Decipher (34 page)

Read Decipher Online

Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
6.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Life bears the scars of its predecessors,” Hackett mused. “In this case shape and symmetry.” Was this the emergent property that marked the transition from simple crystal to lower life form? Real complexity in real action?
“The type of carbon we evolved from has been a mystery,” Rebecca explained. She tapped the screen again to
show an image of Carbon 60 in its spiral nano-tube form, rotating side by side with a DNA strand. “Coal, diamonds, they're all still around in abundance. Theoretically Carbon 60 should also be here in equal abundance. But where'd it all go? You're a physicist. Erwin Schrödinger described DNA as an aperiodic crystal.”
She paused, then looked around at them all. “My theory is C60
is
still around. It just evolved. It's
us.
”
 
“Gerome, is that you? Hinkley? What the fuck are you doing, you twerp?”
Another lightning burst. Another glimpse. And that was when Carver realized that what was approaching, albeit in the shape of a man, was neither Hinkley nor Gerome.
It was rising up out of the ground as it approached. Growing at an extraordinary rate, like a fluid that had decided to take solid form. It was a towering figure. And it lumbered forward, yet remained shrouded in darkness.
Carver stumbled backward. Grasped his gun tightly, and slipped the safety catch off. Squeezed the trigger and fired a clear burst of shots at the assailant. They rebounded harmlessly off its chest.
It moved forward again.
Carver moved too, desperate to keep his distance, but his exit was blocked by the cube of Carbon 60 dangling behind him.
Swarming over its surface was a seething mass of crystal-clear spiders, mixed with the invasive tendrils and roots. Giant glass centipedes and millipedes scuttled within the mass. Carver had the sudden terrifying realization that the entire angry mass was melting in on itself. Everything was merging into one single lump. Like an ice sculpture that had a blowtorch directed on it, it shifted, writhed and reformed. Mutating into a hanging, decapitated crystal human head.
His
head.
Slowly the crystal effigy opened its eyes and focused them on Carver. They analyzed each other for a moment before the head distorted its features as it opened its jaws wide. Exposed its tombstone-like teeth, and hissed at him.
Its tongue rolled out. And upon its tongue—a single word was etched.
Carver's instinct was to run away screaming, but before he even had time to consider what to do next, the ice-cold grasp of the approaching figure's crystal hand was clenched tightly around his throat.
Carver's face reddened, and blotched, as he choked.
The figure moved in closer. Its broad, see-through shoulders barely flinching as its nine-foot frame went to work.
Carver lashed out. Swung a balled fist. But it just hit a wall of solid glass.
The figure did not respond. With barely a scowl across its face, it studied Carver intently. Methodically. As slowly, it squeezed.
 
