The Pyramid Builders (7 page)

He swayed and she reached out and steadied him. “Time to dance, Chris.” She led him to the floor as slow music started and she lifted his arms and put them on her shoulders. She pulled him close and started moving slowly to the rhythm of the song. Chris put his head on her shoulder and she guided him out on the floor. She felt how tense he was, but after a few moments she felt him relax. They danced….and danced. She knew she should feel tired, but she didn’t. She felt moisture on her shoulder and knew he was crying. She could feel it in his arms that had grown weak. She knew Dolly was right. He came to remember and forget his loss.

After a long time she looked up and noticed that the dance floor had cleared and they were the only ones dancing. She looked around and saw a crowd of students surrounding the floor with white lit candles. They all stood silently and watched the couple on the floor. Jillian noticed that most of them were crying. Finally Chris said with closed eyes, “It’s time to go.” Jillian led a staggering Chris toward the door as the bartender came over and placed Jillian’s coverall over her arm. The students parted as she approached and left a path for her to walk outside. Jillian was astounded at the respect and almost reverence they were giving Chris. As they left the building she saw the streets were filled with thousands of students all holding candles. There had to be more than twenty thousand of them gathered.

Jillian realized that Chris cried for the loss of his family. These thousands cried for the loss of Chris. She walked into a large circle where the students had reserved a place for her car to land. She saw all of the ones at the edge of the circle had a small green “T” on a white beret. She knew they must be the Tutors. They stood at attention and Jillian was amazed at the utter silence of the gathered thousands. She lowered her car and two of the Tutors came forward and took Chris from her and helped him into his seat. One of them opened Jillian’s door for her and turned to Jillian and said, “Take care of him, please.”

She nodded and said, “I will.”

She sat down and lifted her car above the crowd. She saw that the gathering was much larger than she thought. She could see lighted candles in every block more than a mile away. She looked at Chris sleeping in the seat beside her and wondered what he could have possibly done to cause such adoration. She felt something move inside her. She knew that his refusal to go initially was due to his commitments to the community he had adopted and not cowardice. She also knew his pain of having to leave that community was more than she thought. She could see that at some level the students were now Chris’ family. She felt the tears come even though she fought hard to stop them. She was a thunk. Dolly had it right. Chris slept and didn’t see her cry all the way back to the port.

Jeff entered the chamber and saw Dolly waiting for him at the Tablet. She had on a strapless black dress that was stunning. Her blonde hair was down to her shoulders and her gold earrings sparked light across the large chamber. Her beauty blinded him to anything else. He walked forward and put the pad down and hit his remote. An ancient song started playing slowly, “Oh, my love, my darling, I’ve hungered for your touch, a long lonely time”. She came forward and put her arms around his neck and held him close. They started moving to the music and Jeff lost himself in her embrace. Dolly looked up into his eyes and said, “The Righteous Brothers. You couldn’t have chosen better.” They continued to dance, and Dolly said with her head on his shoulder, “There’s not much time left for us. I choose to spend it loving you, if you’ll have me.”

“Dolly, I’m so unworthy of you. You are so much more than me.”

“It’s not the brain that’s the most important organ, it’s the heart. I love your courage, and your heart of a warrior. I know I will never have to doubt you.”

Jeff pulled her closer and said, “I’ll be yours forever, Dolly.”

She smiled and leaned back for him to kiss her. He did, and she felt it all the way down to her toes. Now she knew beyond doubt. He was the one she had been waiting to find. They danced….and danced.

C
hris awoke in his room at the space port and squinted, expecting the hangover to come crashing in, but felt nothing. “I have got to get some of that formula!” He looked at the clock and saw it was almost noon. He jerked up and jumped out of bed. Then he noticed that he was naked. “How did that happen?” He thought back to the night before, remembered Jillian in her emerald dress, and sat back down. She was stunning. He didn’t remember anything after he started dancing, but he still saw her in his mind. She was just unbelievably beautiful. He shook his head at the memory. Well, a T-Rex was also beautiful in its own way, and both of them should be given a wide berth when near. Wait a minute! Who put him to bed? He stood up and dressed, then hurried out to go to the Tablet.

