Decipher (27 page)

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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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Sarah stopped in her tracks. She had to steady herself as the image on her retina changed. “What's going on?” she demanded. “Goddamn, I wish you'd given me some warning.”
Floating translucently at eye-level now, right in front of
her were two images. Richard Scott in a hotel bedroom, and a darker guy, with curling lips.
“Well, hello again,” the darker guy said smoothly, oozing overwhelming charm. “This is a pleasant surprise.” His voice had a little reverb to it. A by-product of the conference call.
“For you maybe,” Sarah replied, checking her position a few short steps away from the rise up to the chamber that housed the tools and megalithic crystal. But she had no desire to go there just yet. Carefully, patiently, always alert to the possibility she may have been led into a loyalty trap, Sarah explained what she knew about the Amazon, about China, and about seismic activity.
What she didn't expect was to find unity in her thesis, with the physicist.
“So it is possible,” Sarah reiterated, “the sun's been pulsing out gravity waves for years?”
“It's not only possible,” Hackett warned, “it's the likeliest scenario. Gravity-wave detection is a totally new science. It demands refinement. I'm sure gravity-wave detectors a hundred years from now will be like our communications are to valve-operated wirelesses a hundred years ago.”
“If there'll even
be
a hundred years from now.” Hackett didn't comment. “So how big would a detector need to be to measure tiny gravity waves? Would, say, the size of a planet be about right?”
“At least. The earth's the greatest measuring tool we have for studying its effects.”
“Have you heard of an oscillation phenomenon known as the Tesla Effect?” Hackett thought for a moment. Yes, he had. “I have earthquake data which may tell us how long this has been building up here on earth,” Sarah revealed, solemnly explaining about all five ancient sites being the focus for the low-frequency seismic waves. “I think it gives a pretty accurate picture,” she said.
“Of what?” Scott asked, finally managing to get a word back into the conversation.
“Of how much time we really have left,” Sarah said flatly.
 
Hackett was back in the NMRS lab at CERN. Matheson and Pearce were close by, poring over the raw data that was being
pumped into their workstation direct from the light computer center. The other chemists had gathered around to watch while Hackett shifted in his chair to accommodate them, all the while doing his best not to gawk at Sarah.
Matheson sketched out what he'd been told on a scrap of paper, and didn't like what he saw. He looked around, snapped his fingers. “Anybody here got a globe?” No reply. “An orange?” Somebody loaned him a lemon. Matheson didn't like to ask, just went to work with a magic marker and sketched on a map of the world over its surface. Then marked in the five sites with thick black dots. There was a definite geodesic design. He showed it to Pearce.
“Richard, you asked me before, what is the
use
of quantum mechanics? Well, this is it,” Hackett said to Scott in the meantime. “This is what quantum mechanics just did for us. Unlocked
quantum
cryptography. Code. Language. Information. Encoded at the atomic scale. It's all right here. I've found it! Written in base 60 mathematics, within the Carbon 60 crystals.”
“You're telling me there's computer code? Etched into the crystal?”
Matheson leaned and hi-jacked the call. “A whole lot of it,” he said, holding up the fruit for all to see. “I really gotta get a globe,” he complained.
 
Scott jerked his eyes off the screen. Was this some kind of sick joke? The only linguist on the team and when two pieces of the puzzle had just surfaced—he wasn't within arm's reach of studying
either
of them?
“Sarah? Did you hear that?”
“Yeah. Hold on, will ya?”
Scott looked to November for a reality check. Were things moving fast, or what? He went back to the phones. “Jon, can you give me more—Jon … ?” But Hackett was looking at something off screen. Off screen meant the other screen. Sarah. She was climbing up into some sort of room and—
Hackett saw it first. “That's one hell of a paperweight.”
 
There were packing crates littered around the chamber, wooden and sturdy. Reference numbers were daubed on the
sides with stencils and black paint. Straw filled each container, making them appear rustic and somehow out of place. In each one were being placed the hand-sized artifacts that once sat in the alcoves dotted along the walls. Lids were hammered into place with severe blows.
Sarah checked one of the containers, picking up one of the artifacts, which was like a tool of some kind. Untried and untested. She checked the documentation that went with it, trying to drown out for a moment the excited scientists on the other end of the line.
“What
was
that?” Hackett was saying.
“I don't know. I can't see. She keeps looking at those—things. What are they?”
“It doesn't matter,” Sarah mumbled. She checked the docket in a sealed plastic bag on the side. It was bar-coded, like a Federal Express pouch. Everything was being shipped to Texas.
She ripped the docket off. Stuffed it in a pocket and slapped her own documentation in its place.
Destination: Antarctica
. Judging by what Thorne was up to, she'd rather study these things herself than let them disappear into Rola Corp.'s vast and faceless research division. She had found these artifacts; they were hers. She leaned back from the crate as two Arab workmen retrieved it. Hauled it up and carried it off.
She did the next two in succession before Douglas called her over.
“Ah!” Scott exclaimed, finally getting a better look at the pyramid-shaped obelisk of crystal.
“Sarah, we're going to attempt to move this now,” Douglas announced. They'd set up chains and winches as well as hoists and a cradle for the crystal, should they ever get it out of the stone armature, but there was a stone overhang nearest the wall. It was impossible to get at it properly where it was. It would have to be moved closer to the three crystal beams that came in on the ceiling from the three smaller tunnels.
Douglas pushed at the armature. “This thing lets us slide it out to the center,” he demonstrated. “It's fairly easy. Takes a couple of people, that's all. Must be one hell of a counterbalance the other side of this wall. Anyway, once it's in the center we figure if we drill or hammer into it, one on each
surface, we might be able to compensate for no laser and knock some chunks off. Once we weaken it we can destroy it, and take the pieces home.”
“No, there's a problem,” Sarah said. “These crystal beams—they slope down at an angle. I think they're supposed to connect with the pyramid somehow. There's not much room for maneuver.”
“Let me worry about that,” was Douglas's response.
“What happened to our prototype field laser anyway? Should have brought that.”
“No idea,” Douglas replied. “They told me it was being used.”
Scott was mortified. “You're going to destroy it?”
“I wouldn't worry,” Pearce added on the other line. “It'll never work. They won't even dent it.”
Beneath the C60 pyramid was where the spiraled tunnel's own crystal strip came into the room across the floor and terminated by diving directly into the floor. Sarah made as thorough an inspection of the set-up as she could, to allow everybody on the phone time to digest what they were seeing, but it didn't take a physicist to figure it out. “You're right,” Scott sighed, relieved. “It'll never work. There's not enough room.”
“I know,” was all Sarah said.
Douglas did a double take before it dawned. “Oh, you're on the phone. Thorne?”
“Something like that.”
Douglas waved in her face. “Hey, Rip!”
The retinal images of Scott and Hackett glanced at each other across the inside surface of her eyeball. “Who the hell is Rip?” Hackett asked. Matheson swore in the background.
“You know what the crystal is, don't you?” Scott said excitedly. “That's the benben stone. People have searched for it for millennia.”
 
