Beneath the Dark Ice

Four

Wednesday morning Aimee checked her presentation for the last time to ensure she had the relevant information bullet-pointed and just enough feel-good blue sky built in to entice the most hard-boiled petroleum investor. Her handouts were printed up and bound professionally and she thought they looked pretty damn good. More than anything else she wanted to walk out of that boardroom in two hours (or less if lucky), and have good news for Tom when he returned on the weekend.

Aimee hoped that the progress of their project would give the board enough confidence in them to continue further funding. She drew a breath and smoothed the front of her only blue power suit. She knocked on the door and entered without waiting to be invited.

Instead of the seven members of the board she was expecting, she only recognised one, Alfred Beadman the chairman, who greeted her warmly just inside the door. Seated at the table were four people she had never met before. She assessed them all quickly — two sporty student types, a middle-aged nerd and a military man. She turned her attention back to Alfred, a fatherly figure to her and someone she knew she could always trust. He led her to a seat without letting go of her hand and asked her to sit down.

Her immediate thoughts were that they were going to be shut down and that she had somehow already let Tom down by failing in her funding request and further, getting them bounced right out the door of GBR. Aimee closed her eyes and imagined Tom walking back in at the weekend and saying in his boyish manner “I’ve got a surprise for you,” while holding a box behind his back, and Aimee responding with “and have I ever got one for you.”

After a few moments Alfred spoke softly. “Aimee, we’ve lost contact with Tom — with all of them.”

It was as if the entire atmosphere had been sucked out of the room; no one moved or spoke, no one even breathed. They just sat and stared.

“What do you mean you’ve lost contact?” Aimee was on her feet radiating a mix of disbelief and red hot anger.

“It may not be serious, but exactly what I said, Aimee. I think it might be best if we give you all the facts, bring you in from the cold so to speak, and then we can determine what the first and best course of action is to be. Please sit down, Aimee dear, so we can begin.” Knowing how volatile Aimee could be, it was clear that Alfred was speaking as calmly and evenly as he could. He watched her retake her seat, then turned to his left and introduced the fearsome looking man that couldn’t have been more military looking if he were wearing a uniform cut from the stars and stripes.

“Aimee, this is Major Jack Hammerson. Major, would you like to, umm…”

Hammerson met Aimee’s laser-like stare with his own, and held it — this time it was Aimee who dropped her eyes. The Major waited a few more seconds and then began speaking.

“I’ll get right to it. At O-eight hundred hours, Eastern Standard Time Tuesday, we received a final communication from our initial insertion team. The Hendsen team’s brief was to check in every three hours due to the potentially hazardous nature of their mission and the hostile environment.” Hammerson turned to Alfred and nodded, and the chairman pushed a button on the table to raise the far wall panelling. As the room darkened a blank white wall was revealed. Immediately, images flickered onto the screen. Major Hammerson went on, “Every three hours from touchdown at ten hundred hours Monday, until Tuesday eight hundred we received a packet of encrypted image and voice data. Before you now on the screen are some of those images. I don’t need to remind you that everything you see is highly classified, however, until your security ratings have been increased you will need to all sign a non-disclosure prior to leaving the room.”

Aimee felt both nauseous and restless; the knot in her stomach was making its way up into her rib cage and she placed her hand against her chest in an attempt to quieten the thumping of her heart. Tom was missing in a vast continent at the end of the earth where temperatures could drop to less than a hundred below zero and any rescue attempt would be measured in hours not days and all “General Patton” was worried about was their security ratings. She knew Tom was no Grizzly Adams and outdoors for him meant a stroll across the office courtyard to bring back some donuts. The thought of her honorary big brother being trapped — or worse — in some frozen hell almost made her want to throw up; she reacted the only way she knew how.

“Security rating? Listen Major, I don’t give a damn about forms, security ratings or your entire shit-kicking army right now. I just want to know what happened to Tom and what you’re doing to get him back.” Arms folded across her chest, Aimee glared at Major Hammerson, hoping he wouldn’t see that her hands were shaking. Alfred rolled his eyes and, as if conducting an orchestra, tried to make “calm down” motions to her from across the table.

The Major regarded Aimee coolly for a full twenty seconds before responding. “Dr. Weir, I work for the government, that’s no secret. I also work for the United States military machine, that’s also no secret. But we have a lot more in common than you realise.” Hammerson paused, pinning Aimee with his unblinking stare. “You see, Dr. Weir, we own GBR. We fund your research. If we like what we see we extend your grants. We give you what you need; we even put the choc chip cookies in your little blue jar at work.”

