‘Halford?’ asked Ruby.
‘Huh? No, I’m talking about Brad. They thought he was dead, but they got him back. The experiment worked. Kinda. So Halford could show. No mystery there.’
When the relief at the news of Brad’s survival started showing in her expression, her features softened and she began more closely to resemble the serenity of the weighty stone head. But then that piece of information slotted into the others whirling around inside her. The legend of Halford really could be true. She had witnessed their technology, so launching a rocket on a twelve thousand year return trajectory was not impossible. And if mummification could be reversed, then the threat was real.
‘I know it’s not much warmer inside, Ratty, but I think we should get back in before we all turn to stone,’ she said, leading the frozen group into the house. Ratty directed everyone to the library where a devilish fire welcomed them into its hypnotic sphere. Ruby jogged to the kitchen and back to retrieve her copy of the scrolls, determined not to let the subject drop. The mystery of Ratty’s new landlord, however, had subsumed everyone’s attention upon her return.
‘I don’t get it. What kinda schmuck spends their hard-earned dough on a place like this without looking for a profit?’ said Matt.
‘Not all money is hard to earn,’ said the Patient. ‘It could be argued that the royalties which you used to pay for Charlie’s vehicle, in return for him smuggling you to Belize, were not hard-earned. They flow like water, above and beyond that which you yourself admitted would have been sufficient remittance for your literary efforts.’
‘So what?’ asked Matt, unimpressed at being compared to the idiot who paid for Stiperstones Manor.
‘An unfair comparison, perhaps,’ admitted the Patient. ‘The vehicle was a gift, a compensatory gesture. Let us consider another scenario. Could it be that whoever now owns this house cannot legally receive rent?’
‘Like if he’s a crook? Or a kid? Or a dog?’ asked Charlie.
‘It may surprise you to know that there are examples in history of rent being paid to all such types as you mention. Try thinking about it from a logical stance.’
‘Logically you can’t charge rent to yourself if you’re the owner,’ sighed Ruby. ‘Whoever paid for the manor could have registered it in Ratty’s name. An extravagant gesture of altruism, which I hardly believe can have been possible. Now perhaps we can talk about the scrolls? If Brad’s alive then there’s nothing about the Halford story that can’t come true. It’s far more important than whether Ratty owes rent.’
‘Ruby is correct,’ said the Patient. ‘The rent mystery is solved. Let us continue our deliberations about Halford.’
Ratty’s eyes danced excitedly around the room, not knowing where to focus. Impossibly wonderful thoughts were filling his head. The Patient watched him calmly from the leather Chesterfield. Finally, the restless aristocratic eyes settled upon the Patient. Ratty fell forward from his chair onto his knees and crawled across the parquet floor to the feet of the Patient. He knelt there, head bowed as if receiving a knighthood from his monarch. The Patient held out a hand. Ratty kissed it. He understood. He was humbled by gratitude.
Charlie and Matt looked at each other. Matt shrugged. Charlie mimed a limp wrist. Ruby pointed a stern finger at him.
‘Right, moving on, does anyone have anything else to say about the scrolls? Any sparks of inspiration?’ asked Ruby, ignoring Ratty who was busy kissing his floor, his books and his furniture.
‘I thought they said we’re all going to die,’ said Charlie. ‘Brad said that whether or not we see Halford again, we’re all doomed unless the world learns the lessons from the past.’
‘Brad told you that?’ asked Ruby.
‘Well, from a distance. I couldn’t get too close without a peg on my nose.’
‘The lessons from the past are in the scrolls,’ sighed Ruby. ‘That’s what we’re trying to understand. So let’s work it through. Halford lands on Earth tomorrow, right?’
‘After twelve thousand years in space?’ asked Matt. ‘The capsule’s gonna be a block of ice. Nothing will work. No parachutes. No retro-rockets. Bang! He smashes into a million pieces.’
