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Overview
Marine biologist Zachary Wallace once suffered a near-drowning experience in legendary Loch Ness, and now, long-forgotten memories of that experience have begun haunting him. The truth surrounding these memories lies with Zachary's estranged father, Angus Wallace, a wily Highlander on trial for murder. Together the two plunge into a world where the legend of Loch Ness shows its true face.
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429939775 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/03/2010 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 560 |
| Sales rank: | 300,925 |
| Lexile: | 970L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 485 KB |
About the Author
Steve Alten is the best-selling author of the Meg series, including Meg: Hell's Aquarium. A native of Philadelphia, he earned a Bachelor's degree from Penn State, a Masters from the University of Delaware, and a Doctorate from Temple University. He is the founder and director of Adopt-An-Author, a free nationwide teen reading program used in thousands of secondary school classrooms across the country to excite reluctant readers.
Steve Alten is the best-selling author of the MEG series - which was the basis for the feature film The Meg, starring Jason Statham - The Domain Trilogy, and standalone supernatural thrillers such as The Omega Project and Goliath. A native of Philadelphia, he earned a Bachelor’s degree from Penn State, a Masters from the University of Delaware, and a Doctorate from Temple University. He is the founder and director of Adopt-An-Author, a free nationwide teen reading program used in thousands of secondary school classrooms across the country to excite reluctant readers.
Read an Excerpt
The Loch
By Alten Steve
Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2005 Steve AltenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3977-5
CHAPTER 1
Sargasso Sea, Atlantic Ocean
887 miles due east of Miami Beach
The Sargasso Sea is a two-million-square-mile expanse of warm water, adrift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. An oasis of calm that borders no coastline, the sea is littered with sargassum, a thick seaweed that once fooled Christopher Columbus into believing he was close to land.
The Sargasso is constantly moving, its location determined by the North Equatorial and Gulf Stream currents, as well as those of the Antilles, Canary, and Caribbean. These interlocking forces stabilize the sea like the eye of a great hurricane, while causing its waters to rotate clockwise. As a result, things that enter the Sargasso are gradually drawn toward its center like a giant shower drain, where they eventually sink to the bottom, or, in the case of oil, form thick tar balls and float. There is a great deal of oil in the Sargasso, and with each new spill the problem grows worse, affecting all the sea creatures that inhabit the region.
The Sargasso marks the beginning of my tale and its end, and perhaps that is fitting, for all things birthed in this mysterious body of water eventually return here to die, or so I have learned.
If each of us has his or her own Sargasso, then mine was the Highlands of Scotland. I was born in the village of Drumnadrochit, seven months and twenty-five years ago, give or take a few days. My mother, Andrea, was American, a quiet soul who came to the United Kingdom on holiday and stayed nine years in a bad marriage. My father, Angus Wallace, the cause of its termination, was a brute of a man, possessing jet-black hair and the piercing blue eyes of the Gael, the wile of a Scot, and the temperament of a Viking. An only child, I took my father's looks and, thankfully, my mother's disposition.
Angus's claim to fame was that his paternal ancestors were descendants of the great William Wallace himself, a name I doubt most non-Britons would have recognized until Mel Gibson portrayed him in the movie Braveheart. As a child, I often asked Angus to prove we were kin of the great Sir William Wallace, but he'd merely tap his chest and say, "Listen, runt, some things ye jist feel. When ye become a real man, ye'll ken whit I mean."
I grew to calling my father Angus and he called me his "runt" and neither was meant as an endearing term. Born with a mild case of hypotonia, my muscles were too weak to allow for normal development, and it would be two years (to my father's embarrassment) before I had the strength to walk. By the time I was five I could run like a deer, but being smaller than my burly, big-boned Highland peers, I was always picked on. Weekly contests between hamlets on the football pitch (rugby field) were nightmares. Being fleet of foot meant I had to carry the ball, and I'd often find myself in a scrum beneath boys twice my size. While I lay bleeding and broken on the battlefield, my inebriated father would prance about the sidelines, howling with the rest of his drunken cronies, wondering why the gods had cursed him with such a runt for a son.
