The Pillars of Abraham

by Ian Young

  ‘Well that’s the sixty-four thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? What do you think?’

  ‘My guess?

  ‘For what it’s worth, sure.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, as a professor of biosciences, this is it.’ Kendrick pokes his thumb at the vacuum chamber. ‘Right here, a little incubator for the first life on Earth.’

  Chapter 11

  LA, same day.

  It was probably the worst night’s sleep I’ve had since my father disowned me. Mason suggested a motel, something I couldn’t argue with given there was a dead body lying on my lounge floor. With all the terror yesterday brought, I haven’t even considered calling the cops. How would I explain the body? Mason said it was too late to come clean: you don’t kill a guy and leave him in your house while carrying out scientific experiments on an ancient artefact. Stuff like that happened in the movies. Real people call the cops then sit on the sofa, crumbling with shock.

  I look at Mason now, clearly enjoying a better sleep than me. His hand, outstretched on the bed, just inches from me, is smooth and unblemished, more like an office worker than a soldier. Only yesterday, that hand had closed up and bludgeoned a guy’s face till he stopped moving, stopped living. And now he sleeps as though nothing happened. He did offer to sleep on the floor, but that too was something that happened only in the movies. Sharing a bed is meaningless; whether Mason is on the floor on in the bed, he’s still in the same room. Besides, I don’t want another body lying on the floor all night.

  We paid cash for the room to avoid a credit card trace – Mason’s idea – but we did have to show ID. He asked the receptionist, a scruffy-looking guy, past retirement age, whose English was worse than mine, not to enter the details on his computer until we left. The receptionist agreed, but I suspect he hadn’t fully understood. Mason said it was a long shot, but conceivably the next Vrazi would call round all the hotels in the phone book until he found us, but it was better than sleeping in the park.

  I jump as Mason sits up in bed. He glances around as though waking from a bad dream. I’m sure he has many.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he says, cocking his head for a moment before leaping from the bed.

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Gun fire – silencer, single shot.’

  Seriously? This guy was sleeping but he hears a gun shot that I don’t. ‘There was no gun firing, you must have dreamed it.’

  ‘If only, Andi. Come on, get your things, quick.’ Mason peers through the blinds then waves his hand at me. ‘Get back.’

  He steps to the door and stands beside it. ‘Get behind the bed, keep down.’

  Seconds later a metallic rattle breaks the silence. Click-click. Someone is unlocking the door. Mason steps away and behind, some kind of premonition perhaps because as he does, the door swings on its hinges like it’s been blown open in a gale. A dark figure bursts into the room and fires two shots into the bed before Mason punches him in the side of the head. As the Vrazi lurches, Mason continues his attack, frenzied and uncontrolled, slamming fists and feet into the gunman until he collapses to the floor. It’s like nothing you see in the movies: no special forces martial arts, no quick chop to the back of the head, just wild violence that leaves me retching again.

  ‘Come on!’ Mason grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet, practically dragging me from the room.

  ‘Is he dead?’ I splutter as we run down the corridor towards reception.

  ‘No, but we have a few moments to get away before he recovers.’

  ‘What about the gun, you got the gun, right?’

  ‘Not a good idea, look.’

  The old guy at reception is lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ I put my hand to my mouth expecting to vomit again, but nothing comes out.

  ‘I don’t want to be found in possession of the gun that killed him.’ Mason takes my arm again and leads me to the car. Within moments we’re screeching from the parking lot but, as we speed away, the back window shatters and my hair is showered with fragments of glass. Another sound, like a large bug hitting the windscreen on the freeway, makes me jump. Glass from my hair drops down the back of my top and I arch my back, wriggling to let the glass fall free. Bullets hit the car one after the other, but somehow none hit me or Mason.

  ‘It’s a handgun,’ says Mason. ‘He’s no chance of hitting us at this range.’

  ‘He’s not doing too bad,’ I yell.

