The Ghost from the Grand Banks (Arthur C. Clarke Collection) Read online

  Every trade has its acknowledged leaders, whose fame seldom extends beyond the boundaries of their profession. At any given time, few could name the world’s top accountant, dentist, sanitary engineer, insurance broker, mortician… to mention only a handful of unglamorous but essential occupations.

  There are some ways of making a living, however, which have such high visibility that their practitioners become household names. First, of course, are the performing arts, in which anyone who becomes a star may be instantly recognizable to a large fraction of the human race. Sports and politics are close behind; and so, a cynic might argue, is crime.

  Jason Bradley fit into none of these categories, and had never expected to be famous. The Glomar Explorer episode was more than three decades in the past, and even if it had not been shrouded in secrecy, his role had been far too obscure to be noteworthy. Although he had been approached several times by writers hoping to get a new angle on Operation JENNIFER, nothing had ever come of their efforts.

  It seemed likely that, even at this date, the CIA felt that the single book on the subject was one too many, and had taken steps to discourage other authors. For several years after 1974, Bradley had been visited by anonymous but polite gentlemen who had reminded him of the documents he signed when he was discharged. They always came in pairs, and sometimes they offered him employment of an unspecified nature. Though they assured him that it would be “interesting and well paid,” he was then earning very good money on North Sea oil rigs, and was not tempted. It was now more than a decade since the last visitation, but he did not doubt that the Company still had him carefully stockpiled in its vast data banks at Langley—or wherever they were these days.

  He was in his office on the forty-sixth floor of the Teague Tower—now dwarfed by Houston’s later skyscrapers—when he received the assignment that was to make him famous. The date happened to be April 2nd, and at first Bradley thought that his occasional client Jeff Rawlings had got it a day late. Despite his awesome responsibilities as operations manager on the Hibernia Platform, Jeff was noted for his sense of humor. This time, he wasn’t joking; yet it was quite a while before Jason could take his problem seriously.

  “Do you expect me to believe,” he said, “that your million-ton rig has been shut down… by an octopus?”

  “Not the whole operation, of course—but Manifold 1—our best producer. Forty thou barrels a day. Five flowlines running into it, all going full blast. Until yesterday.”

  The Hibernia project, it suddenly occurred to Jason, had the same general design as an octopus. Tentacles—or pipelines—ran out along the seabed from the central body to the dozen wells that had been drilled three thousand meters through the oil-rich sandstone. Before they reached the main platform, the flowlines from several individual wells were combined at a production manifold—also on the seabed, nearly a hundred meters down.

  Each manifold was an automated industrial complex the size of a large apartment building, containing all the specialized equipment needed to handle the high-pressure mixture of gas, oil, and water erupting from the reservoirs far below. Tens of millions of years ago, nature had created and stored this hidden treasure; it was no simple matter to wrest it from her grasp.

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “This circuit secure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Three days ago we started getting erratic instrument readings. The flow was perfectly normal, so we weren’t too worried. But then there was a sudden data cutoff; we lost all monitoring facilities. It was obvious that the main fiber-optic trunk had been broken, and of course the automatics shut everything down.”

  “No surge problems?”

  “No; slug-catcher worked perfectly—for once.”

  “And then?”

  “S.O.P.—we sent down a camera—Eyeball Mark 5. Guess what?”

  “The batteries died.”

  “Nope. The umbilical got snagged in the external scaffolding, before we could even go inside to look around.”

  “What happened to the driver?”

  “Well, the kitchen isn’t completely mechanized, and Chef Dubois can always use some unskilled labor.”

  “So you lost the camera. What happened next?”

  “We haven’t lost it—we know exactly where it is—but all it shows are lots of fish. So we sent down a diver to untangle things—and to see what he could find.”

  “Why not an ROV?”

  There were always several underwater robots—Remotely Operated Vehicles—on any offshore oilfield. The old days when human divers did all the work were long since past.

