01-01-00 (47 page)

“In a moment.”

While Cameron continued to inspect the burial chamber, Susan provided the astrophysicists with step-by-step instructions on how to operate her equipment, the required access passwords, which programs to bring up on her laptop, and how to set it up in receiving mode in preparation for the upcoming event. She had already made the necessary changes for the selected frequency range in the morning, following a night of discussions with the Japanese team. Ishiguro and Joao were able to lower a canteen and a pack of plastic-wrapped beef jerky—which Susan and Cameron consumed quickly, neither of them having had any breakfast and just a light dinner the night before. While they ate, Ishiguro had informed them of the help on the way, including a medical helicopter for the unconscious shaman and other wounded natives, plus two dozen SEALs for protection. It was then that Susan had learned that Troy Reid was also coming, along with a half-dozen members of her team plus more computer gear.

Now they sat on the stone floor, tired, cold. Cameron had further dimmed the lantern to nothing more than a vague glow, enough to break the total darkness that would otherwise engulf them. He could barely make out the carvings on the opposite wall of the chamber.

“Hold me,” Susan said in the near darkness, scooting over, resting her head on his chest. He hugged her, closing his eyes, her nearness making him forget about computer viruses and ancient temples. Cameron savored her touch, her arms reaching behind him, pressing him against her, close, very close, the intimacy amplified by their surroundings. They were alone, isolated, a hundred tons of stone shielding them from the outside world.

Cameron Slater, eminent archaeologist, field expert, distinguished college professor, realized that for the very first time in his busy life he had developed strong feelings for someone else—despite his best efforts to use past relationships to force such alien emotions aside. He didn't have the time, the desire, the need to get involved like this, with something that went so far beyond anything he had experienced before, that he felt exposed, sailing in uncharted waters, trekking through unfamiliar jungle.

But primal feelings had already begun their slow outward motion, released from the deepest corner of his soul, slowly turning, radiating outward, gaining control of his senses, of his mind. His logic told him to let go of this, to walk away, to seek comfort elsewhere. But Susan Garnett had already burst into his life, awakening feelings he didn't know existed, making him long for a life much different from the one he had lived. He wasn't sure what it was about her that drew him in with a power far stronger than the Brazilian dancer, or the Peruvian beauty. Susan Garnett was beautiful, but so were so many others, and some even more gorgeous and exotic. Perhaps it was her smile, or the way in which she focused those hazel eyes on him, honest, profound, conveying comforts beyond those of the flesh, offering friendship, companionship, love.

Susan's breathing grew steady, serene, peaceful. She curled up like a baby, head on his chest, legs tucked over his thighs. He kissed the top of her head and also fell asleep.

4

The electromagnetic meters on both the SETI gear and Susan's jumped to life at the frequency of 1.42 GHz, peaking at an amplitude of 30 dBs, providing Ishiguro and Jackie with a clear representation of the EM energy bombarding the area.

Troy Reid, the bald and overweight official from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stood behind them, swabbing his forehead with a handkerchief inside one of the dozen tents that the Americans had pitched in the courtyard following their arrival in the middle of the afternoon. Close to thirty people roamed the site now, including a small army of Navy SEALs, deployed quite efficiently around the site. A medical helicopter had also flown to the nearby village. Word from Joao was that the local Maya had refused to let the strangers take away their surviving high priest and had forced them to tend to him on site. The last update he'd gotten from the Mayan chief was that the medics had stabilized the priest but weren't certain when he would regain consciousness. Reid had spent a long time chatting with Susan through the speaking tube, which the SEALs now used as a ventilation duct, to force air into the burial chamber. In the tent next door, the Americans had set up three HP workstations, fed by the generators, and networked back to Washington via dedicated satellite links.

The puttering from a pair of portable electric generators echoed to the rhythm of the tent's canvas flapping in the evening breeze. Ishiguro kept his eyes glued not just on the meter on the screen, but also on the bar next to it, which indicated the number of megabytes of hard drive being consumed as the analog-to-digital translators converted the waveforms into binary code.

At the same time, Jackie used their undamaged SETI gear, which included a portable ten-foot-diameter radio telescope, to gather additional information on the event by searching the microwave range, snapping radio images of the southern constellation Centaur. This part was really a long shot, because if their 350-foot radio telescope back at Cerro Tolo could pick up nothing but a faint violet haze surrounding the distant star, the ten-footer outside the tent stood little chance of capturing much beyond terrestrial EM noise.

The event lasted twelve seconds, and Ishiguro shut down the sensors.

“That was it,” he said, turning to Jackie, her china-doll features washed with amber light. “Just over forty-two megabytes. Like Susan predicted. Did you snap any pictures?”

Jackie nodded. “I'm not sure what we'll get with this little telescope. I've captured two images, both aimed at the expected origin of the source, based on its location for the past few days, as it follows an elliptical orbit around HR4390A. Each file's around 150 megabytes in size. It's going to be a little while before our portable system can convert them to images.”

“Let's look at the EM conversion first,” said Reid, sitting next to Jackie and beginning to work the keyboard of Susan's computer, pulling up the binary data dump. “Then we'll turn the HPs loose on your radio telescope images.”

