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by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  Jess turned to see Su-Lin by a stone basin on the far right wall. She held out a natural sponge.

  The basin held cool water. Jess plunged both hands in to rinse them, then dabbed them with the sponge. She winced as each cut stung.

  “Alum,” her cousin said. “To stop the bleeding.”

  When Jess had finished, she held out her hands, and Su-Lin bound them in scarlet strips of cotton.

  Only then did she help Jess don her shift, the amphibalus, and finally the cape.

  Su-Lin stepped back, assessing her. Then she beckoned Jess to follow her into the long central hall of the cross-shaped shrine.

  Still barefoot, Jess walked on smooth limestone tiles worn with two distinct trails. How many generations of defenders had followed this path before her?

  Ahead, where an ordinary church would have had its altar, the long aisle ended in another wall, unornamented. Centered in that wall was a pair of doors, oak again, bound by iron. There was no latch to seal them.

  Su-Lin put her hands on the doors and looked back. “Jessica, you will follow as others have before you.” Again, the words sounded ceremonial. “You will arrive by a way you know not. You will be led in paths you have not traveled. Darkness will be made light before you, and what is broken will be mended. These things will you do for our Family, and you will not forsake it.”

  The Secret. Jess nodded, ready for her turn. Her burden.

  The inner doors swung open.

  “The Chamber of Heaven . . .”

  Jess breathed those words, barely audible, as she turned slowly in a circle, awed, reverent.

  Each modern replica of this room that she’d seen before—whether here in Zurich or Hong Kong, Rome, everywhere—had resembled this one: circular, its walls plain stone, its ceiling midnight blue, a painted hemisphere of stars and constellations. In its center, a round table ringed by twelve chairs, signifying the equality of those who would sit there.

  But this ancient inner sanctum . . . this chamber . . . almost a millennium and a half older than any of the others . . . it was that much closer in time to the real Chamber of Heaven in which the First Gods had made their Promise to the Family.

  Her gaze traveled up to the dome high above the chamber’s curved walls of stained limestone blocks. The ceiling’s plaster was cracked in places, the vivid colors of its sky and stars faded in the dim electric light. She looked down to a floor black with age.

  Jess’s chest tightened with emotions she could barely contain. It was an incredible reaffirmation of her faith. To see that the Family of today had preserved the knowledge of this site so precisely over the centuries. Such respect for continuity of knowledge. Direct evidence that made it so much easier to believe that the rest of the Family’s traditions from the time of the First Gods had also survived their passage through the ages.

  “Over all that time . . .” Jess marveled. “Nothing’s changed.”

  Su-Lin took Jess’s arm. “Not quite.” She guided Jess to the room’s central table and positioned her behind the high-backed, carved oak chair marked with the symbol of Jess’s Family Line. “Look closer.”

  Jess put her bandaged hand on the chair before her. Not fifteen hundred years old, but what piece of furniture could last that long and still be in use? The chairs, she decided, had been replaced over the centuries, but they were still oak.

  She turned her attention to the table, to check if that wood had also been—

  Her eyes widened.

  “The table,” she said. “It’s stone.”

  “Look closer,” Su-Lin said again.

  Jess moved the chair aside and touched the table’s surface with two of her uncut fingertips. The cool stone felt smooth, honed. “Granite . . . fine grain . . . this green cast’s common to Switzerland, so I’d say it’s local. But why would it not be—”

  Her fingertips stopped as they reached one of the twelve lines that radiated from the table’s center, dividing it into twelve wedges. All the lines she’d seen before on the oak tables in the Family’s replica chambers were either painted on or made of inlaid wood or metal strips.

  Jess turned to her cousin. “The lines are engraved. Is that what you meant?”

  Su-Lin said nothing.

  Jess turned back to the old stone table. A moment later, she caught her breath in surprise. She’d missed something else. Something significant.