  There was an embarrassed silence at the other end of the line.

  “Afraid you’d ask me that. We’ve had a couple of accidents—two ROVs are being rebuilt—and the rest can’t be spared from an emergency job on the Avalon platform.”

  “Not your lucky day, is it? So that’s why you’ve called the Bradley Corporation—‘No job too deep.’ Tell me more.”

  “Spare me that beat-up slogan. Since the depth’s only ninety meters, we sent down a diver, in standard heliox gear. Well—ever heard a man screaming in helium? Not a very nice noise…

  “When we got him up and he was able to talk again, he said the entire rig was covered by an octopus. He swore it was a hundred meters across. That’s ridiculous, of course—but there’s no doubt it’s a monster.”

  “However big it is, a small charge of dynamite should encourage it to move.”

  “Much too risky. You know the layout down there—after all, you helped install it!”

  “If the camera’s still working, doesn’t it show the beast?”

  “We did get a glimpse of a tentacle—but no way of judging its size. We think it’s gone back inside—we’re worried that it might rip out more cables.”

  “You don’t suppose it’s fallen in love with the plumbing?”

  “Very funny. My guess is that it’s found a free lunch. You know—the bloody Oasis Effect that Publicity’s always boasting about.”

  Bradley did indeed. Far from being damaging to the environment, virtually all underwater artifacts were irresistibly attractive to marine life, and often became a target for fishing boats and a paradise for anglers. He sometimes wondered how fish had managed to survive, before mankind generously provided them with condominiums by scattering wrecks across the seabeds of the world.

  “Perhaps a cattle prod would do the trick—or a heavy dose of subsonics.”

  “We don’t care how it’s done—as long as there’s no damage to the equipment. Anyway, it looked like a job for you—and Jim, of course. Is he ready?”

  “He’s always ready.”

  “How soon can you get to St. John’s? There’s a Chevron jet at Dallas—it can pick you up in an hour. What does Jim weigh?”

  “One point five tons.”

  “No problem. When can you be at the airport?”

  “Give me three hours. This isn’t my normal line of business—I’ll have to do some research.”

  “Usual terms?”

  “Yes—hundred K plus expenses.”

  “And no cure, no pay?”

  Bradley smiled. The centuries-old salvage formula had probably never been invoked in a case like this, but it seemed applicable. And it would be an easy job. A hundred meters, indeed! What nonsense…

  “Of course. Call you back in one hour to confirm. Meanwhile please fax the manifold plans, so I can refresh my memory.”

  “Right—and I’ll see what else I can find out, while I’m waiting for your call.”

  There was no need to waste time packing; Bradley always had two bags ready—one for the tropics, one for the Arctic. The first was very little used; most of his jobs, it seemed, were in unpleasant parts of the world, and this one would be no exception. The North Atlantic at this time of year would be cold, and probably rough; not that it would matter much, a hundred meters down.

  Those who thought of Jason Bradley as a tough, no-nonsense roughneck wou
ld have been surprised at his next action. He pressed a button on his desk console, lay back in his partially reclining chair, and closed his eyes. To all outward appearances, he was asleep.

  It had been years before he discovered the identity of the haunting music that had ebbed and flowed across Glomar Explorers deck, almost half a lifetime ago. Even then, he had known it must have been inspired by the sea; the slow rhythm of the waves was unmistakable. And how appropriate that the composer was Russian—the most underrated of his country’s three titans, seldom mentioned in the same breath as Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky…

  As Sergey Rachmaninoff himself had done long ago, Jason Bradley had stood transfixed before Arnold Boecklin’s “Isle of the Dead,” and now he was seeing it again in his mind’s eye. Sometimes he identified himself with the mysterious, shrouded figure standing in the boat; sometimes he was the oarsman (Charon?); and sometimes he was the sinister cargo, being carried to its last resting place beneath the cypresses.

