The Orion Protocol

by Gary Tigerman

  “Please.” Winnick waved her off, visibly upset. But Angela pressed on.

  “You know what Jake found on the Moon. And you don’t want it disclosed because you still believe we’re at risk.”

  “In ways that we could not even anticipate, much less control.” Dr. Winnick set her cup and saucer down with an emphatic clatter. “What you are talking about is imposing a momentous change, by fiat, on all of human civilization. An absolute paradigm shift of the first magnitude. Laying the groundwork for momentous change takes time. Unless what you want is to trigger fear-driven demagoguery and violent social chaos that would make Pan-Islamic terrorism and Mao’s Cultural Revolution look like walks in the park. People have to be brought along the pathway step-by-step. We found the fossilized Martian microbes in the Antarctic in 1984. And released the fossils for study in ’94 just to test the waters, so people could get used to the idea of something alien but nonthreatening: former microbial life on another planet. Next maybe we’ll see how they handle microbes or chlorophyll living on Mars today. And if we take it slowly, and gradually roll it out in digestible bites . . .”

  Deaver shook his head, making an impatient noise.

  “Paula, how can mankind ever grow up as a species if the truth about who we are, the nature of the universe, the nature of reality, for God’s sake, is perpetually being held hostage by those in power?”

  “It’s not being held hostage. It’s being unfolded, Jake. Maybe slower than you or Angela would like, but there is such a thing as wise stewardship.”

  “But isn’t this knowledge a birthright?” Angela said, sounding idealistic if not naive. “Don’t We the People have any standing here?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “No, really. Our tax dollars do pay for the space program.”

  “So what?”

  Winnick batted down the argument like Agassi slamming home a winner.

  “If you paid for a very expensive meal that was going to poison you, and you knew it, would you eat it anyway so as not to have wasted the money?”

  The Nobelist pushed herself to her septuagenarian feet.

  “Forgive me. But I’m afraid I can’t join your crusade to end the world as we know it. However, I can offer you some absolutely wonderful lemon poppy-seed cake.”

  It was an olive branch of civility putting an end to argument.

  “I’ll take it,” Jake said.

  “Let me help.” Angela gave Deaver a look, gathering their cups and accompanying Winnick to the kitchen. “By the way, what was it that Dr. Mead used to listen to on her Victrola, out in the jungle?”

  Dr. Winnick laughed easily.

  “You mean, what music scared the natives off into the trees? Oh! Any strong, disembodied singing voice would do it. Caruso would do it. But there was something about Edith Piaf. ‘La Vie en Rose’ scared the dickens out of them!”

  56

  Outside and across the street, the surveillance baton had been passed to a dark blue Dodge van with blackout windows and faux phone-company markings.

  Inside, two FBI agents wearing headphones kept vigil, recording everything that was said in Dr. Paula Winnick’s living room.

  “I don’t see why the fuck they don’t just swoop on this guy,” the younger G-man said.

  “Sure,” his partner said, sipping flat diet Coke and finishing off the soggy end of a Subway sandwich. “He’s just chillin’ with some fuckin’ TV journalist. Who’s she gonna tell?”

  “Oh.”

  The dish antenna on the roof of the mock-Verizon truck did a decent-enough job and they were getting everything on reel-to-reel. They just could’ve done without the steady stream of folks from the neighborhood wandering over and trying to peer in through the tinted one-way glass.

  The two agents knew why, but it was still a pain in the ass.

  “You’d think a neighborhood like this’d already have broadband.”

  “Shhh.”

  The junior agent shook his head as a housewife braving the cold in a bathrobe and pajamas began rapping on the blacked-out windows.

  “We gotta repaint this truck.”

  57

  Three months earlier/The Great Pyramid/Giza

  Urine and bat guano. Deaver imagined the laugh he’d get telling his students about the dominant fragrances to be found inside the Great Pyramid. Breathing in the stale air and bent almost double as he moved down the close corridor, Jake was also aware of an oppressive density that pushed in on him from every direction.

