The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  I’ve been in the underground chamber. It is over 50,000 years old, maybe a LOT older. So maybe this famous Sumerian King List isn’t so mythological after all? They also found miniscule quantities of human remains, which date from almost 3000BC. According to DiCanio, that’s when the human version of PJ’s gene emerges. She thinks that some of the people who carry that gene have ancestors from this area, dating back to 3000BC.

  Is it possible that the ancestors were actually here, in this chamber?

  Even more; there’s a second chamber, in Mexico.

  Maybe there’s something to that website article about ‘ancient Sumerian biologists’. Maybe I was right first time; PJ’s DNA molecule IS a message we can read.

  Can you try to decode the entire sequence? Maybe translate it into the Sumerian logograms and then back into English? See if you can find any reference to why Eridu fell. Because this ancient chamber seems to part of the ruins of Eridu.

  I need to know this asap.

  J x

  PS Leg is doing great.

  Jackson sent the reply. Then he sat, pensive for several moments. Marie-Carmen was right; DiCanio must have a compelling reason for wanting the Adaptor. She’d claimed that the counterpart in the Mexican chamber was eroded beyond use. Which implied that DiCanio knew or suspected its true function.

  Could it be that the Mexican chamber was still operational?

  Jackson’s mind went to the stories he’d listened to as a boy, of the explorer Ponce De Leon, his search in the New World for a mythical fountain of eternal youth. Maybe the chamber in Mexico was the original source of such legends.

  From outside came the sound of footsteps. Jackson closed the Web browser with a click.

  Connor returned. There was a colder edge to him now. He gaze was baleful, yet coolly appraising. “Who is DiCanio?”

  Jackson’s eyes widened, affecting innocence.

  Connor leaned forward. “We let you have access to the Web, but we were monitoring your session remotely. Look.”

  He indicated another icon on the right hand of the screen. Jackson rolled his eyes.

  “We’ve seen everything you did. You really should learn more about computers. How did you get involved in something like this? You’re seriously out of your depth.”

  Behind the duct tape, Jackson made a tiny, resigned noise. He started to pick at the edge of the tape, near the curve of his jaw. Connor just shook his head. “Not yet. Listen up. Who’s DiCanio?”

  Jackson pulled the laptop computer towards him. He opened a Web browser, typing ‘dicanio’ into Google’s search box. Even on the first page of results, Melissa DiCanio was mentioned, on the website of Chaldexx Biopharmaceuticals.

  He tapped the computer screen. Connor gave Jackson a withering look and then clicked on the website.

  “A neuroscientist? Now I guess you’re going to tell me you were telling the truth about the drug you used?”

  Vigorously, he nodded.

  Connor was thoughtful for a few minutes: “Boy, the Department of Defense would sure like to get a piece of that. How long does it last?”

  Jackson typed rapidly: I don’t know. Tell me what the chamber does, then maybe I can guess.

  Connor seemed to consider. “We don’t know what the chamber does, or did. It’s a ruin, as you saw. There are several remarkable things about it: the apparent age, the incredibly well-preserved state of the structures. And of course, the bio-toxin, but since you’re immune you won’t have noticed that. Come on, Jackson, you’re supposed to be a smart guy: work it out.”

  Jackson typed: Who built the chamber?

  “That’s classified.”

  The writing is Sumerian, right?

  Connor’s reply was guarded. “It’s related to that, yeah. We’ve started a team on linguistics experts on the project back in Virginia.” Then, abruptly, he said: “Why did you lie to me, Jacko? Why did you say you were working for ‘Hans Runig’?”

  Jackson typed: Runig also wants the Adaptor – that’s what DiCanio calls the artifact. He tried to blackmail me into it; threatened to kill me if I wouldn’t, reward me if I did.

  Connor regarded him thoughtfully. “OK so – DiCanio knows about the chamber and the artifacts we found from her friends at the UN. What about Runig – how’d he get so clued in?”

  Leak at Chaldexx?

  “This just gets better. Any idea where we can find Runig?”