Hammerson’s voice went up a level. “We own GBR, we own you, and we own over fifty companies similar to yours across the country and some in other countries as well. Like it or not, Dr. Weir, you also work for the shit-kicking army. And while you’ve lost contact with Dr. Hensen, I’ve lost contact with almost thirty good men and women, some with families, goddammit.”

Aimee opened and closed her mouth, anger morphing back into fear and confusion; she wanted to respond but didn’t know how.

“The known worldwide reserves of gas and oil are estimated at about one hundred and forty-two billion tons, and with current rates of usage will last only another fifty years. But with China and India’s thirst for oil growing exponentially, our prediction is we have reserves for just twenty-five more years,” Hammerson continued. “The fact is your additional funding request is a foregone conclusion. We are thirsty creatures, Dr. Weir, and even if you’d walked into the room with all your clothes on backwards and asked to use the NASA space shuttle for the next round of electromagnetic mapping, we probably would have funded it.”

Aimee felt the Major let her off the hook as his penetrative stare relaxed and his voice lost its hard edge. “We need your help, Dr. Weir, to find out what happened to Dr. Hendsen, and to the other civilian scientists and medical team members that vanished down there with him.”

Aimee sank down in her chair. Not trusting her voice she simply nodded. Hammerson slid the non-disclosure forms across the table and continued with his briefing.

“To continue, the first image you are seeing is the collision point. The plane that struck the ground was a seventy-foot turbofan Challenger jet. Its maintenance records showed it had been fully serviced and was only a few months out of the box. Owned and flown by Mr. John Banyon, who was accompanied by several members of his corporate executive team on a business team-building and sightseeing flight over the Antarctic. For reasons undetermined, it dropped out of the air and collided with the ground at approximately 1907 hours Eastern Standard Time Saturday.” The image displayed on the screen was an aerial shot of a giant hole in the white ice — no debris or engine oil, just a black gash against the blinding white.

“You can see from the entry point that this is no collision crater, what seems to have occurred is the impact has punched straight through the ice and rock crust and opened access to an underground cavern. Next slide please, Mr. Beadman.” Hammerson continued his clinical briefing. “This image shows initial cavern insertion by the Hendsen party and the wreckage of the Challenger jet.” The picture this time showed a large team of men and women inside the mouth of an enormous cave system. Using them as scale this must have been a gigantic hole — it had to be over a hundred feet from where the people were standing to the roof of the cavern. Several members of the rescue team were working among fragments of a completely destroyed plane and holding up pieces of torn and empty clothing. In the background, Aimee could see Tom standing there in his favourite bright orange cold weather parka examining something intently, as was his usual style. Tears sprang into her eyes and she became angry, with both Tom and herself. With Tom for getting himself caught up in this mystery — she wanted to grab him by the collar of that stupid big parka and drag him home like a schoolboy who was late home from the ballpark. But she was even more angry with herself for letting him go alone; she should have pushed harder to go with him. She balled her hand into a fist and punched her thigh under the table.

Major Hammerson picked up the narration once again. “The debris was closely centred with a slightly eastward elliptical spread indicating that the plane came in at an approximate eighty-five degree angle at more than five hundred miles per hour. This accounts for the small fragment sizes. No survivors were expected; what was expected was bodies, body parts, at least significant blood patterning.”

The next slide appeared, showing some of the rescue team heading further down into one darkened end of the cave. Hammerson continued. “Nothing was found other than several strange semi-liquid residues. This is where you and Dr. Silex come in, Dr. Weir.”

Hearing her name brought Aimee back from the Antarctic ice and once again into the boardroom.

“Sorry, ‘Dr. Silex’?” Aimee asked.

Alfred once more spoke up in his warm and authoritative voice. “I apologise Aimee, we were so rushed and determined to bring you up to speed we failed to provide full and proper introductions. Let me begin with someone you have already met. Going around the table, from my left starting with Major Jack Hammerson, who will be in charge of support, security, medical teams and logistics.” Alfred turned to Jack Hammerson and enquired, “Major, I never asked what your areas of specialisation are?”

Hammerson ignored the chairman and turned to Aimee and smiled. “My specialisation is keeping people alive and safe. My friends call me Jack.” Hammerson smiled and held out his hand across the table. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, and hopefully work with you, Dr. Weir.”

At first Aimee was determined to dislike him but was quickly disarmed by his strong and easygoing nature. She liked him, but in the way you liked an enormous attack dog that was always friendly with you but threatened to rip the throat out of anyone else who looked sideways at you.

“Nice to meet you, Jack, and please, call me Aimee.” With that Aimee turned to look at the next man in line just in time to catch him staring at her breasts.

Dr. Adrian Silex licked his already wet lips and swallowed. “How do you do? I’m Dr. Adrian Silex. I’m disappointed you haven’t heard of me, Dr. Weir. Tom Hendsen and I go way back.”

