The Covenant of Genesis (5 page)

‘We didn’t dig up that many,’ Chase noted. ‘How deep can the sonar read?’

‘Up to two feet - it depends what’s on the sea bed. If it’s just sediment, any more bricks should show up clearly. Okay, let’s see what you found.’

The first composite image came up. Nina examined it, zooming in on everything that gave a strong sonar return, but found nothing resembling the regular forms of the bricks. By the time she had finished, more images had been processed, ready for inspection. She opened each up in turn.

‘Oh, oh,’ she said excitedly as the eighth reading appeared. ‘This looks promising.’ A jumbled swathe of sonar reflections showed up strongly, like a handful of tiny diamonds cast across black velvet. ‘Wow, it looks like some of the readings we got from Atlantis, remember? Like buildings buried under the silt.’ She zoomed in. While the objects were scattered, many of them revealed regular, clearly artificial shapes. ‘The place looks trashed, though. It’d take a massive earthquake or a tsunami to scatter everything that widely.’

‘Or people.’ They exchanged looks. ‘How deep is it?’

‘It’s at . . . whoa, a hundred and fifty feet. So it’s not from the same period as the original site.’ Nina brought up the GLUG program on her laptop, entering figures. The map changed, sea level falling still further. ‘
Definitely
not the same period. If this is right, then . . . about one hundred and thirty-five thousand years ago.’ She turned to face Chase, eyes wide. ‘Jesus, that would completely re-write
everything
we think we know about pre-history. According to current theories, humans didn’t even leave Africa until at most seventy thousand years ago.’

‘Maybe it’s not humans,’ Chase said with a grin. ‘Maybe aliens built it.’

Nina frowned. ‘It’s
not
aliens, Eddie.’

‘Yeah, you say that now, but when we find a crystal skull . . .’

‘Can we be serious, please?’ She magnified the sonar image still further. The image pixellated, but individual objects were still discernible, strewn across the sea floor. ‘We have to check this out. As soon as we can.’

‘It’s about five miles away,’ said Chase, comparing the image’s GPS co-ordinates to a chart. ‘Bit of a trudge to get the boats there and back.’

‘We’ll move the ship.’

‘I don’t think Branch’ll like that. You had a hard enough job getting him to let us use the plane.’

Nina gave him a determined grin. ‘I dunno. I’m feeling pretty persuasive today.’

With very poor grace, even after the promise of another payment to cover the unplanned use of fuel, Captain Branch did eventually agree to move the
Pianosa
to the new site. It took a couple of hours to bring the pontoons back aboard and get the vessel under way, but after that it didn’t take long to reach its destination. Once anchored, the crew reassembled the floating dock while the IHA team prepared for the dive. Nina had used the transit time to explain why she had changed the mission so drastically; both Gozzi and Bobak were startled by what she thought she had discovered, but quickly became caught up in her enthusiasm.

Chase was more pragmatic. ‘We can’t stay down there too long,’ he said as the team went through the involved process of donning their deep suits. ‘There’s only a couple of hours before sunset. It’ll be darker anyway because we’re deeper, but any daylight’s still better than none.’

‘This’ll just be a preliminary dive,’ Nina assured him. ‘I just want to be sure there really is something down there. If there is, we’ll dive again tomorrow morning, and if there isn’t . . . well, we’ll go back to the original site.’

‘Bet you won’t find a bit of old net as interesting now, will you? Okay, arms out.’

Nina raised her arms. Like the other divers, she was wearing a modified drysuit, metal sealing rings encircling her shoulders and upper thighs. The ones round her legs had already been connected to the lower body of the deep suit, which Bejo was supporting from behind. She shifted uncomfortably as Chase mated the watertight rings on her arms to their companions in the heavy suit’s shoulder openings, then closed its polycarbonate front section around her and shut the latches one by one.

‘Oh, I hate this bit,’ she muttered as Chase picked up the helmet.

‘Be glad you never wore the old model,’ he said. ‘The helmet was even smaller.’ He had used the first version of the deep suit three years earlier; it had been designed as a way for divers to reach depths impractical for working in traditional scuba equipment, while hugely reducing the risk of the bends. The suit’s hard body let them breathe air at normal surface pressure, while still leaving their limbs relatively free to move. This updated design also allowed its wearer to turn and bend, if only slightly, at the waist, an improvement on the earlier rigid shell, but it was still a cumbersome piece of equipment, especially above the water.

‘I’m always worried about getting something in my eye while I’m underwater,’ said Nina, making sure her ponytail was safely clear of the suit’s neck. ‘Or sneezing inside the helmet. That’d be truly gross.’

‘Or if you fart in the suit.’

‘I don’t fart, Eddie,’ Nina insisted as he lowered the helmet over her head and locked it into place.

‘She does, she just never owns up to it,’ Chase said in a stage whisper to Bejo, who laughed.

‘What was that?’ Nina asked suspiciously, voice muffled and hollow through the helmet.

‘Nothing, dear. Okay, check your systems.’ Chase examined the gauges on the suit’s bulbous back, where the air tanks and recycling systems were contained, while Nina peered at the repeater display inside the helmet. ‘Seal is good, pressure is good, mix is normal, battery is at full. You’re all set.’

Nina waddled to the ladder on the dock’s edge. Gozzi stood beside it making the final check of his suit’s systems, while Bobak was already bobbing in the lapping waves. He waved at her, inviting her in. For a moment Nina considered jumping in, then took the more prudent course of climbing down the ladder, the fins on her feet flapping against each rung.

Chase donned his own deep suit with Bejo’s help, then fastened the belt holding his knife and other gear round his waist. ‘All set, Mr Nina,’ said the Indonesian. Chase gave him a look. ‘Mr Eddie,’ he quickly corrected.

