Subhuman

by Michael McBride

  “That’s it? Thanks for your time?”

  “I appreciate you hearing me out. I guess I needed to talk to someone else to make sure it made sense when I said it out loud.”

  “Why me?”

  “I figured you’d be the only one who’d understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Maybe I was wrong.”

  Roche turned and headed for the door.

  A part of her wanted to tell him off for being so condescending, and then it hit her.

  She remembered the symbols carved into the cliffs to either side of the elevator. They’d meant nothing to her at the time, but suddenly in the context of their conversation they made all the difference in the world.

  “Sound is the key,” she said.

  Roche paused with his hand on the door but didn’t look back.

  The implications of what she was about to say were staggering. If she was prepared to admit the significance of the standing waves immortalized in both stone and fields of crops, she had to acknowledge that she was teetering on the precipice of reason. If he was right, she had to be willing to accept that not only had first contact been attempted, it had already been made.

  “That’s how we get into the pyramid,” she said.

  He turned around, smiled, and left without another word.

  24

  RICHARDS

  Richards blew through the door to Friden’s lab, startling the microbiologist.

  “Jesus! Doesn’t anyone around here know how to knock?”

  “There’s water in the pyramid.”

  “Duh. It’s in a lake.”

  “The core is hollow, but somehow water’s getting inside.”

  “I refer you to my previous answer.”

  “Show some respect,” Connor said. He leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You’re missing the point,” Richards said. “The pyramid has been submerged for thousands of years. Either it just sprung a leak—which would be ridiculously coincidental after all this time—or the water has always been inside. Now we all know that water evaporates, so if we’re dealing with a closed system, there has to be some mechanism that allows water to both enter and exit. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

  “I couldn’t follow you with a bloodhound and GPS tracker.”

  “It would be a shame if something happened to that mouse of yours,” Connor said.

  “Are you seriously threatening Speedy?”

  “I’ve got this under control,” Richards said. “Why don’t you wait outside, Will?”

  Connor stepped out of the lab and closed the door behind him, although Richards knew his bodyguard was prepared to come barreling through the door without a moment’s hesitation. While his old friend’s dislike of the microbiologist was painfully obvious, Richards was confident that Friden couldn’t hurt his feelings, let alone his physical being.

  “You see what happens when you feed a child nothing but raw meat?” Friden said.

  “Are you through?”

  Friden shrugged and slid back from beneath the hood. He removed his goggles and tossed them onto his desk. He’d been wearing them for so long that they left the impression of a raccoon’s mask around his bloodshot eyes.

  “When was the last time you slept?” Richards asked.

  “What day is it?”

  “You’re useless to anyone in this condition. Get some sleep, for crying out loud.”

  “Aw, come on. I was just having a little fun with you. You need to stop taking everything so seriously. It’s not good for your health.”

  “I appreciate your concern, although I could say the same.”

  Richards gestured to the mountain of Red Bull cans overflowing from the trashcan.

  “Touché.” Friden swiveled from side to side in his chair. “Let’s start over then, shall we? Welcome to my laboratory. What can I do for you?”

  “The pyramid’s a self-contained system that allows water to enter and exit while maintaining some amount of hollow space. It’s not just producing the sound; it’s creating an echo.”

  “The water’s making that humming sound?”

  “That’s the general consensus.”

  “And you believe it?”

  “Without reservation.”

  Friden stretched out his legs and spun in a complete circle.

  “So the water’s coming from a source other than the lake.”

  “It stands to reason. The influx of water from the lake would likely cause the structure to collapse like all of the others.”

  “So what’s the significance?”

  “One of the others said something that got me thinking,” Richards said. “Why would anyone build a structure that made a sound no one could hear?”

  “They wouldn’t,” Friden said.

  “Exactly. So we can consider the sound produced by the water entering the structure to be coincidental, but that doesn’t change the fact that the pyramid was deliberately built with sound in mind.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Think about it. The hollow chamber inside somehow took a sound below the range of hearing and utilized its echo to amplify it to audible levels.”

  “A primitive resonance chamber.”

  “Precisely. So the sound is amplified exponentially by its own resonant frequency, like the way the string of a guitar reverberates inside its sound box, creating acoustic energy.”

  “You think there’s a relationship between the design of the pyramid and the reason the organism’s cell membrane ruptured when exposed to the tone at a thousand hertz?”

  “It makes a certain amount of sense, wouldn’t you say?”

  “In theory,” Friden said. “If we factor amplification and resonance into the equation, then we would need to use a tone with considerably less acoustic energy to stabilize the reaction.”

  “And it would have to be a sound the people who lived here could produce consistently. Isn’t there some kind of ancient music scale?”

  “You mean like major and minor?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “And just try every note in the scale and see what happens?”

  “Have you had any luck with the frequencies you’ve chosen?” Richards asked.

