NAÏDA
The glowing structure at the bottom of a lonely northern lake is clearly not of this Earth, but scuba diver Michael Hart can’t stay away. It could be a scientific treasure like no other. It could be a trap. It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be someone special.
The alien artifact is ancient but not abandoned, and what it offers will change him forever, leaving him with astonishing abilities and a destiny he would never have imagined. Except it might be a destiny he no longer controls. He might not even be human anymore.
Ocean researcher Sakiko Matthews is desperate to find a cure for Earth’s dying seas, willing to put her career on the line to learn the answers she needs. In Michael Hart she finds a mysterious ally who could be the key to her success, but the price will be terribly high.
The very future of the human race is in the balance, and the actions Michael takes will make him a hero, or the greatest traitor the world has ever known.
Because he is no longer alone, not even in his own body.
There is another.
Naïda.
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BOOK TRAILER
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CHAPTER ONE
The green depths of the lake beckoned: a coyly inscrutable crystal ball, poised to reveal life-changing secrets.
Michael Hart sank into its liquid embrace, freed for a time from the world above the waves where past choices congealed around him. He became a different person when water closed over his head, as if he were rinsed of his life’s mistakes and, through the element of danger, reborn as a hero.
A few meters away his scuba-diving buddy, Phil Rodriguez, was already clearing his mask. Rodriguez’ mask always leaked a little when they dropped below the thermocline and the colder water made his face muscles contract. Michael questioned him with the circled thumb and forefinger of the OK sign, and Rodriguez returned it, ready to go deeper. They closed in to check each other’s tank pressures: both had just over 2900 psi—plenty of air. Blissfully alien in the underwater realm, Michael exhaled and felt himself drop further, his finger poised on the inflator hose button of the vest-like Buoyancy Control Device he wore like a personal elevator in the water column. As the surrounding liquid darkened, he felt the shiver of his inner eight-year-old discovering a new cave. The bottom of Evergreen Lake was virgin territory, undisturbed by creatures of the land since long before the end of the last ice age.
He and Rodriguez had come in pursuit of a shadow: a tantalizing shape on the bottom of the lake seen by a water-bomber pilot as he’d lined up for a refill while fighting a nearby brush fire. Was it a deep hole? A wreck? No one knew. There’d never been any large-boat traffic on Evergreen. The ribbons of water linking it to adjoining lakes were no bigger than creeks. Maybe a derelict bus had been abandoned to sink through the spring ice, though Evergreen was a bitch to drive to. Michael hoped it was a downed plane. Now that would be interesting.
* * *
The juvenile awakens.
Gradual awareness of its surroundings follows. It is immersed in fluid.
Nearby, it senses the presence it knows as the Controller, also newly awakened, and consults it for more information. The environment is liquid water at an ambient temperature almost exactly midway between the values related to solid and gaseous states. This temperature is ninety-seven per cent warmer than conditions at the time stasis was initiated. Life forms are also present in much greater numbers: billions of micro-organisms suspended in the water, an indication of more abundant solar radiation.
Time has passed. Extensive time. More than planned?
The sun of the planet is visible through the water. Allowing for refractive interference, it appears the same size as before stasis. The wavelengths of radiated light are also in the same proportions.
Manageable time, then: thousands of sidereal years, but not millions. The Controller will make more exact calculations after nightfall using a comparison of star positions.
It is puzzling that none of the others has awakened from stasis. They are emitting no metabolic energy at all. No indication of biological viability.
Is it possible that too much time has passed? That the life processes of the companions have been terminated?
This is unexpected. Awakening alone.
There is something nearby, though. Two large life forms native to this world. They match a pre-stasis record of the planet’s only sentient species. It can be assumed that their presence has triggered the awakening.
This is encouraging. There is a protocol for this.
The Controller begins to fill the water with welcoming light.
* * *
Michael pressed the inflator button to add more air to his vest and slow his descent. He pinched his nose and pushed air into his sinuses and ears to equalize the pressure. Their rate of cautious progress was trying his patience. Whatever they found might change the lake from a nearly forgotten pothole in the water-pocked northern Ontario landscape into a popular dive destination. He wanted the credit for that.
