The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere Read online

  The Gossamer Crown

  Book One of The Gossamer Sphere

  by Melissa Conway

  Copyright © 2011 Melissa Conway

  www.melissaconway.net

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  The North Sea

  Some people were cut out for life at sea, and some weren’t. Kevin Guzman’s feet were firmly planted in the “weren’t” camp. In fact, after two months of suffering through the flow and ebb of low-grade seasickness, he longed to plant his feet deep into solid ground far from the nearest ocean.

  At the outset of the expedition, when they’d left the harbor and plowed through a rough North Sea, he’d regretted his last meal of authentic British fish and chips. Luckily, it only took the greater part of that first day to reach the drill site, and since then the ship’s special stabilizers had kept the rocking and rolling to a minimum.

  Still, he often had to abandon his duties as Dr. Weinstein’s student intern and all-around gofer in order to stand on deck and fill his lungs with fresh sea air.

  Today the normally peaceful deck of the old scientific drilling vessel had been invaded by men and women too excited to stay below in the shipboard labs. Kevin hovered between two chattering groups of scientists, pretending to stare out at the calm blue water while eavesdropping on their conversations. An entire summer in their company and not one of his shipmates had gotten to know him enough to realize he was fluent in multiple languages. He didn’t really blame them for not wanting to hang out with a seasick intern, and besides, he enjoyed his solitude.

  To his left, Mr. Yamata with the big teeth spoke to his fellows in Japanese, “Mr. Masters wants us to believe it’s some kind of alloy. It’s iridium, but we can’t identify the other components. We should compare the sample to the iridium in the clay layer of the K-T Boundary.”

  To his right, Astrid, an attractive blonde researcher, said in Swedish, “The amount of iridium in the core sample was astounding. At that concentration, the impactor must have been composed of iridium.”

  Back at the first conversation, the Japanese men began a rapid dialog about the implications of discovering what could potentially be a new element for the periodic table, while the Swedes focused on the issue of mining. Never mind that the precious metal was located under forty meters of water and three hundred meters of sediment.

  All of the core samples retrieved until today had been sedimentary, as the drill worked its way through millions of years of seafloor buildup. The multinational conglomerate of scientists on board had dutifully examined the chemical and biological makeup of the initial samples, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Now that the drill had finally penetrated to the outer layer of the actual impact crater, however, the earlier core samples were quickly abandoned in their refrigerated compartments.

  Kevin took a deep, steadying breath and focused on the horizon, willing this latest bout of nausea to pass.

  From the moment Dr. Weinstein first described the internship to his Marine Geology students, Kevin knew he had to get the job: a summer at sea drilling into the unusual sub-sea structure of concentric rings that formed Silverpit Crater. He’d been slacking in class up to that point, since his interests were more for the geology of terra firma, but the crater in its watery grave drew him. The age of the crater, the date that the object impacted earth, was debated in scientific circles. Some thought it was part of the same asteroid family that hit in the Yucatán, wiping dinosaurs from the planet. Kevin didn’t know how old it was, but he suspected, sensed really, that it was beyond ancient.

  “There you are.”

  He turned as Dr. Weinstein reached his side, wispy grey hair on end. Kevin, who cursed the unknown ancestor he’d inherited his lack of stature from, still managed to tower over the diminutive professor.

  “Masters says the drill is jammed,” Dr. Weinstein said, referring to Bill Masters, the head of the project.

  “What?” Astrid stepped closer.

  “How long will it take to fix?” One of the Japanese scientists asked in English.

  “They don’t know. He said it must have hit something pretty damned hard, though.”

  Astrid whipped her head around to her companions and said, “A solid mass of iridium! I told you.”

  “That’s very unlikely,” Mr. Yamata said.

  “Besides, iridium is hard, but brittle. It would shatter at that temperature,” Dr. Weinstein said.

  Kevin eased backward towards the rail as the discussion gained contributors and volume. Something felt wrong. He listened, thinking that Masters must have shut down one of the engines, but that wasn’t it. He reached out and grasped the rail. It was the ship. Even with the stabilizers, he’d always felt the movement of the sea.

  Everything had gone eerily still. The water shimmered like glass. A thrill of excitement washed over him.

  His whole life had been one unexplained thing after another. He’d long since stopped fearing these flashes of insight, the bursts of comprehension that had no basis in fact. He knew with certainty that whatever lay at the center of that crater didn’t want them there.

  A rumble began below the ship, all around them, in the air, in the water. No one but Kevin noticed until he shouted, “Hang on!”

  Nothing dire seemed to be happening, so the others gaped at him in astonishment.

  Suddenly, the deck beneath his feet lurched and it felt – impossibly – as if the ship lifted up in the air ten or fifteen meters. Then his stomach dropped as the ship came back down. A muffled, metallic, grinding protest rent the air. Displaced water rushed in from all sides and slapped the hull, rolling on deck and toppling those not holding on. Kevin scrambled to help a soaked Astrid regain her feet, realizing as he did that the sound he’d heard was that of the deep sea drill buckling under the weight of the vessel as the water level lowered abruptly.

