The Khufu Equation (23 page)

"I suppose they need our bodies. These creatures are of another plane . . . another dimension. They have ruined more than one civilization this way."

"What are we going to do?"

"We need wax candles and salt."

"Candles can be found, but salt? We aren't in the kitchen."

"Then we must use whatever we can find."

Rita rushed to a nearby chest of drawers, and in rummaging through it she found two candles. She held them out to the pilgrim. The men looked at each other and exchanged bemused smiles. Rita's explanation was to the point:

"This is a first-class area for certain gentlemen and ladies who prefer intimacy."

The sound coming from behind the door indicated that little time was left.

"We need a flame."

Brett pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and lit the candles.

The monk gave his instructions: "Sit down in a circle, back to back. Quickly!" He gave a candle to Brett.

It wasn't necessary to say more. They took their places on the floor.

Father Sohn, holding the second candle, took out the book and placed his free hand upon it. He was not surprised by the coming of sudden knowledge, and his instinct told him the orientation was correct.

His mind entered the realm of mystical signs from the sacred volume, and he searched for the one true decision. It came a second later, when there was an abrupt crash at the door.

A wave of energy, tinged in pink, splashed out of the book. It enveloped the three like a dome, and then the monk fetched a second. This one was brilliant green.

A crowd of sleepwalkers, sweeping everything, burst into the room. Three lamps were at once broken into pieces by a fiery ball that burst forth from the hand of an attacker. The domes rippled like fountains, their protective energy illuminated only by the flames of two candles. The somnambulists, with their malicious shadows, surrounded the energy domes.

The first of them started its attack, and Brett counted fifteen. The dome wave pushed them back, but Rita's fear, like that of a cornered animal, brought forth a rush of adrenaline. She gave a scream like the roar of a jet. It whet the appetite of the demonic creatures nearest the dome, but its reflected energy snapped Brett's candle.

Jeanette found the boy in a small access beneath the cargo hold. The invisible thread of compassion would have led her to this unprotected child even if he were beyond the frontier of the universe.

"I have to be close Jeff," she said to Father Sohn as they parted. "He needs help, and who will help him except me?" He wanted to keep her there, but she stepped away to maintain her independence.

"If I'm not nearby, he'll die. Your goal is to prevent the Beast from accessing the third stone. Please, leave me to this."

The pilgrim kissed Jeanette on the cheek and, pressing her hands in his, he smiled and said, "Say hello to Jeff."

It wasn't easy for him to find other words, and anything more would have been superfluous.

Jeanette opened the hatch at the end of the luggage compartment and went downstairs toward a very narrow location. The boy lay near one of the walls. The Essence could not be felt, but from out of the nothingness came a whisper:

"He is very close, but you won't be able to take him. Simply be near."

The light from the flashlight was weak, but in the dim glow Jeanette could see the boy's resemblance to his father. She could also perceive the strength and will in his being. "Such an unusual child in this way," she thought. The compressed corners of pale lips trembled a bit. The eyes were closed, but drops of blood oozed from them, and his respiration lacked depth. His bodily system, in self-defense, had spent its entire supply of immunity. A soft moan, barely audible over the noise of the plane, amplified her pity for the child. Jeanette sat down on the cold floor next to Jeff and leaned against the wall. She thought of the little life that grew within her womb.

"What is my baby waiting for? Will it see the white light? Why does the Beast need me? What does all this mean?" It seemed that the more Jeanette thought, the more confused things became.

Jeanette lay down close to Jeff and embraced him. She could feel the heat of his stricken body. The boy wasn't asleep, though. He cried without sound, and he shed tears through closed eyes. He couldn't open them, nor was he able to move. Every cell of his body groaned in misery. His entire being was wracked with pain.

Jeff was thinking of his father when somebody above opened the hatch, approached and sat down nearby. He felt someone's arms hug him tenderly.

The fragrance told him it was a woman, and he could sense her warmth. Eventually he spoke, ever so faintly:

"Who are you? It's very dangerous here. You need to go."

"Jeff, you're not sleeping?" Jeanette said, lifting her head.

"You need to get away," whispered the boy. "Here is death . . . and it hurts so much. You couldn't imagine. Please, go now. Don't die here!"

"Jeff, be calm," said Jeanette, as she stroked his hair. "I'm here to take care of you. The Beast will get neither you nor me. He needs me.

A strange feeling began to rise within the child as the woman gently caressed him. His father wasn't accustomed to doing that but would instead treat him as an equal. Jeff had long missed the love and warmth that a mother provides. He sighed and said:

"Tell me about yourself."

Brett covered Rita's mouth with a hand. As he gazed into her eyes, full of terror and fear, he said: "I am with you, so don't cry. We're safe here, under this dome. Just believe me."

His voice gave her the feeling of a certain control. It was as if no one else could have understood the cause and depth of her commotion; no one else could have responded with such a tone of voice. Rita nodded, and Brett released her.

He tried--without success--to relight the broken candle, and as he did so he watched the raging creatures from the corners of his eyes. The bombarded the invisible wall with balls of fire, but none of them tried to ram it. As the previous experience showed, the strength of demons grew in the presence of human fear.

The remaining candle burned brightly in the pilgrim's right hand. The wax singed his fingers as it melted, but he felt fortunate to be prevented from sleeping. His arm seemed to possess a separate cell consciousness. It made strange, indecipherable motions in the air, while a constant stream of prayers and incantations issued from the mouth of the monk. The sacred volume was there in his lap, maintaining the dome of safety under which the three people sat. Father Sohn's conscious mind swam fathoms deep in the pool of secret knowledge, and the deeper he went the more evident his ultimate strategy became. What was revealed seemed to overturn his long-held notion of the world.

