“We must push on,” said Dr. Josef.
The technician at console one shook his head. “Opening core to fifty percent,” he said.
The capstone of the projected pyramid above them transitioned from gold to red. Electrical discharges now fired at random in rapid succession. The stormy sky grew darker.
“Radical EM level now at one hundred fifty hertz,” technician fourteen announced.
“Fission rate is zero,” technician three said.
Two electrical discharges were expelled from the capstone and struck the ground near the control center. One of the technicians rose from his seat and ran over to the eastern-facing windows that overlooked the complex’s arrival and departure platform. He put his hand on the window. “Martin!” he called. Others joined him there, seeing their colleague’s lifeless, charred body lying faceup on the ground with steam rising from it. Martin had been struck by one of the electrical discharges. The briefcase he was carrying lay open beside him, the wind scattering his papers in all directions. Two other, more fortunate workers had taken refuge underneath a nearby awning, waiting for the violent storm to pass.
The doctors turned to Catherine and took two quick steps forward. “We must stop,” said Dr. Rosa.
“Agreed, we must stop now,” reiterated Dr. Josef.
“We cannot risk . . .” said Dr. Rosa.
“The integrity of the ZPF,” said Dr. Josef.
Catherine’s face was red with anger as she stared at the doctors. “Shut it down, then,” she said reluctantly. The technicians returned to their computers and started working. The capstone of the projected pyramid transitioned from red to deep gold and then to yellow. The lightning and thunder ceased, and the rain and battering wind eased. The capstone transitioned from yellow to white.
Dario walked over to Catherine, and Yinsir made his way to a table where a technician was putting away a few pieces of equipment.
Catherine pointed at the doctors and said, “The two of you had better figure this out.”
“A timetable has been established according to your promises,” Dario added. “Events have been set in motion and cannot be stopped now.”
“The plans you provided . . .” said Dr. Rosa.
“Are incomplete,” Dr. Josef finished.
“A critical piece . . .”
“Is missing.”
“Can’t the two of you figure out what it is?” Yinsir said loudly from across the room, as he picked up an odd-looking piece of equipment. “I am told you’re the smartest people on the planet.”
Neither Catherine nor Dario appeared pleased with Yinsir’s off-the-cuff comment.
The doctors turned and looked at him. They put up their hands and spoke in unison. “Please do not play with that device.”
Yinsir heeded the warning and put the device back down. “The others will be arriving soon. You will have to tell them that your project has been delayed.”
“Doctors, you both knew when you started working here that the plans had not been tested,” Catherine said sternly. “The two of you assured us that was not a problem.”
“Wait,” Yinsir interrupted. “The doctors did not draw up the plans for this device?”
Catherine and Dario exchanged looks. “No,” Catherine said. “The plans for this device come from another source.”
“An old Satrayian,” Dario said.
Yinsir raised an eyebrow. “Then it might be time to get back in touch with him.”
33
The only reason the wise sage told his student to climb the highest of mountains was that the student refused to believe that what he was looking for was within himself.
—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA
TEOTIHUACÁN, MEXICO, 11:20 A.M. LOCAL TIME, MARCH 23, 2070
Logan, Mr. Perrot, and Madu didn’t stop running until they were more than a hundred meters clear of the Moon Pyramid. Seven minutes had passed since the earthquake had started. Electrical arcs, similar to the ones Logan had witnessed on his first trip to Teotihuacán, were shooting out of the apex of the Moon Pyramid. Another, more intense series of arcs shot into the sky. A loud crackling sound rent the air as bolts of electricity scattered. Light crept along the outer surface of the pyramid. The pyramid began to glow.
“It looks like one of Tesla’s static electricity experiments,” Mr. Perrot said, not believing what he was witnessing.
The three men moved farther back, holding their arms out to their sides to maintain their balance as the ground shifted and rippled beneath their feet. Cracks appeared at the apex of the pyramid. Within seconds, the cracks grew wider and longer, running down the sides of the ancient structure. Stones continued to topple down off the pyramid’s façades.
