CHAPTER 54
Penny stayed on the tank’s observation platform all morning and remained there after the others left for lunch. She had wanted some time by herself with the form floating in the tank, but now she had suddenly become tired. Not sleepy, just tired. The bottle of scotch under her bunk beckoned, but instead she headed to the galley to see if there was anything to eat. She salvaged enough leftovers from lunch to satisfy her immediate hunger, then made a strong cup of coffee and drank it down black in one gulp when it was cool enough.
A shadow fell over a porthole for an instant as someone went by. A few seconds later, she looked up to see Chiffrey march in. Good news, she could tell right away.
“Your subs turned up,” she said, guessing.
“The scuttlebutt sure gets around fast on this ship,” he said. “Both submarines reported within ten minutes of each other, less than an hour ago. So, we have more time again.”
“How’s the crew.”
“Took us a while to figure out that they thought they were still on schedule. Had no idea they were missing.”
“Really.”
“Really, except this one junior officer who’s acting weird.” He got some orange juice and sat down. “All their clocks were telling them that only a few hours had passed since they last checked in, not the thirty-odd hours it really was. Even a windup wristwatch someone had. The mission chronometers on those submarines are extremely accurate, atomic but, unlike the ones you buy in a drugstore, they run on their own time. Accurate to milliseconds a year.”
“How do you know it’s not our time that’s off?”
“Whoa, don’t mess my head up any more than it already is.” He smiled. “Please. And I’m sorry about the crane, but I had to do that. We got the egg, or whatever it is, so all’s well that ends well.”
“Being in one piece doesn’t mean it’s okay. It’s shown little in the way of life since you hauled it up.”
“Becka told me it still has that weird double heartbeat.”
“If it is a heartbeat.”
“Well, we’ll see if it hatches.”
“Will you please stop assuming it’s an egg!”
“You’re right, and damned if I wasn’t saying much the same thing to Mateo just a few minutes ago. Everyone is looking for a simple explanation. A scientist at LaBellce Livermore we’ve been consulting with, a Nobel Prize winner, is talking about the submarines having been in a bubble of time, but I can’t really follow it. Didn’t help that he is a pompous ass who thinks he’s mankind’s gift to God. I should probably have accepted Malcolm’s offer of help with the quantum stuff. Course, he seems to believe it’s an egg, as well.” He got up and poured more orange juice in his glass. He glanced her way and nodded toward the dispenser, but she shook her head.
“If the sub crews thought everything was normal,” she asked, “why did they launch the emergency buoy?”
“The theory is that at the beginning of whatever befell them, one of the crew launched it, and my guess would be the officer I mentioned who is well off his toot. It came from his boat. Been babbling and euphoric ever since, you know the drill. His time is completely out of joint, from what they tell me. Thinks he’s been somewhere else for years and years. Decades. The thing is, although he can’t remember anything about where he thought he was, he desperately wants to go back there.”
She knew that feeling. Wanting to go back to some place, except she could never quite remember where it was. Something from childhood, a place where…
She couldn’t remember. Chiffrey slowly sipped his orange juice, nursing it as if it were three-quarters gin.
“Maybe this officer wasn’t affected as much as the others,” she said. “Didn’t slip into whatever frame of time the rest of his crew occupied.”
“Or into some other, like Matthew being the last man standing on the Eva Shay. Or you on the Valentina, for that matter. Perhaps he felt something was wrong and hit the buoy release button. He can’t tell us anything useful at the moment. The odd thing is that I’m almost getting used to this serial insanity.”
“It’s either that or go crazy yourself.”
He laughed. “One new idea you’re sure to like is that the time shift could be just a side effect of however that thing down there operates. That bubble of time idea again, and the way it effects people may not be intentional. More like just standing too close to a fire.” He finished the last of his juice in one swallow and slapped the glass down. “In any case, condition red has gone down to orange, or maybe even yellow.”
“Well, good. And that officer on the sub, even if he sounds crazy, maybe you should listen.”
“Having everything he says recorded on video by three cameras, but mostly he’s babbling about ‘seeing everything all at once forever.’ And rice pudding.”
“He’s talking about rice pudding?”
“To make clear that it’s all he wants to eat. Won’t touch anything else. With a lot cinnamon on top.”
“Are the people higher up buying the time bubble theory?”
“We’re keeping it to ourselves for the moment. I mean, ‘Madame President, time stopped dead for two nuclear submarines, what shall we do?’ Need to wait until some people catch up a little more before we cast that line their way. I mean, it’s not a fact, only a theory, so it’s not intel.”
“Is all this a game to you?”
“No.” He looked weary. “It’s just the way things work.”
“And disobeying orders? Like out on deck with the crane? Is that also part of the way things work?”
“Losing that thing could not be allowed to happen. Sometimes you have to act on gut whatever the consequences. From conscience.”
“Conscience!” She laughed. “Impressive you can find yours without a microscope.”
“Sugar, mine’s tuned into a slightly different frequency than yours, but I listen. Oh, and one other thing. If not for the safe recovery of our subs and crew, this next piece would have been my lead story. Mary Sims turned herself in.”
“What, to the police?”
“No. To whoever runs the Point when your father’s away. Can’t remember the name. Anyway, she told them everything. She had the missing parts, too, the ones she lifted from the ROVs here. They were in her knapsack when she flew away in our chopper with Ripler! Believe that? Showed up with those and the parts she later walked off with from the Point, as well. The only quote in the report I received on the incident is from her: ‘It no longer matters.’ Not sure how to interpret that. Damn shame for her, but at least she finally did the right thing.”
Penny shook her head. “I’d say she’s a bit more cunning than you give her credit. She realized she was being investigated and decided to make the best of it.”
“Maybe, but she was heavily under the sway of Jack, and he could beguile the stripes off a skunk.”
“I’m sure, but given her actions, why should she get off easy?”
“Easy? Any chance she had of becoming a marine science researcher is now destroyed. What’s the point of throwing her in jail, vengeance?”
She looked away before saying, “She’s not the Sister Mary you think she is.”
“Well, take heart.” He picked up his empty glass and toasted her. “The news is good today. All the way to the top, they’re elated the sub crews are safe. What’s more, whatever happened to them is no longer clearly seen as an attack. Combine that with the arrival of our otherworldly specimen in the tank over here, and we’re back on the board with time to score. So, any change at all in that thing, or any new theories on what the hell it is?”
“They took a small scraping, as I’m sure you know from Becka. The cell structure is similar to the sample we found on the Bluedrop. We tried a sonogram, but it wouldn’t penetrate more than a few centimeters for some reason.”
“Blocking the signal, mayhaps?” He grinned and fake scratched his chin. “Elusive, just like its daddy.”
“Maybe, but we’re certainly not going to cut into it to find ou
t.”
“Of course. There’ll be time for a more thorough investigation when we reach port.”
“We’re not heading back yet,” she said.
“No, but eventually we will be. Still, you’re right. With this new breathing space, I’m sure you realized that we have another chance of finding Matthew.”
“Waiting for thanks?”
“Sugar, I believe I just got all the thanks I’m going to get today.”