Adrian Silex was a tall thin man of about forty. His most unusual feature was a long head with a circle of fine hair fringing his ears. It looked like the crown of his skull had actually outgrown his hairdo. His ovoid head had an unpleasant way of bobbing and jerking, giving the impression of some sort of large bird. Most likely a vulture, Aimee thought.

Now it was coming back; Aimee remembered that Tom had mentioned Dr. “Sinex,” naming his colleague after a brand of nasal decongestant spray because he always got up Tom’s nose. Tom and “Sinex” often competed for papers published in the geological or petrobiological scientific community. The problem Tom had with Silex was that he was a sore loser. If Tom published a new paper, rather than publish his own work, Silex would put his energy into trying to discredit Tom’s research. He rarely found fault with any of Tom’s procedures or results, but he was clever enough to hold up the paper’s acceptance and therefore Tom’s credit for the work for years.

“I head up PBRI, or Petrobiological Research Incorporated. I am, I mean we are, the developers of an advanced electromagnetic geological scanning device, or AEM, which the military is very interested in. I’m looking forward to working on you, err sorry… with you on this.”

Aimee turned her head from Dr. Silex and looked down at the notes in front of her on the desk; she exhaled through compressed lips and suppressed a small shudder of revulsion.

Alfred interjected smoothly. “This is a critically important project, Aimee. We need scientists with a mix of chemical, geological and petrobiological expertise. In addition, your work on organic-petrochemical interrelationships and Dr. Silex’s research into stratigraphic imaging techniques makes you two the best qualified candidates.”

Alfred looked at Aimee sympathetically and went on. “The ionosphere down there suffers from a lot of magnetic disturbance, so we might just have total communications failure. Or maybe they’ve gone deeper into the caves and can’t get a message out. Of course, our objective is to bring them back, Aimee, but until we know for sure they have come to any harm, the project expedition remains scientific. Therefore, as the senior scientist, it will be headed by Adrian.”

“I like to think I’m more working with you rather than being assisted by you,” Silex said. “But I’ll pass the introduction baton on, and we can talk more later on.”

The young woman next to him broke into a wide smile. She had an open face and Aimee couldn’t help warming to her. “Hi, Dr. Weir, my name is Monica Jennings. It’s nice to meet you.” With her hair tied back and a spray of small freckles on her face she looked like a hundred other healthy young women Aimee saw playing volleyball or on the athletic track in campuses across America. Aimee smiled back and asked Monica to call her Aimee, then nodded for her to continue. “I’m here to get you down in the hole and navigate the belly of the beast. My specialty is twofold; I’ve climbed just about every significant mountain there is to climb, and there’s not much I don’t know about going up or coming down ice. But my real love is caving — I’m a spelunker.”

The young grad-student type next to Monica was looking at her admiringly. “Very cool,” he said. Aimee could tell he was already smitten by the rock climber. The young man cleared his throat, obviously nervous and introduced himself. “I’m Matt Kerns, Professor of Archaeological Studies at Harvard University. I specialise in ancient civilisations and protolinguistics, and ahh…” Matt looked around at his table companions. “And if this is just a plane crash into a hole in Antarctica, I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Thank you, Dr. Kerns, a perfect time for me to pick up the threads from where I last left off. Mr. Beadman, please.” Once again the lights dimmed and Major Hammerson continued to describe and explain the detail of the new images filling the screen. These showed the crash site and the different teams, now further into the caverns, sorting the collision information. Aimee leaned forward; in the background of the current image she could see Tom giving a peace sign and holding what looked like a test tube. The next few shots showed the cavern from different angles and it became clear that this was no simple hole in the ground but a vast network of caves leading deep into the impenetrable darkness.

The next slide had Matt Kerns on his feet and scurrying towards the screen. “What is that? Is that a structure?” Matt asked to no one in particular.

“And now you know why you are here, Dr. Kerns,” said Hammerson. To the rest of the group the screen showed a jumble of eroded, carved boulders, with just the hint of some facial features on one of the walls. To Matt Kerns, it was his calling.

Matt was now inwardly focused, muttering to himself. “Large modelled stucco mask decorating both sides of a stairway on a former pyramidal platform. Very similar to Uaxactun, El Mirador, I’d say. Masonry is crude and roughly cut, thick layer of stucco evening out surface imperfections, corbelled archways built on stepped slabs. Looks a little like early Peten, about 150 BC, but with plenty of unique variations. No, the corbels are wrong. Must be earlier, I think; much, much earlier.”

Matt Kerns paused for a few seconds and then, nodding vigorously at Jack Hammerson said, “OK, yep, I’m in.”

Adrian Silex cleared his throat. “OK, our turn, please tell Dr. Weir and myself about the liquid residue you found in the caves.”

