Oracle (32 page)

“
Do you think Paul and Ophelia are all right?”

He shook his head, wincing as movement aggravated his injury.
“Hard to say. I think maybe whoever’s running the show has explicit instructions to keep her safe. Remember how Barry pulled her aside last night, just before they tried to smash us with the submersible?”

Jade nodded.
“If they’re both safe, then maybe all we need to do is lay low until the ship returns to port. After that…?”

Professor heaved a weary sigh.
“After that, I just don’t know. Let’s get on board and worry about the rest as it comes.”

As Professor had predicted, the full attention of the crew was fixed on the task of bringing the Moon stone to the surface. He barely made a sound as he climbed up the anchor line and pulled himself through the hawsehole on the starboard bow. Jade was not quite as stealthy, but she could have been banging a drum and still gone unnoticed. The air aboard the ship was filled with a discordant symphony of electric motors straining and metal groaning under tremendous stress.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Jade whispered as she cleared the hawsehole. Professor touched a finger to his lips and then motioned for her to seek concealment behind a stack of shipping pallets. The noise continued for several minutes, during which time Jade wondered if the ship was going to shake itself apart.

“
What time is it?” Professor asked.

“
Time for you to get a watch,” she retorted, in a misbegotten attempt to lighten the mood. She slipped the chronograph off her wrist and handed it to him, but did not fail to notice that both clock hands were close to the twelve o’clock position. “Is that right?”

Professor glanced at the watch, as if that was all it took to confirm what he already knew.
“According to this watch, and my body clock too, for that matter, it’s just after noon. But the sun is going down.”

“
We weren’t on the bottom that long.”

“
Nope. This is the time dilation effect Paul was talking about. Time is moving slower, relatively speaking, the closer we get to the Moon stone. Now that it’s on the ship with us, we’re all caught in the effect.”

Jade squinted at the horizon. She could actually see the sun moving through the sky like a time lapse sequence or a video playback on fast forward.
“Is that something we should be worried about?”

A deep gonging noise reverberated through the entire vessel as the Moon stone was lowered to the deck. Jade waited for the vibrations to subside, but instead of dying down, the faint tremors seemed to increase in frequency until the deck plates felt almost electric under her feet.

“I think,” Professor said gravely, “it might be.”

Brian Hodges stared
at the black stone sphere, still partially concealed by mesh slings and the deflating airbag, and felt an overwhelming sense of destiny. This artifact was an insult to everything he believed, mocking the tragic loss he had suffered with its very presence, and yet now he understood that he had made the correct decision in allowing Ophelia to proceed with her plans to recover it from the ocean floor. Now that it was aboard, he could deal with the threat it represented permanently.

When he had joined the Norfolk Group, he had imagined that he would be striking a pre-emptive blow against fundamentalists and extremists who would use ancient relics to draw true believers to their jihads and holy crusades, the way Roman soldiers rallied around their battle standards. He never would have believed that some of those artifacts might actually possess supernatural attributes. Yet, here before him, was something infinitely more dangerous than a mere symbol, and he was the only person on earth who could do something about it. He slung the AR-15 rifle he
’d taken from the ship’s locker across his back and headed for the stairs that led up to the bridge.

Ophelia must have divined his intent.
“Where are you going?”

He ignored her, tak
ing the steps two at a time, and burst into the control room where Lee and two other crewmen were huddled over a console. The master of the ship, his alcoholic flush deepened to a dark magenta by anxiety, looked up as if he had been expecting the intrusion.

“
Set a course for deep water,” Hodges said. “It doesn’t matter where. Just get us somewhere where we can deep six that thing.”

“
No!” The protest came from behind him. Ophelia had followed him to the bridge.

“
Believe me,” Lee said. “I’d like nothing better. But the GPS is completely screwed. Worse than last night. I have no idea where we are and no way to tell where we’re going.”

Contrary to what Chapman and the others had no doubt believed, the previous night
’s technical difficulties had not been an act of sabotage. Hodges had been informed of the malfunction, and now he realized that, even at a distance, the ship’s hardware had been affected by the artifact that now sat on the deck below. This time, a simple reboot would not suffice to fix the problem.

“
Just point us in the right direction,” he snarled. “It’s a big ocean and I’m not asking you to be picky.”

Lee chewed his lip.
“Deepest spot that’s close to us is Little Abaco Canyon. More than two miles deep in some places. It’s about a hundred nautical miles from here. We could be there in about twelve hours.”

His forehead drew into a furrow as he glanced at the wall clock. It read 12:15 p.m. and yet beyond the large windows, the setting sun was clearly visible. Time and the ability to measure it had ceased to have any meaning.

“Can you steer us there by dead reckoning?”

