The Pillars of Abraham

by Ian Young

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re right, I’ll tell her tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t want you to tell her.’

  Howie whipped round as though I’d thrown a shoe at his head. I wanted to.

  ‘Jeez, Andi, make your freaking mind up!’

  ‘Just let’s think about it, that’s all.’ I stood up and covered the short distance between us in a second. ‘Things haven’t gone well over the last few days. Perhaps we need some cooling-off time?’

  Howie huffed. ‘Well …’

  ‘Let’s analyse this … ball … and see where we’re at after. OK?’

  ‘Sure, honey.’ Howie moved to place a kiss on my lips but I turned my cheek and he kissed that instead, appearing unconcerned with the rejection. As he went back to his packing, I gave him the smile of resignation again.

  I went up on deck to get some fresh air and watch Apra Harbor growing larger and larger. And there he was, stalking the boards like some theatre ghost, omnipresent and unwelcome.

  ‘Ah, Andi,’ said Mason. ‘Just the person I was hoping to run into.’

  I didn’t see why he had to hope; it seemed he could arrange to be exactly where I was at any time. ‘Well, you’re in luck,’ I said.

  ‘I’m hoping to spend a few days in LA after this trip. I thought maybe you could show me the sights?’

  My first thought was no fucking way, Jose, but then I thought about Howie – Howie, his wife and the bag of washing. ‘Sure,’ I said, before I could give myself chance to think it through.

  ‘Oh, right.’ Mason clearly hadn’t expected that since he seemed lost for words.

  ‘I guess you’ll want to know what happens when we analyse our specimen?’

  ‘Um, yes, that would be most interesting,’ he said. Interestingly.

  ‘Here, let me give you my address, you can look me up when you arrive.’

  Mason pulled out his smartphone and tapped in my address. ‘That’s very kind, Andi, I look forward to …’ Mason paused and looked at the floor for a second. ‘Um, I know you and Professor Dyer are together, so please don’t think I have an agenda.’

  ‘What? Oh! Sure, no, obviously, I mean, we can just go and take in the sights.’ Shut up! My cheeks were burning.

  ‘Good day, Andi,’ he said with that smile. ‘I’ll pop round in a couple of days.’

  It couldn’t do any harm. One afternoon, that’s all, I could manage that: this is Venice Beach, this is Hollywood (a dump isn’t it?) this is where Arnold Schwarzenegger lives, coffee in Starbucks, and he’d be out of my hair by sundown. There would be no romantic dinner to end a ‘perfect day’.

  Once Mason had vanished I made my way to the bow and watched the island of Guam expand before me. This time tomorrow I’d be home – my home from home, that was.

  Chapter 6

  Los Angeles, 6 February

  The flight from Guam had landed early and Howie was obsessing like a geek about the ball. Let’s go straight to the lab, he said, like a kid with a new computer game wanting to go straight home to play it. I groaned, desperate for a shower and my own bed, but Howie had found a new lease of life, as they say, and was practically hopping up and down as we waited for a cab.

  ‘I’ve already called Jim,’ said Howie, checking through his emails on his phone. ‘He’s going to prep the lab for us.’

  ‘Great,’ I said, stretching and yawning, not entirely without need. Already, the Los Angeles haze had started to thicken, obscuring the sky and just holding back the sun’s warmth enough to make me pull my jacket closed. Howie had gone back to wearing his brown knitted jacket that academics of his age seemed to wear, even in LA. All he was missing were the elbow patches, or was that a British thing? Talking of British things, Mason had joined the immigration queue for non-Americans about an hour ago and I hadn’t seen him since. Suited me.

  The ride across town was sluggish thanks to the millions of commuters the road system hadn’t been built to accommodate. There was often talk about the environmental impact of Californian commuters, but it seems that mass people transport was too close to communism for the authorities to stomach. Let’s build more roads; personal transport was the American way. Perhaps I could get a job for one of those companies that makes inhalers.

