Dusk (63 page)

“But that date fits right into these
calculations,” Milliken joined in on the round.

“The royalty of Atlantis was populated with
Poseidon’s children, Ea took a human wife, and there is also the
story of the nephilim—the children of the fallen angels that gave
forbidden knowledge to man and took wives of human women. The
nephilim were supposed to have been pale-skinned in a region that
did not necessarily lend itself to pale skin. “Except the Aryans,”
Darius was visibly excited and Jang was again disturbed by the
display of emotion.

“So we’re dealing with some sort of
civilizer, or race of civilizers, who were somehow displaced from
their original base of operation, and, potentially, brought their
knowledge to various regions on Earth when they moved. But, they
also commingled with the civilizations they visited and then
disappeared suddenly.” Davidson spoke up after having listened for
the entire conversation. “All these various myths seem to
correlate. They even seem to agree on timeframe, a timeframe we
originally overlooked as ridiculous.”

“But a timeframe much less sublime given the
empirical evidence in this planet,” Cyrus indicated the images
floating above the floor in their midst.

“So maybe the people of this Atlantis were
displaced, but why would they all travel to different locations on
Earth if they had stayed hidden for so long?” Milliken added, the
look of understanding quickly leaving his face.

“What do you mean?” Torvald asked.

“I mean, we left Earth because we ourselves
were somewhat displaced, but we didn’t spend our energies sending
emissaries and colonists to the four corners of the universe. We
concentrated our efforts on the Set system, despite the existence
of potential inhabitable planets in other systems. If there was
some sort of cataclysm, it would make these connections
less
likely, not more.”

“We are missing one vital point, though,”
Tanner posited. “The city itself. Its design is a confluence of two
ideas in that the Temple is at the center of the Hunab Ku. The
buildings are also vaguely Babylonian. Sensibilities of Mesopotamia
and the Quiché Mesoamerica are undoubtedly interlinked there.

“What about an Egyptian link?” Cyrus
asked.

“Perhaps one exists there as well,” Darius
added, “The lions guarding the temple. It has been oft proposed
that, given the dimensions and the perspective of the Sphinx, it
originally had the head of a lion, and was recarved with a man’s
face at a much later date.”

“Could we call that defacing?” Milliken
looked for a laugh, but the weight of anxiety would not budge, so
he just shrugged his shoulders. “How do we account for Torvald’s
manes though?”

“Well, what if maned lions came along with
the knowledge of how to build these buildings? What if the
architects of these constructs on Asha also dabbled in genetics?”
There was another audible grumble among the scientists, but
Davidson continued, “Is it so hard to believe? How else would two
disparate species ‘have offspring?’ If these alien gods truly did
mate with the daughters of men, would it really be possible in the
traditional sense? Besides, isn’t that the self-same thing we do in
pod centers? We toil away, separating the chaff from the genetic
wheat. Each of these cultures, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and South
America, were they not plagued with either blood cults, blood
sacrifices of some sort, or obsession with the dead? And all this
morbidity in the service of these so-called gods. Given what we
have here, why would it be so hard to believe?”

The grumbles became more affirming, and then
Uzziah, who had been quiet and contemplative throughout most of the
proceedings, finally spoke, “There’s something else,” he paused for
a moment, looking not unlike the Darius hologram when it searched
for information. “The Temple is at the center of the giant spiral.
Your eye is drawn to it by the design, even on the ground level.
The artificial sun is directly above it. The Temple must hold some
sort of significance that we are missing—at least some significance
other than the obvious.”

Then Uzziah, along with Tanner in unison,
answered the question, “The
Aish Tamid
.”

“The what?” Milliken asked, more puzzled than
ever.

This time Uzziah answered, “It is the eternal
flame that burned in the Tabernacle in the Temple. In idea, it
represents a living Torah, a flame that a person who has
experienced Torah on a deeper level carries with him.”

“Which can lead us back to Davidson’s lions,”
Tanner added before Uzziah even finished. “In Egypt, lions were
also connected with Ra or Horus because they guarded the rising and
the setting of the sun as it passed from the underworld, through
the world of the living, and then back again. This idea could also
represent a guarding of a kind of esoteric knowledge.”

