HUMAN OCCUPANT EXPIRED.
Jasper sank to his knees and crouched over the pod. “We should have never let her come. She was too old and weak.”
The others stood in silence as they shared Jasper’s grief for the fallen Watcher.
“Come,” said Emanui. “Let’s find a place to put her to rest. We can do nothing more for her.”
They buried Miriam on a hillside covered with wildflowers. The oldest human who had ever lived became as anonymous in death as she was in life.
When they finally reached Paris, the situation was every bit as bad as had been reported. Blood was literally flowing in the streets, and the mass executions had indeed attracted many Ferals. Although their mission was a success in regard to the large number of Ferals neutralized, they could not help but wonder which species was the most vicious.
SYMPOSIUM
Kozheozersky Monastery, 2011
As Kevak knelt in prayer next to Boris, he detected the sound of the approaching helicopter.
“They’re here,” he said.
Simultaneously, they rose and made the sign of the cross before walking outside. Removing his palmcom from the pocket of his robe, Kevak transmitted the passcode. The lifeboat briefly flickered into view as the hatch opened to grant them entry.
After the helicopter touched down, the passengers walked to the lifeboat.
“Welcome,” said Kevak.
“Father,” said J’Vor as he embraced him.
“You look well, my son,” he said. “Has Tariq been looking after you?”
“My little brother is no trouble, Kevak,” said Tariq.
Kevak laughed; J’Vor was now several inches taller than Tariq.
“Emanui,” said Kevak, “it is good to see you.”
“The monastic life suits you, old friend,” she said.
“Our business associates would not be so keen to invest if I attended board meetings in person,” he said with a smile.
When they were assembled at the conference table, the wall screen began to ping and the image of Primus D’Hal flickered into view.
Everyone present picked up a tiny glass containing hemo-nectar from a tray.
“May Iam bless this fellowship,” said Kevak.
“To absent friends,” said Boris.
A moment of silence was observed in memory of their departed comrades Ephraim and Miriam.
“I call this meeting to order,” said Boris, after clearing his throat. “Present in the lifeboat are Kevak, J’Vor, Tariq, Emanui, and myself. In attendance via video is Primus D’Hal in Newlun.”
“Emanui, are there any updates on the Kepler mission?” asked Kevak.
Kevak’s network had successfully placed Watcher operatives in NASA that had been part of the design team for the Kepler spacecraft, which scanned patches of space for indications of Earth-sized planets orbiting stars similar to the sun. NASA officials believed the spacecraft only used current Earth technology to look for a slight dimming in a star that would indicate an orbiting planet passing in front of it. In reality, cloaked Vambir technology was piggy-backing on the NASA detectors. NASA officials were delighted with the results so far; over twenty exoplanets had been discovered in habitable zones. One of those planets was Vambiri, and the cloaked technology onboard was exclusively monitoring it and transmitting the collected data to the lifeboat computers.
“Small red patches continue to be spotted on Vambiri,” said Emanui.
“The hemoplants have returned!” exclaimed D’Hal.
“There are no indications of life on the surface,” said Emanui.
“That’s not surprising,” said Kevak, “since all the cities were underground.”
“Only the domed spaceports were on the surface,” said D’Hal.
“The nuclear blasts triggered from the uprising on Departure Day obliterated them,” said Kevak.
“If there are any Vambir remaining,” said Emanui, “they’re not using modern technology. No satellites or air traffic of any kind have been detected.”
“Primus D’Hal,” said Boris, “what is the status of the Newisla?”
“The last batch of stasis pods have been put in place,” she said. “The hybrid rocket tests have all performed well within safety levels and the nitrogen tanks have been fitted with detectors far more sensitive than those that failed on the Isla. Everyone is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the embryos.”
The reverse transformation had finally removed enough of the human markers in the Newlunders to the point where Vambir offspring free of mutations could be conceived. Recognizing that the natural process would not produce enough children to propagate the species, fertilized eggs had been gestated in test tubes in the lifeboat lab, ensuring that the Vambir population would be kick-started upon arrival at Vambiri.
