Children of the Sky (The Talari Subversion Book 1)

by Houston V. Grant

  They all agreed.

  Turning back to Chaudry, the leader spoke in Urdu again. “You weren’t able to capture the thieves, but it would have been almost impossible for you. Under the circumstances, you did well. We’ll send further instructions when necessary.”

  And then they were gone.

  12

  Tati and I arrived in St. Louis and immediately drove out to Cahokia and went through the portal. Word of our arrival was sent ahead of us, and Tashmit met us when we arrived at the complex. The more I thought about everything that had happened, the more annoyed I became, but I held my tongue long enough to give her the quick rundown of the mission: bottom line, we didn’t find a portal.

  We told her about our investigation of the ruins at Mohenjo-daro and the weird portal signal.

  “I’m still not sure if there was really a portal there or not, but there was some kind of warning alarm,” I said. “It tagged us somehow. Drained our batteries.”

  “Did you feel the same signal that you felt at Cahokia?” she asked.

  “No,” I admitted. “But it’s not like I’ve got a master’s degree on discerning the signal distinctions between ancient alien devices. I felt a pulsing, like you said. If there are traps that mimic the signals from portals you should have told me. I could’ve gotten killed.”

  “It would’ve been nice to know ahead of time that the Enki have Agents too,” Tati said.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it,” Tashmit said. “I assumed it was understood. Why do you think we needed all the secrecy?”

  I opened my mouth to retort, but what she said made sense.

  “Would it have changed anything about how you carried out the mission? I’m sorry you had a difficult experience, but you made it out, and now you’re stronger.”

  Tashmit didn’t seem sufficiently contrite for my taste. “This isn’t sustainable,” I said. “Flying to random places where aliens were once involved, hoping to find a needle in a haystack is not a plan for success.”

  “And doing all that without getting killed,” Tati added. “And if all that goes right, we get to go through the portal to face who-knows-what on the other side.”

  “You knew there were risks,” Tashmit said. “We’ve equipped you to handle them, but sometimes the unexpected will occur. I don’t mean to sound cold, but I believe you two have everything you need to succeed in this.”

  “They hit us with some device that drained our batteries and almost took us out,” Tati said.

  Tashmit looked thoughtful, though she was trying to project stoicism.

  “Do you know how people catch electric eels on Earth?” I asked. “They corner them in a drying up pool, then prod them with sticks to make them fight until they run out of juice. Then they scoop them up.”

  Tashmit got my point, but I expanded just to be certain. “This here isn’t a plan,” I said. “It’s just a way to get me killed. And unless we come up with something better, I’m done. I’m not trying to go out like a tired old eel.”

  Kelel had joined us during my rant. “Your point is well taken, Nathan, and you’re absolutely right.” His voice sounded more grave than usual. “Fortunately, there’ve been some developments that should give us a much better plan of attack. Beldran has made some rather significant discoveries and he’s on his way here now to discuss them.

  “But before he gets here,” he continued, “I can tell you that that site—Mohenjo-daro—was the location of one of the earliest battles in the final war. The first one where atmospheric weapons were deployed. It was an Enlil-influenced city—orderly and peaceable—a center of learning for the region. It was one of the first cities where we were able to establish academies for humans and build a body of scholars who understood that we were not divine beings, just visitors with more advanced technology. There were no temples or priests devoting their lives to nebulous and ridiculous rules and demands that we supposedly required.

  “The Enki coveted the location—the area is full of valuable natural resources. Our ancestors tried to negotiate a deal to share influence over the region, and several times it seemed that they’d broken the impasse. But each time, the Enki came back with new, more onerous demands, until we finally said no.

  “Communications broke off and hostilities began. At first, it was limited. But then we learned of the Enki plan to take the city by force. We confronted the Enki fleet in Earth’s orbit, but the Enlil commander was loathe to engage unless the Enki fired first. He hoped that a show of force would end the matter, but the Enki pressed on.

  “We’d developed an experimental energy dome to protect the city and activated it before the battle. Our fleet collided with the Enki in the skies above the city. After they lost several capital ships, the Enki deployed the first atmospheric weapon of the war. It was a small one, but it lit up the sky for miles around and destroyed almost a third of the Enlil fleet, and a quarter of the Enki’s own. But under its dome, the city remained untouched.

  “The weapon had so much energy that the desert sand was turned to glass, and it changed the course of the river that flowed west of the city. I believe this still puzzles your archaeologists to this day,” he said. “The stories say that enough ash collected on the dome to blot out the sun. Even with the dome, the shockwaves alone collapsed buildings. And of course everyone who wasn’t under the dome was instantly vaporized.

  “The surrounding lands were rendered unusable—nothing would grow and the animals that had once lived there disappeared. Humans abandoned the city—even those who wanted to stay were forced to leave. The site has remained uninhabited ever since.

