by JC Ryan
In any case, a bigger expedition would have to go in. This time, they'd be dropped in by helicopter, now that they knew the exact coordinates. He'd send some engineers, maybe even Roy. That seemed more practical than archaeologists. There'd be no digging to the site, if JR's impression of depth was accurate. Robert agreed. They hadn't thought to look at their watches as they went down in what they were calling the elevator, as good a word as any. But, coming out had taken about ten minutes, and both men reported the sensation of speed. JR had even said "G's", as if the speed had increased their perception of weight. Incredible.
Daniel was getting the itch to go and see for himself, actually. The picture of what looked just like elevator doors set into solid rock was unbelievable. If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought it was manipulated with digital photo software.
***
JR and Robert had spent the night in Page, driving there in their rental car and making arrangements to drop it there instead of back in Flagstaff. Then they'd found an old-fashioned motel and washed the dirt of six days off them before going to That Dam Bar for an excellent meal and some craft beer. Robert kept chuckling at the name of the place.
It would have been nice to get out on the blue waters of Lake Powell, but they were both exhausted. Six nights of sleeping on bare ground would do that to you. Not to mention the trek back to the canyon rim, dodging mules coming down. On Thursday night, all they wanted to do was sleep in a bed, even if it wasn't the most comfortable they'd ever known. JR in particular was wishing he'd kept looking for a place with a king-sized bed, but the town was packed for some reason. No room at any inn but this one, and that only because of a last-minute cancellation. They were lucky not to be sharing a room, for that matter, or staying in two different places.
They'd phoned Daniel on the sat-phone as soon as they found a signal, while still in the canyon, to tell him of their find. Here in Page, the cell phone worked, though there wasn't a strong signal anywhere. JR had learned that their private jet would be ready for them at around three p.m. on Friday. That gave them time to catch up on sleep, have a leisurely breakfast, and drive out to the dam to act like tourists.
Why the 8th Cyclers would have put their facility so far below ground, where the desert beauty was hidden from view, was one of the many unanswered questions in JR and Robert’s minds. Unless what they'd found hadn't been an Eighth Cycle site at all. That possibility still remained, but JR was leaning toward another theory, one he would share only with Daniel and Sarah. Or maybe just Daniel. The implications were too ugly to throw out without regard for the feelings and psychological well-being of other people. He'd keep them to himself until he was able to share them with someone who might be able to help him sort them out.
Three-fifteen that afternoon found JR and Robert relaxing in the luxurious cabin of a Learjet on loan from one of the Foundation's generous supporters. JR didn't care who'd loaned it to them, but he was grateful as hell. The ability to stretch his long frame out in the relatively spacious cabin beat commercial flight by a long shot.
"I could get used to this," he remarked to Robert, as a pretty flight attendant handed him a frosty margarita.
"Same here," Robert responded, winking at the girl.
JR got a chuckle out of the blatant flirting going on. Suddenly, he missed Rebecca fiercely. She'd still be at her medical conference until tomorrow.
***
Daniel reflected that this was almost like old times. His most valuable friends, family and advisers were in the small conference room, its blinds drawn against anyone who wanted to snoop on this exciting meeting. Nicholas had returned to the building with Sinclair, Sarah was there, and Raj as well. The only new face was that of Stephen Matthews. JR and Robert were the center of attention. Even Luke was there, standing in for Salome, who would no doubt be unhappy to have missed this.
JR, with a fine sense of drama, had concealed his find in a small cardboard box, which he'd placed on the table, waiting for the last people to arrive. As soon as Sinclair had pulled out a chair for Nicholas and had taken one for himself, Daniel spoke.
"Friends, we could be on the verge of a discovery that could rival that of the original Tenth Cycle code. With certain caveats, JR and Robert believe what's in this box to be a relic from the Eighth Cycle. I'll turn the meeting over to JR to explain further."
If the others were impatient to see the artifact, they hid it well. But Nicholas, grown querulous in his old age, challenged. "What caveats? Quit hedging, boy, and tell us what you saw."
There'd been a time when such a demand would have raised JR's temper. But, he loved the old man who made it as much as he loved anyone in the world, and was used to his ways.
"Well, Grandpa, what we found was so close to modern construction that we weren't certain we'd found the Eighth Cycle site at all. A few things lead us to believe we did. But, instead of a fabulous old city carved into the living rock, we found a buried office building, very much like this one. Or, more accurately, I think it was more of a military or intelligence headquarters. Along with a large room that was for all the world like a cubicle farm except for no walls, we also found what I think was a dormitory and Robert observed a kitchen and what was probably a laundry facility."
Underwhelmed, Nicholas sat back with a sour expression and a sound that could have been "Bah!"
JR ignored it. Grandpa would be interested again soon enough.
"We didn't have much time, because we were twenty feet above the canyon floor and it was already late afternoon when we went in. We wanted to be out again before dark, so we could climb back down. Robert and I split up, after finding a door on either side of what we'll call the desk farm." He flipped a switch, and the overhead lights lowered as the viewing screen lit up. "Here's a diagram of the room we found immediately after being deposited what we calculated to be several hundred feet underground, if not several thousand."