According to the child-rearing philosophy of Angus Wallace, tough love was always best in raising a boy. Life was hard, and so childhood had to be hard, or the seedling would rot before it grew. It was the way Angus's father had raised him, and his father's father before that. And if the seedling was a runt, then the soil had to be tilled twice as hard.
But the line between tough love and abuse is often blurred by alcohol, and it was when Angus was inebriated that I feared him most.
His final lesson of my childhood left a lasting impression.
It happened a week before my ninth birthday. Angus, sporting a whisky buzz, led me to the banks of Aldourie Castle, a three-century-old chateau that loomed over the misty black waters of Loch Ness. "Now pay attention, runt, for it's time I telt ye o' the Wallace curse. My faither, yer grandfaither, Logan Wallace, he died in these very waters when I wis aboot yer age. An awfy gale hit the Glen, an' his boat flipped. Everyone says he drooned, but I ken better, see. 'Twis the monster that got him, an' ye best be warned, for —"
"Monster? Are ye talkin' aboot Nessie?" I asked, pie-eyed.
"Nessie? Nessie's folklore. I'm speakin' o' a curse wrought by nature, a curse that's haunted the Wallace men since the passin' o' Robert the Bruce."
"I dinnae understand."
Growing angry, he dragged me awkwardly to the edge of Aldourie Pier. "Look doon, laddie. Look doon intae the Loch an' tell me whit ye see?"
I leaned out carefully over the edge, my heart pattering in my bony chest. "I dinnae see anythin', the water's too black."
"Aye, but if yer eyes could penetrate the depths, ye'd see intae the dragon's lair. The de'il lurks doon there, but it can sense oor presence, it can smell the fear in oor blood. By day the Loch's ours, for the beast prefers the depths, but God help ye at night when she rises tae feed."
"If the monster's real, then I'll rig a lure an' bring her up."
"Is that so? An' who be ye? Wiser men have tried an' failed, an' looked foolish in their efforts, whilst a bigger price wis paid by those drowned who ventured out oot night."
"Ye're jist tryin' tae scare me. I'm no' feart o' a myth."
"Tough words. Very well, runt, show me how brave ye are. Dive in. Go on, laddie, go for a swim and let her get a good whiff o' ye."
He pushed me toward the edge and I gagged at his breath, but held tight to his belt buckle.
"Jist as I thought."
Frightened, I pried myself loose and ran from the pier, the tears streaming down my cheeks.
"Ye think I'm hard on ye, laddie? Well, life's hard, an' I'm nothin' compared tae that monster. Ye best pay attention, for the curse skips every other generation, which means ye're marked. That dragon lurks in the shadow o' yer soul, and one day ye'll cross paths. Then what will ye dae? Will ye stand and fight like a warrior, like brave Sir William an' his kin, or will ye cower an' run, lettin' the dragon haunt ye for the rest o' yer days?"
* * *
Leaning out over the starboard rail, I searched for my reflection in the Sargasso's glassy surface.
Seventeen years had passed since my father's "dragon" lecture, seventeen long years since my mother had divorced him and moved us to New York. In that time I had lost my accent and learned that my father was right, that I was indeed haunted by a dragon, only his name was Angus Wallace.
Arriving in a foreign land is never easy for a boy, and the physical and psychological baggage I carried from my childhood left me fodder for the bullies of my new school. At least in Drumnadrochit I had allies like my pal, True MacDonald, but here I was all alone, a fish out of water, and there were many a dark day that I seriously considered ending my life.
And then I met Mr. Tkalec.
Joe Tkalec was our middle school's science teacher, a kind Croatian man with rectangular glasses, a quick wit, and a love for poetry. Seeing that the "Scottish weirdo" was being picked on unmercifully, Mr. Tkalec took me under his wing, allowing me special classroom privileges like caring for his lab animals, small deeds that helped nurture my self-image. After school, I'd ride my bike over to Mr. Tkalec's home, which contained a vast collection of books.
