A tall and severe besuited man in his sixties greeted them, head tipped slightly back as if snootily regarding the new arrivals – even Miller – down his nose. ‘Good afternoon, Master Donny.’ His accent was refined English. ‘A pleasant flight, I hope?’
‘Not really, Broates,’ Miller replied, looking faintly seasick. ‘Where is she?’
‘Waiting for you in her study. She is eager to meet Professor Wilde.’ The way he said eager made Nina suspect he actually meant impatient.
Miller nodded. ‘Good, good. Okay, let’s go.’
Harhund and his comrade fell in behind Nina as Miller and Broates proceeded into the mansion. Its owner clearly had old-fashioned tastes; the walls were panelled in dark wood and the furniture was all either replica Victorian or actual examples from the era. They also liked it warm, Nina already finding the air uncomfortably stuffy.
The study was a large room overlooking the lake. Broates led the group inside. ‘Your son, and Professor Wilde,’ he said respectfully.
Within was a wizened old lady in a wheelchair. She sat hunched in the seat, right hand clawed around a control lever. Blue-rinsed hair rose in an elaborate beehive. Her face was pinched, wrinkled not only by age but by attitude. ‘About time,’ she snapped.
Miller stepped forward, hands raised in apology. ‘I came as quickly as I could, Mother.’
‘Not quickly enough. And you didn’t even get the key!’
‘It’s on the way. Chase will be here with it soon.’
‘As long as you haven’t screwed it up like everything else you touch.’ She pushed the lever, guiding the chair across the room to stop before Nina. ‘So you’re Professor Wilde.’
‘Yeah,’ said Nina, folding her arms. ‘And you are?’
The old woman gave her son a withering look. ‘You haven’t even told her?’
Miller couldn’t meet her iron gaze. ‘I figured the less she knew, the better—’
‘Well, you’re the expert on knowing less.’ Like Miller, her accent was American – Nina placed it as from one of the south-eastern states – but unlike his, there was no influence from her adoptive country. ‘Since my son doesn’t have the manners to make proper introductions, Professor Wilde, I’ll take the burden. As usual.’ She glared at Miller before turning back to her guest. ‘I’m Eleanor Miller, the founder of Miller & Family. And still having to keep a very hands-on role even though I’ve officially retired. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
‘The pleasure’s all yours,’ Nina replied, scathing. ‘You’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly thrilled to meet someone who’s kidnapped me.’
Eleanor smiled, a tight-lipped contortion of her lower face that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘You’ve got spunk. I like that in a woman.’
‘My British husband would be smirking like a teenager right now. So why did you bring me here?’
‘Straight to the point, too. Good. Saves time, and at my age I hate to waste it. I’ll do you the same courtesy.’ She reversed, gesturing at an armchair near the windows. ‘Take a seat.’
‘That’s okay,’ Nina replied, not moving. ‘I like to stand.’
Malice flared in the wheelchair-bound woman’s eyes. ‘You watch that tongue of yours, missy. If it gets too sharp, I may just have to blunt it.’ She gestured, and Harhund shoved Nina forward.
‘Hey!’ the redhead said. ‘Watch it, asshole.’
Eleanor frowned. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a potty-mouth.’
‘You’ll probably die of apoplexy when you meet my husband, then.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s a sign of no class. I expected more from a professor. Even one from New York. But anyway.’ A dismissive wave, then she continued: ‘You want to know why you’re here – and why I need the key and the sarcophagus as well.’
‘The sarcophagus is here?’ Nina asked.
‘I’ll show it to you soon. Now, what do you know about Miller & Family?’
‘The company, or the jerks?’
‘Watch your damn mouth,’ said Miller angrily.
Eleanor, however, was almost amused. ‘You are defiant, aren’t you? It really must be the red hair.’ She said the latter almost in confirmation rather than comment, but Nina had no time to dwell upon it. ‘I founded the company almost fifty years ago. I don’t expect you to know this, but I have a doctorate, just like you. Although mine is in chemistry rather than,’ a twinge of disdain, ‘the soft sciences. I prefer learning to have some practical value.’
