The Unearthing (27 page)

“I’ll put in the request to the World Council,” Bloom said. She consulted her handheld again.

“On to the trip down tomorrow, the Ship Summit wants us to…oh, this is good. Until we’ve deciphered the Codex, they want us to explore the
surface
of the Ship and find an alternate point of entry.”

“That’s a little like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Kodo remarked.

“Not necessarily Doctor Kodo,” Andrews said, “Given the scale of the Ship and the number of levels we observed on the inside of the hull it is safe to assume that there are several different points of entry, most probably including cargo and landing bays. The real problem would be identifying them and getting them open.”

“Astute,” Bloom said, “I wasn’t aware you had any engineering background, Doctor Andrews.”

“I don’t,” he said, “The Ship is the size of a city. With inner levels along the hull, multiple points of entry become possible without risk to the personnel and inhabitants in the inner hull itself. If you want I could come up with a rough estimate of how many access points we can expect to find per square kilometre of the Ship’s surface.” He paused and then added: “For all the good it’ll do us.”

“What do you mean?” Bloom asked.

“If the Builders had wanted us to have such easy access to the Ship they wouldn’t have bothered sealing the First Chamber now, would they?” Andrews replied, “I’ll wager you that any hatches accessible from the outside have been sealed and the rest can only be opened from the inside.”

“And we can barely get readings on the Ship as it is,” Peter said, “The thing’s impervious to laser cutting…there really
is
only one way in.”

“I want a look inside the Ship,” Bloom said, “And I wouldn’t mind getting a feel for its exterior geography, either. Tomorrow morning, we’ll go down and have a look around. In the afternoon we’ll take a walk across its surface.” Everyone nodded, more than one face betraying smug mirth at Bloom’s disregard for the Ship Summit’s directives in favour of taking the fantastic trip down to the First Chamber, again.

“Unless there’s any other business,” Bloom said, “We’ll adjourn. Peter, put together the gear for tomorrow’s descent. Doctor Cole, we’ll meet in my office in a half-hour.”

♦♦♦

In this most Holy Dream, the Angel stood before Him near the entrance to the Pyramid. Gabriel Ashe beheld its presence as the Ship sang its Sirenhip e܀s song, washed in the garish blue light of the fires of Hell. The Angel was a pillar of gold fire, aglow from within and without, amorphous but for its eyes. Unlike mortal humans, the Angels had three eyes, so that they could look upon the Lord without earning destruction. The Angel’s eyes were dark spheres of black violet, turned such for having seen the Face of God. It approached him, a strange foreimage of itself preceding. As the Angel drew nearer, its indistinct shape took the vaguest of mortal forms, the suggestion of legs and arms, blurred in movement below an asynchronous head.

“Remember this,” the Angel said in a voice like raw electricity, “For I speak the Word of your Father, the Lord.” The Angel then set off for the Pyramid, leaving Ashe to follow. He could not but notice that the Angel had had no need to turn around, before moving down toward the Pyramid; it simply changed its point of view.

“I follow in the footsteps of the Angel of the Lord,” Ashe said, “And I shall fear no evil.” They stood before the gaping black maw that was the opening into the Pyramid.

“You must pass through the gates and descend into the heart of the Golden Temple,” The Angel said, “For this is the word of the Lord whom I serve. You will be baptized within and shown the way to spread the Word of the Lord to all mankind.”

“I will join My Father?”

“You will join Your Father.”

“Then show me how.” And then the Angel moved forward and showed him.

♦♦♦

It was cold before sunrise. She knew that as a fact of life about deserts and had experienced it herself many times in Australia, Africa and Brazil. Somehow she’d expected it to be warmer near the Ship. It meant that her usual running clothes of a tee shirt and shorts had to be traded in for sweat pants and a long-sleeve. Bloom had been thrilled to discover Fort Arapaho boasted a run track along the edge of Ship’s Canyon, including a bridge that covered a natural curve in the rock. The bridge was all guard rails and grillwork; you could see right through it and down to the Ship, kilometres below. Bloom loved the echo of her feet hitting the bridge. The Shipsong seemed to wrap itself around the sound of her footfalls, the clanging percussion of sneaker on steel timing the rhythm of the strange, crystalline ululations. She couldn’t help but pause in her run to walk over to the guardrail on the bridge and stare out at the Ship, feeling a thrill of vertigo as she stood enthralled by the gargantuan alien artifact. The horizon to the east was brightening, the first glints of light beginning to be reflected from the Ship’s surface. The Shipsong echoed through the valley it had created. Even as the sun began rising, the Ship was still brightly lit from the blue fires of its power source. Bloom marvelled over it for several long moments before realizing she had to turn around and start back or she’d be late for breakfast.

