Keystone (45 page)

And then she
noticed the rivers.

Not just the
ancient forebears of the Nile and Amazon and Mississippi, but in the bloated
landmass that had since sunk into the sea there were complex deltas and
marshlands, while upriver water seemed to find its way into every crease of the
world.

And as she
orbited the planet slowly, on the night-side of the Earth she saw the lights of
thousands of Xynutian cities, and she understood why they had slipped under the
radar of human science for so long. Their cities mainly occupied the lowlands
that were now in her time under the oceans and seas.

A small flare
of light shot from one of the cities and flew towards her, and she knew the
Xynutians had reached their space age. In the moments that followed, hundreds
of rockets left the planet on various voyages of discovery, and she already
knew that for some, that voyage would end on Mars. She wondered what other
planets and stars had been touched by the ancient beings.

In the African
Savannah, she gasped as she saw more early hominids walking upright through the
long brown grass, with spears in their hands.
So we evolved separately,
she thought in wonder. This new knowledge
would shatter everything they knew about human evolution. What were the chances
of humanity evolving twice? She watched as the hominids fought against the
Xynutians along rivers, though the Xynutians easily pushed them back into the
forests and plains, and she found herself caught in an emotional tug of war
between these fascinating Xynutians and her ancestors that they were killing,
like a man might kill a beast.
That’s all
we were to them,
she shook her head.

Before she could
give it any more thought, a shadow in the shape of the Amarna Stickman, Aniquilus,
covered the Earth and the hominids disappeared from view. In their place she
saw fire and death spreading through the Xynutian cities. The towering
buildings collapsed into the water of the rivers and seas, and Xynutians lay
dying in the dust of the fields.

One final
armada of spaceships blasted off. As they reached orbit they paused, as if to
say their last, silent, goodbyes, before pointing to the depths of space and vanishing
in a flash of light.
 

Below her, the
fires from the cities extinguished one by one, and the seas rose, swallowing
Xynutian civilisation forever. Sadness overwhelmed her as she saw the last of
the Xynutians slip beneath the waves.

The shadow of
Aniquilus went. The age of Man had arrived.

In the room,
darkness followed.

The wind
whistled in her ears, and gradually dawn broke over the ridges of mountains she
instantly recognised: Amarna, before humans. Though the vegetation was different,
with lush forests and green plains all the way down to the Nile, the shape of
Amarna was unchanged. A small doorway on the plateau above the plains of Amarna
led to a spiral ramp with shallow steps every meter or so that descended into
the ground.

She found
herself walking and instantly knew where she was going. At the end of a long
corridor, she reached the inscriptions on the wall that had been at the top of
the stairs in the Egyptian hall. The red light was there, and as she watched it
flicked to green.

As she descended
another spiral staircase she thought of the coincidence that red and green had
similar meaning for both humans and Xynutians, and wondered whether there was
something universal about the two colours and what they represented. She
reached the airlock, noting the absence of Nefertiti and Akhenaten.

On the other
side of the airlock, she passed the statue with the staff in its hand, and
entered the room with the three doors. The doors with the tree and bear were
already closed, but the Xynutian door was open. She entered.

The vault
within was as deep as the tallest skyscraper on Earth was tall, and just as
wide again. She was standing on a small ledge, jutting out into space, and
facing a wall of small drawers, like millions of filing cabinets stacked on top
of each other. The drawer in front of her was open, and looking back at her
from within was the frozen face of a Xynutian, completely naked inside a glass
bubble.

The drawer
closed and she exited the vault. The door shut behind her and she found herself
at the control benches in the middle of the room. She didn’t understand any of
the symbols or concentric circles that hovered before her, but somehow their
meaning seeped into her mind.

She had no
time to digest the significance of this information, however, as all the lights
suddenly went out.

When they came
back on, her body and senses abruptly came into focus. She was back in the room
with Ben, Henry and Walker, facing the Xynutian statue.

They stood
there in silence for at least a minute before Ben reacted. Walker had caught
him off balance in the airlock, and he had been waiting to return the favour.

Diving towards
the American, Ben slammed his upturned palm into his chin and reached out with
his other hand to grab the pistol. His knee found the other man’s groin, and
Walker let out a yelp of pain.

The Egyptian’s
advantage only lasted a few moments, however, and it quickly became apparent
that the American would overpower him. Ben was focusing most of his strength on
obtaining the pistol, which had left Walkers left hand free to try and gouge
one of Ben’s eyes out.

Reacting
instinctively, Gail jumped into the air and grabbed the Xynutian’s staff.
Hanging from it for a few seconds, it suddenly gave and ripped out of the
statue’s hand. She ran up behind Walker and struck him across the back of the
head with all of her might.

