Decipher (53 page)

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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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“In the same place?”
“I'm afraid so. Looks to me like he did it on purpose.”
“I'm never going to be able to walk.”
“I'll
make
you walk,” Gant promised him. “Next time you double-check. You make sure you got the language right.”
“Depends on the language,” Scott said as he tried to sit up. “What would you have done if the only language these Golems spoke was body language?”
Gant flipped the bird.
Scott eyed the walls of the cathedral-like chamber in which they found themselves. Every square inch was covered in the writings of Atlantis, a massive pattern of spiral upon spiral of glyph sequences. Uninterrupted information.
“Let no one who is not a mathematician read my works,” Scott said.
“Profound,” Hackett commented.
“Leonardo da Vinci,” the linguist explained. “Using the language of numbers.” He looked the major squarely in the eye and indicated the walls. “It's not about
that
language,” he said. “It was never about that language, nor any other kind of language in the normal sense. It's about the language of mythology, religion and superstition. It's about folklore—about decoding the myths, legends and stories of a thousand peoples for a thousand generations. Then putting all those stories together, side by side, and picking out the common factors.”
Gant rolled his eyes. “He's delirious. Patch him up 'fore I punch him.”
“The notion of a lion is a common factor,” Scott protested, but Gant wasn't listening. “The fourth incarnation of Vishnu, the Hindu god, was in the shape of a man-lion known as the Tawny One.”
“So what?”
“The Sphinx was lion-shaped and both symbols were associated
with the age of Leo. These two cultures barely met—yet they share similar mythologies. South American myths have a lot of crossover with India too. Why?”
“Why India?”
“No,” Scott snapped irritably. “Why the crossover?” Some of the others were listening now. “Jon got me thinking when he said the earth wobbled on its axis in a phenomenon known as precession. It reminded me of this peculiarity that no one I know can explain satisfactorily. Why is it the zodiacal ages in which we live bear a striking similarity to the prevailing religions of our time?”
“What do you mean?” Pearce asked. He was trying to remove Sarah's parka so they could treat her injuries.
“He's right,” Hackett agreed. He even managed to get the devastated Chinese soldier's attention. “Imagine the sun is a fixed point in the middle of a page. There's a circle drawn around it marking the orbit of the earth. And then there's another circle around
that
marking the constellations. The only moving object is the earth, right?” The others agreed. “Okay. Now, if you look due east, just before dawn, you'll notice that each month a different zodiacal constellation hangs in the sky, like a calendar babe. We have
Playboy
, the heavens have Scorpio, Leo and so on. The sun is said to be ‘in' that constellation. Now the trouble is, the earth wobbles on its axis in a clockwise direction. The effects on our everyday lives are minimal, but what it means is that if you give this cycle of constellations a start point, like the ancients did, the constellation that appears in the sky just before dawn in the east changes over time. And the time it takes for each constellation to change is just under 2,200 years. They are referred to as ages. Right now, we're just at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. But at the time of the Flood, it was the Age of Leo—a constellation in the shape of a giant lion.”
“What did you say this start point was?” Matheson asked.
“The vernal, or spring equinox. That point in the year when the length of day and night is exactly equal. Right now, at the spring equinox just before dawn the first sign we see is Aquarius, and the signs change once a month, every month, starting from that sign. But slowly, over time, the wobble of the earth means the focus point shifts up the list so that in
2,200 years, the spring equinox will start on a different constellation. Whichever that is.”
“Capricorn,” Scott said, fighting the pain.
“Whatever.”
“The point is,” Scott concluded, “humankind's religions have matched which age we're in. In the age of Leo, the . Sphinx was built, and lion gods were created. Once the devastation of that sunquake finally impacted, civilization was weak, but even so we have archeological evidence of cults to the crab, and more strongly, twin god cults, like you might expect with Gemini. By the time of Taurus, civilization is back with a vengeance. Apis bulls are all the rage in Egypt, bull worship and the Minotaur myth spring up in Crete. The cow becomes the sacred animal in India and Assyria. Next up, the Age of Aries, when rams and lambs are sacrificed in the Old Testament and Amon the ram god appears in Egypt. Then we hit the Age of Pisces.