Nicholas sat forward again, his mouth open to object to that depth, but JR forestalled the remark by rushing on.
"You can see that this room is unsupported by interior columns, suggesting construction of enormous strength. That's the first thing that led me to believe this was in fact Eighth Cycle. To the best of my knowledge, we can't do this today, unless the ceiling is arched and therefore self-supporting. This ceiling, as you can see, is flat, not arched. I want you to understand, though, that these thoughts didn't come to us right away. A lot of what we concluded came from talking as we walked back out of the canyon. Frankly, we were too amazed to say much of anything while we were in the facility."
The diagram of the room had been replaced by pictures, which showed a rather depressing sameness to the vast space. The walls were a gray metal color, but they glowed as if they were a light source, which in fact they were. The ceiling was of the same material, and glowed in the same way. Nothing embellished the walls. It contained row after row of plain tables with what looked like ergonomic chairs, all made of the same metal. The only thing remarkable about them being, of course, the peculiar suspension system for both tables and chairs, and the way the chairs adjusted to the correct height for whoever sat in them. While describing that, JR couldn’t help but smile, but a severe look from Robert with a significant glance above wiped the smile off his face in an instant. They had a mutual destruction situation. One word from either of them and the other would reveal their most embarrassing secret.
If it had been designed as a sensory deprivation chamber, the room would have been almost perfect, except that putting people in all those chairs and assuming they were talking, at least some of them, would have effectively created a rumble that would have been quite distracting. There was nothing on any of the table-desks that would indicate what the room had been used for.
"I don't understand," said Sarah. "This looks modern, sort of."
"That's what we thought," said JR. "We weren't sure we hadn't stumbled onto an abandoned government facility of some sort. As you can imagine, we were reluctant to snoop much,
in case that's what it really was."
"And yet, you entered closed doors and did explore," Sinclair put in. Luke nodded.
"We did. That's what we were there for, but it was creepy, let me tell you," JR said, for the first time sounding a little less than professional. "I'll let Robert describe what he found. What I found was a long hall, so long I couldn't see the end of it. With closed doors on both sides as far as I could see. I tried each door, with every technique I knew to try. None of them opened until I got impatient because it was time to head back and meet up with Robert. I kicked that one." JR had the grace to blush and look sheepish as he admitted that. Everyone but Sarah laughed. She was still skittish when JR exhibited anger, even after four years of no significant breakdowns.
"What happened then, boyo," Sinclair prompted.
"Well, – I used Robert’s technique. I swiped at the door and said ‘Open Sesame’, and the door opened." This even more sheepish statement earned an even bigger laugh. "I still don't know if that's the way you're supposed to open them. After I went in and saw what there was to see, there was no more time. Robert would have already been at the rendezvous point.”
Nicholas interrupted. “And in all your explorations, you didn’t find any remains, or other signs of people?”
“No, Grandpa, we didn’t. It looked like the place had been abandoned. I mean, there wasn’t even a speck of dust, anywhere. I guess there could have been some kind of ventilation system. We didn’t find it though.”
“There’d almost have to have been, with that many people in a facility so far underground. But how it could have survived, still functioning after so long, is a big question. No sign of people or remains. Remarkable.”
“Well, I did find a sign that someone had been there, in that dormitory room. It was in that room that I found this." JR pointed at the cardboard box. The mundane gesture did nothing to dispel the drama of the moment.
"Well, let's see it," Nicholas said.
JR opened the box and took out the object, another box, made of metal. He lifted the lid and picked up the box to tilt it and show it around the table. "May I?" said Nicholas, as if he hadn't been impatient about it for the last fifteen minutes. JR handed it to him.
Gingerly, the old man produced a pair of tweezers from somewhere in his clothing and grasped the edge of one of the leaves within, drawing it out and holding it up where everyone could see it. In contrast to the drab metal of everything else that JR had described, this was a wafer-thin sheet of what looked like metal foil that shone in every color of the rainbow, in a circular pattern that extended to the edges in the middle of the square sheet, but left the corners a single, coppery color.
No one uttered the obvious question, but it was surely on everyone's mind. What is it?
Raj supplied his theory in answer. "That looks like an electronic recording device."
His words broke the spell. Everyone started talking at once, but it was Sarah's voice that carried. "Do you mean like a memory foil?" The technology, consisting of depositing nano-metallic particles on a medium of silicon, had replaced the DVD technology in the first decade after Roy's discovery of how to do it. Instead of megabytes, a piece of material the size of the foil that Nicholas still held up would be large enough to store zettabytes of information; three orders of magnitude more than the terabytes that would have awed this group of people in 2014.
A soft noise was created by seven others letting out a held breath when Nicholas answered, "Exactly."
"Do you mean to say, Grandpa, that what's in this box could be as much information as the entire Tenth Cycle library?" Daniel demanded.
