Catacombs

by John Farris

  Everyone else was trying to talk at once. Jumbe turned gravely to his guests, signaling for silence.

  "Gentlemen! I deeply regret to tell you that the government of Kenya, in support of the despot Manchere of Zambia, has declared war on our nation. Their fighter planes have crossed the border to the north and inflicted damage on the airport at Sanya Juu. Chanvai is a likely and immediate target. In order to insure your protection in this crisis, I must ask you to accompany my elite guard to a retreat that has been well fortified for just such an emergency. Your wives are already on the way." A howl of protest. "There is no time to lose, and your co-operation is very much appreciated."

  The soldiers didn't wait for volunteers. They seemed well rehearsed. They came in quickly and cleared the room. They were patient, but firm.

  As Morgan rose he felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked around at Dr. Kumenyere.

  "Please be seated, Mr. Secretary," Kumenyere said softly, pushing him back into the chair. He was strong enough to make it seem easy. Morgan, thinking of Len, swallowed the anger that had risen in his throat and tried to relax.

  Nikolaiev was in a fulminating rage as he confronted the commander of the guard. He kept throwing his interpreter aside. His face was the color of beet soup. He shrieked oaths in Russian as the doors of the conference room were closed again.

  Jumbe said harshly to Boris, "Tell him to take his seat, or General Timbaroo will shoot out his other eye.

  Timbaroo laughed and, from a distance of seven feet, pointed the nine-millimeter Ingram machine gun, equipped with a Sionics noise suppressor, with one steady hand at Nikolaiev's face.

  Boris didn't have to say another word. Nikolaiev stopped screaming. He looked incredulous. He allowed himself to be gentled back into his chair by Boris. He sat there, chest heaving, sweat pouring down his face. He spoke, quietly and at length, to his interpreter, not taking his eyes off Jumbe.

  Boris turned to Jumbe. "Marshal Nikolaiev informs you that if we are all not immediately released and afforded safe conduct to the airport, there will be severe reprisals by the Supreme Soviet."

  Jumbe wearily waved his objections aside.

  "Tell him that within the hour you will all be safely on your way home.–And you, Morgan, with your son. There is, of course, no war declared or undeclared with Kenya, and no danger to anyone here. I've placed our eminent scientists in protective custody only as a precaution, to keep the great secret of the Catacombs from leaking out until you, representatives of the world's superpowers, have had a chance to act. Now then. Would either of you care for a glass of our excellent Dodoma wine to moisten your palates and settle your nerves?"

  Morgan felt the dangerous pulse in his temple slowing down. He opened the hand he had clenched around the bloodstone, and set the stone on the table. He gave it a little spin. It skittered off the onyx and hit the concrete floor. He was more than a little surprised, and apprehensive, when it didn't shatter.

  Jumbe understood. He smiled.

  "None of this is fancy, Morgan. You are not dreaming. The bloodstone is real, just as Damon Paul said it was. Virtually indestructible. The Lords of the Storm meant to leave records that would endure, in a timeless place. The Catacombs exist. FIREKILL can be a reality too, if you wish it to be."

  "You seem to have caught your distinguished guests by surprise, Jumbe. And you aren't a physicist. If FIREKILL exists, who told you about it?"

  "Dr. Henry Landreth, who was my official liaison with the Chapman/Weller expedition. As you must know, Dr. Landreth was discredited in his profession for certain indiscretions considered treasonous by the British. But his brilliance was in no way diminished by his poor judgment. On another set of bloodstones, secure in the Catacombs at this moment, is the complete formula for FIREKILL, which Dr. Landreth has translated."

  Morgan accepted a glass of wine from Kumenyere. Jumbe faltered and grasped the edge of the table. The doctor hurried to his side, but Jumbe spoke to him harshly in Swahili, turning him away.

  He looked again at Morgan, then at Nikolaiev. His eyes were so far back in his head it seemed he might faint. But his voice was strong.

  "Must I elaborate on the importance of FIREKILL? It can guarantee invulnerability from nuclear attack. The nation that has this guarantee will surely be preeminent in world affairs for a few years–until the desperate loser devises new and more terrible weapons to circumvent even FIREKILL.