By now, Gozzi had also entered the water. Chase dropped into the sea beside him with a huge splash. ‘Show-off,’ said Nina as Bejo tossed him the speargun.

Chase cocked the weapon, then looked at the others. ‘Everyone set?’

‘I certainly am,’ Nina replied. ‘Let’s see what’s down there.’

T
hough only fifty feet deeper than the original site, the new location was far darker, shrouded in perpetual dusk. All four divers had their suit lights on at full power, but even that failed to make much impact on the gloom.

Nina held a laminated sheet up to her lights - a printout of the sonar image of the area. ‘This is it. Anyone see anything?’

Gozzi swung one flippered foot at a rounded stone. ‘This might be another of those bricks.’

‘Eddie, give him a hand.’

Chase joined the Italian, and together they pulled it up. Beneath the sediment, protected from erosion, was indeed another of the crisply edged, slightly curved bricks. ‘Looks like the right place.’

‘We’ll do a survey,’ Nina decided. ‘We’ll each take a quadrant, starting from here, out to . . . fifty metres. Anyone finds anything promising, make a note and we’ll collate everything when we meet back up.’

‘Make sure we stay in sight of each other,’ Chase added.

They moved apart. Nina swam rather than using the thrusters, examining the sea floor as she moved slowly over it. A half-buried rock turned out to be another brick, larger than the others she’d seen. She made a note of the block’s position, then thought about the nature of the bricks as she moved on. The mere fact that they were curved would limit their utility; the earliest example of that kind of architectural thinking she knew of was that of the Atlanteans, whose empire had risen - and fallen - about eleven thousand years earlier.

Quite a gap between eleven thousand and a hundred and thirty-five thousand. Could there possibly have been a civilisation that pre-dated even Atlantis?

A change in the terrain: the ground ahead dropped away quite steeply. She was just able to make out where it rose again through the murk. If the rest of the area had once been a hilly coastline, this had perhaps been a small gully, marking the point where a stream or minor river reached the sea.

Which would make it a good place to search for more traces of the mysterious brick-builders. To any primitive society, a supply of fresh water was a key factor in the location of a settlement.

She swam into the gully. Chase would probably yell at her for going out of his sight, but she could handle that. Bringing up her torch, she shone its powerful beam over the sea floor.

There was something there, a row of stone stumps rising above the silt and gently swaying plants. A
regular
row - too much so to be natural. She looked at the laminated sheet again. A line of five similarly sized blobs
there
, matching the five real-life objects
here
. . .

And more, stronger, sonar reflections just a short distance further up the gully. Her heart jumped with the rush of discovery. Something more intact - a building that hadn’t been completely destroyed?

She swam towards the spot, aiming the light ahead. There
was
something there. As she got closer, she saw that while it wasn’t intact, the curving wall broken up into shark-tooth shapes, nor had it been reduced to scattered rubble. Somehow, it had survived whatever had laid waste to the settlement, the deluge as the seas rose, the ravages of time.

‘Guys,’ she said excitedly, ‘I think I’ve found something. It looks like the remains of a building.’

‘Where are you?’ Chase asked. ‘I don’t see your lights.’

‘I’m in a little dip.’

‘You
are
a little dip,’ he snapped. ‘I told you to stay in sight!’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Now almost at the ruined wall, she slowed, tracing its shape with her flashlight beam. Whatever the structure had once been, it had apparently been circular.

The more she looked, the odder it became. Although the tallest remaining point was only a few feet above the sediment, it was enough to tell that it sloped inwards as it rose. It wasn’t a result of damage, either; the bricks had been crafted and arranged quite deliberately to produce just such a shape. Extending the arc would produce . . .

A
dome
.

She tried to picture it. A brick igloo, fifteen feet high, maybe more. Domes weren’t unknown in ancient civilisations . . . but
this
ancient?

She swam over the top of the wall and looked down. Slightly off-centre of the circle was a pile of rubble, fronds of seaweed wafting languidly from it. A small shoal of fish glinted through her torch beam, edging closer to the plants before flitting away as one.

The fallen bricks were probably part of the collapsed roof. If so, then whatever the building had housed could still be beneath them. Nina dropped to the sea floor and squatted as best she could in the cumbersome deep suit to investigate. ‘We’re definitely going to need the pump,’ she said, brushing seaweed strands aside. ‘If we clear out the sediment, we might be able to find—’

Something erupted from a hole between the bricks.

Nina shrieked and jerked back reflexively, losing her balance and falling on to her butt. A hideous face lunged at her, a huge mottled moray eel with its spike-toothed mouth agape.

Its long body twisted, fangs snapping at her outstretched hand—

Something shot past Nina in a trail of bubbles. There was a deafening
bang
. The next thing she knew, a swirling pink-tinged cloud of froth and shredded flesh was spreading through the water. The front half of the moray, mouth still open in what now looked like frozen surprise, bumped lifelessly against her before sinking to the sea floor.

‘What did I bloody tell you?’ Chase’s voice said in her ringing ears. ‘Don’t go off on your own!’

‘Jesus, Eddie!’ said Nina, caught somewhere between fear, relief and anger. ‘Are you trying to kill me? You almost blew out my eardrums!’

‘You’d rather that thing’d bitten a hole in your suit?’ He swam past her, the speargun in one hand. ‘Big bugger, though. Must be twelve feet long, easily. Although a power-head was probably overkill.’ He loaded another explosive-tipped spear, then tugged the severed tail end of the eel from the hole.

Nina breathed deeply in an attempt to calm herself. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Getting rid of this thing. Don’t want floating shark-bait right where you’re working.’ He clipped the gun to his suit’s belt, then picked up the moray’s other half. ‘Seen this?’ he asked, waggling its head in Nina’s face. ‘It’s got two sets of jaws, one inside the other. Like the Alien.’