  “Earthquake,” Dr. Weinstein gasped. “There’ll be a tsunami.”

  “What? Where?” Astrid looked all around.

  “We’re on top of it,” Dr. Weinstein said. “It’s heading out in all directions away from us.”

  The ship’s alarm sounded. The captain came on the loudspeaker and advised everyone to stay calm, but to don life vests and report to their safety coordinator. Everyone began to run at once.

  Kevin stood frozen at the rail. This was why he’d come.

  Chapter Two

  Fairbanks, Alaska

  Stupid Katrina.

  Lizbeth Moreau sat on her grandmother’s weather-worn wooden porch, her booted feet crossed at the ankle, heels resting on the second step. The air already had that fall feel to it, crisp and woodsy, and leaves had begun to turn yellow.

  Not that there were a lot of trees around here that didn’t have pine needles.

  She closed her eyes and imagined what she’d be doing if she were still back home in New Orleans, if home hadn’t washed away so thoroughly there wasn’t even a pile of rubble left to sift through.

  Stupid, stupid Katrina.

  She would have graduated among friends instead of a bunch of strangers who’d never really accepted her. Lizbeth wasn’t the only dark-skinned kid in school, but the color scale was heavy on the light end and chintzy on anything browner. Being so far north meant hardly anyone even got tanned in the pathetic excuse for a summer.

  Her one good friend, Stephanie, claimed to be envious of Lizbeth’s perman
ent light-brown tan. That was because Steph didn’t see the sideways looks Lizbeth got from a certain factor at school. Steph didn’t believe bigotry existed in this day and age, but Lizbeth knew it was there, not rampant necessarily, but there.

  Stupid Katrina.

  “Lizbee!” Her grandmother called. Lizbeth hated that nickname, it sounded too much like “Lezbie.” Thank God no one from school had ever heard Granma say it, or it would have stuck like pine pitch.

  Inside the cabin, Lizbeth wrinkled her nose at the sulfur of a struck match and saw that Granma had lit a row of candles on the rustic stone fireplace mantle. Oh, no. She better not be having one of her embarrassing voodoo ceremonies again.

  In the kitchen, Granma was seated at the table with a cup of tea, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Good. If the cabin was about to be invaded by a horde of believers, Granma would be attired in her robes.

  “Do you feel it?” Granma asked.

  Lizbeth did feel it, something in the air, but she wasn’t about to admit it. With two sharp tugs, she yanked open the decrepit refrigerator and peered inside.

  “On the news today, they said the North Pole moved,” Granma said.

  Lizbeth snorted. “That’s impossible.”

  “No. It isn’t. If you’d paid more attention in school, you’d know that.”

  “Are we talking about the geographic North Pole or the magnetic one? Because the magnetic pole is constantly on the move, that’s nothing new. Last I heard, it was drifting on its way to Siberia,” Lizbeth said.

  “Well it’s drifted back our way, according to Channel Eleven, and very rapidly at that. And, smarty-pants, it’s not impossible for the geographic pole to move. It wobbles all the time.”

  Lizbeth stuck her head further inside the refrigerator to hide a smile. Her mom worked long hours at the fish market, leaving Granma with the responsibility of seeing to Lizbeth’s education. Since Granma hadn’t made it past the ninth grade, she picked up facts here and there and threw them at Lizbeth, with the end result being that Lizbeth learned from her grandmother a little about a lot of things, but not much about anything in particular.

  Voodoo, for instance, was a subject Lizbeth knew well, not that she’d ever brought it up in casual conversation in the cafeteria. That’s why her grandmother had moved here in the first place many years ago, to escape the competition in New Orleans and find a fresh clientele. She’d done surprisingly well.

  It was almost supper time, but Lizbeth pulled out a half-eaten chocolate cake and cut herself a slice. Granma raised her eyebrows, although not in chastisement for the inappropriate meal. Lizbeth cut another slice and handed the plate to her grandmother.

  “Ah. There it is again,” Granma said.

  There it was indeed. Lizbeth felt it as a tingle all down her spine, like an electric current. She abandoned her cake and went back outside on the porch.

  The early evening sky was ablaze.

  Lizbeth had seen the Aurora Borealis once or twice, but this display, this she doubted anyone anywhere had ever seen before.

  Every color of the rainbow undulated in iridescent ecstasy from one end of the horizon to the other. The phenomenon was not diaphanous at all, but thick and heavy as if an enormous cosmic prism had exploded in the sky.

  “Am I on acid?” Granma asked, not an unreasonable question for a voodoo priestess.

  “Not that I know of,” Lizbeth replied.

  Their nearest neighbors, the Cunninghams across the road, ran out en masse, all thirteen of them. Mr. Cunningham wielded his video camera while Mrs. Cunningham snapped photographs. Lizbeth heard their excited voices on the cold evening air.

  In a daze, she resumed her earlier seat on the porch, head tilted upward. Her grandmother joined her.

  “Now we know why we’re here,” Granma said.

  “Where?

  “Alaska, silly.”

  “We do?”

  “Well, we don’t know why. We don’t know what it means, but it does mean something, mark my words. And it’s yours.”

  “My what?” Lizbeth asked, distracted by the mesmerizing show.

