“I learnt with BSAC,” he grumbled before waddling like a penguin to the side of the boat. He balanced there while pulling on his fins and glanced at Sid. She similarly looked like a cyborg abducted from a sci-fi movie as O’Rourke laced equipment around her. A nauseating swell of emotions rushed through him but he forced himself to switch them off as best he could. Now wasn’t the time.
Raine, meanwhile, helped Nadia. He noticed an intimacy to their interactions that hadn’t been there days earlier, a closeness that had newly developed. Her eyes watched his every move with a dozy gleam that seemed totally out of place on her normally stoic face. The twitch of a smile was likewise a newly added feature which had been there permanently whenever Raine was around.
So, he’d finally melted the Ice Queen, King thought with a grin, pleased for his friends despite his own very recent estrangement.
“Okay,” Gibbs’ voice broke abruptly into his thoughts. He and the other military personnel waddled to the side of the boat and joined their respective buddies. Sid offered King a weak, distant, nervous smile and then perched beside Lake. Raine slapped Nadia’s rump, earning him an angry glare and an irritated glance from Gibbs as he finished his statement. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Then, in twos, they rolled backwards off the side of the boat, splashed into the water and descended into the unknown depths below.
51:
The Monument
Off the Coast of Yonaguni Island,
Japan
Raine and King descended through the gloom of the East China Sea, finning hard to battle the powerful current which dragged at their bodies, fighting to keep themselves oriented towards the face of the Yonaguni Monument.
At sixty five feet, the sunlight was tepid, the water inky, but there was no mistaking the looming presence of the ‘structure’ before them.
The object of scholarly debate for thirty years now had finally been consigned to the realms of unorthodox pseudo-history. Historians generally agreed that no civilisation had existed nine thousand years ago to have built the structure. Geologists generally agreed that, although irregular in its startling regularity, it was not only possible, but plausible to state that it was a product of nature.
Weeks ago, King might have agreed with that assessment. But not anymore. Any doubts he had harboured about the existence of the Progenitors had been cast aside the moment he had laid eyes on the Xibalban mask, clutched in the arms of the human remains of Edward Pryce.
Staring through the full face mask, cocooned within the eerie silence of the rebreather, there was no denying the phenomenally straight edges, the right angles, the steps, triangles and squares of the monument. Flattened, smoothed and rounded by nine millennia of battling the tremendous currents that had exhausted King in minutes, the vaguely pyramid-shaped structure, not too dissimilar to Djoser’s in Egypt, was still perceptible. Troughs, ravines, gulleys and tunnels wound their way in a network around the structure, dwarfing the tiny teams of divers who searched its surfaces.
Other ‘structures’ lay nearby; platforms of rock, one of which had been dubbed the ‘turtle’ due to its shape; two megalithic pillars of rock, and even a ‘face’. Weathered and disfigured, the towering visage of an elongated head, its soulless eyes staring forlornly into the depths, nevertheless stirred memories of the Easter Island statues.
Could they somehow be linked together, just as his father had once suggested? Was he looking at the citadel of some great civilisation, or merely an outpost? Had the crafters of Easter Island’s famous Moa been inspired by the face beneath the waves, a memory passed from generation to generation, just as they had been inspired by the mask that fell from heaven?
Another thought occurred to him. He remembered reading on the internet on the team’s journey here about theories linking the architecture to other monumental constructions such as Sacsayhuamán in Peru, Tiahuanaco in Bolivia, Copán in Honduras and Chichén Itza in Mexico. They in turn stemmed, he now believed, from Xibalba in Venezuela.
The comparisons continued, flitting through his mind in quick succession. He saw in the alignment of the Yonaguni Monument, its outlying temple-like formations and monumental ‘head’ another similarity, this one with Egypt’s Giza Plateau: a pyramid, its surrounding temples and enclosure walls, as well as its own monumental sculpture, the Great Sphinx.
Even as he knew his quest for the Moon Mask was nearing its end, he felt that a greater adventure was unravelling. It was as though echoes of this place reverberated through the architecture of the ancient world, as though all those cultures, separated by oceans, deserts and mountain ranges, had been touched by the same hand.
The hand of the Progenitors?
Am I floating above the origins of civilisation? he wondered. Then Sid’s words stabbed back at him, raw and hurtful, because they were true: ‘And then what? We live happily ever after . . . until your next great obsession comes along. What will it be next time? Atlantis? El Dorado?’
So soon after losing the woman he loved, his mind was already reaching out for new adventures, new discoveries beyond the completion of this one. Was she right? Was he really addicted to the same life, and death, as his father?
“Has anyone found an opening yet?” Gibbs’ voice suddenly blared loudly through his radio. In the tomb-like silence, the sound was like thunder.
All the teams checked in negative, earning a disgruntled complaint from the team leader.
“As I said,” Tank’s voice came over his ear piece, “people have been diving this site for years. If any opening had ever been found, it would have shaken the scientific world. Even the most outlandish claims say that it is a solid monument, not an accessible temple.”
“There’s a way in,” King replied irritably.
“Dosimeters detect no indication of tachyon radiation,” Nadia’s voice replied.