He arrived at the Tablet and found Dolly at the computer. “Well, good morning!”

“Sorry, Dolly. My alarm didn’t go off.”

“I know; Jillian shut it off. She felt like you’ve been pushing yourself too hard and needed the extra sleep.”

Chris looked around and said, “Where is the Pit Bull?”

Dolly smiled, “She has Jeff waiting for you at the entrance with a skimmer. She wants you to come and help them with the Cheops.”

“The Cheops?”

“He’s the Pharaoh the Great Pyramid was named after. Cheops was the Greek name given him. I think they’re ready for you to check the connections on your device’s emitters.”

Chris started to leave and turned back, “Dolly, I notice you and Jeff…”

“I’m going to marry him.”

“What?!?”

Dolly turned around and said, “Sit down a minute, Chris.”

Chris sat down next to her at the terminal, and Dolly looked at him, “When you were taken from the bar by Jillian and the two Alpha Agents, I was really scared that you were in big trouble. I noticed that one of the Agents had a name sewed on his uniform that said J. Garcia. I went back to my room after notifying the Tutors what had happened and did a search on that name. I finally found a match in the Marine Corp Special Ops. I dug deeper and was blocked by a highly classified designation.”

“I’m sure that didn’t slow you down.”

“No, it didn’t. I found that after Iran detonated that nuke over Jerusalem, Israel the United States was given twenty four hours to remove their important people before they retaliated. His unit was one of the initial teams to land in Tehran to save the United Nations embassy staff. I had to break through three more blocks, but discovered that his team was attacked and pinned down under heavy crossfire. Seven of them were wounded and lying out in the open. Jeff, ignoring an order from his commanding officer, went out into that devastating fire, and pulled all seven back to safety. He was hit three times; once in the arm and twice in his legs. He still ignored the pleas of his team, and continued to pull his brothers to safety. Five of them lived. Jeff was in intensive care for three months and came out of it ok. You know how good our medical regeneration techniques are now?”

Chris nodded.

“Although our country no longer gives medals for bravery since we joined the world government, he was given the Medal of Honor by former President Williamson. No one knows about the award but those in his unit, and he will quite likely be the last American to ever receive it. He deserved it and a lot more. I viewed a video of the ceremony and Jeff refused to accept the medal, saying that he did nothing more than what they would have done for him. I saw he meant it. He only agreed to it after the five survivors persuaded him that the two that died would insist he accept.”

Chris looked at Dolly and saw something in her eyes he hadn’t seen before, “He’s a true warrior, Chris. His heart is pure, and he understands what it means to fight for a cause. He was promoted to the Alphas and slated for future command. I didn’t know if you were safe, but I knew you were not being mistreated or taken for a bad reason. He wouldn’t have allowed it. I decided at that moment that I had to find him and get to know him. It was fate that sent him to pick me up to bring me here.”

Dolly paused, and then slowly shook her head, “He challenged me about how I knew he was brave and I told him what I had done.” Dolly reached and pulled a chain from inside her top, and Chris saw the Medal hanging on it. “He told me that my courage to come here and tell the truth regardless of consequences was much more courageous than what he did. He insisted that I take this.” Dolly smiled and said, “I have found what I’ve been looking for, Chris. I may have more intelligence, but he has the inner qualities that make him so much more than I could ever hope to be. I will always be safe in his arms. I love him.”

Chris leaned over and gave Dolly a hug, “I’m certain I’ll never have to worry about your safety. I am so happy for you.”

“Thanks. Now you need to go to work.”

Chris gave a heavy sigh, “You’re right. I’ll see you later.”

Dolly yelled as he walked away, “It won’t be that bad!”

“You have no idea.”

Dolly smiled and turned back to the computer terminal.

Jillian looked at the command control panel and shook her head, “Why hasn’t the generator reached full power?”

The head engineer shouted from the other room, “We can’t bring it to full power until the engines are brought on line. We can’t risk a spike in the current that would damage the circuit boards in the primary coil conduits. We’ve given you enough power to test the board, Sir.”