"Zachary, the human mind is the instrument that determines how far we'll go in life. There's only one way to develop the mind and that's to read. My library's yours, select any book and take it home, but return only after you've finished it."
The first volume I chose was the oldest book in his collection, The Origins of an Evolutionist, my eyes drawn by the author's name, Alfred Russel Wallace.
Born in 1823, Alfred Wallace was a brilliant British evolutionist, geographer, anthropologist, and theorist, often referred to as Charles Darwin's right-hand man, though their ideas were not always in step. In his biography, Alfred mentioned that he too was a direct descendant of William Wallace, making us kin, and that he also suffered childhood scars brought about by an overbearing father.
The thought of being related to Alfred Wallace instantly changed the way I perceived myself, and his words regarding adaptation and survival put wind in my fallen sails.
"... we have here an acting cause to account for that balance so often observed in Nature — a deficiency in one set of organs always being compensated by an increased development of some others ..."
My own obstinate father, a man who had never finished grammar school, had labeled me weak, his incessant badgering (I need tae make ye a man, Zachary) fostering a negative self-image. Yet here was my great-uncle Alfred, a brilliant man of science, telling me that if my physique made me vulnerable, then another attribute could be trained to compensate.
That attribute would be my intellect.
My appetite for academics and the sciences became voracious. Within months I established myself as the top student in my class, by the end of the school year, I was offered the chance to skip the next grade. Mr. Tkalec continued feeding me information, while his roommate, a retired semipro football player named Troy, taught me to hone my body into something more formidable to my growing list of oppressors.
For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of pride. At Troy's urging, I tried out for freshman football. Aided by my tutor's coaching and a talent for eluding defenders (acquired, no doubt, on the pitch back in Drumnadrochit) I rose quickly through the ranks, and by the end of my sophomore year, I found myself the starting tailback for our varsity football team.
Born under the shadow of a Neanderthal, I had evolved into Homo sapiens, and I refused to look back.
Mr. Tkalec remained my mentor until I graduated, helping me secure an academic scholarship at Princeton. Respecting my privacy, he seldom broached subjects concerning my father, though he once told me that Angus's dragon story was simply a metaphor for the challenges that each of us must face in life. "Let your anger go, Zack, you're not hurting anyone but yourself."
Gradually I did release my contempt for Angus, but unbeknownst to both Mr. Tkalec and myself, there was still a part of my childhood that remained buried in the shadows of my soul, something my subconscious mind refused to acknowledge.
Angus had labeled it a dragon.
If so, the Sargasso was about to set it free.
* * *
The afternoon haze seemed endless, the air lifeless, the Sargasso as calm as the Dead Sea. It was my third day aboard the Manhattanville, a 162-foot research vessel designed for deep-sea diving operations. The forward half of the boat, four decks high, held working laboratories and accommodations for a dozen crew members, six technicians, and twenty-four scientists. The aft deck, flat and open, was equipped with a twenty-one ton A-frame PVS crane system, capable of launching and retrieving the boat's small fleet of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and its primary piece of exploration equipment, the Massett-6, a vessel designed specifically for bathymetric and bottom profiling.
It was aboard the Massett-6 in this dreadful sea that I hoped to set my own reputation beside that of my great uncle Alfred.
Our three-day voyage had delivered us to the approximate center of the Sargasso. Clumps of golden brown seaweed mixed with black tar balls washed gently against our boat, staining its gleaming white hull a chewing tobacco brown as we waited for sunset, our first scheduled dive.
Were there dragons waiting for me in the depths? Ancient mariners once swore as much. The Sargasso was considered treacherous, filled with sea serpents and killer weeds that could entwine a ship's keel and drag it under. Superstition? No doubt, but as in all legend, there runs a vein of truth. Embellishments of eye- witnessed accounts become lore over time, and the myth surrounding the Sargasso was no different.