‘If my doctorate didn’t have any practical value, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,’ said Nina snippily.
‘True, true. But you’d have to admit that the creation of new pharmaceuticals has been of greater benefit to the world than digging up its lost past, wouldn’t you?’
She folded her arms again. ‘I doubt the victims of thalidomide or Vioxx would agree.’
The sour scowl returned to Eleanor’s face. ‘Not a single one of Miller & Family’s products has ever been recalled, I’m proud to say. Everything I’ve worked for has been to improve the health of humanity, to increase our lifespan. With great success, I might add. People are living longer than ever before. And that,’ she said with a sudden flourish, ‘is the problem.’
Nina cocked her head. ‘How is that a problem?’
‘Because, Professor Wilde, it’s going to bring about the collapse of civilisation. There are now nearly eight billion people on the planet. Eight billion. Twenty-five years from now, by 2050, it will be ten billion. They’ll all need food. They’ll all need water. And houses, and medicine, and fuel, and a hundred and one other things. Competition for resources will change to fighting for them – first on a local scale, then nationally, then internationally. I guarantee you that within ten years, we’ll see a full-scale war over control of water supplies. Probably between Egypt and Sudan or Ethiopia for the Nile, but it could be anywhere. Wars mean refugees, who add pressure in other countries, and the whole thing spins out of control.’
‘You’ve been reading your Thomas Malthus,’ said Nina. ‘I know the theory: population growth leads to catastrophic collapse as demand for food outstrips supply. But it didn’t happen in the nineteenth century, or the twentieth, because we came up with more efficient ways of producing food. Why would it be different now?’
Eleanor was clearly not used to being challenged on her assertions, nor did she welcome it. ‘I know what I’m talking about! I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life researching it. It will happen! Why do you think I moved to New Zealand?’
‘For the bungee jumping?’
An angry laugh. ‘I’m not the only wealthy person – or smart person – to move here. Civilisation as we know it is unsustainable. The crash is coming, believe me. The rest of the world will tear itself apart as everybody fights over the remaining resources, and billions of people will die.’
‘But not you? You’ve built yourself this nice little bolthole and are going to hide out while the world burns?’
‘I have a more worthy goal, but yes. This is the ideal place. Isolated, but with resources – water, geothermal power, farmable land. I’ll be able to wait out the crash in safety.’
Nina couldn’t help noticing that she was speaking in the singular – and her son was aware of it too. However, there was another point she had to make. ‘Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but I don’t think you’ll be around long enough to do that, however many Miller & Family vitamin pills you take. You’re in your eighties, I’d guess? And you don’t look in good shape. Another five years will be pushing it, never mind ten or twenty.’
‘Hey!’ cried Miller, outraged. ‘You shut up.’
‘She’s right,’ Eleanor told him. ‘Left to my body’s own devices, I’d be lucky to last another ten years, even being optimistic. But that’s where you come in.’
‘Me?’ said
Nina. ‘What, you think I know a way to extend your life?’ She tried to cover her unease. In her adventures, she had indeed discovered not one but two separate means of prolonging the human lifespan: one was a rare yeast found in the Pyramid of Osiris deep beneath the Egyptian desert, and the other the Fountain of Youth, hidden behind a trail of clues left by Alexander the Great.
Eleanor, however, had something else in mind. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘But I believe you can help me suspend it.’
‘What do you mean?’
The old woman turned the wheelchair to gaze through the windows. ‘I realised that prolonging life is worthless if you’re going to end up living through hell. So I began an alternate line of research: suspended animation.’
‘Like cryogenics?’ Nina asked, surprised. ‘Freezing people?’
‘That was one avenue, yes. There have been numerous recorded cases where people were revived from a state of effective death at low temperatures. But the problem is that no repeatable techniques have been found. The risk of cell damage during freezing is too high. I also tried chemical stasis using anaerobic gases, but again, the process is unreliable – at least in any form we’ve yet developed. It is basically filling every cell in the body with poison, after all.’
