Threshold

by Robinson, Jeremy

  For the small object to have gravity, it would have to be incredibly dense. “They’re miniature suns,” he said.

  “Very bad,” Alexander repeated before heading past the sun. “Scientists at the National Ignition Facility are trying to achieve a sunlike fusion reaction using lasers that would supply infinite energy, but this … this goes beyond any science known to me.”

  “And I don’t see any lasers,” Queen said.

  They all knew the implications. Ridley had unlocked the secrets to not just immortality, animating stone, and imbuing clay with life, or a close approximation of it, but he’d also unlocked the secret to creating light—not in a Thomas Edison sense, but in a real creator of all existence sense. Something beyond their comprehension.

  King looked at his high-tech XM-25. Its exploding rounds seemed crude compared to the tiny sun behind them. Could he really stop a man who had made himself a god? He looked at Alexander, who had manipulated history so that the world believed he, the mighty Hercules, was a half-human half-god myth. But now Ridley had, in fact, achieved such a thing.

  Alexander met King’s eyes. “He’s still human.”

  Realizing they’d been thinking the same thing, King asked, “How do we kill him?”

  “We can’t kill him,” Alexander said. “But we can silence him.”

  “How?”

  “Take off his head. Burn the flesh.”

  “Like the Hydra.”

  A raised hand from the front of the hall silenced the hushed conversation. Knight pointed through the tunnel exit, then to his ear. They heard somebody. King met them at the end of the tunnel and stopped to listen. The deep baritone voice was impossible to mistake.

  They’d found Richard Ridley.

  A second voice, identical to the first, replied.

  They’d found several Richard Ridleys.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  KING LED THE team toward the voice, moving slowly and silently. He stopped at a tunnel that branched away and turned back to the others. He pointed to Queen, Bishop, and Knight. “See where this goes. Keep your eyes open for Fiona.”

  Queen hesitated, but then nodded. She didn’t want to miss taking out Ridley, but King was right. Their best chance of finding Fiona was splitting up. Each member of the team carried an insulin shot. It didn’t matter which one of them found her first. As long as someone found her.

  Queen led Bishop and Knight down the side tunnel, their path lit by equally spaced mini-suns.

  King and Alexander resumed their approach toward the hallway’s end, toward the voices. The exit was narrow and provided plenty of wall on either side for the two men to hide behind. They stood flat against the brown stone and peeked into the chamber beyond.

  The space was vast and separated into two rings. The outer hall wrapped around the room. Its walls were covered in stone murals and blocks of cuneiform. The floor was nearly smooth, constructed from massive stone blocks fit tightly together. Several tall statues, arms raised high, separated the outer hall from an inner chamber. They appeared to be supporting the roof, but King suspected they were decorative.

  He eyed the closest statue. Its style was clearly Sumerian—rigid posture, straight limbs, curved joints. All were masculine in build but wore what looked like shin-length skirts. Stiff-looking rolls of hair stretched down just below the shoulder line. King had no doubt that if he could see the face it would have the same oversized, oval, blue lapis lazuli eyes he’d seen beneath the sands of Babylon.

  He motioned to Alexander and then to the two nearest statues. Alexander responded by taking a quick peek into the room and then dashing across the twenty-foot distance to one of the statues. He stopped behind it, throwing himself against its backside without making a sound.

  King noticed how easy it was for Alexander to move with stealth. How many times had he snuck up on an enemy? How many wars had he taken part in? Better yet, King thought, how many wars has he started?

  Alexander peeked around the statue briefly and then waved King in.

  King covered the distance to a second statue quickly and stopped behind it. Its legs, hewn out of a solid chunk of marble, easily hid his crouching form. He leaned around the statue’s base and looked into the center of the chamber.

  He didn’t notice the stepped ceiling or the faces of the eight other statues wrapping around the room. He paid no attention to the tables stationed over a dark brown stain on the stone floor, or the lab equipment and specimen cages they held. He only saw Richard Ridley.

  Two of him.

  They stood to either side of a third man, whose body and head were concealed by a hooded cloak. But he appeared disfigured somehow, like a hunchback. The three men were speaking with hushed voices, impossible to discern. In fact, King wasn’t certain what language they were speaking.

  Then it hit him, they’re speaking the mother tongue!

  But were they having a conversation or doing something more nefarious?

  King’s question was answered by a puff of grit that fell from above. He saw it fall slowly past his face and land on his arm. He turned his head up, tracing the fallen dirt’s path back up.

  Two football-sized blue eyes, twisted with rage, stared back at him. The statue’s head had turned around! Its puglike nose was pulled up to reveal a snarling mash of sharp teeth. Though clearly Sumerian, the statues were not designed to look human. Not fully human at least.

  Before he could move or shout a warning to Alexander, the statue sprang to life, wrapping its large arms around his ribs in a crushing bear hug. He marveled at the speed and silence with which the golem moved. It seemed Ridley was perfecting the art. Then the pain struck as his body was pinned in a stone embrace. His weapon and gear pushed against his body, making struggling painful and escape impossible. He pummeled the golem a few times, but his efforts were fruitless. It couldn’t feel pain. Hell, King thought, it probably can’t feel anything.

