Additional excited murmuring echoed throughout the room.
“And the result of this expedition?” Ala questioned.
“Nothing that would concern Interterra,” Suzanne said. “In fact, the goal of the expedition changed even before it began. Instead of looking for the entrance to the interior of the earth, by the time they got underway they were tasked to find new sealing and whaling grounds.”
“So Mr. Symmes’s theory was ignored?” Ala questioned.
“Completely,” Suzanne said. “And the idea has never resurfaced.”
“We are indeed thankful,” Ala said, “especially considering Mr. Symmes was correct in some respects. The South Pole was and still is our major interplanetary and intergalactic port.”
“Isn’t that curious,” Suzanne said. “Unfortunately it’s a bit late for Mr. Symmes to be vindicated. Be that as it may, I gather from your questions that you are asking me if your secret is safe, and I have to say it is, as far as I know. But while we’re on the subject, perhaps I should mention that although no one currently believes in a hollow earth, there have always been fringe groups who talk about aliens from advanced cultures that have visited us or are among us. There has even been a hit TV show with that as its theme. But these ideas of alien visitations refer to aliens coming from outer space, not from within the earth.”
“We are aware of what you are describing,” Ala said. “And we have been pleased with that association. It has been particularly useful on the few occasions that one of our interplanetary craft have been observed by secondary humans.”
“The only other thing I should mention,” Suzanne said, “is that our culture has had enduring myths about Atlantis that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks. But I assure you the scientific community considers them to be pure myths or possibly the result of the destruction of an ancient secondary human culture by a violent volcanic eruption. There has never been a theory that a primary human culture lives beneath the ocean.”
The elders noisily conferred again. Suzanne shifted uncomfortably as they deliberated.
Ala concluded the private discourse with a nod to her colleagues and then redirected her attention to Suzanne. “We would like to inquire about the episodes of random deep-ocean drilling that have been occurring over the last number of years in the general area of Saranta. None of these have been on the crest of a seamount.”
“I imagine you are referring to the drilling that has been done to confirm the latest theories of sea-floor spreading,” Suzanne said. “It’s been done merely to provide rock cores for dating purposes.”
The elders again erupted in a short burst of excited chatter. At its conclusion Ala asked, “Was there ever any suggestion the supposed magma chamber into which you were drilling was filled with air instead of low-density lava?”
“Not that I was aware of,” Suzanne said. “And I was the senior scientist on the project.”
“Those exit ports should have been sealed ages ago,” one of the other elders said with some vehemence.
“This is not a time for recrimination,” Ala advised diplomatically. “We are dealing with the present.” Then, looking back at Suzanne, she said, “To summarize, in your professional life you have never heard any suggestion that a civilization exists under the ocean or any theories to that effect?”
“Only as myths, as I’ve mentioned,” Suzanne said.
“And now for the last question we would like to direct to you,” Ala said. “We have become increasingly apprehensive about your civilization’s progressive lack of respect for the ocean environment. Although we have heard some mention of this problem in your media, the rate of pollution and overfishing has increased. Since we are dependent to some degree on the integrity of the ocean, we wonder if your civilization’s talk of this issue is mere lip service or a real concern?”
Suzanne sighed. This issue was close to her heart. She knew all too well that the truth was discouraging at best.
“Some people are trying to change the situation,” Suzanne said.
“That response suggests it is not considered an important issue by the majority,” Ala said.
“Perhaps not, but those who do care, care passionately.”
“But perhaps the general public is not aware of the crucial role the ocean plays in the grand scheme of earth surface environment, for example, the fact that plankton modulates both oxygen and carbon dioxide on the earth’s surface.”
Suzanne felt her face flush, as if somehow she were to blame for the way secondary humans treated the world’s oceans. “I’m afraid that most people and most countries view the ocean as an inexhaustible food supply and a bottomless pit for refuse and waste.”
“That is sad indeed,” Ala said. “And worrisome.”
“It is self-interested shortsightedness,” Ponu said.
“I have to agree,” Suzanne admitted. “It’s something I and my colleagues are working on. It’s a battle.”
“Well, then,” Ala said. She pushed herself off her chair. Once she got her feet on the ground she walked directly over to Suzanne with her hand outstretched, palm forward.
Suzanne raised her own hand and pressed palms with Ala. Ala’s head only came to Suzanne’s chin.
“Thank you for your helpful counsel,” Ala said with sincerity. “At least in relation to the security of Interterra, you have allayed our fears. As a reward we offer to you the full panoply of the fruits of our civilization. You have much to see and experience. With your background you are uniquely qualified, far better than any of our other earth surface visitors. Go and enjoy!”
Sudden applause by the other elders left Suzanne momentarily flustered. She self-consciously acknowledged the acclaim by nodding before speaking above the persisting applause. “Thank you all for providing me this opportunity to visit Interterra. I’m honored.”
“It is we who are honored,” Ala said. She gestured toward Arak and Garona, directing Suzanne to follow.