  In every modern Chamber of Heaven, the oak tables had been identical. Each of the twelve sections of the table bore a different symbol—a representation of the constellations. Not those of the common zodiac but those of the Family; to this day Family astronomers still argued over where the twelve celestial patterns fit among the stars.

  “The constellation silhouettes, they’re not—”

  “They’re not constellations.”

  Jess stared at her cousin, shocked. She’d just contradicted a basic fact of Family history that Jess had been taught since childhood. “But . . .”

  “Look closer, Jessica.”

  Bewildered, Jess looked again at the table’s surface, then, after a moment’s thought, chose the concave design on the segment closest to her. It was the Blossom constellation—a large circle atop a small circle atop a horizontal bar. What else could it be?

  She bit her lip in frustration. It was clear she was still being tested, but she had no idea what was expected of her.

  After a moment, Su-Lin pulled one of the chairs away from the table, revealing a purple-cloth-wrapped package, the size of a small shoebox. She picked up the package and carried it to another segment of the table whose indentation Jess had been taught was the constellation of the Archer’s Bow.

  Reverently unfolding the richly colored cloth, Su-Lin uncovered a pitted black metal object, which she placed in the indented symbol. It fit perfectly.

  She looked at Jess inquiringly.

  “Is it a meteorite?” Jess asked.

  Su-Lin’s only response was a repetition of that maddening instruction. “Look closer.”

  Her professional knowledge challenged, Jess walked around the table and picked up the object. It was surprisingly heavy, but she was relieved to discover that it was a meteorite, and it had an endcut. The fact that the dark stone was cut made it a “half individual” in the parlance of her field. She studied the diagram inscribed on its flat surface, recognized it.

  “It’s a heliocentric solar system, so it dates around . . . third century B.C.E.”

  Her cousin shook her head.

  Jess felt a flash of annoyance. “I can’t date it precisely without a lab. How much older?”

  “Nine thousand years.”

  The impact of those words struck the sound-hushed chamber like rolling thunder after lightning. “It’s not possible.”

  “Even so.” Su-Lin waved a hand at the other segments of the table. “It’s our belief that the so-called constellation silhouettes painted or inlaid on our wooden tables are, in reality, two-dimensional outlines of three-dimensional hollows designed to hold twelve different objects. One of these twelve objects is that meteorite.”

  “Our belief?” Jess’s grip tightened on the meteorite. Was Su-Lin saying the defenders didn’t know what the twelve symbols really were? Or what they really meant?

  Then, at last, like countless others before her, she assumed her burden as she learned the truth.

  “The Secret’s lost,” Su-Lin said, “and not even the defenders know where to find it.”

  TEN

  Ironwood stepped through the airlock of the alien spacecraft.

  Someday, he thought. Someday . . . Then his casino’s tidal wave of sound slammed into him and the illusion was destroyed.

  Bells chimed, electronic tones warbled up and down the scales, sirens screamed, and, woven through it all, was the omnipresent rush of what pros called the sound of rain—the raucous dance of coins against coins as they tumbled from slot machine hoppers into hard metal payout trays. Of course, these days, only a handful of the slots on the casino’s
main floor operated with coins. The majority of them used player cards, electronically deducting dollars and cents in small and regular amounts, occasionally adding back large sums, but invariably according to finely tuned gaming equations that guaranteed slightly more deductions than additions, except for the lucky few.

  Because of those player cards, the sound of money that filled the air surrounding Ironwood—the sound of wealth and luck and dreams come true—was itself a recording, an illusion, no different from the green-skinned alien drink hostesses in their silver miniskirts, his dealers and croupiers in their Space Service uniforms, and his personal favorite: the soaring Syd Mead architectural flourishes evoking the inside of a fantastical otherworldly vehicle.

  “Welcome back, sir!”

  And so it begins. Ironwood nodded to Osman Mirza, manager of his Atlantic City Encounters Casino & Resort. The slim young man in a sober black suit had charged on the double through a throng of tourists. In his wake fluttered two executive assistants in narrow pencil skirts and steep stilettos never meant for running. All were slightly out of breath. As they ought to be.