  Jackson shook his head, but indicated the laptop.

  Connor looked doubtful. “We’ve looked into it. He’s listed as a stockholder for a bunch of companies, but we’ve found no other references to him, not anywhere. I just spoke to one of the companies he’s invested in; they say they’ve never met him in person. Apparently he prefers to videoconference.”

  Then, changing the subject again, Connor asked, “This girl, Marie-Carmen. How does she fit in with all this?”

  Jackson typed: She’s a friend. Hans Runig has people looking for her. He was going to use her to get to me.

  “So she’s more than just a friend?”

  Something about Connor’s tone, quite suddenly, sent a surge of protective jealousy through Jackson. It must have shown in his eyes because Connor broke into a suggestive grin.

  “Must be quite a girl. That’s a very illuminating bit of research she’s sent you. It’s not news to us, of course. See the thing about ancient mythology is this: when there’s no physical evidence for anything, it’s easier to dismiss what is written as invention. After all, people have been making up stories since the beginning of time. So we’re supposed to take them seriously, just because all of a sudden they’re carved in stone? On the other hand, a find like this, well it sends you straight back to those ancient texts. All of a sudden they seem pretty enlightening.”

  Jackson thought again about the apparently bizarre decision to bring in the NRO to manage the operation. He’d glibly suggested an extra-terrestrial origin for the burial chamber, but in fact, that must now be a realistic possibility.

  Really not extra-terrestrial?

  Connor shook his head. “What seems more likely, but almost as controversial, is that this is the first credible evidence for a previous civilization. It’s buried pretty deeply, much deeper than the earliest parts of Eridu.”

  As his brother spoke, Jackson found himself wondering why Connor was feeding him so much information – information which was surely classified.

  Why are you telling me all this?

  “I thought that’d be obvious, Jacko. We want you working with us. You don’t really have another choice. The alternative would be a charge of treason or espionage. Hell, we could even send you to rot in Guantanamo.”

  Behind the tape, Jackson swallowed hard. Betraying DiCanio would not be easy to accomplish. He’d have to become part of a military intelligence operation. But as his brother suggested, Jackson doubted that he’d have any real choice.

  Connor spoke again. “Let me tell you how this is going to work. In twenty minutes, you will leave here, dressed as me. You’ll take the replica of the “Adaptor”, as you call it. You’d better convince DiCanio that it’s the real deal. We’re going to have you followed. You can’t escape us, so don’t try. Tip off DiCanio and you might not survive. Do you understand?”

  Jackson nodded, expressionless. Connor appeared to be satisfied. No wonder, Jackson thought. They hadn’t given him much choice.

  “One more thing: before you leave, I want you to write down everything you know about DiCanio. How you met, what’s her plan, why she wants the artifact, how she convinced you to help. And listen up: when we catch her, which we will, your two stories had better be identical. Or else you can forget any clemency deal. If you lie to us, I’ll stand by and watch them throw the book at you. Believe it, Jackson, that’s quite some book.”

  Wonderingly, Jackson watched his brother leave. He could almost believe that his brother had never heard of DiCanio. Yet DiCanio claimed to have approached Connor first.

  One of them had
to be lying.

  Lament For Eridu

  As Jackson sweated it out in the tiny interview room in the Abu Shahrain base, Marie-Carmen was taking breakfast beside the salt-water pool of the Acapulco Princess. It being rather late in the morning, a small line had formed at the entrance to the Chula Vista restaurant. The restaurant was situated next to a turquoise lagoon with waterfalls, surrounded with coconut trees and red and white hibiscus flowers. Pink flamingos stood elegantly in ornamental ponds, grazing on dyed bird feed. Near the head of the line, Marie-Carmen recognized her companions from the previous night’s dinner table.

  Daniel O’Shea caught her eye. With a broad, easy grin, he waved her over.