‘If you had paid attention,’ said the Patient, ‘you would know that the spacecraft was designed not to need any active systems. Mathematics and gravity will return it to this planet. Logic suggests it will land in an ocean in order to minimise the stresses on the vehicle.’
‘It’s still going to break up when it hits the sea,’ said Matt.
‘Perhaps,’ suggested the Patient, ‘that is the intention. A body that is essentially dead, sealed in a protective casket, can withstand far greater gravitational loading and impact shock than a live person. The breakup of the capsule would be a failsafe way to release the casket containing the body.’
‘So what stops the sticky fellow from drowning?’ asked Ratty.
‘Sea water,’ said Charlie.
Matt laughed as loudly as Ruby growled.
‘Everyone, we have to take this seriously,’ she said. ‘If you can’t make a sensible contribution to the discussion, Charlie, keep out of it.’
‘I believe he is serious,’ said the Patient. ‘Sea water contains the dissolved nutrients, gases and salts needed to create life. Our biology began in that environment. Is it therefore unreasonable to consider that sea water might trigger reanimation following the mummification process?’
‘I, er, don’t know,’ said Ruby.
‘I mummified my father, just as he mummified his own father, but Otto was obsessed with perfecting the process of reversal. He was preparing to reanimate Josef Mengele now that medical science is capable of treating the illness that killed him, but his attempts to bring back prisoners from mummified stasis were not always successful. The ancient texts from which he took his instructions described a fluid containing sodium, magnesium, sulphur, calcium, potassium, bromine, chloride, hydrogen and oxygen. He spent years trying to perfect the mix. I suspect raw sea water was the answer. And if Halford’s casket is designed to float, then there is no impediment to Halford’s reanimation, even without external assistance.’
‘So the guy lands in the sea,’ said Matt. ‘Floats in his coffin until the water wakes him up. Paddles ashore. Then what? Starts killing everyone? With what?’
‘Alone, only his germs are potentially deadly,’ said the Patient. ‘But ours are equally dangerous to him. Without medical supervision he may succumb to a virus and die before he has a chance to harm anyone.’
‘Or he may trigger a pandemic,’ said Ruby.
‘And what if he gets control of an army?’ asked Matt.
‘If my father had maintained his mind control over my brother, they would have been ready to receive Halford. They would have kept him in isolation, protected from infection, and used his knowledge as the missing link needed to reproduce all of the ancient technologies and create a state with military capability beyond anything the present world has seen. But that won’t happen now. If Halford shows up, I don’t think he can be a credible threat to the world without Orlando’s help.’
‘So why the big hullabaloo in the scrolls about preparing for his second coming?’ asked Ratty.
‘Good question. Let’s work it out. The scrolls were written when society had crashed back to the Stone Age,’ said Ruby. ‘So if Halford returned before civilisation rebuilt its technologies, then he would have had the upper hand, being the only human on the planet with the knowledge to create advanced weaponry.’
‘Sure!’ said Matt, suddenly realising that there would be a tomorrow. ‘That was the danger. It makes sense. But we beat him to it!’
‘Exactly,’ added Ruby. ‘There’s nothing he could achieve now without a sympathetic dictator at his side, and with Orlando no longer under Otto’s influence, he’s going to struggle to find one.’ She smiled and exhaled slowly, contentedly. They had cracked it. Halford could be no immediate threat to a civilisation that had already achieved technological advancement.
‘So would you say that by shooting Orlando and making the Patient guy take Otto’s liver, I kinda saved the world?’ asked Matt.
‘Matt, I think we all played a part,’ said Ruby.
‘My friends,’ said the Patient, ‘it is time I explained to you a little more of what I have recently learned. My brother was fooled by our father. Orlando intended to use the ancient technical knowledge that Halford would provide to make his country powerful, but he did not know of Halford’s evil ways. Otto edited his translation of the Sphinx scrolls so that Orlando had no knowledge that he would be entering into a deal with the devil. Otto’s blinkered determination to fulfil Josef Mengele’s dream of global oppression would have been disastrous for us all, but Otto’s absence in the final days before Tikal’s destruction weakened his control over Orlando for the first time. Orlando began to think for himself. After I saved his life I told him of the true contents of the scrolls. Halford remains a danger if any other nation is naïve enough to attempt to exploit him, but Orlando is planning to ensure that will not happen.’