He shuddered
under the impact and fell into Ben, sending them both crashing to the floor,
the pistol held in between them. A shot, muffled by their bodies, echoed in the
ante-chamber.

Patterson ran
to pull the two of them apart, and as he did so Walker pulled the pistol barrel
round and fired a second shot, hitting Patterson in the chest.

As Ben lay
motionless on the floor and Patterson gasped for air, his back against the wall,
Walker stood up and faced Gail.

“Just you and
me now,” he grimaced, nursing the back of his head. “And from what I’ve just
seen in that little mind-fuck back there, those people didn’t make this place
with an exit. So we’re stuck down here after all.”

Gail
brandished the Xynutian staff defensively and took a step away from him. She
looked down at Ben and tried to see if he was still breathing or not. He
blinked at her slowly, his face pale. Patterson was gasping for air and
reaching out to her.

“You bastard,”
she said between clenched teeth.

He took two
steps towards her. “Sorry you feel that way, sweetheart, because I was kind of
hoping you’d make the stay down here more interesting.”

She cringed at
the thought of it, and took another step back, moving past the Xynutian statue.
“You’re crazy,” she said. “After all this all you can think about is raping
me!”

“Rape!” he
laughed. “I’m not that kind of guy.” He levelled the gun at her chest and his
smile disappeared. “But I don’t see why you need to be here any longer taking
my air.”

She closed her
eyes and raised her arms defensively in front of her.

The cacophony
of gunshots that followed made her eardrums feel like they were exploding, and
she fell backwards. The Xynutian staff clattered to the floor beside her.

But the pain
she had been expecting never came.

She waited for
a moment before opening her eyes to see Walker lying on the floor in front of
her; blood covered his face and the wall behind him. The angle of his head told
her instantly that he was dead. She looked beyond the Xynutian statue and her
whole body started to tremble. Her heart pounded in her chest and her breath
shortened. Tears streamed down her face, and while she was still unable to hear
following the gunshots, she knew she was uncontrollably repeating his name over
and over out loud.

Because there,
standing in the airlock with a gun held to his shoulder like the last action
hero, was George.

George lifted Gail up and spun
her around the room, and as her feet finally touched the ground they kissed,
melting into each other with unrestrained abandon.

“Gail, I –”
George didn’t know where to begin, as he broke from their embrace and looked
her in the eyes. “I thought I’d lost you, I –”

Gail cut him
off, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I know, George, me too. But first we
need to see to Ben and Henry.”

He was about
to ask who Henry was when Zahra pushed past him and made her way to Ben’s side.
She knelt down beside him and located the entry point of the bullet in his left
shoulder through a hole in his shirt. She asked him a series of short questions
in Arabic, and after each response nodded matter-of-factly. Finally, she
repositioned herself so that she was kneeling behind his head and propped him
up against her.

“I need some
saline,” she told George. “And blood for him,” she nodded at Patterson, whose
breathing had turned into a pant. Gail had gone to his side, and was trying to
comfort him as best she could.

Tariq had
followed them in through the airlock, and Zahra quickly gave him his orders in
Arabic. Gail panicked for a moment as she wondered whether the airlock would
let them out as easily as it let them in, but as soon as Tariq entered the
brightly lit corridor the door closed behind him.

Probing the
back of Ben’s shoulder, Zahra found the exit hole directly opposite the entry
point on his front. It looked like a clean pass through the shoulder, and some
tentative movement of the arm suggested that none of the bones or joints had
been hit on the way through.

Using her
knife, she cut his shirt open and cleaned the small hole with water from a
plastic bottle she got from her backpack. Her medical training in the Army
reminded her that there was one major artery and a major vein in the left
shoulder, which supplied the left arm and the top of the neck. But the slow
rate at which this wound was bleeding and the colour of the blood told her
instantly that the bullet hadn’t severed either of them.

“Get me some
bandages,” she asked George.

George
ferreted in her backpack and came out with two rolls, which he ripped the
cellophane from and passed to her one by one. She held the first roll over the
hole in his front and used the second bandage to wrap over his shoulder and
under his arm. Within a few moments the dressing was secure. She lay him back
down on the floor and, standing at his feet, lifted his legs up so they rested
against her groin.

“He’s a bit
light headed, but the wound itself is not serious,” she said. “This will push
some blood back to his head. But he still needs a saline drip to be sure – he
could go into shock if we don’t treat him.”

When the
colour started to return to Ben’s face and he smiled at her, she put his legs
back down on the floor and got him to bend them at the knees.

She moved on
to Patterson, and her face dropped. He had started to splutter drops of blood.
She gave him a quick inspection and shook her head at Gail and George.