  These people were small, he thought, avoiding dusty cobwebs and glad for even the few bare, low-voltage electric bulbs strung haphazardly above them.

  But the sense of traveling thousands of years back in time was a palpable thrill, and once they reached the King’s Chamber, Jake was able to stand upright under high vaulted ceilings.

  Mancini played the light from his halogen lamp across the surrounding walls, which were covered from the floor to a height of fifteen feet with a gorgeous panorama of hieroglyphs.

  “Genesis,” he said out loud, the word echoing off the hard surfaces.

  Jake stared at the epic story etched in stone: the Egyptians’ account of the origin of mankind and the birth of civilization. It was a history repeated with small variations in cultures around the world, a celebration of the First Ones, ancient gods who came down from the sky and presided over the artistic and scientific development of human society.

  Jake pored over the exquisite carvings, some still holding their vegetable-dye pigments after millennia in the dark.

  “My God, Marcus . . .”

  “Come, there is something I want to show you.”

  The Italian archaeologist motioned Deaver over to a low section of the vaulted ceiling. He then reached up and removed a stone facing that covered the entrance to a dark, narrow shaft.

  “This leads up to the top of the Pyramid at a very precise angle. Take a look.” Mancini moved so Jake could peer up the shaft. Though it was noon outside, he could see a small portion of the sky, black as night, and three stars that were perfectly visible. Deaver recognized them immediately.

  “The belt stars of Orion.”

  “Si, si, the shaft totally blocks out the sun. Now the interesting thing is, the three pyramids here on the plateau are aligned in precisely the same geometric relation to one another as the three stars there.”

  Jake considered the symbolic meaning more than the pure engineering feat.

  “Like holding up a mirror to Orion.”

  “ ‘As in heaven, so on Earth.’ The astronomer priests did real science, tracking the precessional motion of the Earth on its axis.”

  “Pre-Copernican.”

  “Oh, si. Long before Copernicus. They measured time in epochs of twenty-six-thousand-year cycles, the precessional cycles.” Mancini replaced the stone facing. “They wanted very much to know what time it was.”

  “And you have a theory about why.”

  “Only a guess at what I cannot yet prove.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  Mancini took a moment, gathering his thoughts on the hypothesis.

  “I believe . . . that part of why the whole complex at Giza was created was to call attention to the recurrence of catastrophic celestial events.”

  “Extinction events.” Jake nodded.

  “Not just the K/T event that did in the dinosaurs. There were two Taurid asteroids that ended the last Ice Age, impacting in the ocean off Japan sometime between nine thousand and eleven thousand b.c. and then another mass extinction in the Bronze Age that is just coming to light.”

  “The underwater ruins off Cuba and Turkey and India.” Deaver could envision a cascade of ancient cross-cultural connections. “So, perhaps the Pyramid is predictive. Like a planetary alarm clock.”

  “Si, si. To awaken mankind. To remind us that our solar system passes through dangerous territory in its long journey around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. To pass down awareness of a cycle of catastrophe, in
case we had forgotten.”

  Jake made a note to himself to revisit the mathematics memorialized in the Cambodian ruins at Angkor Wat, the geometry of the Mayan pyramids in Central America, and the historic myths of Quetzalcoatl and Plato’s Atlantis.

  “Marcus, does this relate to the Mayan calendar?”

  “You mean, does the world run out of time on December twenty-third, 2012? I don’t know what to think about that. There is still so much to learn here.”

  “I understand.”

  The former astronaut’s eyes then fell on a singular object dominating the center of the room: a polished marble sarcophagus. He ran his hands along the coffinlike sides and Mancini moved the light to illuminate the elegant symbols etched all around it. Deaver recognized one picto immediately.

  “Horus?”

  “Yes, very good, the Great Pyramid was a temple of initiation for The Followers of Horus. One of the spiritual practices of the order, which included the reigning king, was to lie here in meditation for three days.”

  Deaver traced another glyph in the stone.

