The Grail a5-5

by Robert Doherty

  Aspasia!

  The name echoed in her consciousness. How could it be? And human? Aspasia was Airlia. And he was dead.

  In her fear of being discovered and the uncertainty about what was going on, Kelly retreated, releasing her toehold in the data stream and hiding in the shell of what remained of her body.

  Area 51, Nevada

  “It doesn’t look good.” Major Quinn slapped down a black-and-white photograph on the conference room table. The air was heavy; the only change from before was that Mualama was back at work, his fingers hitting the keys even more furiously than before as he translated. Quinn pointed at the man in the water. “This was taken eight minutes ago. That’s Turcotte.”

  He put a second photograph on top. “This was taken six minutes ago.” They could all see the Egyptian patrol boat next to Turcotte. The next picture showed him on board the deck of the boat, surrounded by soldiers. “What about the rest of the team?” Yakov asked. “Any sign of them?”

  “Negative.”

  “Can you get someone in Washington to contact Cairo and try to get Turcotte released?” Yakov asked.

  “Washington has been screaming at Cairo about the AWACS getting downed,” Quinn said. “Now the Egyptians have captured an American soldier, illegally in their country. Also, they let those helicopters get out of their airspace. Someone holds a lot more leverage with the Egyptian government than we do. I think the time for negotiating is long past.”

  “What do you recommend?” Yakov asked.

  “We need to wait and—” Quinn began, but Che Lu slapped her palm on the table, getting their attention.

  “We cannot wait. The Navy SEALs who went under the shield wall on Easter Island have not been heard from. The Ones Who Wait are inside of Qian-Ling with the key to the lowest level.” She tapped the photograph. “Turcotte has failed in his quest of rescuing Duncan, and I see no Grail in his hands as this boat picks him up.” She turned to Quinn. “You must get beyond thinking only of your country and think globally. There is a country, is there not, that would have a very good intelligence system in place in Egypt?”

  Quinn nodded. “Israel.”

  Che Lu was in her lecture mode, as if she were back at Beijing University. “Very good. And an agent of that government met Turcotte at Hazerim air base, did he not?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I recommend contacting that person and seeing what assistance he can render.” She almost shoved him toward the door. “Go!”

  After Quinn had exited, she turned to the bank of computers that hid Professor Mualama. “Do you have any more of the manuscript done?”

  Mualama raised his head, just his eyes peeking over the top of the monitor. “Yes. It’s loading now.”

  “Does it say what exactly the Grail is and what exactly it does?” Che Lu asked. “That information is most vital now that it appears that someone has escaped with it.”

  “The new chapter speaks of the Grail’s travels and—” Mualama paused. “You will have to determine what more for yourself.” His eyes disappeared and she went back to work.

  “Sit!” Che Lu ordered Yakov as she scrolled.

  BURTON MANUSCRIPT: CHAPTER 7

  For just short of five hundred years, the Grail was hidden by the Watchers in their headquarters at Avalon. That none of them succumbed to the temptation offered by the alien device in those successive generations is a testament to the discipline of the order. But it was inevitable that such a powerful icon would once again cause trouble.

  A Watcher by the name Myrrdin, Merlin as he is more commonly known, read the same scrolls I have translated. He read of Atlantis, the Grail, the Ark, and the alien creatures who walked the Earth. He learned much of the ancient ways. Indeed, I believe he stole some of the original scrolls that told of some of the powers the wedjat of Atlantis had and used them to his advantage, presenting himself as a magician to the people of his day. Indeed such things as gunpowder, the use of a compass, which plants to be used for healing, surely the humans of Atlantis had such technology and knowledge as part of their day-to-day life, but they would be wonders to the people of Britain of A.D. 500, toiling in their fields and dying on average before the age of 30. Imagine the effect this information had on Merlin?

