“Bit over three weeks in this area, we’ve only really had time to survey briefly. Now that we’ve realised we might have something, we’re making more arrangements.”
“What makes you think you have something?”
“I’ll show you first, then you tell me.”
“Ok, and arrangements?”
“So, we’ve sorta been making plans,” she replies, taking Alison’s hand and leading her further into the small camp.
“Where is everyone?”
“Actually it’s just us at the moment. Suni and Marion have gone on a supply run and Samuel has gone back to Sydney to do, well, a whole bunch of stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Well, we know there’s something here now so Samuel wants exclusive rights to the property. At the moment the land owners just think we’re prospecting a timber mill site. I think Samuel has gone to make arrangements to purchase the entire property.”
“Oh wow. That’s a bit full on isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but you know Samuel. He doesn’t have much patience, always keen to get things done right away.”
“Plus I think he knows we’re going to be here for some time, so I think some more permanent arrangements would be in order, don’t you?”
“Like?”
“I’d love a shower.”
“You know I don’t mind roughing it Luci.” Alison laughs.
“True,” she smiles. “But a hot shower and a warm bed every now and then, maybe.”
“Well, ain’t that the truth!” They both laugh together, Smith remains plain faced, standing at the periphery of their conversation.
“You’re the digger, hey Smith?” Lucinda tries to involve him.
Smith doesn’t reply.
“Alison tells me your very good at your job?” She mimics the actions of a person digging, flexing her muscles as she does so.
Still no reply and an awkward shuffle of the feet for Lucinda.
“So how did you two meet anyway?”
“Desert, dug giant hole …”
“Up near Darwin, before the dig,” Alison cuts in quickly, still trying to avoid any suspicious questions about Smith. “Just before we set out I decided I needed more help with the dig.” She lies for Smith. “And he’s been great ever since, so I’ve decided to keep him on.”
“Fair enough,” Lucinda replies. “Good help is sometimes hard to find.”
“Yep.”
“And you didn’t find anything out there?”
“Well, just a few bits and pieces, nothing really useful,” she lies again. “I got some cool spears for you to look at though.”
“Huh,” Lucinda muses. “I thought everything you’d been working for led you to believe there was something there? The path of the floods?”
“Nope.”
“What about the stone tablets you and your father uncovered, they were genuine artefacts that spoke about the great inundation?”
“Well maybe it’s still out there, or maybe it’s been moved. Maybe I missed it or maybe the tablet was just plain wrong, or even the wrong time.” She tries to change the topic, “In any case I didn’t find anything, so I thought I’d be better off helping you guys, and its seems you think you’ve found something.”
“Hey, glad you could make it.”
“So how far up is it?”
“Very close,” Smith says softly.
“Oh, how did you know that?” Lucinda replies, surprised.
Before Smith can answer though, Alison steps in and answers for him, “I told you he was good didn’t I?”
Lucinda smiles but doesn’t say anything, she starts to get the impression there is something odd about Smith but discards the thought, eager to show her new guests the discovery they’ve made.
She turns and indicates for them to follow and they move up the incline in the thick bush until they come upon a small area that seems to be indented. Alison notes it’s been recently cleared of brush and foliage.
“This is it.” Lucinda holds her arms wide open, inviting them in to inspect the area. “Doesn’t look like much at the moment, but we’ve made a few cuts into the ground.”
Smith doesn’t hesitate, he jumps right into a small crater that’s been dug, with small incisions cut into the earth inside it. It’s one of these incisions in particular that draws his attention, a small cut, roughly a metre square at the opening, the hole only going down a further two feet.
It follows another crack in the earth though, a crack that keeps running downwards into the rock.
He comes to the edge, kneels down and grabs a handful of dirt, rubbing it between his fingers and smelling it. The other two can only watch on as Smith inspects the site carefully, eventually hopping into the hole itself.
“Careful now,” Lucinda cautions him, moving over to the edge to keep an eye on him. “There’s a large crack in the earth in that cut. It could mean something is under us, like an old mine shaft, or it could just be natural. Either way, tread carefully.”
Smith doesn’t respond though, he gets down into the small hole and spends only a few seconds analysing the colour of the rock before he starts playing with the small crack running the length of the small excavation.
“Well, what do you think Mr Smith?”
“Smith,” he replies. “Smell.” He sticks his nose to the crack.
“Ok, so, what do you think? Do we have something here?”
Smith then does something strange, his tongue extends itself and tastes the area around the crack. Lucinda cringes a little as she witnesses it, thinking it’s a most unusual thing to do, she’s never seen anyone lick the ground.