On the surface, Eddie the winch was getting restless. What was Carver playing at? It had been nearly a quarter of an hour now.
He trudged over to the opening in the ground, grimacing at the ever-present stench of rotting vegetation every time he kicked up a clump of undergrowth.
“Hey, down there!” he shouted. “What the hell's wrong?” No response. “Answer me, damn it!”
He looked to his associate, manning the computer, engrossed in his phone-call, before stooping to his knees and examining the chain. It jolted. Once.
“At last. All right!” He returned to his winch. Shoved it into gear.
The motor roared as the chain retracted at a rate that was simply too good to be true. Anxiously he brought the whole thing clattering to a halt again and rushed to grab the end of the chain. But where a neatly cut block of Carbon 60 should have been, sat an empty cradle harness.
Concerned, he tossed the thing to the ground, and marched over to the communications table, where Bulger had more lap-tops, vid-phones and a satellite link-up all ready and active. He took a radio from among the toys. “Carver, what's going on down there? What's the problem, bud? We're wasting time here.” Nothing. “Carver?” He tapped the radio. “Damn, I think the power's out on the comm relay.” He turned to Bulger. “Jack?”
But Bulger was ensconced in discussions.
“Jack?” He reached out and put a hand on the man's
shoulder, and was surprised when the stocky guy shot around like a startled child.
“What?” the engineer growled, puffing smoke furiously.
Eddie jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I'm going down into the tunnel. I think Carver's got a problem.”
“Fine,” Bulger replied, turning his back on the man as he stumbled through the rain and let himself down.
“Little robots, you say? What can these little robots do? And what are they made of, if they're so small?”
“They're made of carbon,” Bulger explained over the din of the chugging winch engine, his end of the line. “And they can do anything you want. Correct tissue damage inside your body. Cut out a cancer. Build microchips from the atom up—”
“The ones you got right there?”
“No. I don't know what these ones are programmed for, but the potential's there. All we have to do is reverse engineer them in the lab.”
“I don't understand.”
“Jay, just find a vid-link. I'll show you,” the engineer demanded gruffly.
The lawyer paced in front of the open doors to Pope Lucien Sfiorza's office and hung on every word that escaped from deep within the plush interior. As much an exercise in wealth and opulence as any of the other Vatican palaces, it didn't have the frescoes of Michelangelo, like the Pauline Chapel, or the architectural touch of Bernini. But the Pontifical Apostolic Palace was a palace nonetheless, its splendor tempered only by its pursuit of utility. After all, people worked here. God's work went on next door.
In the Pope's office the President of the United States sat
taking tea with the President and CEO of Rola Corp., Ripley Thorne, alongside Rabbi Malachai Stern straight in from Jerusalem, while the Pope himself, resplendent in his robes, sat behind his desk.
They were discussing matters that went far beyond miniature robots. They were discussing things that, simply put, brought the cornerstones of Western society into question. They were concerned with the end of the status quo. That, to them, was what Atlantis represented. And they didn't like it.
Neither did they like the fact that sound traveled. It was clear Houghton's relentless movement while glued to his cellular phone was making him few friends.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Houghton, but you really must try to keep your voice down,” an eminent priest warned quietly and patiently. “I'm Father McRack, one of Pope Sfiorza's aides.”
“Tell him to forgive me,” Houghton said rudely. Roger “Fergus” McRack seemed stunned. “Well, it is his job,” the lawyer added with a shrug.
“Jay? Jay, are you still there?” Bulger croaked.
“Yeah, I'm still here,” Houghton confirmed as Fergus shooed him away from the door and in the direction of a vacant desk a few yards away.
“When you're ready to quietly rejoin the discussions, you may do so,” Fergus warned.
Houghton ignored him: There was a vid-phone on the desk. He transferred the call over and activated the visual. The screen was split. Bulger in one half, tiny little insect-like things moving around on the other. “Okay, where are the robots?” Houghton demanded.
“You're looking at them.”
“Those things are robots? They look like bugs. How big are they?”
“So small, you could fit a hundred thousand of 'em on the head of a pin.”
“I see,” Houghton said, impressed. Now he got it. “Holy shit!”
From way down the other end of the office complex, through the mahogany double doors, Pope Lucien Sfiorza shot the lawyer a look of censure.
Clifford Maple stuffed fresh tobacco into his mouth as one of his men pushed past to get a better look at the subterranean opening hidden in the heart of the Amazon.
Like a catacomb in a European gothic cathedral, the great expanse of space before them was only possible because incredible arches of red stonework supported the weight of the eight enormous pyramids above ground. Square pillars of stone, 40 feet across each side supported the archways. But overall it was still possible to see the entire catacomb from end to end. Raised pathways snaked around it, climbing higher, up to ten feet above ground level, as they wended their way toward eight separate crystal chambers. Above them were suspended huge crystal pyramids. One for each chamber.
In the ceiling, above the eight C60 pyramids, were twisted stone funnels that disappeared up into the darkness, each penetrating deep into the interior of the pyramid above.
“Why do I feel like I'm looking at the insides of a V8 engine?” Maple wondered.
Up in one of the chambers, his men were busy assessing how best to dismantle the crystal structure. It was a precarious place to be, considering the ground was beginning to tremble once more.
Maple spat a globule of black tar-ridden slime out across the floor. “We'll be lucky if this place doesn't shake itself apart,” he said.
The overall shape of the catacomb was roughly oblong. And in the center of each outer wall, just a few feet off the ground, were the entrances to four large offshoot tunnels. They had arrived through one of them. But all four were now trickling filthy muddy water as a prelude to flooding the entire area.
“Where the hell is Carver?” Maple fretted, checking his watch. He looked to his men. “Can we get to work, or what?”
“We really need that particle beam, sir. This shit's tough to cut.”
Maple scratched his head in frustration. He was not a
man who liked to be kept waiting. “You and you—go get that gun. If Carver gives you any trouble, knee-cap him.”
They didn't need telling twice. But as they passed by the entrance of one tunnel, on the way to their exit, one of the men suddenly froze while his companion turned back on his boss—something the renegade wasn't used to. “Maybe we should come back and do this later,” he said hoarsely. “We got company.”
Maple spun on his heel in time to watch a shimmering crystal-blue figure clamber down from the tunnel in front of his men and advance. “Who the fuck is this joker?” he snarled.
“The Machiguenga,” one of his more Hispanic accomplices hissed.
“The Machiguenga are dead.” He went for his rifle, and indicated to his men to follow him down. Grabbed his radio. “Carver, come in!” Static. “Carver, get your ass down here, we need back-up.” But Carver wasn't coming. Carver would never be coming.
Unarmed, naked and vaguely define, the effigy of a large man lumbered toward them. The peculiarity of the situation seemed to fail to register in the minds of the mercenaries. All they perceived was a threat, whether that threat was transparent and crystalline in nature, or not.
Fanning out, they raised their rifles in unison and fired at will, indiscriminately. Some in short bursts, others one shot at a time, trying to prevent the figure from advancing, which in the end was what allowed them to neglect their flanks.
Suddenly an arm shot out from behind an archway and grabbed one of the mercenaries roughly by the shoulder, swinging him around. There was a struggle, but only on the part of the human as he glared into and through the eyes of a second attacker. He became aware of those strange letters etched across the being's forehead. Became aware too of its sheer size and power. Then realized there was a third stone giant, waiting in the wings.
Petrified, from the Greek, meaning “turned to stone.” It was awesome to discover that the stone had come to life and turned on him. When the effigy decided to act it did so at speed, tearing the mercenary's head from his shoulders and dumping the two parts unceremoniously on the ground before
heading for the rest of the squad. Which was just about all the persuasion the rabble needed to turn tail, and run.
“Call the choppers!” Maple yelled into his radio, as he broke into a sweat-soaked sprint for the exit. “Call the fucking choppers, now!”
But there was no panic on the other end of the line. There was no hyperventilated frenzy of a comrade desperate to come to their aid. With the din of rushing blood in their ears, the roar of pumping adrenaline, and the thud, thud, thud of combat boots on wet rock flooring, their radios stayed alarmingly silent—confirming that they were on their own.
Maple fumbled with his broadcast unit, trying to get it to send out a signal, but luck wasn't with him. Spitting his tobacco out of his mouth, he ripped the plastic earpiece from his ear and flung it away. Fired covering rounds into the spiraled tunnel ahead of them, and clambered inside.
What none of the mercenaries did, was to check whether they were being followed. Had they done so, they would have seen three crystal effigies of men pull up short at the entrance to the tunnel and hesitate, before finally retreating and going their separate ways, returning to wherever they had come from. For it seemed the tunnel the mercenaries had chosen was not their domain, but the domain of something else.
And that something else was waiting for them.
 