Nicholas shrugged. "I can't tell how many of these things are in the box. Could be, though. If this is what I think it is, it’s got as much information in it as the entire Library of Congress did in my day." In fact, it would have been more, but that was the best analogy the old man could come up with at the time. He put the foil back into the box, careful not to crumple it, where it joined hundreds of others, as closely stacked as the pages of a book. "Trouble is, we have no idea how to read it."
Everyone looked at Raj, who paled under his brown complexion. "I...I'm afraid I'd destroy some of the information if I tried," he protested.
The material was indeed delicate, at least it looked delicate. The group sat, each silently raking his or her memory for anything they'd heard that could help. Then Robert perked up. "What about Roy?" he asked. "Couldn't he examine it under one of his non-destructive instruments and maybe get an idea? Say, where is Roy?"
“He and Salome took a well-deserved vacation. They should be back on Monday."
Chapter 19 - You're gonna love it
By Friday morning, Salome despaired of finding the last thing they needed. The hot springs complex Roy had surmised was exactly where he thought it would be. Even more to their delight, it was a large field of "pots" as Roy called them, some large, some smaller, and of varying temperatures. Several had been the perfect temperature for bathing, but they confined their daily baths to one of the smaller ones, not knowing whether they would contaminate it with what they washed off. Already they planned to return if they could find fresh water and the cave system that Salome insisted would accompany the ideal spot. They had taken samples from the pot they chose for bathing before they got in. When they returned, they'd know whether the other pools were off limits or not, depending on how the water sample changed.
Roy insisted that fresh water wouldn't be a problem, and was proved correct well before the supply they'd brought with them was used. A spring in one of the limestone outcroppings flowed into a narrow crack that led to one of the nearby creeks. Though they couldn't use the water from the creek without filtering it, the spring water tested purer than city drinking water. It tasted wonderful, too. Salome had never thought about the taste of water before.
The only remaining problem was the cave system. They'd hiked for miles each day, always staying within reasonable distance of the hot springs area and the fresh water spring. They'd moved the camp closer to the latter, so they wouldn't have to waste time fetching water from half a mile away.
"Roy, we've covered every inch of the mountainside we'd be able to reach from here. It's a bust."
"No, it isn't. Look." Roy unrolled the last of the topographic maps they hadn't used yet. It was inconvenient, but they were in a spot that was covered by the contiguous corners of four different maps. Hard to see the contours of the land that way, without creasing the maps, which went against his compulsions. Last night, he'd done it anyway, and now he fitted the last map into the corners where the contour lines would line up with the others.
"We're right here," he said, pointing to a spot near the edge of one of the maps. We've been here." Now his finger moved, covering the areas they'd explored. "But not here." His finger rested on the last map, the one he'd just unrolled. The lines showed a steep upward slope, which he emphasized by pointing to the mountain that lay in that direction. "I've been hoping we'd find an entrance lower. But that's where we need to go before we give up."
"But Roy, if we have to run..." Salome objected.
"We may have to do a bit of covert engineering. But this spot has everything else we need. Let's see if it has a cave system, too."
Salome had to admit he was right. In the week they'd been there, she hadn't even heard an aircraft overhead. No cars had come to interrupt their idyll. There was plenty of space for housing for a few dozen people, and natural resources that would help them provide the comforts of modern life. Roy had explained how he'd use the hot springs for geothermal energy to provide electricity. And for food, if they had to stay long enough to deplete the supply they'd bring with them, the herd of fat deer that had scared her so badly the first night seemed to have accepted their presence and only scattered when approached. Surely there was other game around, too, and the soil appeared to be fertile.
"We need to decide what we'll do if we don't find anything today," she said. "It's over eight hours from Bill
ings to home, counting stops. And probably more than three from here to Billings. Do we want to make that drive in one day?"
"No, probably not. If we don't find anything today, we'd probably better head back no later than noon tomorrow. That won't give us much time to explore any more, though."
"No, because we have to break camp, and make sure we don't leave evidence we've been here. We'd better get started. Today's our last chance."
By now the routine was familiar. They shrugged on their packs, already replenished from yesterday's hike, and headed in the direction of the snow-capped mountain to the south. Salome let Roy break trail. Neither of them had been experienced hikers before this trip, though Roy had done a little with Robert and JR in the foothills north of Boulder. They'd pushed through the aches and pains on the first day, but the hot springs baths had soothed weary muscles. Salome had learned to use the alpine poles Roy brought, and appreciated the lift they gave her when a step was particularly steep. Today, they came in very handy. Roy had even brought his, though he'd foregone them in the past few days, claiming they were 'sissy'.
She couldn't help but observe that the route they were taking wouldn't make a great escape route. Even a fit adult wouldn't be able to run up this slope, not when poles were needed to balance on the rough terrain. And they couldn't very well build a path, since that would lead any attackers directly to them. When she mentioned it to Roy, he just said to let him worry about that if and when they found a cave.