“It’s falling apart,” Madu said in disbelief, taking a step forward.
Mr. Perrot grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said, recalling what it was like watching old skyscrapers being demolished after the Great Disruption. A haunting and eerie moment of stillness occurred, as if they were standing at the eye of a hurricane, before a series of blue lights exploded overhead. Logan, Mr. Perrot, and Madu ducked as the light passed over them. A mere five seconds later, the Moon Pyramid, which had once jutted into the sky, imploded. A massive dust cloud rose into the air and spread into the twilight sky.
“It’s gone,” Madu said in shock. He closed his eyes, falling to his knees and whispering. “And all of its secrets along with it. . . .”
* * *
Logan and Mr. Perrot helped Madu, still distraught, back to the museum’s research center. “It doesn’t look like there was much damage here,” Logan said, as they entered the pyramid-shaped room.
He set his backpack on a table, and Madu set down the three whistles he was carrying and the headband he’d taken from the skeleton, then lowered himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands. Logan untied the string he’d wrapped around his backpack and took out the pieces of broken pottery he’d salvaged. Mr. Perrot leaned the copper rod against the table and placed the metal case containing the restored whistle on the floor.
“Do you have the other headband?” Logan asked.
Mr. Perrot held it up to show him and placed it on the table next to the one Madu had taken.
“There you are!” Nadine ran into the room and rushed over to Madu and hugged him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he replied. “I’m fine.”
While Nadine and Madu spoke in hushed tones, Logan and Mr. Perrot turned their attention to the items they had salvaged from the hidden chamber. Logan inspected one of the headbands. He ran his fingers over the Satraya symbols, which had been pressed into the copper along with the mysterious symbol that could be a snowflake or a flower. He looked at the inside of the headband and saw a familiar phrase. He pointed it out to Mr. Perrot: QUITETEUHQUIMILOA CANAHUAC COHUATL TOCONMONEXTILIZ ITOZQUI TLALLI.
Mr. Perrot picked up the second headband. “The phrase is also written on this one: Wrap thin serpent to discover earth voice.”
Logan sighed, still unsure what it meant. His PCD sounded, and he started to worry when he saw who it was from. “Ms. Sally,” he said, typing a reply. “Jamie had another one of those splitting headaches.”
Madu and Nadine joined Logan and Mr. Perrot at the table.
“It cannot be a coincidence that this phrase is found on both headbands and also on the stem of the stone whistle,” Mr. Perrot said.
“The term earth voice is curious,” Madu said. “I suppose it could be referring to many things. Sound, music, even poetry . . .”
“I recently learned that my mother took violin lessons from a man named Sumsari Baltik when all of you were on the Council,” Logan said.
“Yes,” Madu said. “Sumsari was a musical genius.”
“He told my mother that the earth had a voice. The message on this stone whistle and also on these headbands alludes to the same thing. What if the earth’s voice is the activation harmonic for th
e pyramid?”
Nadine gave Madu a skeptical look. “I thought a source of radiation was the key. Isn’t that the assumption behind all your work over these last many years?”
Madu sighed. “It is possible that my initial theories were incorrect. Based on what we discovered before the pyramid collapsed, sound and resonance might have played a more pivotal role. Sumsari knew a great deal about these things. Perhaps I should have listened to him more closely back then. I wonder if he’s still alive. He might be able to shed more light on what we have discovered here.”
“I’ll send Valerie a message,” Logan said, pulling out his PCD. “She’ll be able to tell us if Sumsari is still alive and, if so, where he lives.”
“Until then, we need to push forward,” Mr. Perrot said. “I wonder if the serpent that was carved into the mica platform is what this phrase is referring to.”
“A serpent could mean a lot of things,” Nadine said, straightening up the mess of artifacts on the table. “In those days, people spoke allegorically when they wanted to veil certain truths. The term serpent could mean anything from a real snake to the symbol for energy to a piece of jewelry.”
