Then, three separate thoughts struck King at once. First, he would find no support from the mad king’s men. Second, they no longer had orders to kill the prince. King was sure of that. The third thought explained the second—somehow, Nebuchadnezzar had discovered the secret of the Eridu pyramid and the earth-shattering technology that lay within. He wanted it for himself, and they would need the boy for the same reasons as Sereb-Meloch.
Granted, the theory was a stretch, but it made sense. Yes, Nebuchadnezzar could conceivably open the door with his own DNA. After all, he was theoretically a descendent of Nimrod as well. However, the Babylonian ruler would undoubtedly see the risks as too great. No telling what horrors might be awakened once the spacecraft’s doors were finally opened. King doubted the man would want to be within a hundred miles of the place when that happened. So, who better to use than an heir already marked for death?
The burn scars across King’s body itched as his veins filled with vitriol for Belshazzar’s dear old grandfather. It was bad enough when he’d issued the decree to have the boy killed. Now, he could very well be intending to use him as a guinea pig. King seethed at the very thought.
“That’s not gonna happen,” he mumbled to himself, as he wrapped his tagelmust around his face. Leaving his horse alone on the ridge, he crept down the embankment to the valley below and mapped out his plan.
20
After slipping past the westernmost watchtower, King dipped into some nearby underbrush and waited until dark. Once the sun had set, he clung to the shadows and crept into the interior of the decaying city.
The soldiers’ vigilance was pitiful to say the least. Whether because they were expecting an army of cutthroats to come barreling over the northwest ridge like a stampede of elephants or just from overconfidence, King had no problem navigating the darkened, sand-covered streets. Of course, with the tagelmust wrapped securely over his face and head, and the dark brown linen of his robes, he blended in perfectly with the night. Even the most wary guards would have had a difficult time spotting him, and by the time they had, he would have already been close enough to disable them before they could so much as utter a word.
King hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Much better for all involved if he could reach the temple’s entrance without encountering any opposition at all. He knew that once he engaged the first combatant, it would be that much more difficult to keep his presence in Eridu a secret.
Darting between two dilapidated buildings, he waited as a squad of soldiers passed. He then snaked his way to within a hundred yards of where the slaves chipped away at the centuries of sand and detritus that had blocked the entry of the tomb. At the rate they were going, the path would most likely be cleared by around noon the following day. That was too long for King to wait to get inside and too soon for him to be confident he could prevent anyone else getting in.
He needed to consider an alternative. Demolish the entire site? He couldn’t see that happening. Though he’d managed to whip up his own homemade batch of plastique, it wasn’t nearly potent enough to destroy an entire archaeological site, and Alfred Nobel wasn’t scheduled to invent dynamite for another few thousand years or so.
Okay, then what other options do I have?
He glanced around for ideas. Another watchtower lay just two hundred yards to the north. A perfect vantage point to see something he’d missed along the ridge or as he’d skulked through the town. From what he could see, there was only one soldier keeping watch on the thirty foot platform. Easy enough to take out clandestinely.
King snuck around the eastern face of the pyramid, avoiding the line of sight of both the slaves and their drivers, and headed north.
Around the mid-point of the temple, he was brought to an abrupt halt when a tremor erupted from somewhere inside his robes. Startled, he fumbled at the robe’s folds until he reached the inner pocket that held the medallion. He pulled it out to discover the strange disc was vibrating madly and emitting a dim, green glow around its edges.
Okay. What set you off, I wonder.
He turned around from the direction he’d just come and the vibrations slackened. He headed north once more and the disc became even more kinetic than before.
Some kind of homing mechanism? he thought. But to what?
His best guess—or perhaps it was nothing more than a vague hope—was that it was pointing him in the direction of another entrance. If the medallion acted as some sort of magnetic keycard, as Daniel had seemed to indicate based on his dreams, then perhaps it had detected the nearby presence of a receptor into which it fit.
He turned to face the ziggurat. He scanned the exposed surface of the temple’s peak, searching for anything that might be used as a door. There was no telling where it might be located. More than three-fourths of the structure was buried in sand and muck. If another door existed, it could be buried more than seventy-five feet deep. It might take weeks to uncover.
King froze at a sudden noise from around the northeast corner. Two men talking. Possibly a patrol making their regular rounds along the temple grounds. He glanced around, looking for a place to hide, but he found nothing but open space, the wall to the ziggurat’s apex and two nearby palm trees.
“Well, shit,” he mumbled just as the two guards came into view. From this distance, King was still relatively shrouded in darkness. He wouldn’t be easily detected for another twenty yards or so. And then, all bets would be off. With no long range weapons, taking out two well-trained soldiers silently was going to be tricky.
He crouched down, obscuring himself even further in the shadows, pulled a dagger from his sash, which Daniel had provided him, and counted down each guard’s steps. The soldiers’ armor clanked noisily with each footfall. One carried a spear, perched casually on his shoulder. The other, a short sword.
When they were no more than fifty yards away, the spear-wielder stopped suddenly.
“Just a second,” he said to his companion.
King froze.