  As a matter of personal policy, Ironwood never gave his employees advance notice of impromptu visits to his properties. They had to be prepared to see and welcome him at any time.

  “No one broke the bank yet, Ozzie?”

  Mirza gestured out at the sea of flashing lights and noisy electronic misdirection. “No, sir. Statistical analysis shows we’re dead-on our rate of—”

  Ironwood thumped Mirza’s narrow shoulder. “Don’t mind me, son. You’re doing a fine job.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Mirza said, relieved. “Your suite is ready.”

  “I know it is. But I’m going to the Red Room first. Tell J.R. when he comes in.”

  Mirza blinked, and the two executive assistants shared a sudden furtive glance.

  “Your son is here?”

  “Junior’s watching them park the bus.” Limousines were too small for Ironwood’s liking, so he kept his offices in a fleet of buses. “Like a rock star on tour,” the Wall Street Journal had said in a recent profile. “Tell him where I’ll be. And tell him I said he’s to get his backside in there ASAP. No side trips.”

  “As you wish, Mr. Ironwood.”

  Ironwood walked on, oblivious to the noisy groups of dreamers who enriched him with their gambling, dreaming his own dream. Someday . . .

  Officially, the Red Room was the smallest of Encounters’ six main gaming areas. It was located off a corridor that did nothing but loop around a set of upscale shops, and as such it seemed to be an afterthought in the meticulously designed resort complex. As a result, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission accepted without question that the Red Room wasn’t utilized as a full-time gaming area but was instead what Ironwood’s management team called a research facility. A place where new games and technologies were tested. Naturally, that use required safeguards, falling within the same security procedures protecting the casino’s counting rooms.

  Thus, the Red Room was unsecured by electronic systems or biometric hand scanners, retinal readers or numbered keypads. Entrance was granted only by personal recognition by three guards posted outside its doors. Sometimes the simplest precautions were the strictest in the world of high security.

  As Ironwood approached the Red Room, he noted with approval three former marines, all of a type, attentive-eyed, solid with muscles. There was no attempt to hide the bulge of the weapons they carried under their smart hotel-staff blazers.

  Two of the guards simultaneously turned their keys at wall-mounted stations sited far enough apart that one person could not operate both at the same time. The third opened the heavy door. Its Kevlar-reinforced ceramic core—bullet- and blast-proof—was discreetly masked by pale oak veneer.

  Ironwood nodded at the guards as he passed into the Red Room. “Thank you, gentlemen.” Respect was earned, and these men had his.

  High overhead, the Red Room’s ceiling was a frozen sea of curved, reflective panels studded with bright lights. The deliberate visual chaos was designed to hide overhead remote-controlled cameras that could move ceaselessly and undetectably from table to table on their search for cheaters—if the room were ever restored to its original purpose.

  Now it contained all of the trappings expected of a research facility for new gambling technology. A traditional carousel placement of video slot machines was oriented toward the main door, each machine with its covering console removed to expose electronic workings, while their screens flashed with seductive displays.

  The rest of the visible space was occupied by banks of computer equipment, also in constant operation. A conference table against a featureless beige back wall was littered with file folders, empty coffee cups and soft drink cans, and crumpled candy wrappers.

  The air was cold. The background hum of industrial air-conditioning was noticeable; the murmured conversation of eight technicians, barely audible.

  Whenever the representatives of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission wanted to check for unauthorized, private high-roller playing of unsanctioned games, they were welcome. The Red Room was exactly what everyone expected it to be.

  Except that it wasn’t. Because of what lay behind the featureless beige side wall, through the single cylindrical darkroom door, installed not to keep light out but to maintain the temperature on the other unseen side.

  The eight technicians were also not what they seemed. Unofficially, each made five times the salary of Osman Mirza, who was, as Encounters’ manager, the highest-paid member of the resort’s staff. At least on the resort’s official books.