  The bullets stop coming but Mason doesn’t slow the pace. He drives like something out of a video game – until we hit traffic on the freeway.

  ‘We have to get out of LA,’ says Mason. ‘I’ll make a call.’

  ‘You said they could trace us if we use credit cards or show passports anywhere.’

  ‘I work for a private security firm,’ he says, checking the mirror. ‘We have answers to these problems. I just need a payphone.’

  We drove through commuter traffic for fifteen minutes; every driver, passenger and pedestrian staring at our smashed up car (they probably thought we were making a movie). And then Mason pulls off the freeway and into the parking lot of a shopping mall.

  ‘Stay here,’ he says, getting out of the car.

  ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll stay here,’ I said, glaring at him.

  A few minutes later he’s back. ‘Right, do you know Brackett Field Airport?’

  ‘Never heard of it. Why?’

  ‘That’s our exfil point.’

  ‘Our what?’

  ‘Exfiltrate. We’ll take a plane from there to a little airfield called Double Eagle, near Albuquerque, then a commercial flight to Baltimore, then on to Boston. Company is arranging to have passports and a credit card waiting for us in Double Eagle.’

  ‘Why can’t they deliver them to … where we heading? Brackett’s …’

  ‘Brackett Field. It takes time to organise, and the flight to Double Eagle will put distance between us and our last known location. It’ll buy us some time.’

  I marvel at the tricks of Mason’s trade, but the thought that these skills (that I don’t have) were necessary to stay alive brings on my nausea again. Without Mason, I’d never slip these assholes. I’d be dead many times over.

  ‘I’ll Google it,’ I say.

  ‘No, your phone can be traced. Someone in there will have heard of it.’ Mason points towards the mall.

  ‘Don’t bet on it.’

  He returns about ten minutes later, his face showing no signs of success or failure. ‘La Verne, apparently. We take the Interstate 10 and head east.’

  We reach Brackett’s (or whatever it’s called) in forty minutes. It’s a small airport to the east of the city, home to every rich guy’s personal plane by the look of it. The tarmac is almost entirely concealed by small jet planes and some not so small. It’s like Santa Monica marina, but for pilots. I’ve never been in one of these business jets. I imagine they’re like luxury RVs, full of leather sofas, a kitchen and a cabin with a cosy double bed. Too cosy for me and Mason to share. I look along the rows, wondering which I’d choose if I were rich. The more I stare, the bigger the plane gets in my mind. There’s one that looks like a seven thirty-seven, same kind of size at least, but that seems too big. At the other end of the scale is a pointy thing that looks more like a Corvette – a bit like a coupe: far too small inside for any serious luxury.

  ‘Wait here,’ says Mason.

  I’m getting used to this, so I nearly bark to show my obedience. He goes into a building that advertises itself as a flight school.

  It seems like an hour has passed and Mason’s still in there. I can’t help myself from checking the parking lot entrance, ready to run if anyone dressed in black comes in. Why always black? Is it meant to be scary? Shooting bullets into my bed is scary. At least I’ll see him com
ing.

  Mason finally comes out, chatting with a young guy carrying one of those flight cases. He holds a couple of headphones, their leads dangling beside his legs like the jellyfishes they dig out of Santa Monica marina. Mason also has a set of headphones.

  ‘Andi, this is Joris, he’s going to take us to Double Eagle.’

  Joris holds out his hand. He’s Mason’s height but half as wide, a smooth face with no trace of stubble. ‘Hi, pleased to meet you.’

  Definitely not American, but not English either. He hands me one of the headphones and then uses his hand to swipe away a lock of floppy, blond hair from his face.

  ‘You’re a pilot?’ I ask, barely – no, not at all – concealing my doubts. Joris looks like he might only have recently passed his driving test.

  ‘Yes, I’m training here.’

  I look at Mason, hoping he’s understood my silent question of ‘seriously, we’re getting in a plane with a trainee?’