♦♦♦

They made their way down the ramp to the base of the Pyramid. The great door stood open as they had left it following their first descent into the Ship. No one from the Expedition had been here since Echohawk and Scott were been killed. The Ship Survey Expedition stood silent before the entrance to the Ship for a long moment; a respectful, ponderous pause. The Shipsong cycled through its strange alien notes and sounds, echoing throughout Ship’s Canyon and resonating powerfully, almost unbearably loud around the members of the Expedition. Finally Bloom stepped forward and crossed the arch into the Pyramid. She was strangely let down by the scene inside: the flat black walls, the raised dais upon which the lift car would rest when it rose from the bowels of the Ship. It seemed almost ordinary. A faint trickle of dust and dirt had scurried into the Pyramid, drifting through the open door and into the far corners, curling around the side of the dais that faced the door. As the members of the Expedition came in behind Bloom, a wind turned the detritus into spinning dust devils. The wind came from the lift tube, whose sealing valve opened in anticipation of the approaching lift car. Bloom had gone to see Kodo that morning and she had agreed with him: the valve was indeed biological and not nanotech. The Ship was indeed partially organic.

“Headsets on, people,” Bloom said, as the wind’s rushing augmented. The lift could be heard coming towards them, displacing the air between it and the Pyramid as it ascended. The expedition members switched on their headsets, cameras recording. The lift car surged through the valve, coming to an abrupt and startling halt.

“That’s unbelievable,” Bloom said, taking tentative steps towards the gigantic lift. She reached out to touch its surface. The crystal car’s eggshell walls split open and the door into the lift appeared. Bloom stepped back, drawn to the mimetic effect of the crystal walls. She and the other members of the Expedition climbed aboard. She turned to face the door as they waited for the car to seal and descend. Bloom watched as the door slid back into place and fused seamlessly shut.

“Any ideas on how the car knows all are aboard and ready to go?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“It appears to be automated,” Andrews supplied, “Although whether it’s triggered by the open door into the Pyramid, or the presence of people within, I couldn’t say. My guess is sensors either in the walls or floor count the number of people who enter the chamber and then the car.”

“One mystery of many,” Bloom said. The car was swallowed into the darkness of the first leg of their journey. Soon they were dropping past the rings of blue light that marked passage through the tunnel and then came the climactic descent into the Ship’s vast interior.

“My dear God,” Bloom gasped. The members of the Ship Survey Expedition faced outwards, peering at the wonders around them. The huge spires of the airframe bridged the gap between inner and outer hulls. Deck after massive deck, whole cities unto themselves encircled the upper hull, some extending well into the airframes themselves. They wrapped around the interior of the Ship in a gigantic ring, joined to the outer hull and to whatever lay below their line of site by tubes of flowing blue energy and the skeletal fingers of the airframe. Bloom craned her head up to take in more of the Ship’s interior as they dropped away from it. The curvature of the Ship was dizzying from the inside and Bloom felt like an ant staring up at the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. As massive as the Ship was, it was also a thing of beauty. The gold and black of its interior was a majestic triumph of engineering, of art, of the ability to create. She was looking at the fulfilled promises of a thousand legends: El Dorado, Atlantis, the City of God, Shangri-La…had the hearts of the prophets and storytellers who spoke of those places been somehow brought here, to this place in their dreams? As the car brought them to the end of their journey and down into the First Chamber of the inner hull Bloom felt robbed, cheated of the wonders she had seen. She was unsurprised by the dampness on her face. Kodo, Aiziz and Paulson, she saw, had also been overwhelmed by their emotions during their congress to the inner hull.

Bloom’s hand traced itself around the brilliant blue band of encased energy that bisected the walls of the round chamber. The walls of the golden room had the same mosaic appearance as the floor of the lift. As did the ceiling, save for where the white light shone through. Only the floor, a smoothly polished yet flat and reflectionless black, differed. The Codex dominated the room. Andrews and Aiziz looked from the Codex to their workpads, to the keypad by the sealed door.

