Decipher (29 page)

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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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It wasn't so much the creaking from the walls that got to Scott first, or the way his coffee bounced across the bedside table. It was his bed. For as he sat there trying to decide what to do, it became startlingly obvious that it was sliding out from under him.
He jumped off, instinctively, just as the rumble of shaking concrete got louder. He could hear the panic and screams from adjacent rooms. The standard lamp across from him crashed to the floor, its bulb exploding in a shower of glass.
November yelped, and threw herself into the middle of Scott's bed. And that was when he saw it. A fissure, deep and black, opening up across the bedroom floor. The carpet moaned under the strain as the remaining strands of pile failed to halt the advancing crevice in the floor. Each thread pinged one by one as the floor covering was ripped in two.
“November!” Scott yelled, holding his hand out to her, but she just stared at it blankly as the bed bumped its way along and just hit the wall below the window.
“Dr. Scott!” she shrieked.
The glass light fixture smashed down from the ceiling. On the vid-phones Scott caught a glimpse of the pyramids on one screen, firing energy bolts up into the sky. On the other screen he could see Hackett and the men and women of CERN dodging falling equipment and spitting power arcs, before eventually both lines went dead. The vid-phones eventually clattered against harder surfaces.
The fire alarm erupted. Loud and metallic, as the window behind November's head succumbed to the pressure and disintegrated, blown inward as harsh, freezing winds blasted the glass into the room. It was only the heavy drapes, drawn across the window, that saved the young girl's life by taking the full force of the blast. They stopped her from being shredded by the surgically sharp daggers of glass.
She clambered out from under the thick heavy sheets as ceiling plaster crumbled. Dazed, she had no idea just how fast events were overtaking her as Scott plowed in. Snatched her off the bed and dragged her away in time as the floor collapsed, taking the bed down with it into the room below and beyond.
“Oh my God, what do we do?”
“We get out of here!” Scott yelled, squeezing her hand and dragging her to the door.
Trouble was, it was jammed.
“We can get out through
my
room!” November said, thinking quickly and leading the way.
They really weren't prepared for earthquakes in this part of the world. At least, not at this intensity. That much was painfully obvious as the pair dodged more falling plaster. But there was no way out from November's room either, and they were running out of options.
“Clear the closet,” Scott ordered. “I'll get the mattress.”
 
Within minutes they were huddled together, as safe as the situation allowed, under a mattress. Awaiting their rescue.
Hackett ducked his head back in under the table as another half-ton steel component whistled past and left a crater in the concrete floor. He looked to the others who were crouched down with him, tried half a smile. But only half. “Well,” he said. “This is fun.”
Matheson pulled his legs in tight. “That was a dry run? Shit, if that's what they got in Egypt, what the hell kind of thing can we expect in Antarctica?”
“Worse.” Hackett was certain. “Much worse.”
“We don't really have many options against this type of thing, do we?” Matheson croaked darkly.
“Sure we do,” Pearce said, crawling up next to him to allow Hawkes room to huddle into safety with them. “Ain't no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.”
“Huh?”
“We can pray.”
 
The scientists may not have liked it. But at least it was an option.
Sunset in the Amazon wasn't normally this exciting, Bulger figured. But then, this was his first visit, what did he know? Except the trees, ten feet across, some of them, interspersed with Acetic and Corozo Palms, Coco de Monas and Divedives, shouldn't be swaying like reeds. The ground shouldn't be shaking uncontrollably. The floodwater along the forest floor shouldn't be draining off into underground fissures, while the vegetation across the surfaces of the pyramids, thick and moist, shouldn't be bursting into flames. But it was.
The light from the sun seemed to visibly flicker, like a candle caught in a draft—when it wasn't obscured by thick angry cloud, which pelted down raindrops like bullets.
They'd assembled their base camp and equipment when the chaos struck. So panic-stricken were the remaining Machiguenga, they fled from their hiding places and made off into the jungle. Some chose to stay and fight, and for the first time Bulger got a close-up view of one of the fearsome painted warriors as he sprang from behind a tree, baring the incredible array of razor-sharp teeth he'd proudly filed himself.
They struggled for a moment, the Machiguenga biting down into Bulger's forearm, before Carver put a bullet in the back of the Indian's head.
Maple, for his part, stood in the clearing, eyeballing the sky in a bid to outstare God. Though he had just as much difficulty standing upright as anyone else, he seemed determined to ride out the trembling ground like a rodeo star on a bucking bronco.
