‘What have you found?’ Berk called from the tunnel.
‘What are you doing here?’ Nina demanded.
‘This is our property!’ said Elmas, affronted.
‘It’s a UFO,’ Eddie replied. ‘The place is full of dead space aliens! Wait, wait – one of ’em’s moving! There’s something coming out of its chest – no, no! Aaah! Eeaarghhhhh!’
Nina folded her arms impatiently as he flailed about, pretending to strangle himself. ‘Are you quite finished?’
‘Gaahhhh . . . yeah, I’m done.’ His grin widened as her eyes narrowed.
‘So it is UFO?’ Maximov asked uncertainly.
‘It’s not a frickin’ . . . Ugh, whatever.’ Nina shook her head. ‘We’ve found the vault, but its entrance might be booby-trapped. Nobody else come down here until I’m sure it’s safe, okay?’
She moved her light around the door’s edge. The narrow gap was a constant width, precisely crafted. The rest of the vault’s surface was smooth and unmarked except for the dust of ages.
‘All right,’ she said, regarding the handprint. ‘This is the only feature I can find. So either it’s a way to open it, or it’ll kill me.’ She looked more closely at the inset disc. A purple stone, thin veins of some dark metal running through it. Something else she had encountered before, and it had never led to anything good. ‘Great. I thought the whole earth energy crap was behind me, but apparently not . . .’
‘It’s earth energy?’ Eddie asked.
‘It’s the same stuff the Sky Stone was made of. And we know how well that went for the Atlanteans.’ The Sky Stone was a large meteorite, exact composition still unknown, that somehow channelled and focused the earth’s natural energy flows in a way that certain people could control. The rulers of Atlantis had sought to use it as a weapon – but the attempt went catastrophically wrong, bringing about the destruction of the Atlantean civilisation itself. ‘That might explain how they were able to transport something this big, though. Maybe they used the earth-energy effect to levitate it.’ She registered her husband’s disbelief. ‘Hey, come on. We both saw a chunk of rock the size of a house floating in mid-air! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
‘I’ve seen so much weird shit since I met you that I’ve lost track,’ he said. ‘But I’m not bothered right now about how they got this thing down here. I’m more worried about it blowing up any fucking second!’
Nina raised a hand to touch the vault’s curving flank beside the door. ‘Maybe if—’
She gasped in surprise, jerking back.
‘Jesus!’ said Eddie. ‘What’re you bloody doing? Don’t touch it, you might set it off!’
‘I didn’t touch the handprint,’ she said. ‘If anything’s going to happen, it’ll be when someone touches the stone.’
‘So what’s wrong?’
‘Feel for yourself.’
He put a dubious fingertip against the metal. ‘It’s buzzing!’
‘Here as well,’ she said, testing another spot. ‘The whole vault’s . . . humming. Earth energy, it has to be.’
Eddie backed away. ‘What, so the spearhead’s charging up and getting ready to explode?’
‘The earth energy might be keeping it from exploding.’ At his confused look, she elaborated: ‘The test the Atlanteans carried out, when they blew up an entire island – they said they kept the spearhead inside the vault until they were ready. Once they took it out, the last men who got away said it started to flash and shake, more and more violently. If the spearhead contains antimatter particles, then however they were trapped, it would need a lot of power to contain them without their coming into contact with normal matter and exploding. Earth energy might be that source of power. And the vault could be how they channel it.’
‘I thought you needed a person to channel it,’ said Eddie, dubious. ‘It’s how it worked before. Excalibur, that death-ray DARPA built from it, the Sky Stone – they all needed you touching ’em to work.’
‘Me, or anyone else descended from the right line of Atlanteans. Even back then, only a few people could focus the energy.’
‘I doubt there’s still anyone alive inside there to do that. They’d be bloody hungry after eleven thousand years.’
They both turned at a sound from the entrance. ‘Hey!’ Nina snapped, looking around the vault to find Lobato staring at it in wonderment. ‘I told you not to come down here.’
‘We cannot waste time, Dr Wilde,’ he reminded her. ‘We must secure the spearhead.’ He tried to peer past her. ‘Have you opened it?’
‘No, not yet, because I don’t want to blow everyone for ten miles to atoms!’