Nina’s unease returned as she remembered the toxic yellow gas that had escaped from the sarcophagus in the frozen fortress. Was that what Eleanor was after? ‘But you think you’ve found a new approach, right?’
‘I have.’ The wheelchair turned to face her again. ‘Several years ago, I was approached by a Chinaman who knew about my interests in suspended animation. He offered me a deal: if I helped him get out of China with a new identity – and a large sum of money, naturally – he would provide me with technical details of China’s research in that area.’
‘And he gave them to you?’
‘He did.’
‘But I’m guessing the information wasn’t any use, since you still need me.’
‘On the contrary, it was very useful. So useful that I haven’t gotten him out of China yet.’ A mean little smile. ‘He’s far too valuable where he is.’
‘I’m sure he’s delighted.’
‘There’s nothing he can do about it. If he raises a stink, he’ll be arrested – and boy, is China hard on traitors! But I keep my promises. I’ll get him out . . . once I’ve got everything I need from him.’
‘So if he’s supplying you with the technology to put yourself in suspended animation,’ said Nina, ‘why do you need me?’
‘Because the Chinese are in the same boat: they can’t make it work.’ Eleanor’s expression became almost conspiratorial. ‘They didn’t build the technology. They found it. Those coffins you discovered in the iceberg? The Chinese found some too. They’ve had them for nearly fifty years.’
Nina was stunned enough by the revelation to be lost for words. Miller excitedly filled the silence. ‘I’ve seen pictures of the bodies. They look like aliens, but the Chinese did DNA tests – they’re related to humans.’
‘Very closely related,’ added Eleanor. ‘But at the same time, different. Meaning there’s something about their DNA that lets them use their technology, while we can’t.’ Her gaze focused laser-like upon Nina. ‘At least . . . most of us can’t.’
Nina realised where she was leading. ‘And you think I can?’
‘I know you can. You brought the ship trapped in the iceberg to life when you touched the key. You’re one of the few people in the world with the right DNA profile to manipulate earth energy – or as the Chinese call it, qi.’ She pronounced it tchee. ‘In Chinese mythology, it’s a life force that runs through the whole planet. Seems there’s more than a little truth to the legend. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Would I?’ Nina shot back, challenging – and wanting to find out how much the Millers knew.
‘Yes, you would. You found King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur – a conductor for earth energy that could cut through almost anything. Then there were the levitating statues that led you to the lost cities of Paititi and El Dorado in South America, the Atlantean spearhead that almost blew up a big chunk of the Middle East, and I suspect some other things you didn’t mention to the International Heritage Agency.’ Eleanor smiled again, but the only humour behind it was gloating. ‘Oh yes, missy. You know.’
‘And how do you know?’ Nina demanded. ‘A lot of what I discovered with the IHA is still classified.’
‘And which country is one of the IHA’s biggest funders through the United Nations?’
She let out a soft moan at missing the obvious answer. ‘China. Of course.’
‘They know everything the IHA knows – and thanks to my man on the inside, I know everything they know. When it comes to earth energy, at least. But the Chinese know a lot more than the IHA. They know that to activate the technology they found, they need a key. They found one – but then they couldn’t find anyone who could use it. Which brings us to you.’
‘You want me to use the key to open the coffin,’ said Nina. ‘But why? What use is a hundred-millennia-old dead body?’
Eleanor laughed again. ‘You haven’t realised yet? It’s not a coffin. The body inside it isn’t dead – it’s in suspended animation!’
18
Nina stared at the old woman, thinking she had misheard. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Do you think I’d go to all this trouble for a joke?’ Eleanor replied. ‘During their nuclear testing, the Chinese discovered a fortress hidden in the Gobi Desert. It was smashed, all the sarcophagi damaged and the people inside them dead, but they also found and translated the records buried with them. They were very clear.’
Despite herself, Nina couldn’t help but be intrigued. ‘What did they say?’
