So I saw Dr. Pickman’s comment on my post from yesterday. And no, Dr. Pickman, you didn’t answer any of my questions. We’re “special”? We’re “unique”? What does any of that mean?
But fine. I’ll be professional. So let’s leave it as “Dr. Ferris” if you don’t mind.
And if you won’t answer me, then I’ll address the others out there. Someone else is reading this, I’m sure. So… do any of you have any ideas?
I have found out some more here, so I will relay it on.
—-
I got up with Captain Anderson and asked if we could stop long enough for us to test the minisub. He seemed agreeable, and we had altered course towards a seamount that was relatively on our way, but Dr. Stepherson came storming onto the bridge only a few minutes later, demanding to know why we were changing course.
“I told you that we have a deadline!” he was yelling at Captain Anderson. “We have to get to Paloma within the next week!”
“And we will be there in six days,” said Captain Anderson, calmly. “That is plenty of time to allow Dr. Ferris to conduct his tests.”
“Dr. Ferris can wait!” he shouted, looking at me. “His research does not require that he be somewhere at a particular time. Mine does! And it was his assignment to this expedition that delayed us in the first place!”
I gritted my teeth. “Dr. Stepherson, help me understand. Why is it so important that we get to this island so quickly? If you would perhaps explain…”
“No! I have told you that! I will not have you sharing my research online where anyone can see it. When this gets announced, it will be by me!”
I was getting pretty tired of secrets by this point. Was this why the Internet was filtered on the ship; to keep Dr. Stepherson’s “secret” from getting out?
Wait… if he knew what I was publishing, then that meant that he had his own separate channel off the ship. But if he didn’t…
“You don’t have to worry about that, Dr. Stepherson,” I said. “The information I am sending back is being held by Dr. Pickman and not being published until we return.” I pointed to the iPad he was holding. “Pull up the Miskatonic site and check yourself. You’ll see that there is nothing there.”
He frowned, but pulled up the tablet and started tapping. I tried to look relaxed, but it was all I could do to not hold my breath.
Dr. Stepherson continued tapping for several minutes, pausing every now and then to read something. Finally, he lowered it and looked back at me with a grudging nod. “It seems you are correct.”
I let out an imaginary breath and was surprised to hear someone let out an actual sigh behind me. I resisted the urge to turn around.
“You see?” I said. “You don’t have to worry about what I might say to someone. So… what is so important?”
He glared at me for a long moment before shaking his head. “No. Not right now.” He looked around the bridge, then back. “I will tell you later. In a day or two. As long as you promise me that you will not try to divert this ship again!”
It wasn’t what I had hoped, but it was something. “Fine. I’ll give you a day or two to get your… notes together.” I had almost said “…get your story straight” but decided not to offend him again when he finally seemed to be giving in a bit.
“But,” I added. “If we get to Friday and I haven’t gotten an explanation, then we’re stopping while I test the minisub.”
He grimaced at that but nodded. “I will explain everything tomorrow night. After dinner. In fact, I will tell everyone. So no more secrets, Dr. Ferris.”
“Of course not, Dr. Stepherson.”
“Very well.” He turned to Sara, who was at the wheel. “Now, please, no more diversions!”
She turned to Captain Anderson, who glanced at me, then nodded.
“Certainly, Dr. Stepherson. We will do everything we can to get you to your island on schedule.”
“Thank you, Captain, Doctor.” He nodded once more then left.
I heard Sara let out a sigh and realized she had been the one holding her breath earlier. “I guess that went OK.”
“He been giving all of you a hard time too?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He is really desperate to get to this island ‘before the quarter moon.’ Not sure why.”
“He said something about a ‘festival’?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Any idea what he is going on about?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Of course, I usually don’t know what all of you researchers are going on about. Nothing personal.”
I waved a hand. “That’s fine.” I looked over at Captain Anderson. “Sorry to cause problems.”
He waved it off. “I assure you, Dr. Ferris, you aren’t the one causing problems. But… there is always one.” He paused. “Always one.”
“Something?”
“Dr. Kashan. He was a lot like our Dr. Stepherson here. Always insistent on something but never telling us why.” He paused. “I hope Dr. Stepherson doesn’t suffer the same fate.”
“It isn’t like we’re going to be trapped in ice here.”
“But storms are everywhere.” He sighed. “Maybe I’m just too cautious after last year. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“I hope so.”
“So do I.”
I thanked Sara and Captain Anderson again, then left the bridge. I was heading back to the passenger quarters when Reiko came up to me.
“Hey, Doc Ferris! Got a minute?”
“Certainly!” I said, turning to her. She was smiling more than usual. “Haven’t seen you too much for the past few days. Everything OK?”