  One can understand Merlin’s desire. I have been in the room deep under Glastonbury Tor, surrounded by the scrolls of the Watchers. I too wondered why they kept such knowledge hidden. How would I have felt if I had found information in those scrolls that I knew could help the people around me? Would I have been able to stay true to an ancient oath, or would I have tried to spread the knowledge to do good? I cannot judge.

  But there were more than scrolls under the Tor. In addition to the Grail, there were other Airlia artifacts. I found a listing in one of the scrolls, dated A.D. 489, which tells of the Grail, shaped like a golden cup, yet solid on both ends — the first description I read. It also says that the Grail is not complete by itself, that two special stones are needed for it to work. This may have been much of the problem that it caused throughout the years — men could hold the Grail but not partake of it!

  It also tells of a weapon, a sword of unbreakable metal, yet lighter by three times than the normal sword of the same size fashioned by the best of current blacksmiths. And the sword had runes written into the handle and blade telling of its power.

  You must remember that Britain at this time was a divided land, racked with wars between petty kingdoms, threatened from the north, east and south with invasion.

  What harm, this Merlin must have wondered, would there be in using this wondrous sword as a symbol of power to help unite the land? After all, the Watchers didn’t even know what it really was.

  So Merlin stole the sword from the Tor. He gave it to the one he thought had the best chance of uniting the various factions, Uther Pendragon, one of the two sons of King Constantine.

  But the sword was not enough. Fighting continued and Merlin realized he needed something stronger.

  The myth is that he disguised Uther, brought him together with Ygraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall, and out of that illegal bond came a son, Arthur.

  This is not the truth.

  Merlin stole the Grail from the Tor. He had it in mind to allow part of it to be used, the part that brought knowledge, to the next ruler of Britain. But he did not have the stones to work the Grail. And then it was taken from him by one of the many fierce tribes from the north.

  This brought about what the Watchers had feared. The Ones Who Wait brought forth one of their own, Arthur, to regain the Grail. I believe Arthur was an incarnation of Artad, using the ka method — his Shadow.

  The Mission, of course, responded. Mordred, one of the many incarnations of Aspasia’s Shadow again using the ka, came forward to do war with Arthur.

  “Is this ka thing connected with the Grail?” Yakov asked as the chapter came to an end.

  “Perhaps we will find out later in the tale,” Che Lu said. “For now, let us hope Major Turcotte has a plan.” She pointed at the screen. “Note, however that Artad, or his Shadow, was King Arthur, while Aspasia’s Shadow was Mordred. I think our cause lies closer to what is in the lowest level of Qian-Ling than what is hidden in The Mission.”

  “Perhaps,” Yakov allowed. “But you would have to convince the United Nations Alien Oversight Committee of that, and then all the countries that are aligning as Isolationists, Progressives, or Neutrals.” He laughed. “I can just imagine trying to convince those politicians that Artad was once King Arthur!”

  “This is a very serious matter!” Che Lu admonished the Russian.

  “I know it is,” Yakov agreed. “But Artad is going to have to rise from the dead and do something quite spectacular to convince people to align with him. And coming alive in the middle of Communist China might not have been the best choice he could have made.”

  “He did not make that choice,” Che Lu said. “Communism occurred long after Qian-Ling was established.”

  “Yes, but people have sh
ort memories,” Yakov said.

  Qian-Ling, China

  The first sign of life was the eyes flickering open. And it was the first indication that the “man” was not completely human. Red vertical irises within red pupils, his eyes stared straight up for several seconds before shifting about, taking in the two figures that stood next to the black tube.

  Lexina held her hands up. “Welcome,” she said in English, knowing there was no way he could understand, but hoping he picked up the intent.

  Lexina, Coridan, and Elek bowed their heads as the man sat up. He adjusted his robe. Then, the spear in one hand, he stepped out of the tube.

