Spears of God

by Howard V. Hendrix

  “This is nastiest of all,” Semenov said, out of a mouth almost invisible in its forest of bushy black-and-silver beard, beneath black bug-eye sunglasses and a floppy gray desert hat. “Empty Quarter is correct. Full of shifting seif dunes. Unpredictable sand cliffs, twenty meters high. Heat wave for this time of year—over 325 Kelvin during day, not much below 310 before midnight. Largest contiguous sand sea on earth. Broader than all of American Texas, where I live since becoming U.S. citizen. You’ll see, you’ll see.”

  Soon thereafter, a long camel caravan blocked their one clear way through a low pass among huge, horned, barchan sand dunes. The camel drivers refused to open up a space for the Humvee. Semenov honked the Humvee’s horn and cursed the men and their beasts in Russian-accented Arabic.

  “Ever since bilaterians invented anus,” Semenov said, shaking his head when the caravan finally passed, “more and more assholes on this planet! Something biology books don’t teach, but every field biologist knows.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be traveling in a caravan, too?” Avram asked. “For safety, I mean?”

  “No need! We have food, fuel, water. We have radio. Most important, we have GPS.”

  Avram wasn’t particularly reassured, especially when, a moment later, they began to bog down in the sand. Semenov adjusted the Humvee’s tire pressure on the fly, however, and they continued on their way—up, over, down, and around dunes and cliffs.

  They were in this for the long haul. Not that they had much choice. Wabar’s remoteness, high ambient temperatures, and the surrounding soft and irregular dunes made the place inaccessible to fixed-wing aircraft or all but the most highly (and expensively) modified helicopters—and even such rare birds as those were most often restricted to dropping off and picking up, without landing.

  When a sandstorm began to pelt them, Avram did notice that Yuri slowed slightly and detoured more often, to avoid plunging them over sand cliffs. Semenov also seemed to pay more attention to his treasured GPS as the storm worsened.

  Avram rubbed the back of his neck. I’m GPSed too, he thought. That was the only real pain he’d had to endure for his mission so far. Luis Martin’s technical people (“some new Tri-Border friends,” as Martin put it) had designed a small capsule to be implanted under the scalp where it met the fleshy nape of Avram’s neck, just about on a line with the foramen magnum. He hadn’t felt much discomfort when they installed what they called “his own personal biopowered homing beacon,” although it had occasionally proved something of a pain since then. An itch he couldn’t actually scratch.

  Wonderful. If he died out here in the desert, at least someone would be able to find his body. If they took the time to look.

  “So, Yuri,” Avram said, trying to make conversation to keep his mind off the worsening conditions, “what’s a biologist like you doing out here, working with impact geologists at an astrobleme in the middle of the desert?”

  Yuri smiled.

  “Love that word—astrobleme. Means ‘star wound,’ you know? Not working with them, certainly. My research laps over theirs. I study ecologic and genetic anomalies linked to electrophonic meteors. You know electrophonic meteors?”

  “I know many observers report a hissing noise, like radio static, during the sighting of a fireball.

  Sometimes even before seeing one. Since sound waves travel much slower than light, the phenomenon’s never been satisfactorily explained.”

  Yuri shook his beard vigorously up and down.

  “Da. Not just hissing. Snaps, pops, clicks. Rustling, rushing, roaring. Like great wind. Many sound effects, like thunder underground, in witness-eye records at Tunguska, before seeing bolide.”

  Avram nodded, though at the moment he would have preferred that Yuri pay less mind to conversational eye-contact and more to their journey. Better the man should have all his attention focused out the windshield, on the undulating gray-brown terrain through which he was maneuvering them. That landscape had grown increasingly indistinguishable from the very close, gray-brown sky swirling around them.

  “So, you believe it was electrophonic?” Avram asked, glancing away from the desert and toward the driver. “The Tunguska…what? Stony asteroid? Comet?”

  “Tunguska meteoroid, is it comet or asteroid? No one agrees. Call it Tunguska space body, TSB. Along flight path of TSB many ecologic and genetic anomalies. Accelerated growth, morphometric peculiarities in taiga trees, birches, ants. Even Rhesus negative, Rh-D gene—very rare among them—found in Evenki people along space-body trajectory.”