He went to the bottom.

“The same date,” Reid said.

Ishiguro nodded. “Zero one, zero one, zero zero.”

“But the general pattern is much different from previous dates,” said Reid. “Much more defined.”

“I think we're now listening at the precise frequency,” Ishiguro offered.

“Let's see what it yields,” Reid said, forwarding the binary file onto the HP workstations.

5

Susan Garnett had her eyes closed, but she was not sleeping. Her mind was in a faraway place, in another time, when the night's cool air had filled her lungs with peace and comfort, bringing with it the sweet memories of Rebecca, of Tom, of a life that would never be again, a life that she now found herself remembering with affection, but no longer with
obsession,
also realizing that hope once again filled her.

Susan had felt alone then, but she didn't feel alone now, in the quiet and murky chamber, in the arms of Cameron Slater. Her body had belonged only to her husband, but he was gone, had been gone for a very long time, leaving her alone.

Alone.

Susan hated being alone. She had longed for the touch of a man, for the embrace of that stranger who had so suddenly come into her life, for the man who understood her pain and was willing to lend more than a helping hand during her worst moment of need.

Susan opened her eyes and turned in the direction of Cameron, who smiled.

A decent man.

“Hey, I thought you were—”

She put a finger to his lips and slowly shook her head as she sat over his thighs, facing him, her knees pressing against his sides, her fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders. Cameron closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her touch.

Leaning down, she kissed him, enjoying his taste, his lips, soft, unlike the rest of him, hardened by years of fieldwork. He cupped her face and returned the kiss, passionately, but with the gentleness of a partner, of a husband.

“Thank you,” she said, a hand on his cheek.

“No. Thank
you,
” he replied. “I'm enjoying this as much as—”

“Sue? Dr. Slater? You guys down there?”

They looked up, toward the speaking tube.

“Where else can we be, Troy?” she replied, standing, but not before kissing Cameron once more.

“Rain check?” he whispered.

“Absolutely.”

“We have a match,”
Reid said, his voice sounding surreal.

“We do?
Where?
” Cameron now stood by her side.

“Palenque. We got a perfect match with the Maya site at Palenque.”

Susan and Cameron exchanged a puzzled glance.

“What does that mean?” she asked Cameron, who turned up the intensity of the lantern and began to pace around the crypt.

“It certainly suggests that the point of contact on zero one, zero one, zero zero is Palenque, not here.”

“What do you think is going to happen there?”

“Well, according to Mayan mythology, the completion of the Great Cycle, at the end of the thirteenth
baktun,
will be a moment of global harmonic realignment, when the spirit of Pacal Votan, galactic agent 13 66 56 0, will return to Palenque to bring unity to his people. There are some parallels here with the Christian belief of a second coming of Jesus.”

“On the day of final judgment?”

“Correct. But for Christians, that day symbolizes the end of the world, the final chapter of the Earth.”

“The apocalyptic message in the Book of Revelation,” Susan said.

“How do you know about—”

“I'm Catholic. In the Book of Revelation the angels of the Lord come to Earth to set the stage for the second coming of Jesus Christ.”

“In Mayan mythology this day is supposed to symbolize a new beginning, a refreshing of the spirit to begin a new Great Cycle.”

“But the Maya have all but disappeared,” said Susan. “The modern world has eradicated their culture to a few isolated spots. You yourself told me that Palenque is nothing but a tourist attraction these days, plus whatever digging archaeologists like yourself might be doing. Whose spirits is Pacal going to renew? The terrorists even killed two of the priests and wounded the third.”

Cameron sighed. “Good question.” Then he spoke directly into the hollow duct connecting them to the surface. “Reid?”

“Yes, Dr. Slater?”

“Was there anything else translated? Anything at all?”

“The date was the same. The only odd thing was that although the Temple of the Inscriptions is not geographically at the center of Palenque, it was at the center of the binary map.”

Cameron looked about him. “There's something else that's missing. We now have the place and the time, and I also think we may have the message, but I fear that something else must be done to replace the fact that Palenque is not the same place Pacal left in
A.D.
683. Much has changed since.”

“We've contacted the White House,”
said Reid.
“The President is currently in conference with the Mexican president to figure a way to isolate the area for the next couple of weeks, if that helps in any way.”

“It will likely help once we know what else must be done.”

Susan stepped up to the speaking hole. “What about the body of the virus? The 260 bytes of data that are always different on each daily event?”

“I checked them, Sue. They're still following the same pattern since we began tracking them on the twelfth.”

“That may be the last piece of this puzzle,” Cameron said.

“But how are we going to figure it out?”

Cameron didn't answer, his eyes shifting back to the ancient carvings.

6

Cameron Slater wasn't a gambler by nature, but he certainly knew how to mitigate risks, how to gather all available information before making a decision. He knew that the global event on 01-01-00 would take place in Palenque. He also knew that Pacal Votan was due to return to Palenque on this date to refresh the human spirit and prepare it for the next Great Cycle. Around the crypt were stone buttons that he could press, one of which, he felt certain, would not only reveal a passage out of the crypt, but also provide another clue on what work remained to be done prior to the end of the thirteenth
baktun.