  ‘But don’t worry,’ says Joris, ‘I have a pilot’s licence, I’m just finishing off a commercial licence here so I can work back home for an airline someday.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘Holland,’ he says, waving vaguely towards the mountain ridge as though Holland was on the other side. He motions us around the building to a parking area for light aircraft. ‘Here she is.’

  I stare at the tiny plane with its two propellers and freeze. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’

  ‘Queen of the skies,’ says Joris. ‘The Piper Seneca.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s the Queen of England, I’m not getting in that.’

  Mason laughs; I’m glad he’s having fun. ‘Come on, Andi, I’ve been in these things dozens of times, and Joris flies it every day.’

  ‘Is there a toilet on board?’

  It’s Joris’s turn to laugh. ‘No, but we do have … uh, facilities. However, you might want to go now before we get in.’

  I can imagine what these facilities might be: a plastic bottle, no doubt. ‘Thanks, give me a minute.’

  Inside the flying school there’s little activity. Some young guy is drawing lines on a map, while another sits with his feet outstretched on a coffee table, reading a book. The radio plays in the background, some idle chatter about celebrities, I suppose, then the jock plays a record. I see the toilet sign and head for the door. By the time I come out, the chatter’s back and something the DJ says catches my ear – the cocktail party effect. But it isn’t my name; it’s Frank Steiner’s.

  ‘Turn it up,’ I say to a woman behind the desk. Expecting that not to happen straightaway, I rush closer and strain to hear.

  So this guy Frank Steiner – you couldn’t make that one up – and a Harvard Professor called Kendrick claim they have an alien artefact that proves God doesn’t exist … I get the idea of a journalist getting wrapped up in a hoax, but the Harvard guy, he ought to know better.

  I rush from the room just as the woman gets round to turning up the volume. Those bastards are stealing my glory. That artefact is mine, that discovery is mine. And it isn’t alien! I can’t get to Boston soon enough.

  ‘Mason, Mason,’ I yell, running across the tarmac. ‘That bastard journalist has gone public. It was just on the radio, we’ve got to get to Boston now.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Right? What do you mean, right? They’ve gone public without speaking to me. That was—’

  ‘Andi, Andi.’ Mason grabs my arms. ‘We can’t go to Boston now.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? I want—’

  ‘Steiner and his friend will be dead before we land, and your artefact will be in the hands of the Vrazi sent to kill them. It’s over, Andi, you’re safe now.’

  Chapter 12

  Boston, MA

  Dr Kendrick has spent three hours squinting at the microscope’s screen, jotting down notes and wiping his hand across his mouth. The rasping from his whiskers is the only sound that competes with the hum from the machinery.

  Thirty years he’s spent in this institution, first as a student then as a postgraduate researcher, quickly earning the first class doctorate that eventually found him among Harvard’s teaching elite. But in that time he achieved nothing special; no startling discovery, no groundbreaking research, no prizes. It’s as though his career in science has amounted to nothing but the training of tomorrow’s scientists – the ones who would achieve all the things Kendrick hasn’t. But that’s why you got into teaching, he tells himself. That and the pretty students that occasionally came along. There were a few over the years, and they all earned good grades, but then they vanished into the world and Kendrick never heard from them again. Some day he might spot one on TV, or read about her in the New Scientist, presenting her findings on some genius piece of work. Actually, muses Kendrick, that would be as much his success as hers, only his name wouldn’t be on the paper. Perhaps she might mention him, an early influence. If she does, will she pause and think about their lovemaking?

  ‘Shit!’ Kendrick jumps up from the chair and looks around for Steiner. ‘Look at this.’

  Steiner dashes across, his journalistic instincts pricked like a dog’s ears. ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘A planetary system.’

  ‘OK.’ Steiner frowns at Kendrick, waiting for him to explain why that was exciting.

  ‘But it’s not ours.’