‘How’s he going to stop the rest of the world getting hold of Halford when he lands?’ asked Ruby. ‘NASA and ESA will be scanning the skies looking for him. A small country like Guatemala won’t have the resources to be the first to locate the rocket.’
‘Otto and Orlando had this planned for months; they had astronomers and recovery ships on standby. But that was before other nations knew what was happening, so Orlando has established a new contact at the front line. She will inform my brother when the time comes. And my brother has a special reception planned for Halford if he gets to him first.’
‘What’s he gonna do?’ asked Matt.
‘There is a small chamber within the Sphinx we found in Temple IV,’ said the Patient. ‘Before Halford can be reanimated, he will be placed within the Sphinx. It will be sealed. And no one need fear Halford again. The transition from the end of the Mayan calendar to the next era will pass peacefully.’
‘I propose a drink, then,’ said Ruby. ‘Let’s toast the end of this baktun, and the start of the next.’
Ratty nodded his approval and headed off to the wine cellar.
‘Guys, what if the date is wrong?’ whispered Charlie, hoping not to be shouted down. ‘I mean, what if his capsule has already landed?’
‘Huh?’ asked Matt.
‘Halford might have crashed in Roswell. Nineteen forty-seven. He’s already here. Might have teamed up with the President and developed those cold war nuclear weapons. Or maybe he became President. Changed his name to Kennedy or something. When someone found out they had to kill him.’
‘That is the daftest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard,’ said Ruby. ‘But it doesn’t matter, Charlie. I really don’t think there’s a threat now, so you can waste time saying whatever rubbish you like.’
‘But what about the connection with your name, Rubes?’ asked Matt. ‘If Halford arrives and Orlando doesn’t get to him, he’s gonna come looking for you. Halford’s gonna think you’re the key to controlling the world.’
‘You know what, Matt? Perhaps I am the key to ruling the world. Why not? I’m sure I can do a better job of it than some!’
They laughed away the tension of the previous days. Ratty returned from the cellar holding a bottle of expensive wine. He looked at the cheerful faces assembled in his library and suddenly dropped the bottle on the parquet floor, glass fragments and Grand Cru spraying over the legs of his friends. He showed no reaction to the exploding Saint-Émilion, but just spread his lips wide and mouthed several silent words before remembering to speak aloud.
‘Scrolls. Warning. One almost forgot. Eggs. Descendants.’
The burbling gibberish extinguished any sign that an intelligent revelation was coming. It was just Ratty being Ratty, Ruby decided.
‘Scrolls,’ he repeated, pacing crunchily back and forth across the stained parquetry. ‘Forgot to mention that I found some. Well, not as such. Not scrolls, I mean. I did find them, but they were pages bound in a book. A notebook. A diary.’
‘Another of Bilbo’s?’ Ruby asked.
‘Good Lordy, no. Different chap this time. Actually more of a chappess, if you catch my drift. Lady Doodah. Friends with everyone. Mitfords. Mosley. Dali. Wrote a lot of shopping lists, mainly – eggs and wotnot, don’t you know – but she had things to say about this and that. Said she found something queer. Locked it up again and threw away the key. Forbade any of the Ballashiels clan ever to open the door again. Wrote a sort of a warning for the descendants, you see, in amongst the reminders to feed the horses and whip the servants. Probably nothing. Shouldn’t have mentioned it, really.’
He looked down at the wine on his floor.
‘Tea, anyone?’
