Leap - 02 (35 page)

“Yeah?”

“Great work!”

He chuckled.  “Thanks, Ali.  We’ll see.”

She hung up and handed the phone back to Clay.

“So strong and weak?” said Borger.

“Yeah.  But Lee said the accuracy is barely above fifty percent.  I’m not sure how much better off we are.”

“It’s better than nothing.”

She nodded in agreement and continued staring at the screen.

“Maybe there’s some meaning in the triangle itself.  Maybe it points to something.”  Borger reached over Alison’s shoulder and zoomed out.  “Then again, maybe not.  Looks like three directions that just point away from the cliff.”

Clay stood behind Alison, transfixed on the screen.  “If we assume IMIS is wrong about the shapes, then we have nothing.  So let’s assume it’s right.  Which gives us what?”

“A triangle, three symbols, three possible points of direction, and two words; strong and weak.”

“And,” Alison thought out loud, “if the shapes have single word definitions, then we’re not looking for a sentence.  We’re looking for some kind of relationship between all three.”

“Maybe there’s a mathematical significance to the number three.”

“Prime number?”

“There are a lot of prime numbers.  Why not two or five?”

Clay kept staring at the third shape on the screen.  The circle with inward pointing arrows. 
Strong and weak.  Strong and weak.  And a circle.  Circle with something traveling inward.  Traveling inward.  Traveling inward.  Coming inward in all directions.  But what?  And from where?

Caesare thought about it tactically.  “You said those were boulders, right?”

“Right.”

“Big boulders?”

“Yes.”

“That means if you were standing next to them and looking horizontally, you probably couldn’t tell what they were.”

“That’s right,” Borger said.

“So you could only see the shapes if you were at the top of the cliff, looking down.  From high ground.”

“That is true!”

“Or from the air,” reminded Alison.

Suddenly Clay turned.   “That’s it!”

“What?”

“From the air!  You can see these from the air, or the sky.”  He turned to Borger.  “Or from space!”

“Right.  But then what does the triangle mean?”

Clay’s eyes lit up.  He began searching for something then spotted a piece of paper sticking out of Borger’s pack.  He grabbed the paper and unfolded it, laying it on the table.  “I need a pen.”

“Here.”  Borger dug deeper into his bag and pulled one out.

Clay grabbed the pen and brushed the wrinkled paper out straight.  He then scribbled the three symbols in the same formation: one to the left and the others to the right, with one above the other.  He leaned on the table and looked at the others.  “What if there is no triangle?”  He paused.  “What if it’s not even three?!”

“I’m not following.”

“Think about it.  What are we missing?” 

They looked at his paper.  Alison saw it first.  “The cliff.  We’re missing the cliff.”

“Exactly.”  Clay reached down and scrawled the cliff to the right of the three symbols.  “It’s not a triangle,” he said, connecting them all with straight lines.  “It’s a
square!
”

Borger nodded.  “It’s four points, not three.”

“And four meanings.”  Clay wrote the words ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ under two of the symbols.  The other two, the circle and the cliff, remained blank.  “Two out of four.  Strong and weak!”

Borger shook his head.  “Okay.  So what do the other two mean?”

“Four meanings, Will.  Only viewable from space!”  He waited.  Finally, he laughed and slapped Borger on the back.  “Remember your astrophysics, Will!”

It took three seconds before the light went on
.  “The Four Forces!”

Alison looked back and forth between them.  “What?  What?!”

Borger jumped back in front of his computer.  “The Four Forces of Nature!  In astrophysics, four primary forces control everything.  A strong force, a weak force, gravity…and electromagnetism.”  He pointed to the third shape.  It was the circle with four arrows pointing inward.  “Gravity!”

“Which means the last one is electromagnetism,” added Caesare. 

“So what does that mean?” asked Alison.  “The cliff is electromagnetism?”

“I’ll tell you what it means,” Clay said, leveling his gaze at Caesare.  “It means that cliff face is not a wall. 
It’s a door!”

