by A D Davies
Who else but he could have harnessed the power of an ancient, buried technology without dissecting it first? Who else could have discerned its purpose and decoded the breadcrumbs that led from this land to Achilles’ shield, and the dark purpose he could reap?
And who else possessed the iron will to do what had to be done for the glory of his people?
In less than forty-eight hours, he would be a god. And no one, not even the party leaders of the country he loved, would stand in his way.
Chapter Twenty-Four
New Zealand
For all his adult life, Jules had struggled with emotion. To achieve what he’d felt he needed to, there had been no room in his brain. He’d battled to attain physical perfection, partly to serve him in the retrieval artefacts from deserts, mountains, deep under cities and under oceans, and also to burglarize those who had stolen without ethical boundaries and to survive the criminal networks that facilitated such trades. He’d studied for mental agility to investigate those networks and the individuals who benefited, to ascertain the locations of those artefacts based on clues penned hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years ago. Emotions interfered with his work, but he was not immune to them, he just buried them and pushed people away so ethereal notions like friendship wouldn’t weigh him down.
Now, leaning on the control room’s glass—more of an observation point—he struggled to name the feelings welling up inside and bursting from his chest.
Project Ahua was more than an exploration of lost architecture and construction. It was even more than the intricate examination of the orbs and their magnetically bound tech. Jules had never expected to see anything like this, presented in the deep, dead center of a volcano. Cloaking technology was one thing. This was something else.
“We’ve named them ‘homo colossus’,” Prihya said.
They looked human, roaming through the forest, its widely spaced trees allowing a view that was most definitely not an intricate fake. Four of them. Clothed in simple adornments, reminiscent of the costumes on the actors they glimpsed in the village down in the valley, but simpler, more practical. Leading the group was a ten-foot-three-inch-tall male with thick black hair on his head and face, a low brow, and a neck roughly the width of a refrigerator. The woman stood almost nine feet, her hair the same color but shorter than the man’s with only wisps of it sprouting from her cheeks. Two juveniles marched alongside. Going by human growth rate, Jules ranked them as teenagers, one a little older than the other.
A churning mix of wonder and horror made Jules’s head spin. Since no one else seemed able to speak, he guessed they were feeling the same.
No one, except those who’d known about it all along.
Tane said, “They were cloned from DNA retrieved from bone marrow. We found the bones—or people who worked on this before me did—in the 1980s. It wasn’t until the human genome got decoded that our guys even dared think about bringing them back.”
“The original intention was to study evolution,” Prihya said. “This place was covered by a net, of all things. When the orb turned on, discoveries accelerated exponentially.”
Jules found his voice. “You used them to activate and power your machine.”
“A ten square mile commune populated entirely by giant humans,” Tane said. “They have more hair, two-to-three times the size of a gorilla. Their DNA is closer to ours than a chimpanzee’s—and they were our closest living relative.”
“In nature,” Charlie pointed out.
“Now we have long lost cousins,” Toby said.
Of them all, Professor Garcia was the one whose face glowed brightest. She pressed her entire body against the glass, a simpering expression radiating, her arms spread as if trying to hug the family.
“Would you like to meet them?” Tane asked.
Sally peeled herself from the pane and joined the others in surrounding Prihya and Tane, like a huddle before a basketball game.
Bridget said, “They won’t tear our faces off?”
Tane laughed. “Don’t let their appearance fool you. They’re big, and their dense muscles make them incredibly strong, but like you and I, they have the capacity for reason. They might look like apes from a distance, but they’re not.”
“In fact,” Prihya said, “their first instinct upon meeting new people is curiosity rather than fear or suspicion. Possibly because their genes make them so tough.”
“How tough?” Dan asked.
“We estimate they could bench a couple of school busses without breaking sweat,” Tane replied. “Their skin is thicker than elephant hide, although they can be cut. We haven’t completely tested it, but based on what we’ve been able to examine, their skin combined with their muscle density will absorb a .50 caliber bullet from six feet away.”
Jules whistled appreciation and saw the same from Harpal and Charlie.
Dan said, “Like shooting a bullet into sand.”
“Right,” Prihya said. “So—time’s wasting. We have work to do. Are we going to say hello first?”
Access to the forest floor was through a door on the rock-wall side of the control station, set aside from the orb and activation suite. They descended the hairpin metal staircase and emerged onto hardscrabble ground.
“Stick together,” Tane said. “They’re friendly but not harmless.”
Jules tingled all over. Couldn’t drag the smile from his face. He had no idea why this euphoria had gripped him so hard, but this was the first time in years he’d been unable to contain himself. In the past, such strong emotional waves were largely negative: grief, anger, fear. Occasionally, he found himself beaming uncontrollably when he recovered some stolen relic and returned it to its rightful place, but that was nothing like this.
Why?
And why was Bridget the only one who seemed so troubled? She had looked as impressed as Jules at first, but since descending the stairs she’d had time to think and must have snagged on something that reigned in her excitement.
As they marched in a huddle, Prihya explained, “While they are intelligent, on a par with the average homo sapien, their minds work differently. We can communicate do a degree, even co-exist, but they have little self-awareness beyond the usual animalistic need to eat, mate, and survive.”