“That doesn’t mean the mask’s not here. In Cornwall it was contained inside Imhotep’s lead-lined coffin.”
“If that was the case here,” the Russian’s voice replied, “I should be able to pick up a large metallic object with a magnetometer. Hold on.”
Thirty foot below the surface, Nadia finned hard against the current, struggling to keep herself steady. As well as all her diving gear, she also had an array of scientific equipment, specially designed for underwater work, attached to her vest. She plucked a Fluxgate magnetometer from it and wrapped the strap around her wrist so she didn’t lose it. She flicked it on and tried to study the screen through the magnifying effect of the gloomy water. “That’s incredible,” she breathed, forgetting herself for a moment. The current pulled her sharply and she forced herself to kick against it.
“What?” King’s voice was urgent, excited.
“I’m detecting a very strong magnetic signature.”
“The mask?”
“Unlikely,” she replied. “The magnetic reading is off the scale.”
“What are you getting at?” Gibbs snapped. Already down for over twenty minutes, with no indication of an entrance, constantly battling the powerful current was starting to get to every member of the team.
“I am getting at the fact that whatever metallic object I am detecting is very large,” she replied curtly. “In fact it is . . .” her voice trailed off as a conclusion dawned on her. She packed away her magnetometer and spoke through her radio to her buddy. “Garcia, I need the metal detector.”
“Stand by,” Sid heard Nadia’s voice instruct all the teams.
Close to the surface the current wasn’t as strong, however she could feel the pull of the waves fifteen feet above as she hovered alongside Kristina Lake directly above the flat top of the sunken structure.
She and Lake had been the only team to think they had found an opening. On the surface of the monument was what she could only describe as three ‘wells’ descending six feet into the rock. Two of the wells were circular but the third, oddly, was vaguely hexagonal, its six sides almost di
scernable. King had told the team about the two circular depressions but had missed the hexagonal, and therefore less natural, shape in his briefing. Nevertheless, after a brief surge of excitement, it had proven to be, quite literally, a dead end.
From her vantage point, she looked down on the monument in its entirety and could make out the tiny figures of the other teams. She knew King was down near the base and, logically, the most plausible place to find an opening, but was unable to make out which figure he was. Just the thought of him sent her emotions into a spin so she forced herself to blot him out of her consciousness for the moment. There would be time to attend to the demands of a broken heart later.
“Sid,” Lake’s voice suddenly cut into her thoughts. She heard an echo of concern there. “Drop down now.”
Sid felt a surge of panic and exhaled the air from her lungs. It took a moment but she finally felt herself dive, assisted by a suddenly outthrust hand from Lake who pulled her to the roof of the structure.
Instantly, the terrifyingly recognisable silhouette of a hammerhead shark sped past, only three feet away. It slowed for an instant and turned her way and Sid felt the wave of panic erupt into terror as one of the creature’s eyes bored into her. Then, with a ripple of muscle, it pushed off and vanished into the gloom.
Sid sucked in the air through her rebreather. She heard King’s voice suddenly erupt in her ear but couldn’t discern the words. Her own heartbeat hammered and echoed through the water. She began to thrash but Lake grasped her arms and held her firmly.
“Sid, it’s okay. It’s okay, don’t panic,” she told her. “Take deep breaths. Calm down.” Slowly, Sid regained her self-control. She forced herself to breathe in and out slowly but she didn’t let go of Lake’s hand. Through their face-plates she could see the other woman’s concern.
“He was just coming to investigate,” Tank’s voice came from somewhere below, obviously having seen the excitement. “Sometimes they get a bit close for comfort, but they’re just being curious.”
“You okay?” King asked, the worry in his voice evident.
“I’m fine,” she forced herself to reply. “Just don’t expect me to watch Jaws with you anytime soon.” Her mental slip stirred up unwanted thoughts again. They wouldn’t be watching any movies together again, curled up on the sofa in front of a fire . . .
“Steven Spielberg’s got a lot to answer for,” Tank half-joked.
“My god,” Nadia’s voice suddenly interrupted, snapping everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand. “This whole structure is a meteorite.”
“What?” Raine’s voice sounded incredulous through Nadia’s underwater radio.
“This entire structure has been fashioned out of a meteorite,” she elaborated. “More specifically, I believe it could be the same meteorite as the fake mask which we found.”
“I thought you said it was constructed out of the sandstone and mudstone of the bedrock, King?” Gibbs reminded them all over the open communication channel.
“That’s right,” King said defensively. “Geologists have taken samples-”
“I presume the only samples that have been studied are of the surface levels?” Nadia asked. “No one has drilled into the ‘structure’ to take samples from its core? Just like no one, I presume, has bothered to run a magnetometer or a metal detector over it?”
She knew there was a scathing tone in her voice but she did not care. From what King had told them about the structure, most of the scientific community had, at best, given the site only a cursory glance, leaving the ‘science’ to pseudo-scientists, self-taught amateurs with little funding but a lot of imagination.
“I guess not,” King replied sheepishly, as though the oversight was his responsibility.