She laughed. “Is this part of my grade?”
“Um… sure!” We both laughed at that.
“Well, I’ve got something for you. But… not here.” She gestured with her head. “Cafeteria?”
I nodded and followed. There were a few people there watching something on a TV, but we both grabbed a beer from the cooler and found a table.
“Got something for you,” she said. She reached into her laptop bag and pulled out a small, leather book that she handed to me. “I’ll need that back pretty soon, but I figured you would like to look at it.”
I glanced through it. It looked to be a diary or journal of some kind, written in a cramped hand. I looked at the first few entries and saw they were dated from the 1920s.
“What is this?”
“Something that Donnie had in his cabin. I know you’ve been asking a lot of questions about Dr. Stepherson. Hell, Donnie tells me about it.” She laughed. “He takes all this so seriously.”
I flipped through the journal again. “Does he know you have this?”
She shook her head. “Nope. But even if he realizes I have it, I’ll calm him down. Don’t worry, Dr. Stepherson won’t know you’ve seen it.”
“So… you and Donnie are getting along pretty well?”
She rolled her eyes. “What? You keeping track of my social life?”
“What? No! I’ve just seen the two of you together a lot.” I frowned. “Hey… you aren’t hanging around with him to get information for me or something, are you?”
“What? Hell no! I mean, you’re the best professor I’ve had, but I’m sure as hell not basing my social life around what you want!”
I held out my hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, sorry! Didn’t mean to sound that way. But you’re right. Sorry. That was out of line.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“It’s just that… I’ve had a lot of bizarre things happening lately. Well… enough that I’m starting to get a bit paranoid. Sorry. Didn’t mean to stick my nose where it didn’t belong.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “OK, yeah. That’s… fine then.” She paused. “I thought maybe Darrin had said something to you.”
“I could tell he was unhappy with the fact that you’re spending time with Donnie, but… he never said anything.”
“Well, good. I mean, I like Darrin. I really do. I’ll probably hook back up with him once we’re back home. But… sometimes you just need a meaningless winter fling, you know?”
“If you say so.”
“Anyway, don’t worry about Darrin. Or me. We’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure.” It still seemed a bit odd to me, but… it was really none of my business.
“Anyway, so what is with this book?”
“Oh, just the basis for Dr. Stepherson’s research and why he is on this expedition.”
“Oh?” I glanced through it again. “Have you read it?”
She sighed, reached over, and took it. “No, but Donnie was sure to tell me all about it. He’s so excited to have someone who will talk to him that he can’t help himself.” She laughed.
“Anyway, it’s about an expedition that someone took back in the 1920s. Not one of ours, apparently the people involved were from Brown University, a father-daughter team. They found a group of people living on this island that we’re going to now, they called it ‘Paloma,’ that was undocumented and somehow separated from the other Polynesian cultures around them.”
“This Dr. Neighton and his daughter Lilith, he was a linguist and she was an artist, by the way, spent a few months on the island and learned they had some special festival once per month. They managed to convince the locals to let them join the village, which let them attend the next one. It turned out that it was a night when people from another village somewhere came over, and they had a huge orgy on the beach.”
“Sounds like the last music festival I went to.”
“Oh, you were there too! I didn’t know that!” We both laughed. “Anyway,” she continued. “Apparently several of the islanders told them that they were sorry that no husband had selected Lilith the night before. She was a bit unhappy at that revelation, and they left before the next month.”
“So, what happened?”
She paused. “That’s where it gets a bit weird.”
“Of course… that seems to be the norm for this trip.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe later. So… what’s the weird bit?”
“Well, the Neightons never made it back to Rhode Island. They had apparently come into the port of New York and were on a bus trip back home. A massive storm hit, and, from what anyone could tell, they took refuge at a lodge along the way.”
“And?”
“The lodge collapsed sometime during the storm. Or there was a fire. Or both. After the storm was over and rescuers showed up, they found a lot of bodies, but no survivors.”
“So, where did the book come from?”
“All of Neighton’s notes, specimens, and such were taken to Brown and put into storage. Apparently, Dr. Stepherson was up there doing some research on something else, found the stored notes, and started doing some follow-up. It seems the description Dr. Neighton gave of the festival matches a few other, strange ceremonies around the world. Alaska, Costa Rica, Chile, and even one in France. Dr. Stepherson thinks he has found evidence of some larger, historical culture that was world-spanning and wants to get to Paloma since there may still be people there following that culture. All of the other mentions are historical only. He’s been having Donnie going through some old texts to find anything that seems to support that.”
“Has he found anything?”
“Apparently, but he hasn’t told me anything about it.” She smiled. “Not yet, anyway.”
