Zara walks away to look at the form of the giant standing five meters high and ponders why her family held back this pendant, which is clearly and exactly engraved on this twelve-thousand-year-old monolith. Jean-Paul helps Peter, who is clearly shaken, to stand. Peter wants to go to her to apologize, but decides being the little boy will win her forgiveness. He puts his hand on the side of the monolith and says, “Kirk to Enterprise. Spock, beam me up immediately. I am under attack by hostile forces. Fire photon torpedoes at this location.”
For the first time, Jean-Paul lets out a little snicker. Zara remains unamused, but no longer looks as if she is going to dismember him.
“Jean-Paul, seriously, how are we going to know if anything here is the object in the traditions?” asks Peter. “If the originators had some special relationship to the object, how would one know how it manifests when a descendant is near it?”
He puts his arms around the fox pelt loincloth relief on the monolith and hugs it, saying, “Shouldn’t I feel something?”
Zara, annoyed by her Little Boy’s silliness, says, “It is easier to make a camel jump a ditch than to make a fool listen to reason. God would not talk through a giant stone to someone as ridiculous as you, Little Boy.”
Peter is relieved Zara is back to normal again, for he has come to understand that the term Little Boy is her form of endearment. And he has come to embrace her odd way of showing affection, albeit heavily bruised from it. He walks carefully back over to her and softly says, “Your mother said I should return the pendant to her. You know her much better than I. Will I be in trouble if I will not be able to return it to her?”
Not knowing what to make of her mother’s intention other than she did not tell her own daughter anything, she replies, “What did she tell you to do with this?”
“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you, but I already violated one of her requests by showing you,” Peter replies, putting his hand over his heart. “But she said this was very ancient and had been passed down through many, many generations. It was meant for you to pass to your children.”
Zara’s face softens as she hears children. Her mother must be deeply disheartened knowing her only daughter, her only living child, has failed to find a good husband, twice, and has since said she cannot have children, ever. Maryam must be in a conundrum as to what to do with the family heirlooms and secrets. If this is the case, maybe Zara can forgive her mother. But forgiveness for this little boy? That is yet to be seen.
Peter observes the harsh, angry lines on her face dissolving and finds the courage to say, “She said I shouldn’t show this to you unless it was absolutely necessary. And I should give it back to her when I return. I reminded her that you said I was never to return, ever.” Peter waits to see if the angry lines return, but Zara only seems puzzled. “She told me she knew I would return.”
“Did she say anything else?”
Shuffling his feet, he thinks maybe he should run now while he is ahead. But for sure she is a faster sprinter than he, so he decides to stand his ground and be truthful. “She thinks I can help you.”
“Help me? How? How are you going to help me? You can’t even help yourself?” Zara cries in exasperation.
“She thinks I can free you, that my inner strength will be helpful for you,” Peter says meekly, unsure if he should duck or offer his hand in friendship.
Zara, unsure if she should feel shunned that her mother did not tell her or confused at what she meant by her words to him, hands the pendant back to Peter. “One can never repay one’s debt to one’s mother. I love my mother. I trust her implicitly. She meant for you to have this, for now. It is only on loan, as it rightfully belongs to me.”
Peter clasps his sweaty hands on hers, and the magic happens again. She senses it. And she does not pull back. They have a special bond, and even more so with this pendant.
While the two hold hands, they are oblivious to two points. First, Jean-Paul has brought down the chest-pack EM detectors, and second, their silhouette perfectly matches the H-shaped reliefs found throughout Göbekli Tepe.
As Zara pulls her hands back, now shivering, scared of what these precious moments of physical contact foretell, she asks Jean-Paul, “What next, priest? Peter finally made a good point. How will we know which of these behemoth stones is the object we search for?”
“We scan these enclosures and let Alexander’s tech do the rest,” replies the serene good Father as he blinks methodically. “Logically, we should start with the oldest enclosures first and then span out.”
“And if we find nothing in the oldest enclosures, you said there might be at least twenty more,” Peter laments, trying to lift the EM detector will little success. “We could spend weeks doing little more than hunting for the proverbial needle in a monolith stack.”