‘Is the bomb really that big?’ asked Berk from behind him.
Nina huffed in exasperation. ‘Oh, sure, why doesn’t everyone come in? Jesus! I’m remembering why I retired – so I didn’t have to babysit any boat-footed gawkers!’
Eddie laughed. ‘There’s the woman I married.’
‘This was here all the time?’ asked Elmas. ‘Is it made of gold?’ She sounded thrilled at the prospect.
‘It’s a gold alloy called orichalcum, and yes, it’s been here for thousands of years. Now if everyone would let me work . . .’ But when the new arrivals showed no sign of taking the hint, she reluctantly accepted she was stuck with an audience. ‘All right, just stay back, and don’t touch anything.’
Lobato nevertheless advanced until Nina’s annoyed glare reached an intensity even he could not fail to interpret. Berk and Elmas went the other way to watch from behind Eddie. ‘What have you found?’ asked Ana from the tunnel entrance. ‘Can we see?’
‘Sure, why not?’ was Nina’s sarcastic reply.
Eddie’s was more measured. ‘Someone needs to stay on guard, in case we get visitors.’
‘I stay outside,’ Maximov replied. ‘Roof is too low for me anyway!’
The Brazilian made her way into the chamber, standing beside Lobato. ‘Everyone got a good view?’ said Nina, before focusing. ‘Right,’ she said, staring intently at the handprint. ‘This is either a lock or a trap. Which is more likely?’
‘I would say the probability—’ Lobato began.
She cut him off. ‘Shush! Rhetorical question. It’s more likely to be . . . a lock.’
The billionaire was irked at being silenced. ‘I hope your reasoning is based on experience rather than intuition.’
‘The vault was well hidden,’ she explained, ‘and it can only be opened by someone of the right Atlantean bloodline. Only about one per cent of people today are of Atlantean descent, and even in Atlantis itself, very few could focus earth energy. So the number of people who could have opened the vault would be very small. Anyone else would have to force the door open. That’s where the trap is.’
‘Try to break it open, and boom?’ Eddie suggested.
‘Exactly. The only people who would try to force their way in would be its targets. That would make them a danger to Atlantis – they couldn’t be allowed to gain control of a spearhead. So breaking open the vault would get them blown up as surely as if the Atlanteans had set it off themselves.’
‘You are sure about that?’ Ana asked.
‘As sure as I can be. But there’s only one way to know for certain, and that’s to open it.’ She sensed distinct uncertainty from her audience.
‘Anyone who isn’t convinced had better get out of the blast radius,’ said Eddie, pointing down the tunnel. ‘About thirty miles that way.’
The Onans looked to be considering it, but Lobato was more confident. ‘You are sure you are correct, Dr Wilde?’
‘I am,’ she replied.
‘Then I will trust your judgement.’
Nina gave him a nod of thanks. ‘Okay. Let’s do this.’ She cautiously raised her hand towards the indentation and pressed her palm against the stone disc.
A moment passed . . . then relieved exhalations came from around the chamber as everyone’s atoms remained intact.
Nina’s response was different. The moment
she touched the lock, she felt a bizarre sensation, as if some tremendous power was flowing through her. With it came almost an image in her mind, a flash of knowledge: that she had indeed found the object for which she had been searching. ‘It’s here!’ she gasped, stepping back. ‘The spearhead – it’s here!’
‘You okay?’ Eddie asked, concerned. ‘You looked like you just got zapped! Is it electrified?’
‘No, it’s . . . it’s hard to describe,’ she told him, recovering. ‘But I know the spearhead is inside – it’s almost as if I saw it. I’ve felt something like it before, with the three statues that led to the Sky Stone. I was . . . connected to it.’
‘In what way?’ asked Lobato.
‘I . . . I don’t know. Like I said, it’s hard to describe. As if I had an extra sense, but only for a split second.’
‘But nothing happened,’ Ana pointed out. ‘The door is still closed.’
‘Something did happen,’ Nina insisted. ‘In the vault, at least. Maybe I need to—’
Before she could finish, a flat metallic thump caught everyone’s attention. ‘What was that?’ said Berk, alarmed.