Maybe they should have known it was coming when the jungle went eerily quiet moments beforehand. But the screams from the wildlife were deafening now, and as dead wood trees crashed into the clearing around the camp, the biggest surprise of the evening was revealed.
Holes in the ground.
Massive and deep, cutting into the mud around the bases of the pyramids. To begin with no one was sure whether they were ancient traps, or uncovered entrances, but Carver was
quick to bring his skill to bear, stumbling over to one hole and setting up his equipment.
As mud slid down into the pit, it took him a moment to calibrate, compensating for the gushing rain. But when he did and the results blinked onto the mini-screen, his face lit up. “Carbon 60!” he hollered. “Directly below! And leading all the way up into the pyramids!”
“Fuckin' A!” Maple yelled back, stuffing tobacco into his mouth. “This is gonna be easier than I thought!” He quickly directed the others to the machinery that was packed together under wet tarps. Earthquake or no earthquake, they had work to do. “Radio the choppers!” Maple ordered. “Tell 'em they may as well head out here now. We'll be trawling this stuff outta here by morning.”
Bulger nursed his arm as he set up the communications and Maple's men attached some kind of hi-tech canon to a tripod with a
Rola Corp. Research
logo on its side. They ran cables from its back to a generator, just the way Bulger had taught them, and awaited the signal.
“Okay!” Maple ordered. “Fire her up!”
They flipped the power on. Aimed at a tree and pulled the trigger. There was a screaming whine. A blinding flash. And the most powerful. particle beam ever created for portable use, twisted and sliced its way through the air, evaporating the rain in its path in a cloud of hissing steam, and blasting the tree trunk to splinters. Whoops of excitement shot around the encampment.
Maple gave the thumbs-up. “Shit, yeah!” he cried. “Now get down that fucking hole and start carving up our C60! We're getting paid by the kilo. And I intend to retire!”
They were achieving precisely what they had set out to do. They had found the ancient lost Peruvian Pyramids, had identified their contents, and were looting at their leisure.
But as they lowered each other down into the slippery, muddy pits by rope, and began slicing into the ancient crystal structures—spirals up long tunnels—what they could never know, was that by agreeing to dismantle the Carbon 60 monuments of Pini Pini, they had made one of the worst decisions of their lives. Certainly, it was going to prove one of the most devastating.
The essential feature of complex behavior is the ability to perform
transitions
between different states … Complexity is concerned with systems in which evolution, and hence history, plays or has played an important role in the observed behavior.
 
Grégoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine
Exploring Complexity: An Introduction,
1989
“It was a hand! I'm telling you, we
saw
a freakin' hand!”
“There was an awful lot of signal degradation when that power burst kicked in,” Houghton objected frostily. “There's no telling what you saw.”
“We saw something that was
alive,”
Pearce warned. “Trust me.”
The lawyer shrugged, unwilling to argue. He went back to his notebook.
They were in the back of the Ford People Carrier. Flinching as wave after wave of golf-ball-sized hailstones hammered down in a ferocious assault on the vehicle's rooftop, accompanied by sharp cracks and bangs as the ice exploded on impact, shattered across the paintwork or skipped off onto the tarmac. It was like being on the receiving end of a constant barrage of machine-gun fire.
Hackett nursed a deep cut across one cheek as he rested against the glass and watched the world stream by, while Scott shifted in his seat. “I wonder how Sarah's doing?” he muttered. “Did anyone manage to get back in touch with Cairo?”
Houghton didn't look around from his paperwork. “We're working on it,” was all he said.
“I hope she's okay. I hope everybody's okay.”
“Five times on this planet,” Hackett grumbled, stirring, “life has virtually been extinguished. Almost wiped out. At the end of the Cretaceous Age, the Jurassic Age, the Triassic and the Permian Age. Now, watch out, folks. Here comes the end of the Space Age. Great.”
Bob Pearce, who was sitting a row in front, turned on him. “This is nothing to joke about. This really is the end of life on earth.”
“I didn't say the end of life,” Hackett smirked. “I said a virtual extinction. There's a difference.”
Up ahead, Dower and Gant rode in separate cars in the tinted glass, military cavalcade. Hackett watched them swerve in and out for a moment.
They crossed the Port du Mont-Blanc cautiously, aware that Lac Léman was still in a vitriolic mood. Across the lake,
around which Geneva stood, the famous Jet d'Eau, a manmade geyser that usually squirted a mast of water 150 feet into the air, had fizzled to a 10-foot trickle. Meanwhile the hailstorm rained chunks of ice into the water, causing it to froth up in response.