“We may never know,” Madu said. “What if what we’re looking for is now buried under the Moon Pyramid?”
“Then we will dig it up,” Nadine said emphatically.
Logan watched as Nadine wound the discolored string around her fingers. His eyes lit up in realization. “A Spartan scytale,” he said out loud.
“A Spartan what?” Mr. Perrot asked.
“A Spartan scytale was a ciphering technique used more than twenty-five hundred years ago,” Logan said. “It involved wrapping a string or ribbon around an object, usually a cylinder on which a secret text had been imprinted. The text was transferred to the thread. Then, when the thread was unwrapped, the message was encrypted; the message would look like a bunch of random marks on the string.” Logan pointed at the string wrapped around Nadine’s fingers. “You see these dark marks we thought were dirt? What if it’s a cipher? Wrap thin serpent to discover earth voice,” Logan said, repeating the phrase as Nadine began to unwind the thread.
“What if the earth voice is—” Mr. Perrot started.
“The activation harmonic,” Madu said, completing his thought.
“The key to deciphering a message like this one is to wrap the string around something that is the same shape and size as the object on which the message was originally imprinted,” Logan said. “The string was originally found in the wooden cart in the secret chamber.”
“What about the copper rod?” Mr. Perrot suggested.
“Worth a try,” Logan said.
Nadine quickly finished unwrapping the thread and handed it to Logan, who then carefully twisted it around the copper rod, making sure the marks faced outward.
Mr. Perrot examined it when Logan was done. “Doesn’t look like we have the right object. There is nothing decipherable.”
Logan tried again at the thinner end of the rod, but the results were the same. “This rod is not the key.”
“Other than the copper staff,” Madu said, “we were only able to salvage the three whistling vessels and some broken pieces of pottery.”
Logan set the string on the table. He surveyed the items beside it for anything that might serve as the key to the Spartan scytale. “The broken pottery clearly won’t work. The whistling vessels are a possibility, but their odd shapes would make it difficult to wrap the thread around properly.”
Nadine and Madu tried several whistle stems and even set two next to each other and wrapped the string around them both, but neither way worked.
While they did that, Logan looked at the praying man statue and the mica platform on which it stood, wondering if they should try it. But he discarded the idea, because the platform was too large and the thread would only go around it a couple of times. Then, recalling something, he walked over to the statue and knelt down near the base. “What did you say this phrase said?” he asked Madu.
“The wise man of stone holds the nest of the snake,” Madu replied.
Logan smiled. “And what does the stone man hold?”
“The whistle,” Madu said.
Mr. Perrot took the reconstructed stone whistle from its case and set it on the table. “The nest of the snake,” he said, sharing Logan’s smile.
Nadine quickly took the string and started wrapping it around the cylindrical body of the praying man’s whistle. Logan walked back over to the table to join Mr. Perrot and Madu. They watched anxiously as, loop by loop, Nadine meticulously wound the thread.
“The marks are lining up,” Logan said. “It looks like a series of animals.”
“We’ve seen these before,” Madu said. “These are the animals that were painted on the seven whistling vessels we found in the chamber.”
“This might be the sequence in which the whistles need to be played in order to activate the pyramid,” Mr. Perrot suggested.
Logan looked at the three whistles they had taken from the chamber. “Without the other four, this sequence is meaningless.” He turned to Madu, regret on his face as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Madu.”
Everyone was silent. All of Madu and Nadine’s efforts at Teotihuacán over the last seven years seemed to have been for naught. Madu stood with his head bowed, and Nadine gazed at him with concern in her eyes.
“The two of you should come to the commemoration in Washington,” Mr. Perrot gently told them. “Put all of this aside for now, and rejoin us as Madu and Nadine Shata, the finders of the Chronicles and the only people to have survived the Pyramid Run.”
“You remember that story?” Nadine said.
“Of course I do,” Mr. Perrot replied. “It is the inspiring true story of two people who didn’t give up in the face of hopelessness.”