“
No,” Ophelia shouted. “You can’t do this.”

Hodg
es rounded and struck her a vicious backhand blow. The impact stung his hand, but the sensation was deliciously satisfying, as was the sight of Ophelia crumpling senseless to the deck. Then, as if what he had done was of no more consequence than swatting a fly, he turned back to Lee. “Can you?”

The captain nodded.
“I can wing it. It’s east-by-southeast. If we veer off course, we’ll see Abacos and be able to correct.”

Lee
’s drunken slur did not fill Hodges with confidence, but what alternative was there? “Do it. We may not have much time.”

Lee straightened and addressed one of the crewmen.
“You heard the man. Take the helm. Bring us about. Engines at one-quarter until I give the word.”

Hodges felt the ship begin to move. Through the window, the blood orange orb of the sun
, which was just beginning to kiss the flat line of the horizon, seemed to slide sideways and then disappeared altogether. Lee stepped over Ophelia and stuck his head through the door in order to continue tracking the sun’s position. “On my mark, straighten the rudder and all ahead full.”

“
Aye, sir. On your mark.”

Hodges craned his head around and caught a glimpse of the sun, flattening out against the horizon as day slipped into night.

“Now!” Lee cried.

Hodges felt the ship lurch as the engines revved up and the
Quest Explorer
surged forward like a racehorse out of the gate.

Lee stepped back inside and peered through the window into the deepening twilight. A few seconds later, a slim fingernail of silvery light appeared in the gloom.
“There,” the captain said. “Head for the moon.”

The moon.

Ophelia and Dorion had called the black orb “the Moon stone” and hadn’t the physicist talked about tidal forces and gravitational anomalies?

Without saying another word, he stepped over Ophelia and headed for the deck. He wasn
’t sure what it was about the rising moon that was nagging at his consciousness, but he had a feeling Dorion would know.

Jade felt the
subtle shift at her center of gravity as the ship began moving, turning. Before she could frame the obvious question, Professor stiffened in alarm.

“
What the hell are they doing?”

Jade shared his concern, but did not understand the reason for it.
“What’s wrong?”

“
Think about it. That thing they just brought on board is probably the source of all the weirdness that’s been attributed to the Bermuda Triangle for the last four hundred years. And that was when it was just sitting there, buried under tons of sand and doing nothing. Moving it has clearly upset the natural equilibrium and exacerbated the effect. It’s obviously screwing with space-time, and something tells me that what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of iceberg.”

“
Okay. So?”

“
Bermuda Triangle?” His voice was uncharacteristically harsh. “Ships and planes vanishing without a trace. You really think we should be trying to go anyplace with that thing on board?”

“
Oh. I see your point. So what do we do about it?”

He frowned, but it was a look of concentration.
“The Phoenicians found a way to move that thing across the Pacific three thousand years ago. Maybe the field is more massive now, but it must equalize after a while. Maybe there’s some kind of trigger that…” His eyes widened and he turned to peer into the darkest part of the sky. “Oh, no.”

Jade followed his gaze and spied the full moon, bloated and yellow just above the black line of the horizon. Before she could say anything, the glowing disk seemed to grow even larger, until it filled her vision. She thought she heard Professor
’s voice reaching out to her, but his words, if indeed there were any, were swallowed up in the sudden rushing sound that filled her ears.

Jade looked up
and saw Dane Maddock standing over her, a bottle of Dos Equis in each hand. One for him, one for her. She reached out and took the proffered bottle, feeling the cool glass against her palm and beads of moisture—condensation drawn out of the humid tropical air—trickling across the back of her hand, He smiled at her and Jade felt a surge of emotions well up in her heart.

This was perfect.

She took in her familiar surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. She was on the foredeck of Maddock’s boat,
Sea Foam,
as it rocked gently in its slip at the Key West marina, watching the sun go down out in Gulf. The sky a dazzling swirl of orange and purple against water that was almost black.

This was the life she was meant to have.

He sat down beside her and reached out with his own bottle, tapping it against the neck of hers. “To the good life.”

She laughed, but something about his toast left her ill-at-ease.
“What made you say that?”

He smiled and gestured toward the sunset.
“Look around. We’re living the dream here. You. Me. A tropical paradise. And Bones is three thousand miles away, helping Crazy Charlie with his latest get-rich-quick scheme. Does it get better than that?”

The good life.

“I have gazed upon the life that might have been as one might gaze through a window,” she murmured. “If only I could open the window and step through, I would.”

Maddock
’s smile slipped by a degree. “What is that, a poem?”

The words—words she had read in another life, another reality—tugged at her, a force like gravity, drawing her out of this most perfect of worlds.

