Mallory didn’t reply. He reached up for a handhold. With that, Irvine cut the rope.
Mallory desperately clung to the side of the mountain. He didn’t speak again even though his mouth opened up, farther and farther. Irvine could hear bones cracking and ligaments tearing. Something gray was now visible in Mallory’s mouth, coming forth. Irvine didn’t wait to see more. He threw his ice ax at the climber and it hit him in the head. Mallory lost his grip, scrambled for it, then arched backward from the step, free-falling, until he slammed into the base and then began tumbling, picking up speed. Irvine watched as the body smashed into rocks, still rolling, then fell off the first step they had climbed earlier that morning and was gone down the mountain.
Beyond that Irvine knew there was a thousand feet of nearly vertical rock before his partner would crash into rock, ice, and snow. The curious thing was that Mallory had not screamed or made a noise as he slid, as if he accepted and almost welcomed his fate. The memory of whatever had been coming up into Mallory’s mouth caused Irvine to shudder, even more than the freezing cold seeping in through his clothing.
Irvine checked the sun, which was well past its apex. He knew if he continued upward his own death was inevitable. He also knew that he could not make it down alone. He looked up at the summit, then across at the top of the Kanshung Face. The summit? Or the other way? Irvine turned toward the Kanshung Face. It was late in the day and he knew, at best, he would reach the location just before dark, if not after the sun was gone. And that would seal his fate as effectively as a firing squad. And what would be the point of summiting when he was going to die there anyway? No one would know of his feat.
He rubbed his goggles, trying to scrape away the ice that constantly formed on them. He could barely see twenty feet. As had been true for the past week, the ground in front went upward. Ever upward. He was on the roof of the world — higher than any other human being on the planet.
He looked up once more, trying to clear his goggles. The sky was clear and the wind wasn’t howling, about as good as weather got on Everest. The ice on the lens was too hard and thick and Irvine gave up on his attempts to clear the goggles and pushed them down so they dangled around his neck. He blinked in the bright sunlight. The sun burned into his eyes, but Irvine ignored the pain as he searched the rock wall for the climbing route to the left.
He was on the north face of Everest. On Mallory’s first trip years earlier he had proclaimed the north face impossible to climb. The only possible way up Everest, Mallory had so boldly pronounced, would be via the less steep southern approach. Those words had been one of the indicators of trouble when Mallory announced this expedition and indicated he would use a north side route. High peaks were visible, all below him, and beyond them the brown plateau of Tibet. He could even make out the curvature of the Earth in the far distance.
The terrain grew steeper as he moved away from the ridge that he would have followed had his primary goal been summiting. He paused as the crampons on his left foot hit something solid. Rock was his first thought. He looked down. There was something brown. He reached down with one mittened hand and wiped away snow. A frozen face looked back at him, the skin etched where the steel had dug in.
As far as Irvine could tell, the man was dressed in leather. How long he had lain there, Irvine didn’t know for sure but he could make a guess. This was one of the party that had put Excalibur here millennia ago. Rather than discouraging him, the presence of the body gave Irvine a boost of energy. If men like this, with ancient equipment, had conquered the mountain so long ago, surely he could go farther. One of the man’s hands was clutched to his chest and on a finger Irvine could make out a large ring, with an eye carved onto the surface.
Irvine reached the edge of the ridge. Beyond was the top of the Kanshung Face. Irvine blinked, trying to clear his eyes. There was a thin ledge, less than six inches wide, leading out onto the top of the rock wall. It went straight for about fifty meters, then disappeared around a rock-and-ice cornice. Below was a vertical drop as far as he could see. The wind was sending plumes of snow off the summit, whipping the white flakes around.
Irvine stepped onto the ledge, arms spread wide, the weight of his pack like a hand trying to pull him off the mountain. He shuffled his feet, slowly making his way along the edge. It took an hour to reach the spur, all the while the wind and the pack striving to separate him from the rock face.