Like a painted portrait that was still wet, the human head sticking out the side of the tunnel was fused to the Carbon 60 spiral, and looked as if it had been smeared throughout the crystal, like a swirl of strawberry sauce in a pot of yogurt.
It was Carver's head.
Maple felt sick. Fought the knots twisting in the pit of his stomach. “Dear God …”
“Fuck, man! Fuck!” one of his men screamed, ripping at his own scalp as he tried to come to terms with the total insanity of what he was seeing.
The whole spiral convulsed, like a snake digesting a rodent. Carver's head stretched out along the crystal as if it were made of rubber, while slowly it began losing color, turning gray as it dissolved.
Maple didn't want to stick around and see any more. “Come on,” he ordered, leading the way.
The men broke into a run, leaping through the water as if it didn't exist. Sprinting past odd Carbon 60 protrusions that seemed to be lining their journey, paying them little attention as they pushed on. But the protrusions were growing. Thrusting out. Turning pointed. Becoming spikes.
Becoming spears.
When the spears launched they took the stragglers first, catching them completely off-guard. Like pikes from a Dark Ages battle they shot forward at an explosive rate, pierced straight through the abdomen of two men and propelled them at the wall opposite. Their screams were intense as agony swept over them. And though they struggled against being impaled, their actions were for naught, as the crystal spears continued to blast straight through them, their trailing ends mutating into a mass of curved spikes designed to split the men apart.
It was over in a matter of seconds, forcing Maple to widen his eyes.
He was out of his league.
 