No. This is the life I want.

She clutched at memories like a lifeline.
The day they had met, when he had saved her life after she’d gotten trapped while cave diving. The year they had been together; the fights, but also the good times, and then the break. But he had come back. He had come to her in Japan and they had fought the Dominion together, and when it was over, he had taken her back into his life and….

That
’s not what happened.

But in another universe… in this universe… it was.

She reached out and took his hand, as if physical contact might anchor her to this reality, but it wasn’t enough. She knew that she was an intruder here, a usurper. This was only the life that might have been, not her real life.

But what if it could be?

The inner voice was so seductive, the touch of Maddock’s hand was so real. What would she have to do to stay in this moment?

No. This is wrong. This is a lie.

She let go of his hand, thrusting him away. The abrupt motion caused the beer bottle to go skittering across the deck, vomiting a trail of foam.

“
Jade, what’s wrong?”

She could already feel herself being pulled, like a rubber band snapping back after stretching
almost to its breaking point. Every fiber of her being told her to hang on to this world. She had passed through the window…no, the open door…and all she had to do was shut it behind her forever.

Can I do that?

Should I?

It was already too late. Maddock
’s face vanished into the haze and the setting sun became darkness and then….

The touch of
sunlight on her eyelids roused Jade.

Sunlight?

She sat up with a start. The sun had risen and now hung low in the eastern sky.
That can’t be right. The sun just went down.

The accelerated dawn was not the strangest sight to greet her eyes. Something had happened to the ship, though she couldn
’t quite put her finger on exactly what. Everything appeared…crooked. Bulkheads were tilting at crazy angles. The deck was warped beneath her, buckling as if under extreme pressure. It reminded her of Salvador Dali paintings where solid objects melted and flowed like Silly Putty. When she got to her feet, she could see the wave-tops flashing by dizzyingly fast, but the water level was alarmingly close to the deck; the
Quest Explorer
was sinking.

“
Jade!”

Even though it only seemed as if a few seconds had passed since she
’d last heard him speak, she turned to Professor as if he were an old friend she hadn’t seen in ages and threw her arms around him. He returned the embrace with equal enthusiasm.

“
Thank God,” he whispered. “I was afraid you…I didn’t have time to warn you.”

She let go and held him at arm
’s length. “Warn me?”

“
You saw something again didn’t you?”

The thought of what she ha
d seen sent a pang through Jade. No, it was worse than that. It ripped off the scab and rubbed jalapeno juice into her wounded heart. Professor, perhaps noticing her reaction, did not ask. “Me too. And I think I know what’s going on here. The disappearances of the men at the lighthouse, the ships found completely abandoned. Even what happened with Gil Perez.” He glanced at the sky. The sun was climbing fast, though that didn’t seem to mean anything anymore. “We don’t have much time. I’ll explain on the way.”

“
The way to where?”

“
The bridge,” he said, already moving away.

Jade started after him.
“In case you’ve forgotten, the people on this ship are trying to kill us.”

“
Not anymore.” He gestured to the main deck where the she had last seen the crewmen gathered around the Moon stone. The black orb was still there, but the area appeared completely deserted. As she started to turn away, she spied movement behind the sphere. Before Jade could shout a warning to Professor, what she had glimpsed resolved into a person. It was Dorion.

“
Paul!” Jade cried out. “You’re still here.”

He jogged over to join them.
“Where did everyone go?”

Professor paused at the base of the stairs.
“Do you remember how Perez said that he had seen the life that he might have had if he had made different choices? I think that when you are this close to the dark matter field, that’s exactly what happens. You don’t just see possible futures; you see alternate realities in the multi-verse. Worlds where the decisions we make spin off to form alternate timelines.”

Jade nodded dumbly. That sounded about right.

“Maybe you see the life you think you should have had,” Professor continued, and Jade thought she heard a hint of anguish in his voice.

What did you see?
Maybe there was a reason he had not asked her that question.

“
A window into other worlds,” Dorion said, “but not a door. The same rules that govern our universe, also govern the multiverse. Everything must balance. If a person tried to pass between realities, it upsets the balance and the results are, well, unpredictable at best. Possibly even catastrophic.”

“
‘Look but don’t touch.’” Professor summarized. “That’s what happened to Perez. He thought the other reality he was seeing was a way to escape being trapped underground, but when he tried to pass through, the fabric of reality got mixed up. All the different possibilities got jumbled and when the pieces finally settled, there were two Gil Perez’s in our world: one in the cavern under the pyramid, and another in Mexico, accused of deserting his post in Manila.”

Jade thought about how she
close she had come to making a similar decision. “So if we tried to stay in one of those other realities, the same thing might happen to us? We could get teleported somewhere else?”

