Keystone (19 page)

Danny ran his
hand along the smooth surface. “Could obsidian be this smooth, naturally?” he
wondered.

“Absolutely.
Polished obsidian was even used for mirrors thousands of years ago. I would
expect a substance such as obsidian to be that smooth naturally. Danny, can you
show me a more
ground level
view,
please, from the edge of the stone across it?”

He obliged,
climbing down the side of the stone that Captain Montreaux had just emerged from.
He scanned the edge of the stone, and then raised his head slightly and tilted
it down so that Jane would be able to appreciate how flat and rectangular it
was.

“Fascinating,”
she said eventually. “It looks perfectly flat, and the stills I have taken from
the video feed suggest that the angled edges I have seen are all at ninety
degrees.”

“What do you
make of the grooves, Dr Richardson? Could they have been carved or etched into
the surface?” Montreaux asked.

“No,” she
replied. “At least not if the stone is indeed obsidian. Obsidian is very
similar to flint, in that it splinters and creates flakes. Fantastic for making
arrow heads and knives, but very difficult to craft, and virtually impossible
to chisel or strike with any reliability. When used in ornaments nowadays, it
is usually polished, so it’s relatively easy to create a smooth and accurate
edge. However, a groove is entirely different: I don’t think you could
polish
a groove into a flat piece of
stone, at least not a groove like that.”

“Can’t you use
lasers?” Danny offered.

“Indeed you
can. In fact the only useful application of obsidian I can think of right now
is surgical knives. The blades of precision instruments can be fashioned using
a laser. Because of the compact nature of the crystals that make up the rock,
the width of obsidian blades can literally be measured in molecules, so they
are hundreds of times more accurate than steel.”

“Stone
knives?” Montreaux was amazed.

“Even now
they’re still used in heart surgery, Yves,” she confirmed.

Montreaux took
a step back and contemplated the stone beneath him. He found his eyes
inexorably drawn towards the crater wall by the grooves. He wanted nothing more
than an excuse to start digging like crazy, but if this was what he sensed it
to be, then things would have to be done properly.
 
“Dr Richardson?”

“Yes?”

He measured
his words carefully, not wanting her to infer anything unprofessional. “Having
seen the stone we are standing on, its dimensions, shape and,” he paused, as if
looking for the correct terminology, “other characteristics, what do you think
made it?”

“I am not a
geologist by trade, Captain,” she replied without hesitation. “However, I have
seen some incredibly unbelievable rock formations on Earth, particularly where
cooling magma is involved. The grooves may have been set as the magma cooled,
possibly the imprint of other stones, maybe even by water, which we know at
some time existed in abundance in this area. This stone could be a naturally
occurring phenomenon. I would need to see a sample.” She waited for a response,
but none came. “And I would very much like to visit the stone myself,” she
added.

Danny looked
at Montreaux and winked. “Jane, cut the bullshit now, OK? We’ll use that last
bit as a sound-bite for Earth, you sounded great,” he said. “Now tell us what
you
really
think.”

“Danny, you
are standing on a perfectly flat surface, as smooth as a pane of glass, with
perfect parallel sides and straight edges, all seemingly at a perfect ninety
degrees to each other,” she said. “Not only is the stone flat, it also appears
to be horizontal, which is why you two aren’t slipping off it. It’s also
jutting straight out of the side of the crater, possibly pointing directly to
the centre of said crater. And to top it all off, there is a groove in its
surface that is not only aligned with the stone itself, but is also uniformly
one-point-eight centimetres deep and ten-point-six centimetres wide – I know
because I’ve checked it from the video feeds you sent.
 
Can any one of these features on their own be
produced in the natural world? On Earth, certainly. On Mars? Who knows, but the
laws of physics are no different here to back home, we simply have different
environmental conditions. I would say that probably yes, too. Now you’re left
with the big question.” She paused. “Is it possible for all of these features
to be found together, in the same place, given the context of the stone?”

“Dr
Richardson, I appreciate your thorough summation of the situation, but could
you just give us a straight answer?” Captain Montreaux was getting
uncharacteristically impatient. He knew what the answer was, he just wanted to
hear her say it.

“Yves, I am a
scientist, and we never say things of any major significance in anything less
than five hundred words. But to be blunt, there is no doubt in my mind that
what you are standing on was put there. And although I cannot believe I am even
saying this, I am sure that you and Danny are not the first beings to have
stood on it, either.”

There was a
very long, weighted silence.

Captain
Montreaux couldn’t help but remember the journey to Mars, the conversation with
Lieutenant Su Ning, the suspicious circumstances of her death.
 
He had known then that something big was
going on, and things certainly didn’t get any bigger than this. On the one hand
he was excited at the magnitude of their discovery, but on the other he knew
that people were prepared to kill them to cover it up. His heart sank. He knew
deep down that nobody back on Earth of any importance to him would ever find out
about their discovery. He also now knew why they had landed on the northern
edge of the Hellas Basin
rather than
any other, and why the pre-planned coordinates of their rover expeditions had
been so exact. And now that they had found the Jetty, what next?