He swept his head back and forth as much as the stiff neoprene hood of his wetsuit would allow. They should have brought flashlights. It might be pretty dark at the bottom.
Michael glanced at Rodriguez, who always swam a couple of metres from his left shoulder and a little behind. The man was farther back than usual. Michael waved him forward. The gap didn’t change.
What was he worried about?
Facing forward again, Michael saw a gleam beckoning from the darkness below. Steady. Yellow green. He gave his dive computer a quick check: twenty-two metres deep—a long way for sunlight to penetrate a northern Ontario lake. But there couldn’t be a light source down there.
Unless somebody had beaten them to it.
No, it wasn’t electric light. Chemical maybe, like the glow-sticks divers attached to their gear to keep each other in sight when night diving.
Drawn to the glow like a moth, he found that his mind wouldn’t immediately accept what he saw: not an object illuminated by light, but an object that seemed to be made of light! His brain tried to tell him it was a nebulous afterimage, like the lingering trail of a child’s sparkler waved through a night sky. But it didn’t fade. It was stable, maybe solid: perhaps a structure of some kind, but a structure such as he’d never seen. An array of jelly-like geometric shapes jutted from the lake bottom: hexagons, or maybe octahedrons that were nearly transparent and produced their own eerie radiance.
Jellyfish did that, but they were creatures of the deep ocean. Did they have bioluminescent cousins that lived in fresh water? Not that he’d ever heard. These gelatinous sheets were the height of a man. A shot of air into his buoyancy vest brought Michael to a gentle hover, and he watched patterns of light and shadow ripple over the uneven array below, like an office of cubicles arranged by a drunken builder.
His wetsuit was no protection against a sudden chill.
Something clutched his arm and he nearly screamed into his mouthpiece.
It was Rodriguez, expressively pointing to his gauge pack. Could the man really have burned through that much air in—how long had it been—fifteen minutes? Aching cold could do that. Or fear.
Rodriguez’ eyes were saucer wide behind his face mask, and clouds of bubbles burst from the first-stage regulator at the back of his neck every few seconds. Michael nodded again and gave the thumbs up sign. Together, they tipped up into a vertical position and gave a few kicks to start a carefully controlled ascent.
At five metres below the surface Rodriguez had calmed down enough to do their three-minute safety stop, and they hung motionless in the water, allowing time for absorbed nitrogen to leave their bloodstream before they surfaced. But their eyes were fixed on the direction of their fins, and the dark depths beyond. Michael felt his legs twitch.
The shore was only a ten-minute swim away along the surface. Once on land, they stripped off their gear in awkward silence. Michael cleared his throat. “That was something, huh? What do you think?” He struggled to keep his balance while tugging his left foot out of his wet suit.
Rodriguez only shrugged and hurriedly shoved his fins into his gear bag.
“You’re not going to pretend we didn’t see anything.”
“I got no idea what we saw. Maybe we were narc’d.”
“Shit, Phil, we’ve both been way deeper than that without any nitrogen symptoms. Only, what the hell was it? Toxic waste?”
“A joke. Somebody trying to pull our leg.” Rodriguez went to dry the protective cap of his regulator with air from his tank, and the cap flew from his hands. The tank gave a scream of escaping air while he fumbled with the shut off valve.
Michael looked away and looped his hoses to fit in their carrying case. As they lugged the heavy gear up the hill toward his car, he stole a glance at his friend, at Rodriguez' stiff stance and staring eyes.
“That wasn’t a gag. Or anything natural, either. I don’t think it was…from here.”
“Jesus! Let it go!” Rodriguez dropped his bags and stood bent over, breathing hard. Then he straightened but avoided looking at Michael. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.” The words were thick with pleading.
They drove home in silence, not even saying goodbye when Michael dropped Rodriguez off in his driveway. As he turned the wheel toward his own home, he thought about the green glow in the watery darkness, like something from a Stephen King novel, and swallowed hard.
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