Spears of God

by Howard V. Hendrix

  “‘Elves’ and ‘sprites’ would be my guess,” Miskulin said.

  “And mushroom clouds?” Jim asked. “When is a shooting star like a thunderstone and a mushroom cloud?”

  That riddle seemed to stymie his visitors for a while, although “stymied” for them took the form of Miskulin and Pittman arguing about bolides and “Peter Pan pineal glands”—Miskulin’s phrase—while Yamada and Jim looked on. Brescoll called a halt to it at last.

  “We’re not going to solve it all today. I don’t know how these kids and their pineal glands will fit in with what might happen, but we’ll keep looking for them. In the meantime, we’ve already got more than enough going on with these damned ‘holy rocks.’”

  He saw the others looking at him questioningly, even if they said nothing.

  “We’ve got one full-blown world crisis going on because of what happened at the Dome of the Rock, remember? We certainly don’t want anything similar to the Dome of the Rock incident playing out in Mecca during the Hajj. That could spiral completely out of control. It hasn’t escaped our notice that there’s a strong possible meteorite connection to the Great Mosque and the Kaaba. You’re my best experts on that, too. I need to have all of you available at a moment’s notice.”

  His visitors agreed, leaving with him their contact info as they took their leave of his office. As she was leaving, Darla Pittman turned to Brescoll.

  “Thanks for the protection, Director,” she said. “It’s been hard, being AWOL from the lab, but I still have some connections there. Seems that my postdoc, Barry Levitch, has taken a sudden leave from the Rocky Mountain Labs. He’s spirited away a good deal of my research material in the process. I may have trusted him too much. He’s privy to the whole metaphage concept, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ll look into his disappearance then, too,” he assured her. “And I wouldn’t worry so much about retaliation from Retticker. He’s a good deal smoother than you might guess. Nothing too obvious or high profile.”

  After Dan Amaral ushered the last of the visitors out, Jim absently pushed the button that caused the volumetric display-dome to descend into his desktop and disappear. As he watched it go, Jim Brescoll wished he could make other domes, and their associated problems, disappear as easily, especially after he began scanning private and public information sources on his computer.

  “Much of the Muslim world is in ‘military exercises’ mode,” one of Amaral’s field people said in a video report. “Syria’s war-gaming the Dome crisis for ‘geopolitical counterbalance to Israeli hegemony,’ as the analysts put it.”

  “Iran has found the current situation to be well suited for playing along the older Sunni-Shia divide,” said one of his own field observers, in a recorded picturephone message. “Behind the scenes the Iranian government is leading the chorus of doubters questioning Saudi competence in providing security for the Kaaba and the Great Mosque. The Shia are calling for a pan-Islamic multinational force to take over security duties in Mecca for the upcoming Hajj—something the Saudis have rejected, rightly viewing it as a threat to their sovereignty.”

  The datamining digest he’d had his techs set up—to search for anything involving thefts and meteorites—flagged his e-mail with a notice about thefts of relic spearheads from a museum in Austria and a church in Rome. Failing to see the relevance, Jim rolled his eyes and shut off the system.

  “Well, Mister Fahrney,” Jim said, addressing the air, “what do you think?”

  An apple-cheeked, gray-haired, bouncily energetic little man emerged from a door leading into the hallway beyond Brescoll’s office suite. From the cherubic smile on the billionaire’s face, it was clear that he’d relished eavesdropping on the meeting. The man with the clout, his ace in the hole. Jim had called him in again, into his role as secret adviser.

  “Well done, Director Brescoll. I think those three are going to prove extremely important in this matter. I also think they as yet have very little idea how important they are. Make straight the way for them, by all means!”

  COVER STORIES

  “You’ve got to answer us this time, Victor,” Vida said, confronting the meteorite hunter in the original Wabar modulab. Avram and Yuri were in tow, albeit somewhat reluctantly. “You can’t just put us off with a whiff of weird stuff from the Temple Mount and a lot of speculating about alchemists and Kabbalists and Templar knights. Not this time.”

  “Put you off about what, Vida?”