  "I offer one of you an opportunity. I care nothing about the ultimate ambitions of superpowers. Africa will endure, as it always has. For the black man. It makes little difference to me which of your nations is the first to build FIREKILL. According to Dr. Landreth, both American and Russian scientists have been at work on a comprehensive nuclear defense. Charged-particle or hydrogen-atom beams are costly and impractical. Other ABM systems have failed. FIREKILL will not fail."

  "What price you asking?" the Russian said with a skeptical smile.

  "I am not interested in selling the secrets of FIREKILL to the highest bidder. In exchange for the formula bloodstones I want mobile nuclear weapons and the men to employ them. Either the Russian Scoundrel or the American Whippersnapper. Ground-launched cruise missiles with terrain-contour-matching guidance systems will also be acceptable, despite their lesser range. You have thirty days from this hour to begin delivery. The FIREKILL bloodstones will be released a few at a time as the weapons systems arrive by air. The key stones, already selected by Dr. Landreth, will be paid when the systems are fully operational. Needless to say, the weapons you give me could not successfully be turned against your own countries, even if I had a motive for doing so."

  "Instead you intend to destroy the white government of South Africa," Morgan said.

  "Yes, Morgan."

  "The result will be a catastrophic loss of human life. Black lives, Jumbe. Have you thought of that?"

  "The first shot will be directed into a remote area of the Transvaal–Mount Blouberg would do. The Afrikaner government will have the opportunity to empty Durban before the second shot destroys it. The government of South Africa will then surrender to a coalition government composed of political prisoners from Robben Island and other black leaders now in exile."

  "I think you underestimate them."

  "You underestimate the panic which the threat of nuclear devastation will cause. Afrikaners will clamor for surrender. But this is not a concern of either of your countries, whose official policies regarding those racists are very well known."

  Nikolaiev spoke to his interpreter, who replied: "So are our policies regarding the dissemination of nuclear weapons."

  "What do you have to say, Morgan?" Jumbe asked.

  Morgan had another sip of wine. The Sikorsky helicopter was taking off almost directly overhead, and he waited for the noise to fade.

  "I think," he said regretfully, "that FIREKILL is a figment of your imagination. And all of this is a hoax–on an unprecedented scale; obviously you've taken infinite pains and invested a great deal of money. But a hoax nonetheless."

  Jumbe smiled and serenely picked up a double handful of the brilliant bloodstones. His dark face swarmed in their fabulous light; his eyes turned red as hellfire.

  "Can either of you afford to be wrong?"

  Morgan, gazing at the stones, felt, as Jumbe intended him to feel, a trickle of doubt. He glanced at Nikolaiev, who sat sweating and grimacing, staring at the hoard of bloodstones.

  "The stones may well be an archaeological treasure," Morgan concluded. "As for the rest of it–why not take us to the Catacombs?"

  "Yes, we must see Catacombs," the Russian said quickly. "Then we know with our own eyes what you are telling is the truth."

  Jumbe shook his head. "A difficult and dangerous trip, even for those who know where they are going. Unfortunately, I have not been able to go myself." He paused in mid breath, as if speared by pain; Kumenyere glanced at his pocket watch and looked concerned. Jumbe lowered his cupped hands and, trembling, replaced the bloodstones one by one in the
block of Lucite.

  "If you doubt the experts you've heard, or think that their testimony is part of a conspiracy, then choose a sample for your own experts to analyze. Choose any one stone. But remember: I want the weapons in thirty days."

  Jumbe picked up his staff and shuffled slowly out of the room, not looking back. General Timbaroo closed the doors behind Jumbe, then stood with his back to the doors, his submachine gun across his chest.

  Kumenyere opened a cabinet, slid out a drawer in which were mounted identical cassette tape recorders. He removed the cassettes and placed them in pockets on the inside covers of the gold leather notebooks. He presented a notebook each to Morgan and Nikolaiev. Morgan found his notebook quite heavy.

  "The book contains a complete computerized translation of the language of Zan," he said. "The tape will help your intelligence agencies to conduct voiceprint analyses of our other guests, should you have questions about their identities. When you're ready to leave, you'll be driven directly to the airport by General Timbaroo's men. But take your time, please. Stay as long as you like. Have another glass of wine while you ponder your choice of bloodstones."