The cornice was the worst. Reaching around, Irvine could tell it was two feet wide. The ledge disappeared completely and the rock was smooth. He couldn’t tell if the ledge continued on the other side. He had to trust that it did. Below was air.
Irvine took several deep breaths, only to realize there was very little oxygen flowing into his mask. He tried to remember when he had switched over to the last bottle, but his mind couldn’t compute the time.
He swung his left leg around the cornice, feeling the momentum take his body. He was committed as he followed through with his left hand. His left boot scrabbled for a hold, but his foot was so frozen he couldn’t tell if it had found purchase or not as he lifted his right foot and let go with his right hand, his body sliding around the cornice. He fell, was convinced he had failed and would continue falling, when a shock slammed up his left leg as the boot landed on a ledge. His hands scrabbled to keep his body from tipping over.
He hugged the side of the mountain so tightly, the right side of his face froze to the rock. But he didn’t even feel it. His eyes were glued to what was just ahead. The ledge widened to six feet deep, almost a cave. Set in the rear of this indent in the side of Mount Everest, frozen into a sheet of ice almost a foot thick, was Excalibur, sheathed in an ornately carved scabbard.
Irvine moved closer, ripping skin from his face as he pulled from the rock, now unaware of the dangers of falling, his mind and body drawn toward the sword. He stumbled and almost fell, before he noticed that on either side of the sword was a body, frozen to the mountain. Irvine looked down. The one on the right was dressed in brown leather and furs, the same as the previous one he had found.
The one on the left also had furs, but underneath was a black robe fringed with silver. The man’s face was aged, his hair and thick beard white. In his frozen hand was a long wooden staff.
The two bodies flanked the sword, dead eyes open, staring out over the world. Each man had a ring similar to the previous body’s. Strangely, each man’s face was twisted with a frozen smile that had endured for millennia.
Irvine turned his attention back to Excalibur. He pulled his mittens off and pressed against the ice. Encased in the ice, the sword’s handle glittered in the waning daylight. The metal was shiny, unmarred by the elements. He understood now why legends had grown up around it. He felt an urgent desire to touch it, but the ice denied him access even to the scabbard.
Irvine suddenly realized he had no feeling in his hands. He tried pulling them back, but they were stuck to the ice. With all his will he pulled his arms back. He blinked with almost bemusement as three fingers on his right hand and two on his left simply cracked off and remained frozen to the ice. He felt no pain, just a distant dullness from his elbows down.
With great effort he slid to a sitting position between the two bodies. Irvine slumped back against the ice. The rays of the sun were horizontal and soon it would be gone. The wind, strangely enough, had died down. It was eerily quiet; the only sound he could hear was his own gasping for oxygen in the thin air.
He sat back, totally exhausted. Still he summoned the strength to turn his body ever so slightly so that he was looking at the mountain, at Excalibur. A slight smile touched his blood-spattered lips. And that was how he died.
CHAPTER 8: THE PRESENT
Area 51
Turcotte ignored Yakov, Che Lu, and Mualama. He walked into the room where Duncan was seated in a chair, a blanket wrapped around her slight frame. His fatigues were dusted with sand from his sojourn into the desert and where sweat had soaked through the camouflage material, the san
d was crusted in place. “You’re back,” Duncan said, a hesitant half smile on her face. She started to get up. “Mike, I’m telling you the—”
“Shh—” Turcotte said as he lightly put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back into the chair.
But that didn’t stop Duncan. “I’m telling you the truth as far as I know it.” “I know. I think I’ve got an idea what was done to you. When we infiltrated Majestic-12’s base at Dulce,” Turcotte said, “we found that they were conducting experiments on abductees, including Kelly Reynolds’s friend Johnny Simmons. Mind experiments using Airlia technology.”
“Dulce was destroyed,” Duncan said.
“Yes, but they got the basic technology from the Airlia. They were working on EDOM — electronic dissolution of memory. Majestic was using it on abductees to wipe out their real memories of being captured by Nightscape, and then implanting false memories of disinformation.”