“There is a large metallic core at the centre of this structure,” she explained. She had studied her findings as thoroughly as possible given the difficult conditions, and had fine-tuned the metal detector’s discriminator and pulse inductor to the phase response of the meteoric metal from which the fake Moon Mask had been fashioned. “We are looking at the same metal . . . possibly the same meteorite.”
“What about tachyons?” Gibbs asked urgently and Nadia wasn’t sure whether his question was born out of concern for their welfare or excitement of finding a ‘mother lode’ of tachyon-emitting metal which would dwarf the Moon Mask’s discovery.
“I hate to disappoint you, but no, I detect no tachyon emissions from the structure itself. Hence why I claim it to be of the same, or similar meteorite as the fake mask, not the ‘real’ one.”
“But what you’re saying is impossible,” Raine said. “The largest meteorite ever discovered was in Namibia in the 1920s. It was about nine feet square by three deep and weighed something like sixty tons.”
Almost collectively, everyone’s voice came over the com-link at once. “How do you know that?”
Raine, for his part, ignored their surprise. Nadia had realised that despite his shoot-first-ask-questions-later gung-ho attitude to life, her new lover was anything but the dumb ex-soldier he liked to portray.
“What did you say this thing was, Benny? Almost five hundred feet long, one hundred and fifty wide and ninety deep?”
“A bit less,” King replied. “But, yeah, more or less.”
“There’s no way a meteorite that size would survive entry through the atmosphere without breaking up.”
“I believe it did break up,” Nadia replied. “Hence the fake mask. I dare say there are other pieces scattered across the earth. With a shallow enough trajectory, it is plausible for it to have entered the earth’s atmosphere somewhere above South America, breaking up and dropping chunks into the rainforest, before racing westwards across the Pacific and slamming into the bedrock here.”
“Then, the ancient people of this region, when it was still free of water, fashioned it into what we see before us,” King suggested.
“Is it possible they enclosed the meteorite inside local stone?” Sid asked. “Fashioning these steps and terraces around it. There are similar building styles in Egypt, in the Valley Temple at Giza where some scientists think later builders built over more archaic and more monumental original constructions. Even the pyramids themselves originally had a façade of limestone covering them.”
“It would explain why geologists say the entire structure was fashioned from local rock,” Nadia agreed.
“So what are you saying?” Gibbs demanded. “That there is no temple here? No Moon Mask?”
“No,” King replied testily. “If there is a meteorite in there then the ancients wouldn’t have just ‘walled’ it up. There would be space between the meteoric core and the constructed monument- a temple. If there was a temple, then there must be a door.”
“Then where the hell is it, Doctor?” Gibbs snapped. “In case you hadn’t noticed we’re fighting a pig-ugly current in shark infested waters in China’s backyard. Now, all you nerds can sit around talking about temples and meteors and shit all you like once this is over, but for now all I care about is finding the goddamn door!”
Anger flared through King. “You think I don’t know that, you-”
“Hey, Benny,” Raine suddenly cut in, grasping his forearm through the water. “Chill out, yeah? Gibbs, shut the hell up.” Expertly, he kept hold of King’s arm, achieving perfectly neutral buoyancy, and reached out with his gloved hand to grasp the side of the monument. “Relax. Stop kicking, I’ve got you.” King continued to fin against the current. “Stop kicking,” he reiterated in a no-nonsense voice. “Good, now breathe deeply. Close your eyes, relax your mind-”
“Who are you? Derren Brown?”
“I’m gonna feed you to the goddamn sharks if you don’t shut up,” he snapped. “Now, just close your eyes, relax, and try to remember what you saw in your . . . vision.”
King floated there, weightless, putting all his faith in the other man not to let any harm come to him. He took several deep breaths and felt the ca
lming effect of the oxygen flowing through his system. His eyes drifted shut and his mind wandered-
A face in the gloom!
He tried to reach out and grasp the face but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
A hand reaching out to him!
He jerked back in fright.
“What do you see?” Raine’s voice asked but he seemed to be coming from far away.
“I’m . . . I’m in a temple,” he replied, his soft voice being transmitted to the entire team. “There are . . . pillars . . . dozens, hundreds of pillars. An entire forest of them. They’re . . . glowing.”
“Glowing?” a woman’s voice entered his thoughts, Sid’s or Nadia’s, he couldn’t tell.
“There are . . . pictures . . . images on them . . . glowing red.”
“Is there a doorway,” Raine asked quietly. “A tunnel . . . a passage?”
He tried to look around the columned hall but the red glow grew more intense, burning his eyes. Is this how Kha’um found Imhotep’s tomb? he wondered. “No,” he replied. “I can’t see a door.”
“Pointless fucking temple, with no door,” another voice, Gibbs, invaded his head and produced a flash of anger.
Sunlight pierced the temple . . !
“What?” Raine asked, feeling him tense. “What do you see?”
. . . blazing down through holes in the ceiling!
The shafts of light grew narrower, refining to a single laser-like beam until that too was gone.
Darkness.
Such utter darkness.
Then noise.
The roaring of a beast that could never be stopped.
It echoed all around, it pounded against the temple walls, it began to break through.
Moon Mask Page 54