That gets Zara’s attention, and her fierce freedom fighter face returns. “We do not have that much time. We have a day or two.”
And her words rile Peter’s “we should be afraid” gene as he says, “But the AC forces are still far away.”
Looking at the real-time satellite surveillance on her MoxWrap, Zara replies, “It is not the AC I am worried about. It is the possibility of a radical Daesh offshoot assassin squad that worries me the most.”
“A what?” Peter utters, now thinking he should be terribly afraid, as he mounts the EM detector across his chest with Jean-Paul’s assistance.
“The Arabic Confederation is a nation now recognized by many countries, following ethics consistent with those of most neighboring countries. But the most radical elements of the former ISIS did not fully join their national movement. The AC tolerates these radical groups so long as they do not act against the AC. One of these radical group’s assassin teams could easily slip through the lines of battle and surgically strike us here. They are exquisitely good at what they do, maybe better than me.”
Jean-Paul adjusts the EM detector on Peter and tells him, “You are ready. Touch nothing. Take tiny baby steps very, very slowly around this enclosure, starting on the outside and making a spiral to the inside. This walk should take you two hours and no faster, or we will get a poor read.” With that, Jean-Paul takes his pack and goes to Enclosure C while Zara takes a high position and scans the horizon with her binoculars.
Peter is sweltering in the heat, no worse than Death Valley back home, but still death. Zara, who seems to have a built-in air-conditioner under her tunic shirt and headscarf, succumbs to an overwhelming sense of pity for him and brings him a constant fresh supply of cold water. That is love if he has ever seen it, Peter muses as a way to distract himself from the pain of carrying this device as if he were a tiptoeing pregnant cow.
When Peter is finally finished, he gently lets himself sit down in the center of the enclosure and peer up at his T-shaped alien giants. Zara excuses herself for Asr prayer, the afternoon one, and Jean-Paul comes over from Enclosure C. And much to Peter’s chagrin, Jean-Paul says they need to return the EM units to the truck for data processing as well as security in case of an attack. Neither of which are popular concepts for Peter.
Sitting under the shade of the truck, Peter asks what he thinks a safe question. “What are we doing for dinner? Did we bring a microwave?”
“Don’t look at me. I don’t cook for men,” Zara whips back.
“Does that imply you cook for women?” replies the cheeky gene in Peter.
“In my old unit, we cooked for each other, and yes, we were women. I am not your domestic servant. I am the one who is going to get you to your imaginary object and maybe save your silly life in the process. So you need to cook for me.”
And the peacekeeper, Jean-Paul, intercedes lest they starve this night. “I believe it is God’s plan we prosper and find this object, so I will cook. But, Zara, unless you want reconstituted freeze-dried gunk, someone needs to hunt and clean some local game. And, if you could be so kind, please show Peter where to find some edible plants.”
And three headless rabbits and so
me local greens later, they sit satiated around their camp. Peter asks Zara why all three rabbits had their heads shot cleanly off. She shrugs her shoulders and says there is something in her that does not find them so cute. And so she shoots them just behind their cute wiggling noses. She points out that her AK-74 is not a hunting weapon, but a blunt instrument of death. And so, their heads are blown off. Peter is seriously not feeling her warm and fuzzy side, if she has one at all.
After evening prayer, Zara offers to take the first watch, with Jean-Paul to relieve her at two a.m. She watches Peter toss, turn, flail his arms, and yell. If the object is talking to him, then they must be close. If the object is supposed to calm him, they are doomed.
And so passes the next day in the same fashion. Zara stands guard as well as attending to her five daily prayers. The men scan six more enclosures, which nearly kills Peter, who is flattened by dinner. And so they eat reconstituted freeze-dried gunk with a couple more headless rabbits. The night passes, with Zara taking the later watch, again witnessing Peter’s nightly distresses.
