Chapter 314

Chapter 314: On Dagger Island

To the east of the city-state of Frostholm, at the far edge of sight from the sea cliffs, you could see a tall rocky island. It was long and narrow, curved like a thin saber or a strange dagger. Jagged rocks and barren sand covered the whole island, so the people of Frostholm simply named it after its shape and called it Dagger Island.

On the vast, endless sea, land was the most precious foothold. No matter how barren or narrow a lonely island was, people would still try every way to make use of it. Dagger Island was no exception.

The island had fresh water, but no land that could be farmed and no ground wide or flat enough to build a real settlement. It could not serve as a stable place to live or grow grain, and it had no useful plants or animals. But the island had once held a small deposit of Boiling Gold, so the people of Frostholm built a mine and a refinery there.

When that tiny amount of Boiling Gold was finally dug out, the island served for a while as a transfer harbor. Later, after the Frostholm rebellion, the routes around the city-state were adjusted. The harbor on the island was turned into a special storage site, used to keep dangerous things that had to be kept far from the civilized world.

As the years passed and the world rose and fell, this barren, rock-covered island changed hands many times. Now it was controlled by the Frostholm military and had become a secret “temporary research base”, used to study the strange thing that had been dredged up from the Deep Sea.

The sealing apparatus used to store dangerous objects, together with the tight security on the island, gave strong protection for this kind of research.

At noon, a mechanical cutter came from Frostholm and drew near the military harbor on the hollowed side of Dagger Island. The tall flag flying on the mechanical cutter showed that it belonged to the Frostholm navy.

After a series of complicated and strict checks, tests, and registration steps, the fast ship named the Sea Swallow was cleared to dock. As the steam core’s roar slowly sank to a low growl, it came to rest beside the pier and lowered a gangplank from the rail.

Several soldiers in blue-black naval uniforms walked down the gangplank first. After them came a tall, broad-shouldered officer with short gray hair.

A few military personnel stationed on the island were already waiting on the shore.

The burly officer with gray hair took in the situation around the pier, then walked ashore along the gangplank. The waiting personnel at once stepped forward and saluted. One of them said: “General, you are twenty-five minutes later than scheduled. This needs to be recorded and explained—you must go to the registry in person.”

“Mm.” The burly officer, the general they had called him, nodded. He did not feel that a normal officer saying this to a general like him was any kind of offense. This was a special research facility. Strict approval rules were normal and reasonable safety demands. “We will go now… How are things on the professor’s side?”

“Professor Merson is in the ‘Chamber’,” the man who came to receive him said. “He made a discovery while running tests on the new batch of samples. Under special test conditions, the material scraped from the surface of that thing seems to show strange properties. But the details will have to wait until we get into the ‘Chamber’.”

“All right, take me to the registry first.”

…

Not far from the military harbor of Dagger Island, on the inner side of the bay, research work was still going on in tense, busy order inside a strong building made from reinforced concrete and huge blocks of stone.

This gray, dull-looking structure was the so-called “Chamber”. It was also one of the best-protected and strongest laboratories on the island.

The hall inside the building was brightly lit.

It was a large hexagonal room. Each wall had been poured from the toughest concrete, and symbols and religious signs with meaning in occult studies were carved along the tops of the walls. Huge cloth bands covered with scripture hung down from the ceiling, crossing and overlapping in the spaces between the light of the gas lamps. Steam pipes crisscrossed above the hall. Some valves hissed softly, while incense devices burned quietly in the corners, their holy smoke slowly blending into the air.

Researchers in short robes worked busily all over the hall. In the very center, a metal device about five or six meters across, round and swollen like a Great Bell, hung from heavy chains. The surface of the metal was mottled and old, as though it had spent ages soaked in seawater. The complex valves and fittings at the top were enough to show its purpose.

It was a diving bell.

Directly under the hanging diving bell, the center of the floor held a huge circular grate. Its diameter was much larger than the long axis of the bell. Through the grate, one could faintly see a striking red glow deep underground.

A very tall, very thin old scholar with neatly combed silver hair stood in front of the diving bell, watching a few assistants carefully scrape samples from its surface.

A clergy member in priest’s robes walked slowly behind the assistants. This priest carried a brass censer in his hand. Pale incense smoke rose from the brazier with a soft whisper, like a murmur of benediction, and drifted through the air.

“Professor, General Belazov has reached the harbor,” one assistant came over and said from behind the tall, thin old scholar. “After he finishes the necessary registration and handover, he will come here to see you directly.”

“Oh… Belazov. I got the message that he would come in person. It seems City Hall is finally getting a bit nervous.” Professor Merson, whose silver hair was so neat not a strand was out of place, sounded slightly helpless. “Let him come… How are the samples that came to the lab this morning?”

“They went through the final round of tests. Now we can be sure that, even though that stuff looks like rust, it is not any material we know,” the assistant answered. “And as time goes by, its properties keep changing. It feels… as if that thing is still in some kind of evolution, so it never shows a stable set of traits.”

“Mm.”

Professor Merson nodded slightly, but his eyes stayed on the diving bell hanging in midair.

The outside of the diving bell was badly eaten by rust, but the round hatch on its side was still easy to see. The hatch was tightly shut. From the time it was brought into this “Chamber”, it had never once been opened.

On the other side of the diving bell there was a round window. A very, very thick plate of special glass was set there. For some reason, the inside of the window was covered in filth. Black grime almost coated the whole pane, so that no one could see what was inside the diving bell at all.

They could only just make out a messy hollow space, and something that looked like liquid.

What was inside the diving bell?

Professor Merson himself had wondered this more than once. But no matter how curious he was, he never had the slightest thought of opening the hatch.

The year the Abyssal Trench Project began, he had been sixteen.

He had learned what things one could be curious about, and what things one had to treat with care.

As he thought, the assistant’s voice came from behind again: “Professor, do you think the people above will order us to open that hatch?”

“Honestly, I do not want to get that order at all,” Professor Merson shook his head and turned to look at his assistant. “Courage and the spirit of exploration let humans survive on the Boundless Sea. But once those two things cross the line, they turn into recklessness and death.”

The assistant blinked. Then the assistant blinked a third and a fourth eye.

“But our progress is too slow—and if it is really like you said, what if another submersible comes up?”

Professor Merson thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “If that really happens, opening the hatch will not be all we have to do. We will have to be ready to face the Deep Sea itself.”

The assistant looked as if the meaning was only half clear.

This assistant was still too young. But then again, after half a century, how many people could still understand the horror of the Abyssal Trench Project?

Professor Merson lifted his head and looked at the busy figures around the diving bell.

Some of those figures did not seem quite the same as when they had first come to the island.

Some others now and then gave the old professor a faint sense of strangeness.

It felt as if many unfamiliar figures had quietly appeared in this research facility.

But that was not strange. Personnel changes in a research team were very normal, especially in a complex, special project that needed many experts. Everything looked very reasonable.

The clergy member holding the brass censer walked over and nodded slightly to Professor Merson.

The censer in his hand opened its eyes a little and secretly studied the old scholar’s face.

The strange scent of incense drifted through the air.

“Today’s Blessing rite is complete,” the clergy member said softly. “I will come again at this time tomorrow to give a benediction to the machines.”

“Thank you for your hard work, priest %?&%@*.” The old professor smiled and nodded, calling him by name as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “If not for the pile of trouble that is sure to come this afternoon, I should buy you a drink.”

“You should greet the general first,” the priest said with a laugh. “He is the big shot sent by Frostholm to ‘watch over’ this place.”