“See anything?” Robinson asked, trying to keep his mind off the carnage.
Friday coughed as she shook her head. Neither of them had expected the airport to be so big. And, of course, neither knew exactly what they were supposed to be looking for.
A single tower loomed over the airport. Robinson thought it might give them the best vantage of the area, so they climbed to the top. Most of the windows had been broken and the weather had rotted half the floors away. The view was pretty, but it didn’t reveal anything outside of several fields of what looked to Robinson like old solar panels.
“Nothing,” Robinson said. “There’s nothing here.”
Friday heard the frustration in his voice. To that point, she’d tried to hold her excitement in check, but something about the way they’d been led to this place felt like fate. First the artifacts from Troyus. And then the way the old woman had tied the symbol and DIA together.
What was the Goddess trying to tell them?
Friday fought back the urge to itch the lesion on her arm, knowing it would only agitate Crusoe more.
“We can return to the city,” Friday said. “Scout the library as you said. The answers are here. I feel it.”
When Crusoe looked at her, she could see how much her words strengthened him.
“Let’s look around a little longer,” he replied. “Maybe we missed something.”
They walked the airport and perimeter again, coming across statues of pilots, astronauts, an Egyptian Anubis, and even a towering blue horse with red eyes that prompted Friday to make a warding gesture every time she saw it. There were strange murals, mosaics, and phrases in languages they did not understand.
As they were about to leave, Robinson saw a lightly frosted stone monument by the front entrance. On instinct, he wiped it clean and his breath caught. It looked like a gravestone, but the square and compass symbol was clear underneath the words, New World Airport Commission.
“Look,” Robinson said. “It’s the symbol.”
“What do the words read?”
“It says, ‘A time capsule beneath this stone contains messages and memorabilia for the people of Colorado, 2094.’”
“Time capsule?”
“It’s kind of treasure box. People leave the valuables of their day for the generations after them. I read about them once.”
“What purpose does this serve?”
“Maybe so their children’s children would understand them? I don’t know. It seems silly now, but 2094 was fifty plus years after the Great Rendering, which means it was never opened.”
“Could there be a message inside?”
“Let’s find it.”
Robinson looked around for something to open the tomb with, but there was nothing nearby. He crossed the street and toppled a pole with a meter. He used it to crack open the stone tablet and push it aside.
Inside was a metallic structure, heavily rusted but intact. It too had the square and compass symbol stenciled on it. Friday helped him pull it out and open it.
Inside were a variety of objects. A portrait of a sports team. A smaller brass statue of the blue horse outside. Pictures. Books. Shiny discs. Beneath them all was a purple felt sack tied with a golden string. Inside was a small marble tablet with writing on it.
From the thirty-two-count reverse of time,
until the one of five you will find.
Lead the symbol by the hand,
and eye the key to Neverland.
The New World waits with ordered fate,
if you make it past the gate.
Beware the stone shepherd sitting in thrall.
He holds and keeps the master’s walls.
“Do you understand this?” Friday asked.
Robinson shook his head. “No, but it doesn’t appear to fit in with the other objects. Someone slipped this in here for a reason.”
“What reason?”
“I’m not sure. Riddles were mostly used as a kind of entertainment for children, but this is more of a puzzle.”
“A puzzle for who? Us?”
“I doubt it,” Robinson chuckled. Then he thought about it. “Well, maybe. See, a puzzle like this—if it really is a puzzle—would’ve only been devised for two purposes. One, to ensure that only a specific group of people would solve it.”
“And number two?”
“In hopes someone worthy would solve it.”
“Can you solve it?”
Robinson shrugged. “I can try. Let’s break it down one verse at a time. First stanza. From the thirty-two-count reverse of time. What correlates with the number thirty-two? There’s thirty-two teeth in the human mouth. Present company excluded, of course.”
Friday slugged him hard on the arm.
“Hey,” he protested, “I’m missing a couple too.” He continued. “Thirty-two is also the atomic number for germanium, which is a semiconductor. I’m drawing a blank for anything else.”
“Keep going,” Friday said.
“From the thirty-two-count reverse of time, until the one of five you will find. ‘Reverse of time’ could mean backward. Count backward from thirty-two. Maybe steps? From here?” He looked around. “But what is the ‘one of five’ we will find? Do you see the number five anywhere? Or maybe a roman numeral? Something in the shape of a V?”
Friday shrugged but said nothing. She knew when Robinson got to thinking, it was best to leave him alone and let him work things out on his own.
Robinson went back to the slate and read it again. “New World Airport Commission. Why the second name? One airport, two names. That makes no sense. Unless….”
He crossed the street again. This time, Friday followed him as he traversed the grounds, mumbling numbers to himself. Eventually, he ended up outside the northwestern part of the central terminal looking south. He turned, and Friday saw him smile.
“I got it.”
“You do?” Friday asked. “What do you have?”
Robinson ran off, and Friday rushed to keep pace. They ended up back at the concourse between the main terminal and terminal A.