“Here we find a man who walks on water, multiplies loaves and fishes, refers to himself as ‘the fisher of men,' and is symbolized by a fish by many sections of his faith, as well as a cross and a halo representing the sun. Christ is born.”
The others were stunned.
“Now here we are in the Age of Aquarius, symbol of water, and our predominant concern is a flood. Why? Constellations are merely pictures made out of random points of light in the sky. They mean no more than that. Yet across the planet similar tales and stories revolve around similar patterns of those points of light in the sky. And they all seem to funnel in on this one particular point in time. Our time. And the concerns about a flood—the effects of a gravity wave hitting the earth. Coincidence? I think not. You can't see into the future by means of magic either. But you can
predict
the future through science. And you damn well can pass the warning information on down through the ages, by sewing it into the very fabric of society through myth—and more powerfully—through religion.
“Everything we have needed to know has been readily available to us through our own scriptures handed down from generation to generation. These people who created this incredible place knew how the human mind works better
than we do. They knew how to keep the idea alive, and they hoped we might be smart enough to figure it out. So you see—it was never about that language. We couldn't decode it until we had decoded the myths. And by the time we did that, we'd already figured out what we needed to know. Oh, these walls will fill in any blanks and spell it all out to us on a scientific basis, I'm sure. But the bigger picture, the one that'll save us? We already know it.”
“What do you think, Major?” Pearce asked. But the marine was checking out the towering structures around them.
They were gathered on the floor, a floor that was as clear as glass and as hard as marble. Across from them stood another set of equally vast gates as massive as the first set, while on either side of them were winding staircases leading to some higher levels, and up there, just visible, a multitude of doors and passageways.
This
was Gant's concern.
If they weren't careful they were going to wind up getting lost.
Gant examined his own sonic device carefully. “Where do we have to get to in this city?”
Scott shrugged. “I don't know. The center, I guess.”
“Then we want the shortest route.” Scott nodded as Gant pointed. “Which means heading through that second set of doors.”
Scott thought that made sense.
Gant showed him his artifact. “So how do I use this thing?”
Scott told him what he needed to know. How to pronounce correctly the Sumerian words for opening and closing a door—and how to blow away a Golem.
The marine made it his business to go ahead and check out the second set of massive crystal gates, while Hillman, having found what he was looking for, crouched down to assess Sarah's injuries.
His knife was razor-sharp and compact when he took it out. A real Swiss Army kind of affair. Carefully he slit through Sarah's thick clothing while the others fed both her and Scott massive doses of painkillers. He gently slit a large cross and peeled back each flap, securing them with silver duct tape.
There was some blood which needed to be cleaned off
but Hillman's hand, though steady with a knife, was not gentle enough with a swab. He was simply too jumpy. Too wired. So Matheson hastily took over.
“You're gonna be okay,” he kept assuring her.
“I hope so,” Sarah quipped back. “This is my tennis arm.”
“You play tennis?”
“No. But I imagine if I did, this is the arm that I'd use.”
Matheson smiled at that as he swabbed away the last traces of blood; strangely, there was very little, which in itself was peculiar. He exchanged a look with the others. Why wasn't there more blood?
Pearce edged forward. “We need to take a quick poke around in that wound of yours. See if we can't find that bullet.”
Sarah wasn't buying it. “Seal it up,” she ordered. “I'll deal with it when I get back. I don't want you hitting an artery.”
“It'll just take a second.”
“Do you know what you're doing?”
Pearce didn't reply. Instead he took his flashlight and used his fingers to start gingerly opening up the wound. He used his little finger to scoop out more gunk and that was when he felt it. The projectile was in deep and hard to the touch. He angled his flashlight and peered into the hole.
Almost instantly he wished he had not.
“You found the bullet?” Sarah gasped. Pearce stuck his hand over his mouth and nodded. “I told you it was in deep,” she said, clearly in pain. “I can feel it.”
But that wasn't what was getting to Pearce. He handed his flashlight to somebody else to have a look, and then turned away with a shudder.
“What is it? What's the matter?” Sarah demanded weakly. But even as she said it she caught a glimpse of November exchanging a panic-stricken look with the others as she tended to Scott's leg.