  The red eyes fixed on the three Ones Who Wait. The mouth opened and the singsong words of the Airlia flowed forth, receiving no comprehension. Lexina felt the frustration of not knowing the Airlia language, another piece of knowledge lost over the millennia they had waited. The creature must have realized that, for it became silent once more. Then it spoke in another tongue, most likely ancient Chinese, Lexina guessed, but it was also unknown to her. Once more, seeing the words making no import to the listeners, the man ceased speaking. Abruptly he turned and strode toward the main tunnel leading up.

  “Artad!” Lexina cried out, hoping that one word would be recognized. The man paused, eyes glancing at the black wall ever so briefly, then continued up the tunnel. Lexina, Coridan, and Elek hurried to follow.

  As they entered the main chamber, the man paused, taking in the shield generator, then entered the smaller room that held the guardian. He went up to the golden pyramid and placed both hands flat on the surface. In a moment he was surrounded by the golden glow that meant he was in contact with the computer.

  Lexina, Coridan, and Elek stood by, watching and once more waiting.

  Area 51, Nevada

  Larry Kincaid remembered crunching numbers with a slide ruler, something the new generation of scientists thought as quaint as using an abacus. His opinion was that while the technology advanced, the human minds using that technology retreated into specialty niches, losing the ability to think with imagination beyond what the machines could do.

  That’s not to say he didn’t appreciate what modern technology could accomplish. Sitting in a small office just down the hall from the conference room, he had the imagery from the Hubble spread across his desk.

  The black smear representing the mech-robots was still moving across the surface, their path relatively straight since leaving Cydonia. Occasionally there was a slight detour as they went around various obstructions in their path.

  And there was something else. A second group of mech-robots was leaving the Cydonia region. These were carrying long black objects. Kincaid shifted the magnifying glass to Cydonia. Part of the black network had been disassembled. They were moving it. To where? he wondered.

  There was a knock on the door and one of the technicians from the Cube handed him a long cardboard tube and departed. Kincaid pulled out a large rolled-up paper from the inside and spread it out on the floor — it was a mosaic of Mars photographs taken by the first Surveyor probe years ago.

  He located Cydonia. Then he marked each location the Hubble had caught the mech-robots at. He took a yardstick and put one end on Cydonia and then aligned it through the median of those points. He drew a line, then removed the ruler.

  His eyes followed the line from the present location of the mechs outward. There was no mistaking where the line led — and where the mech-robots were heading. Mons Olympus. The largest volcano on Mars and in the Solar System. It was over fifteen miles high, the equivalent of three Mount Everests. However, its sides sloped so gently, only two to five percent, that its base was over three hundred and forty miles in diameter. The entire mountain complex was surrounded by a four-kilometer-high escarpment.

  Why were they going there? Kincaid wondered. The Airlia seemed to have a fascination with high mountains, he thought, as he remembered the story from Burton’s manuscript about the destruction of Mount Ngorongoro in Africa.

  He went to the desk and searched through the imagery until he found what he was looking for — a shot of the Cydonia region, focused on the “face.”

  Mech-robots were still working over the black metal grill-work that they had uncovered. The description from Burton’s manuscript from the Watcher who had seen the complex on the side of Mount Ngorongoro had reported the same thing. This one on Mars had obviously been destroyed a long time ago also. And now it was being rebuilt. To what end? And how did that connect with Mons Olympus?

  Kincaid wondered.

  His musings were interrupted by a light knock on the door. Che Lu stuck her head in. “Am I intruding?”

  “No, come on in.”

  She walked around the large mosaic of Mars and took the seat across from him. “I need some assistance.” She slid a piece of paper across to him, on top of the Hubble images. “I have checked and rechecked my figures, but I still cannot align Nabinger’s grid system with our planet.”

  Kincaid picked up the paper and scanned it. “What is your reference point?”

  “I have used both poles, aligning every point at least once with each, but it doesn’t make sense. Then I used Easter Island, Qian-Ling, and Giza in the same manner — as one would expect those to be marked by the Airlia — and there has been no sensible correlation among the three points. I even used Ngorongoro — and still nothing.”

