“Earth energy?” Sophia asked.
“That black project you said Callum was pissed off at us for wrecking?” said Chase. “That used it.”
“It was a way to channel the earth’s own magnetic fields into a weapon, using Excalibur as a superconductor,” Nina explained.
Sophia raised an eyebrow. “Excalibur? Don’t tell me you found that as well.”
“Yeah, kinda. Long story.”
“It can wait,” said Sophia, pointing her flashlight at an opening across the chamber. “Whatever powered all this, it seems to have stopped working—and finding the tree of life’s more important right now.”
Nina reluctantly had to admit that they did need to move on from the fascinating chamber. The tilt-rotor had to return to the ship before nightfall, and they still needed to find another way back down to ground level. “Let’s see what’s through there.”
On the surface, Trulli double-checked that the walkie-talkie was still working. It had been some time since he’d heard anything from the party below. But the green LED was lit; the radio was fine despite the cold. He was tempted to call for a status report, but he resisted. Knowing Nina, she was probably so engrossed in exploration that she’d forgotten that the outside world even existed.
He was stuck in it, though, and so were the others. Shrugging to circulate the warmth inside his thick coat, he slowly turned to take in the scene. The BA609 was now parked farther away; Larsson had heeded the warning about the dripping ice above the fumarole. Bandra was plodding across the ice from the aircraft, no doubt to come and complain about something new. Rachel and Baker sat on folding chairs by the winch, huddled together in their bulky clothing like nesting penguins. Noticing that they were sharing the headphones of Rachel’s iPod, he grinned. That was one way to start a relationship.
A faint noise, something other than the constant flutter of the wind across the plain. A low murmur. Powerful, mechanical …
And growing louder.
He turned again, scanning the sky. White haze on the horizon, the sun still crawling infinitesimally across the empty blue dome—
And something else, moving more quickly. Aircraft. Some way off, but heading toward him. He recognized the type immediately: C-130 Hercules transports, large, four-engined propeller craft. One painted in high-visibility red and white, the other a pale military gray.
The expedition wasn’t expecting visitors. And in the Antarctic wastes, the odds of encountering anyone by chance were effectively zero. Whoever was aboard knew they were here.
Trulli could think of only one group of people who might be searching for them.
“Nina! Eddie!” he shouted into the radio, the urgency in his voice immediately catching the attention of Baker and Rachel, who looked at him in concern. No reply. “Eddie, can you hear me? The Covenant is here!”
The radio remained silent, the warning unheard.
TWENTY-FOUR
I can see daylight again,” said Chase, leading the way. “Yeah, but will we be able to get out?” Nina wondered. The crust of ice covering everything in the frozen city seemed to be thickening, the icicles hanging longer and lower.
“Somehow I don’t think so,” Sophia said, aiming her flashlight ahead.
They had reached the end of the passage, the cold azure light illuminating the exit … and also revealing that it was blocked. Glassy ice covered the arched opening, angling claustrophobically down to the stone floor.
And even if the ice had not been there, getting out might still have been difficult. Nina could make out the silhouette of what appeared to be a barred metal gate inside the archway.
“Bollocks,” Chase murmured. “End of the line.”
“We should have brought those gas cylinders with us,” said Sophia. “We could have melted our way through.”
“Wouldn’t make any difference. Look how thick it is. Take days to get through all that—even if we could open the gates.”
Nina was more interested in what lay to one side of the gate. “There’s something here, in the ice.” She directed her flashlight at it, trying to make out the objects. “They look like bowls, metal bowls.” A word in the Veteres language appeared to have been painted on the side of the largest.
“Something here an’ all,” Chase said from the other side of the archway. “It’s another record player.”
“Weird. Why have one here?”
“Maybe it’s the gate guard’s iPod.” He turned his attention to the buried gate. “Reckon this is the way to the tree of life?”
“Well, we had the tree of knowledge, so …” Nina’s voice trailed off. “Huh. I just realized how biblical that is. In the Book of Genesis, the Garden of Eden contained the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.”
“The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, actually,” Sophia corrected, moving back down the passage.
“Well, you’d know about the second one,” sniped Nina before turning back to Chase. “That’s kind of a coincidence, though. If it is a coincidence.”
“So these people might have had something to do with the Bible?” Chase asked.
“I don’t see how; the time gap is way too big. Even the oldest parts of the Torah only date back to around the tenth century B.C. But …” She frowned, thinking. “Some sort of race memory, maybe? An idea that passed down over a hundred thousand years …”
Sophia’s urgent voice dismissed her musings. “Over here! There’s another room!”
Nina and Chase jogged to her. Behind one of the pillars was a narrow gap in the wall, a low passageway. “Can you see what’s inside?” Nina asked.
“Only that it’s not very big. I can see the back wall.”
“Let’s have a look,” said Chase. He began to break away the icicles obstructing it.
“Eddie, come on!” Trulli yelled into the radio. Still no response.
He looked up. The two Hercs had flown overhead and were now circling back around.
“It’s probably just a supply flight on its way to Vostok or Dome Charlie,” Bandra said patronizingly. “They didn’t expect to see anyone here, so they’re overflying us to make sure we’re all right.”