  Marie-Carmen smiled, relieved to have company and that Daniel didn’t seem annoyed by the way she’d run off the night before. Jackson’s predicament – and silence since yesterday afternoon’s email – had her seriously concerned. Her cell phone was still switched off, but it taunted her with potential knowledge. Had Runig called her, left any message with demands, or information about Jackson? The desire to check was an unbearable itch, one she dared not scratch.

  Marie-Carmen joined Daniel at a poolside table, under a large parasol.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” Daniel said with a beam.

  “Hey,” she told him. “I thought we had an understanding.”

  “Sure – that’s what makes it possible to talk this way. You couldn’t possibly think I have ulterior motives.”

  Marie-Carmen tapped her watch. “The Waiting List Rules? Remember?”

  Daniel laughed. “I guess you left in a bit of a hurry yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes. I was waiting for a call. Then I stuck around and did some reading. What you told me about the Sumerians was fascinating. I ended up learning some more about Eridu. So, what happened to it, in the end?”

  “To Eridu?” Daniel shrugged very slightly. “You know, the whole Sumerian culture eventually died. Not dramatically and mysteriously like the Maya cities, maybe, but still, there’s a lot we don’t understand about why it all just died off. As for Eridu, legend has it that it was buried in a storm.”

  Marie-Carmen placed her plate on the table, sat down.

  “Buried?”

  Daniel turned away for a second to catch the eye of a waiter.

  “Right. There’s a piece of literature known as the Lament for Eridu. It talks about a terrible storm, which swept over the city; the sky became dark even during the day, the city being covered as if by a sandstorm, destroyed forever.”

  They sat in silence as a waiter filled their coffee cups.

  “Just how old is Eridu?” asked Marie-Carmen. “Yesterday, you told me that it was founded around four thousand five hundred BC. Well, I was reading the Sumerian King List, and according to that, Eridu is over two hundred thousand years old.”

  Daniel raised one eyebrow, impressed. “You found a translation of the Weld-Blundell Prism? I guess you’ve been reading the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. You know, I’ve actually seen the Weld-Blundell, in Oxford. It’s at the Ashmolean Museum. You gotta respect the guys who transcribed and translated those markings. That’s a piece of work! Yes, according to that record, the pre-flood kings had superhuman life spans, ruled for tens of thousands of years. That’s one of several parallels with the Book of Genesis. After the flood, there was a ‘second descent’ of the Gods from heaven. The post-flood kings ruled for more normal life spans. But you know what, Marie-Carmen? It’s literature! Let me ask you this; you believe everything you read that the Maya write about and refer to with Long Count calendar dates?”

  Marie-Carmen shook her head. “Of course not. Among ancient peoples it was customary to weave fact and fantasy in their historical records.”

  “Not just ancient peoples. I think the point really is that it all happened so long ago, who knows? Think how hard it is to find the truth in the printed word, even today. There’s information, misinformation, disinformation, that’s even before you get to literature. In the Romances of the Middle Ages, it was the fashion to start a piece of literature with a statement that the author had found the manuscript, implying it was a historical account. Originality wasn’t what people sought back then; what they loved was tradition.

  “Even by the time of Cervantes, in the sixteenth century, when he wrote what’s probably the first modern novel, Don Quixote, he begins in the style of the very Romances he’s trying to emulate: ‘I found this manuscript’. In the second part of Don Quixote, the first book has already made the hero a well-known figure. So then the author gets to refer to Don Quixote as a quasi-historical figure; ‘Remember the famous Don Quixote whose story you already know?’

  “The point is that, even then, everyone knew that fiction presented as truth was a game, it gave it that extra frisson. Now, just imagine if all the texts which refer to Don Quixote were destroyed and only the original book was left, and people thousands of years in the future found it. Would they believe that Don Quixote was a historical figure? The answer is that without independent verification they probably wouldn’t. Think about how easy that makes it to create a historical hoax; one seemingly independent source might get any old story verified.

  “With ancient history, it’s hard to tell fact from fiction. You use your common sense until evidence suggests otherwise.”

  With that, Daniel made a start on his cooling heap of sausages, eggs and tortillas in green tomato and chili sauce.