  Despite himself, Avram was fascinated by the way the man could drive such irregular and treacherous terrain while simultaneously expounding on his theories. It reminded Avram of a professor he had once studied with, a man who was most eloquent in his explanations when he was rather drunk.

  “Hmm! How do you explain that?”

  “Tunguska meteoroid’s flight accompanied by powerful extreme low frequency–very low frequency electromagnetic radiation. ELFVLF stressed local biota, triggered subtle mechanisms to release hidden genetic variation into phenotype. Some direct mutagenic factors, from ionizing radiation of lightning during explosion, cannot be prevented from inclusion also.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute…,” Avram said.

  Yuri braked the Humvee to a near stop so suddenly it threatened to throw Avram at the windshield.

  Then, probably from the surprised look on Avram’s face, he belatedly realized Avram had been speaking rhetorically. Yuri slipped the vehicle back into higher gear without comment and continued his dogged way through the sand-blind late afternoon.

  It took Avram a minute to relocate his train of thought, and why he’d told Semenov to wait a minute to begin with.

  “I’m not a biologist, Yuri. How does a fireball affect genes?”

  “Many possibilities. Passage of fireball through atmosphere traps, twists Earth’s geomagnetic field behind it. Strain energy of field releases as VLF electromagnetic radiation. Shock wave of meteoroid’s catastrophic breakup propagates in plasma around meteoroid, making ELF electromagnetic transients.

  Tunguska blast force equals twenty megatons. Nuclear explosions similar in size generate much lightning.

  Lightning makes ionizing radiation to cascade. Explosive disruption of large meteoroid generates electromagnetic pulse also, and Joule heating.”

  “Without radioactivity?”

  Yuri nodded. An annoying whine started up somewhere in front of the vehicle’s dashboard. Yuri whacked the dash once, hard, with the palm of his hand. The whine subsided.

  “Electromagnetic fields still at very low energies can induct—induce—heat shock proteins, HSPs. HSPs normally buffer genetic variation. In stable environments, HSPs, um, ensure phenotypic stability despite increased accumulation of hidden mutation in genotype. Understand?”

  Avram nodded.

  “But under catastrophic environmental stress, HSPs, um, are over-burdened with job of chaperoning other molecules. No longer can they mask variations of genotype, so variations are released in phenotype. HSPs are capacitors of evolution. Ecologic and genetic consequences of Tunguska event, they are manifestations of latent mutations already present in Tunguskan biota. Stress response, due to increased electromagnetic radiation from TSB—ELF-VLF electromagnetic radiation from bolide, ionizing radiation from lightning to accompany explosion in atmosphere—that releases mutations already there but hidden, penned up—”

  “Pent up?”

  “Um. Okay. Thanks.”

  The whine from somewhere in front of the dashboard started again in earnest. Or maybe, Avram thought, the howl and rasp of the sandstorm had now decreased just enough that he could hear it more clearly.

  “These genetic anomalies,” Avram said, “they appear with statistically greater frequency along the TSB trajectory?”

  “Da. And with greatest frequency at two points. One, where TSB trajectory would intersect Earth if meteoroid made it to ground. Other, at point of extinction, um, location i
n trajectory through atmosphere where cosmic velocity is lost, visible light goes out—”

  “And remaining material falls freely due to Earth’s gravity,” Avram said, helpfully. “Becoming meteoritic upon reaching Earth’s surface.”

  “Da. Is death-point of most falling stars blocked by atmosphere of Earth—at least for meteoroids under one hundred meters in diameter.”

  “But not so, if the meteoroid is sufficiently large.”

  “No. Then airburst detonation, heat and shock waves accompanying. Also lightning, thunder, electrophonic effects, do not forget.”

  The dashboard whine faded from Avram’s consciousness as he experienced an epiphany—another realization of the wisdom that legends and oral traditions of peoples throughout the world contained concerning meteorites and impact events.

  “So when prescientific peoples called meteorites ‘lightningstones’ and ‘thunderstones,’ they weren’t just being ignorant and superstitious, after all.”