  We arrived at UCLA by 10.30 am. Other than Jim, no one had been told about our discovery so there was no reception for us – I wouldn’t have been surprised if the faculty hadn’t even realised we’d been gone for a week.

  Jim Doody stood in the centre of the lab; he wore the obligatory white coat with blue jeans hanging down his legs. He was younger than Howie, about forty I guessed, and made the same joke to everyone: he only got into chemistry so he could make his own drugs. Hilarious.

  ‘Hey, Howard,’ said Jim with a passive expression. ‘What ya got?’

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jim smile, not even when telling his favourite joke.

  ‘Jim, good to see you,’ said Howie, grasping Jim’s hand like he were a long-lost brother. ‘Close the door, this is special.’

  ‘It better be, I’m meant to be shaking that lot together this a-m.’ Jim nodded to a row of flasks on a table, each containing a coloured powder. ‘You’ve no idea of the street value sitting there.’

  Jim spoke with such deadpan delivery it was impossible to work out if he was serious or not. Judging by the colours, though, the flasks contained nothing that would lead to an illegal substance. It was probably prep for an undergraduate class someone had to take. Not me, I was outta here as soon as we’d watched the ball open and close a few more times.

  ‘We need some boiling water and a compass,’ said Howie. ‘Hold that last one, I just realised I’ve got a compass on my phone.’

  Jim frowned but filled a bowl with water from the boiler and placed it on the table. Howie lifted the ball from his bag and placed it by the bowl.

  ‘Behold,’ said Howie as though he’d just returned from some Aztec temple where he’d found a fabled artefact.

  Jim glanced at Howie, then the ball, then at me. His face gave nothing away.

  ‘Grab the tongs, would you, Jim,’ said Howie. ‘Now watch this.’

  Howie lowered the ball into the steaming water and twisted the tongs round until the seam bisecting the ball faced north-south. The water fizzed with the vibrations, but when the two halves slid apart, Jim’s jaw almost dislocated itself.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he said with more expression than I’d seen before.

  ‘Pretty neat, eh?’

  ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘That’s what we’re here to find out.’

  While we stared into the bowl the water temperature dropped below the 85° C threshold and the ball slid closed. ‘That’s the damned problem,’ said Howie, banging the table with his fist.

  Whatever this ball was, it’d brought Howie and Jim to life, and turned Mason into Einstein. Only I seemed unaffected by its power.

  ‘Well hell,’ said Jim, striding across the lab. ‘Let’s just clamp it open.’

  Ha! Mason hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘I’ll refill the bowl,’ I said. ‘The water has to be above eighty-five Celsius for it to open.’

  ‘And what’s the deal with facing north?’

  ‘No idea,’ I said. ‘It just seems to resonate in the Earth’s magnetic field. Who knows?’

  ‘Where the hell d’ya find it?’

  ‘Andi dug it out of the ocean floor,’ said Howie. ‘The Challenger Deep, I spotted it on my dive, glowing on the infrared monitor, and Andi went down and brought it back.’

  ‘Alien?’

  ‘Not you as well!’ I supposed it was only a matter of time.

  I placed the replenished bowl on the table and lowered the ball into the water. As the halves slid apart, Howie reach
ed in and fastened a plastic clamp across the middle where the two halves met.

  ‘That ought to do it,’ he said. ‘Lift it out, Andi.

  When clear of the water the ball remained open, crackling away – I could see the sparks. It had shocked Howie then. Jeez, this was just some kind of Van de Graaff generator with its own power source. I shook my head.

  Jim let out an ironic whoop-whoop but Howie seemed much more excited. It was the first time we’d got a good look at the inside. One side was hollow, a little cruddy perhaps, but the other side was solid.

  ‘It’s spongy,’ said Howie, prodding the solid surface with his finger. ‘Jeez, it’s like … like some kind of gel.’

  ‘A gel?’ I said, frowning. ‘Gels aren’t spongy.’

  ‘They can be when they’re agitated,’ said Howie. ‘And this has just been—’

  ‘Vibrating,’ I said, as though piecing together a puzzle.