  “Your duty, child. Whatever needs to be done, needs to be done by you.”

  Lizbeth didn’t ask what she meant. Ever since she was a child, her grandmother had been grooming her for some indefinable task, some fate not within her control.

  As much as she wanted to watch the fireworks, she was even less inclined to enable her grandmother’s delusions. Lizbeth stood and brushed her hands across the back of her jeans. Without acknowledging the celestial burden Granma would like to place on her shoulders, she went back inside the cabin to her bedroom.

  She could ignore her grandmother and her supposed destiny but the crawling, tingling sensation that had spread from her spine to every nerve in her body was another thing altogether.

  Stupid Katrina.

  Chapter Three

  San Francisco, California

  On a secluded patch of grass in an exclusive neighborhood park, fourteen people ranging in age from maybe twelve to eighty slid into various versions of the Tai Chi pose “snake creeps down.” They followed the slow, controlled movements of their instructor, a muscular black man whose sweaty bald head reflected the morning sun.

  Zach Wong sat on a park bench, studiously ignoring the class. If he watched, he’d have to actively suppress the urge to wander through the group offering advice and correcting stance, posture, everything. Even for the instructor – especially the instructor – who kept entreating his class to keep their “joints soft” while his own technique was stiff and his movements jerky.

  Zach focused on his laptop, which had a tenuous link with the Internet half a block away from home. He’d rather sit out here and watch poorly executed Tai Chi and deal with a spotty connection than listen to his parents argue. Although they called it a “discussion,” as if his mom and step-dad screaming at each other in Chinese was that civilized.

  His email service provider took forever to load. While he waited for his cursor to stop spinning, he read the news headlines, “Massive Aurora Blankets Alaskan Sky,” “Interview: North Sea Tsunami Survivors,” and “Electromagnetic Pulses Predict Earthquakes.” He clicked on the last one and waited for the story to come up. A glance at the fumbling Tai Chi class and he couldn’t help but laugh. The instructor, who should have been in a meditative state of mind, gave him a dirty look. Zach shook his head and looked back at the earthquake story. Some scientists were claiming that a series of strange electromagnetic signals had been detected in and around the city. Apparently, similar signals had appeared just prior to earthquakes in the past, and they were anxiously watching the sensors along the San Andreas Fault, hoping to link the occurrences.

  Electromagnetic pulses? This morning he’d been awakened by a strange sensation, like all the hair on his body was made of metal and some unseen hand had passed a huge magnet over his bed. He’d burst from under the quilt, ready to fight, but tripped over his sheets and landed in the kind of undignified heap he didn’t often find himself in. It had affected him that strongly.

  The story didn’t say anything about people being able to feel the pulses, so Zach shrugged it off and read his email. Then he pulled his tablet out of his backpack and opened a graphic file he’d been working on.

  Within minutes he was completely engrossed in the drawing. It wasn’t for school – although technically he could submit it for his portfolio class – but for a girl he knew online. She’d written a story and wanted a picture of her main character, a warrior princess. For trade, she was writing an essay for him for his English class. It annoyed him no end that to get his degree he had to take boring courses like English that took time and energy away from his precious art.

  He’d sketched, scanned, outlined and colored the drawing. Now he was working on the details of the character’s costume, an elaborate strappy leather thing with buckles and about a dozen sheaths with ornate knife handles sticking out every which way. The “princess” bristle
d with armament, but his challenge was to make her appear feminine. He did this through the exaggerated curves of her body and the flowing waves of her long red hair. On her head, he placed a silvery crown. It was this that had his concentration, as his virtual pen stroked back and forth with feathery lightness to get the complex pattern on the crown just right.

  As absorbed as he was, he still knew when the Tai Chi class ended and the instructor approached him. Zach looked up, mind still on the drawing.

  “You find something funny about me and my class, boy?” The instructor spoke in a southern accent.

  “No.”

  “Because folks who exercise instead of spending all day playing video games do a helluva lot better in life, hear?”

  Zach clicked on the save button and set his laptop on the bench. He stood and faced the instructor. They were about the same height, six foot, but Zach was much leaner.

  The man opened his mouth wide and let out an uproarious laugh.

  “You want to take me on, grasshopper?”

  Zach bowed. “I have no wish to fight, Sensei.” It wasn’t true. Zach was itching to get into it with this joker, but he would do nothing to instigate it.

  The instructor wiped a finger under his eye and shook off an imaginary tear of amusement. “Well, I have no wish to swat a fly, but if it irritates me enough, I’ll roll up my newspaper.”

  Zach held himself still. Six of the instructor’s students were still around, two in Zach’s line of sight, two in a car parked at the curb ten yards behind him at 7 o’clock and two walking south on the sidewalk. The grass was damp with dew and would be slippery. The sun was shining in the instructor’s eyes, and his skin would be slick from the sweat of his exertion. Earlier Zach had noticed that the older man favored his left leg at the knee.

  “You think you picked up enough Kung Fu moves from watching cartoons and playing your little Xbox?” The instructor asked. “I’m a third degree black belt, son. My hands are registered as lethal weapons.”