  “Neither side returned to salvage anything for nearly 2,000 Earth years. Of course, this happened almost 7,000 Earth years ago, so by the time the first scavengers arrived, much had simply been lost to time. Over the years, thieves have gone to that site and many others looking for loot. My suspicion is that some scavenger—maybe Enki, maybe not—has been poking around there and set up a trap.

  “The point of that little history lesson is to inspire you to push forward with caution, but not fear. I don’t think our mission is compromised. But we must remain aware that there are other people out there who are interested in the same things we are, and not necessarily for the same reasons.”

  “Do you think that the Enki resistance had anything to do with this?” Tashmit asked.

  “That’s impossible to say, but my instinct would be to say no.”

  Kelel continued his lecture while Tati and I peppered him with questions. The history humans shared with the Tkosi was as complex as it was epic. I was riveted.

  Kelel had just begun explaining the reason the number twelve appeared so frequently throughout human lore when the wall opened and two more Enlil came in.

  “Nathan!” Beldran said with surprise as he joined us in the room with a subordinate in tow. He quickly touched thumb and forefinger to head and chest. “I hadn’t heard that you were back yet. You have the most impeccable timing. You always show up just in time for momentous news.”

  “I like momentous news,” I said. “What’ve you got?”

  “Well,” he hemmed, “there’s good news and not so good news. But the good news is really good.”

  “I’m feeling optimistic,” I said. “Good news first.”

  Beldran clapped his hands together. “I like the way you think. You’re going to like this. We’ve been studying the items you brought when you first came through the portal, and we’ve learned a lot. We think we know how the portals worked now. And we can help find what you’re looking for.”

  “Ok,” I said. “This is good news. I’m listening.”

  “Up to now we’ve been speculating on how many portals there were and where they were located. I think we know that now.”

  He moved to the console and motioned. The three-dimensional image of Earth projected outward. “At one point, there were thirty-nine portals on Earth, and they were all connected. You could travel directly from any one of them to any
other.”

  “Okay. How many are left now?”

  Beldran already knew that was the next question. “We don’t know that yet,” he said, shaking his head. “But we may know something more useful.”

  I gestured for him to continue.

  “Of the thirty-nine portals, twelve were trans-dimensional gates that also allowed travel between Earth and Tkosi.”

  “Like the ones in Cahokia and in the jungle that I came through,” I said.

  “Right. Those are two of the twelve dimensional gates.”

  “So why can’t we use those same dimensional gates to travel to Enki land?”

  “We can!” he said. “I think. But you have to activate them first.”

  I was confused. “What do you mean activate? Aren’t they already active? We’ve already used both of them to go between Earth and Tkosi.”

  “That’s right. So this is the part that needs explanation. You said there were two stela in each of the portals you’ve already used, right? One with the glowing devices and one without?”

  He was talking really fast, which meant he was super excited about this. And he was right about the stela. Both portals had one stela with glowing mushroom devices and another with empty spaces for mushrooms to fit. His excitement was starting to rub off on me. I nodded.

  Beldran was grinning now. “I think that in both of those dimensional gates the active stela—the one with the glowing devices—is anchored to Enlil, and the inactive one is anchored to Enki. That’s how the dimensional gates worked—each one had two stela anchored to Tkosi. One stela anchored to a place in Enlil—”

  “—and one anchored to a place in Enki.”

  “That’s right. We just need to activate the inactive ones. That’s how we get to Enki.”

  “This is fantastic news,” Kelel said. “Well done, Beldran.”

  It was a positive development, but I wasn’t sold yet.

  “You still haven’t said how to activate them,” Tati said.

  Beldran’s grin got even wider, if that was possible. “The mushroom things Nate found are what activate the stela in the dimensional gates. The ancestors called them shims—‘key’ seems to be the closest translation. Each one of them represents another dimensional gate. And a stela—both the one for Enlil and the one for Enki—needs all twelve of its shims in order to work. If a stela is missing any shims, it won’t activate. It’s sort of like an electrical circuit.”

  “Are these shims interchangeable?” Tati asked. “The stela anchored to Enlil has all twelve of its shims, can’t we just plug those on the other side into the Enki stela?”

  “Unfortunately not. Each shim represents a specific portal on Earth—one of the twelve trans-dimensional ones. Shims 1-12 only work with the Enlil stela and shims 13-24 only with the Enki stela. So we have to find the set of 13-24 shims that fit the Enki stela.”

  “And even though we think at least some of the trans-dimensional gates have been destroyed, we still need to stick in all twelve shims? We can’t skip the shims for the gates that have been destroyed?”

  “That’s correct. You need all twelve.”

  “Ok, so that’s your good news,” I said. “I presume the bad news is that you have no idea how to find these shims.”

  He chuckled. “You are a wise human. We have some idea, but you’re right, we don’t know exactly where they are. But there’s good news here too.”

  Beldran continued. “When you first came to us, we catalogued and inventoried everything you brought with you. Just a couple of days ago, I got around to doing what I should have done first: sequencing the DNA of the biosim blood on your clothes.

