Stories: All-New Tales

Then she was shocked beyond belief, and terrified. The ocean beneath the boat and in a long, narrow strip beyond began to churn, forming into a 100-foot-long tubular wave—but the very opposite of a breaking surf, for this wave had depth instead of height, its crest not a peak but a trough ten feet below the water’s surface. She thought of her mother and brothers, of her late father, and of the fact that she wouldn’t get any credit at all for discovering this freakish inverted tsunami before it killed her.

But the boat wasn’t swamped or sucked under, and the upside-down wave, instead of crashing, just kept rolling and rolling. In other words, a ten-foot-wide ditch had formed in the sea, with ten-foot sides of smooth water and a sloshing, foamy bottom. Nancy Zuckerman was sitting in a boat suspended by metal pincers—the two big pipes, now fully exposed—at the top of this perfect, impossible ditch.

As in Exodus 14, the waters of the sea had been divided, the waters being a wall on her right hand and on her left. But even at that supremely dreamlike moment, Nancy Zuckerman’s faith in reason and science was unshaken. Miracles are a function of ignorance, inexplicability a temporary condition. By some mechanical means, a hundred thousand gallons of seawater were being sucked away to form a semicylindrical void. It was amazing, but it was also like one of the rides at Water World, off I-25 in Denver.

She had the presence of mind to push the button on her GPS, and press again to record the reading: longitude 14º 48' 53" east, latitude 86º 19' 27" north.

And then she was vindicated—although also freshly terrified—when a rubbery blue sleeve rose from the pit beneath the boat and wrapped itself tightly around the hull with a vacuum-packing thrrrooooop. Definitely a machine at work, not God or Satan. As the dinghy started moving smoothly and slowly into the slot in the sea, she considered escape—she might be able to dive out past the edge of the slot and swim away, might make it to the ice and pull herself out of the water before hypothermia set in, might be rescued by searchers from the Dauntless after they discovered her and the dinghy missing. But curiosity kept her in the boat. As the machine moved her down into the mists and darkness, Nancy was careful to notice everything she heard and saw and smelled. She was an explorer.

TWELVE DAYS AGO, HIS beacon—now out of the closet and sitting on the coffee table in the living room—had started alternating a chartreuse throb with each purple one. Chartreuse meant that someone had entered the station. And the station’s mapping console, assuming it still worked, would give the intruders the precise location of the remote beacon. He thought of getting rid of the device, leaving it on the El or heaving it into the Chicago River, to put the hounds off his scent. But then he admitted, once and for all, that he wants to be tracked down. He craves being found.

And so he has gotten all his documents and images in order, the entire chronicle. He has packed a suitcase, and straightened up the apartment. He has been watching cable news and surfing the Web constantly. Surely it is only a matter of time.

But he’s surprised when the front-door buzzer buzzes. He had expected helicopters and floodlights and grappling hooks and special-ops troopers in black visors and haz-mat suits bursting through the doors and windows with automatic weapons and gas canisters, and had even practiced dropping to the floor and putting his hands over his head. The Obamas’ Hyde Park house is ten minutes from his apartment, which he’d figured would make the brouhaha all the more spectacular. As he stands at the intercom speaker, he looks out the window down at Kimbark Avenue: cars driving past, people strolling by and hanging out as on any summer afternoon, no evacuation of the block, no emergency vehicles, no perimeter secured.

The doorbell buzzes again. He wonders if it’s the UPS guy.

“Yes?”

“Hello?” A woman, sounding tentative.

“Yes?”

“I’m looking for someone who, um, also lives at 86 degrees, 19 minutes, 27 seconds north?”

He grins, and buzzes her in.

Opening the apartment door, he’s surprised all over again: she’s alone, apparently unarmed, and very young. She extends her right hand.

“I’m Nancy Zuckerman.”

“Hello. I’m Nicholas Walker.”

“I’m a scientific researcher,” she says. “From the Arctic.”

“Really?” He smiles, and motions her inside. “So am I! How very fortunate. For the both of us.”