  “Hey, boss.” Keisha Harrill led Ironwood’s Red Room team. She wore a blue T-shirt with a large Union Jack above the word GREECE, which Ironwood found comical for someone whose expertise involved mapping. Just twenty-eight, Keisha was already set for a comfortable retirement due to the seven-figure bonus he’d paid her to reject Google’s latest offer.

  A few of the other technicians looked up from their workstations for a moment, curious about what new challenge he might be bringing them. Of the eight people on his handpicked team of specialists, four men and one woman were close to Keisha’s age, young and eager and brilliant, as innovative mathematicians are apt to be. The other two were veteran engineers, both in their fifties. When it came to building custom computers from scratch, experience counted as much as innovation.

  “What can we do for you?” Keisha asked.

  “I had an idea. Something to try while we’re waiting for a fourth set of search coordinates.”

  Ironwood was pleased to see that with those words he had her complete attention. The work the team did in this room on his behalf was not something he could ever discuss by e-mail or by phone. If the government ever learned what went on here, they wouldn’t call him to the Hill for testimony—they’d lock him up and vaporize the key.

  “What if we compare the first three sites, you know, come up with all their points of similarities? If we find some other locations that have the same ones, we’d have ourselves some new target spots to check.”

  Keisha fingered her long, beaded dreadlocks as she considered the request. “That’s cool. In fact, Frank’s been working on that since we got the hit on that third set of coordinates.” She called over to a member of her team. “Frank? You mind coming over here?”

  Frank Beyoun reluctantly wandered over to join Keisha and Ironwood. He was short and bearded, wearing tattered jeans, sandals, and an untucked green and brown flannel shirt. If Frank’s outfit ever changed, Ironwood had never seen it.

  “Any luck?”

  “Haven’t cracked it.”

  Keisha gave the glum mathematician an encouraging look. “Explain to the man, Frank.”

  “The thing is the first site, in India, it’s in a river valley. Inland, low altitude, reachable by boat back when it was built. The second’s in the Andes. But high altitude. Way inland. Unreachable by boat. Third’s in the South Pacific. Originally above sea
level. On an island. Boats all the time.” Frank looked away as if he were embarrassed by his failure. “So far we found nothing else to link them. Other than the three outposts have identical designs.”

  “Okay, Frank, that’s all we needed,” Keisha said. “Back to it.”

  Frank nodded and shuffled off toward his station.

  Ironwood had deliberately held back a few details from the team, though he’d shared the important ones they needed to do their work. Now he reminded Keisha of one of those details. “Don’t forget we found identical designs and similar artifacts in all three outposts.”

  The carved stone tables in the outposts in India and Peru were virtually the same. Merrit had reported there was a similar-sized table in the underwater outpost in Polynesia. Then there were the two black meteorites, from India and Polynesia. Each was inscribed with an identical diagram of the solar system.

  Keisha looked thoughtful. “I don’t think there’s any question the outposts were built by the same people, what with the ones in India and Peru constructed within a few hundred years of each other. My guess is the one in Polynesia will turn out to have similar dating, too. That said, it’s no big shock the artifacts in them are the same.” Her smile was playful, questioning. “You ever going to tell us what the artifacts really are?”

  Ironwood winked, letting her know there was no chance in hell of that. “Just what I told you before. Furniture and carvings.”

  Keisha properly didn’t press the matter. “Anyway, the point is—”

  A warning chime sounded, and she broke off. The main door was about to open.

  “Keep going,” Ironwood said. “It’s just J.R.”

  “Okay, well, the point is, we’ve yet to identify a common factor that accounts for why the outposts were built where they were built.”

  “What about the one in Peru? It’s not too far from Machu Picchu. That’s a sacred site. Maybe some ley lines nearby? Earth energy? Any chance there’re some of those lines at the India and South Pacific finds?”