Passing by the cracked and torn Eglise Anglaise, and the shaken Gare de Cornavin, the main train station, they turned right, speeding up Rue de Lausanne and swerving to avoid masonry and fallen roof-tiles.
Everywhere they looked there was structural damage to the buildings. Geneva had been hit hard.
“At the end of the Permian Age, 286 to 245 million years ago,” Scott recounted, “eighty percent of all life was destroyed.
Eighty percent.
Trilobites gone. Fusulinids, huge Iguana-type creatures, gone. The three main dominant types of reptile: Cotylosaurs, Pelycosaurs and Therapsids—all gone. It was the most destructive end to any period of evolution known to earth. Yet we're still here …”
“Maybe extinction events are God's way of denying evolution exists,” Hackett commented mildly.
“The death of eighty percent of all life on earth is the end of life,” Pearce moaned.
Hackett scratched around. Lifted the Etch-A-Sketch November was doodling on, out of the girl's hand, said: “May I borrow this? Thanks,” and held the doodle up for all to see.
“This is the earth, okay?” He pointed at the doodle. “And this is all life on earth.” Pearce nodded. “A gravity wave hits—” Suddenly Hackett shook the Etch-A-Sketch violently, erasing everything on it, much to November's surprise and annoyance. “Okay. What have you got left?”
“Nothing!” November said crossly. “Nothing. Everything's gone.”
“That's what I'm saying,” Pearce exclaimed.
“Uh-uh,” Hackett chided, tapping the cheap plastic Etch-A-Sketch firmly. “You've still got this, the earth itself. With all its constituent elements and its ability to nurture. And in time …” He twiddled a knob and started the tiniest new doodle. “In time—life will flourish again. Except this time it will be in a new way. A new combination. The deck will be shuffled and the building blocks will be reassembled. But this time it all takes place—without us.”
He dumped the Etch-A-Sketch back in November's lap. “Thanks,” he said, without even a hint of sincerity.
She glanced down at her missing masterpiece. Nursed the graze on her arm from the night before and said thinly, “Great.”
“No, it's not the end of life we need to worry about,” Hackett declared. “It's the end of us. The end of the human race.
Life
will take care of itself.
“Why'd you think environmental activists are so important? Okay, so
they
delude themselves into thinking the preservation of some cute fuzzy creatures in the Amazon creates some kind of emotional bond with the earth. But what they're really doing is maintaining the food chain. By maintaining the food chain, evolution remains stable; the environment reaches equilibrium. And why is
that
important? Because the current environment is the
only
environment in which we, as a species, can exist. Three million years ago we weren't around and the environment was different. You want to save something because it's cute? What's the point? None. No, you preserve the environment because it preserves
us
. And to do it we have to go against the laws of nature. We have to become—
un
natural.” Hackett chuckled. “Nature
is
infertility. Nature
is
genetic disease. Nature
is
famine and pestilence. Nature
is
weather patterns more severe than we can imagine. Nature
is
change.”
“In the Book of Isaiah,” Scott chipped in, “God clearly states that he is both good
and
evil.”
Hackett and Scott eyed each other warily. Were they actually starting to agree on something?
Up in the front passenger seat, Houghton shifted in his chair. He slung an arm over the back of it and turned to address everyone in the People Carrier.
“Are these figures correct?”
“Yes,” Hackett confirmed, referring to the mass of differential equations he'd passed over. “The sun will hit its main nutzoid zone midnight Saturday, right on the cusp of two holy days. Which Sabbath do
you
use?”
Houghton looked sheepish. “Actually I don't much go in for religion.”
Hackett,forced eye-contact. Let a smile touch his lips, but
it never did quite make it to his eyes. “Might wanna start,” he advised.
Houghton coughed. Rubbed his temples. “This is, uh, pretty frightening. I had no idea this was all so real,” he confessed.
“I've run the figures a hundred times.” Hackett sounded weary.
“That number stream from inside the crystal?”
“No,” Hackett answered dismissively. “Not that. I haven't got a clue what
that
is. No, I've been running the numbers Sarah gave me on seismic wave propagation—the Tesla Effect. By my calculation, the peak of the sun's gravitational waves will occur one hour and fifty-seven minutes before Sarah predicts the final geological event will hit the earth and snap the carpet out from under us. In other words, it will take approximately eight minutes for the gravity wave to travel from the sun to the earth at the speed of light. It will then hit us, causing an already increasing resonance within the liquid core of this planet to increase out of control. It will take, by her figures, one hour and forty-nine minutes for the wave to pass throughout the planet and rebound back again. By which point the damage will be irreversible.”