“One thousand embryos are now in stasis tubes and ready to be transferred to the Newisla,” said Emanui.
“Newlunders are honored to be the caretakers of the Vambiri race,” said D’Hal. “Kevak…are you sure…”
“My family is here,” said Kevak, gazing affectionately at J’Vor. “This is where I discovered the word of Iam, and I intend to live out the rest of my life in obscurity at the monastery.”
“The next item on the agenda is agriculture,” said Boris. “What is the status of hemoplant production?”
“Locations closest to the equator yield the best crops,” said Tariq, “and harvests in New Guinea, Guyana, and the York Peninsula of Australia have once again exceeded all expectations.”
“How is the morale of the Rescued stationed there?” asked Kevak.
“They embrace the isolation,” said Tariq. “There is no shortage of volunteers; in fact, some of the regions are at maximum capacity.”
“And poppy production?” asked Kevak.
“We need to shore up profits,” said J’Vor. “Our pharmaceutical business is attracting too much attention due to our charity work.”
“Because we donate more to Third World countries than anyone else?” asked Kevak.
“It doesn’t make business sense to operate at a loss,” said J’Vor. “Government auditors will suspect it’s a cover for something nefarious.”
“They’re half right,” quipped Tariq. “The blended poppy and hemo-crops provide essential camouflage. We have a legal contract to grow poppies, and the satellite images show vibrant red flowers, as expected.”
“Has there been any increased activity in government surveillance?” asked Kevak.
“Nothing unusual with regard to satellite monitoring,” said Emanui. “No auditors have been sent to any of the production regions. I can’t imagine a suit-wearing, pencil-pushing accountant being pleased to receive that assignment. But I agree that the pharmaceutical business needs to start showing a profit.”
“Increase trade in competitor markets,” suggested J’Vor.
“Very well,” said Kevak with a sigh. “Use the profits to reinvest in more philanthropic work.”
“The next topic concerns the Ferals,” said Boris. “It’s been extremely difficult to obtain an accurate count.”
“They’re operating under the radar,” said J’Vor. “Ferals are well aware that we monitor all public records for any mysterious disappearances or deaths. The slums of Brazil, South Africa, Haiti, and India, to name a few, are prime feeding grounds. Gang violence is rife in those communities, and suspicious deaths are common. The Rescued have been kept extremely busy rooting out Ferals in those areas.”
“The struggle never ends,” mused Kevak.
“If they’re out there,” said Tariq, “they would crave the safety of feeding in the slums but would be averse to the lifestyle.”
“It would be extremely difficult to maintain the facade of respectability while having to hunt humans in order to feed,” said J’Vor.
“Medical professionals would have access to an unlimited blood supply without the inconvenience of hunting,” said Tariq.
“As would any employee of a blood bank,” sa
id J’Vor.
“The Rescued know to look for statistical anomalies of blood shortages,” said Boris, “and so far, nothing has been flagged.”
“They are most likely engaging in activities that don’t keep official records,” said Tariq, “such as drug and human trafficking.”
“They would not transform those they fed off,” said Kevak. “Too many Ferals in one location would attract attention.”
“The Rescued in law enforcement are ever vigilant,” said Emanui.
“And they must continue to be,” said J’Vor. “Eventually, someone will either talk or defect.”
“Which brings us to Venomy,” said Boris. “Emanui, what did you find out? Is he a Feral or a pretender?”
“Neither,” answered Emanui.
“He is immune?” asked Kevak.
“I thought so at first, but it’s not the case,” she said as she linked her laptop to the wall projector. Two DNA helixes appeared on the screen.
“The DNA to the left is human, and the one on the right is Vambir,” said Emanui. “Both are double helixes. If the twisting is removed and shown in two dimensions, they resemble ladders. When the Vambir first ingested human blood, the two helixes merged.”