  “Not so wrong, no. Nejd meteorites, of same composition as Wabar stones and from trajectory of same fall, were reported seen falling in Wadi Bani Khaled during ‘thunderstorm’—same day in 1863 as huge fireball headed in direction of Wabar site passed over mud-walled town that is now capital, Riyadh.” Yuri jerked the wheel hard as a dune’s sudden dropoff caught him by surprise. “But lightning-spark leaping in circuit of evolution is bigger than that.”

  Avram cocked his head in surprise.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Falling stars greater than one hundred fifty meters of diameter are not much retarded by passage through atmosphere blanket of Earth, no? They retain most or all of cosmic velocity. Point of extinction for them is within body of Earth itself. For objects greater than ten kilometers in diameter, point of extinction is not only catastrophic for meteoroid, is also catastrophic for to induce mass extinctions of many species on planet.”

  Avram nodded.

  “Even an impactor of one kilometer in diameter produces effects powerful enough to potentially wipe out advanced civilization, if not the human species itself,” he put in. “Fortunately, the bigger they come, the less frequently they fall.”

  “True, but evolution has created strategy to exploit even mass extinction. Stress of disaster overwhelms HSP buffer capacity, so hidden accumulation of mutation and variation is revealed. Survivors with more variation exploit disaster-opened niches faster.”

  For the first time, despite or perhaps because of the strangeness of the situation—traveling through blistering desert, up and down mountainous dunes, in a sandstorm, as night fell—Avram truly understood what the evolutionary biologists meant by punctuated equilibrium.

  Earth was a palimpsest planet, the writing of life on its surface periodically but incompletely erased by enormous catastrophes. From the incompleteness of that erasure, life rewrote itself all over the planet again and again, scribbled itself anew across five great global extinction events—the Ordovician-Silurian, Devonian-Carboniferous, Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic, and Cretaceous-Tertiary—all of which had been linked to impactors from space.

  “The latest great extinction event,” Avram said, almost to himself, “is us.”

  Yuri gave him a quizzical look.

  “The mass extinction we humans are causing is the only one not caused by the impact of a celestial body,” Avram explained. “We’ve taken to ourselves the prerogative of falling stars.”

  Yuri nodded slowly. He seemed to weigh his answer before he spoke.

  “But we have only partial success in this role, I think. We make many extinctions, but cannot make lightning of pent-up variation to leap gap from biochemical capacitors of evolution, as great thunderstones did.”

  The engine whine somewhere in front of the dashboard became a crackling snap, followed by a cycling of what sounded like broken pieces. Yuri smacked his hand against the dash again, this time in frustration.

  “Dammit! Here’s catastrophic failure. Desert duty today too heavy for heavy-duty air-conditioning—phooey! Night now, at least—and sandstorm is ending. Will get hot inside, but wait long as possible before opening windows, please.”

  “This has happened before?”

  Yuri nodded grudgingly.

  “Many times. Worst in bright day. So hot, have to snort water to keep brain cool. Snuffing, is called. I hate snuffing.”

  Trying not to think of heat so severe as to require such a ritual, Avram returned to their conversation for distraction more than anything else.

  “If you’re looking for ecological and genetic effects,” he said, “then why Wabar? The ecology out here is about as sparse as you can get.”

  “True. And event here much smaller than Tunguska. Wabar-Nejd meteoroid probably only four thousand tons and one hundred kiloton of potential energy, to start. Lost most of energy during shallow oblique passage through atmosphere, maybe twenty to forty-five degrees from horizontal, before it hit desert floor. After airbraking in drag of atmosphere, largest impact only twelve kiloton, or one Hiroshima. But is recent—one-hundred-fifty-plus years old, not much older than Tunguska.”

  “Aside from the occasional camel or Bedouin, though, wasn’t there pretty much nothing out here at the time?”

  “Exact reason for research! We know which al Murra Bedouin were closest to impact. I have located descendants of people all along trajectory of Wabar-Nejd fall and am taking blood samples—both from people and camel herds. Collecting other medical records of descendants, too. Weighing them against general peninsula population. Looking for anomalies in numbers, statistics. In people I start with Rh-D gene, independent verification of Tunguska results. I do not stop there, of course.”