“I’ll do my best, Dr. Silex, but be patient as I’m no expert.” Major Hammerson opened a slim folder and drew out half a dozen sheets of tightly typed paper. He flipped over the first sheet, and ran his finger down the page. “This was in the last data packet we received from Dr. Hendsen — talks about various chemical compositions in subsurface hydrocarbons and the results of some propensity modelling for Antarctic potential; OK, here we are, this is where it gets interesting. There were two items in the report that made us both sit up straight and scratch our heads — two items that we believe require your unique talents in petrobiology and stratigraphic mapping.”

Hammerson put the papers down and looked from Dr. Silex to Aimee. “The first item of interest is the result of Dr. Hendsen’s ground-level EM mapping of the stratigraphy associated with the potential oil and gas traps. Initial images show a massive body of liquid below the surface which if it is oil, could hold reserves of between one hundred and one hundred and fifty billion barrels of oil.” Major Hammerson paused and then went on slowly and softly, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “That’s a lot of oil, enough to start a war over.”

At this point Alfred Beadman spoke up, “The United States, like eleven other countries, is a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty. If I’m not mistaken, it was the first ever arms control agreement signed during the Cold War at the end of the fifties, isn’t that right, Major?”

Hammerson nodded and picked up from Beadman. “That’s correct, Mr. Beadman, presented in 1959 to be exact, and there are even more signatories now. We’ll continue to respect that treaty. Problem is, there are dozens of countries who haven’t signed, or have no reason to even acknowledge the ‘hands off’ approach we are taking to this continent. We believe if one of the other large resource-hungry countries detects what we have found they will stake a formal claim of sovereignty over Antarctica, it could take several decades to unravel the mess through the United Nations, and by that time they would have digested the lot.”

“What about China?” asked Silex.

Beadman went on smoothly. “China was a late signatory and our feelings are we will be able to trust them provided the fair commercials stack up. Frankly, America doesn’t care if it has to pay for its share; it just wants to make sure that it is made available evenly to the world. We’ll bring China and all the other signatories in when we have some more concrete information.” Aimee frowned. Alfred Beadman was clearly no ordinary chairman of the board.

Major Hammerson brought their focus back to him again. “Now to the second item, and a little puzzle for our petrobiologists.” Hammerson looked directly at Aimee. “Why is the only chemical trace we can find in those caverns a type of organic ammonia — biology and source unknown?” Hammerson raised his eyebrows and went on. “And why did Dr. Hendsen write one word, a question, next to his results — secretion?”

Silex jumped in. “Contamination. Tom’s results were always a bit flaky.” Aimee’s head snapped around and she gave Silex a look that immediately had him backpedalling. He shrugged, “I mean, whose results wouldn’t get contaminated in those conditions?”

Hammerson interjected quickly; there were bigger and stranger issues to deal with. “Contamination? Possibly, but that’s not the only problem with the data we received.”

He nodded at Beadman who brought up the last image. It was indistinct and watery, but showed a young girl dressed in old-fashioned clothing, certainly not warm enough for the freezing temperatures of the Antarctic. She was holding a baby.

Aimee felt a chill up her spine and leaned towards the screen. “Who’s that?” she said.

“We don’t know. There was no woman with a baby on the original crashed flight, and it wasn’t one of the rescue team members.” He shook his head slowly. “Frankly, we just don’t know,” he repeated, “who she is or where she came from, and more importantly where she and everyone else went.”

The meeting had broken up quickly after Alfred and the Major had given brief details of the trip logistics and now Aimee just wanted to rush home and start packing. She saw Matt and Monica sipping coffee together, and Silex looking over the top of their heads while holding up a cup and pointing at it. She didn’t feel up to small talk, so as Hammerson shook Alfred’s hand and then headed for the door she went with him.

“Major, err sorry, Jack, have you been down to the Antarctic before?”

“Yes I have, Aimee. We have a number of research stations down there, and I spent a few weeks at our McMurdo base one spring. Beautiful country; cold, but beautiful, so pack your woollies.” He smiled at her and his cheek creased along an old scar.

She smiled back and realised she was still a little unsettled about Tom and nervous about the trip. She was thankful that he would be down there; he made her feel safe.

“Jack, I wasn’t clear on whether we’d all go together or you’ll meet us down there.”

“Ahh, these old bones feel the cold too easily now. I won’t be there, but you will be met on route when you arrive down in Australia. I’ll be sending my best man and a few HAWCs.” They got to the stairs and Hammerson turned to shake her hand. “Don’t worry, Aimee; they’ll look after you. Good luck and see you in a week.”

A week, no problem, Aimee thought. She glanced at the elevator, changed her mind and followed Hammerson down the stairs.