  He was lifted off the ground and turned around. Twenty feet away, Alexander was being treated similarly, though his arms were pinned to his sides while King’s remained free. But he continued to fight against his bonds. The injuries Alexander received were healing as quickly as he inflicted them on himself, but even he was unable to break free.

  The two Richard Ridleys and the hooded man faced the pair.

  Ridley’s voice filled the chamber, “Welcome, King,” but neither of the Ridleys had spoken.

  The man in the middle is also Ridley, King thought. Ridley 1.0. But what’s wrong with his body?

  “And our unknown adversary I presume?” Ridley said.

  King saw the cloaked figure’s hood turn toward Alexander as he spoke, confirming his suspicion that he was also Ridley.

  “We have much in common, you and I,” Ridley said. “Though you seem to lack my ambition.”

  Alexander remained silent, his arms shaking as he tried to pull them free of the golem’s grasp.

  “Or is it that you just lack the brains? After all, you were born into a world that was flat. You would have had no concept of the world as a whole. I respect what you’ve done, the lives you’ve lived. But you have been small-minded for thousands of years. Of course, you didn’t have the mother tongue. It was gone before your time. Even if you could speak the language, the lack of technology would have created logistical problems. How could you reach a planet full of people?

  “Happily, that’s no longer a problem.” Ridley reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive. “Fifteen seconds of audio to change the world. When I’m done there will be one language again. One god. The human race will be united under me for all time.”

  Ridley turned back to the table, opened a laptop, and plugged in the flash drive. King followed the cable leading out of the laptop. It hung down to the floor. From there, the cable stretched out between two of the statues and ended at a row of blinking servers. He hadn’t noticed them before, hidden in the darkness. Several more cables came out of the servers, many descending into the stone floor, and just
as many rising up through the ceiling.

  “You’re connected to the whole world?” King asked.

  As the computer booted, Ridley turned around. “It’s a simple matter really, though not possible without the help of my Russian friends. How is Rook, by the way? Did he run into any trouble in Siberia?”

  King remained stoic. Rook’s fate was something he couldn’t worry about right now.

  Ridley smiled when King didn’t take the bait. “The Russians have given me access to land lines, cell towers, and satellites around the world. Their hackers have arranged for a thirty-second, all-access pass to the rest of the world’s communications. Of course, the Russians believe my goal is to hack into and collapse the U.S. financial market, but they won’t complain when they learn the truth. No one will ever complain again.”

  Ridley tapped his head. “Because the real hack, that’s up here. In the human mind. Did you know that there was a time in human history when the human race was docile? Call it the subservient gene or naïveté gene. Whatever you like. We were loyal, loved unconditionally, and lacked cunning. Like biped cows. We had free will to choose whether or not we would, say, eat an apple or a grape, but knew nothing of good and evil. And then, something flipped the switch.” He snapped his finger. “And we changed. We became killers, consumed with greed, lust, and envy. The original speaker of the mother tongue made us this way. I’m going to fix things.”

  “So you’re flipping the switch back?” King asked. “Is that it? You’re going to save the world?”

  With a nod, Ridley said, “That’s exactly what I’m doing. The human race will know peace again. There will be no war. No hate. No fear. We will be innocent once again. I’m simply modifying the language, redirecting humanity’s adoration from the original speaker of the language—to me.” Ridley stretched his arms out. “‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ You see? It’s all been prophesied.”

  Ridley smiled. “But you’re still wondering how? Oh ye of little faith. Some things are beyond human comprehension, King. The origin of the universe. The emergence of life on our planet. The same science that developed the theory of evolution and the big bang theory tells us both are statistically impossible. Yet here we are. The universe exists. The human race has evolved. And it all came to be … because of a language. Whether it’s the language of God, an alien tongue, or the tones of the universe, I don’t know. I don’t yet understand its origin, but I do understand its power.”

  “Like a child with a loaded weapon,” King said.

  Ridley considered King’s statement for a moment, his expression darkening. “Do you understand how a nuclear sub works? Stealth technology? The Aegis combat system? Could you even tell me how to smelt the metal your weapons are made from?”

  In fact, King could answer most of those questions, but the stone giant’s grip around his chest had begun to tighten. Were Ridley’s mood and the golem’s actions tied together? If Ridley grew angry enough would the golem respond by killing him? “Point taken,” King said, fighting to hide his pain.

  A smile returned to Ridley’s face and the grip on King loosened. But then he said, “You should be glad you’re here, King. This is one of the few places on the planet that is protected from the change. But I’ll take care of you personally. You and your little girl.”

  King’s insides ached with rage, but he didn’t fight his bonds. Buying time for the others to act was his primary goal. If he had to remain behind while they blew the place to kingdom come and made off with Fiona, he would do so willingly. The words of his father came back to him. There is no greater love than a father who is willing to lay down his life for his children. If it came to that, he would. And with that, King realized how truly attached he’d become to Fiona.

  Damnit, he thought, I love the kid.

  King saw the laptop was fully booted and some new software was loading up. Hoping to keep Ridley’s attention off the laptop, King asked, “What happened to you, Ridley?” King asked. “After you jumped out of the helicopter.”