  Kumenyere smiled indulgently at them and took his leave. Nikolaiev chuckled, mopping his face with a handkerchief.

  "Madmen," he said, leaning toward Morgan, tapping his forehead with a blunt finger. "So much craziness we're hearing. Mad, mad! What a situation for meeting you first time, my dear friend." The Russian held out both hands to the glittering bloodstones, an infatuated gesture partly redeemed by the curling of his lip. "What you think, who makes these writings? Ten thousand years ago? Civilizations, like ours? Such lies!"

  "There are strong occult and primitive traditions." This was translated for Nikolaiev. He chuckled again.

  "Fairy tales." He heaved himself up from his chair and hovered over the attaché case on the table, touching one of the bloodstones, then another. He put back the one which Jumbe had given him. Suddenly he scooped up a stone at random and turned. He tossed it casually to Morgan, who was startled as he snatched the stone out of the air.

  "Taking it. Why not? Some, what's the right word, suckers we are. Little reward for our long travels." He took a jeweler's cloth from the case, selected a diamond for himself, wrapped and stuffed it carelessly into a pocket of his coat. Then he picked up an untouched glass of wine, drank some, made a disbelieving face, and said, pointing to the glass, "Another hoax!"

  He came over to pump Morgan's hand. Outside an animal screamed in the night.

  "Terrible country," Nikolaiev complained. "Too much sweat. We should both go home before these chernomazy shooting and eating us."

  Morgan could still hear the Russian's laughter as he went outside with his interpreter to the car that waited to drive them to Kilimanjaro airport.

  And then Morgan was alone, faintly warmed by the dying fire, thinking about the diamond in his hand, with a market value (Damon Paul claimed) in the millions of dollars. He wondered if there actually had been a Chapman/Weller expedition. Easy to check it out. He wondered what Marshal V. K. Nikolaiev was really thinking when he pocketed the irresistible bloodstone.

  Jumbe's story of FIREKILL was too fantastic to believe, but . .

  Morgan was disturbed by a chill of premonition, of despair, as if some vital exchange had taken place between the bloodstone and his own flesh. He was feeling, not thinking, with the innate arrogance of modern man.

  As recently as sixty years ago no one had believed the atom could be split, or that men would reach the moon. Or that the bones of humanlike creatures, three million years old, would be discovered in a gorge called Olduvai, located only a short distance from where he was sitting. Africa yielded its mysteries with numbing slowness. On the banks of the Nile the great pyramids crumbled, riddled by the sandy winds of two thousand years. Once the desert of Egypt had been rich farmland. Was theirs the highest civilization to evolve before Christ? Or could Egypt have been a colony, a satellite state that faltered and died when it lost touch with an even more advanced civilization? If the Hawaiian Islands were abruptly cut off from the rest of the world, their society would disintegrate, in an astonishingly short time, into a primitive archetype. Within two centuries there would be only vague race memories of television, airplanes, neon lights.

  He recalled other phenomena he had read about or seen: cave paintings of remote peoples in surprisingly contemporary modes of dress, dry cell batteries resurrected from the furnace-lands of ancient Mesopotamia, the interiors of Egyptian pyramids untainted by the smoke of torches: Either the builders had been able to see perfectly in pitch darkness, or they'd had some source of artificial light.

  Morgan went out under the stars to catch his breath, clear his head, scratch an itch of indecision. General Timbaroo was a silent, shadowy presence nearby. The darkness seethed with unseen life, primordial violence was all around. Morgan could make out Kilimanjaro surprisingly well, as a distant snow-field beneath the transiting moon.

  Perhaps it was all nonsense. But he was fascinated with the concept of a civilization whose leaders had built their memorials in the earth and not on it, to endure for a hundred centuries and then a hundred more.

  Catacombs.

  Rubbing his fingertips lightly over the facets of the bloodstone, Morgan could just feel the tiny pictographs etched there. He was overcome with a sense of imminent danger, the folly of disbelief.

  "General Timbaroo?"