If this is going to be part of a cover up
,
he thought,
how likely is it we’ll be
allowed to return home alive?

“What do we do
now?” Danny broke the silence.

Montreaux
looked over at him, hoping that the reinforced Plexiglas of his helmet did not
reveal anything. “I have an hour of air left in this cylinder, how about you?”

“About the
same. And we have three hours more in Herbie.”

“Dr
Richardson,” Montreaux hailed her.

“Yes?”

Through the environmental
interference on the com system, Montreaux fancied he could detect something odd
in her tone, a hint of self-assuredness, of
knowing
,
and suddenly an alarming thought materialised:
was she in on it? Were they both?
The dark thoughts crystallised,
only making sense now, as he stood on the alien stone with the enormity of the
situation staring him right in the face.
Did
either of them know of the cover-up because they were involved?
He had a
momentary flashback of Dr Richardson and Captain Marchenko the previous day,
having one of their friendly arguments. As they did every day, he thought. He
swallowed hard. Was he the only one not in on the cover-up? Was he going to be
next?

“Captain?”

Danny’s voice
came through faintly in his earpiece. He cocked his head and looked at the
Russian. Suddenly extremely self-conscious, he realised that he must have been
looking into space for quite some time.

“Yves, are you
alright?” Jane sounded genuinely concerned.

He snapped out
of his daydream in an instant.
Nonsensical
paranoid delusions,
he concluded
.

“Dr
Richardson, you’d better put a hold on those steaks, for an hour or so.” He
gestured towards the wall of the crater, to where the groove in the stone
disappeared. “Captain Marchenko, let’s get some tools from Herbie and find out
where this groove goes.”

From its
viewpoint two thousand metres further along the edge of the Hellas Basin impact
crater, Beagle watched the two figures ascend the crater wall.
 
Using a high-resolution lens, it zoomed in on
the black object, three hundred metres below, upon which they had been standing
moments earlier.

The rover
edged forward slowly, coming to a halt against a small round rock which hid
most of its body from the direction of the MLP.

The lens
re-focused on the object, picking out the grooves in its surface.

It started
taking pictures.

The rain came down in waves,
lashing the flat sides of the tall building again and again. Bright halogen
beams cut through the darkness from their source along the roofline of the
building, reflecting against the drops of falling water on their way to the
ground. A simple white door was the only noteworthy feature of the plain white
walls. A group of tall palms bowed under the forces of nature, their flexible
bodies saving them from the worst of the hurricane.
 
In the distance, the roar of the disturbed
sea was hardly perceptible above the sound of the rushing wind.

At the side of
the building, a white van sat purring in the darkness, its headlamps dipped,
waiting.

“So much for
global warming,” the driver said, resentfully.

The percussive
fall of rain on the van’s roof was almost incessant, save for the short bursts
of very strong wind, when the water would be whipped back into the air before
it had the chance to hit.

His passenger
shivered and tucked his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “Warmer for some,
though, isn’t it? Otherwise where do you think all this would be coming from?”

They both
stared into the building’s courtyard and contemplated this. Suddenly, as if on
cue, the driver turned off the engine and the heating. “Here comes another one,
let’s get out of here.” He switched off the headlamps and rested his hand on
the door release.

Outside, the
howling wind reached its terrifying crescendo then dulled, the threat of its
return lying oppressively in the air.

The men jerked
open the van’s doors and slammed them shut behind them. As they ran towards the
small door in the side of the building, the driver pointed his arm behind him
and pressed a button on his keys, rewarded by the quick chirp of the van’s
central locking system. His passenger had already reached the wall and was
pressing the intercom button repeatedly.

The door gave
a loud buzz and they pulled it open in unison. They were barely through the
opening when the wind made its return, violently slamming the door behind them
and making the frame shake.
 
They had
been outside for a few short seconds, and yet they were soaked through to the
skin. The passenger stood motionless with his legs apart, leaning his body
forwards and holding his arms out to his sides, frozen in the posture of a man
who has just been punched in the stomach.

“My God!” he
exclaimed.
 
The water had already left
his hairless scalp and most of it had made its way to his bearded chin, from
where it dribbled to the floor with a patter.

They found
themselves in a short corridor with another door at the far end, also secured
by an intercom.

The driver
shook his arms before running his hands through his short hair. “And to think
people come here to retire.” He stopped in the middle of unzipping his coat. “Your
bag?”

The passenger
looked in disbelief at his own empty hands. He turned his head back towards the
door and the raging storm outside. “Damn.”

“You’re
kidding me, right?” he gaped, still halfway between taking his coat off and
reluctantly putting it back on again. “I don’t get paid enough for this! Here,
take my keys, you can go and get it.”

