Scientifique, but in reality they answered to the current president of the European Union. Upon her arrival in the nearby town of Rovinj, it had been obvious that the Croatians resented what they naturally considered interference by the EU, but with Croatia still awaiting approval to join the European Union, they had to play ball.

The resentment of the Croatian biologists and geologists worked significantly in Alena’s favor. She was the lone American on the scene, there as an official observer and representative of the U.S. government, and the Alliance Européenne pour l’Exploration Scientifique hated her with a fiery passion. It was adorable, really, the snits they got in whenever she showed up at a dig or discovery. But since both the Croatian government and the leaders of the EU had issued an invitation — under pressure from the U.S. State Department — they really had no choice.

Alena didn’t mind. She’d transcended any need to be loved decades ago. That wasn’t to say she couldn’t enjoy fondness and affection, but she never troubled herself searching for them.

Reaching up, she grabbed hold of the ladder and emerged from the Adriatic Sea, water sluicing off her skinsuit as she climbed to the platform. Half a dozen techs and assistants were camped there, monitoring transmissions from the cave. The team medic, an attractive Austrian man, watched Alena as she pulled off her goggles and slid them onto her arm. She pulled off her gloves, tucked them into the belt on her suit, then tugged back the headpiece and shook out her shoulder-length silver hair.

From the corner of her eye she caught the medic watching the show and it made her smile. She figured the guy for mid-forties, handsome and fit. Alena’s daughter, Marie, had turned forty-seven in February — she herself had celebrated her seventieth birthday only a week ago — and the Austrian studied her with an appreciation that might embarrass him if he knew her age.

Alena pushed her fingers through her hair and shook it out again, then bent to remove her flippers. She carried them, hooked on her fingers, over to the metal walkway that led to the top of the cliff. As she passed the medic, she tipped him a smile and a wink and he grinned happily, knowing he’d been caught.

“Fresh air and red wine. The secret of eternal youth,” she said.

“I must drink more wine,” he replied, his accent thick.

His eyes were alight with mischief — a come-on. Sex with older women had come into vogue in recent years—thank you, Helen Mirren—but still men often seemed astonished to learn her age. Even Alena herself was a bit astonished. Seventy, my God.

She considered flirting further, even suggesting some wine later on, but she had been traveling too much lately and knew she would not have the patience for a dalliance during this trip. It would be a brief visit. For all of their arrogance, the EU team was doing a perfectly competent job of cataloging the new species discovered in the cave. There were other things that interested her about the microcosmic ecosystem there that had nothing to do with bugs and worms.

As she walked up the metal stairs that made up the last dozen steps to the top, Alena didn’t bother looking back to see if the Austrian might still be watching her. If she caught him studying her ass, she might be tempted to go back. A bottle of red wine would go well with dinner tonight.

Then she saw Martin Jungling hurrying toward her from the hastily arranged camp headquarters — a series of box trailers arranged in rows to provide lab space and sleeping quarters for the EU team and their Croatian counterparts.

“Ah, Dr. Boudreau. I feared you might never return,” Jungling said, with a faux-pleasant smile. Tall and painfully thin, the Belgian had an aspect of the reaper about him, with sunken cheeks and humorless eyes.

“Feared, or hoped?” Alena asked, arching an eyebrow.

“You wound me,” Jungling replied. He had perfected the face of diplomacy, the one that said, I’m just being polite and I don’t care if you know it.

Alena smiled. “You’ll be happy to know that I expect to return to the States tomorrow. If you’ll keep me apprised of any new developments, my superiors and I will be grateful, but otherwise I suspect I’ve got what I need to make my report.”

Jungling’s face twitched. “We’ll be sorry to see you go.”

They fell into step side by side, walking back toward the camp’s central lab.

“It’s quite a remarkable thing, isn’t it?” he said.

“It is. Over the years I have been called in to examine or investigate dozens of claims of supposed ‘lost world’ discoveries, but this is among the most unique. Do you really think the five-million-year estimate is accurate?”

To her surprise, the question did not seem to offend him. Jungling must have been even happier at the prospect of her departure than she had expected.

“There is room for error, of course,” Jungling admitted, “but if we’re off a few hundred thousand years in either direction, what difference does it make? An ecosystem closed off from the rest of the world, evolving on its own over the course of millions of years. There’s never been anything like it.”

Alena cocked her head. “Surely that’s not true. There must be others. Now that this one has been discovered, we must allow for the probability that there could be an untold number of such caverns that remain undetected in the planet’s womb, each with its own unique properties.”

Jungling nodded in contemplation. “Of course.”

Silence followed for half a dozen steps as they both considered the implications. The walls of the cave were covered by gray-white mats of fungi, which in turn were home to a unique bacteria that processed water, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide to produce food for many of the cave’s troglobite species. Granted, the venom of the water scorpion — a deadly poison that had cost two members of the initial Croatian exploratory team their lives — could be of interest to her employers, but Alena felt the cave’s bacteria presented far more avenues for inquiry. Crossbred to exist elsewhere, what else might be engineered to survive on the sustenance provided by that bacteria?

She wondered if her employers would want the secrets of the cave explored, or destroyed. Fortunately, the latter was not often a part of her job.

“I’m afraid we must part ways here,” Jungling said, though he did not seem at all regretful. “I have a meeting.”

“Of course,” she said, holding out a hand. “Until next time.”

One corner of Jungling’s mouth rose in the ghost of a smile as he shook her hand, but he did not release his grip.

“Dr. Boudreau … Alena … who do you really work for?”

She squeezed his hand a little, gave it a shake. “Is your memory failing, Martin? The National Science Foundation—”

Jungling released her hand. “I have friends at the NSF. They’ve all heard of you, but none of them have ever met you.”

“I’m not in the office much. Anyway, you’ve seen my credentials.”

“American government credentials—”

“And the NSF is part of the government.”

“Yes. It’s just that I’m not sure it is the part you work for.”

Alena gave a light shake of her head. “You’re a strange man. Au revoir, Martin.”

She strode away, following the path that would take her to the main lab. There were files she wanted copies of before she could return home. As she walked, she knew that Jungling watched her go, his attention entirely different from that of the Austrian medic. The Austrian had been intrigued by her, and the Belgian intimidated.

Alena could not decide which reaction pleased her more.