Madu looked up. “Robert is correct,” he said to Nadine. “There is nothing more for us here. Even if we are able to persuade Rigel to fund the excavation of the Moon Pyramid, it will be months before we can start. There are other pyramids where I can continue my research.”
Nadine nodded and took his hand.
Just then, Logan received a reply from Valerie on his PCD. “Here’s another reason for you to go to Washington with us: Valerie says that Sumsari Baltik is alive.” He sighed, turning to Mr. Perrot. “He was a victim of the satellite malfunction last July, though. He is now at the Calhoun Medical Center undergoing therapy.”
“Still, that should be our first stop when we arrive in Washington,” Mr. Perrot said.
Madu looked at his old friend and nodded in agreement.
34
Can anything you have ever done in your life be forgiven?
Yes.
—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA
SOUTHAMPTON, UNITED KINGDOM, 6:00 P.M. LOCAL TIME, MARCH 23, 2070
“So this is where that famous ship began its maiden voyage?” Valerie asked, looking out the helicopter window. “The one that collided with an iceberg?”
“Yes, it sank, killing more than a thousand people,” Chetan answered. “It was called the Titanic. It’s been at the bottom of the Atlantic for almost one hundred sixty years.”
“And Rigel Wright thinks he can raise it after all this time?”
“Of course. He even has plans to build a gigantic museum for it.”
A WCF transport plane had flown them from Zurich to London, where they’d boarded a helicopter to take them over the city of Southampton on the southern coast of England. While social unrest had spread through most of Great Britain during the Great Disruption, the southern coast had been relatively unscathed. The city of London, one hundred forty-four kilometers to the northeast, did not fare so well. A series of earthquakes had shaken the city and caused the Thames River to surge, flooding many of the landmarks along its banks. The fabled timekeeper, Big Ben, had stopped at half past four on the day of the first major earthquake. It remained that way to this day to remind everyone of the moment when the Great Disruption struck. L
ondon Bridge had collapsed into the river, along with portions of the nearby Tower of London. During the worst of the city’s riots, the Beefeaters who guarded the Tower had been overrun, and the Crown Jewels had disappeared, never to be seen again.
“There are hundreds of boats down there,” Valerie said.
“You cannot miss Rigel Wright’s,” Chetan said. “Do you see that boat with the multitiered deck and the long bow? There is a helicopter landing pad on it.”
“That’s not a boat,” Valerie said. “That’s a whole island.”
“That is the Water Shadow,” Chetan said. “It has a crew of eighty and can house thirty guests. It’s the fastest ship ever constructed. It can reach speeds of more than two hundred knots. It is where Mr. Wright spends most of his time.”
“What about his family?” Valerie asked.
Chetan chuckled. “He is a bit of a playboy billionaire.” Valerie gave him a look. “That’s what I read, at least.”
The helicopter banked to the left as it descended toward the Water Shadow. Valerie and Chetan could hear the pilot announce their arrival to the ship’s captain. The copter dropped its landing gear and softly touched down on the ship’s bow. Valerie and Chetan hopped out and were greeted by a middle-aged woman wearing a full-length white dress and a black scarf tied around her neck.
“Welcome to the Water Shadow. My name is Karen,” she said loudly over the sound of the whipping helicopter blades. “I am Mr. Wright’s assistant. He is not here just yet, but I have notified him of your arrival. Please follow me.”
Valerie and Chetan followed Karen down a stairway to a lower deck. As they walked toward the stern, they caught glimpses of lavishly appointed staterooms and passenger cabins through tinted windows. After two more sets of stairs, they stood on a deck almost level with the sea.
“Do we know how long Mr. Wright is going to be?” Valerie asked.
“Shouldn’t be much longer,” Karen replied.
Valerie gazed out on the English Channel, expecting to see an approaching boat. Then she looked up and saw a plane in the sky. “Is he planning to parachute in?”
Journey Through the Mirrors Page 23