A few moments
later, the passenger burst through the small door again, this time holding a
satchel against his chest.

“Time for a
drink,” he said.

“In this place?
I think machine coffee is about as good as it gets!”

They walked
towards the second door hastily and the passenger pressed the intercom button
once.

“Coffee it is
then,” he said.

Seth Mallus,
dressed in an immaculate black suit, crisp white shirt and light blue silk tie,
sat in a large executive chair at a large executive desk. In front of him, a
letter-size notepad sat exactly perpendicular to the edge of the desk. A Mont
Blanc pen lay on the pad, aligned to the margin, in which the day’s date had been
written neatly and underlined:
November 9
^th
,
2045
.

“Dr Patterson,
how are things progressing?” he said to the dishevelled man who sat opposite
him in jeans and short-sleeved shirt.

Patterson had
been in the facility for barely half an hour, the time to quickly dry off,
change and grab a terrible coffee, before their meeting had begun. He brought
his hand to his chin and played with his beard briefly. It was well kept, but
the silver-grey hue added at least a decade to his fifty-six years.

“Here are the
latest transcripts, with the translations.” He slid the paper across the table.
“They are consistent with the other transcripts; whatever happened to these –”
he hesitated before saying the word, “–
people
,
there was nothing they could do to stop it.”
 
He flicked through his notes. “There is a
lifetime of work here,” he gestured to the small folder on the table in front
of him.

Mallus leaned
forward in his chair and fixed his eyes intently on the man. “A lifetime can be
long or short, Dr Patterson. You have been studying these texts for years now.
How long will it take before you find out what I need to know?”

He swallowed
hard and tried to avoid the steely gaze. “Some of the material is very clear as
you’ve seen, but most parts make no sense at all. Context
is
everything, and in this regard I need assistance from someone
more specialised in the field.” He put his hand on the folder and opened it.
“Otherwise, it would take at least another two years for me to decipher it in
its entirety, if at all.”

“Then I will
need to find you some help.” Mallus paused and looked across at the transcripts
in front of him. “We have experienced some unexpected setbacks that have
already subjected this project to a great deal more risk than we anticipated. I
need to be sure that you understand how important it is that this work remains
secret, Dr Patterson.” His cold eyes met the scientist’s across the table. “I
know how you academics work, and I know that you like to
bounce ideas around the community
. But for this project, the
community is comprised of you and me. Do not seek contact from anyone else, I
will send someone to you,” he ordered.

“Sure,” he
muttered, “I understand.”

Mallus relaxed
his gaze. “The cliché tells us that
time
is money
, but you will understand more than anyone that in this case, a lot
more is at stake. You will get the help you need, and in return you will
provide me with the answers I want, quickly.” He smiled and leant back in his
chair. “And as for getting our hands on more
context
,” he continued, “we’ll just have to keep our fingers
crossed, won’t we?”

Dr Patterson
nodded his head in agreement as he moved his eyes slowly across the hieroglyphs
on the pages in front of him.

“On a positive
note,” he said happily, “the Mars mission
is
bearing fruit. They have uncovered a jetty of some sort, which I think you’ll
find interesting and may help you further.”

“A
jetty
?” Patterson queried.

“Indeed. I
would suggest that you make your way through to Mission Control straight away.”

After
Patterson had gone, Seth Mallus browsed through a series of résumés on his
computer display.

He wasn’t
happy bringing more help in: keeping things running smoothly was a trial at the
best of times, and the last thing he wanted was more questions. For that reason
he wasn’t about to openly put an advert for the post in the local paper,
either.

How on earth
had he ended up with Henry Patterson? All that time ago in the corridors of the
Peabody Museum it had seemed a good bet. He had certainly delivered what had
been asked of him, and in return Mallus had given Patterson the single most
important discovery in human history.

But now,
enough was enough.
Years
with the
texts, and still he had no comprehensive translation.
How hard can hieroglyphs be?
Things had started out well enough: the
first leads had been very promising, and had led him to where he was right now.
But the time had come for that final push.

Of all the
archaeologists, linguists, Egyptologists and anthropo-logists that Patterson
had put forward, one was head and shoulders above the rest because of her
Amarna experience. He looked at her photo on-screen; possibly not the most
recent snapshot, as the file said she was forty-one years old and the
attractive dark-haired woman looking back at him could barely have been a day over
thirty.
The same age as me
, he
thought wistfully.
 

She was
married, but with no dependents. No known close family. Her academic work
involved regular, frequent travel abroad. The husband would be an annoyance,
but he’d dealt with worse.

Walker would probably
be best suited to the job: reliable, and able to use his head. If things
did
go wrong, he could make any mess-up
look like an accident.

Leaning back
in his chair, he sent the résumé through to Walker with a quick note attached:
quickly, quietly and in one piece.

He was looking
forward to meeting Dr Gail Turner, and to finally getting the answers he was
looking for.