Leviathan(8)
Raising his chin, Connor gestured to a large, two-story stone building behind them. “Did you know that that building was built ten years ago when Norway tried to turn this place into a loading port? And all they used was 440 wiring. That's all they needed.”
“I know about Grimwald Island, Connor. And I'm not sure whether the history of this place is relevant to what we need to be doing.”
With a shrug, Connor picked up the leather electrician's belt. “I just wasn't sure if you knew as much about this island as I do, Chesterton. I wasn't sure if you knew—”
“Connor,” Chesterton broke in, “believe me, I know everything there is to know about Grimwald Island.” He paused. “This place is one hundred fifty square miles of land with three hundred miles of coastland. It's located ninety miles east-northeast from Iceland and approximately fifty miles inside the Arctic Circle. It's got a forty-mile gap between the south coast and the north coast and a sixty-mile gap between the east and west coasts. It's mostly mountain but it's got some valleys and four freshwater lakes. The highest peak is 7,792 meters, and it's got a wheelbarrow load of arctic bear, wolf, elk, and seal that make for real good hunting. But we don't have any time to hunt any of them because we're always working. And nobody's ever managed to colonize this place because the winters are too hard and the ground can't keep the cattle or sheep alive. There's nobody here now but us.”
“And Thor,” replied Connor.
Chesterton stared. “Who?”
“Thor.”
Confusion gave way to amazement.
“He lives in the tower on the other side of the island.”
Chesterton was already nodding. “Yeah, yeah, all right. I forgot about him. The big guy. But what does any of this have to do with anything? I came up here with a simple request”—he shook his head to express wonder at how a simple request could get so sidetracked—”and you start asking me about the history of Grimwald Island and some old lighthouse keeper and—”
“A line of 440 can handle a lot of power,” Connor said, locking eyes. “But a 1,000-amp line can handle a whole lot more, Chesterton. More power than you can probably even imagine. It would take an absolutely unbelievable power surge to burn one up.”
“Yeah?” Chesterton replied. He hesitated a long time, abruptly still. “What kind of power are we talking? A million volts, maybe?” He stared strangely. “Maybe more?”
“It’d take a lightning bolt, Chesterton.” Connor noticed a faint trembling in Chesterton's hands. His face seemed suddenly pale. “That’s the kind of power we’re talking about. The kind of power that can vaporize steel.”
“You still don’t have total clearance,” Chesterton said as they stepped into the elevator. “So just go by the drill, Connor. Don't mess with anything that's not involved in the job.”
Without replying, Connor casually held the ribs of the cage. Maybe it was Chesterton's overly rigid control or maybe it was something else, but Connor somehow already knew the answer to his question.
“So where's the problem at?”
“It’s at the Observation Room located beside the Containment Cavern.” Chesterton was staring into the darkness beneath them. “We've got a line burned out.”
Connor smiled. “Yeah. You said that.”
Chesterton glanced up, expressionless, and turned away. Connor studied him for a moment more but found nothing in the disciplined face and tried to shift his mind to something else. He watched the white chalk walls of the elevator shaft sliding past them and remembered how this cavern formation was created.
Created shortly after volcanic activity thrust Grimwald Island through the crust of the Norwegian Sea to tower high in the Arctic Circle, the sprawling maze-cave was almost the only one like it in this region of the world. Not formed solely as a result of volcanic activity, it had been burned out of the island's heart by hydrogen sulfide gas rising from nearby oil reserves. As the hydrogen sulfide reached the ocean floor, it reacted with oxygen, creating sulfuric acid that ate through the limestone of Grimwald Island to form a complex labyrinth of tunnels, over twenty miles of them.
The cavern itself was a far-ranging complex of passages and cathedral openings deep inside the island, beneath sea level. Although some of the tunnels were merely narrow crevices, most were immensely wide, even wide enough to accommodate heavy equipment, trucks, dozers, whatever was needed for extensive construction. And Connor knew there were at least twenty major caverns, the deepest and largest cavern being over 4,000 feet across with a 600-foot ceiling.
One of the chambers housed the living quarters for the thirty supervisory and science personnel who managed the research project. Another was a barracks for military personnel, while still another was a command center that housed military operations. And one cavern held an elaborate supercomputer known as GEO, a powerful multiprocessing creation of artificial intelligence that oversaw all aspects of the secret research operation.