“They have a language?” Bridget asked, her voice small, tinged with caution.
“Their vocal cords can’t form complex words. They do have a proto-language, and names for one another. To us, it sounds like a series of grunts and snorts, some higher-pitched syllables in there too. We’ve taught them some basic sign language too, so—”
“How?” Bridget was frowning now, walking more slowly as they came upon the family, their movement visible through the trees.
“Sign language isn’t difficult for—”
“No, I mean, how did they discover their language? You can’t retain language in your genes. You don’t learn it as you grow from an infant. Project Ahua bred these creatures in a lab. If they’re not able to learn English or other modern language, how did they evolve this ‘proto-language’ as you call it.”
“I’m interested in that, too,” Garcia said. “If they follow genetic imperatives to survive, that’s the same a cat going feral. How is it different from abandoning a child with food and water for years, then looking in on them occasionally?”
“It’s before both our times,” Tane said. “The original pioneers of this were pensioners when we started. They’ve since passed the baton to this generation. We’re the custodians. All those moral questions—”
“Conveniently sidestepped,” Charlie said.
Toby raised a finger, one of his lightbulb moments. “Not sidestepped. Adopted.”
Prihya held her ground, and all halted.
Toby said, “If anyone here is concerned about morality, it’s me. I lost my position and my prestige in the House of Windsor precisely because of my ethical qualms about our activities. Bridget, Charlie, I share your concerns. Sally, I share your curiosity. But th
ese creatures exist. They are alive. The moral questions were answered long before Prihya and Tane took on this… responsibility. And I’m glad it’s fallen to them, not some predatory bureaucrat, or private financier. Can you imagine what would happen if someone thought to profit from this?”
“Thank you, Toby,” Prihya said. “Took the words right out of my mouth. I have little to add, except that the welfare of our giant friends is paramount.”
“It’s literally in her contract,” Tane said.
“Admittedly, we use them in the lab. We have little choice, given threats like Valerio. And now, the North Korean executive. But they are never harmed. We have a simulated chamber down here, and that feeds into the setup upstairs.” Prihya glanced Charlie’s way. “Another addition that we can’t retcon to be more efficient without taking the system offline.”
“You experiment on them?” Bridget said. “Like rats?”
“Bridge,” Jules said. “Let’s concentrate on what we can affect. What’s more important? Figurin’ out the ethics, or stopping Ah Dae Sung and his boss, and the death they’re trying to bring?”
Bridget stared at him. “You think it’s okay? Bringing these creatures to life and… enslaving them here to… to…”
Jules was about to answer when movement up ahead drew his attention. Big movement. A lumbering shadow, parting branches, plodding forward.
Prihya and Tane stepped aside, and the male giant loomed toward them.
His dimensions were not quite an ape, not quite human. Despite his ten-foot height, he looked almost squat, which Jules supposed was the musculature compensating for the body’s greater mass. His form brought to mind the greater thickness of the fossilized bones in the Alabama cavern. The other three were shaped similarly, wide but muscular, with the heavy brows and extra body hair. They followed and remained behind the big man.
“This is Gilim,” Prihya said, plainly amused by the apprehension radiating from the LORI contingent. “His wife is Nan, his children Noroth and Wade. Gilim and Nan see the world through an innocent’s eyes, like everything is exciting and new. Noroth is a coy one, quiet, but very loving, and he likes to draw… sort of. They’re markings we think represent things he’s done, food he’s eaten, but it’s hard to tell. Wade loves frolicking in the ponds, loves being in and around water.”
“Tolkien,” Jules said.
Harpal held as still as he would if facing a growling junkyard dog. “I don’t remember giants from those books.”
Jules stepped forward. Gilim kneeled, his brow wrinkling more, shading his eyes. Jules kept going, one hand outstretched. “They didn’t feature much. They’re mentioned in spells, conversations, things like that. Wade isn’t, though.”
“That’s a name in some of his more obscure literature.” Sally had come alongside Jules, eager to participate. “Wade was possibly a sea giant. It’s more in Germanic folklore than anywhere else.”
Prihya said, “You know your stuff.”
Jules extended his arm farther. He was smiling, could sense the stretch of skin around his mouth, his eyes. A deep, booming chortle rumbled inside Gilim, his own hand passing through the air. Tentatively, Jules remained on course, and so did Gilim. Jules placed his palm on Gilim’s flattened fingers, the giant’s hand the size of a manhole cover. He’d be able to engulf Jules’s torso in his grip.
Jules pressed lightly on the skin, which felt rough and leathery, and when he turned the hand over so his fingertips pointed up, the giant clearly had fingerprints, too—dirty, ingrained whorls with filthy nails. He smelled like a wet dog, but… damnit. None of that mattered.
Jules said, “Hey, Gilim. Nice to meet you.”
“Careful,” Tane warned.
Jules regarded his colleagues, who had been emboldened to come forward a little hastily, now slowing.
Sally touched her hand to Gilim’s too, and the enormous man before them grinned wide. His teeth were a gleaming ivory, and the breath that huffed out in another joyous laugh bore the stench of vegetation.