Later as the three exited the great pyramid, Suzanne paused to glance back at the imposing structure. She wondered if she should have posed the question to the Council whether she and the others were temporary visitors to Interterra or permanent, captive residents. Part of the reason she hadn’t was her fear of what the answer would be. But now she found herself wishing she had.
“Are you okay?” Garona asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“I’m fine,” Suzanne replied. She resumed walking, still engrossed in her thoughts. The one thing the visit did clear up was the reason she and the others had been brought to Interterra. The elders had wanted to quiz a professional oceanographer about suspicions of Interterra’s existence. She didn’t think that the treatment she and her crewmates would receive was about to change now that the Interterrans had achieved their goal. On the other hand she now felt solely responsible for their plight. If it hadn’t been for her, they would not have been abducted.
“Are you sure you are all right?” Garona asked. “You seem so pensive.”
Suzanne forced herself to smile. “It’s hard not to be,” she said. “There’s so much to take in.”
“You have provided a great service to Interterra,” Arak remarked. “As Ala said, we all are grateful.”
“I’m glad,” Suzanne said as she tried to maintain her grin. But it was difficult. Sensing that Donald was right and that they were in Interterra to stay, her intuition was telling her that a confrontation was inevitable, and given the personalities of some of her colleagues, the situation could soon turn violent and ugly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“This place gives me the creeps,” Michael said.
“It is weird that it is so deserted,” Donald said. “It’s also weird that they let us roam around in here by ourselves.”
“They are trusting,” Michael said. “You got to give them that.”
“I’d call it foolish,” Donald said.
The two second-generation humans were wandering around inside Central Information. Ismael and
Mary Black had accompanied them to the entrance of the vast building but had chosen to remain outside while Donald and Michael paid their visit. Inside, the two men found themselves in an enormous labyrinth of intersecting corridors and passageways. The place was a hive of rooms filled floor to ceiling with what appeared to be the hard drives of a colossal computer array. Except for two worker clones they’d come across in one room near the entrance, they had not seen another living thing.
“You don’t think we’re going to get lost in here, do you?” Michael asked uneasily. He looked back the way they’d come. Every corridor looked the same.
“I’ve been keeping track of our movements,” Donald said.
“Are you sure?” Michael said. “We’ve made a lot of turns.”
Donald stopped. “Listen, bonehead,” he said. “If you’re worried why don’t you just go the hell back to the entrance and wait?”
“That’s okay,” Michael said. “I’m cool.”
“Cool, my ass,” Donald said. He started walking again.
“What did you want to come here for anyway?” Michael asked a few minutes later.
“Let’s just say I was curious,” Donald replied.
“It’s like a nightmare,” Michael said. “Or like a horror movie about technology gone wild.” He shuddered.
“For once, I agree with you, sailor,” Donald said. “It’s like technology has taken over.”
“What do you think all this equipment does?”
“Arak suggested it runs the place,” Donald said. “Apparently it monitors everything. And it stores peoples’ essences. God knows how many people are locked up inside this thing right now.”
Michael shuddered again. “Do you think they know we’re here?”
“You got me there, sailor,” Donald said.
They walked for a few minutes in silence.
“Haven’t you seen enough?” Michael questioned.
“I suppose,” Donald said. “But I’m going to press on for a while yet.”
“I wonder if this thing repairs itself.”
“If it does,” Donald said, “then we’d have to question who was more alive, this machine or these people who seem to have so little to do.”
Suddenly Donald put out a hand, stopping Michael in his tracks.
“What is it?” Michael cried.
Donald pressed a finger to his lips for Michael to be quiet. “Don’t you hear that?” Donald whispered.
Michael cocked his head and listened intently. He did hear faint sounds in the far distance: soft bursts piercing the otherwise heavy silence.
“Do you hear it?” Donald asked.
Michael nodded. “It sounds like laughter.”
Donald nodded as well. “A curious kind of laughter,” he said. “It comes at such regular intervals.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d say it was canned laughter, like what you hear on a TV sitcom.”
Donald snapped his fingers. “You’re right! I knew it sounded familiar.”
“But that’s crazy,” Michael said.
“Let’s check it out!” Donald said. “Let’s follow our ears!”
With mounting curiosity the two men proceeded, hoping to find the source. At the junctures of each corridor they had to stop and listen to choose a direction. Gradually the sounds became louder, and with it, their choices became clear. As they rounded a final bend, they could tell the noise was coming from a room on the left. At that point they were convinced they really were hearing a TV sitcom; they could even hear the dialogue.
“It sounds like a Seinfeld rerun,” Michael whispered.
“Shut up!” Donald mouthed. He flattened himself against the wall to the side of the room’s entrance and motioned for Michael to move beside him. Slowly Donald eased himself forward. To his surprise, it looked like the screening room of a TV station. The far wall was covered with more than a hundred monitors. All were turned on, most tuned to various programs although a few aired only test patterns.
Leaning forward a bit more Donald noticed a man sitting in a white contour chair in the center of the room facing the monitors. The guy was a far cry from the typical Interterran; he was balding with scruffy gray hair. Sure enough, on the screen directly in front of him were Elaine, George, Kramer, and Jerry.