  The mercenary came briskly forward, three paces, and clicked his boot heels together.

  "Yes, sir!"

  "If a car is ready for me, I'd like to start for home now."

  Chapter 3

  KINGDOM MISSION

  Ivututu, Tanzania

  April 29

  In the mission hospital Erika Weller worked with a mind-numbing intensity until well after sunset, trying to keep up with the needs of critically ill men and women. She was certain it would not be long before she heard the boots of Colonel Ukumtara's askari on the stairs outside. No doubt her punishment for plotting an escape would be mild: an elaborate, scornful dressing down from the colonel himself, then close house arrest during those hours when she couldn't be at the hospital. No community meals. Perhaps she would also be deprived of morning Mass.

  Raymond Poincarré had returned just before dusk from the airstrip with many cartons of supplies that had to be unpacked and put away; he'd been busy in the hospital storeroom and hadn't come upstairs for his evening rounds. Her only company, aside from a couple of nurses who were virtually sleep-walking, was Father Varnhalt, who had arrived dutifully after vespers with communion wafers for those patients able to accept them. At least his phonograph had been silent for a while. But the mourning drums of the neighborhood villages had begun, along with the yaps and chortles and bloody howls of jackal and dog baboon in the rocky hills and ravines behind the mission.

  The only sound she had been listening for, and hadn't heard, was the engine of the Bonanza as it took off for the return hop over the mountains to Mbeya town.

  That was significant. It could mean that Bob Connetta had succeeded in temporarily disabling the plane before Dr. Poincarré arrived. Bob was a twenty-three-year-old graduate student in archaeology, the son of an American colleague of Chips'. The Chapman/Weller expedition had been Bobby's first major venture into the field, and one that would make him famous out of all proportion to his experience. That is, if he lived. She couldn't condemn Chips for having delegated him to sabotage the Bonanza–no one else had the opportunity. But she was worried.

  Chips had been fitfully asleep for more than an hour. She replaced his IV bottle, a five-percent dextrose solution in water, and tried to rouse him; but when she spoke he replied deliriously, replaying some yacht race or other he'd been involved in years ago. Erika couldn't cool him down and was worried about his breathing. She wondered if she should insert an endotracheal tube.

  Father Varnhalt, wearing a purple-and-white surplice over dust-smudged khakis, was down on one knee, mumbling i
n Latin at the bedside of another patient. When she turned around, tears squeezing from her eyes, she saw Raymond Poincarré at the door, watching her.

  "He's worse," Erika groaned. "It's just consuming him, like a fire in a hollow tree."

  "Sometimes it happens that way. Then there's a remission. We'll try more procaine penicillin."

  "Useless! Nothing . . . bloody . . . works, only the grace of God is going to save the lot of them."

  "Erika!"

  She struggled to control herself. "Yes. All right. Nothing good's going to come of carrying on, is it? I'll . . . prepare an injection, or do you want to drip it?"

  "Injection," he told her.

  Erika opened the pharmaceuticals cabinet and took out the little bottle of penicillin, broke the cellophane pack of a fresh disposable syringe. While Raymond looked at Chips' chart, Erika administered the drug. The doctor said quietly, not looking at her, "The pilot had a slight mishap on landing."

  Erika felt a cold flash of fear. "I hope he wasn't hurt."

  "No, it's nothing, really. Flat tire. Of course he hasn't a spare."

  "Couldn't he take off with a flat tire?"

  "Any competent bush pilot could manage that, even in the dark. The problem seems to be in coming down again. Rather than run the risk of crumping a new airplane and having the government sack him, the pilot has decided to remain until a new tire can be dropped to him in the morning."

  "That's . . . sensible."

  "I think so. He prefers, naturally, to stay with his aircraft. I let him know there was rather much risk of contracting the fever if he put up at the mission. He'll be uncomfortable, but we'll send supper and a bottle of wine later."

  Erika stared at Raymond, wondering just what he was trying to tell her. Apparently he'd arrived too late to prevent Bob Connetta from slashing the Bonanza's tire. Was he now letting her know how hopeless it would be to attempt to steal the plane with the pilot, who was undoubtedly armed, watching over it?