“I don’t get it though. We have Oannes,
Viracocha, Poseidon, Ea, Osiris—all bearers of knowledge to
different civilizations. But the Temple is distinctly Judaic,
correct? It’s not just Near Eastern. Where is the Judaic
civilizer?” Everyone looked to Tanner then to Uzziah, and then back
to Tanner again. Tanner began to look extremely uncomfortable until
Darius spoke.

“Azazel.”

Tanner did not look as if the name surprised
him, but his expression was of unmistakable discomfort.

Darius continued, seemingly insensitive to
Tanner’s discomfort, “Azazel was the leader of the fallen angels
after the original leader, Samyaza, gave in. Azazel had experienced
a displacement of sorts. He had chosen to cohabitate with humans
and to take wives of the daughters of men, but most importantly, he
brought esoteric knowledge to the humans against the will of the
godhead. He taught men to wage war, possibly against the gods
themselves, and he and his progeny were punished.”

“Let me guess,” Milliken asked, the
discomfort leaving his face, “with a flood.”

“Yes, the godhead sought to eliminate the
damage that Azazel had caused, and it had Azazel imprisoned by his
nemesis in a place called Dudael,” Darius added.

Cyrus could not hold his curiosity any longer
and addressed Tanner directly, “What is so disconcerting about this
information?”

Tanner paused for a moment, exhaled, and then
spoke, “If Azazel is the equivalent to those others we mentioned,
it would imply Noah was somehow the offspring of the fallen as
Lamech had feared—that Noah himself, in some way, either literally
or figuratively, was nephilim,” Tanner shuffled in his chair.
“Which makes the Old Testament godhead, as Darius so tactfully put
it, look more like the Demiurge of the Gnostics. Since knowledge
seems to be at the root of the problem, both here on Asha and in
the Old Testament…”

Cyrus had crossed the room and now rested his
hand on Tanner’s shoulder. Cyrus did not want him to continue any
more than Tanner himself wanted to. Tanner had come to this planet
just like the rest of them. Just like the rest of them, he had been
looking for answers. But unlike the rest of them, all the answers
presented to him had tested what he understood of the world in a
merciless kiln.

Milliken tried to work through his own
confusion, seemingly oblivious to Tanner’s internal struggle. “So
if this Azazel guy is at odds with the godhead, that would make him
Satan, no?”

“
HaSatan
is merely a title that means
‘The Adversary,’” Darius corrected, “It implies conflict, but not
evil. The title is sometimes used to refer to the being Samael, who
serves as the Judaic Angel of Death. Samael is also sometimes
referred to as this Demiurge that Tanner mentioned, or as the head
of the Sitra Achra, one of the Kabalistic representations of chaos.
Samael is sometimes represented as both good and evil—more a
necessity to the universe than a representation of wickedness.”

“So let’s assume this Azazel did set all this
up and was banished and had everything he had built destroyed. What
does that mean for us?” Davidson was intrigued.

“It would mean that the loveliest trick of
the Devil was not to persuade us that he didn’t exist, but rather
to trick his opponent into siring and nurturing his children,” even
Cyrus was unamused at the revelation as he said it.

“Or at the least, instilling in us the
knowledge that this Demiurge wanted to hide,” Davidson’s
qualification settled Cyrus, but did nothing for Tanner.

“Knowledge of what though?” Torvald asked, as
oblivious to Tanner’s struggling as Milliken.

“The Garden of Eden story says it is
knowledge of Good and Evil, and of humanity’s own ‘nakedness,’ or,
more accurately, ignorance, that was hidden from us. Enoch says
Azazel taught men to wage war and women to wear
make-up—implications of base ideas, but also of self-respect. The
Mayans say this being taught men to be less feral, less beastlike.
The Greeks say men learned acculturation, while the Sumerians say
Ea taught the secret of eternal life. They all imply that whatever
knowledge was taught by these ‘civilizers’ made humanity closer to
the gods than the gods were ultimately comfortable with.” Darius’s
treatise settled the room. The implications the hologram used must
have been from criticisms and annotations, but they were profound
nonetheless.