Saturday 22nd December 2012
Monika returned to the desk, placed the steaming coffee down carefully, checked her seat had not been tampered with, looked around for anything that appeared to be out of the ordinary and sat down. It was a routine for her now. A defensive habit. She had learned to live with Rocco’s eccentricities. His games no longer possessed the power to aggravate her. She almost felt a kind of fondness for him. Working next to him was like watching a pet dog playing with a toy. Sometimes she even thought she could feel the beginnings of a smile cracking the sides of her face when she thought about him.
She viewed his conspiracy theories with a little more respect these days. The diligent research that had resulted in finding the identity of her father showed that there was some substance to Rocco, even if she hadn’t been comfortable with the result he had obtained. Gerhard. He had graduated in 1977 and practised as a doctor in London for two years before relocating to Guatemala. Dr Otto Gerhard had been using the pseudonym that his adoptive father had chosen after the war, but when his father died he had reverted to the true family name: Mengele. Monika felt a chill run through her whenever she thought of it. Despite her misgivings she had wanted to write a letter to her father to introduce herself, but Rocco had discovered that Otto’s address no longer existed, his home having sunk into the ground. The trail would have ended there, were it not for the publicity surrounding the new President of Guatemala who was rumoured to have had a close relationship with Otto. Rocco continued to dig for information, and finally presented Monika with the staggering revelation that President Orlando was her half-brother. She was grateful to Rocco, and had even managed to force herself to display her gratitude with a hug.
The shift they’d shared the previous day was unlike any other, however. His playfulness was gone. He barely spoke. An Internet news channel was playing constantly, reporting the events taking place around the globe to mark the end of the Mayan calendar, and he watched it obsessively. Occasionally he would mumble about some or other cover-up, but he appeared genuinely in fear for his life, as if an asteroid were about to come crashing down upon the planet. Which was exactly the kind of thing he need not fear, since he was part of the team tracking the heavens for just such an eventuality. Today his mood had lifted, though, and he was almost back to his normal insufferable self.
Monika sipped her coffee and looked at her screen. As usual, in the five minutes she had spent away from her desk Rocco had programmed the computer to spin the massive radar away from where it was supposed to point in order to check out his latest conspiracy theory.
‘What is it this time?’ she asked. ‘Checking to see if the moon is really a giant potato?’
‘I’m trying to get a lock on a Chinese communications satellite. It looks like it’s out of alignment.’
‘So it’s died. Big deal.’
‘No, a very, very big deal. There’s still power left to re-align it, but no one is doing it. A billion-dollar machine and no one’s looking after it. Why? Because there’s no one to look after it.’
‘You’re not still on about the Chinese scientists getting sick?’
‘They’re keeping things hushed up, and no one knows how bad it is, but if you look in the right places
you can see the effects of a community that’s in trouble.’
Monika gritted her teeth and punched in the correct co-ordinates for directing the radar. Perhaps Rocco had a point. There was a kind of logic in his theory, but a satellite’s misalignment could remain uncorrected for any number of reasons. Slowly her monitor started to fill with the celestial objects she was actually being paid to track. One by one, the computer compared the items it was seeing to a database of what it expected to see. Red blips turned to green as it identified the objects. The algorithms in the software were complex, elegant creations that could predict the orbit of a speck of dust, taking into account the gravitational pull of the Earth, the moon, the sun and the surrounding satellites. To Monika these algorithms were like poetry. The poetry of motion. And they were astonishingly accurate.
There was still a red blip on the screen. She looked closely, waiting for the algorithms to turn it green. It was not on an orbital trajectory according to the tracking data; its path would shortly bring it into the Earth’s atmosphere. Five metres in diameter, announced the screen. Someone must have spotted it before. The computer would match it soon enough. The red would turn green.
She waited.
It stayed red.
She picked up the phone and dialled her brother.
Stewart Ferris
The Ballashiels Mysteries
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For more information about Stewart Ferris
and other Accent Press titles
please visit
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www.accentpress.co.uk
Published by Accent Press Ltd 2016
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ISBN 9781910939390
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Copyright © Stewart Ferris 2016
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The right of Stewart Ferris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Sphinx Scrolls Page 39