Matheson scooted over for a closer view. “It's the same,” he confirmed gravely.
Scott sat up sharply, slapping November's hand out of the way. “What's the same?” he asked, twisting his leg so he could get a good close look at his own wound.
Then: “Jesus Christ! What's with my leg? What's up with my fucking leg?”
It was a legitimate question. For like Sarah's shoulder, his leg wound had stopped bleeding, and the crystal bullet lodged within it could never be removed. For it had fused with the surrounding tissue like a skin graft.
Two tumor-sized lumps of Carbon 60 were now a part of both Scott and Sarah. And they were growing, like cancer.
Sarah couldn't see it properly. She twisted her neck but she just couldn't see the crystal lodged in her shoulder. Panicked, she grabbed Pearce by the wrist. “Use that fucking
thing
,” she demanded. “Speak into it. Deactivate this stuff in my shoulder!”
She knew that the Carbon 60 bullet was in fact a cluster of carbon nanoes feeding off her flesh and multiplying but she dared not dwell on it.
Pearce's hand was shaking. He tried to do what she asked but he couldn't pronounce the words correctly. He turned to ask Scott for advice but the linguist was hurriedly trying the same thing with his own leg wound, using his own identical sonic artifact.
But nothing.
This wasn't like trying to destroy a Golem, this was a whole other entity. And it was impossible to stop.
Sarah looked to Hackett. “How long have I got?” she asked. Her nerves were clearly fraying.
Hackett seemed to find what he was about to say decidedly unpalatable. “I'd say less than a day … before it eats you alive.”
Sarah gulped, trying to take it all in. But from somewhere deep within her psyche, she found steel resolve. She looked to Hillman. “You have to cut it out,” she said.
“Are you crazy?”
“Take your knife and cut this fucking thing out of me,” she ordered. “Right now.”
“I could do so much damage I'd wind up losing you your arm.”
“Then lose my arm. Gimme the knife! Give it to me!
I'll
do it! I'm not gonna end up like one of
them!
”
Hillman took a deep breath. Inclined his head as he chewed it over. “Okay,” he said. “But this is gonna hurt.”
Sarah was past caring.
The knife Hillman chose to use was different from the one he'd used to cut open her clothes. This one was a large metal hunting knife and it appeared threatening before he'd even put it to use.
He handed her a thick piece of rope from the coil hitched on his belt. She bit down on it as the others held her arms.
Hillman sized up where to start cutting and went for it, plunging the hunting knife deep into the red raw flesh around the carbon nano mass.
Sarah screamed in agony as Hillman began to slice and hack at her shoulder. She bit ferociously into the rope and struggled when suddenly she could feel it—a vibrating sensation. A swarm on the attack at the molecular level.
Her whole body started to convulse as she realized belatedly that the Carbon 60 nanoes within her were drawing power from the surrounding structures. She felt like a human capacitor and yanked open her eyes in an attempt to warn Hillman to stop.
But the rope was stuck fast in her mouth and she couldn't make herself understood.
And even worse than that, it felt for all the world like time itself was moving substantially slower. She could see the disaster approaching—yet she was absolutely powerless to stop it.
 
Sarah saw a carpet of red flame roll across the surface of the inner walls of Atlantis. As if it had a mind of its own it coalesced into a shimmering giant sphere which imploded in on itself as it sensed her presence and zeroed in on the crystal bullet fused into her shoulder.
She convulsed again as the surging power unified into a single lance of searing energy which popped and crackled up the blade of Hillman's hunting knife and lashed out with such ferocity that the marine was blasted back 40 feet across the floor.
There would be no cutting this nano lump from Sarah's shoulder, or Scott's leg for that matter. That much was clear now.
Matheson scrambled over to the marine to check he was okay and found Hillman winded and smoldering.
“Fuck me!” the marine wheezed.
“That is not an option,” Gant snapped from across the chamber.
They all looked over. He'd gotten the second set of doors open and stood confronted by a solid wall of compacted snow and ice so deep and thick that there would be no tunneling their way through.
He turned on the party, barely acknowledging what had just happened, before striding toward them and pocketing his sonic artifact.
“We need to find another way,” was all he said.

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