But then again, maybe he needed a radical change in direction, because so far nothing had been altered. All his visions were still of the same thing: complete final destruction. His death, and everyone's death at the hands of this man sitting before him so calmly.
Calderon leaned in slightly. "Do you know why the Nazis sent elite missions out to remote corners of the earth? Tibet, the North Pole, Antarctica?"
Xavier stared at him.
"These were hardly positions of strategic importance to the war," Calderon continued. "And Himmler and other select SS members continued to expend vast resources seeking out areas where there were caves and tunnels penetrating deep into the earth. What were they looking for?"
Xavier shrugged, pretending not to care, although a sinking feeling was forming in his gut. "Treasure?"
"Not exactly. Hitler and the other members of what they called The Thule Society were following up on legends—or possibly if one source is to be believed—remote visions of a certain psychic named Trevor Ravenscroft. The belief in a pre-diluvian civilization, an advanced race, possibly coinciding with Atlantis or else even its predecessor. A race of supermen with advanced intelligence, physical strength and especially, mental powers. Powers and abilities that made them godlike."
Xavier nodded. "Yeah, so Hitler was insane. Easily manipulated by whackos with god-complexes. Aryan master race. Sure. If they could prove they were descendants of these Thulians or whatever, then they'd what—justify genocide and lordship over the Earth?"
Calderon grinned. "Not only that, although certainly that was a big part of the justification for their quest. No, what Hitler intended was to discover where the remnant of this great super race went during the last cataclysm. Where they hid. And, he believed, where they continue to reside, deep in the earth, watching. Waiting…"
"For what?"
Calderon shrugged. "Hitler thought maybe they were waiting for him. Waiting for a ruler to step up and take the mantle of succession. To build an army capable of overwhelming the lesser races. All at the behest of a ruling class with advanced powers."
Xavier wriggled against his bonds, wishing he could have hidden a knife in his sleeve to give himself a chance at escape. A chance at ending this here and now. Instead, he had to think of another way. "So, forgive me Senator. What the hell does this have to do with anything? Hitler's gone, and us 'lesser races' smashed his superman dreams and dismantled his aspirations."
"Gone, yes. But the Custodians are not."
"The who? Oh, the Thule people. The master race. They're still there, hiding under rocks?"
"Deep in the earth. Deep underground." Calderon rubbed his hands together slowly, again looking out the window at the devastation. "And now, Xavier, we finally have a way to get to them." He patted the briefcase, his eyes glowing with excitement.
And then Xavier got it. He understood his visions. Understood why nothing could stop the coming devastation. And at last, he understood what they were doing up in Alaska.
"Oh dear god," he whispered. "HAARP. I guessed you used it to cause this localized earthquake. Modulating an ELF vibrational wave, using a billion watts of power, all in the same cadence and frequency into this one spot…"
Calderon waved his hand to move him along. "Yes yes, that was child's play. Technology we've had for decades, but enhanced only recently in the last upgrade to the antenna arrays. All thanks to Tesla's vision. But still, it wasn't enough. The Custodians are deep. Deeper than we could ever probe, deeper than we could reach, even with HAARP."
Xavier motioned with his chin to the briefcase. "But this is the game-changer."
"It is," said Calderon. "And I think they've been after it for millennia. Two sides, forever at war. It started up there." He looked up at the roof. "Among the planets. The myths, decoded, tell the story. The gods of the sky and their squabbles, their bloody and earth-shaking battles. Marduk and Tiamat. Thoth and Set, Odin and Loki… So often repeated, so often recalled, if only in fables by our small minds. But there were always those who knew the truth, those who sought for dominance—or if nothing else, at least détente."
Xavier tried to put the pieces together. "The Emerald Tablet gave the possessor what… a way to tap into greater destructive powers?"
Calderon nodded.
"But the Tablet does more." Xavier thought quickly. "And now you have the translation. So, what do you need me for?"