A third day passes, and the men complete only five enclosures as Peter collapses after doing two. Zara comes to Jean-Paul to assess the situation, about which Jean-Paul has no good news. The scans are not interpretable, meaning either they do not have enough data yet to discern the object, or the object is not here.
Zara shakes her head, saying their time is running out. The AC forces have broken through to the southern side of Sanliurfa and are proceeding to the western side, where they are. The air campaign is not favoring the Turks due to the superiority of the AC’s Chinese-made advanced fighters. The US has decided not to launch their advanced fighters for fear of Russian intervention defending the Kurds.
Jean-Paul walks Zara away from Peter and says, “I share your apprehensions over the situation. We do not have enough time to be sure that this site does or does not have the object.” He looks her in the eyes with his methodical blinks and says, “There is another way that could help us.”
And with wide eyes, Zara shakes her head in protest. “No. I told you and Alexander, no. I am not that kind of woman. Fly Mei here.”
And the fourth day passes, with the same results. Five more enclosures, a dead Peter, and nothing conclusive. And Zara shakes her head all day, watching the battle through her binoculars and the live satellite surveillance. She has taken the precaution of setting up perimeter sensors to give them some advance notice of any small infiltration teams.
Again, she and Jean-Paul have the same conversation, and she replies, “Priest, I cannot tell you why what you ask is not possible. It just is not. I cannot do what Mei could do. Not only is it against my faith, it is just not possible for me to do.” And she walks away to perform her Isha evening prayer before taking the first watch.
In response to Zara’s complaint a couple of nights ago, Peter decided to sleep far from the truck so as not to disturb the others. Zara stands watch in sight of him as he undergoes his nightly fight routine. This time he hits a rock and screams. Her latent motherly instinct tells her she should attend to his pain, lest he attract an assassin team. He sits whimpering with his injured hand next to his chest. She takes it and sees just a little scrape, no wounds, no bone breakage. What a little boy he is, worse than her baby lambs. And she spits on the scrape and rubs it with her palm.
And the magical something between them starts. She feels the peace emanate from her palm. He puts his other hand on hers and rubs. She senses the peace move up her arm, up her neck. She looks at him, a wounded child, and she decides to try what Mei did. She puts her thumb on his forehead, drives it in, and grinds, for her fingers lack the delicate softness of that Chinese courtesan.
“Ow! That hurts,” Peter yells. “It’s not supposed to hurt.”
Zara puts her hand over his mouth to shut him up. He is going to wake up the dead at this ancient temple, or worse, they will be the dead if he alerts an assassin team. Emulating what Mei did, she puts her palm on his shirt over his heart and applies pressure, firmly rubbing it.
He screams again, under her hand cupping his mouth. “I’m not having a heart attack. That’s CPR you’re doing. The kind that breaks sternums. Ow!”
Peter puts his hands over his crotch, deeply afraid of what she might do next, and whimpers, “Please, I beg of you, not down there. My mother wants me to keep them intact for her grandchildren.”
She’s had it. She tried. She was not made for this. Give me someone to kill, she thinks, as that is all she is good for. She spits at him in her disgust over her own inability. He spits back. As she uses her hand to remove his saliva, she senses it again. She gets it, finally. And with Peter looking at her in fear, imagining what horrible things she is going to do this time, she leans into him, kisses his forehead, and then licks it softly, drawing circle after circle around with her soft tongue.
Peter leans his head into her scarf and inhales through his nose to smell her. And her pheromones begin their work. The fog that permeates his night brain begins to dissipate, and he ducks as they come roaring out, dozens and dozens of wild boars. From his dream, he remembers fighting one with a spear. And then he remembers a woman wearing the pendant, praying at the object in the middle of the T pillars.
They are both awakened by the shrill of Zara’s security systems. She checks her MoxWrap and says, “We have to run. Satellite-guided munitions are coming down on our heads.”
They get no more than thirty steps and the bombs strike the grounds around them. Monoliths split and shatter, spitting out shards all around them. In sheer panic, Peter crumples into a sitting fetal position. Zara, unable to get him standing, drags him to the truck, where the priest is kneeling in prayer. She yells, “Priest, this is no time to ask for God’s help. Help me get him into the truck.”