“No meat?” Jules said.
“They’re not quite vegetarian,” Prihya replied. “They can digest cooked chicken or venison—they catch their own deer sometimes—but anything heavier makes them ill. They’ll scoop up a pile of bugs in those huge hands and shovel them down, though. Crickets, cockroaches, anything crunchy. But what we think of as meat? No, they don’t handle it so well.”
“There’ll be no grinding my bones to make bread, then,” Toby said, close enough to join Jules and Sally. He placed his hand on Gilim’s as Sally had done. “Oh, my.”
Gilim evidently found something funny and let out another of his throaty chuckles. He eased back, grunted a few times, and then his “wife” and children ambled through. They trod lightly, only their bulk making them appear shambling as they moved. It was a kind-of nervous exploration, a nerd at a party full of popular kids, or a kitten making its first steps into a garden.
“I know you have misgivings,” Prihya said, aiming her comment mainly at Bridget, but taking in all of them as she approached Nan to take her hand. “But I assure you, the only tarnish on this place is that we control their reproduction. It can’t sustain a population that expands out of control. We’ve limited it to two family units initially, but we’ll let nature take its course for the next couple of generations.”
“There’s another family?” Sally said, sliding her hand from Gilim’s to make room for Dan and Harpal.
“Less fanciful names.” Prihya smiled at the meeting of the two races, Charlie and Harpal wandering away from Gilim to say hi to Nan. The boys held back but watched carefully. “Rosso is the other male. Issa the female. Lucy and Holly the daughters. Holly was born on Christmas Day. Cheesy, but, hey.”
“You control their genders, too,” Bridget said, coldly. “Boys here. Girls there.”
“Genetic variation is necessary. We hope to let them flourish from hereon-in, that they’ll populate only this basin. But if we can’t, these will be the last of their kind.”
“Why?” Dan asked.
“We can’t reintroduce them to the world,” Tane said. “They’re not the original creatures. No original culture or language. They might be susceptible to illness or pollutants in the air. We’ve no idea how to serve them best outside this environment. It would be cruel to bring them into a modern world. Like sending a saber tooth cat or woolly mammoth into the wild.”
Bridget seemed sad as she repeated the gesture the others were employing, her tiny hand to Nan’s massive one. “It’s all good and well saying you’re doing your best for them. What if they escaped?”
“They’ve shown no interest in anything outside of the shield,” Prihya said.
“Could be what works outside works inside,” Jules offered. “People visiting don’t pry on the volcano, so why not the people living here?”
Tane sighed. “Maybe. But we clued the local Maori chiefs in. They know what we have here. They understand the need for balance. For once, the Maori and white-majority government are together.”
It was so peaceful, utterly beautiful, Jules could have hung out here for hours.
“Gilim is the alpha,” Prihya said. “They know who is in charge, understand we bring them food, and they’ve seen us medicate them when sick or hurt. They are always watching, always working things out. If they were prisoners here, if they wanted to get out, they would.”
“Hence the bank vault of a panic room,” Charlie said. “If they ever go berserk?”
“If that happens, we follow precautions,” Tane said. “There are gas nozzles here and there, built into the floor. Tranq darts are useless, and the gas is far more humane.”
Prihya stroked one of the boys and he giggled. “We used it once when they all got sick, some cold or flu thing that responded to a barrel-full of antibiotics. But it’s not in widespread use.”
“I have to get some pictures.” Sally fumbled in her pocket for a cellphone, pulling it out in haste.
The Kiwi agent gently m
oved in front of her. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
“I have to.” Sally attempted to get around him.
Her sudden, faintly aggressive move startled Gilim, his gigantic head turning her way, and his hand pulled away from Dan and Toby. The two juveniles crowded their mother.
“Protective,” Jules commented.
“It’s okay. Nothing to worry about.” Prihya’s hands fluttered in sign language, reducing the giants’ concern without eradicating it. “Okay, I think visiting hours are over.”
“I have to exonerate myself,” Sally said. “The board think I’m a kook. They want to fire me. I have to prove this. Show them—”
“In time, maybe,” Tane said, accepting the handset. “But that can only happen once we understand the tech, when we can figure out how these guys can be incorporated into academic teachings. So they won’t be exploited. Then, and only then, can we consider revealing this to the world.”
A persistent beeping sounded on Prihya’s belt. She checked it and removed what looked to be a cellphone but wasn’t any brand Jules recognized. Must have been particular to this facility, an internal comms device to prevent anything happening like Sally planned to do.
Tane moved to her, and they both listened, concern darkening their faces.
“Time to go,” Tane said. “The listening station. Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“How the hell did they find us?” Tane demanded.
The how wasn’t important to Dan, though. Only what to do about it. “Defensive options,” he said. “Talk to us.”
Tane had led them into the security suite—the listening post, as they’d called it—where one operator reported that, “Facial recognition says a few are DPRNK civilians. No military records. But they entered the country on Chinese passports. Same with the other three that flagged up.”
Tane rubbed his chin, which rasped with two days of stubble. “No Ah Dae-Sung or Pang Pyong-Ho.”