70

DeeAnn awoke to the sound of something breaking.  She checked Dulce, who was still out, and looked around frantically.  The noise was coming from the rear of the cabin.  Both Caesare and Clay were tearing a large cupboard apart. 

Caesare cut the power to several power plugs and proceeded to kick holes along the bottom of an interior wall.  He checked to make sure there was no charge before reaching in and yanking out the electrical wiring.  When it got to the end, he gripped the wire tight and gave a giant pull, snapping the other end off inside the wall.

Behind him, Clay removed part of Alves’ specially modified interior power system.  He disconnected a set of thick cables from one of the cabin’s many twelve-volt batteries.  Clay then lifted it out from the bottom of the storage area.

Caesare stepped past him, his eyes fixated on the long-necked sink faucet.  He instantly wrapped his big hand around the top and jerked, snapping it off at the base.

Alison and Borger stood quietly, waiting at the door.

“What’s going on?” DeeAnn asked.

“We’re going back out,” Caesare answered, brushing past her.  “Take care of Dulce. We’ll be right back.”

She blinked, watching them file out of the door, one by one, into the pouring rain.  “Be careful!”

Together, they hiked back uphill to the cliff.  Its entire face was now covered in a sheen of water, cascading down from the heavy rainfall.  They approached the area in the rock where the two subtle grooves, almost ten feet apart, traveled together straight up.

Clay dropped the battery and held out the metal faucet pipe from Caesare.  In one hand, Caesare gripped the pipe and one end of the wire together.  With straining muscles, he then wrapped the thick wire around the pipe one pass at a time.  In a few minutes, he had coiled most of the wire around the pipe.  He grabbed the dangling ends, shaping them into hooks.  With that, Caesare reached down and picked up the large battery, hooking the wire ends to the positive and negative battery terminals.

Alison brushed several soaked strands of hair from her eyes.  “What’s that?”

Clay winked.  “An electromagnet.”  He looked at Caesare who nodded, then held the coiled rod up and pressed it against the rock. 

Nothing happened. 

Clay moved the rod to another place against the rock.  Still nothing.  Section by section, he moved the magnet across the cliff face and touched it to the hard surface.

Clay and Caesare suddenly looked at each other when they heard a heavy “clunk.”  A moment later, the rock began to shake and loose pieces fell away from the vertical grooves above.  With a low, deep rumble, the face began to push outward from between the grooves.   

It continued sliding forward until a large black entrance appeared.  All four stood together in the rain…speechless.

Alison shook her head.  “This is definitely
not
Mayan.” 

Clay dropped the magnet and glanced over his shoulder.  He carefully approached the dark entrance.  When he was close enough, he took a single step inside and looked around.

“Whoa!”

71

The other three followed Clay in as a rush of stale air blew past, forced outside by the light breeze behind them.  Inside, the room was large, reaching well above their heads.  Its depth and width quickly disappeared into the darkness.  But they barely noticed the room’s size.  It was the contents that stunned them, leaving their mouths agape.

The room was radiating a bright green glow.  The color looked almost fluorescent.  Yet the most startling of all…were the tubes: rows and rows of thick clear tubes, standing nearly ten feet high.  Hundreds of tubes.  And each was filled with what appeared to be a bright glowing green liquid.

Side by side, all four of them stood in awe, slowly scanning the room.

“Okay,” Caesare murmured.  “This is pretty much the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

“What in the world is this?” whispered Borger.

They stepped further inside, approaching the closest tube.  Inside, they could see the glowing liquid, swirling around ever so gently.

Clay looked at the smooth stone floor, appearing green from the hue of the tubes.  He brought his right boot forward and gently placed it onto the floor in front of him.  He then raised it up again revealing a deep footprint beneath. 

Alison peered down and did the same thing, creating a smaller print in the thick layer of dust.  “This place,” whispered Alison, “is really old.”

“What are these things?”

Clay shook his head at Borger’s question, dumbfounded.

The green ambient glow revealed a stone ceiling several feet above the top of the tubes.  Their clear casing appeared to be thick glass.  When Borger reached out to touch one, a ripple of light burst from the glass, and he drew his hand back quickly.  “Ouch!”