Chris walked in just as Jillian began running a test of the stardrive’s memory board. “Reporting for duty as ordered.”

Jillian looked up and smiled, “Why don’t you come and help me go through this navigation system?”

Chris wondered about the smile, but came over and sat in the second chair next to the panel, “What’s going on?”

“Having a stardrive is fine, but finding your way around our galaxy is not going to be easy. We have to be able to come back to where we started. If we jump out more than a hundred light years, our solar system will just be a point of light among thousands of others, and it will be changing position after we leave. This system will lock in the Earth’s position relative to the Galaxy’s main features and hopefully allow us to make our way home.”

Chris watched the simulation and said, “This is a little scary.”

Jillian frowned, “What do you mean?”

“Those main features will also be changing position at a rate of more than thirty miles a second, and they are not moving at the same rate as our system.”

Jillian furrowed her brow and said, “I see what you mean.”

“And it gets much worse if you go out five thousand light years, as I suspect we’ll have to do to see the building of the Great Pyramid.”

Jillian leaned back in her chair and sighed, “It looks like this is doomed from the start.”

“Not really.”

“Why do you say that?”

Chris looked at the screen and said, “I mentioned earlier that we are going to go out and capture light that left Earth.” Jillian nodded, “Well there is a minute amount of decay in light as it travels through space. My device will capture it and determine how long that light has traveled based on the energy difference between it and what it was when it originally left. It will tell us exactly how many light years, minutes, or seconds it has traveled. That means if we orient the ship perpendicular to that light, we just jump that distance and we’ll be back, or close enough to adjust and get back.” Jillian immediately saw it. “Theoretically, as long as we don’t jump further than the light from Earth has traveled, which is about a billion light years, we should be able to find our way home.”

Jillian slowly shook her head, “Is your device capable of discriminating that difference over the extreme distances we’re talking about?”

“I trialed it with light that traveled from Earth to the moon and it read it exactly. We can jump out to Mars and take a measurement to confirm it, but I know it will accurately read it.”

“Chris, the atmosphere on Earth has changed numerous times during its different ages. The reading you take now won’t match the reading from the time of the pyramid builders. Will that be a problem?”

“I’ve done a huge amount of work on that with Dolly’s help. The main thing that we use to program the sensory program is the bulk gases. Nitrogen and oxygen are the main components of the atmosphere, and those ratios have not changed significantly since before land animals first developed. Carbon levels have changed as well as other trace gases, but the main ratios have been consistent.”

“What if there is another planet with the same makeup as Earth?”

“Dolly did the computations, but she insists that the ratios would differ. Maybe not by much, but it would be enough to distinguish it as being different.” Chris saw Jillian’s nervousness and said, “Tell you what; here’s what we can do to make sure before we make a catastrophic mistake. We’ll jump out two light years to make sure we clear the ort cloud. I don’t want to emerge back into normal space and be hit broadside by a rock flying at thirty kilometers per second. We’ll take a reading and see if it’s accurate. We’ll also do a 360 degree turn and see if there are any other similar wavelengths out there. If there are, we come back and find another way. The sun will be the closest and largest star to our location so I’m sure we’ll be able to get back.”

“Did Dolly say what the probabilities of another planet with identical readings were?”

“Within twenty thousand light years they were six billion to one matching exactly.”

Jillian smiled and said, “I’m going to have the engineering team slave the navigation board into your sensors. Thanks; you’ve helped a lot.”

“You’re welcome. I also want to thank you for going dancing with me last night. I really hope I wasn’t a jerk. I never remember what happened the next day, and I hope I behaved.”

Jillian smiled, “You were the perfect gentleman.”

“Good. I was worried about that. I also want to say that you were devastatingly beautiful last night. Your dress was gorgeous, and it made me feel great to see all the envious looks from the regulars. I sincerely appreciate your putting up with me on my dance night.” Chris saw her nod, and then turned to go check the status of his emitters in the main landing bay.