  “What are you hoping to discover with this?” Kincaid asked.

  “I think that the current location of The Mission is hidden among those coordinates.”

  “The Mission has moved often — according to the STAAR records we uncovered from Antarctica and Burton’s manuscript. These coordinates are old. Why would The Mission be at one of these ancient sites?”

  “I think this is a listing of where guardian computers were located,” Che Lu said. “And given the current situation, it would be logical for The Mission to have relocated from Devil’s Island to one of the ancient bases that has a guardian in order to stay in touch with Mars and Easter Island.”

  “How did Nabinger compile this list?” Kincaid asked.

  “From his travels and archaeological studies of the High Runes,” Che Lu said.

  “So not from one source, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Maybe some of these are false locations, then,” Kincaid said. He counted. “We have twenty-four spots. If even a few are false, that would make it very difficult to orient the grid. What we need to do is run a computer simulation on the spots, removing them one by one, then the various permutations of more than one. We’ll use Giza, Easter Island, and Qian-Ling as three fixed points because we know there were guardians at each of those sites.”

  “How long will that take?”

  Kincaid closed his eyes in thought. “It will take me a little while to develop the program. Then, when you consider the factorials of possibilities, even using the computer we have here, it will take a while to crunch the numbers. Several hours at least, maybe a day.”

  Vicinity, Cairo, Egypt

  Turcotte was on his side on the desert sand, hands uncomfortably cuffed behind his back. A squad of soldiers milled about nearby, smoking cigarettes while they waited for the commander to make a decision. He was arguing in Arabic with a man in civilian clothes.

  Turcotte found he could not focus or bring his energy level up to face the current threat — of course, there wasn’t much he could do in the present circumstances. He’d felt like this before, but never so deeply. He knew he was drained of not only energy, but the ability to produce any more adrenaline.

  His reserve was tapped out and he also knew it was more emotional than physical. That still didn’t change the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion.

  Turcotte twisted slightly. He could see the civilian and the colonel. They were outside of Cairo, about forty-five minutes from Giza, as near as Turcotte had been able to tell from the bumpy ride in the back of the two-and-a-half-ton army truck he’d been thrown into after get
ting captured on the Nile. The colonel had taken charge of them and Turcotte first thought he’d be taken into the city, but the civilian — whoever he was — had appeared and presented some sort of credentials, redirecting them to this location.

  Turcotte could see the officer nodding and then heard him barking orders to the six soldiers.

  One of the soldiers kicked Turcotte in the side, indicating for him to get up, as the other five deployed in a rough line about ten feet away and began checking their weapons.

  Turcotte could see the late-morning sun and feel the warmth of the rays on one side of his face and sand on the other. He swore he could feel every little grain pressing against his skin.

  The soldier kicked once more and gestured.

  Turcotte hardly noticed the pain. He thought of how many times he had seen the sun come up in so many different places around the world, and how often he had simply taken it for granted. To think this was the last he would see seemed more like a bad dream than reality.

  The officer knelt next to Turcotte. “You must stand,” he said in surprisingly good English, with a slight British accent.

  “I don’t think I’ll be giving you any assistance in killing me,” Turcotte said. For some reason, he was thinking how hard it must have been in the old West to hang someone in the desert. He tried to focus his thoughts, but couldn’t.

  “Show some bravery,” the colonel said.

  Turcotte didn’t think it was brave to stand before a firing squad. It was the ultimate surrender.

  The colonel yelled some more orders and two men grabbed Turcotte by the shoulders, bringing him to his feet. His first inclination was to immediately drop back to the sand, but his training was too strong — that would indeed be a sign of fear in front of these men.

  He thought of running, but the field of fire ensured that the bullets would easily beat him to any cover or concealment. He almost laughed. The adrenaline was back, his nerves were alive and alert, his mind racing. If only the threat of death hung over every second of life, then he would always be one hundred percent alive.