Atlantis (24 page)

She started as she looked about. Near the rear of the plane, a thick golden beam blazed straight up into the sky, about twenty feet above their current elevation. Other than that, there was nothing. Ariana could hear Mansor’s breathing and the beat of her own heart sounded loud inside her head. With the glow from the four beams and her eyes beginning to adjust, she noticed there was a very faint visibility, but nowhere near enough to really see anything further than a few feet away.

She reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled out the flashlight. A firm grip came down on her wrist. She could just make out Mansor’s silhouette next to her.

“I wouldn't,” Mansor said. “I don't think we want to attract any attention.”

“All right,” Ariana agreed, peeling his hand off her wrist. “Let's go.”

They moved down the top of the plane by feel, staying on top of the center of the curvature, Mansor reeling out cable as he went, Ariana keeping one hand on the cable, letting it drop behind her. Ariana concentrated but she could hear nothing. The total lack of sound was unnerving, as much as the lack of light. She wondered when dawn came whether the sun would be able to penetrate the strange mist that enveloped the plane.

They made their way about twenty feet along the top of the fuselage. Ariana could faintly see the top of the plane beneath her feet and about twenty feet ahead as her eyes adjusted to the dark.

Suddenly Ariana sensed something behind them. She turned. A circle of gold light twice as large in diameter as the fuselage appeared at the nose of the plane, lighting up the skin of the aircraft inside of it’s circumference. Ariana could see the gaping hole in the top of the cockpit as the circle slid down the plane, covering a few feet every second. The circle was only about ten feet deep, behind it was the same darkness, as if the plane were being run through the beam of a massive searchlight.

“Freeze,” Ariana hissed, knowing they couldn’t out run it. Mansor needed no further prompting, seeing what was coming.

The two of them stood perfectly still on the top of the plane as the light circle slid down the plane. It reached them and Ariana felt the hairs on her skin energize. Her brain felt as if it were encompassed in a compressing tight band. The pain in her head became unbearable and she bit back a scream, then the circle was past and they were back in darkness, the pain gone as quickly as it had come.

The gold circle was still going down the plane and she followed its progress.

“Oh, man,” Mansor whispered as the circle passed the mid point and they could see that part of the plane. Ariana stared in disbelief. The wings were gone, smoothly cut off less than two feet from the body of the plane. The plane appeared to be resting on a tangle of broken foliage, but Ariana knew that the wings had not been torn off in the crash. There was no sign of them and she knew they were gone long before they came down. She began to understand some of the last words she’d heard from the cockpit.

Ariana watched the circle hit the rotodome and she could see the source of the golden beam that was going up. It came straight out of the top of the rotodome.

“Shit,” Mansor muttered. “Now we know why--”

He paused as they both heard the sound of something massive moving to their left. Ariana squinted but the only image that came to her was of a darker shadow against the black if such a thing were possible. Its indeterminate form towered over them about fifty meters away. She could tell it was coming closer, the trees splintering underneath its weight sounding like shots. Overriding that sound was the same slithering noise they’d heard inside the plane, with a backdrop of hissing, like steam issuing from massive boilers.

Ariana’s heart froze as she began to make out the dark form as it got closer: the forward part of a thick serpent’s body, five meters wide, was raised up off the ground. Thirty meters up the body, it split into seven snakes’ heads, well above their level, hissing issuing forth from each open, jawed mouth as they twisted and turned. Each head was over a meter wide and tall, the dark eyes glinting over a six inches in diameter each on the side of the mouths. Behind, the rest of the length of the body stretched into darkness.

While Ariana remained frozen, Mansor turned and ran back toward the hatch they’d come out of. One of the snake’s heads darted down toward him, foot long fangs bared.

A blue beam flashed out of the dark from the other side of the plane and struck the head a glancing blow. With an angry hiss, the head jerked back, barely five feet from closing on Mansor. The fangs snapped shut in frustration.

With a startling display of accurate fire, the blue beam flashed seven short bursts in less than two seconds, each one catching a different head. While the blue beam fired its last burst at the snake, a golden beam struck Mansor dead on, freezing him in its grip like a deer in bright headlights.

“Ariana!” he mouthed.

She broke out of her amazement and moved for him, but the golden beam picked him up into the air, ten feet above the fuselage.

Ariana looked over her shoulder as she heard the creature moving, but it was heading away, disappearing into the darkness. She turned back to Mansor. The golden beam was starting to draw him in the opposite direction, toward its source. She came to a halt directly below Mansor, helpless. She grabbed hold of the cable that he still had in his hands and that was tied to inside of the plane. She twisted a wrap around her left wrist and braced herself, trying to hold against the force, feeling her own feet begin to leave the top of the plane.

The blue beam came out of the darkness again and struck Mansor. Gold and blue flashed around his body in a panoply of color. Ariana noted that he was no longer being pulled toward the gold, but rather seemed caught in a bizarre tug of war, while she dangled below from her left wrist, her toes scraping the top of the plane.

She looked up and caught Mansor’s eyes as he desperately twisted his head, gazing down at her, his mouth still open in a silent scream.

Ariana’s scream was heard though, as Mansor’s body burst apart in a explosion of blood and viscera that rained down upon her.

Both beams disappeared. Ariana collapsed to top of the fuselage. She was vaguely aware that she was being pulled forward via the satellite co-ax cable, but all she could truly register was the wet feeling on her face of Mansor’s blood.

CHAPTER TEN

Dane sat in the red web seat and checked out the plane. The Canadians were seated halfway up the cargo bay, near Michelet and Freed. The forward third of the bay was filled with a large green metal canister, something Dane had seen before: a five thousand pound bomb designed to be dropped off the back ramp. When it went off, it would clear an area large enough for a helicopter landing zone. He’d seen them dropped and he’d even been on the ground nearby when one of the “daisy-cutters” as they were called, went off. The shock wave had lifted him three feet off the ground and slammed him back down.