“Tell me what you see,” Robinson said.
“White peaks.”
“How many?”
Friday counted them. “Thirty-two.”
“The riddle said count reverse of time, but what’s the starting number?”
“Thirty-two?” Friday ventured.
Robinson shook his head. “That would just take us back to whatever canopy we started. Now, on the slab there are two dates—the only use of specific time. One was the date the time capsule was supposed to be opened.”
“2094,” Friday recalled.
“And the date the capsule was interred. March 19, 1994. The nineteen in that date is right beneath the arrow of the square and compass symbol. So, if we count nineteen counter-clockwise from the number one canopy, it’ll take us there.”
He pointed to one of the tallest canopies with a window at the top.
They reentered the terminal and jogged to the beam beneath the canopy in question. They scaled an iron ladder to the top. There, Friday spotted the small, golden symbol of the square and compass on the western side of the canopy mooring.
“Look in that direction and tell me what you see.”
“Five buildings. The symbol is pointing to the second.”
“Then that’s our destination.”
They descend the beam and exited the terminal, crossing the broken tarmac until they reached the building in question. Robinson noticed it was the only one of the five buildings with security cameras. He remembered similar ones at the White House and how the blinking red light led him to his mother.
It only had a single door. It looked like someone had forced it open long ago. They entered.
The interior of the hangar boasted four small planes, all with their cabins and cargoes open. It appeared they had been hastily landed and unloaded. Inside was the pinnacle of luxury from its white leather couches to its gold-fringed bed. The shelves were neatly alig
ned with liquor bottles and crystal glasses engraved with a familiar sign.
“Lead the symbol by the hand and eye the key to Neverland. The New World waits with ordered fate if you make it past the gate. We’re looking for a gate.”
The hangar had four rooms, including two with mechanical equipment and two offices. None of them had anything resembling a gate. Friday found a small, metal staircase that descended below the hangar.
They entered the basement cautiously. With no windows or lights, Friday was forced to light a torch, revealing a room full of cold boxes and containers that appeared to have been easily emptied.
As they maneuvered through the room, Robinson noticed more black camera domes perched above, but unlike the White House, there were no red lights to declare their status.
When they’d circled through the basement twice, Friday threw up her hands. “I see no gate, no doors. It is a room for … how do you say … provisions?”
“Storage,” Robinson said. “Maybe. But that doesn’t jive with these giant boxes. Why bring them down here to empty them if you’re only going to carry what’s inside back upstairs?”
He continued scanning the room, looking over the walls, the ceiling, anything that might provide a clue. As they kicked up dust, Friday’s cough got worse.
“Lead the symbol by the hand and eye the key to Neverland,” he recited again. “But I don’t see the symbol or an eye or a keyhole. The only odd thing in here is that golden mirror over there.”
Friday stepped closer to peruse the reflective plate and pulled back in surprised when she touched it.
“It is warm,” she said.
Robinson walked over, and he too felt a slight heat. He scanned the edges, but it was secured firmly to the wall. That’s when he noticed a small hole in the center of the plate. He waved his hand over it and felt a shift in current, as if someone had exhaled.
“Do you feel that?” Robinson asked.
Friday held up her hand and nodded.
“Lead the symbol by the hand,” Robinson repeated. “Lead is a verb. We shouldn’t be looking for the symbol. We should be bringing it. Friday, do you remember how the original orphans first saw this symbol?”
“A stranger bore the mark on his hand,” she said, excitement bleeding into her voice.
Robinson asked for the torch and flicked an ember to the floor. Once it was cool, he used it to draw the square and compass on his hand. Then held it in front of the golden plate, backing up until a blue-hued light suddenly appeared and scanned the symbol from top to bottom. The light disappeared.
“What happened?” Friday asked.
“I don’t know. The symbol should key the gate, but I don’t see any door.”
“Crusoe,” Friday said, “the book said the mark was burned onto the man’s hand, did it not? Maybe ash is not enough. We have a similar mark, do we not?”
She was right. “Try it,” he said.
Friday stepped up to the golden plate and turned to her side. Then she lifted the cloth covering the peaked mark of the Aserra brand on her upper arm. The blue light flashed again, scanning the brand from top to bottom. Like before, it blinked out. But this time it was followed by a series of heavy gears rumbling below.
Suddenly, the ground jolted, and the cement platform the pair was standing on began to descend.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sweethome
The platform sank into a concrete shaft, passing dim, flickering lights. The concrete was cracked in places but appeared secure enough. Rather than cables, the platform ran on risers imbedded in the shaft’s tracks. The rusted wheels screeched as they descended.
At intervals of ten or fifteen feet, the platform passed through sectional joists, activating steel doors that locked with a mechanical hiss as they passed. The doors were marked but too dark to read.
Robinson knew Friday had a problem with closed spaces since being a prisoner on Arga’Zul’s ship. He reached out and held her hand, proud that she never once revealed fear or panic. She was Aserra through and through.