  “Do you have any idea how many different frequencies that generator Dreger cobbled together for me can produce? My children would be grandparents before I tried them all.”

  “You have children?”

  “God, no. At least none that I know of.” He knocked on his desk. “But that’s not the point. My point is that until now I’ve been flying blind. I’ll research ancient musical scales and try some of the more common notes. Maybe now I can finally make something resembling progress.”

  “Then I’ll get out of your hair. Keep me posted, would you?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To bed. Like a normal human being. You should try it sometime.”

  “Are you trying to seduce me, Mr. Richards?”

  Richards rolled his eyes and headed for the door. Friden spoke to his back in a voice lacking his customary sarcasm.

  “Let’s say you’re right and the pyramid was designed to amplify this specific sound. Think of how many millions of tons of stone and countless hours of hard labor were required to build it. And all for what? To create a resonance chamber for a single tone? What could they possibly do with a sound?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  Richards opened the door and joined Connor in the hallway.

  “You’re not one of those nutjobs who thinks that ancient aliens built the pyramids, are you?” Friden said. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. As long as your checks continue to clear, I don’t really care.”

  Richards closed the door and led Connor back toward the main complex, where he maintained his own private suite in the engineering wing. It bothered him when people mocked him for his beliefs, especially people like Friden, who were so close-mind
ed that they couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The evidence was everywhere around them, staring them right in the face and yet so few actually allowed themselves to see it.

  The cafeteria was empty and the greenhouse securely padlocked. Someone had finished off the pot of coffee, but otherwise there was no sign of life. He cherished moments like this, when he could be alone with his thoughts and not under siege by questions and demands from everyone around him.

  There was no one in the hallway, although he could hear the third shift rustling around behind closed doors, preparing to start their day. Richards’s suite was actually a combination of three, customized at the factory to provide maximum privacy, not to mention a private restroom. The outermost portion belonged to Connor and was separated from Richards’s quarters by another door and a short hallway with a separate, alarmed entrance.

  “I’ll be fine from here,” Richards said and clapped his old friend on the shoulder.

  “You sure? You don’t seem like yourself.”

  Richards smiled.

  “There’s a bit of melancholy involved with knowing your dreams are finally within your grasp.”

  Connor nodded and watched him pass though the bedroom. Richards closed the door behind him and stripped out of his shirt and pants as he walked past his bed and bureau to the third chamber, which was little more than a walk-in closet, but was more than large enough to serve his purposes.

  He closed the door behind him and sat on the lone stool in the center. The walls were lined with shelves upon which his collection of relics was displayed under Lucite and black lights to prevent degradation by oxidation and UV rays. These objects represented an investment greater even than the arctic station in which they resided and the culmination of his life’s work. In this small chamber was the proof others refused to see, pieces of a puzzle that were all about to fall into place.

  Richards stared at the golden relic that would always hold the place of honor, largely because it was his first. The tiny sculpture was Incan in origin and dated to somewhere between 500 and 800 CE. That it was gold-plated wasn’t nearly as fantastic as the fact that it resembled an airplane, complete with triangular wings and an upright tail fin. While one could make a case for it being a bird, no one who took the time to compare its measurements and proportions to a fighter jet could see it as anything else.

  The case beside it housed a fragment of the Polonnaruwa meteorite that struck Sri Lanka in 2012, the microscopic examination of which revealed fossilized bacteria and algae genetically distinct from any known terrestrial species. He had several Mayan carvings purchased directly from the Mexican government, which had been protecting them as state’s secrets for nearly a century. They’d been unearthed from beneath the pyramid at Calakmul and featured depictions of spacecraft and aliens. As did the Ica Stones in the adjacent display, designs carved into andesite and discovered near Nazca, Peru, where the framed photographs he’d personally shot from the open hatch of a helicopter had been taken. They featured designs painstakingly created by people who would never have been able to see them from the ground, geoglyphs that were hundreds of feet wide and only appreciable from the air. There was a hummingbird, a monkey, a spider, and a 1,500-year-old alien sculpted into the side of a mountain, with its wide eyes, misshapen cranium, and arm raised in greeting.

  He had skulls ranging in size from an orange to a watermelon, all of them deformed to some degree and collected from all around the world. There was a 12,000-year-old Dropa stone from China that was nearly identical to the disc brake from a car’s wheel. Lizard people figurines pre-dating the Sumerian culture from Al Ubaid, Iraq. Miniature sculptures of coneheaded people carved from mammoth tusks and discovered at a Stone Age excavation in Russia. Ancient bronze gears and threaded screws in petrified wood. Egyptian petroglyphs with flying saucers, aliens, and designs of technology that should have been well beyond their documented ability to comprehend.

  And then there was his most prized possession, the Betz Sphere, resting on a custom-made plinth at the back of the room, almost like an altar. It looked like an ordinary silver bowling ball emblazoned with an elongated triangle and was recovered in 1974 from a fire that decimated the woods surrounding the Betz family home on Fort George Island, east of Jacksonville, Florida.

