Beneath the Ice (37 page)

Perry watched, stiff-jawed, as Enkian took
the knife, approached the central stone altar, and threw his head
back. He said something Perry couldn’t understand. Perry looked at
Dr. Curtis, who just shrugged and said, “I don’t recognize the
language.”

Enkian began to sway. He muttered. He
whispered. Only the name “Marduk” was recognizable.

Suddenly, Enkian stopped, lowered his head,
and placed the point of the knife at the top of his sternum.

He pressed.

He drew it down.

Blood began to seep, then
pour down his chest, mixing with the dark hair of his chest. He
uttered no cry of pain; his face showed no agony. A red line
zippered down, and Perry thought for a moment the madman was
vivisecting himself in full view of all. No one showed surprise.
Tia stood by, her eyes fixed on the gore before her as if she had
seen it a hundred times before.
Maybe she
has,
Perry thought.

The knife inched its way down Enkian’s
sternum to the soft abdomen, stopping just above the navel. He
removed the knife and set it on the altar, then bent over the
stones and laid his bloody chest on the rocks.

No one moved.

Minutes later he stood erect. He raised his
arms, oblivious to the crimson stream that continued to trickle
down his body. He groaned. He hummed and the others joined him. The
sound roared in a crescendo amplified by the concave interior of
the Chamber until Perry’s ears hurt.

“I think I can fly the plane,” Griffin
whispered in Perry’s ear.

“What?”

“I think I can fly the plane,” Griffin said,
a little louder. “I took lessons in college. I’ve flown solo
several times.” When Perry turned to him, he flushed. “It was just
a single-engine Cessna, but I think I can deduce the difference
between a single-engine and twin-engine.”

“Deduce?”

Griffin nodded. “I’m talking about the
smaller plane, of course. Still, the difference should not be
insurmountable. Once we’re airborne, I can figure out the
distinctions on the way to McMurdo.”

Perry shook his head. It was hard to believe
he was hearing this. He had to admit that stealing the Casa 212 had
crossed his mind. But he was unable to come up with a plan that
would afford them the necessary time to make their way to the
craft, start the cold engines, taxi far enough away, and take to
the air without being cut down by a fusillade of gunfire.

“I appreciate it, Griffin, but I don’t think
they’ll let us wander very far without killing someone to show
their displeasure.”

“We have to do something,” Griffin
complained.

“I agree . . .”

E
nkian raised his voice. “Most honored are you above all the
gods. Your decree is unmatched by men and gods. You, Marduk, are
the most honored of all gods. Your decrees are unquestionable. For
now and forever, your declarations are unchangeable. No one from
the gods can transgress your boundaries. Marduk, you are our
avenger. You are our
avenger . . . our avenger . . . our avenger.”

“Avenger!” the men shouted. “Avenger!”

“I’d be a lot more comfortable if they’d use
a different word,” Jack said.

The chant grew louder
until Perry was sure the prefab dome of the Chamber would collapse
from the vibrations. Sarah and Gwen were white with fear and held
their hands to their ears. Griffin looked shell-shocked, and Dr.
Curtis stood as rigid as a marble col
umn,
his jaw slack. Jack was surprised but unshaken. Gleason just looked
puzzled.

Enkian fired his hand into the air, and the
chant turned to silence in an instant. It was as if all the air had
been sucked from the room. All eyes were fixed on him.

He lowered his hand and spread his arms
wide. “For millennia we have waited for this day.” His voice was
fairly strong, despite the wound and his chest being bared to
subfreezing temperatures. Perry felt cold just looking at him. “The
prophecies told of this day, the Time of Return, the Time of
Revenge.”

He stepped to the closest clay cylinder.
“Here,” he said, “it was recorded. Here on these cylinders the
words of our ancestors re-main alive. They are ours to protect as
those who came before us protected them. They looked forward to
this day.” He stopped and looked at Perry and the others. “Come
forward.”

Perry hesitated.

“Come forward!”

“This must be like the invitation in a
Baptist church,” Jack quipped.

“I doubt it,” Perry said as he walked toward
the circle.