The two ladders on the screen moved closer together until they formed a single ladder with three frames.
“The rightmost frame of the human ladder and the leftmost frame of the Vambir ladder fused together,” explained Emanui. “The same process happened to the first humans who were transformed. To an uninformed observer, the DNA sequence of a Vambir who ingested blood or a first generation transformed human would appear as a triple helix. But what is interesting is what happens when transformed humans in turn transform other humans—the human ladder becomes more prominent, and the so-called triple helix is no longer symmetric. This continues with each subsequent transformed generation.”
Images of asymmetric helixes appeared on the screen.
“Eventually, the human helix completely obscures the Vambir one, and this is what happened with Venomy,” explained Emanui.
“How many transformed generations were required to obliterate the Vambir strand?” asked Kevak.
“Venomy is a 128th transformed descendant of Commander Mazja,” said Emanui. “He can tolerate daylight and consume Earth-based food.”
“The Feral bloodlines are fading away,” said Tariq. “Humanity will be free of them someday!”
“Only if there are no Vambir at liberty,” said Kevak. “Otherwise, the vicious cycle is renewed with each human they transform.”
“Which brings us to the final item on the agenda,” said Boris, “the Aztec exhibition attended by J’Vor and Tariq.”
From his laptop J’Vor transmitted the image of the jade bust with the elongated head and central fangs. Kevak felt a chill as he looked at it.
“It definitely has Vambir characteristics,” said D’Hal.
“It looks as if you posed for it, Kevak,” said Emanui.
“We know that the Aztecs had vampire legends and participated in human blood sacrifices on a massive scale, but what stands out is that a number of mysterious events occurred at the beginning of the sixteenth century,” said J’Vor. “The Spanish discovery happened on the same day that the god Quetzalcoatl was predicted to return. Contemporary accounts mention a triple-headed comet. Immediately afterward, the temple of Huitzilopochtli was destroyed by a so-called ‘thunderbolt’ and there are accounts of Lake Texcoco ‘boiling deep.’”
“The Cortés invasion was over half a century after the Vambir arrival,” said Emanui.
“I believe the triple-headed comet could have been three stasis pods falling to Earth,” said J’Vor. “Maybe there were some damaged pods that survived incineration when the Isla broke apart. Their navigation systems could have been offline, and they floated in a decaying orbit until 1519.”
“Three of them together in the same decaying orbit?” asked Emanui.
J’Vor brought up a new image on the screen. “This is a contemporary Aztec pictograph of the comet. As you can clearly see, it was not one body with three heads but rather three separate vapor trails in formation.”
“I’ve accessed the lifeboat databanks concerning pod navigation protocols,” said Tariq. “There is one scenario that could have happened. In the event of the destruction of the Isla, if any jettisoned pods were unable to complete atmospheric entry, the onboard computers would seek each other out, and the navigation systems would band together to work in sync. The shield generated by a group of pods would offer better odds with respect to heat protection.”
“That’s correct,” said Kevak.
Those present were silent as they contemplated the possibility of Vambir pods having landed in the region.
“Even if the pods had landed intact,” said Kevak, “without seeds to grow hemo-crops, any surviving Vambir would have been forced to ingest blood and undergo the metamorphosis into human form.”
“We know with absolute certainty there were no pods in orbit when Kevak and Jasper vaporized the wreckage from the Isla in 1622,” said Emanui, “and there were no homing beacons emitting signals anywhere on Earth.”
“Would the lifeboat databanks be able to access pod readings from the Isla in her final seconds?” asked J’Vor.
“To what end?” asked Tariq.
“It was confirmed that two hundred and twenty-one pods landed in Transylvania,” said J’Vor. “If we could find out how many pods were still functional when the Isla arrived at Earth and how many were incinerated when the jettison command was given, that should give us an idea if it was possible for three pods to still have been in Low Earth Orbit by 1519.”