Calderon was silent for a moment. "The boys are untested and rash, while you… you have a strength they'll never attain, at least not in time to be of use. And Nina… well you know her."
Xavier shrugged. "Does anyone really know her? I thought I did."
"Regardless, you have an affinity for the power in the Tablet. A power that needs to be wielded by someone who can already do what you can."
"So it was designed by one of them?"
"If you mean the Custodians, the early race, then yes. I believe so. We have certain evidence, scrolls and traditions that speak of a time when these artifacts were created by the greatest of the 'gods', used and coveted by their brethren. But like the hammer of Thor, only one of their own could access its true power."
"So, fine. You need me. But you already know I'm sworn to stop you. All I've seen my whole life is you destroying the world. At first I thought it was to exact some sort of fiery revenge for Marduk's ancient loss, but now…"
Calderon bent his neck. A moment of doubt crossed his expression. "I am not the destroyer," he whispered. "They—these Custodians, forever aloof but forever jealous and stewing, dreaming only of their return, like some slumbering Lovecraftian deities—they are the true enemy. As long as they exist, mankind can never be free." He spread out his arms. "I'm the world's savior. And you, Xavier Montross, can help me."
Xavier merely stared at him, dumbfounded. He'd known something was coming, but this?
"Join me," Calderon said in a voice just above the rumble of the bulldozers, helicopters and rescue equipment. "Stop the Custodians. Together with your remote-viewing, with your ability to spirit-walk or whatever it is you do, and my resources, we can find them. Seek out their hiding places, penetrate their shields, and with this…" He gripped the case in both hands. "With this… we will wipe them out, bury them under a billion tons of earth like the cowardly moles they are. Wipe them out and reclaim this world for ourselves."
Xavier felt dizzy. Tugged in two directions. "No," he whispered.
"Xavier, don't be a fool. They see what's happening. They're tracking evolution. We're changing, transforming… into what they can't abide."
"What?"
"Changing into them." Calderon grit his teeth. "Use your viewing powers later to confirm all this, but trust me. They are the ones that have constantly interfered in humanity's path. The Flood. The Tower of Babel… Anytime we got too close, started working together, started evolving toward something, unlocking genes they had tried to deactivate. Custodians indeed!" He made an expression of disgust. "Custodians of their own perverse lordship perhaps. If you look, you'll see their bloody fingerprints stamped across history. Since Babylon and since crushing the last great human civilizations, like those Indus Valley, Peru, Egypt and Cambodia, China—wherever man dared to advance and reach for their true destiny—we believe they've opted for the subtle approach. Fostering wars and disunity. Corrupting religion so humanity is always at each other's throats."
"Fighting ourselves so we can't see the real enemy?" Xavier had to smile. "Reagan made the same speech at the UN in 1985. Thought maybe if aliens threatened us, we'd find common ground and unite against them."
"Yes, you have it! And yes, I've had predecessors who have sought to change the status quo. But none with the access to the knowledge or power that I possess. They fear people like you, like my twins. Like the Morpheus Initiative. And they've dreaded the rediscovery of The Emerald Tablet."
"But if it could hurt them, surely they would have found it first. Being as powerful as you claim. They could have done what Caleb did and fou
nd it first."
Calderon shook his head, his eyes twinkling. "For some reason, they couldn't. Maybe they've forgotten how, or else they misjudged and believed it was destroyed or if not, that at least no one would be able to retrieve it."
Xavier frowned. Something didn't make sense there. "But…"
"Xavier, stop thinking with your head. Use your heart. Your gut. You know I'm right."
"But HAARP… if it can do what you believe it can, then these Custodians would have infiltrated it. Sabotaged it, destroyed the potential tool of their own destruction. You can't sneak something like that past them." He glanced outside. "Especially after this."
"We're well defended," Calderon insisted.
"I found you, RV'd it quite easily. I just couldn't physically access the site, not without help."