Duncan frowned. “Are you saying my memories are false? That everything I know is a lie? Electronic signals implanted in my brain?”
Turcotte tapped the CIA folder. “We know your memories are a lie, Lisa.” A nerve twitched on the side of her face. “I don’t have a son?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Duncan was shaking her head. “It can’t be. It just can’t be. I remember him. I remember all of it. Damn it, Mike, I remember giving birth to him. The pain. I watched him grow up. Maybe some of my memories are false, but others true? All of it can’t be a lie.”
Turcotte remembered how Johnny Simmons, Kelly Reynolds’s friend who had gotten her involved in the whole Area 51 mess, had killed himself after they’d rescued him from an EDOM pod at Dulce. To have one’s past taken away and replaced with a set of lies was undoubtedly devastating. It took away a person’s sense of self. Duncan had just learned that her family was not only dead, they had never existed.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she finally said. “Why would Majestic have done this to me? I ended up putting in motion the forces that destroyed them.”
Turcotte shook his head. “I’m saying the technology and techniques used on you are similar to the EDOM Majestic used. I’m not saying Majestic was behind it.” “Who, then?”
“That’s a very good question,” Turcotte said. “If we can figure that out, maybe we can figure out who you really are.”
Turcotte went to the door and motioned for Quinn to come in. “How far has Dulce been excavated?” he asked the major.
Quinn checked his PDA, accessing the CUBE mainframe. “They’re down to the bottom level.”
“So they’ve uncovered the EDOM pods and research area?”
Quinn nodded. “And the guardian that corrupted Majestic. It’s being held under heavy guard but it doesn’t seem to be active. Just like the one in the Mission under Mount Sinai seems to be off-line.”
“Where are those guardians now?” Turcotte asked. “I don’t know. UNAOC has taken over all Airlia artifacts. Most likely they are still where they were found.” “Do you think it would be possible to reverse EDOM?” Turcotte asked him. He saw Duncan lift her head, listening intently now.
Quinn shrugged. “I have no idea. That’s not my field of expertise.”
“Find someone whose it is,” Turcotte ordered. He nodded toward the door. “Tell the others to come in.”
Che Lu, Mualama, and Yakov entered the conference room and sat around the table. Turcotte quickly updated them on what he thought had been done to Duncan.
“But we don’t know who did this to her,” Yakov said when Turcotte was done. “It could have been Artad’s side; it could have been Aspasia’s Shadow’s.”
“Well, we can assume it wasn’t Majestic,” Turcotte said. “Which means someone else has or had access to the same technology.”
“Most likely garnered from Airlia artifacts,” Yakov said. Che Lu was rubbing her chin in thought. She looked at Duncan. “This means you cannot trust any memory prior to ordering Turcotte to infiltrate Area 51.”
“I can’t trust my memory and I don’t know what has happened to me.” Duncan held her hands up in defeat. “What now?”
“We need the Master Guardian,” Yakov said. “And Excalibur. And we do not have much time.”
“How long until Aspasia’s Shadow’s fleet is in range of Pearl?” Turcotte asked Quinn.
“A couple of days.”
“Should she be listening to this?” Yakov asked, nodding toward Duncan. “You want to shoot her again?” Turcotte snapped.
“We don’t know who she is,” Yakov pointed out. “She doesn’t know who she is. And more importantly, we don’t know who did this to her or why.”
Turcotte rubbed his forehead, trying to relieve a pounding headache. “Let’s keep it simple — we’ve got to do two things. Recover Excalibur and find the Master Guardian, which, according to Kelly, is in the second mothership. Does anyone disagree with that?”
There were no objections.
“I think we all understand the gravity of the situation,” he continued. “It’s not just the fleet that is approaching Hawaii or Artad’s ultimatum to the Chinese government. I want you to think about what will happen if Aspasia’s Shadow combines the Grail with the nanovirus he is using to control all those people. He will have an army of unkillable slaves that he can increase exponentially with every battle he wins. On top of that, imagine the horror of being controlled by the nanovirus while being immortal — it would be an eternal hell.”