“The point about Schrödinger and his cat,” Hackett explained, back in the lab with the others, “is you put a cat in a box and close the box and the cat is both there and not there all at the same time.”
Scott swiveled on his chair. “Whatever you say.”
“But that's not important,” Hackett told him. “What's important is life is an extension of a crystal. Order means life. Crystals and cells are one and the same, they both do exactly the same job. They replicate. They grow by stacking identical units one on top of the other. And at some point, crystals and cells were exactly the same entity. What is the basic constant of life? What do all living things do? Living things replicate. Out of chaos, order is born. God creates the Big Bang. The Big Bang creates carbon crystals. Carbon crystals create DNA. DNA creates living cells. Cells create mankind. Mankind creates intelligence. Intelligence creates God …”
“Man destroys Gold.”
“God destroys man,” Sarah added.
“Carbon 60 starts life all over again,” Hackett concluded.
“You got all that,” Scott asked, perplexed, “from a trip to a
bio
-lab?”
“It was very stimulating. The irony is,” Hackett said, “we know why all this is happening. There's just nothing we seem to be able to do about it.”
“Wait a minute,” Matheson interrupted. “Are you suggesting that if life on earth was destroyed, Atlantis would be able to re-seed life? That it's biologically potent?”
“What more is life than a few billion molecules that decide on a whim to be you for a while? They can just as easily decide to be something else.”
November was curious. “Life started out as a crystal of carbon?” Hackett nodded. “In the Bible, didn't God create Adam from clay? And breathe life into him? What better way is there of breathing life into a carbon structure, than by tapping directly into the energy of the solar wind?”
“In pre-Islamic Iran,” Scott revealed, “the Avestic Aryans believed that Yima, their version of Noah, during the Flood, was ordered to make a Var—an underground place, that linked the four corners of the earth, where the seed of all livings things would be kept and stored. After the Flood it became covered in snow and ice. And remains so to this day.”
 
Jack Bulger sat forward, trying to hide his glee as he leaned into the camera and explained a few things to Houghton. In 1956, John Van Neumann, father of artificial life, proposed machines that could replicate themselves. In 1986, K. Eric Drexler took the idea one step further and christened it nanotechnology. Now in 2012, the name of Jack Bulger would be on everyone's lips. He had made this theoretical discovery a reality. And Bulger wanted one hell of a deal.
“Explain to me,” the lawyer was asking, “how these larger devices work, when these tiny robots fuse together to become bigger units. Is there any limit to their size?”
Bulger was confident. “None that I'm aware of. It simply depends on how strong their chemical bonds are. I would imagine about the largest thing they could assemble to become would be a thimble. Any bigger and they'd run into problems. But I can't say for certain.”
“And they can disassemble back to their original state at any time?”
“It seems that way to me. Sure.”
Houghton narrowed his eyes as he contemplated the implications. “Extraordinary.”
 
“Angel Base, come in! This is the Tooth Fairy! Bulger, you ignorant fuck—
Come in
!” Maple screamed into the radio, as the assault intensified. “Bulger, if you can hear this, send for the choppers
now
!”
He fired a constant barrage of bullets into the darkness ahead as he sprinted for the opening in the ceiling. There was light ahead. He was drawing ever closer, even as his final man was picked off and sent spluttering to the tunnel wall in a spray of blood and torment.
Maple didn't look back.
He was going to make it. He was damn sure he was going to make it. Because up ahead, still set up on its tripod and hooked into the power supply was the particle beam. Which was handy because as he squeezed his rifle's trigger it clicked, and failed to deliver.
He slung it over his shoulder as he picked up the pace. He could feel his heart trying to thump its way out of his chest. Could see the spikes growing large in the periphery of his vision. Sensed the impending wave of destruction—and calmed.
Timing, as any professional would tell you, was everything.
He dived forward, tucking his feet in and pulling his head down as he turned his fall into a roll. The spears above him lashed out and smacked into the tunnel wall opposite as Maple bumped to a halt by the tripod and recovered his senses. He stayed crouched, ever watchful for a further attack as he keyed the power switch. Flared up the energizer—and fired.
The fire power was formidable as a twisted rope of pure energy arced from the barrel and shattered the crystal spikes, one after the other, in successive lines down each side of the tunnel wall. He could hear movement behind, swung the gun around and pumped explosive uncontrolled rage into the crystal spikes that were growing out of the tunnel in that direction as well.
But the lightning storm was illuminating in other ways too. For where there used to be large cube-shaped holes in the crystal spiral, there were now burnt reddish-colored patches of new crystal, slowly pulsing their own brand of energy. A distinct brand that bore traces of human flesh.
For the spiral was healing.
There was a clattering, like broken glass being scrunched together and rattled around. It was coming from the direction of the crystal chamber. The direction from which he'd just come.
Maple twisted at the hip, brought the gun around to face the onslaught and cranked up the power setting as far as it would go. He activated his radio again, trying to make contact with the surface.

Other books

The Princess and the Peer by Warren, Tracy Anne
Taming Precious Sinclair by Combs, Sasha
CREEPERS by Bryan Dunn
Finders Keepers by Shelley Tougas
Stormy Challenge by Jayne Ann Krentz, Stephanie James
The Sound of Broken Glass by Deborah Crombie
Unexpected Blessings by Barbara Taylor Bradford