November sidled up to him on the bed. Handed him a coffee. Scott could feel her warmth through her thin cotton night-shirt. “What's the benben stone?”
Scott, coffee in hand, ran his finger over the outline of the crystal. “That.” He sipped his coffee. “The benben stone sat in the city of Heliopolis, the City of the Sun. Some say it
represented the ‘Primeval Mound,' where life began. The first place, some say, where civilization settled after the Flood. Others say the benben stone was the petrified semen of the sun god, Ra. It's supposed to hold mystical powers.”
Hackett went to open his mouth. “I don't know what kind of powers,” Scott chipped in quickly. “Where the stone sat in Heliopolis was believed to be where the sun's rays first fell each morning. In honor of it, on top of each pyramid, a gilded capstone was placed. But the original benben stone, the one from Heliopolis that was later placed on top of Cheops's pyramid—well, it disappeared.
“Benben derives from the word ‘weben,' meaning ‘to rise.' It's from that word the Egyptian benu-bird comes, the original Phoenix—the bird that rose again from the ashes. The benu-bird literally represents the sun—destruction and re-birth.”
Hackett was mulling it over on the other screen. “To rise …” he said slowly. “I wonder if that bears any relation to the hole in the ceiling above the stone … ?”
Sarah suddenly took her flashlight out and waved it at the ceiling of the chamber. She hadn't noticed that before.
“Well, I'll be damned,” she said.
 
Bob Pearce didn't know where to turn next. He had a choice of screens and on each one something new and wondrous was unfolding. But the string of computer data was paling against the tangible sights of the catacombs beneath the Sphinx. And the benben stone to top it all.
Pearce started muttering to himself, excitedly. Louder and louder. Attracting attention, but still nothing compared to the discoveries being made.
“In the ninth century, Ibn Abd Alhokim, an Arab historian, and later an Egyptian Coptic called Al Masudi, both spoke of ancient wisdom that said the Great Pyramid was built by an Egyptian King called Surid, or Salhouk, who lived three hundred years before the Great Flood. They said that there was a connection to Leo, and that this King had all scientific knowledge deposited into a place of safety, with strange beings placed by priests to serve as guardians and stop the knowledge falling into the wrong hands.”
Matheson came up alongside him. Concerned. “What type of beings?”
Pearce shrugged. “I don't know.”
Matheson glared at him. “Bob, what're you talking about?”
“I'm talking about history being proven correct yet again. I'm talking about … the vision.” His voice faltered in his throat. “The vision that I had. That chamber. It's exactly as I saw it …”
But no one was listening. Something else was concerning Matheson. He crouched down beside Hackett and watched the spectacle as Douglas led a team of men and swung the huge crystal pyramid out toward the center of the room.
“What do you think?” Hackett asked warily.
“I think,” Matheson said quietly, watching the crystal move, “that's a very bad idea.”
Hackett eyed him.
“Look at the way the room's laid out,” Matheson said. “Look at how the crystal beams there are going to connect with the pyramid stone and the beam in the floor. We know what this stuff can do, Jon. A damn satellite picked it up under two miles of ice. What if this is what the Chinese did? Look at them—they're creating a circuit. If they want that thing out of there, they better find another way of doing it because that whole room looks like a piece of machinery.”
Hackett rubbed his hand over his chin, disturbed. It was so obvious. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I think you're right.” And that was when the alarm on his wristwatch went off. He eyed Matheson darkly. “The sun …” was all he said.
 
Sarah kept quiet as she listened to the discussion batting backward and forward. A giant machine? What were they talking about? And what on earth were “The Guardians”? She didn't like the sound of that. “What kind of guardians?” She rapped out, “Are you saying there are some kind of creatures down here?”
Pearce went to answer but the crackle and hiss of static interrupted. Her radio was cutting in.
“Sarah. Come in. This is Eric, over.” He sounded faint. Perplexed. Distracted even.

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