“All of you!” Enkian snapped.

The outer circle of men parted before him
like earth before a plow’s blade. A few steps later, Perry and the
others stood in the inner circle. Tia moved forward, her eyes hard
like the stones of the altar. The message was clear. No one was to
touch Enkian.

“Do you know what this is?” Enkian asked.
Perry looked at the cylinder then at the self-inflicted wound on
his chest. The gash was not as deep as Perry first thought, but it
was deep enough to cause sufficient pain to drop a man to his
knees. Enkian seemed to pay it no attention. The other scars—Perry
guessed there were close to fifty of them—were evidence that Enkian
had learned to live with pain.

Perry answered. “Not really. A clay cylinder
of some kind.” He could see its smooth sides were occasionally
marred by cracks and missing clay. There were no letters, but tiny,
exquisitely drawn pictures ran in vertical rows.

“It is the story of life,”
Enkian said. “The true story of life. It is
the oldest writing in the world, penned—as it were—in the
days of
Gilgamesh.”

“Gilga-who?” Jack said.

“Gilgamesh,” Dr. Curtis
answered. “From the
Gilgamesh Epic,
one of the many ancient flood accounts. It was
written in cuneiform on twelve clay tablets about four thousand
years ago. It’s the Babylonian version very similar to the Bible’s
story of Noah’s flood.”

“Very good, Doctor,” Enkian said. “Your
Bible lifted the story from our more ancient accounts.”

“I doubt it,” Curtis said. “It’s more likely
the other way around.”

“Your fellow scholars would disagree with
you.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Curtis
said. “And I also find it interesting that one of the main
characters in the story of Gilgamesh is a man named Enkidu.
Coincidence?”

“Many great men have taken
the noble name of Enki,” Enkian said. He looked at the cylinder.
“This came to me through my father, and his father before him, and
his father before him. These cylinders predate the
Gilgamesh Epic;
they
predate the Bible. They are the only true record of my past. They
are both prophecies and histories.”

“Prophecies?” Perry said. “Are you telling
us that these clay cylinders predicted the discovery of the
ziggurat?”

“Discovery?” Enkian
laughed. “It was never lost, Mr. Sachs. Never.
My people have known its location for centuries. The account
has been kept alive for millennia. We were just waiting for
the
time to . . . mature.”

“That cylinder tells you when the time will
be mature?”

Enkian looked at the cylinder with the gaze
of a man who held the world’s most precious possession. He nodded.
“This one in particular. There are sixty-six of them, each kept in
a glass container like this. The chamber is filled with an inert
gas that doesn’t react with the dried clay.” He stroked the clear
container. “They’re all special. Each tells a portion of the
story—of the Flood, the Tower, the Dispersion, or the Revelation.
This one holds the future of my people. This is more valuable than
all of my possessions and all of my businesses. It is
irreplaceable.”

“Your people?” Perry asked. “Just who are
your people?”

“We are an ancient people.
My fathers built the ziggurats. More importantly, they built
the
ziggurat, what you
call the Tower of Babel. Have you heard of the Piri Reis
map?”

“Dr. Curtis explained it
to us,” Perry said. “It’s a sixteenth-cen
tury map showing a portion of Antarctica.”

“More specifically, it shows an iceless
Antarctica,” Enkian ex-plained like a teacher with a slow child.
“It shows the continent that lies beneath the ice sheet, a
continent no man had seen until a joint Swedish-British expedition
did a seismic profile in 1949. Piri Reis based his maps on older
maps. Maps my people had in their possession.”

“You’re saying the ancient Babylonians built
the Tower of Babel on this continent,” Griffin interjected.

Enkian’s face darkened. “No, Dr. James, that
is not what I’m saying. We are not Babylonians. The Babylonians are
descendants of ours. We were those after the Flood. Mr. Sachs and
Dr. Curtis hit on it. Their Bible gave them enough information to
be close to the truth.”

“Just close?” Jack said.

Enkian ignored him. “After the Flood, my
people adopted a noble goal, to build a new civilization.
Civilizations are built on shared goals and common interests. We
built a tower to reach the sky . . .”