The second guard turned to look at his partner. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The first man bent over and fiddled with something around his feet. He then stood up, used the spear shaft as a balance and raised his foot into the air before shaking it. “I’ve got something in my boot,” he said. “A rock, I think. It’s been bothering me all night.”
King let out his breath with a smile. Ah, the joys of perimeter duty, he thought, remembering his early years in the military. No matter which era one lived in, some things never changed.
After a few minutes, the guard brought his foot down once more, gave the ground a quick stomp, and sighed with relief. “Ah, much better!” He adjusted his bullet-shaped helmet and nodded to the other soldier.
But King was no longer paying attention. Something had caught his attention the moment the guard had stomped his foot. A faint, subtle sound of metal underneath the sand. Metal...on a stone pyramid? King knew he’d just found the hidden entrance for which he’d been searching. All that remained was to deal with the two soldiers before they could raise an alarm.
He watched as the two men chatted, reluctant to resume their patrol. King could relate. He’d spent many hours on sentry duty himself, wiling away the long, tedious hours with little to do. He recalled just how much relief it had been to connect with another living soul during those times. To speak to another human being in the darkest hours before dawn. These Babylonian soldiers were little different than the buddies he’d made while in the Army, before being chosen for Delta.
“…and I couldn’t believe what she said to her husband when it was all over,” laughed the spear guy. “It was madness, I tell you.”
“Well,” said the other. “What did she say?”
King ignored the conversation. Now, while they were distracted, was the time to act.
He snuck forward, crab-walking toward them like a great spider along its web. He’d easily broken the twenty yard boundary, and they’d still not seen him. If he could just make it a few
more yards, he’d be able to take the two guards out silently and possibly avoid killing them. All he needed was a little luck and…
The soldier on King’s right turned to face him, just as he reached striking distance.
As understanding dawned on the soldier’s face, his mouth opened to shout, but King struck too quickly. Pushing off with his legs, he bolted upright, his right fist plowing into the man’s jaw. The soldier collapsed to the ground just as his partner spun around, a spear twirling over his head in preparation for battle. The spear shot forward and would have pierced King’s left thigh, if he hadn’t swiveled to his right at the last second.
Unfazed by King’s speed, the soldier brought the spear around and slammed the shaft down on King’s shoulder. King stumbled forward from the blow, but did not fall. Instead, he used the momentum in a forward roll and came up behind the spear-wielder, reached around his head and with a quick jerk, snapped the man’s neck. The subsequent crack of the spine frustrated King. He’d felt a certain camaraderie with the man and his fellow soldier. But King’s mission was paramount, and he had to remind himself that these men would not have hesitated to kill him if given the chance. Worse, they could have possibly set their sights on Belshazzar.
Quietly, he lowered the dead man to the ground and set to work on binding his unconscious partner with leather straps. Once the man was secured and gagged, King scrambled over to the patch of ground from which he’d noticed the metallic sound. After a quick two minute search, he found it. Digging furiously with his hands, King wiped away the sand until he’d uncovered a strange metal access port embedded in one of the stone steps of the ziggurat. The hatch, similar to the metal used in the medallion, was perfectly round and nearly two feet in diameter.
King’s hand felt around the port, searching for a latch or slot in which to insert his disc, but he couldn’t find anything. As a matter of fact, the hatch was so flush with the stone, he couldn’t even locate a seam or hinge to allow it to open.
“Okay…” he whispered aloud. “So what am I doing wrong here?” Curious, he pulled out the medallion and felt it vibrate in the palm of his hand. Oddly, the disc’s tremors had reached a certain frequency and now remained fixed, as he held over the portal. “What exactly am I supposed to do?”
He set the medallion down next to the circle of metal on the ground and allowed himself a moment to think the process through. He’d expected to find a control panel or scanner or something to unlock the door, but if such a device was there, it was still hidden by centuries of sand.
Or, he thought, it’s something outside the box. Something outside of my own experience.
He picked up the disc again and examined the metal more closely. Once, twice, even three times, he compared the strange holographic material to that of the access port. To the naked eye, they were absolutely identical.
Curiously, he placed the disc on top of the hatch. Immediately, it burst into a bright green glow, followed by a rushing hiss. King watched amazed as both portal and key shimmered into a strange, opaque liquid. The substance resembled molten ore, yet radiated no heat.
Well, this is new.
He took the dead man’s spear and stuck it through the liquid. It passed with no resistance. When he yanked it out, the tip and shaft appeared completely undamaged.
Still wary, he searched his immediate space and discovered a small stone. Holding it a few inches from the gelatin-like surface, he dropped it through the portal. It, too, passed without any issues, though to be fair, he had no idea what had happened to it on the other side.
A low moan from behind swept King’s attention away from the portal. The remaining soldier was coming to. Granted, he was tied up, and the gag would prevent him from alerting his comrades, but King couldn’t take any chances. He reached into the pouch tied to his belt, and withdrew a mixture of herbs he’d discovered in his two-hundred year sojourn. Crushing them with the palm of his hand, he slipped over to the prostrate man and poured the dry contents down the groggy man’s throat and waited. Within seconds, the man was unconscious again. Grabbing the soldier’s sword and tucking it into his belt, King quickly returned to the portal with a fresh idea.