After what seemed an eternity, the platform jolted to a halt in front of a single, steel door. Gears rattled, and the door opened with a whoosh. Robinson and Friday looked at each other and walked out.
The hallway was empty and dark. One by one, lights flickered to life, revealing a long, clean corridor all in white. A draft of air fed in from somewhere, but smelled artificial. As Robinson and Friday walked forward, the door behind them closed and sealed with a hiss.
They continued walking, eventually arriving at a twenty by twenty square room. The walls were decked with patterned hexagons.
“What now?” Friday asked.
Robinson shrugged. Then an image of two pairs of feet glowed on the ground in front of them and began to flash.
“I guess those are for us,” Robinson said.
He stepped onto the first image of feet. Friday stepped onto the second.
The lights in the room dimmed and more blue lasers, larger than the first, circled around them. Once they were done, two hexagonal drawers extended out slowly, halting a foot away from the pair.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” Friday asked.
As if responding, a chime emitted from the front of the drawer and the image of various weapons appeared there and flashed.
“Looks like we’re supposed to put our weapons inside,” Robinson said.
Friday shook her head. “No. I will not go unarmed until we know what we’re heading into.”
“I’m not sure we have a choice.”
He was right. No doors opened. Nothing changed. Only the flashing images continued to blink. Eventually, Robinson slipped off his belt and laid his weapons inside. Friday shook her head but followed suit. Again, nothing happened.
“Friday,” Robinson said.
Friday growled and removed a hidden dagger. The moment it went into the drawer, the flashing stopped, and they slid away.
“What now?” Friday asked.
The answer came when two more hexagonal drawers opened, with the image of clothes flashing this time.
Robinson could see the fury rising in Friday, so he quickly began to undress.
“We have to do this,” he said.
On one level, she knew he was right. Even if she wanted to back out now, she knew the way was closed behind them. Friday had never been troubled by nudity. The Aserra often walked around without clothes. But she was pregnant and knew of two lesions Crusoe had yet to see. The idea of exposing them made her vulnerable. And Friday was never vulnerable.
In the end, she did it for their child. They had pinned their hopes for the future on finding the City of Glass. If this was it, exposing herself was the least of her worries.
Once their clothes retracted, the flashing footsteps guided them into another room and onto two circular areas that were three feet apart. After they stood on their circles, a cocoon of glass rose around them. Each pounded on the glass, but their voices couldn’t cut through it. A moment later, gas started streaming into the chamber.
Panic filled Friday as the taste of chemicals found her nose and mouth. The chamber became frightfully cold. Yet as quickly as it had begun, the gas cut off and was sucked from the chamber. Friday coughed but was relieved when it didn’t turn into a fit.
Both were covered in a sheen of chemicals that coated their skin. It tingled, but it wasn’t painful. Before they could process what had happened, a string of code appeared on the wall in front of them. Tiny typeface sped past in a blur.
Examination sequence complete … analysis of trace organisms … biological vectors propagated … toxic source pathogens to follow: skin microbiota … Erysipelas …Clostridium tetani … Obligate intracellular parasites … rickettsial (RMSF), pediculosis capitis, prolonged incubation 68R1CZ998-U /MTT: topical treatment applied where applicable.
Decontamination sequence complete.
Sweethome/NWO/C1/DARPA ingress assessment:
Male subject—APPROVED.
/> Female subject—DENIED—Recommend quarantine for further study.
An interminable silence ensued. Robinson wasn’t sure what he’d just seen. Have I been approved for something and Friday denied? She had been recommended for quarantine, but for what? Quarantine from whom? He was trying to process it when the glass opposite him slid open, revealing yet another open corridor, for him alone.
Friday slapped the glass, terror etched on her face. Simultaneously, a tone chimed and flashing feet appeared in front of Robinson, leading away from her.
“Don’t worry,” he said to Friday through the glass. “I’m not going to leave you here.”
Friday couldn’t hear him through the glass or the white noise setting into her head. She hit the glass, as her heartbeat began to increase, slowly at first, then faster and faster. She could see Robinson shaking his head, trying to calm her, but the light and noise were overstimulating her. Her chest grew tight and a wave of nausea rolled over her. She was struggling to catch her breath as the panic made her a prisoner of her own mind. Unable to control the physiological responses of her body, she sank to the floor.
Robinson stooped, worried she might go into shock.
“Friday, look at me. Look. I’m not going to leave you, okay? I give you my word.”
He looked around the room, eventually spotting one of the familiar opaque bubbles on the ceiling. Whomever was watching—if anyone was watching—he needed to be clear.
“I won’t leave her,” he said. “Do you hear me? I’ll die before I leave her.”
The moment stretched, and then Friday’s glass rose. Robinson pulled her into his arms.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I got you. Come on.”
He pulled her down that final length of corridor until they came to a room with the hexagonal drawers already open, white robes laying inside. They were more thaubs than tunics. Both quickly put them on.
Robinson Crusoe 2246: (Book 3) Page 14