Turcotte placed his hands flat on the table and looked each of the people in the room in the eye, uncertain whether he could trust a single one of them and forced to accept, for the moment, that he had no choice. “So. First. Where is the second mothership that holds the Master Guardian?”
Quinn pulled another folder from his briefcase. “The Germans were also searching for a mothership. They zeroed in on the legend of Noah’s Ark.”
“And?” Turcotte prompted.
In response, Quinn threw a black-and-white photograph of a mountain on the table. “They finally focused their search on Mount Ararat. It’s the legendary location for where the biblical ark ended up. And we’ve learned there’s a lot of truth to legends, haven’t we?”
Turcotte picked up the photo. “How come no one’s found it? Ararat’s not exactly the most remote place in the world.”
“It is somewhat remote,” Quinn said, “but more importantly, Ararat has always been in the center of political and ethnic turmoil. It’s located awkwardly in a part of Turkey that juts between Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. And the locals in the area are mostly Kurds, who have been fighting the Turks for centuries.” “Still—” Turcotte began, but Quinn interrupted him.
“The mothership we found here was hidden in a cavern,” Quinn reminded them. “While there have been a few expeditions that have searched for Noah’s Ark on Ararat, they all assumed it would have grounded on the surface after the Great Flood. At worst, they figured it might be covered by several feet of soil or caught in a glacier, not hidden in a cavern deep inside the mountain itself, like the mothership here was hidden.”
“All right.” Turcotte put the photo down. “Let’s say the mothership and the Master Guardian are hidden under Ararat somewhere. What about the key — Excalibur? What was this stuff about Saga-something or another?”
“Sagamartha,” Quinn said. He pulled out another photo. Again of a mountain and tossed it on the table. “That’s what the Nepalese call Mount Everest.”
Turcotte picked up the picture, recognizing the world’s highest mountain. “Great,” he muttered.
“A bouncer ought to be able to go anywhere on the mountain safely,” Quinn noted. “Why do I have a feeling it won’t be that easy?” Turcotte said. “Yakov. The ark is yours.”
“By myself?”
“Afraid of a challenge?” Turcotte didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll see if I can get you some help. One thing to keep in mind — I don’t think Artad has forgotten where he parked the damn thing.”
; “Understood,” Yakov said.
“And Excalibur?” Mualama asked.
“I’m going after it,” Turcotte said. “I will help you,” Mualama said.
Turcotte’s instinct was to decline the offer, but he didn’t want to leave Mualama alone. “All right. And check Burton’s manuscript to see if that sheds some light on any of this. It would be nice to have an idea where exactly on Everest it is.” He turned back to Quinn. “How soon can you have a bouncer ready for me?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“OK.” Turcotte looked around at the small group. “The plan is Yakov gets to the ark and the Master Guardian. I get to Excalibur and free it so that Yakov can use the Master Guardian to shut down Artad’s and Aspasia’s Shadow’s guardians.” He focused on the Russian. “You should be able to drop the shields and stop the nano-virus.”
Yakov laughed. “That is all you want me to do?”
Turcotte slapped the Russian on the shoulder. “Hey, I only have to climb Everest. Want to swap?”
Yakov pretended to consider the proposal seriously for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I am much heavier than you. It is best you do the climbing.”
“Always the practical one,” Turcotte said.
* * *
Down the hall, Larry Kincaid was doing something he had spent a career at NASA and JPL doing: looking at imagery of an object in space. In this case, the object was Mars as viewed through the Hubble Space Telescope.
The deeply rutted track in the red surface of Mars going from Cydonia to Mons Olympus was obvious. He had taken the time to count the number of mech-robots and come up with over three thousand, but the amount seemed to be growing hourly — more were leaving Cydonia than returning.
He could see the massive cut in the Mons Olympus escarpment. And now he saw the destination as the first of the carriers began dumping their black cargo high up the slope before turning to head back. The site was less than a mile from the volcano’s crest.
Other mech-robots were digging into the side of the volcano, excavating.
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