  It was growing incredibly hot and stuffy inside the vehicle. Avram, pouring sweat, was sorely tempted to open the window. When he touched the glass with the palm of his hand and felt how hot it was, he held off.

  “What about the old stories of a destroyed city? Do you think it’s under the Wabar astrobleme?”

  Yuri shrugged.

  “Wabar-Nejd is too recent fall. There have been other falls, though. Impacts of Wabar size may come once each decade, somewhere on earth. Most blow up over oceans, crash into water. Sooner or later, one explodes over or maybe impacts on modern city. Then what? Good to know effects, how to distinguish from nuclear blast. Do you know Koran, Sura forty-six, verses twenty-one to twentyfive?”

  “No, I can’t say I do.”

  “Mention, too, the brother of Aad,” Yuri began reciting from memory, “when he warned his people in the wind-curved sandhills…: ‘Worship none but God: verily I fear for you the punishment of the great day.’ They said, ‘Art thou come to us to turn us away from our gods? Bring on us now the woes which thou threatenest, if thou speakest truth.’

  “‘That knowledge,’ said he, ‘is with God alone: I only proclaim to you the message with which I am sent.

  But I perceive that ye are a people sunk in ignorance.’

  “So when they saw a cloud coming straight for their valleys, they said, ‘It is a passing cloud that shall give us rain.’ ‘Nay, it is that whose speedy coming ye challenged—a destructive wind wherein is an afflictive punishment—it will destroy everything at the bidding of its Lord!’ And at morn, nought was to be seen but their empty dwellings.”

  Yuri eyed him carefully.

  “‘A cloud coming straight for their valleys,’” he said. “What sounds like that to you?”

  “The dust trail or smoke train of a meteoroid,” Avram admitted at last. “The ‘wind-curved sandhills’ does sound a lot like this Empty Quarter dune country, too.”

  “Exactly—and written in seventh century! Something else, also. Destructive wind comes as punishment in conflict between two brothers and their tribal groups there. Evenki people at Tunguska talk about TSB event same way: battle between shamans of rival but related tribes, one calling down destruction on the other. To call down, on enemies, disasters—bad stars—shows God on our side.”

 
“The spears of gods or angels,” Avram said quietly, the heat sapping his strength and attention. “In Central America, the conquistadors burned nearly all the Mayan bark books, but some that remain, particularly the Codex Borgia and Codex Vindobonensis, refer to the Nuhu. Star-entities, symbolized by spears and associated with meteoritic stones, particularly iron meteorites. The spears of God.”

  Unable to endure the heat any longer, Avram opened the window. The blast of hot dry air made him think that now he knew what the clay pot felt like when the door of the kiln was opened. Yuri nodded as he rolled his window partway down as well. Surprisingly little sand blew inside.

  “In Arab folklore,” Yuri said, “angels hurl spears and other things at jinn sitting atop walls around heaven.

  Jinn are trying to eavesdrop on God’s councils with angels, and angels are trying to drive them away, which is what makes shooting stars.”

  “All over the world, that association of meteorites and divine weaponry,” Avram said, fighting a heat-induced lassitude. “Odin’s spear Gungnir is made of uru metal from the heavens, from Asgard. The Hindu vajra, the ‘diamond thunderbolt,’ has many of the same attributes as Gungnir, too. And then there are the Spear of Lugh and the Spear of Luin, from Welsh and Celtic legends, which influenced the Arthurian material.”

  Yuri scratched at his beard, and nodded.

  “Arthur’s sword Excalibur comes from material that falls from heaven, as well.”

  “I’ve heard that. And he proved his right to kingship by pulling an earlier sword from a stone—a reference to forging the steel taken from meteoritic iron, some say.”

  “Weapons made from stuff of heaven,” Yuri said, shaking his head. “Always same old story.”

  “Often the very same Arthurian story. Think of Hitler and his reported obsession with the so-called Spear of Destiny—the magically powerful Spear of Longinus, which pierced the side of Christ as he hung on the Cross—the one described in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival.”

  “Same poem that calls Grail ‘lapsit exillis’?”