  ‘It’s getting harder, Andi, feel it.’

  I touched my finger on the surface like I might test if a plate is hot. ‘So what does it mean?’

  ‘Let’s take a look under the scope,’ said Jim, nodding encouragingly at Howie and me.

  I nodded too. Jim placed it in the vacuum chamber of the scanning electron microscope and waited for the machine to purge the air. Once the light illuminated to say the microscope was ready for use, Jim began to focus the electron beam on to the surface of our ball and an image appeared on the monitor. In unison, we peered closer for a better look.

  ’I reckon you’re right, Howard,’ said Jim. ‘It’s some kind of nanocomposite hydrogel.’

  ‘So entirely within our technological capabilities,’ I said wearily.

  ‘That means jack,’ said Howie. ‘It’s what’s inside that’s important.’

  For some reason that thought made my stomach tense, even though I knew— Actually, I didn’t know what to think now.

  Howie peered closer at the ball. ‘An artificial hydrogel that melts when agitated has got to be some kind of lid.’

  ‘So why not a structure that melts with heat?’ said Jim. ‘I mean, the little dude opens up with the heat, why not melt the lid with heat? Why with agitation?’

  ‘Killing two birds with one stone,’ I said, shrugging.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jim.

  ‘How the hell do I know?’ Howie began pacing around the lab. ‘Maybe it doesn’t exactly melt, just softens so you can scoop it out and get at what it’s hiding.’

  ‘Or allows whatever it’s hiding to scoop itself out?’ Jim delivered his words with no trace of farce.

  Howie stopped pacing and looked stunned. ‘You mean like some kind of egg?’

  ‘Hell, why not?’

  ‘We’ve been through this,’ I said. ‘Apparently it’s the wrong shape for an egg.’

  Jim shrugged. ‘If it’s an egg, maybe that empty side’s hatched already.’

  ‘If it’s an egg,’ said Howie, ‘it’s definitely alien.’

  ‘Oh, not again, Howie!’ I said, throwing my arms up.

  ‘Jesus, Andi, what kind of oviparous animal lays eggs like this that you’ve heard about?’

  I shook my head and sat down. What an ass.

  ‘That’s why it vibrates,’ said Jim. ‘Warms up the egg for hatching.’

  ‘Right.’ Howie began pacing again, hands joined together at his lips like he was praying. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  I forced myself to join in the ludicrous fantasy. ‘That there’s an alien creature swimming around the ocean?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’

  ‘Andi, we know more about the moon than we do about the ocean floor. You bet your ass there’s an alien down there somewhere.’

  Howie was suffering from what the shrinks call confirmation bias. He was so desperate to believe he’d found an alien thing of some kind that he clung to any theory no matter how ridiculous. He fitted the evidence to suit his ambition. I wanted to take a closer look at this nanocomposite hydrogel that probably did cover something, though not an alien chick.

  By now the gel was rock hard and I wanted to soften it up a little to see if it could be penetrated or, better still, removed. After a few minutes facing north the gel had morphed into a viscous gum and I turned the ball around to stop it vibrating. Using a spatula, I scraped away some gel but immediately the tacky fluid reflowed itself to fill the hole I’d dug. There was nothing unearthly about that. It was no different from spooning out some partially melted Ben and Jerry’s on a hot Los Angeles afternoon.

  It had been a couple of minutes since the vibration stopped and, free from agitation, the gel had quickly hardened again. I twisted it round to face north and waited. This time I would use a bigger spatula.

  Within seconds of digging, I’d scraped enough gel away to leave only a thin, clear layer that revealed a dark mass beneath.

  ‘Howie, look!’

  Howie was sitting in the corner of the lab with Jim, poring over Google Ocean trying to work out where his alien fish might be lurking. I heard him saying something about checking if there’d been any reduction in marine life in recent years, something he would no doubt attribute to the introduction of a non-indigenous species.

  ‘Howie!’ This time I shouted, trying to rattle him from his obsession.