Calderon shrugged. "I admit I was worried, but we're being protected. The legacy of Marduk perhaps. Either way, it's our fate. Our mission is crucial, and it's not going to be stopped. We will root them out, and with those keys…" He pointed out the window. "We'll translate this Tablet fully, and then their worst fears will come true."
"What do you think that's going to tell you?"
"Only how to reactivate the genetic material the Custodians blocked in our developing species." His eyes blazed. "We're going to do it, wholesale, across the globe. All at once, transforming the world."
Xavier trembled. He thought of Alexander, and the boy's love for that Pixar movie, The Incredibles. "And when everyone's super…"
Calderon got the connection immediately and laughed, then finished the line: "…no one will be."
After a pause, Xavier shook his head. "But something's not right. You're going to make a mistake. Enhancing your technology with the power of the Emerald Tablet will create a level of power beyond your control. You'll do something wrong. Maybe…" He had a flash of a vision: rocks and magma blasting out of a hole, something with massive force drilling into the depths, layer after layer until cutting through a massive hollow cavity. A gleaming city of marble spires and citadels, suddenly pulverized by an invisible wave of energy which then continues deeper, deeper toward a churning crimson mass.
Xavier's eyes shot open. "You won't be able to control the depth. It'll go too far, causing chain reactions, magnifying the initial vibrations into something unstoppable. It'll smash into the core, disrupt the earth's axis…" He felt a rush of heat, heard nine billion souls cry out at once, and then…
"You'll kill us all," he said as he collapsed.
#
Treading carefully over the massive fragments of the library's shattered glass dome, Nina followed the boys toward the smoldering pit. At the precipitous edge, she looked down. Hundreds of feet, past the crumbling masonry, the twisted metal posts, the smoking husks of several taxis that had been unloading passengers, the fused layers of iron and drywall, the sparking wires, the jagged bookshelves thrust like spears into the sides. Huge chunks of the library's outer wall—the rounded Aswan Granite carved with scripts from 120 different languages—littered the ledges and were scattered about the pond, the highway, and even lodged in the walls of nearby buildings. Several boats in the harbor had been crushed with exploding debris. In the pit, a host of pages fluttered about, still whirling, descending into the darkness.
In the wreckage, Isaac found a large leather-bound book, its cover sheared in half, spine dented. Smiling, he picked it up, dusted it off and then flung it, Frisbee-style, into the void.
Nina lowered her head. So unlike his father.
Jacob stood farther back, a little wary of heights, still shaken from the last minor aftershock that had rescue crews and spectators running for safety. He edged closer to Nina, started to reach for her hand again, but then saw his brother glaring at him; so he withdrew, shambling over to Isaac.
"Keep back," Nina ordered. "You had your look. That should be enough."
Isaac shrugged like he hadn't a care in the world. "No problem, not for us. Just wanted to see the carnage, we did. See what daddy Calderon can do when he sets his mind to it."
"And when we help him," Jacob added, the excitement in his voice faltering as he surveyed the damage once more.
"Come along then." Nina led them around the barrier, carefully stepping over blocks and gaping fissures. They made their way to the makeshift command center that had been set up inside the planetarium. Rising from a reflecting pool on the outskirts of the main library, the planetarium had been miraculously spared, along with several other ancillary buildings, research centers and administrative offices. The waters of its reflecting pool however, displayed only a pall of lingering smoke, occasionally bisected by roving news helicopters.
Nina and the twins walked around shell-shocked workers, numb-faced police standing beside army members and rescue workers who looked dumbfounded at the totality of the destruction, so much so that they had nothing to do and no one to save. Anyone down in that hole, they reasoned, was beyond hope.
But Nina knew otherwise. After flashing her credentials to a pair of soldiers, she entered the planetarium lobby.
She strode into the main command center, through members of UNESCO, who gave her a wide berth, barely registering the presence of the two out of place boys at her heels; she headed for the center terminal where a man in khakis was bent over a flat screen monitor. He adjusted the Bluetooth device at his ear and then tapped a section of the display—the output of the ground-penetrating radar, showing ridges, clumps of debris and hollow sections.