The blast debris from the temple starts raining down on their heads, pelting the truck as Zara gets into the driver’s seat and bolts out of the parking lot, her foot to the floorboard as more munitions explode all around them and throughout the entire complex.
Jean-Paul looks back and sees that Göbekli Tepe is no longer.
Chapter 31
Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you.
If while living you fail to find yourself, to know yourself,
How will you be able to understand
The secret of your existence when you die?
—Farīd ud-Dīn Attar,
twelfth-century Persian Muslim poet
9540 BCE
Site of modern-day Göbekli Tepe
It has been thirty-five sun cycles that they have known peace at last. The daughters of Nanshe have fulfilled her vision—bountiful food and years of safety lead to the desire to search for higher sense of meaning. The villages in the plains below have blossomed, as have the numerous farms. Hundreds upon hundreds of people now live with a day’s walk of the monuments, which serve not only as the storyboard for all time, warning future generations of the dangers of the giants, but, in their magnificence, to inspire the awe that has led the villagers and farmers to come worship with the sacred twins, Sarpani and Zirbani, and their children.
The forever faithful and obedient Ki, still never having heard the voice, never experiencing its peace, beauty, and harmony, honors her mother’s wishes, her father’s wishes, and teaches the three dozen grandchildren of her, her brother, and her twin sisters. They range from toddlers to her two granddaughters, Iriana, twenty cycles, from her son Parcza, and Vatlana, seventeen cycles, from her daughter Ramana. These two young women have listened to her as she had to her mother, faithful and obedient. And as Ki held a special place in Nanshe’s heart, so do these two oldest granddaughters with Ki.
Iriana and Ramana, her dearest and most obedient. Similar to Ki’s youth, they are not married yet, as they have not found men who live up to the standards they have expected of their lives, although many dozens of marriage offers have come and been turned down. Someday, they hope, the right man will come.
Until then, they follow their grandmother Ki’s lead—pray with the family, honor the object and those who hear the voice, and go on the hunt. Ki, seventy-three cycles of age, still takes them on the hunt. She is still young at heart, but age has lessened her strength and agility. No longer with the great bow strength or speed of firing, her aim and accuracy remain as sharp as ever.
Sun cycles ago, Ki turned leadership over to her two younger twin sisters, Zirbani and Sarpani, as she focused on teaching this new generation. Clearly there is a split between their children. The ones who suffer the dreams or hear the voice, they are much more attuned to memorizing the family oral tradition from her grandfather Parcza. The ones, like her, who do not dream or hear, can only obediently pray in faithfulness. Aside from Iriana and Vatlana, the other unafflicted grandchildren think their grandmother Ki is being excessive in asking their obedience to some silly words, as only peace has reigned in their lifetime, in their parents’ lifetime. None of their villager friends are made to do such things.
Ki teaches the lore of her aunt, Illyana. The strength, the will, the benevolence she embodied—or that is what she was taught by her parents to believe. Deep inside her, as she ages and nears her own death, she trembles with the dilemma her father faced. If a loved one were faced with a life worse than death, would you kill them out of mercy?
She saw how much her father suffered and agonized over his indecision and decision. And somehow this agony has passed itself on to his descendants who suffer the dreams. And so she teaches them the lore of Illyana so they can come to their own peace through the moral lessons and dilemmas of her life and death.
The lore of Illyana’s name has been given to Sarpani’s oldest granddaughter, the oldest child from her daughter Tallia. As Ki’s mother had said, to preserve the ability to commune with the voice, with the dreams, they would need to make the hard choice of telling the afflicted to marry among their kin. And so, Tallia was married to her cousin, one of the older sons of Zirbani. And the wisdom of Nanshe comes true again as the younger Illyana possesses the strongest touch, the strongest bond with the voice of any in her generation. She will become the successor to her grandmother, Sarpani, as the group’s new spiritual leader.
The Matriarch Matrix Page 39