  “These modulabs, and what the new people are doing here. The troops standing guard. That telepresence researcher, Michelson. And some guy who looked doped up. And now those four kids. I saw them come in—even if they did show up in the middle of the night, smuggled in aboard some kind of stealth UFO.”

  “‘Smuggled’?”

  “And what’s this thing you’ve got under wraps right here? What’re you working on?”

  Victor Fremdkunst gave her a quizzical look. On a workbench, surrounded by stone-cutting and polishing equipment, stood a curtain-draped object propped atop a pedestal.

  “I’ll be happy to show you,” he said, walking toward the workbench. “It’s not quite finished, but I certainly wouldn’t want you to think I’m ‘putting you off.’”

  With a flourish, Victor flipped back the draperies. What Avram, Yuri, and Vida saw there made them catch their breath.

  It was beautiful. A piece of very mixed skystone, roughly the elliptical shape and size of an American football but sliced to incredible thinness. Incandescently shining Neumann lines and Widmanstätten structures—both, in one stone—were cut so as to perfectly highlight their patterns. Beautifully sectioned chondrule spheres shone in it, too: silicated material containing what looked like pyroxenes and olivines, glowing translucently in a rainbow of colors like stained glass from an alien cathedral. All in the same stone.

  To Avram it looked as if Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock had collaborated on a stone canvas—by way of outer space.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Vida breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Nor had I,” Victor said. “Sorry to have been so secretive about it, but I really think this will be my masterpiece. I guess it’s time you found out about this tepui stone and its provenance, hmm? That history should answer most of your other questions, too, Vida. If you’ll follow me to the most recently arrived of the modulabs, please….”

  They followed Victor to the door. Bracing themselves against the oven-blast of desert heat, they made the short but brutal walk to the newest modulab, without environment suits, through an afternoon breeze tasting of dusty iron, blowing out of the Empty Quarter.

  Once indoors again, Avram, Vida, and Yuri caught their breath in the relative coolness of the new lab.

  Victor Fremdkunst introduced them to Joseph Retticker, Doctor Jeremy Michelson, and Doctor Barry Levitch.

  His handshake as hard and firm as his gaze, his white hair and mustache trimmed to within a fraction of an inch of nonexistence, Retticker seemed always to be standing at attention. Michelson, however, shook their hands perfunctorily—a tall beak-nosed man with faraway eyes behind owlish ARGUS blinks, his face framed by unkempt, thinning red hair above shoulders hunched and stooped, as if he were embarrassed at his own height. Levitch, intermediate in height between the other two men, wore a heavy mountain-man beard, perhaps in hopes of distracting attention from his prematurely shiny-bald pate.

  “Joseph,” Victor said after everyone had been introduced all around, “our senior researchers here want to know about the history of the tepui stone and the young people you brought in. Think you might be able to bring them up to speed on all that?”

  “With a little help from my friends here, I think we can do that,” Retticker said, launching into a history that Avram found surprisingly detailed.

  “Jacinta Larkin’s discovery of the ‘ghost people’ of Caracamuni tepui, the mushroom-totemist Mawari,” Retticker said, “was suppressed for many years by her brother, Paul Larkin. The sadly botched e
fforts of an expeditionary force dispatched to Caracamuni tepui at first appeared to have resulted in the death of all members of the small Mawari tribe. All were thought to have died during a confused skirmish in the caverns where they lived.

  “During that expedition, it was found that the tribe worshipped a unique meteorite that contained extensive nonterrestrial nucleic acid materials. I’ll turn things over to Barry Levitch, now. He knows more about the scientific particulars than I do.”

  “What Darla Pittman and I first thought might be ‘space-junk DNA’ proved to be anything but junk,” Levitch said, before going on to lay out for them the concepts of “phoenix phenotypes” and “metaphage.”

  “As a result of its interaction with fungi already endemic to the tepui,” Levitch explained, “the tepui stone functioned as a sort of sclerotium or mushroom stone—the ultimate source of the totemic mushroom of the Mawari. By piecing together replicating components from the tepui stone with ‘space junk’ from other meteoritic sources, we think Doctor Pittman managed to produce a more complete version of the metaphage than existed even in the tepui stone itself.”