“And God sent you packing,” Perry said. “We
know the story.”

“Not God, Mr. Sachs,” Enkian said. “Gods.
Read the Mexican account, read the Babylonian version. The gods
became displeased. My ancestors did not honor them as they should
have. That is a mistake I will not make.”

“I think you’ve already made a big mistake,”
Jack said.

“What you think means
nothing to me,” Enkian said. He looked back at the cylinder. “The
languages were confused, just as your Bible says. In fact, it is
from that event we get our English word
babble.
Not only were the languages
confused, but the people were scattered, literally transported to
other areas. Those who were left continued building a civilization
and great cities. They became the Babylonians. Others raised up
vast empires wherever they were planted. Have you ever wondered why
there are so many stone
structures in the
world?”

Perry spoke for the others. “It’s crossed my
mind.”

“Incas, Mayans, Egyptians,
Babylonians to name a few,” Enkian
lectured. “Add to that stone monuments like the Callanish
stones in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, the Avebury stone circle in
England, the famous Stonehenge near Salisbury, England, and
hundreds more. Stone is not lifeless; it is the foundation of life.
Descendants of those first people erected monuments, some more
successfully than others.” He looked down to the ice. “Below is the
greatest of them all, the original.”

“
I still don’t understand how the
tower could be so far south,” Perry said. “It was built in
Mesopotamia.”

“And of brick, not stone,” Curtis added.

“The material is the gift of the earth,”
Enkian said. “We made stone where no stone was.”

“You speak as if you were
there,” Jack said. “You don’t look that
old.”

“I was there in my forefathers. Their blood
courses through my veins. Their knowledge has been passed to me. I
have taken their past; I return to them a future.”

“You could make millions writing pithy
sayings for fortune cookies,” Jack said.

“Don’t trifle with me, Mr.
Dyson.
”

“You still haven’t
explained how the tower came to be at the bot
tom of the planet,” Perry said quickly, drawing Enkian’s
attention.

“Hapgood.”

“Oh, please,” Griffin said with disgust. “No
one buys that nonsense.”

“Dr. James,” Enkian said. “There is a
man-made structure two miles below your feet. If I had told you
that was the case before you came here, you would have declared
that nonsense.”

“What’s a Hapgood?” Jack asked.

No one spoke.

“Explain it, Dr. James,” Enkian ordered.

“
Charles Hapgood of Keene College, New Hampshire,”
Griffin
said. “I believe he taught history
of science or something like that. He published a book in the early
fifties putting forth an impossible idea. He said Antarctica was at
one time two thousand miles further north and, obviously, much
warmer.”

“Then how did it get here?” Sarah asked. Her
voice was shaky.

Griffin explained, frowning as if the words
pained him. “He believed in something he called ‘earth crust
displacement.’ He said the crust of our planet shifted over the
Earth’s core. I believe he described it like the peel of an orange
moving over the meaty part of the fruit. No orthodox geologist buys
it.”

“Albert Einstein liked the idea enough to
write the foreword to the book,” Enkian said.

Griffin didn’t respond.

“Why tell us all this?” Perry asked. “We’re
not part of your group.”

“Because I can,” Enkian said.

“So what’s next?” Perry said. “You have the
hole in the ice, and you know the ziggurat is down there. What
next?”

Enkian turned to Tia. “Bring him.” Tia
walked away, taking two men with her. She disappeared through the
air lock that led to the Dome. A few minutes later she reappeared
with a bound Lari-

more staggering before
her. Even across the Chamber, Perry could see the man had been
badly beaten. He was surprised to see him
alive.

Tia pushed the commander through the circles
until he stood by the altar and a few feet away from the ice
shaft.

The beating must have been fierce, and Perry
was moved with pity. Larimore’s left eye was swollen shut, and his
nose was broken and twisted. Dried blood was caked beneath his
nostrils and at the corners of his mouth. He leaned to one side,
and Perry assumed that they must have beaten his body until ribs
broke. He dragged one foot behind him.