Torvald was the first to speak, “This all
makes sense in reference to myths and primitive peoples, advanced
or not. But what could they stand to show us, or the Ashans, in
this day and age?”

“Whatever the Ark, or the Arks in this case,
are designed to facilitate mechanically,” Tanner said, surprising
Cyrus.

Cyrus nodded to Tanner, who returned the nod,
and began to pace. “So what knowledge pertaining to modern humanity
would Mundi see the relevance of as soon as the existence of the
city was communicated to him?”

“Maybe the city was just an afterthought.”
Darius surprised the entire room time, filling them with the din of
surprise. “The war could have been started because Mundi discovered
the
gold deposits
in the scar. Think about it. The man who
shows up to a troubled planet with a ship full of gold would surely
be seen as a god among men.”

“But how could he move enough gold to impress
an entire planet, however destitute? The density alone would be too
much,” Milliken retorted.

Darius looked as if he were contemplating
something and everyone stopped, to see what he had to say. “What
about the five ships beneath the pyramid? Echelon records show the
resources to build those ships have been collected over the last
hundred years.”

Cyrus should have been used to the weight
that seemed to pile onto his shoulders whenever he spent extended
time in this room, but it seemed every nuance in the conversation
made the air heavier. “But what’s the point in setting up something
of this scale if you don’t live to see the end of it? Did Mundi
even have any descendants?” Cyrus was perplexed, it all made sense,
and yet it didn’t.

“As far as I can tell, there’s no conclusive
proof Rex Mundi ever existed,” Darius said.

“So why would…” a thought stymied Cyrus in
mid-sentence. “Wait, you said they only made one of those star
skimmers?”

“It was made and then put to dry-dock, but
after that there is no record of it. Although...” Darius looked as
if he were trying to remember something again, “There are several
records of inquiries from Mundi, and then suddenly, nothing.”

And then it all came together like the doors
of a mausoleum.

Cyrus looked to Tanner, but it seemed like
Tanner was looking beyond him. “What was the Ark used for again,
traditionally?”

“It was placed in the tabernacle, where the
priests would communicate with God. They also placed the blood of
the sacrificial lamb on the mercy seat, the place between the
cherub wings.”

Tanner seemed to be in contemplation himself,
the lids of his eyes straining under the pressure the last few
months had placed on his faith, and he seemed not to notice as
Cyrus muttered “sacrificial lamb” to himself and then wandered
through the door toward the storage room.

When they rounded the corner, Milliken and
Tanner gasped as they saw Cyrus drag the blade of a knife across
the palm of his hand. He looked over his shoulder, acknowledging
them with a smirk that seemed as disturbed as it was confident, as
if deep down he was hoping he was wrong.

“Maybe they dabbled in genetics,” he said
aloud to himself, and then he turned, squeezed his fist over the
mercy seat of the Ark, and then he simply froze in place as if he
was a holo-image on the fritz. Tanner moved to touch him, but even
as he approached, it felt like the static in the room held him
back, and he found his feet refusing to move him within arm’s
reach.

No one said a word, and Tanner was not even
sure he could speak if he tried. He tried to take a step back, but
he realized he could not retreat either. He was stuck there, his
arm outstretched toward Cyrus, unable to move.

And then he realized he could not feel the
usual twinge from holding his muscles in place. He could not feel
the floor against his feet, the dense air of the barracks against
his skin, or the beating of his own heart. Dust particles no longer
moved in the air, light no longer played across the gilded edges of
the Ark. It was as if the physical world had frozen in time, but
somehow his mind still functioned.

He tried to blink and found he could not, but
it didn’t matter, the sensation of dryness in his eyes, of
irritation from holding his arm out for too long, of anything for
that matter, was non-existent. And when he tried to think of how
long he had held his arm out, of how much time had passed, he
realized time had no longer had meaning. It just didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered. Not time. Not the strange revelations that had
been laid before him today. Nothing.