2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (37 page)

Rebecca touched a link and it popped up on-screen. ‘Deuteronomy 2:10,’ she said. ‘The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim.’ She scrolled down the page and then went back to the first set of results.

Time passed as she continued to sift through page after page of text. She went back over the same scripture, flicked through the same photos, and then went back to the beginning and started all over again. She asked him variations on questions he’d already answered and when she put to him another such ambiguity Goodwin slapped his knee in frustration. ‘This is getting us nowhere!’

Rebecca glanced round to see her patients still slept.

‘Sorry,’ he said, dejected.

She patted his leg and looked at the notes she’d been taking. ‘Don’t worry about it. And I disagree. It seems to me the Nephilim were one of four things: the children of fallen angels and human women, fallen angels who possessed men, the descendents of Adam who followed false gods, or ordinary men who rejected God and chose to be wicked. And what’s more the Bible and other ancient texts tell us giants were commonplace all over the world in the days before the great flood, although according to other scholars the term
Nephilim
literally means
giants
, a derivative of the Hebrew word
naphil
. And some say the giants referenced were just tall peoples from Africa or other distant states.’

Goodwin rubbed his temples. ‘Didn’t mankind start in Africa?’

Rebecca shrugged before looking it up. ‘Yes, South Africa. Bones of our distant ancestors were dug up in a place called the Cradle of Humanity.’

‘Then it stands to reason the Anakim could have evolved from there, too.’

‘Maybe.’

Goodwin stared at the screen, wishing for something to jump out at him and make sense. Nothing did.

Rebecca yawned. ‘Perhaps the flood drove the Anakim underground.’

‘What did you just say?’

‘The flood, perhaps the water drove them down here.’

‘Maybe. But—’ he gave a groan.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘All this, we’re beneath Mexico, none of this can be related. The Anakim from the Bible would have lived thousands of miles away.’

‘So?’

He shoved the screen away. ‘So this is all pointless.’

‘How do you know there’s not another Sanctuary over there?’

He blinked and then shook his head. ‘Corporal Walker said this is the only one.’

‘As far they know. Maybe they just haven’t found it yet.’

The idea made him feel dizzy and he bent his head.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, I’m—’ A figure on the frieze stared back him, its photo on top of the pile. He picked it up and then sorted through the rest with increasing speed. Behind all the figures, as clear as day, the forms of giant waves reared up to create the background. How could he have missed it? Then something else caught his eye. Two of the photos containing the Libra carvings had fallen one across the other. He picked them up. Each photo had been taken at a different location in the city and consisted of various carved lines and the constellation itself, and they matched up, the designs flowing seamlessly from one to the other. He spread the remaining photographs out on the floor and moved those of the frieze to one side.

‘What is it, Richard? Have you found something?’

Goodwin didn’t reply. He scanned through the designs as he sought to match them together. One looked like it would connect to the first two. He folded it in half and the designs merged.

Rebecca moved away and returned with some scissors and Goodwin cut up the first three photos, which enabled him to lay them down flat next to each other on the ground. In silence, they continued to find more photos which flowed on from the first three until the pattern ceased, with two thirds of the photos left over. An hour passed and they found that some of the remaining images also matched up to one another – two here, and three there – but none to the ten images they’d already aligned into a single whole.

Sitting back, they assessed their handiwork.

Rebecca prodded at a couple of the photos to move them closer together. ‘It doesn’t look like much.’

Goodwin wasn’t so sure. He moved some of the smaller sections around the larger group, which he left in the centre. ‘I think the constellation is the key. Look,’ – he pointed to the corner of each image – ‘each depiction of Libra coincides with the corresponding piece next to it, creating a spiral pattern of the same symbol.’

‘Like the galaxy map?’

‘Exactly! And each representation of the constellation is just how it looks at different places in the night sky when viewed from Earth, at various locations and times of the year.’

‘Then it might be telling us how to get to the surface,’ she said.

Goodwin’s eyes grew bright, but something else nagged at him.
I’m missing something
. He picked up his handheld computer and turned the large screen transparent, then held it over their newly created mosaic and took a photo. Not sure what to do next, he used the touchscreen to remove parts of the image he didn’t want, including all of the inscriptions and elaborate pictograms.

He showed the image to Rebecca. ‘What does that look like to you?’

‘A bunch of squiggles?’

‘Look again.’

She did so, but her expression remained confounded.

‘It’s the lake,’ he said, ‘the shoreline!’

‘Are you sure?’

Goodwin was positive. He’d been in Hilt’s command post for months on end, watching as the Darklight reconnaissance teams pieced together a map of their surroundings, metre by metre and mile by mile. Even though it was incomplete and only showing the southern portion, there was no doubt in his mind it was the outline of the ancient aquifer that sustained them with both food and water. Knowing things always came in threes, he believed this revelation indicated a third resource lurked in its inky depths – a way out of Sanctuary itself!

Chapter Forty Two

Despite Goodwin’s excitement at cracking the code of the carvings and the possibility of a route to the surface, Rebecca had soon pointed out that they were unable to enter the lake to find out what lay within. Not only were there fierce, sharp-toothed creatures swimming in its near bottomless expanse, the twenty-seven square miles of surface might as well have been on the moon as they had no equipment with which to dive. And not only that, where in such a large body of water were they supposed to look? It could take years, decades, to locate something they knew not what.