Patterson was
drowning in his own blood. He needed emergency treatment, blood, saline and
invasive surgery now to stand a chance of living, and they were capable of
delivering none of it.

Gail mopped
his brow with her sleeve.

“It’ll be
fine, Henry,” she said comfortingly. He started to say something, but she
hushed him. “No, don’t try to talk.”

He shook his
head as best he could, spitting out a mouthful of blood and saliva. “No,” he
insisted. “We failed; Mallus thinks he’s Aniquilus. He’s going to plan B.”

“Who’s
Aniquilus? What’s plan B?” George asked.

Patterson
looked him in the eyes. “Nuclear war,” he coughed and held his chest as he
gasped desperately for air. His eyes widened as he realised he was unable to
breath.

“Today.” he
managed to say as the last breath left his body. He sagged limply against the
wall and his chin fell to his chest.

They reached
the surface carrying Ben between them, emerging into the evening chill to the
welcoming arms of the al-Minya emergency services. George wasted no time in taking
advantage of his phone, which had been useless underground.

Martín
answered after the fourth ring. “George?”

“Martín, it’s
me, we’re OK, and Gail is safe,” George summarised. He cut Martín’s joyous
reply off. “DEFCOMM are launching an attack, Martín. They’re going to try and
start World War III!” On their way to the surface, Gail had told him about
DEFCOMM’s hangers full of missiles being assembled. There was no doubt that if
Seth Mallus wanted to kick things off, he had the muscle to do so.

He said as
much to Martín, and after wishing him luck, hung up.

They could
only hope that Martín was able to get the message through to the Americans
quickly enough, and that they would take it seriously.

As Ben was
being looked over by two paramedics, Gail slipped her hand round George’s
waist, pulled him close and kissed him softly on the lips.

Martín was immediately on the
phone to Larue, as Jacqueline tried to figure out what had got him out of bed
in such a hurry: it was barely seven o’clock in the evening.
 
They were still in the earliest stages of
their relationship, where love had no timetable and the world revolved around
the bedroom. Plus, he’d been away in Egypt for days and they had spent most of
Saturday making up for lost time.

She clung to
his neck passionately, and he managed to untangle himself tactfully in order to
concentrate on the conversation with Larue. Once she heard his tone of voice,
all thoughts of love-making left her head, and she pulled a pillow to her chest
for comfort.
 

Martín
explained the situation in Egypt and what Patterson had told Gail and George
before dying. He’d expected to make a full report to his boss after the
weekend, but this new information couldn’t wait that long.

Jacqueline got
dressed while he listened to Larue’s response.

“I’ve already
told you,” he said desperately, cutting him off mid-sentence. “DEFCOMM, in
Florida. Yes I know it sounds crazy, but think about it: they control the
defence satellites for the United States, which includes all of the early
warning systems for nuclear attack. If they want to, they can simulate an
attack on the United States from anywhere on Earth. We need to warn the
Americans!”

By the time he
put the phone down Jacqueline had been to heat up some coffee. She passed him his
mug.

“What did he
say?”

He looked her
in the eyes. “I’ve done what I can. I’m not sure he really believes it, but
he’s going to talk to his counterpart at NASA.”

“Do you think
it’s true, what they said about them wanting to start a nuclear war?”

He looked into
the thick-black liquid. To Martín, coffee was one of the world’s great
paradoxes; it would certainly put him on edge and make him nervous later, but
when he was actually drinking it he felt a smooth calm descend on his mind. Its
heat and bitterness could lift any doubt and confusion, allowing him to focus
effectively.

“Think about
it,” he said eventually, “remember what they did to the crew of the
Clarke
? What did we think at the time?
That there must be something pretty incredible worth hiding to go to all the
trouble of disrupting
all
transmissions from the spaceship, and then from Mars, too. And now, God only
knows what’s happened up there, since we haven’t had any news from the planet
for days.

“Not since
Apollo 11 have the eyes of the world been so firmly rooted on a space mission,
and never in the course of history has technology made it so easy for people to
follow it. And yet they tried. Imagine the
risk
!”
He took a gulp of coffee. “If they were prepared to do that, then they either
had a lot to gain, or nothing to lose. It’s inevitable that they would be found
out eventually, because –”

He froze. Jacqueline
stared at him wide-eyed, and pushed him to talk. “Because what?”

“Because the
mission was
never
coming home. That’s
the only way they would have been able to ensure that no-one found out. But
Gail Turner’s free now, she’s talked.”

He didn’t know
half the story, didn’t know where Gail had been for the past week or even what
she had seen, but he was convinced that DEFCOMM was about to do exactly what
George had said.