Dane focused his mind and stared across the cargo bay at Sin Fen

How we can do this?

Her dark eyes locked onto his and he knew she’d ‘heard’ him. She got up and sat down next to him.

“It will be easier if we spoke,” she said. “The capability is a genetic throwback.”

“Go on,” Dane prompted.

“What do you know of the bicameral mind?” His negative answer was instantly in her head and she continued. “All right, let me start with the basics so you can understand.

“First, you’re left handed, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So am I. The majority of the population, of course, is right-handed. Which means that the left side of their brain is the dominant hemisphere, due to the crossover of our central nervous system at the base of the skull. So already you are part of only three percent of the population, in that the right side of your brain is dominant. But I believe you are even more rare, because I think both sides are, in a way, dominant, in that they work together much more efficiently than a normal person’s.”

She must have sensed his confusion.

“Let me back up a little. The issue is at what point in our evolution did humans become different from the other animals? What makes us different from, say a monkey? An ignorant person would say the ability to think, but that’s not true. All the manifest examples of thinking are present in various degrees in the animal world: learning, the ability to conceptualize. True, they may be very basic, but they are there so any line drawn would have to be arbitrary.”

Dane found himself listening, mesmerized at the two levels to their conversation-the verbal and the other, deeper, level inside their heads where he knew she was picking up more from him than he was from her.

“There are those who think language is the great divider but several species have a rudimentary language. It is widely accepted that dolphins communicate on some level. Some monkeys have approximately eighty signals or commands that they use-communication, in effect.

“There is a theory that we only truly broke away from the animal world when we were able to communicate extensively with a verbal language and act as an individual rather than as part of a group. But what you have to understand is that we humans did not start out with a verbal language or even with verbal communication being our primary mode.

“Wait!” Sin Fen cut off Dane’s interjecting thought. “Listen to me and you will know all I do.

“There is a physiological theory that prior to having an extensive verbal language, early Homo Sapiens communicated on a telepathic level, which in a way-although it made for an effective group defense in a harsh environment--also retarded progress because it required the group to stay close together and also think somewhat alike. Once we developed verbal language, we were able to explore and have more initiative as individuals. This is the point at which man separated himself from the animal world.

“The interesting thing is that the development of language wasn't dictated so much by external factors but more by the physical evolution of the human brain itself.”

Dane felt Chelsea pressing against his leg and he could hear the steady drumming of the plane’s engines. He was aware that Freed was moving about the cargo bay, pulling the parachutes out of their wrapping and preparing them, but his primary focus was on Sin Fen.

“That's where the bicameral mind comes in,” Sin Fen continued. “The human brain consists of two halves that are almost identical, but have very little actual physical connection to each other. Scientists believe the two sides developed that way to give us redundancy in critical brain processes.

“The speech centers in the brain are present to almost the same extent in both hemispheres yet in ninety-seven percent of people they are functional only in the left hemisphere. What happened to the speech centers in the right? They are still there, three distinct areas that work together to produce speech: the supplementary motor area, the least important; Broca’s Area, in the back of the frontal lobe; and Wernicke’s area in the posterior part of the temporal lobe, the removal of which produces a permanent loss of meaningful speech.

“These areas function together to produce speech from the left hemisphere for most people, but they are also present on the opposite side, but apparently non-functioning. Some believe that these opposite side speech centers working together is where the telepathic ability resided. Initially, man's brain was more connected between the two sides and the speech centers worked in harmony so that all humans could ‘talk’ to each other the way we have.”

Sin Fen smiled, revealing even, very white teeth. “You’ve always been able to sense things, even hear ‘voices’ sometimes that others can’t hear, haven’t you?”

Dane nodded.

“Of course, since the verbal language wasn’t yet developed, the only messages that could be sent were very basic and really just a surge of raw emotion. Warnings of danger by a burst of fear, for example. In a way, it required the development of a verbal vocabulary for man to add the depth and subtlety to language that allowed us to move forward as a species, yet in losing our telepathic capability we regressed in a certain way also.

“But think if some humans have come full circle! What if some of us have the verbal language in our heads, but also retain the telepathic capability? This is what we are!

“Our speech centers are developed equally in both sides of the brain. The two hemispheres of our brains are also more connected than a normal human's. I have seen MRIs of my own brain and know this to be a fact. This is how we can communicate telepathically and how you have your ‘sixth’ sense that has served you so well. It is simply your brain functioning on a higher level, analyzing more sensory input in a more efficient manner than the normal person.”

Dane stared at Sin Fen. He’d always known he was different, but because he hadn’t known what normal was, he hadn’t known how different he truly was.

Sin Fen continued. “Physiological psychologists at the very least agree that Wernicke’s area in the non-speech side of the brain does exist. It can be removed in most people without causing any apparent problems. But there are those who hypothesize that this apparently non-functioning area is the center for our imagination, the place where we hear the voices of the Gods.”

Dane started in surprise. He’d heard voices in his head all his life and he knew from the way Sin Fen’s voice resonated in his brain that she wasn’t referring to ‘Gods’ in the traditional sense, but a higher order of awareness.

“Not only does this area give you the ability to ‘speak’ to me,” Sin Fen said, “but it gives you many more capabilities, some of which you are not even aware of yet.
You
have some of the power that the ancients ascribed to the Gods.”

Dane could see Freed running his hand along the steel static line cable that stretched the interior length of the cargo bay from front to rear, checking it.

“What does that have to do with where we are going?” Dane asked, trying to bring this back to a level he could cope with.