“If they didn’t know we were here, how come they were heading right for us?” Trulli shot back.
“Does it matter? Why, are you expecting trouble?” The Indian scientist’s smirk fell when he registered Trulli’s serious expression. “Are you?”
“Why do you think I’m trying so hard to get hold of Nina and Eddie?”
“Well—but why would there be trouble over an archaeological find?”
The Australian gave him a look of disbelief. “Haven’t you ever read anything about Nina? People are always trying to kill her!” He gave the walkie-talkie one last try, then glared at it in disgust. “The radio in the plane’s got more power—I’ll try to hook this up to it and get through to them.” Another glance skyward. The C-130s had angled away, turning into the wind. They would pass a couple of hundred yards from the site. “I don’t know how they found us in the first place, though.” Bandra’s expression became shifty. “What?”
“That, ah … that may be my fault,” Bandra admitted. “Last night, when we returned to the ship, I … I contacted UNARA.”
“You what?” Trulli shouted.
“I’m the leader of this expedition, not Dr. Wilde! I sent a detailed email to New York to complain about the way I’d been treated!”
“And did you tell them about the find?” Bandra’s guilty countenance was all the answer Trulli needed. “Well, that’s bloody marvelous! You’ve just led the bad guys right to us!”
“Bad guys?” Bandra snorted. “This isn’t some Hollywood movie!”
“Maybe not,” said Trulli, pointing at the approaching planes, “but what do you call that?”
The rear cargo ramps of both aircraft had been lowered. Men and machines poured from them, white parachutes snapping open to send them drifting toward the frozen plain like a line of dandelion seeds.
“G
et to the plane,” Trulli warned everyone. He ran for the parked tilt-rotor, clutching the radio.
The last icicles smashed onto the cold floor. Chase crunched over them and emerged in the room beyond. He switched on the lantern as Nina came through the low opening, followed by Sophia. “Another one?” Nina asked, seeing one of the primitive gramophones in a corner.
“Yeah. They really like their decks. But I don’t think that’s what the room’s for.” He lifted the lantern higher, illuminating one wall.
Nina’s eyes widened. “My God!”
It was another inscription, blocks of text scribed into a layer of plaster. But this one featured something the one in Australia lacked.
A map.
It was not an accurate cartographical representation; instead, it was more like a linear account of the various places visited along a journey, what appeared to be coastlines strung out along its length between points labeled with more ancient writing. Nina recognized numbers and compass bearings: the direction and number of days’ sailing from each point?
“The land of cold sand,” said Sophia, pointing to the symbols at one end of the map. “This is where we are now. Antarctica.”
Nina traced the route back. It was apparently a long voyage across open sea to another land—Australia? Then up the coast to … “That might be the site north of Perth. If it is, then …” Her excitement rose as she continued. “This could show the spread of the Veteres culture across the world—if these at the end are Antarctica and Australia, then these other coastlines would be Indonesia, Southeast Asia, India …”
“Which means,” Sophia said, looking at the other end of the map, “this is their origin. The point they expanded from. Where it all began.”
“God, yes,” gasped Nina. Heart pounding, she ran her finger along the frosted wall. Westward from India along the coast of what was now Pakistan, Iran, the mouth of the Persian Gulf … which at the time of the Veteres would have been closed off by the lower sea level, the gulf itself nothing but an inland lake. Along the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, another settlement there—
“Oman!” Sophia cried, stabbing a finger at the mark. “That’s the site I visited with Gabriel eight years ago, it must be. The Covenant had destroyed it.”
“Looks like they missed quite a few, though,” said Chase. There were at least a dozen places given as much prominence as the Oman site, and numerous smaller ones.
“They’re still there to be found,” said Nina.
“Unless the Covenant has already found them,” Sophia pointed out.
Nina’s finger moved more quickly across the map. “They can’t have gotten them all. Arabia, across the entrance to the Red Sea, up its coast … and then they go inland.” She looked at the others. “Into Africa. That’s where they came from. Africa!” The trail of the Veteres to the coast crossed a river, leading some distance inland back to its origin: three trapezoidal symbols, the topmost having four winding lines—more rivers?—running outward from it.
“So that’s why their statues look like that one you used to have,” Chase reasoned. “Same people.”
“Different times,” Nina replied. “These people had already moved out of Africa at a time when we thought early humans were only just starting to form the most primitive societies, in places like Ethiopia and Sudan.”
“That would fit with the map.” Sophia stood, regarding the text above it. “The first words here are something like ‘The journey of the people of God, from …’ I assume that’s a name. The name of their homeland, maybe. But the first line ends with ‘to the land of cold sand.’”
Nina studied the words with her. “They left it in case their people ever returned—a reminder of who they were and where they came from. It’s their whole history.”
Sophia read on. “More mention of beasts, as well—the word appears quite a lot. They certainly seem to have had trouble with their animals.”
“Soph,” said Chase from behind them. “That word you didn’t recognize, you think it’s a name, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s here as well.”