Scott hunted for moisture in his parched mouth. “When's the final event?”
“Three A.M.,” Hackett said. “This Sunday.”
“In two days …”
Hackett nodded. “At just after midnight the sun will pulse for the last time. By three o'clock Sunday morning, earth-crust displacement will have shifted whole continents by as much as twenty degrees. That's so much carnage, for the human race—it's game over.”
Scott rubbed his face. Wondering: “What the hell do we do?”
“I thought maybe we could get together when we reach McMurdo.” Pearce turned on the anthropologist. “McMurdo's got a chapel.”
Houghton coughed in an attempt to strengthen his voice. Sipped coffee from a cheap styrofoam cup. “To bring you up to speed,” he said, “we didn't just lose contact with another seventeen satellites last night. We lost contact with the Chinese base.”
Ralph Matheson looked up. He wasn't much of a fan of
lawyers. It wasn't just that the man acted like a weasel, but that he looked like one too. His build was best described as slight. It meant that when he did things to piss someone off, they had this overwhelming urge to sock him one in the gut. It was instinctual, almost primal. It was something Houghton was well aware of, and played on.
But for once, he didn't seem pleased with this turn of events.
“Say again?”
“The Chinese base has fallen silent. We don't know why.”
“Oh great, so what happens when we go a-knocking? Legally we have to tell them we're coming. If we take them by surprise they could just open fire!”
“There is a chance of that now, yes,” the lawyer reluctantly agreed.
The People Carrier turned right onto the Avenue de France and the final approach to the Parc de l'Ariane where the Palais des Nations usually sat resplendently. But today its gleaming white exterior was tarnished. The array of national flags across the front lawn was crooked and buckled. The bronzed statue of mythical beasts within a globe had crashed off its perch in the circular reflecting pool and lay dented to one side. Vehicles were parked askew, up on the grass verges and scattered wherever the diplomats had cared to put them.
Like entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, order was disintegrating.
But the Ford People Carrier didn't turn into the UN as everyone anticipated. Instead it drove straight on. Following the signs to the airport. “I thought we were going inside?” Matheson queried.
“Change of plan,” Houghton said tersely. “After such an exciting evening here in Switzerland, the Chinese delegation left early this morning. As a consequence—there are no negotiations to enter into.”
“I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing,” Hackett mused.
“The Security Council in New York passed a resolution granting the United States permission to mount its own inspection team, under its own jurisdiction. So long as we stay within Treaty guidelines, give China fair warning of our intentions
and let them know about your imminent arrival, that'll be sufficient.” He added: “States of emergency have been declared across several continents. We can basically do what we want. A wrangle between China and America is the least of their worries right now.”
“But you said you've lost contact with the Chinese base,” Scott reminded him. “If you can't warn them, and there's no Chinese delegation to inform, how will they know we're coming? We'll be sitting ducks.”
Matheson rolled his eyes, alarmed. “Oh, Christ. This is bad. This is very fucking band.”
Houghton took a deep breath. “We can only assume the Chinese are using the current crisis to dismiss the rule of international law. In which case you'll have to go in under armed escort. The only other option is—their base is simply no longer there.”
Matheson was confused. “I don't understand. Surely you can check something like that?”
“Three major spy satellites were knocked out last night,” Houghton revealed. “There's just no way of knowing for sure. The President's asked me to join him in Rome for a debriefing.”
Pearce fidgeted nervously. Gasping for air, he met Houghton's gaze and couldn't help but draw attention to himself. “I can find out,” he said quietly. “Why don't they ask me?”
Everyone in the back of the van exchanged curious looks. What on earth was he talking about? Only Houghton seemed to understand.
“They know, Bob,” the lawyer answered gravely. “They know. And they will be calling.”
 
No one asked any further questions. No one bugged Pearce about his odd conversation. No one seemed to want to know. They should have been nervous. They should have been apprehensive. But exhaustion was a curious thing. Instead, they reclined their seats on the green army Hercules C-130 transport plane, pulled blankets up around their necks, and spent the eleven-hour flight to Cape Town, South Africa, fast asleep. Not even stirring when the plane touched down briefly in Cairo to pick up another passenger.

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