“Is it hot?”

“No, it’s ice cold.”

Clay moved forward and closed in, just a few inches away.  The green glowing fluid was clearly moving.  But there was something inside that the fluid was swirling around.

“There’s something in the middle of this tube.”

The others joined him and peered inside.  “They look like bubbles,” Alison said.  Her voice echoed softly against the thick walls.

“Or tiny spheres.”  Caesare raised his head, following the spiraling strands of spheres to the top of the tube.  “There’s thousands of them.”

Borger stepped away and examined the next closest tube.  “They all have them.”  He looked closer.  “Wait a minute, there’s something inside of the spheres.  It looks like little dots.”

“And different sizes.”  Clay slowly circled around the first column and peered at the strands from the other side.  “Very different sizes.”

Borger looked more closely, staring intently through his eyeglasses.  “You’re right.  Some of these are bigger.”

“What do you think they are?”

Borger looked back at Clay.  “I think they’re
seeds
.”

The four moved deeper toward the back of the room.  Every tube appeared to have strings of spheres wrapped inside, twisting in a way that reminded Clay of a double helix shape.  Although these contained ten or more strands each.  “There are no machines in here,” he remarked to the others. 

“I don’t see any either.  Unless they’re behind the walls.”

“I don’t hear anything.  You’d think there would be some kind of sound, even if it were behind a wall.”

Caesare considered it.  “If there are no machines, then where’s the power source?  What’s keeping all of this cold?  And what’s causing the glow?  A chemical reaction?”

“That would last
this
long?  You’d have to add more chemicals, but these tubes look like they’re sealed on both ends.”

The four fanned out quietly, examining more of the columns.  A few minutes later, Borger called out from the other side of the room.  They ran to find him back near the door in the cliff. 

“Look at this!” 

They peered down at the floor near his feet and could see a faint jagged etching through the dust, making its way to the door.

“What is it?”

Borger touched his finger to it then raised his hand and sniffed.  “I think it’s water.” 

They turned around and traced the tiny stream back to one of the nearby tubes.” 

“Is it leaking?!”

Clay crouched down and checked the glass.  “I don’t think so.  In fact,” he stood up, looking all the way to the top, “I don’t think it’s the fluid at all.”  He spotted a tiny flash near the ceiling.  “I think the water found a way inside this cavern, and it’s dripping down this tube and onto the floor; then it trails to the door.”

“I think you’re right.”  Borger careened his neck to the ceiling until he saw the same reflection from a drop of falling water.  “That’s how it’s seeping back outside and changing the soil.”

Both Clay and Borger observed a tiny flash emitted near the top of the tube each time a drop of water hit the glass.

Alison stared through the tube nearest to her.  “So, maybe this glowing liquid is some kind of power source.  Or maybe some kind of nutrient.”

“Or maybe it’s both.”

“Hey,” Caesare called from behind them, “come take a look at this.”

They found him a few aisles over, examining some of the spheres.  “Take a look at these bubbles right here, closest to the edge.  Tell me what they look like to you.”

As soon as they saw what Caesare was pointing at, the others froze.

“Oh my gosh,” Alison whispered.  “Those look like some kind of embryos!”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Instinctively, they all took a step back and scanned the glowing room with a very different expression.  One by one, they backed up, retreating toward the door.  When they reached it, they made sure it was still open and remained near the exit.

“Alison,” Clay spoke softly.  “How old do you think this place is?”

“I have no idea.”

“Just a ballpark.”

She shrugged.  “Well, judging from how worn the boulders are outside and the amount of undisturbed dust inside, I’d say pretty old.  I don’t think this thing has been opened for hundreds of years, maybe thousands.”

“Will and Steve, in your opinion, is there any possibility that something like this could have been made by us?”

Caesare looked at Borger then shook his head.  “Are you kidding?”

Clay nodded pensively.  “So, does anyone believe this place is
not
storing an extraordinary amount of DNA material?”

“DNA that doesn’t belong to us,” added Caesare.