  Marie-Carmen looked beyond the crowded restaurant, past the tall coconut palms which flanked the pool, beyond the wide sands of the beach, beyond the lines of creamy surf, past the indigo of the ocean. If only it were possible to gaze into the recent past as easily as into the distant millennia of the heavens. Sometimes, studying the texts of the ancients, you could almost believe you did. At other moments, the very alien nature of those past civilizations defied understanding. It was the central tension of her field of study: how could one accurately read the past without the eyes of the ancestors?

  ***

  After breakfast, Marie-Carmen returned to her room, anxious to check for a message from Jackson.

  The door was open, with the housekeeping trolley outside the room. Marie-Carmen heard a brief rustle of activity as she wandered in to find the maid changing the pillow cases.

  Both women exchanged a polite smile. Marie-Carmen took her laptop computer out to the balcony, leaving open the French window. In the far distance, she could already see the afternoon storm clouds approaching from behind the mountains.

  There was a new message from Jackson. Marie-Carmen read through it quickly, disturbed by the contents. The news that he had been ‘caught’ struck her immediately as peculiar. Why didn’t Jackson give any details about who was holding him, or the consequences of his being discovered?

  So, Jackson wanted her to decode the full amino acid sequence using the key to the code she had found on www.archaeologyconspiracies.com

  Decoding ancient writing had always enthralled her, even more in a new language. However, Marie-Carmen’s initial assessment of the article’s likely truth hadn’t changed. With all the lies and hoaxes out there on the Web, how could she possibly take it seriously?

  Yet for some reason, Jackson seemed to have quite radically changed his views.

  Marie-Carmen had to admit that were the translated sequence to make any sense, they might be onto something.

  After translating the first six logograms, she knew that Jackson was right. It made sense. Breathless with excitement and the exhilaration of discovery, she continued until the entire message was translated. She then summarized what Daniel had told her about the fall of Eridu, pasting in some quotes from the Lament for Eridu from the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

  Marie-Carmen was about to conclude the email with a message of affectionate sympathy for his situation, when from the bed she heard a sound which made her stomach lurch. Almost out of charge, her cell phone battery was bleeping.

  Someone had s
witched her phone on.

  Marie-Carmen dashed back into her room. The cell phone was partly obscured by a pillow. It had been switched on for at least thirty minutes.

  She checked the last number dialed. The chamber maid must have made a long distance call before being startled by Marie-Carmen’s return. Marie-Carmen’s fury was superseded only by the creeping panic, the certainty that thirty minutes was enough time for her cell phone to be tracked, to reveal her location.

  Marie-Carmen’s hand shook as she tapped out the code for reception on the room telephone.

  “I’d like the express check-out service,” she said. “I’ll be down in twenty minutes.”

  She forced herself to remain calm, to move methodically through the mechanics of escape. She went swiftly to the closet, grabbed her suitcase and began to pack. The final item into her case was the laptop. The email to Jackson remained incomplete, so she sat on the bed to finish it.

  As for me, well I think it’s time to move on again. Perhaps it’s being so lonely here; perhaps the logogram decoding sessions have made me paranoid. But even here, I’m seeing shadows, I sense pursuit. So I’m leaving, going someplace where I’ll be really alone. Why pretend to be something I’m not?

  Write to me when you are safe again. Until then, let’s practice a little self-preservation.

  Marie-Carmen

  Don’t Go For Any Heroics

  Connor returned to the interview room with Jackson’s uniform and boots, which he tossed at his brother with a sudden burst of venom. Then he sat down to read the statement that he’d demanded. Jackson was dressed and ready by the time Connor looked up.

  “Is this for real? You really expect me to take this seriously?”

  Jackson remained expressionless.

  “Global warming? You think DiCanio’s doing this because of global warming?”

  Connor’s indignant disbelief was rapidly becoming something else, something more dangerous. Jackson could see the temper slowly emerge, a steady fuse smoking, exactly as when they’d been boys.