“The earth keeps moving through space,” Dorion said. “So when you get pulled back, you don’t end up where you started. It is like stepping off of a moving train and then trying to get back on. You’ll end up in a different car, if you don’t get left behind altogether.”

Jade swallowed. She had wanted to stay in that other world so badly she could taste it, yet if she had tried where would she have landed?
In the middle of the ocean? Outer space?

“
I think that’s what happened to the crew,” Professor said. “I guess we were smart enough not to fall for it. Or just plain lucky.”

Jade felt that luck had played more of a part in her case. It had happened so quickly. She wondered what alternative realities had enticed the crew. Had Nichols glimpsed a world where he was a famous treasure hunter, a world-renowned celebrity, whose exploits made the front page of every newspaper? Had Lee seen himself, clean and sober, and in command of a five-star cruise ship? What about Ophelia? For that matter, what
‘might-have-been’ had Dorion glimpsed and ultimately rejected?

“
I think it peaks when the moon rises,” Professor continued. “The additional pull of gravity supplies an extra kick to the dark matter field. We’re safe for the moment, but with this time dilation effect, we won’t have long.” He started up the stairs. “We have to abandon ship; leave in the RIB.”

“
Then why are you going up there?” When he didn’t answer, her curiosity got the better of her and she headed up the stairs after him, with Dorion right behind her. She passed through the doors a moment later and was surprised to find him kneeling over a groggy Ophelia.

“
I guess we’re not the only survivors after all,” Jade said under her breath. Evidently, whatever alternative reality Ophelia had glimpsed had not been as enticing as the prospect of using the Moon stone to dominate her family enterprise, and perhaps the rest of the world, too.

“
What…” Ophelia looked up at him, then at Jade. Although her disorientation might have been attributable to the effects of the Moon stone, there was a spot of blood at the corner of her mouth and a distinctly hand-shape bruise on her cheek. When her eyes fell on Dorion, her expression became apprehensive.

She doesn
’t look very happy to see him. I wonder why?

Ophelia
’s gaze came back to Professor. “What happened?”

“
Long story,” Professor told her. “Jade, get her up.”

Jade helped Ophelia stand while Professor went to the helm. Through the big window that looked forward, Jade could see land directly ahead and approaching fast. Only then did it occur to her that the ship
’s engines were still chugging away. Professor adjusted the controls and the view changed, the islands slipping away to their left.

“
That should do it,” he said. “Unless I’m mistaken, that’s Abaco to port. Once we’re past it, there’s nothing more but open ocean all the way to Africa. Not that this tub is going to hold together long enough to make it that far.”

“
It is Abaco,” Ophelia said blearily. “Hodges wanted the captain to make for Abaco Canyon. He was going to dump the Moon stone there.”

“
Hodges? He’s here?” Professor looked at her for a moment, but then shook his head. “Well, he had the right idea. The canyon would be the perfect place to get rid of it. I think that, in addition to everything else, the dark matter field is creating a gravitational anomaly that’s causing the ship to implode. It’s going to sink, probably very soon. We have to try to get it away from populated areas before it does.”

Ophelia came wide-awake.
“No. You can’t. We have to save it.”

Jade placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Ophelia, the Moon stone is dangerous. It’s already taken the crew.”

Ophelia looked around, evidently noticing for the first time that there were only the four of them on the bridge. She frowned but then pointed to the not-too-distant outline of Greater Abaco Island.
“There’s land right there. We can put into port. Quarantine the ship until we’re able to figure out how to move it safely.” She turned to Dorion. “Paul, you said it would settle down if we stop moving it. Tell them.”

He started to answer, but Jade cut the debate short.
“We’re getting off this ship. End of discussion.”

Professor stepped away from the helm and went to the chart table, on which a map of the Bahamas was displayed underneath a sheet of Plexiglas. He tapped it.
“We were here, at Great Isaac last night at sundown. Now we’re here. That’s about a twelve-hour journey under normal conditions. With the ship taking on water, it’s probably taken a lot longer…relatively speaking that is. From an outside perspective, we’re moving at a normal speed, but because of the time dilation effect, a twelve or fifteen hours only feels like a few minutes. To us, it’s like hyperspace travel.”

Outside the window, the southern tip of Greater Abaco Island slid out of view. Professor returned to the helm and adjusted course again.

“So what does that mean?”

He searched the controls for a moment, found what he was looking for, and pressed a button. The engines instantly fell silent but the ship continued to move forward at what seemed like breakneck s
peed. In the sudden quiet, the noise of the ship’s slow structural collapse was audible. “It means, we’re right where we need to be, and not a moment too soon. Now, let’s get the hell off this ship.”