  Richards caressed its seamless contours.

  He should have known all along that the secret would be sound.

  The problem with the world was that when it came to aliens, people demanded a level of proof greater even than that of their own religious beliefs. They wanted to see UFOs and little green men. They lacked his patience, his vision. They looked to the sky as though waiting for proof to fall into their laps while he dusted for fingerprints, which he discovered all over the remains of every ancient society from the dawn of man through modern times. There was no doubt in his mind that extraterrestrial life had influenced the development of the human species. And it was only a matter of time until he had irrefutable proof.

  Richards brought his lips to within inches of the Betz Sphere and hummed. He felt the vibrations first in his lips, then in his teeth as the sphere resonated with the sound. It continued to emit the tone even after he ceased humming. The noise degenerated into throbbing pulsations that grew farther apart with each repetition until they sounded like the heartbeat of a living being.

  25

  ANYA

  September 21

  Anya swam down through the frigid water toward the submerged ruins. She was one of the few scientists with diving experience, but she’d never dived under conditions like these. She’d explored the Mayan cenotes of the Yucatán as an undergrad and the Great Barrier Reef while on vacation. Both had been reasonably challenging dives, but when it came right down to it, they were warm water and close to civilization in case of an emergency. The water temperature here was 28 degrees and only remained in liquid state through a miracle of physics beyond her understanding. All she knew was that it was so cold she had to wear multiple layers of clothing beneath her thermoprene dry suit, which not only did her precious little good, but made her movements considerably more cumbersome.

  Kelly trailed behind her. Although the more experienced diver, she lacked Anya’s ability to catalog the remains in situ, a skill that just might help them figure out what happened down here that led to the interment of so many bodies. Truth be told, she and Kelly were also the smallest and had the best chance of squeezing into the ruins without causing their collapse, a task that was looking more and more impossible the closer she got to the tiny orifice.

  The submersible drone hovered above it, shining its lights down onto the gap between stones.

  “How are you doing down there?” Evans asked. He and Jade were on the inflatable Zodiac floating above them, monitoring their progress via the live feed from the cameras mounted to their diving masks. The communications unit projected his voice directly into their left ears. Inasmuch as it was Anya’s job to analyze the remains, it was Evans’s to gather details of the structure and function of the building, along with interpreting the petroglyphs on the walls.

  Anya’s upper lip grazed the microphone when she spoke.

  “I don’t see any way either of us is getting through that hole, at least not with these tanks on our backs.”

  Bubbles burbled from her regulator toward the surface, where she could barely see the silhouette of the raft through murky water roiling with sediment and microbes.

  “How hard is the ground?” Richards asked. He was back on the shore, coordinating her efforts with those of the others, who were in the process of assembling some sort of acoustic sound system.

  Anya swam to the mouth of the hole and thrust her bright orange dry gloves into the silt, all the way past her wrists. She dragged several scoops of mud away from the entrance, creating clouds of sediment that made it momentarily impossible to see, even with the twin lights affixed to her temples.

  “It’s soft,” she said.

  “Can you widen it enough to squeeze
through?”

  She looked through the settling cloud at Kelly, who shrugged noncommittally.

  “Maybe.”

  Together she and Kelly excavated the sludge from the orifice until they reached the underlying stone. They had to wait for the cloud to settle before they could evaluate their work.

  “I don’t know,” Anya said.

  “I’m not worried so much about getting in as I am about getting stuck in there,” Kelly said.

  “If you do,” Jade said, “release your main tank and switch over to your backup.”

  “Which is a fraction of the size and only holds five minutes of air.”

  “That’s more than enough to reach the surface.”

  “Easy for you to say from all the way up there.”

  Anya flattened herself to the ground and peered into the hole. The mounds of rubble cast strange shadows and created a veritable maze through which she could only barely discern the path of the borescope through the sediment.

  “No point dragging this out,” she said and pulled herself into the fallen structure.

  The slightest movement stirred the silt, diminishing visibility nearly to her mask and creating an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. She was acutely aware of the sound of her own breathing and the finite amount of air strapped to her back. There wasn’t even enough room to flipper without banging her knees and elbows. She had to continually remind herself of what awaited her at the end of the maze as she navigated the narrow confines.

  She nearly cried when the walls finally receded and the ceiling rose high enough to allow her to raise her head. The chamber appeared considerably smaller in person, but no less impressive. The broken remnants of columns littered the ground amid a scattering of bones. Many were hominin, but the majority belonged to animals. While determining the species was outside of her skill set, she recognized antlers, hooves, and the unique splayed digits of paws. They’d all absorbed the color of the sediment and taken on the consistency of stone, but she could still clearly see scratches in the cortex she equated with scavengers.

  “Walk me through what you see,” Jade said.