I sighed. “OK, so that’s why he’s in such a rush to get there. He thinks he’s going to be able to see this beach festival. If it exists. Or, maybe he’s just in a hurry to get to the orgy.” We both laughed at that.
“Still, you better get that back. Wouldn’t want you to get into trouble with your new boyfriend.”
“Hardly that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I think the limit of how long we would be together would be about the length of this trip. So it will work out.”
“Well, thanks for the info.”
“Dr. Stepherson is going to have to tell us what is going on at some point. It will be interesting to see how much he actually tells us.”
“Yeah.”
We spoke a bit more about our schedule for the week, which mostly involved running a drag-net for a while and collecting samples, then she left to drop the book back off before Donnie noticed she had it. I snagged a pair of beers from the cooler and headed outside.
I made my way aft and watched Atiya and her team drop off another of their buoys. When they were done, I wandered over and held one of the beers out to her.
“Why, thank you, Kalen! Your timing is impeccable, as always.”
“Well, you are dropping these things off on a pretty regular schedule. It was pretty easy to guess I would find you back here.”
“So, you come back just to drop off a beer.”
“No, I was hoping to talk to you a bit. Busy?”
She shook her head. “No, anything can wait. What do you have?”
I glanced around. “Mind if we go somewhere a bit more private?”
She gave me a mischievous grin and stepped forward. “Well… if you’re inviting me back to your cabin again…”
I shook my head. “No, not that. Well…” It was my turn to smile. “Maybe later. But…” I paused.
“It’s hard to explain. Something is going on with this trip. Something isn’t right.”
She frowned slightly. “What… are you talking about?”
I gestured with my head. “Come with me.”
I led her to the minisub and climbed on top, opening the hatch. She hesitated, but then climbed up with me. I indicated the aft seat and waited for her to descend before following her.
I closed the hatch behind us and sat down. She was looking at me dubiously.
“What is this about, Doctor Ferris?” I noted the change to a formal tone.
“Nothing really,” I said, trying to sound relaxed. Doctor Pickman had told me that she knew something but had also told me not to confront her. Yeah, we had spent a pleasant night together, but I decided that I wanted information more. I was tired of being told to wait.
“What do you know about Dr. Stepherson?”
She frowned. “That he’s an anthropologist? That his research has to do with the spread of cultural traditions through cultures? Specifically, the spread through cultures other than the one that it originated in? Why?”
“When did he tell you that?”
“What?” She thought. “When they had the first meeting for the teams on this trip, they reviewed everyone’s projects.” She paused. “Oh yeah! You weren’t there back then!”
I nodded. “What was Dr. McNamara’s project?”
She thought again. “Interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field with solar radiation, or something like that. I was kind of interested in it because it touches on my own research in some ways; solar and lunar gravitational effect change our own gravitational signature, so I need to…”
I waved a hand to cut her off. “Yeah, OK. So your research, Dr. McNamara’s research, and Dr. Stepherson’s research intersected?
She frowned. “Well, mine and Dr. McNamara’s did. And… I seem to remember Dr. Stepherson saying he was looking forward to working with Dr. McNamara, so I guess theirs did too. Why?”
“So why am I here?”
“Dr. McNamara got someone mad, and they booted him?”
“So I’ve heard. So… how does that make the two of you feel about me?”
She laughed. “Really Kalen, is that what this is about? I think I showed how I felt about you a few days ago. Speaking of which…” She glanced around. “It’s pretty cramped in here, but I think I can work with it.”
I waved a hand. “That’s not what I mean. Was there… something? Anything, that Dr. McNamara or Dr. Stepherson had said to you that would indicate that there was something… more important about this trip?”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Sorry, I’ve just been getting some… weird feelings about things. You know we got selected for this at the last minute.”
“Yeah, and that delayed departure for about a week. And?”
“And that Dr. Pickman asked me to document the expedition for one of our sites?”
“Yes, you told me that the other day. How is that going, by the way? I haven’t had a chance to look.”
“I don’t know. It appears that nothing has actually been posted yet, so I’m not sure why he wanted me to do daily uploads.”
She frowned at that and looked away. “I haven’t worked with Dr. Pickman much. He’s the person who represents us on Facebook, right?”
“Yeah. Online in general. He also runs our web sites and social media classes. He wanted me to give daily updates from this trip. I’m guessing he wants to wait until we’re back for some reason.”
“Maybe because Dr. Stepherson is trying to keep things so secret?”
“Could be. I don’t know. Though he said that he would tell us in the next day or two what he is out here for.”
“So… why are you asking me about him?”
“Maybe… an excuse to spend some time alone with you?” I smiled slightly.
“We both know that’s a bad line.”
“I know.”
She leaned forward. “But not too bad…”