  The hooded Ridley turned toward King.

  “I lost an arm,” Ridley replied. “Nearly my head.”

  “And I was born.”

  The second voice came from the cloaked Ridley, but sounded different. Had Ridley’s injuries wrecked his voice? Were his regenerative abilities not as refined as Alexander’s?

  “The injection I gave myself just minutes before our brief meeting had not been perfected.” He chuckled. “When I jumped from the helicopter I had no idea if I would survive or not. But I did. I had received the regenerative gene of the Hydra, but there was one other gene that had yet to be culled. I discovered its effects when I looked in the rearview mirror of the car that carried me to freedom.”

  King noticed that Alexander had stopped struggling and started listening.

  “It was this side effect that spurred my continued research into the mother tongue. For years, long before we met, I searched the past for clues to long-forgotten powers—which, as you know, led me to the ancient remains of the Hydra. Ancient maps, runes, texts, hieroglyphs—I collected and studied the world’s history and came to a stunning conclusion: the Tower of Babel story is real. I don’t yet fully understand the mechanics of how mankind’s language fractured, only that it did. In the past two years I have pieced together several key phrases of the lost language that allow me to alter and reshape the physical world as well as the thoughts and emotions of the people in it. Not to mention I now have the key to ridding myself of this unfortunate disfigurement.”

  “Be kind,” said the higher pitched, wet voice.

  “Apologies, Adam. You will always be my first son.”

  Adam. The name struck a chord with King. Ridley had been naming his golem clones after the bloodline from Adam to King David. Was this Adam the first of his lifelike golems?

  “I hoped to separate myself from him—from Adam. Thankfully,” Ridley said, holding up a stone tablet, “the final piece of the puzzle arrived from Stonehenge.”

  King could see a series of Egyptian-like runes covering one side of the bluestone tablet. He could probably spend his whole life on the task and never decipher what it said. Ridley, on the other hand, had apparently done so already. “One of Merlin’s greatest hits?”

  Ridley grinned. “I’m afraid Merlin can’t take credit for the words recorded here. He simply recorded the words taught to him in Egypt. And it’s just one of the many ancient efforts to preserve the ancient language in stone—the only medium that can reliably last the test of time.”

  “El Mirador,” King said, realizing that Ridley had been collecting bits and pieces of the spoken and written language.

  “One of many sites that contained written samples of the mother tongue,” Ridley said. “Your primitive friends in Vietnam, though unable to read the words carved on the walls, added to my knowledge as well. And with the words gleaned from Merlin’s fragment, Adam and I can rejoin the world above as whole individuals.” Ridley affectionately rubbed a hand over the tablet before placing it down on the table behind him. “And you are just in time to witness our separation.” The cloaked Ridley stepped forward, raising his arms out to the side. “Show yourself, Adam.”

  King gaped as a third arm reached up over Ridley’s head and took hold of the hood. The fingers, thin and bent, wrapped around the fabric and then pulled back quickly.

  Ridley stood before them, bare-chested and pale, his bald head shining under the light of a halo of mini-suns. The third arm reached up and over his torso, gripping his chest tightly. A head followed it, rising up behind his shoulder. The face was Ridley’s, though slightly disfigured.

  “Thank you, King,” Adam said. “Without you I would have never been born.”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  QUEEN WAITED BY the entrance to a small room, keeping watch while Bishop and Knight checked out what was inside. She
was bothered by the lack of security. In the past, Ridley had surrounded himself with the high-tech security force known as Gen-Y. They had ultimately failed him, so it was understandable that they were no longer in his employ, but if he had reason to be paranoid about security before, he had twice as many reasons now.

  Yet the hallways were empty.

  Which meant Ridley had no need for security, had lost his marbles, or had plenty of security that they had yet to discover; she hoped it was the second, but suspected it was a combination of the first and last. Maybe all three.

  Knight and Bishop exited the room. “Looks like it used to be an armory. Lots of old blades buried beneath a layer of fibrous dust. Probably ancient wood.”

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been in there recently,” Bishop said.

  “Probably not since this place was built,” Knight added.

  Queen moved on in silence, her thoughts on the mission, but also with Rook. He should be here now, she thought. But he was either dead and not returning, or alive and in trouble. Of course, she thought, he could be alive and choosing to stay away. But if that were true … She forced the thought from her mind and turned her full attention to the entryway ahead. She could hear a scratching sound. She detected a foul combination of odors next.

  She paused and breathed through her nose.

  Piss and shit.

  With her XM25 pressed firmly against her shoulder, Queen entered the chamber and froze. Large cages filled the room, lining every wall and stacked three high. She quickly noted the stenciled labels on the front of each cage, written in Russian. And beneath the labels, a Manifold Genetics logo, also in Russian. “Look,” she said, pointing to one of the logos. “These cages were either here before we took Manifold down—”

  “Or the company is still active,” Knight finished.

  “In Russia,” Queen said. They had witnessed the destruction of Manifold Gamma and Beta. And they had captured the Manifold lab in New Hampshire known as Alpha. But with plenty more letters in the Greek alphabet remaining, who’s to say there weren’t as many Manifold facilities left?