“Yes,” comes the simple reply as he pulls back. “Fahwad here.”
“Far-what?” Lucinda asks.
“Let me check.” Alison kneels and crawls into the small excavation, making it a tight squeeze for the two of them.
The close proximity doesn’t faze either one of them though, they both study the crack together. Alison can see more clearly what Smith has smelt and tasted, it’s a thin line of rock looking a little like dull gold, mixed with silver.
“What do we have here?”
“Metal … pyramid … taste familiar.”
“Well metals, yes, I can see that … but you say you can taste something?”
“Must dig … now.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Colour here … see?” Alison looks to where he indicates to a barely discernible black streak, it looks like a vein of some sort. “Smell it.”
“It smells like something organic.”
“Yes.”
“Caused by?”
“Something down there ...”
“Ok. That doesn’t mean … the smell could be caused by anything.”
“Taste.”
“What?”
“Taste.” Smith indicates with his eyes.
Alison hesitates a moment, as the request is a little off, but she trusts Smith and does as he instructs, licking the earth as Smith has. “What?”
“What taste?”
“Nothing familiar, why?” She shrugs.
“Nothing familiar … yes.”
“What?”
“Geologist know … ”
“Know what?”
“Know taste.”
“Well I don’t know the taste of that,” she remarks.
“Exactly.”
She thinks about it for a minute. “Well if I don’t know the taste then … then I guess it can’t have come from here.”
He winks at her.
“And if it didn’t come from here, then it must have come from …” she looks up to the sky.
He nods his head, winking at her.
“Ok, I got ya.” she winks back at him, thinking back on
their previous conversation. He’d mentioned that a fire had come from the sky and the fire from the sky had brought with it other things, things like the manacles.
But it would have brought with it other items, things like what she just tasted. Here now was evidence, the black streaks properties have combined with the presence of the shiny metals, metals specifically known to have proliferated Atlantis.
“Luci, I think you were right, I think we have something here.” Alison calls out.
“Oh great!” Lucinda lets out a sigh, “I thought we’d found it but I wasn’t so sure, you see, Alison, she’s a much better geologist. That shiny stuff though, I thought it was it, Samuel took a sample with him back to Sydney to get checked.”
Smith doesn’t reply, he just gets out of the hole.
“Lucinda?”
“Yes, Alison?”
“Can you give me a hand up?” she calls, hand extended.
“Oh my, maybe best to let your big muscly friend here do that.” She smiles awkwardly at the two of them, she isn’t a strong looking woman.
Smith doesn’t hesitate, he quickly extends his arm, grabbing hold of Alison’s. Without seemingly to cause the man any effort, he pulls her from the hole like she’s a twig.
“Dig.” Smith states plainly.
“What? Now?”
“Now.”
“Ok. Awesome. We dig, but we just have one rule here though.”
“Rule?” Alison queries. “What rule?”
“Just one, I promise.”
“I don’t like the sound of this, just one?”
“Yeah, just one.” she seems slightly awkward at having to mention it. “You can’t tell anyone about this place, or what we’re doing here ... anyone.”
- -
Catlin
“What are we going to do Catlin?” Ursula asked as she poked a fire.
“I don’t know,” she replied solemnly. “I’d say we should go back, but I don’t even know where that is now.”
“We’re lost aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Well how the hell should I know?”
“You said you could use a compass.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes, you grabbed it out of my hand, when we came off that mountain.”
“That doesn’t mean I knew how to use it.”
“Then why did you grab it then?”
“Well you were getting us nowhere … I thought I should take …”
“Control?”
“Well …” she tried to reason. “Someone has to.”
“Typical thought process from you.”
“Shut up.”
They did in fact have a compass and had been following it east as Marion had told them to do so, but they’d found no sign of a road or any sign of civilization. The way had been tough, having to climb and descend mountainous territory dense with foliage. This also made their progress slow, now they’d made camp for the night.
“Here, have some food.” Catlin handed over a steaming cup of hearty beef soup to Ursula over the camp fire.
Ursula didn’t complain as the smell drifted over to her, she reached up and took the cup from Catlin, sipping at it gently as the steam escaped the edges of the cup, its aromas wafting into the air.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m so hungry!”
“I know, me too. I think we’re ok, we just need to keep at it, tomorrow we’ll find something.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, jeepers!”
The two had fought the entire journey, constantly bickering over each other’s decisions. Catlin wondered if Ursula was just frustrated over the loss of her mother, for leaving her behind was certainly not easy. And Ursula thought that Catlin was still power tripping from her short stint at Destiny as Operations Chief.