  It was a secret ritual that had somehow evolved over the years, and which he believed had saved his life more than once. For while he was engrossed in the music, his subconscious mind—which apparently had no interest in such trivialities—was very busy indeed, analyzing the job that lay ahead, and foreseeing problems that might arise. At least that was Bradley’s more-than-half-seriously-held theory, which he never intended to disprove by too close an examination.

  Presently he sat up, switched off the music module, and swung his seat around to one of his half-dozen keyboards. The NeXT Mark 4 which stored most of his files and information was hardly the last word in computers, but Bradley’s business had grown up with it and he had resisted all updates, on the sound principle “If it works, don’t fix it.”

  “I thought so,” he muttered, as he scanned the encyclopedia entry “Octopus.” “Maximum size when fully extended may be as much as ten meters. Weight fifty to one hundred kilograms.”

  Bradley had never seen an octopus even approaching this size, and like most divers he knew considered them charming and inoffensive creatures. That they could be aggressive, much less dangerous, was an idea he had never taken seriously.

  “See also entry on ‘Sports, Underwater.’”

  He blinked twice at this last reference, instantly accessed it, and read it with a mixture of amusement and surprise. Although he had often tried his hand at sports diving, he had the typical professional’s disdain for amateur scubanauts. Too many of them had approached him looking for jobs, blissfully unaware of the fact that most of his work was in water too deep for unprotected humans, often with zero light and even zero visibility.

  But he had to admire the intrepid divers of Puget Sound, who wrestled with opponents heavier than themselves and with four times as many arms—and brought them back to the surface without injuring them. (That, it seemed, was one of the rules of the game; if you hurt your octopus before you put it back in the sea, you were disqualified.)

  The encyclopedia’s brief video sequence was the stuff of nightmares: Bradley wondered how well the Puget Sounders slept. But it gave him one vital piece of information.

  How did these crazy sportsmen—and sportswomen, there were plenty of them as well—persuade a peaceable mollusc to emerge from its lair and indulge in hand-to-tentacle combat? He could hardly believe that the answer was so simple.

  Pausing only to place a couple of unusual orders with his regular supplier, he grabbed his travel kit and headed for the airport.

  “Easiest hundred K I ever earned,” Jason Bradley told himself.

  11.

  ADA

  A child with two brilliant parents has a double handicap, and the Craigs had made life even more difficult for their daughter by naming her Ada. This well-advertised tribute to the world’s first computer theorist perfectly summed up their ambitions for the child’s future; it would, they devoutly hoped, be happier than that of Lord Byron’s tragic daughter: Ada, Lady Lovelace.

  It was a great disappointment, therefore, when Ada showed no particular talent for mathematics. By the age of six, the Craigs’ friends had joked, “She should at least have discovered the binomial theorem.” As it was, she used her computer without showing any real interest in its operation; it was just another of the household gadgets, like vidphones, remote controllers, voice-operated systems, wall TV, colorfax…

  Ada even seemed to have difficulty with simple logic, finding AND, NOR, and NAND gates quite baffling. She took an instant dislike to Boolean operators, and had been known to burst into tears at the sight of an IF/THEN statement.

  “Give her time,” Donald pleaded to the often impatient Edith. “There’s nothing wrong with her intelligence. I was at least ten before I understood recursive loops. Maybe she’s going to be an artist. Her last report gave her straight A’s in painting, clay modeling—”

  “And a D in arithmetic. What’s worse, she doesn’t seem to care! That’s what I find so disturbing.”

  Donald did not agree, but he knew that it would only start another fight if he said so. He loved Ada too much to see any faults in her; as long as she was happy, and did reasonably well at school, that was all that mattered to him now. Sometimes he wished that they had not saddled her with that evocative name, but Edith still seemed determined to have a genius-type daughter. That was now the least of their disagreements. Indeed, if it had not been for Ada, they would have separated long ago.

  “What are we going to do about the puppy?” he asked, eager to change the subject. “It’s only three weeks to her birthday—and we promised.”