Now back in his own tent, Goodwin pondered on the tantalising nature of his discovery and ground his teeth in frustrated distraction. Getting to the surface of course would be second to finding the USSB. But even though the next wave of asteroids would soon be arriving, they would have time a plenty to relocate to another base – if, that was, Goodwin could contact the GMRC Directorate without Malcolm Joiner finding out about it first. No small feat, but one he felt he might be able to pull off, given the chance. He still had contacts he could call upon if needed, notably the Director of USSB Pelagic down in South America. If he’d have known the consequences of trying to enter Sanctuary at the time, he’d have continued their journey south.

Full of expectation, later that evening Goodwin decided to raise his findings with Kara, who sat on the bed in subdued silence while reading a report on projected food stocks for the camp.

Kara held his photographic collage and listened as Goodwin gave her his theory about a way to the surface.

‘And Rebecca’s been helping you with this?’

‘Yes.’ He pointed at the line that represented the lake’s edge. ‘Do you see it?’

‘And what
else
has
she
helped you discover?’

Goodwin failed to notice the edge to his partner’s voice as he regaled her with their observations about the frieze and its connection to the Anakim, the Bible and even the Great Flood.

Kara massaged her eyes. ‘Richard, can you hear yourself?’

He didn’t understand what she meant and his wrist had started itching again. He scratched at it. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re quoting passages from the Bible, for God’s sake! The Nephilim, the apocalypse, the flood, this is all fantasy, don’t you see? Rebecca is a sweet woman, but she believes everything the book says is real, she’s detached from reality and she’s dragging you down with her. You’re vulnerable, willing to accept fiction as fact and fact as inconsequential.’

‘But the map of the lake, look!’ He pointed at it again and then showed her the photo of the frieze. ‘Can you see the waves in the background? It’s a foretelling of the great flood. I looked it up; every nation in the world has the same stories, passed down from generation to generation. It can’t be a coincidence.’

‘It can, and it is.’ Kara came to him and held his hands in hers. ‘Calm down and think. None of this makes sense. The Anakim are far older than the biblical tales. You know this. They aren’t related in any way. If you look for something long enough, if you want it badly enough, you’ll find it. You’ve altered the answers to fit the question. Science is littered with people who searched for something and lo and behold they found it, justifying their miraculous findings with facts that couldn’t be verified one way or the other. It’s like the Higgs boson; they pumped billions of dollars into Cern’s Large Hadron Collider and surprise, surprise, they found what they were looking for, the so-called God particle. Who could verify it was as they said it was? No one, as no one knows what it really is – something that exists for a fraction of a second and which the scientists themselves admit cannot be given a hundred per cent guarantee of being the theorised particle at all. Just because people say it’s true doesn’t mean it is. What would you do if you had a set of results that cost billions to achieve? Would you go, “Sorry, folks, we’ve wasted your time and money,” or would you do everything in your power to make it fit, to get the answer that validated your career, your life, your very existence?’

Goodwin frowned. ‘Coming from a scientist that seems like a funny way of looking at things. You think we shouldn’t even bother with trying to advance ourselves?’

‘No, not at all. What I’m saying is, belief is a powerful thing. It can create as well as destroy. It can also blind those behind it to the starkness of reality. Add a powerful motivator to the mix, like money, or a way out of Sanctuary—’

He held up the photos. ‘This is not fiction. It’s real. The map of the lake is real. The constellation symbols that match up –
are real
. You just refuse to believe it because you lack faith.’

Her face blanched. ‘What?! Unlike your precious Rebecca?’

‘That’s not what I meant, but now that you put it that way, yes. At least Rebecca trusts my judgement and respects what I have to say.’

Kara slapped him round the face.

Shocked, Goodwin gaped at her in hurt confusion.

‘Get out!’ Kara thrust a finger at the tent’s entrance.

Goodwin bent down and collected his photos from the floor.

‘I said, get out!’ Kara hurled a shoe at his head.

Goodwin made a hasty retreat and ducked out into the darkness, his bridges burnt and sanity questioned.

♦

Kara stood in her tent, her breathing shallow and hands clenched. She let out a shriek of fury and kicked out at the bed, sending its frame skittering across the room.

Pain throbbed in her foot at the site of impact, stifling her anger, and she limped to the tent flap and peered out to see Goodwin’s form disappearing into the gloom. Her expression turned to one of despair. ‘Richard,’ she whispered, ‘come back to me.’

Chapter Forty Three

California, USA

Cold winds blew through the creaking limbs of the dead and dying carcasses of the majestic old-growth trees that covered the flowing plain of the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Brown leaves, whipped up by swirling vortices, tumbled through the air alongside the pervasive dust particles that sifted down to the ground from the heavens above; these tiny pieces of pulverised rock an ever-present reminder of the devastating and distant impact of the asteroid impact a year previous.

A darkened campsite lay amongst the giant columns of bark and wood, its facilities empty except for a blue and white coroner’s truck which stood parked in quiet isolation.

Inside this large vehicle, two women, one large and one small, stood next to one another in quiet contemplation.

The disgraced BBC newsreader, Jessica Klein, stared into the face of peace that was Professor Steiner, lost in his own mind to death’s eternal embrace. Dark welts that scared his pale skin drew her eyes down, their blood red striations creeping over his exposed chest and neck in equal measure. A well of pity and sorrow grasped her heart.
What suffering has this poor man endured? Beaten and abused by those that sought their own justice. And what does he know that can help my family? And why did he help the man known as Colonel Samson to commit such atrocious crimes?
Soon, all would become clear, or so she hoped.