Nina and Sophia turned to see him holding his flashlight over the icy gramophone. Next to it were two of the clay cylinders. “So it is,” said Sophia, looking more closely at the one Chase had indicated. “The other characters say … I think it’s ‘the path from.’”
“So that’s the title of the recording?” Nina said. “The Path from … from whatever they called their homeland. If we could translate that as well as the whole inscription …” She peered at the second cylinder. “What does that one say? Is that ‘prophet’?”
Sophia confirmed it. “I can’t read the other characters.” She pulled it free of the ice.
“What does it say?” Chase asked as she turned the cylinder in her hands.
She looked puzzled. “I think it’s ‘The Song of the Prophet.’”
Nina examined it. “That’s the word for ‘song’? Because it’s also what was painted on those bowls in the ice.” She turned to the gramophone, putting her hands on the wheel. Ice ground and crunched—then cracked, the wheel rotating more or less freely. “These things were left here for a reason. I think we need to play them.”
By the time Trulli reached the tilt-rotor, the new arrivals were landing and collapsing their parachutes with well-practiced skill. The Hercules in military livery had borne United States Air Force markings—but the men who emerged from it were not in American uniforms. The vehicles landing on pallets with them were not exactly standard U.S. issue either: they looked like small hovercrafts, glossy beetle-black bodywork bearing what appeared to be stubby, squared-off wings.
Five hovercrafts in all, and about twenty men. Armed men.
He looked for the other expedition members. Rachel had initially hesitated before following him to the BA609 and was still clomping across the ice. Baker dutifully remained at the winch. Bandra, though, was moving to meet the paratroopers. “Oh, you stupid bastard,” he moaned in the Indian’s direction before giving the walkie-talkie to Larsson. “I need you to hook that up to the radio—and get this thing started!”
Chase delved into his pack to produce a flare, igniting it and holding the two cylinders beside the sizzling red flame to melt the ice off them. In the small room the light was dazzling and the sulfurous burning smell almost overpowering, but it quickly did the job. Once the cylinders were clear, he used the same trick to remove the ice crusted over the needle and speaker cone before tossing the flare into the passage outside.
Nina turned the wheel again. “We’ll have to work it by hand. Hope we can get it to the right speed.”
“The one you improvised wasn’t turning that fast,” said Sophia, drying the cylinders and handing them to her.
Nina mounted the first cylinder, the one labeled “The Song of the Prophet,” on the spindle, positioning the needle against the cylinder’s groove. “Okay. Here goes.”
She turned the wheel, spinning it at what she thought was roughly the right speed. An unpleasant scraping noise came from the copper cone. Chase winced. “Sounds like the greatest hits of Fingernails and Blackboard.”
“Hold on.” She adjusted the needle and spun the wheel again. This time, she got a result. A slurred, uneven voice came from the cone.
“That must be the title,” Sophia told her. “But you need to go faster.”
“Okay, okay.” Nina spun the wheel more quickly, waiting for the next words to emerge.
They didn’t. What came from the speaker was a chant.
“‘The Song of the Prophet’? You weren’t kidding,” said Chase.
Nina kept the wheel turning. The music was a long, sustained note, distorted by the inevitable variations in the speed of the turntable, but she imagined that, had it been played as intended, the singer would have maintained perfect pitch. The note rose an octave, then dropped two before rising again. Then it stopped. The whole was beautiful, yet somehow unsettling. “What was that?” she said. Chase humme
d the five-note theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “Not that.”
“A ritual chant, maybe,” Sophia suggested.
“Of their prophet. Maybe even by their prophet,” concluded Nina. “Give me the other cylinder.”
Back straight, head held high to show a confidence that was rapidly draining, Dr. Bandra strode toward the parachutists. Both aircraft, having disgorged their cargo, were heading away, toward the coast. Most of the newly arrived soldiers were engaged in removing the hovercrafts from their pallets, except for one group of five men, standing apart from the others, who appeared to be in charge.
He slowed as he approached the apparent officers. All but one had rifles slung over their shoulders as well as holstered pistols. Increasingly nervous, he stopped before the group. “Good afternoon,” he began, the words catching in his throat. He cleared it and continued more authoritatively: “I’m Dr. Rohit Bandra of the United Nations Antarctic Research Agency, in charge of this expedition. I’ve been given no advance notice of any other activities—can you tell me what you’re doing here?”
To his anger, they didn’t even acknowledge him, most of them looking away as another soldier ran over to give a report. Only a white-haired man seemed to have any interest in his presence—and Bandra, finding his unblinking gaze increasingly unnerving, was already wishing that he didn’t.
“Look,” he said, trying to catch the attention of the others, “I have authority here, as granted to me by the United Nations. So I insist that you tell me what’s going on. After all, ha, I’m sure you remember that the Antarctic Treaty prohibits military operations.”
The white-haired man’s stare didn’t waver. “We’re not military,” he told Bandra … as he drew his pistol and shot him in the head.
The shot cracked across the plain, audible even over the rising noise of the tilt-rotor’s engines. “Shit!” Trulli yelled, throwing the cabin door open. “Davo! Come on! Run!”
The Covenant of Genesis_A Novel Page 28