  ‘Ah, that’s … OK, how do you know?’ Steiner’s frown morphs into scepticism.

  ‘Christ, Frank, you’re a science correspondent. Look at the damned planets!’

  ‘Sure, let me get my bearings.’ Steiner spends a few moments studying the monitor. ‘Only three planets.’

  ‘There you go,’ says Kendrick. ‘What else? Look at those planets more closely.’

  ‘No moons?’

  ‘Right. There’s no Earth here.’

  ‘I guess it’s our future, then,’ suggests Steiner. ‘You know, at the end of the sun’s life.’

  Kendrick peers closer. ‘Yeah, I guess you could be right. Look at the size of the sun. It’s much bigger than it is right now.’

  ‘So these planets must be, what, Uranus and Neptune and … the other one?’

  ‘You mean Saturn? Hell, Frank, you’re meant to be a science correspondent.’

  ‘So you keep saying. No, not Saturn, look, no rings. Pluto, the planet that isn’t, or it is, depending on your view.’

  ‘If you’re right, it means we’ve been swallowed up already.’ Kendrick sits down.

  The end of life on Earth is understood and expected. The sun will swell into a red giant and swallow the Earth in about 7.5 billion years. Most scientists believe our yellow star will end its days as a black dwarf, inert and lifeless in a dead and depleted solar system. The outer planets will probably survive; the ice moons of Europa and Enceladus might even thaw and enjoy a few million years in the comparatively warm sunshine. Life might even flourish. Perhaps by then, if we’re still here, humans will have figured out how to move themselves to one of these ocean-filled moons.

  ‘I’d like a former colleague to take a look at this,’ says Kendrick. ‘An astrophysicist who was once one of my students before deciding biology was best left to the bedroom.’ Kendrick flashes a wry smile and pulls out his cell phone.

  Chapter 13

  Boston, MA

  Dr Alabama Fox pops her lipstick back in her purse and frowns at herself in the bathroom mirror. There’s a window into the parking lot, she tells her reflection. Perhaps she should scramble through it to avoid going back to the dreary man sitting at her table. She flicks a lock of hair away from her right eye and wonders if a lighter lipstick would contrast better with her deep red colour.

  What an ass. Her date hadn’t mentioned his strong religious convictions on his profile. If he had
she wouldn’t be here. Seriously, God made the universe and everything in it in six days? Did anyone actually believe that, for real? Surely even the Pope accepts that it took longer than that. Hell, in her experience, it would take more than six days for a man just to remember to change a light bulb, then another six days of constant nagging to get him to do it. Which means there’s another explanation: God is a woman.

  Alabama sniggers to herself and decides that ‘Plum Perfect’ by Maybelline was exactly the right colour for her lips and couldn’t care less what anyone thinks. Ha! When she gets back out there, she’ll tell the guy her theory about God being a woman; he’ll go apoplectic. At least the date will be over.

  As she re-enters the restaurant, St Peter’s there, sitting at the table staring straight at her, as though he’s done nothing in her absence but wait for her to reappear. He smiles gormlessly as Alabama sits down.

  ‘All refreshed and shipshape?’ he says, grinning like he was truly blessed by God.

  ‘What?’ Alabama spits the word out carelessly, like she really doesn’t give a shit how he takes it. But her date’s grin never falters.

  ‘Are you—’

  ‘I get it,’ she says, cutting him off. ‘I mean … never mind.’

  ‘So,’ he says, leaning on the table. ‘Where do you stand, or sit,’ – giggle – ‘on Adam and Eve?’

  ‘Look, Pete, you’re a really nice guy, but I think we’d just end up arguing all the time, and you would—’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he says. ‘But humour me. God is omnipotent, all-powerful—’

  ‘I know what it means,’ snaps Alabama.

  ‘Sure. So, he could have us believe what he wants us to believe. He could plant evidence of dinosaurs, or of early humans, to throw us off the scent.’