Organic, he thought. A spear and a pebble is one thing. Flesh is something altogether different.
He glanced at the dead soldier to his left, then eyed the pulsing liquid. He returned to the man he had killed and shrugged. He dragged the corpse to the lip of the hole. Slowly, he dipped the soldier’s hand into the liquid and immediately withdrew it. Nothing.
Confident he’d tested it as much as he could, King took a deep breath and plunged his own arm into the viscous metallic liquid. Though he felt an odd tingling sensation in his limb, there was no pain. Nothing uncomfortable. When he withdrew it and saw that he was still intact, he tossed the spear completely through the opening and followed immediately after it, into the unknown.
21
King dropped to the floor. When he looked up at the ceiling, the portal was nowhere to be seen. A quick search around him in the near-dark chamber revealed that the circular pool of liquid was now on the wall to his left.
But that’s not possible… unless…
He let his train of thought loose for a few moments to hypothesize the displaced access port. If he was indeed standing in the bowels of some deep-space vessel and if it had crashed, there was a good chance it hadn’t landed right-side up. He thought that a deep-space craft might utilize some form of artificial gravity that would attempt, if sustained with enough energy, to keep the ship’s interior equalized spatially. In other words, if the vessel did have artificial gravity, the device might simply orient its interior to the correct position. If he was correct, King hadn’t dropped down into the ship, but rather simply entered it.
It’s as good an explanation as any, he thought, as he turned his attention to more pressing matters like figuring out how to retrieve the medallion from the portal mechanism. If Daniel was correct, then the disc was needed to reach the other Girtablilu, who’d been hiding somewhere in the bowels of the ship. After three thousand years, he would have doubted any of them could have survived, but then he remembered Tiamba and Namtar. Both had survived for that long, locked away in a cavern. If they’d managed it without support or technology of any kind, surely their brethren, confined to the advanced systems of an alien craft, could have as well. But whether they still lived or not would be moot if he couldn’t access the doorway.
Instinctively, he reached out to the liquid hatch and hovered his hand near its surface. He wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. He then inserted his hand to try to feel around for the disc, but from the warmth on the skin of his hand, he’d simply reached through the portal.
“Well, great,” he said, retracting his arm. “All I wanted was the damn key.” As if on cue, the liquid solidified into the multi-colored metal once again. The medallion, now fully intact, hovered millimeters away from the portal. Voice activated and it knows English. He paused, then reached out and plucked the disc from mid-air. “Cool.”
The moment the disc was in King’s grasp, the chamber echoed with hums and clicks, followed by an ethereal blue glow cast by a train of recessed lights. Once King’s eyes adjusted to the sudden glare, he discovered he was standing in a long corridor. The walls and floors of the complex were made of a marble-like black material with veins of gray and white. Their polished surface absorbed the light coming from the elliptical ceiling, reducing the illumination. There weren’t any windows, and there was no décor or doorways that he could see in either direction, which stretched on for as far as he could see. The craft—if that was what it was—was much larger than the ruined city above him. From his brief, first glimpse of the ship’s interior, it could stretch for miles.
It didn’t seem possible. If the purpose of the craft was what he suspected, it should have been built to enter a world’s atmosphere with little difficulty. But something this size... It would have been absolutely impossible to hold together in the sky, u
nder the weight of the Earth’s gravity. There would be no way the pilots could have possibly hoped to land something this massive on Earth.
So what am I missing? If it’s not a spaceship, then what is it?
For the moment, he decided to put the question aside. He had more pressing matters with which to concern himself. Sereb-Meloch’s army would reach Eridu sometime later that day—probably afternoon, if his calculations were correct. If King had any chance of stopping both the high priest’s and Nebuchadnezzar’s’ armies, he needed to find the Girtablilu. Of course, if his previous encounters with Tiamba and Namtar were any indication of what was waiting for him, he wasn’t certain he wanted their help.
Brushing his trepidation aside, he grasped the medallion in his hand and waited. If the thing had led the way to the interior hatch, it might do the same with other doors. And one of those doors would have to be where the surviving scorpion men had secured themselves. At first, the disc remained dormant. No matter which direction he turned, he could sense no reaction from it at all. He chose a direction at random and began walking.
After the first ten minutes, his brisk walk became a slow trot, as he traversed the never-ending hallway. The trot soon escalated to a jog, and still, the medallion showed no change. He began to wonder if perhaps he’d made the wrong choice. Maybe he should have gone the other way. He slowed his stride as he pondered the need to retrace his steps, but he thought better of it. Best to proceed until there’s no going forward, he thought morosely.
PLEASE PROCEED.
King stopped. The new thought inside his head hadn’t been his own. He’d heard it in his own mental voice—that much was sure—but the words were an intrusion. After living ninety-seven years near Athens and the rest of the time travelling the ancient world around the Mediterranean, he’d long since stopped thinking in English. Greek had become his ‘native language’ and this particular thought had clearly been in English. He paused, willing the blood rushing through his ears to quiet. Had he imagined it? Had he heard someone speak and somehow confused it with a thought in his own mind?
Jack Sigler Continuum 1: Guardian Page 10