"Yes sir," he said. "We've pinpointed three such cavities directly under the impact site that could contain survivors. We can get drilling teams started, but without any other information, we're going to have to guess…"
"You don't have to guess," Nina said.
The man turned. Typical retired general sort, Nina thought. Stocky, a little pot-bellied. Neck like an elephant's leg and a hair as white as a tusk. He stood up straight and let his eyes wander over her body. "Yes senator. She's here now. With… a couple kids."
Nina saw Isaac stick out his tongue.
"All right, all right. Your call." He tapped his ear, ending the conversation. "So, your boss says to dig where these rugrats tell me to dig."
Nina smiled. "He's your boss too. And these rugrats are our only chance."
The man shrugged. Looked her over again, his gaze lingering around her chest. Then he stuck out his hand. "I'm-"
"I don't care," Nina said, brushing past him and letting the boys take two vacant chairs around the screen. "We don't have time to get acquainted."
Jacob glanced up at her with a smile of admiration at the way she handled the general, then settled his attention on the screen.
The commander tried to move in closer. "This, I gotta see."
"Give us some space," Nina ordered. "Go assess something. Now, boys. You know the target, and we know he's alive. So I need you to focus. Think about these three air pockets down there. Think hard, and try to see. Where is he? Where is-?"
"-our brother," they both said in unison, after closing their eyes.
But Isaac peeked, and nudged Jacob's arm. "Wanna race?"
"Shut up. I've already won."
"Boys," Nina began. They were rushing, clouding the reading. This wasn't the way.
But then, aware that the commander was still at her back, watching all this, both boys reached out at the same time, as if they were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, and both pointed to the middle cavity, under the thickest section of collapsed concrete, earth and debris.
"Shit," said the commander. "Had a bad feeling they'd pick that one."
Just to be sure, Nina thought, she joined her hands to theirs, squeezed and let the information jolt up her arms like two pythons coiling and slithering up to strike at her skull.
Two visions, both almost identical:
Near darkness. A feeble beam of light, dancing around the wreckage, highlighting broken scrolls and broken bodies crushed under huge blocks. The light shining up… and the vision scutt
ling up the beam with it, through the gap in the cracked ceiling, up past huge blocks, broken metal beams, another body impaled on broken glass, and then out, looking straight up from the center of the crater…
She let go. "Good job, boys."
"Of course, mother." Isaac beamed at her, although she couldn't help notice the sarcasm in his voice. Jacob lowered his eyes. "How soon can we get down there?"
"About six hours, I'd say." The commander picked up a CB and started barking orders in Egyptian.
"So what do we do while we wait?" Jacob asked, glancing around at the exhibits, the huge photographs taken from the Hubble Telescope, the models of lunar modules and landers. Nina saw his curiosity and wondered again what kind of childhood they'd had with Calderon. School? Friends? Regular boy stuff like playing with rockets and digging for worms? Or had they bypassed all that, being groomed instead for a grander destiny?
"I've got new objectives for you all," said Mason Calderon, striding inside, then leaning on his cane. "And another set of eyes."
He moved aside, and pointed the cane like a stage magician—and there stood Xavier.
"Why," asked Nina, "is he out of handcuffs?"
Xavier shrugged. "Bondage was never my thing."
"Xavier has seen the wisdom of our mission, and that really there is no other choice. Isn't that right?"
Xavier kept his eyes on Nina. He seemed pale, shrunken, like he'd lost a couple years. She remembered how she'd reacted when Calderon first showed her what was at stake, who the real enemy was. It was a lot to digest, almost too incredible to comprehend.
"We've been working the same side all along, just from different angles. All that's important is stopping them."
"And your recurring visions of doom?" Nina asked, barely moving her lips.
The Cydonia Objective (Morpheus Initiative 03) Page 13