Borger gasped.  “Holy cow!  It’s another vault!”

“What do you mean ‘another’ vault?”

“I mean the seed vault.  In Norway.  On the island!”  Borger gave them a sarcastic stare when he saw their questioning faces.  “You don’t know about the seed vault?  The
Global
Seed Vault!  It’s a large complex on a Norwegian island that has been stockpiling copies of seeds for years, from all over the world.”

“Why?”

“To protect them in the event of a major catastrophe.  It’s got something like a hundred thousand different seeds, all from different continents.  The complex was supposedly built to last hundreds of years.”  Borger waved his arms emphatically in front of himself.  “That’s what this is!  It’s another vault!”

“Whose vault?”

Borger turned to Clay.  “Well, clearly not ours.  Someone else.  An alien race.”

“
Another
alien race?”

“Why not?” Borger asked.  “Remember what Palin said.  The amount of water that Earth has is not common, which makes us stand out to anyone who can see us.  Like a beacon.”

Alison frowned.  “But why would some alien race put copies of their seeds on Earth?”

“The same reason as us,” Borger replied.  “In case of a catastrophe.  But right now, we can’t go very far.  They can.  And if you’re going to locate a seed vault anywhere, I’m guessing you’d want to do it on a planet that you
knew
could sustain you.”

Everyone turned back to the columns in front of them.

Alison broke the silence with a whisper.  “So what do we do now?”  She looked back and forth between the three men, none of whom answered.  “Guys?”

To her right both Caesare and Borger finally shrugged.  She looked to her left.  “John?

Clay blinked but continued staring, transfixed.

“John?”

Quietly, he inhaled then spoke under his breath without taking his eyes away.  “Beware of the leap.”

“Huh?”

“Beware of the leap,” he repeated, louder.

“What leap?”

“It’s what Palin said to me before we came back through.”

Caesare looked at him curiously.  “What does it mean?”

“We’ve seen what those plants can do.  Which was probably nothing compared to the water itself.”  He turned to the others.  “And that water is only touching the glass in here.  What do you think the solution inside those tubes is capable of?”

No one answered.

“We could be talking about something so far beyond our current abilities and understanding that it would seem like
magic
.”  Clay scanned the entire room again.  “Commander Lawton was so amazed by the DNA in those plants that she was sure countries would go to war over it.  How far would they go over something like this?”

Caesare squinted at Clay.  “All the way.”

Clay stood thinking.  “You’re right.  So, the question is how many lives is it worth?  A thousand?  A million?”

“There could be a lot of good,” Borger offered.

“Would it be worth it, Will?”

Borger shrugged.

“Would those who died still think it was worth it?”  Clay sighed.  “A lot of advancements are vindicated as the cost of progress.  But it’s an easy question when you’re only asking the survivors, isn’t it?”

They continued to watch Clay, each of them silently thinking.

“Who knows what would be unleashed from these things.  Or from the DNA they’re protecting.”

“It’s a sleeping giant,” said Caesare.

Clay looked at them, gravely.  “Who thinks we should find out?”

When no one raised their hand, he looked back up at the nearest tube.  The glowing green mixture struck him as having an odd beauty about it.  In the end, Palin had tried to warn them about what they might find.  About wisdom. 
How often did humans really learn?  What about governments?

“So what do we do?” asked Alison.  “It won’t be long before people start showing up.”

Clay’s voice dropped almost to a whisper.  “I say we leave it alone.”

“Someone else will find it, John.”

“Not if we bury it.”

Caesare raised an eyebrow.  “Bury it?  Bury it with what?”

Clay turned and peered outside.  The rain was still pouring.  “Didn’t our Chinese friends leave some bulldozers behind?”

Caesare stared at him.  “John, we can’t bury the whole damn cliff.”

“We don’t have to,” he replied with eyes still fixed outside.  “We only need to bury the sign posts.  Or better yet, remove the boulders.”

“Then how will whoever put it here find it, assuming they ever come back for it?”

Clay frowned.  “If we don’t hide it, there might not be anything for them to come back for.”