But then sometimes they were only at each other because of the situation they were in, lost in the bush and the frustrations that came with having to survive. Frequently they’d make snide remarks about the other’s behaviour or actions to give voice to their frustration over their predicament.
Of being lost.
Ursula was still regretting her decision to leave Marion behind, whilst Catlin was determined to press forward. They were like a couple of bickering schoolgirls, pouncing on any opportunity to shill or mock. The constant of being in company with one another was driving them both insane.
Catlin also had time during the long walks to reflect upon her own situation, which she’d seldom done since everything had started. She’d barely had time to think before being on this journey, let alone process what she was coming across.
She recalled the staff walkout back at the installation and felt most disheartened by it. Despite the confusion and disparity of the situation for her and her colleagues, she remained entirely optimistic about their future.
She thought she’d conveyed purpose in a meaningful way to the Destiny staff, even going so far as to offer them a choice in the situation. Her mistake was thinking they were the same as her and might have believed in what she were doing.
Stuff them! They’re all selfish, all of them and they only cared about themselves. If they cared about the world they would have stayed.
As they sat by their small fire, both sat very much in silence, a testament to their own differing dilemma’s.
“Hey Ursula?”
“What?”
“I’ve been wondering ever since this all started happening, why me right? Why is someone after me? Why go to all that trouble to protect me? Why bring me into the Destiny installation? What is so special about me?”
“We already spoke about this,” Ursula moaned, rolling back and forth as she sat seated by the fire, dipping a small chunk of bread into her mug of soup.
“Yeah, but I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense, what makes me so qualified to be the leader of Destiny?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, what, they just bring me in at random?”
“Yeah, why not?” Ursula replied, disinterested.
“Ursula, tell me you don’t believe that?”
“Actually, I hadn’t really thought about it much to be honest. My mother always taught me to look forward not backward.”
“But don’t you think it’s a little odd? Bringing an inexperienced person in to run Destiny?”
“I guess.”
“Unless of course they brought me in as the fall guy, you know I’m a bit of an activist, I have a history you know. Perhaps they brought me in as the scapegoat for whatever game they’re playing.”
“Yeah.”
“Well what about you?”
“Well I was different to you, I wasn’t out there in the world living like you were, I was always with my mother.”
“What, at the facility?”
“Yes, I grew up there.”
“Wow,” Catlin wondered, she’d never thought to ask Ursula about her past before, now it intrigued her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Wow, so you were born in the facility?”
“Yes, as far as I’m aware anyway.”
“So, you’ve been at Destiny your whole life?”
“Yep.”
“How does that feel?”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“I mean, to grow up inside a facility …”
“I don’t know, the same as you I guess.”
“We’re not the same,” Catlin adjudged.
“Of course we are, just because I grew up within and you without doesn’t make us different people. Maybe different perspectives …”
“Maybe,” Catlin mused. “D
o you know who your father is?”
Ursula seemed uncomfortable with the question and retaliated instead. “Do you?”
“Hey!”
Catlin reeled at the aggressive response and was about to shout something back at Ursula when she realised Ursula had meant something when she said it, something in her tone alluding to more.
“What did you say?”
Ursula seemed to sense the impact her words had. “I’m sorry Catlin. I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes you did … what did you mean?”
“Nothing, sorry.”
“That was a quick reply.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look, I’m just trying to figure all this shit out ok,” she yelled. “So stop giving me grief about it.”
“Sorry,” Ursula lamented. “That facility, it …” she struggled to find the words. “It was full of secrets. Some my mother knew, some I knew. But I never truly knew anything and only got scorned when I tried to learn more. The only two people who knew everything were Ma’am and Samuel. Everyone else was in the dark and were better off not asking questions.”
“Well fat chance of seeing those two again, I’m sure with their expertise they are well disappeared.”
“You never know, they’re not dead.”
“True, they could be out there somewhere, doing something we are unaware of.”
“Sitting on a beach?”
“Slamming tequilas together.”
“I’m sorry I’m not much more help to you,” Ursula apologised. “I really don’t know a great deal about you or what your story is. I’ve never even seen your thread.”
“It’s ok, I just get frustrated sometimes. Not knowing.”
Something seemed to jog Ursula’s memory then, “Hey, do you remember when we were doing training on the threads?”
“Why?”
“Well do you remember during training I brought up your thread as an introduction to it all?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t my thread if I remember, right?”
“No it wasn’t yours. Ma’am saw what we were doing and told us to stop.”
“So …?”
“So it’s normal that on everyone’s first day on the threads that they get to look at their own, it’s like a ritual right?”
“Yeah.”
Recalling Destiny Page 48