‘The sarcophagi are filled with a gas that suspends cellular functions – and they also use qi, earth energy, to somehow put the whole body into a state of indefinite stasis. My man in China sent me as many technical details as he could, including the gas’s chemical formula; I’ve already had large quantities manufactured. But recreating the sarcophagus has been harder. It requires some kind of crystals that even the Chinese haven’t been able to find or duplicate. All the ones they have are broken, useless.’
‘So you thought it’d be easier to steal a sarcophagus instead.’
‘I wanted more than one.’ She gave Harhund a critical stare.
‘We were only able to get one before the iceberg broke up,’ the mercenary told her, unfazed.
Eleanor huffed. ‘Excuses, excuses. I’ve had enough of them.’ Her glower turned upon her son. ‘Especially from you, Donny. But I suppose I should be glad I have even one sarcophagus, after you almost wrecked the entire plan before it started.’
‘I did what I thought you wanted, Mother!’ Miller protested. ‘If you’d told me more—’
‘I told you as much as you needed to know!’ she snapped, making him flinch. ‘If I’d wanted you to send people to get the key in Germany, I would have told you to.’
‘You didn’t know what he was doing?’ asked Nina.
Eleanor shook her head, still glaring at her contrite son. ‘I wanted you to get the key, Professor Wilde, so you would follow the trail to the Dutchman in the madhouse, then hopefully get enough out of him to find the iceberg. That way, I would have the key, the sarcophagi and you, all in one go. But my idiot boy almost ruined everything by trying to steal it in Hamburg!’
The redhead let out a dismayed sigh. ‘So the whole thing was a set-up? Oh, man! Eddie keeps warning me, and I keep stepping right into them!’
‘Like I always say, there’s book smarts, and there’s common sense,’ said Eleanor with mocking amusement. ‘Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have the other. Donny’s living proof of that.’ To Miller’s relief, her gaze finally went back to Nina. ‘But I got all three eventually.’
‘You haven’t got the key yet,’ she reminded her.
‘I will soon.’ She turned the wheelchair and headed for the door. ‘I want to be ready when your husband arrives. Broates, show her down to the bunker.’
Broates gestured for Nina to follow. ‘This way, please, Professor Wilde.’
‘Thanks, Alfred,’ Nina replied sarcastically. ‘You know you’re complicit in a kidnapping, don’t you?’
‘I have faith in Mrs Miller and her lawyers to successfully navigate the legal system on my behalf,’ he replied, with a mocking smile.
Miller, Harhund and Wintz at her back, Nina followed Eleanor and Broates to an elevator. The only buttons inside were for the ground and upper floors – but then the old woman flipped the whole panel open to reveal another behind it. She put her hand on a palm-print scanner, then pressed the lowest button. The doors closed, and the car began to descend.
The ride continued downwards for longer than Nina expected. ‘Where are we going, Mordor?’
‘I don’t merely want to live through the fall of civilisation,’ said Eleanor. ‘I want to rebuild it afterwards. This bunker isn’t just for me – it’s for the survival of the whole human race.’ The elevator eventually slowed. ‘We’re now two hundred feet underground. This place can survive a direct nuclear strike. Not that it should need to; I came here precisely because it won’t be on anyone’s list of targets.’
The doors opened. Broates held the others back so Eleanor could exit first. ‘Welcome to my redoubt, Professor Wilde,’ she said proudly.
Nina was impressed only by the engineering needed to carve such a place from the mountain’s root. Compared to the old-world luxury of the mansion above, this was stark, almost brutal in its use of bare grey concrete. ‘Going for Soviet chic, I see.’
‘Decoration is not my top priority,’ Eleanor said as she led the way down a long, curving passage. Other corridors headed off it; Nina saw an evacuation plan at a junction that revealed the underground complex as a veritable maze. Their location by the elevator was marked by an arrow, but a tunnel at the bunker’s opposite end appeared to lead to stairs to the surface. ‘All the essentials are in place, though. It’s completely self-sufficient for power and water – it has a geothermal generator, and two separate wellheads. Then there’s storage for vacuum-preserved food, seed banks, tools, machinery, weapons; everything people will need to rebuild.’
The Resurrection Key Page 20