  “And this means ‘sun boat,’ right?”

  “Yes, sun boat. Or solar boat.”

  “May I?” Jake indicated the interior of the sarcophagus, where the high priests and kings of Egypt had lain.

  “Of course, of course.” Mancini helped the former Apollo astronaut climb into a different kind of capsule made for a very different kind of star journey. Once stretched out inside the cool smooth marble, Jake took a few slow deep breaths.

  “Can you read to me what it says?”

  “Sure.”

  Mancini’s low voice sounded soothing and almost hypnotic as he walked around the sarcophagus and translated the meaning of the glyphs.

  You must cross the sky-river in your solar boat . . . The Followers of Horus prepare you for your Journey to the First Time . . . Your Father is waiting for you among the Great Ones whose mouths are equipped . . . You must fly to be with him in the Du-At . . .

  “Sirius. The star home of the gods.” Jake nodded, closing his eyes.

  With his arms across his chest as though lying in state, Deaver began noticing a subtle change in energy, which he experienced as a high-frequency oscillation or hum inside his skull. It seemed to be building in intensity with a rushing, psychotropic quality that was heady but not unpleasant.

  It’s my nervous system. I’m hearing my nervous system, he thought, the resonance transposing itself, modulating up the scale to a higher frequency.

  Within moments, all jet lag and physical weariness had dissolved, dissipating into the marble trough wherever it touched his body, leaving Deaver’s mind keen and alert. His essential self seemed lighter, or at least more lightly tethered to his body, and he experienced the locus of his consciousness as if it were floating in the hard casement of his head.

  But only because he wished it to be floating there.

  The idea occurred to him that if he wished to go somewhere else, anywhere he wanted to go, that he could simply go there. And leave his body behind.

  But before he could test this idea, the image of an immense hawk appeared in his mind’s eye, rotating slowly and unblinkingly above him.

  You must cross the sky-river in your solar boat . . .

  He was awed by this vision, so vivid and dreamlike, though he was certain he was awake. And the words he heard in his mind’s ear seemed charged with meaning and even a sense of personal mission.

  The Followers of Horus prepare you . . .

  It was like a mythological riddle was being posed by this supremely intelligent spirit animal; a puzzle for Jake himself to decipher.

  Yet Jake was not just himself. He was much more, something profoundly older and more complex, belonging to a noble lineage with sacred duties and tasks that must be performed.

  The Followers of Horus prepare you for your Journey . . .

  The spirit animal, if that’s what it was, was speaking to him now, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Deaver watched in a kind of rapture as the mythic creature began transforming itself from the form of a hawk into something else: a jackal the size of a man.

  No, it’s a man wearing the mask of a jackal, he thought.

  The creature slowly turned toward him as if angry at being discovered.

  Oh, it’s not a mask . . .

  “Unnhh.” Jake opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them.

  Dr. Mancini smiled and helped him out of the sarcophagus with an air of ceremony, as if welcoming him back to the dimensional world. He then led the way out of the stone passage toward the light of the sun god, Ra.

  “It has a certain power. No?”

  “Yes, it does.” Deaver checked the luminous dial on his watch and felt a new respect for The Followers of Horus and their seventy-two-hour ritual entombments: all of five minutes had passed since he’d lain down inside the sarcophagus. Then Mancini’s voice was echoing off the hard stone walls.

  “Commander, stay where you are.”

  Up ahead he could see the Italian Egyptologist or at least his silhouette at the tunnel entrance. He was in some kind of argument, speaking in rapid-fire Arabic with Jake’s bodyguard, who was gesturing emphatically.

  Puzzled, Deaver stood still a moment, hunched over in the dim, low shaft.

  Listening beyond the voices of Mancini and the agitated driver, he could just make out the chaos of people shouting in excitement or alarm and the sporadic Orville Redenbacher pop-pop-pop of what sounded like automatic weapons fire.

  Jake then hurried up the tunnel toward his host.

  “Marcus, what’s happening?”