“If the numbers are base ten, then this is definitely a periodic table,” Kodo said, studying the stone with the pair, “The layout is perfect and from what I remember of atomic construction, the runes associated with this pattern would seem for the most part to match them.”

“For the most part,” Andrews stressed, “But even from what I remember of the sciences I took in school I know there are far too many elements listed. What is the currently accepted prediction? No more than twelve additional elements are possible?”

“Something like that,” Kodo conceded, “But up until a few years ago there were only a hundred and twenty-six elements on the table. There are a hundred and thirty-one now.”

“There would appear to be over two hundred symbols on this table,” Andrews said, “What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know
what
to make of it,” Kodo said, “Of the twelve predicted elements left to our periodic table, none of them are likely to be stable; some of them aren’t even known to occur naturally. I’m still trying to figure out the extra chromosome pairs and strange components in the cells I lifted off the lift tube valve.”

“Extra components seem to be something the Builders enjoyed,” Andrews said bitterly. Aiziz gasped and looked at Andrews and Kodo.

“That’s the key,” she said, “The extra components. I’m sure of it.”

“How do you mean?”

“The equations that are evidently false; I don’t think they are. I think they’re
meant
to call attention to themselves, to show us something else.”

“Like what?” Andrews asked. Aiziz stepped back from the Codex, her eyes roving until she could take it all in at a glance. She ran her eyes across the surface of the black stone with grim determination. Andrews and Kodo could only watch. Soon, Bloom, then Paulson turned to watch. At once Aiziz’s eyes froze and widened in dawning realization.

“Sonia?” Bloom and Andrews asked, as one.

“I think…I…yes. Yes, I believe so.” The Palestinian woman muttered. She used her stylus to scribble fiercely across her workpad, pausing only long enough to study the Codex before continuing with another burst of scrawling. She did this for several minutes and then moved for the keypad on the far left of the Codex. She keyed in a series of glyphs and runes and then pressed the stand-alone rune that appeared comparable to an “execute” key. There was a thud and then a hiss. The door from the first chamber rolled down into the floor and a short corridor beyond began to light up.

TEN

FIRST CONTACTS

James Johnson stared gravely at the door before him. They’d already scraped the gold-lined black lettering from the door. The words

Prof. Mark Echohawk

had once graced the frosted glass panel in the doorframe of the office in UCLA’s Costen Institute. Now the glass was bare. James put the key in the door, turning the lock. Yesterday he’d sorted through the Prof’s papers, checking the curriculum and assigning the work to the teachers who’d taken over Echohawk’s classes. James had sent his mentor’s journals on to the World Aboriginal Anthropological Society as per Echohawk’s last will and testament. Today he would be cataloguing the pieces in Echohawk’s private collection, including photos, video chips and countless artifacts ranged along shelves in Echohawk’s office suite. Some pieces were bequeathed to colleagues, friends, family; the rest was to be boxed up and sent on to museums. James didn’t want to be here. He’d slept poorly the night before and the circumstances surrounding his first few waking moments today left him in a dark mood.

He’d woken up gasping for breath, his belly a tight, cold knot of terror. It took a moment for James’ breathing to come under control, several moments more for his heart to slow down. There was enough light coming in from outside for him to identify his surroundings: Laura’s living room. There was not enough light for his terror to be extinguished. Another nightmare. The Prof’s death played out again. This time he was the Prof, getting shot, feeling the pain…getting shot again, falling over and knowing that these were the last few seconds he would be alive, trapped and drowning in a failed sack of meat. James rolled out of bed, got into an undershirt and sweat pants and shuffled into the kitchen. He paused when he heard a low moan coming from down the hallway. He could hear bedsprings creaking rhythmically. Allison and Laura had gone out that night. He’d remained behind, declining the invitation to come with. They’d come home long after he’d gone to bed. One of them apparently hadn’t come home alone. As another, louder, swooning sound of pleasure escaped down the hallway, James felt both aroused and so very alone. But above all, the Terror; the irrefutable knowledge that he would one day die, that he would grow old, degenerate and finally expire. From the time he had been a child James had had doubts about whether or not he had a soul, though the five-year-old boy he’d been would never have been able to articulate it that way.