  “Well,” said Edith, softening for a moment, “she still hasn’t made up her mind. I only hope she doesn’t choose something enormous—like a Great Dane. Anyway, it wasn’t a promise. We told her it would depend on her next school test.”

  You told her, Donald thought. Whatever the result, Ada’s going to get that puppy. Even if she wants an Irish wolfhound—which, after all, would be the appropriate dog for this huge estate.

  Donald was still not sure if it was a good idea, but they could easily afford it, and he had long since given up arguing with Edith once she had made up her mind. She had been born and reared in Ireland, and she was determined that Ada should have the same advantage.

  Conroy Castle had been neglected for over half a century, and some portions were now almost in ruins. But what was left was more than ample for a modern family, and the stables were in particularly good shape, having been maintained by a local riding school. After vigorous scrubbing and extensive chemical warfare, they provided excellent accommodation for computers and communications equipment. The local residents thought it was a very poor exchange.

  On the whole, however, the locals were friendly enough. After all, Edith was an Irish girl who had made good, even if she had married an Englishman. And they heartily approved of the Craigs’ efforts to restore the famous gardens to at least some vestige of their Nineteenth-Century glory.

  One of Donald’s first moves, after they had made the west-wing ground floor livable, was to repair the camera obscura whose dome was a late-Victorian afterthought (some said excrescence) on the castle battlements. It had been installed by Lord Francis Conroy, a keen amateur astronomer and telescope maker, during the last decade of his life; when he was paralyzed but too proud to be pushed around the estate in a wheelchair, he had spent hours surveying his empire from this vantage point—and issuing instructions to his army of gardeners by semaphore.

  The century-old optics were still in surprisingly good condition, and threw a brilliant image of the outside world on to the horizontal viewing table. Ada was fascinated by the instrument and the sense of power it gave her as she scanned the castle grounds. It was, she declared, much better than TV—or the boring old movies her parents were always screening.

  And up here on the battlements, she could not hear the sound of their angry voices.

  12.

  A MOLLUSC OF UNUSUAL SIZE

  The first bad news came soon after Bradley had settled
down to his belated lunch. Chevron Canada fed its VIPs well, and Jason knew that as soon as he hit St. John’s he’d have little time for leisurely, regular meals.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Bradley,” said the steward, “but there’s an urgent call from Head Office.”

  “Can’t I take it from here?”

  “I’m afraid not—there’s video as well. You’ll have to go back.”

  “Damn,” said Bradley, taking one quick mouthful of a splendid piece of Texas steak. He reluctantly pushed his plate aside, and walked to the communications booth at the rear of the jet. The video was only one way, so he had no compunction about continuing to chew as Rawlings gave his report.

  “We’ve been doing some research, Jason, about octopus sizes—the people out on the platform weren’t very happy when you laughed at their estimate.”

  “Too bad. I’ve checked with my encyclopedia. The very largest octopus is under ten meters across.”

  “Then you’d better look at this.”

  Though the image that flashed on the screen was obviously a very old photograph, it was of excellent quality. It showed a group of men on a beach, surrounding a shapeless mass about the size of an elephant. Several other photos followed in quick succession; they were all equally clear, but of what it was impossible to say.

  “If I had to put any money on it,” said Bradley, “my guess would be a badly decomposed whale. I’ve seen—and smelled—several. They look just like that; unless you’re a marine biologist, you could never identify it. That’s how sea serpents get born.”

  “Nice try, Jason. That’s exactly what most of the experts said at the time—which, by the way, was 1896. And the place was Florida—Saint Augustine Beach, to be precise.”

  “My steak is getting cold, and this isn’t exactly helping my appetite.”

  “I won’t take much longer. That little morsel weighed about five tons; luckily, a piece was preserved in the Smithsonian, so that fifty years later scientists were able to reexamine it. There’s no doubt that it was an octopus; and it must have had a span of almost seventy meters. So our diver’s guess of a hundred may not have been all that far out.”