  58

  February 10/Washington, D.C.

  The morning drive-time traffic crossing and recrossing the Potomac was every bit as stop-and-go as Angela had imagined it would be, although ten hours earlier she hadn’t expected she’d be dealing with it at all.

  Before meeting Jake at Reagan National, she had booked a room for him at the Mayfair Hotel on her Science Horizon business Visa. And after saying good night to Dr. Winnick, they’d climbed into Angela’s Grand Cherokee and headed back to D.C., fully intending to go straight to the hotel.

  Which we almost actually did, Angela thought, deftly applying eyeliner in the truck’s rearview mirror as she crept along with the traffic.

  Certain images kept coming back from the rest of their night together and she found herself grinning into the mirror uncontrollably. Searching for a word with which to characterize Commander Deaver’s generosity as a lover, she settled on lavish and almost swooned at the thought.

  “Lavish . . .”

  Especially the second time.

  Science Horizon would be billed for the room at the Mayfair, and she thought about not telling Miriam that Jake had spent the night at her apartment. She could avoid the third degree by just saying that she’d taken him to the airport that morning, and get points for saving the company taxi fare.

  Angela touched the brakes, narrowly avoiding a collision with a shirtsleeved man in an E 320 Mercedes who glared back at her blissful face.

  Of course, if she was going to continue grinning like a maniac, dissembling was not really going to be an option: her partner-in-crime, Miriam Kresky, was a woman of many talents. One of which was that she could read a smile like Barry Bonds reads the seams on a big-league curveball.

  Well, hell, Angela decided, adolescently rebelling at the idea of having to hide how she was feeling. There’re only so many secrets about a man that a person can keep.

  59

  The Oval Office/the White House

  Shit.

  Bob Winston was unhappy, but more because of his own miscalculation than anything else: this was not a level of play with much room for error.

  The national security adviser was sitting in a yellow, incongruously cheerful-looking chintz-upholstered chair in the Oval Office, paying close attention to the President of the United States now towering over him from behind the desk built for FDR. />
  A file containing the findings of Sandy Sokoff’s investigation lay open on the President’s blotter, including a brief on the Mars Observer/ TOLAS package that had been given to Congressman Lowe and Lowe’s description of his experience with Winston at the National Archives.

  Too angry to sit, the Commander in Chief just stood there staring down at the file in excruciating silence and letting Winston sweat.

  A few feet away, Sokoff and an uncomfortable-looking Phillip Lowe shared a couch. Sandy observed with satisfaction how Winston ignored them, as if nonacknowledgment was the same as nonexistence.

  Sandy, however, felt quite at ease, in a hardball sort of way. Coming when it had, Congressman Lowe’s unexpected phone call and subsequent revelations had been providential, if not miraculous. Sandy decided he would have to ask his new friend the Jesuit monsignor what exactly was involved in the Church officially recognizing an event as a miracle. He seemed to remember that the convening of a synod of bishops might be required, but he wasn’t sure.

  For his part, the President of the United States did not believe much in miracles. He suspected Congressman Lowe’s courage in coming forward might have been driven by ambition as much as by the whispering of angels.

  But he’d take whatever he could get. The President closed the file.

  “Thanks to an independent investigation, conducted at my request, information regarding Unacknowledged Special Access Projects has been brought to my attention, Bob. Information of crucial importance to any sort of informed executive decision concerning Project Orion. The kind I had hoped to find in the briefing paper you provided me two weeks ago.”

  “Within the constraints of time, Mr. President, I thought that brevity might serve best. I take full responsibility if that was a misreading of what you required, sir.”

  Sokoff watched Winston coolly taking the heat, like the ceramic tiles on the outside of the Space Shuttle deflecting friction fire during reentry. The President appeared unimpressed.

  “In any case, Bob, the issues raised by these Special Access projects will provide the talking points at a National Security Council meeting I’m calling for this afternoon. And I expect your contribution to that meeting to be an unabridged disclosure of all current USAP activities.”