‘It came from inside,’ said Eddie. ‘Maybe we should get out—’
‘No, no!’ Nina insisted. ‘It’s opening!’
As she spoke, another sound came from the metal sphere: a low creaking noise, as if a giant spring were being released from centuries of compression. The thin line marking the door’s edge gradually widened, the barrier reluctantly moving outwards before starting to hinge open. Eddie sidestepped to stay with Nina as it swung out into the chamber. The vault was thick, more than a foot of metal emerging before the first glimpse of the interior was revealed.
To everyone’s shock, it was not dark. A strange shimmering light came from within. ‘What is that?’ asked Lobato.
‘What we came to find,’ said Nina, waiting for the door to open wider before leaning through.
What she found was remarkable even by the standards of Atlantis. Inside was a circular space, the metal walls inset with columns of some kind of crystal. The spaces between them were scribed with Atlantean text. But translating it was far from her first thought, her attention instantly dominated by what sat at the room’s centre. A pillar of dark stone rose from the floor, its top cupped to hold the object the vault had been built to contain.
To hold it. But not touch it.
She knew she was looking at the spearhead, the image that had flashed into her mind returning like a lost memory. It was an elongated and slightly flattened diamond shape, just under a foot in length, formed from translucent crystal. The light came from within it, blue-white motes sparkling and flickering as they lazily swirled like a miniature galaxy.
But that was not the most astonishing thing about it.
The spearhead was levitating, suspended a few inches above the pillar’s top. ‘Look at that,’ she whispered. ‘It’s incredible!’
Lobato’s view was obstructed by Eddie. ‘What is it?’ the billionaire asked impatiently.
‘Just your everyday glowing diamond the size of a rugby ball floating in mid-air,’ the Yorkshireman replied. ‘No big deal.’
‘A diamond?’ exclaimed Elmas, all worry in her voice instantly evaporating.
‘This isn’t a damn Tiffany’s,’ said Nina. ‘Everyone get back. I need to read this text.’
With Eddie acting as bouncer, she warily stepped into the vault. The door opened fully, stopping with a thud that made the golden sphere shudder. She flinched, but the spearhead, silently hovering above the purple stone altar, was unaffected.
A moment of wonder as she peered into the crystal’s shimmering depths, then she forced her attention to the Atlantean inscriptions, starting with the most prominent. ‘Okay,’ she said after reading the first blocks of text, ‘this confirms what I thought about the spearhead’s purpose. It’s definitely a weapon – a doomsday device that Atlantis could use to blackmail or destroy the civilisation that existed here.’ She cocked her head as she continued her translation. ‘The Atlanteans obviously thought they were a major threat, but they also didn’t have a very high opinion of them. They’re referred to as “barbarians” and . . . “the skull desecrators”. Actually, that would tie in with some of the archaeological findings from Gobekli Tepe—’
‘Nina,’ Eddie cut in. ‘Glowy bomb thing. Top priority.’
‘Ugh, okay.’ She looked back at the ancient writing. ‘More about their enemies, which is fascinating but I’ll skip it for now . . . Ah! These,’ she indicated a new section, ‘are instructions for the “Emissary of Perses”.’
‘Perses?’ said Berk. ‘He was a Greek god.’
‘One of the Titans rather than an Olympian deity, actually, but yes.’
‘But this is from Atlantis, not Greece.’
‘The Atlanteans and Greeks shared a pantheon,’ she explained. ‘The roots of ancient Greek mythology date back much further than was once thought, but it wasn’t until Atlantis was discovered that—’
‘Bomb thing,’ Eddie said impatiently.
‘Argh! Okay, okay. Perses was essentially the god of destruction – whenever he got personally involved in a conflict, there wouldn’t be much left standing. If the spearhead really is an antimatter bomb, that fits. So after the emissary opens the vault, she – interesting, it specifies the emissary will be a woman – she then confronts the leaders of Gobekli Tepe, and issues an ultimatum . . .’ She frowned, falling silent as she read on. ‘Oh, crap.’
Eddie stiffened. ‘Yep, when I’m standing ten feet from a bomb, that’s what I want to hear.’
‘What does it say?’ asked Lobato.