  “Unfortunately,” Retticker said, jumping in, “the Rocky Mountain Labs, where Doctors Levitch and Pittman worked, were attacked by armed gunmen. Remarkably, Doctor Pittman survived being shot to pieces—a miraculous self-healing, apparently the result of her having been exposed to the metaphage material with which she was working. The experience was nonetheless traumatic, and as a result she is now on extended leave.”

  “Darla Pittman was trying to grow that material out on media that mixed cerebrospinal fluid, serum, and neuronal tissue,” Levitch explained, “in imitation of the myconeural complex the tepui people reportedly developed as a result of ingesting their totemic mushroom.”

  “Nothing ‘reportedly’ about it, anymore,” Retticker asserted. “From medical professionals who objected to the way their patients were being treated by their ‘guardian,’ Paul Larkin, we learned that there were in fact four surviving ‘ghost people.’ In order to protect the children from Larkin’s exploitation of them—and from an attack of the sort Darla Pittman had suffered—we sent in a team to remove the children from Larkin’s custody. I’ve brought these same surviving Mawari children here, to work with Doctors Levitch and Michelson.”

  Levitch and Michelson eagerly described their understanding of the slowly growing myconeural complex, and its effects on the children’s raphe nuclei and pineal glands.

  “The so-called paranormal or parapsychological abilities attributed to the Mawari, in the legends of their South American neighbors,” Michelson said, “are in fact quantum telemorphic effects. What I’m learning from the children is proving to be a breakthrough in neurophysics more important than I ever dreamed.”

  To underline his point, Michelson led all of them to an observation room at the other end of the modulab, where four undeniably engrossed and preoccupied youngsters, wearing what looked like exotic telepresence gear, appeared to be levitating and manipulating a variety of objects—no hands involved, and no strings attached.

  Victor, Avram, Vida, and Yuri at last left Retticker and his colleagues behind, in Michelson’s so-called telemorphy lab, observing the children.

  “So you see,” Victor said, when he and his senior researchers were again alone, “I wasn’t just putting you off with that talk of knights and alchemists and Kabbalists, the lapis and the Grail and the Spear.”

  “Oh?” Vida asked.

  “Think how what those gentlemen have described to us—the self-healing in Pittman’s case, the paranormal communication and manipulation of matter with the Mawari and these kids—think how much those sound like the powers associated with the Grail and the Spear, or those ‘Nuhus’ you talked about, Vida. Really think about it, and you’ll begin to understand why the temples and sacred cities of a dozen religions grew up around holy skystones.”

  “I think I see the way this ‘metaphage’ might have affected human history,” Avram said, “and human evolution before that. Even in fragmentary and corrupted form.”

  “That’s why Levitch is here,” Victor told them. “To use our collection of sacred stones, of celestial talismans and power objects from around the world. His goal is to make an even more complete version of what Darla Pittman was working on, before she was attacked. To piece together the complete mosaic.”

  “And Michelson?” Yuri asked.

  “He’s here because those kids are here. And safe, given all this private security. Obviously, Michelson thinks he can learn a great deal from them, for his research.”

  “Or exploit them,” Vida muttered. Victor pretended not to have heard, and instead took his leave of them, returning to the observation room to confer with Retticker and company. Yuri, Avram, and Vida headed back to their own lab space.

  “A plausible cover story,” Vida said as they walked through the desert evening. “I don’t think it’s anywhere near the whole story, though.”

  “No one ever gets whole story,” Yuri said. Avram said nothing. He agreed with both of them.

  Later that evening, the cover stories and the stories behind that cover only got more complex. Avram was alone in the yome—Yuri was out drinking with some of the newer arrivals—when a knock sounded at his door. He expected Yuri or perhaps Vida, but when he opened the door, he saw Mahmoud Ankawi standing there, a young man looking serious but content behind his beard and glasses.

  Avram invited him in, but they made small talk for only a short while.

  “In two days we leave,” Ankawi said. “On Hajj.”