The basis of existence was stasis, like an entity or condition so fundamental and far removed from perception that it couldn't be described. It existed beyond any space and time, but it was able to think. The space was created, and it began to divide. The elemental facts followed one after another, defining the concept of time. The fracturing of this stasis in turn provided the origin of intellectual units, which achieved realization as a consequence of creation. Thus the thinking creatures were born, and they were the part of the original stasis. Simultaneously trying to balance itself, the stasis divided into negative and positive, which with a vast collision became nothing.

Before separation from the original stasis, every spiritual essence went through a certain multidimensional object: Set's Brilliant. It was the first and very emotional experience of all spiritual essences, but it was also one of the first traps, as it blocked any spontaneous return to the starting point, or the "beginning." Most of the information received through Set's Brilliant taught peace and harmony, but the contrary information led to conflict and entrapment. This was the nature of the balance that had been achieved.

The created things, upon leaving Set's Brilliant, built their own worlds. The more dimensions those new worlds had, the more highly developed they were. Creatures building a multidimensional model of the world needed more time than those that were less sophisticated. Those that stood on lower stages, being greater in number, took the first stroke. Initially, it was just a game, but then the game took on a cruel form.

Hundreds, thousands and millions of years passed. There were billions of years. The spiritual creatures, being immortal, sank deeper and deeper into their own traps. They provoked the Great Explosion, as a consequence of which they learned to block numerous manifestations and abilities. Instead, they became embodied in material structures such as clouds. Even such mundane things as meat and children's dolls could embody them. Obeying the law of balance, some played the role of angels, while others became executioners or the exact opposite of their heavenly counterparts.

The one, standing higher, put on a blood-soaked cloak and pronounced himself God. In reality, however, all was the whole.

Father Sohn left the transcendental state just long enough to estimate the dome's remaining defense, and dove again into the pool of mystical thought.

Two hundred years in the past, a small cadre of English esoteric explorers found a description of the tunnels to Set's Brilliant. It was a certain multidimensional conglomeration that allowed the alchemistic magicians to manipulate time and space. The tunnels of Set had numerous passages, but for the sake of mankind most of them were locked by czar Solomon. However, modern occultists viewed those impediments as a violation of their right to secret knowledge, whereupon some were broken and transcended. Thus, predatory strengths from the fourth dimension rushed toward our three-dimensional world. They began to show themselves as previously unknown phenomena, like new diseases, radiation and even UFOs.

They were energy-based vampires that implanted, in the human mentality, programs intended to pull mankind into the sewer of desperation and loathing. It was a device by which people would slit others' throats simply to have a larger piece of the pie. This gave rise to envy and aggression. Having provoked an enormous eruption of energy, the energy vampires devoured the human consciousness like a python swallows a suckling pig, dissolving it into an eternal perpetuation of schemes and negativity.

The energy vampires are hidden within the lower layer of reality, hovering just above man's head like a Russian winter hat. The weaker the person's will is, the more absently he spends his energy and the more readily he triggers the deadly resonance in space. Such an individual is therefore left open to attack by hordes of vampires and other demons.

Eventually, someone from among the followers of secret knowledge blocked the tunnel of Set, hoping to prevent the entry of unseen creatures into our world. For the energy vampires, this meant it was time to gather stones. No longer would they drink of human consciousness in little sips. It was far more satiating to drink in deep, bloodthirsty gulps, as did the Beast. This habit, apart from its blatancy, causes the inconstancy of a particular gland in humans and mammals.

The pineal gland is the brain's keeper of time. It is secreted only at night, in the absence of light. Situated behind the bridge of the nose, it helps to regulate the body's natural rhythm, from the moment one awakens to the last instant of sleep. It is also a factor in animal migrations, hibernation and winter sleep, and the mating season.

The melatonin of the vampire has two peculiar characteristics: It switches off the mechanism of aging, but when sunlight appears it causes the monster to melt.

Thus, by the next morning they would be like unto their emissary. For them he would open a new portal, through which they would acquire one of the features common to ordinary men. Their thin veil of energy--their existence--would be reconstructed, and they would swim amid the photons of sunlight. The infinitely nano-scale realignment and interconnection of elements would make all this possible.

Rita, ever fearful that any glance toward the surrounding shadows could being catastrophe, tried to dispel her cowardice:

"I am not afraid of them . . . . Heavenly Father, give me strength. I shall not fear . . . ."

The constant inundation of emotions helped remove her from the immediate circumstance, at least for a while. She told herself, "When everything ends I'll be drunk as a shoemaker. I spit on this prick of a captain, John Garrett, and I'll tie his balls to the steering wheel. Let him dismiss me."

The darkness flooded Rita, and as it cloaked her it whispered with sickeningly sweet cunning:

"You have so much fear, Rita. You live it and breathe it. Yes, yes. You are afraid of all men. You're afraid of mice, moonlit nights and even your own shadow. Isn't it true, Rita? So, be yourself at last. Be given!"

The darkness drew in upon her, but still Rita resisted. "No! It's not truth. I am not a coward!"

The darkness, however, persisted in its embrace upon Rita's shoulders. It compressed them so that she started to cry. Then, with a bitter lump in the throat, she began to pant. As if a stopper was released from inside, at the source of her being, there came a deep, guttural cry unlike any she had ever uttered. It was the cry of death.