Nina hurriedly reread the inscriptions, hoping she had translated wrongly. But if anything, her second attempt only made the words more chillingly clear. ‘It says . . . when the emissary opens the vault, the spearhead is . . . “freed” is the word they use, but it can also be translated as “unleashed”. Once that happens, their enemies have less than a day to surrender – or be destroyed.’ She looked at the others in appalled fear. ‘I’ve just started the countdown on the world’s biggest bomb!’
32
Eddie stared at his wife. ‘You’ve done what?’
‘It’s a kind of fail-safe – well, a fail-deadly!’ Nina frantically scanned the rest of the inscriptions. ‘The vault didn’t need any deathtraps, because it is the deathtrap. The emissary opens it, activating the spearhead, and then goes to the target’s rulers with the ultimatum from Atlantis. That way, if they imprison or kill the emissary, the bomb goes off. The only way to stop it from exploding is . . .’
‘I hope there is a description of the procedure,’ said Lobato drily.
‘Yeah, me too! Okay, something about . . . the emissary asks for . . . nope, useless. Ah . . . this might be it! The spearhead goes through three phases . . .’ She read the ancient words as rapidly as she could. ‘All right. In the first phase, which is what it’s in now, the flashes inside it get brighter over time – although apparently there’s a very bright flash a few minutes after it’s taken off the altar. Which, incidentally, is something else that starts the countdown.’
‘So we don’t move it,’ suggested Ana.
‘Wasn’t planning to anyway,’ Nina assured her. ‘This phase lasts . . . half a day. Then in the second phase the flashes get brighter and more . . . violent, I think that means, and the light changes colour. Once it gets into the third stage, it starts to shake from inside. That’s the point of no return.’
‘I believe I know what it is describing,’ said Lobato. ‘The spearhead must indeed contain particles of antimatter, which are contained by some sort of magnetic field, preventing them from coming into contact with normal matter. Once this field starts to weaken, the antiparticles begin to escape, whereupon they collide with matter and explode. At a certain point, the spearhead is so damaged it can no longer contain the remaining antiparticles. The field collapses, they are all released at once – and the result is an antimatter detonation o
f enormous force.’
‘So how do we stop it?’ demanded Eddie.
‘I’m workin’ on it!’ Nina replied. ‘There must be a way, otherwise why have the ultimatum?’ Her gaze flicked over various sections of the Atlantean text in the hope of picking out some key word that could help her, and to her relief, eventually she found one. ‘Ah! Here – I hope.’
‘Don’t suppose there’s an abort button, is there?’ said Eddie.
‘Not exactly, but there is a way to bring the spearhead back to normal, if you do it in time. Let’s see . . .’ She crouched to read the inscription. ‘Great, now I find a bunch of words I don’t recognise. Okay, context, context . . .’
Maximov’s voice echoed down the tunnel. ‘Eddie!’
‘Hold on, Max!’ the Yorkshireman shouted back. ‘Got a situation here!’
‘What kind of situation?’
‘The “we’re gonna get blown up” kind! Give us a minute.’ He turned back to Nina. ‘If we have a minute . . .’
‘I think I’ve figured it out,’ she replied, though she was far from confident. ‘This text describes some kind of ritual, so a lot of the words are specific to it – they’re probably religious terms. But it’s all to do with this altar.’ She indicated the stone column. ‘Opening the door – correctly, rather than forcing it open – somehow affects the flow of earth energy into the spearhead, and causes whatever field contains the antimatter to gradually decay. I’m guessing that if the door is forced open, the field collapses immediately and everything explodes. But as long as the spearhead hasn’t entered the final stage, putting it on the altar and performing the ritual stabilises it.’
‘Ritual?’ said Lobato dubiously. ‘You are not suggesting the Atlanteans used magic, surely?’
‘Not in the Harry Potter sense, no. But there’s some hands-on physical process involved, the emissary touching the altar to affect the flow of earth energy. Ancient cultures almost always attach ceremony to certain acts over time – you see it in healing rituals throughout the world – and eventually the mumbo-jumbo comes to be seen as the driving force of whatever’s being done, rather than just baggage attached by the gatekeepers. But enough anthropology, more archaeology, huh?’ She read on.
The Spear of Atlantis (Wilde/Chase 14) Page 32