Donald flattened himself back against the corridor wall, away from the open door. He looked at Michael and whispered, “You were right! It’s an old episode of Seinfeld.”
“I’d recognize those voices anyplace,” Michael said.
Donald raised his finger to his lips again. “There’s a geezer in there watching it,” he whispered. “And he surely doesn’t look like an Interterran.”
“No shit?” Michael questioned in a whisper.
“This is unexpected,” Donald said. He rolled his lower lip into his mouth while he gave the situation some thought.
“That’s for sure,” Michael said. “What should we do?”
“We’re going to walk in and meet this guy,” Donald said. “We might have lucked out here. But listen! Let me do the talking, okay?”
“Be my guest,” Michael said.
“All right, let’s go,” Donald said. He pushed off the wall and stepped into the room. Michael followed. They moved quietly although the TV was so loud, the man could never have heard their approach.
Unsure of how to avoid startling the man and yet get his attention, Donald merely stepped into what he thought was the man’s field of vision but off to the side. The ploy didn’t work. The man was mesmerized by the show; his face was frozen into a slack, comatose expression with lidded, unblinking eyes glued to the screen.
“Excuse me,” Donald said, but his voice was lost in another burst of canned laughter.
Gently Donald reached out and nudged the man’s arm. The man leaped from his seat. Seeing the two intruders in the process, he shrank back. But his recovery was almost as rapid.
“Wait a minute! I recognize you two!” he said. “You are two of the surface people who’ve just joined us.”
“Join is not the right word,” Donald said. “We had no choice in the matter. We were abducted.” He eyed the man, who was no more than five-two with a stooped, bony frame. He had deeply set, rheumy eyes, course features, and a heavily lined face. He was the oldest-looking man Donald had seen in Interterra.
“You weren’t shipwrecked?” the man asked.
“Hardly,” Donald said. He introduced himself and Michael.
“Glad to meet you,” the man said cheerfully. “I was hoping I would.” He came forward to shake their hands. “And that’s the way people should greet each other,” he added. “I’ve had it with that foolish palm-pressing nonsense.”
“What’s your name?” Donald asked.
“Harvey Goldfarb! But you can call me Harv.”
“Are you here by yourself?”
“Sure as shootin’. I’m always here by myself.”
“What are you doing?”
“Not much,” Harvey said. He glanced briefly at the bank of monitors. “Watching TV shows, particularly the ones that take place in New York.”
“Is this a job?”
“Sorta, I suppose, but it’s more like I’m a volunteer. It’s mostly that I like to see bits and pieces of New York. I like All in the Family quite a bit but it’s hard to catch reruns nowadays. It’s too bad. Seinfeld’s all right but I don’t get much of the humor.”
“What is this room for?” Donald asked. “Just entertainment?”
Harvey laughed derisively while shaking his head. “The Interterrans are not interested in TV, and they don’t watch it much. It’s Central Information that’s interested. Saranta Central Information is one of the main media reception sites for Interterra. It monitors the surface media to make certain there is no reference to Interterra’s existence.” Harvey made a sweep toward the monitors with his hands. “This stuff plays twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
“Hey, that reminds me. You guys got a lot of coverage up ther
e on CNN and the networks. You’re all in the news for having gotten consumed in an undersea volcano.”
“So there were no suspicions about anything abnormal?” Donald asked.
“Not a peep,” Harvey said. “Just a lot of geological jabber. Anyway, to get back to me, I volunteered to come down here and monitor TV shows for the files and to censor out any violence.”
“That doesn’t leave much TV,” Donald said with a cynical laugh. “Why bother?”
“I know, it doesn’t make much sense,” Harvey agreed. “But if they do watch it, it can’t have any violence. I don’t know if you know it or not, but these people, the real Interterrans, cannot stand violence. It makes them sick. Literally!”
“So you’re not a real Interterran.”
Harvey gave another short laugh. “Me? Harvey Goldfarb an Interterran? Do I look like an Interterran? With this face?”
“You do look a bit older than everyone else.”
“Older and uglier,” Harvey snorted. “But that’s me. They’ve been trying to get me to agree to let them do all sorts of stuff to me, even grow me hair, but I’ve refused. Yet, I have to say they have kept me healthy. No question about that. Their hospitals are like taking your car to a garage. They just put in a new part and out you go. Anyway, I’m not an Interterran. I’m a New Yorker. I have a wonderful house in the best section of Harlem.”
“Harlem has gone through some changes,” Donald said. “How long has it been since you’ve been home?”
“It was nineteen twelve when I came to Interterra.”
“How’d you get here?”
“A bit of luck and the intervention of the Interterrans. I was saved from drowning along with a few hundred others after our ship ran into an iceberg.”
“The Titanic?” Donald questioned.
“None other,” Harvey said. “I was on my way home to New York.”
“So there are quite a few Titanic passengers in Interterra?” Donald asked.
“Several hundred at least,” Harvey said. “But they’re not all in Saranta. A lot of them moved over to Atlantis and on to other cities. They were in demand. You see, the Interterrans find us entertaining.”