“The Commander had noticed there were missing crew members just after we were revived from stasis,” recalled Kevak. “She ordered the Yeoman to find out what was keeping them. Seconds before the thruster malfunction, it was determined that several stasis pods were offline. There should be a record of it.”
“I’ll see what I can do with the logic fragments,” said Emanui. “If a pod was incinerated just after being jettisoned, there should have been some kind of temperature spike that the Isla recorded, even if only for a fraction of a second.”
“Assuming there were at least three pods in orbit in 1519, what then?” asked Boris. “Mexico City was built on top of Tenochtitlan.”
“If any of the pods exploded on impact,” said J’Vor, “finding titanium traces in soil levels corresponding to the sixteenth century would be proof of it. The remains of the temple of Huitzilopochtli would be the logical place to start.”
“That area was excavated over a hundred years ago,” said Boris. “The artifacts were extracted and the sifted soil discarded.”
“Whenever a Vambir network has been exposed,” said Emanui, “their modus operandi has been to manipulate humans by twisting their beliefs for their own purposes.”
“The Venus transit was sacred to the Aztecs,” said J’Vor.
“I’ll have a look at satellite images of the region during the 2004 transit,” said Emanui. “If there is a cult still worshipping the Vambir as Aztec gods, they would observe the holy days.”
“The next transit is in 2012,” said D’Hal. “Perhaps we should delay the departure of the Newisla until after that event, in case any Vambir are discovered.”
“That would be prudent,” said Kevak.
“If Tenochtitlan has been picked over, where do we start?” asked Boris.
“Undiscovered cities could reveal more information,” said J’Vor. “There could be petroglyphs carved in the stone walls or more pictographs that survived the ravages of time.”
“An archeological dig?” asked Boris. “Even if we had a specific location, which we don’t, that would be an enormous undertaking, and the red tape involved just to get permission would be extremely time-consuming.”
“Not a dig,” said J’Vor. “The ruins should still be partially above ground, and Vambir technology could be used to find them.”
/> “I’ll get to work on it,” said Emanui.
“There is something else,” said Tariq. “I don’t know if it is significant with regard to the Vambir, but one of the speakers in London, a Professor Espinoza, was an epidemiologist who made a convincing case that the Aztecs were not decimated by smallpox but rather by a hemorrhagic plague.”
“A Vambir blood infection?” asked Kevak.
Tariq shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It never occurred in Transylvania,” said Emanui.
“There aren’t any human remains to test,” said Boris. “We must concentrate on what we can work with now.”
“Very well,” said Kevak. “We will meet again when these matters have been investigated fully.”
ESCAPE
Mesoamerica, 1520
After months of trying to establish contact with any survivors of the Isla, Vrin finally admitted to herself that she was on her own. Her one flicker of hope was that the crew had been able to escape the crash in the lifeboat and had landed on the other side of the planet. That would explain why there had been no communication, since the Isla was no longer in orbit to relay the signals.
Her situation was desperate. She and J’Vor had used up the hemo-rations in the pod, and the packets Kevak had taped to her during the evacuation of Vambiri were all that remained. It would not be long until she would have to choose between either starving to death or ingesting the red liquid the Aztecs offered her each night. Her bio-scanner had confirmed the substance was a nutrient, but when she had leaned down to sniff it, a chemical reaction in her brain had brought on intense cravings and psychotic thoughts. She had angrily ordered the Aztecs to take it away, but each night they stubbornly returned with new offerings. They could not understand why their Chimalma was starving herself and the god-infant, and it disturbed them deeply.
Vrin had picked up the rudiments of the Aztec language and no longer needed the palmcom to communicate. The more she learned about their culture, the more worried she became. Their artwork depicted scenes of horrific violence they had inflicted on their own kind, and it was now patently obvious where the bowls of red liquid came from.
The Nosferatu Chronicles: The Aztec God Page 9