  ‘What is it, honey?’

  ‘You were right,’ I said, putting on an excited face to interest him. ‘I’ve removed the gel, there’s something underneath.’

  Wow! I’d never seen Howie move so fast. He scrambled across the room, dragging his upturned chair halfway along the floor. The journey across the lab had clearly taken it out of him. Either that, or his panting was a sign of excitement. Actually, I of all people could testify that the latter was probably the case.

  ‘What’ve you seen?’ he said, slavering. Yes, that was Howie all excited.

  ‘Well, nothing really, but the point is—’

  ‘Let me see.’

  Howie grabbed a magnifying glass and peered at the gel. ‘Can we remove this last layer?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But aren’t you worried some vile creature will spring out and cling to your face?’

  ‘Jim, hand me one of those face masks, would you?’

  I gaped at the professor, my mouth hanging open as though stunned. ‘Oh, come on, Howie, I was kidding.’

  Howie ignored me and pulled the straps of a mask over his head. ‘Here,’ he said, handing me a mask.

  ‘I’m good,’ I said, smiling sweetly, as though placating a mad man.

  ‘What do we do?’

  I turned the ball north to agitate the gel then began scraping away the last few millimetres. Nothing happened: no re-enactment from the Alien movie; no tentacled creature shot across the room melting through the floor. A dark, thick liquid, like oil, lay in the hemisphere. It wasn’t what I’d expected to see, though I had no idea what I expected to see. Before I realised what I’d done I was standing three feet away from the ball. So was Howie.

  Jim stepped in and picked up the ball. ‘Let’s take a look,’ he said, placing it inside the microscope’s vacuum chamber.

  Within a minute. the equipment was ready to start firing electrons at the ball and we watched the monitor like waiting for a favourite TV show to begin.

  ‘There,’ said Jim as an image appeared on the screen. ‘The oil’s full of free-floating molecules, look.’

  Jim adjusted the microscope’s controls and zoomed in on one of the molecules. Peering closely at the screen, he scratched his head and gave a small cough.

  ‘That’s a DNA molecule.’

  Howie and I pushed our head towards Jim’s and took a closer look. ‘Jim,’ said Howie, ‘I think you’re right.’


  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Howie,’ I said, ‘but it doesn’t automatically mean it’s alien DNA.’

  ‘Sure, but you have to admit, honey, it’s got to be more likely than any other explanation.’

  Howie had a point. Why would anyone on earth pack so much DNA into a little ball and then lose it in the ocean? But then why would an alien do that? Jeez, listen to yourself, girl!

  While Howie and I moved away and argued over the origins and purpose of a ball full of DNA, Jim sat down and handled the microscope’s controls.

  ‘There are traces of bacteria, too,’ said Jim, staring at the monitor again. ‘But we shouldn’t get excited about that, there’s bacteria everywhere.’

  ‘Bacteria on the DNA?’ I asked.

  ‘Embedded in the crust in the other hemisphere, the empty side.’

  ‘Howie started pacing around the room, both hands pressed against his face. ‘How long before we can determine whose DNA it is?’

  ‘Probably a couple of days, but you’d have to convince the biology lab to take a look in a hurry, otherwise it’d be weeks.’

  ‘Can’t we do it in this lab?’ I said. ‘We have the equipment, all we need is a little guidance.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Howie. ‘We have access to the barcoding software, we’d have a match in no time. Unless there is no match.’

  ‘There will be,’ said Jim. ‘We’ve barcoded the DNA of all known species.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Howie flashed a smile at Jim, and then raised his eyebrows at me.

  Jim looked again at the ball, examining several different molecules. I was convinced it would be human DNA, probably some kind of time capsule to be discovered by someone millions of years after humans have died out – a vain attempt to restart the human race, perhaps. Ha! Just in time for the sun to go supernova and wipe us all out again.

  ‘There are millions of species,’ I said. ‘Can’t we just compare it with our DNA instead of running through everything that ever lived on Planet Earth?’