  “But it’s still weeks away,” Avram said, puzzled. “As I’m sure you know.”

  “This is the plan, nonetheless. I will serve as your mutawwif.”

  “All the way to Mecca?”

  “All the way to Makkah, yes.”

  Avram gave him a hard look.

  “You’ve been on Hajj before, right?”

  “Yes,” said Ankawi. “Five years ago I traveled in the sacred districts.”

  “You know I’m not a Muslim. So why are you helping me?”

  “You forget that I am a meteorite hunter, too, Doctor. Amateur, yes, but very enthusiastic. More enthusiastic there, perhaps, than in my religious life. Think what you like.”

  “The Black Stone…you’ve seen it?”

  “Yes. I’ve heard the stories, too. Ever since childhood. About how the angel Gabriel brought the stone from heaven and gave it to Father Abraham. Or how it was once white, until it turned black from the sins of the world. Some say it was light enough to float on water, others that it was inordinately heavy.”

  “Or maybe it can alter the gravitational field of the planet…” Avram said with a smirk.

  “Exactly! I want to know the scientific truth about al Hajar al-Aswad—not just rumors and legends.

  That is what is most important to me.”

  So that was how Luis Martin and his backers had sold Ankawi on helping him in this adventure, Avram thought. Ankawi’s curiosity was so strong that the man was sure Avram must share that obsession. It had blinded Ankawi to any other possible reason for Avram’s journey. Pathetic, really.

  “Not afraid that what I might discover might also damage your faith?”

  “If letting you examine the Black Stone in situ, “ Ankawi said thoughtfully, “if that examination, however you’re going to do it, uncovers the truth, then I’ll be happy, as I said. Other non-Muslims have seen the Black Stone before, after all. Radical Muslims took the Black Stone and the Kaaba itself hostage, too, when they occupied the Great Mosque of Makkah by force—before the Saudi army drove them out by more force. Despite it all, the Black Stone has always survived.”

  Ankawi gave him a list of the preparations he would need to make for departure, a plausible cover story for his leaving, and a rendezvous point. Soon thereafter the bearded scholar—and betrayer of his faith?—said good-bye and departed, betraying no sense whatsoever that he was doing anything wrong.

 
SEVEN

  THROWING STONES

  Michael Miskulin was surprised at how quickly NSA director James Brescoll had put them up in D.C.—and even more surprised when he called them to another meeting in his offices, just two days after their first briefing. They met in a conference room off his office suite at NSA headquarters, and this time Brescoll had more of his “brain trust” with him.

  Michael, Susan, and Darla were introduced to three of Brescoll’s top advisers. They had met one of them—Dan Amaral—before, but not the other two. Tall, redheaded Bree Lingenfelter headed NSA’s Communications Research Division and its Laboratory for Physical Sciences, both at the University of Maryland. Steve Wang, a wiry man in ARGUS blinks, was introduced to them as a researcher with Princeton’s Institute for Defense Analysis. He also held positions as chief cryptologic linguist and cryptologic computer scientist with NSA’s Communications and Computing Center.

  “First off,” Brescoll began, glancing from time to time at his notes, “let me say that I’ve tried to get everyone onto the same page on all this. Steve and Bree know nearly as much as I do concerning the Tetragrammaton and Kwok-Cho history, about which Dan here is also now aware. You also have Dan’s report on the pattern of telecommunication connections and intercepts that suggests, despite the extensive use of anonymous remailers and throwaway cell phones, that Avigdor Fox and Ismail Hijazi were at least in occasional communication with Victor Fremdkunst and possibly George Otis as well. I’ve brought Dan, Bree, and Steve up to speed on what you four have told me about the Mawari, mushroom stones, meteorites, metaphages, myconeural complexes, phoenix phenotypes—”

  Smiling at the alliteration, he looked up from his list.

  “—pineal glands, all that. I’d also like to thank Doctor Pittman for informing us of the disappearance of her postdoctoral researcher, Barry Levitch. An NSA team has been able to reconstruct what he was last working on, from computer records he thought he had destroyed but which we were able to resurrect.”