The real danger lies in the sea's unusual weather. The area is almost devoid of wind, and many a sailor who once entered these waters in tall sailing ships never found their way out.
As our vessel was steel, powered by twin diesel engines and a 465-horsepower bow thruster, I had little reason to worry.
Ah, how the seeds of cockiness blossom when soiled in ignorance.
While fate's clouds gathered ominously on my horizon, all my metallic-blue eyes perceived were fair skies. Still young at twenty-five, I had already earned a bachelor's and master's degree from Princeton and a doctorate from the University of California at San Deigo, and three of my papers on cetacean communication had recently been published in Nature and Science. I had been invited to sit on the boards of several prominent oceanographic councils, and, while teaching at Florida Atlantic University, I had invented an underwater acoustics device — a device responsible for this very voyage of discovery, accompanied by a film crew shooting a documentary sponsored by none other than National Geographic Explorer.
By society's definition, I was a success, always planning my work, working my plan, my career the only life I ever wanted. Was I happy? Admittedly, my emotional barometer may have been a bit off-kilter. I was pursuing my dreams, and that made me happy, yet it always seemed like there was a dark cloud hanging over my head. My fiancée, Lisa, a "sunny" undergrad at FAU, claimed I had a "restless soul," attributing my demeanor to being too tightly wound.
"Loosen up, Zack. You think way too much, it's why you get so many migraines. Cut loose once in a while, get high on life instead of always analyzing it. All this left-brain thinking is a turnoff."
I tried "turning off," but found myself too much of a control freak to let myself go.
One person whose left brain had stopped functioning long ago was David James Caldwell II. As I quickly learned, the head of FAU's oceanography department was a self-promoting hack who had maneuvered his way into a position of tenure based solely on his ability to market the achievements of his staff. Six years my superior, with four years less schooling, David nevertheless presented himself to our sponsors as if he were my mentor, me, his protégé. "Gentlemen, members of the board, with my help, Zachary Wallace could become this generation's Jacques Cousteau."
David had arranged our journey, but it was my invention that made it all possible — a cephalopod lure, designed to attract the ocean's most elusive predator, Architeuthis dux, the giant squid.
Our first dive was scheduled for nine o'clock that night, still a good three hours away. The sun was just beginning to set as I stood alone in the bow, staring at endless sea, when my solitude was shattered by David, Cody Saults, our documentary's director, his cameraman and wife, and the team's sound person.
"There's my boy," David announced. "Hey, Zack, we've been looking all over the ship for you. Since we still have light, Cody and I thought we'd get some of the background stuff out of the way. Okay by you?"
Cody and I? Now he was executive producer?
"Whatever you'd like, Mr. Saults."
The cameraman, a good-natured soul named Hank Griffeth, set up his tripod while his wife, Cindy, miked me for sound. Cindy wore a leopard bikini that accentuated her cleavage, and it was all I could do to keep from sneaking a peek.
Just using the right side of my brain, Lisa ...
Cody chirped on endlessly, forcing me to refocus. "... anyway, I'll ask you and David a few questions off-camera. Back in the studio, our editors will dub in Patrick Stewart's voice over mine. Got it?"
"I like Patrick Stewart. Will I get to meet him?"
"No, now pay attention. Viewers want to know what makes young Einsteins like you and David tick. So when I ask you about —"
"Please don't call me that."
Cody smiled his Hollywood grin. "Listen kid, humble's great, but you and Dr. Caldwell are the reason we're floating in this festering, godforsaken swamp. So if I tell you you're a young Einstein, you're a young Einstein, got it?"
David, a man sporting an IQ seventy points lower than the deceased Princeton professor, slapped me playfully across the shoulder blades. "Just roll with it, kid."
"We're ready here," Hank announced, looking through his rubber eyepiece. "You've got about fifteen minutes of good light left."
"Okay boys, keep looking out to sea, nice and casual ... and we're rolling. So Zack, let's start with you. Tell us what led you to invent this acoustic thingamajiggy."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Loch by Alten Steve. Copyright © 2005 Steve Alten. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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