  “So I ran the DNA from the biosim and on chromosome 23 I found something that I’ve never seen before. There was a written message encoded in the DNA describing a plan to sabotage the dimensional portals. I’d read that we used to encode messages in biosim DNA, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve probably sequenced close to two-hundred biosims and I’ve never found anything to support that belief. But I have now. It took up so little space that I almost missed it. But I didn’t.”

  “Wait, slow down,” I said. How do you write a message in DNA?”

  “DNA is just another medium for storing data. The best, actually. Its storage capacity far surpasses anything else. Obviously, it’s used to encode the instructions to create a living thing, but those instructions are just a form of data. You can use it for any kind of data. And they did.

  “According to the message, towards the end of the wars a group of Talari operatives were tasked with destroying the dimensional gates to prevent the Enki from moving troops through them.”

  “Talari? As in, what I am?”

  “Yes. But the Talari didn’t carry out their orders. They knew that destroying them would’ve made all the other portals inoperable too, and would have severely limited humans’ ability to interact with each other on Earth and wiped out thousands of years of progress. So rather than destroy all twelve dimensional gates, the Talari decided to destroy eight of them and just deactivate the other four. That way the portals could be used again when the wars were over. Apparently as long as four gates were active, the other portals would work.”

  He handed me a small device. “I’ve downloaded and translated the message. This is it exactly as it was rendered. No edits.”

  I opened the screen and read:

  We are Talari, Keepers of the sacred pathways:

  Nephiste, The Winged of the First Temple

  Artia, Shining Foot of Bekaa

  N’damshi of the Path

  Papshukal the First

  Ninshibura, Bow of Heaven’s Light

  The Nations of Children of the Sky have ordered the destruction of the twelve sacred pathways to the heavens to prevent the movement of Enki forces. We, the Chief Talari of the nations, have gathered to disobey this order. Destruction of the sacred pathways will end man’s ability to travel amongst ourselves and will only hasten our destruction. Rather than destroy all twelve sacred pathways, we shall leave four alive, to be sealed and deactivated until such time as they may safely be reanimated.

  We have divided amongst ourselves the four portals which shall remain. Each of us shall lead our team of Talari to deactivate the Enki stela and hide their shims throughout the world. No one Talaris among us shall know where all are hidden.

  Directive

  ◦ A team shall consist of a circle of Talari.

  ◦ We shall form four teams.

  ◦ Each Talaris shall hide the shims entrusted to him and record their exact location within the essence of a Patron.

  ◦ Each Talaris shall advise the Talaris directly before him in the circle where one must go to find that Patron. The circle shall proceed thus.

  ◦ The next in the circle shall encode his chosen Patron with the exact location of his own entrusted shims.

  Attend Here

  The shims hidden in this area will be found _______.

  To complete the circle, travel next to the lands east of the battered mountains of the moon and find the grounded Patron therein.

  I read it twice.

  “This was encoded in the jaguar biosim’s DNA?” I asked.

  “Yes. Pretty cool isn’t it?”

  “This is amazing,” I answered honestly. “What are these Patrons they’re referring to? And what’s their essence.”

  “Patron is what they called the biosims. They saw them as patron deities created to protect areas, temples, portals, etc. Yet they also knew how to encode messages in their DNA, which is what they’re referring to when they say ‘essence.’ It’s interesting to see what understanding they had of the technology they were using versus the times when they thought of it as something supernatural.”

  “Wait, so let’s clarify what all of this means,” Tati said. “These Talari were supposed to destroy all 12 of the dimensional bridges, but rather than destroy all of them, they left four of them intact?”

  Beldran nodded. “Yes. And in each of the four the
y left intact, they removed and hid the shims powering the stela that connects to Enki land.”

  “And there were twelve shims per stela, right?”

  “Yes. They split up into four teams to hide the shims. Each team was responsible for the Enki-anchored stela. We only need to get one portal operational to get to Enki, so we only need to find the shims hidden by one team. Twelve shims. If we just follow the messages that this one team encoded into the biosims, we should be able to get what we need.”

  “So we find the shims and then what?” I asked.

  “Then we go through.”

  Beldran cleared his throat. “You’ll also notice, at the end, the message is blank where there is supposed to be information on where to find three shims. We think this was a form message that was included in each of the biosims that the teams were manipulating, and the Talari were supposed to fill in the location information. Apparently, this Talaris didn’t complete the task. We suspect something befell him before he had a chance, but fortunately, you found the shims that we presume he was supposed to hide. The biosim you encountered is missing information on the specific hiding location of the three shims this Talaris would have hidden, but it has information on where to find the next biosim in the circle, and that’s more than we’ve ever had.”

  “What’s up with the flowery language?” Tati asked.

  “They were still a superstitious, supernatural people,” Kelel said. “Some of it is borne of that. And besides that, they just kind of talked that way.”

  “Also, they probably wanted to give an added layer of secrecy in case anyone else was able to read the message,” I said. “And with forming a circle they compartmentalized the mission. They set this up so no one person could give the whole thing up. Clever.”