by Brandt Legg
Nanski had clear instructions and a promise of unlimited resources. The challenge was not to broaden the mission to the point where it spun out of control. The Church needed the Eysen, needed it before anyone else learned of its existence. Nanski didn’t even tell Leary about it; the casing was enough. Still he worried. Secrets this dangerous were nearly always impossible to keep.
Sean drove all night except for a quick two-hour nap around four a.m., and made it to his brother’s house just past nine in the morning. He found the hidden key by the front door. The state police officer assigned to watch the house stopped sipping coffee from a thermos. The Jeep was the wrong color: they’d been looking for red, but primer grey was easy enough to cover, the plates matched, and even from a distance; Sean fit the description. This is it, he thought. The trooper radioed for back-up as he watched the suspected terrorist enter the house.
Sean found no trace of his brother, but he did notice the house seemed neater than usual. Maybe now he should call his girlfriend; she was smart- way smarter than him- but did he want to involve her? He sat on the couch to think and almost immediately nodded off.
The ringing phone jarred him. Hoping it might be Josh, he ran to the kitchen and answered it. “Sean, there’s an undercover cop watching the house. More are on the way to arrest you. Get out of there now, leave from the back door. You’ll never get away in your Jeep.”
“Who is this?”
“A friend of Rip’s. Hurry!” the man shouted, “Get out now!” then hung up. Booker’s agents, parked nearly a block behind the state trooper, watched the house through binoculars and saw a front shade move ever so slightly. Moments later, Sean sprinted through a small strip of trees that separated Josh’s house from another neighborhood. By the time the SWAT van pulled up ten minutes later, he had put a mile between himself and the house.
Gale gazed at the books covering the walls from floor to ceiling. Glass doors enclosed the shelves on the south wall, protecting the oldest volumes. A tall window in the middle provided light and a view of the lawn and a small pond with an arched bridge to a tiny island the size of a king-sized bed. She settled into the wide windowseat on an old faded leather cushion and turned to take in the room while waiting for Rip. His uncle had purchased the house furnished with the books included; many of which went back to the original occupants. Gale replaced the volume she was looking at, an 1814 edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, and was moving across the well-worn Oriental rug when Rip entered.
He placed his pack on the long narrow library table and, with a chance to study what they’d risked so much to protect, pulled out half the casing again. He’d learned from Booker that the other half was now in the hands of the FBI or worse, the Vatican. Gazing at the incredible object felt overpowering.
“Not only does this one object singlehandedly prove my Cosega Theory,” Rip began, “it dramatically alters the Earth’s history.” He didn’t need Sweedler to tell him it had been buried for eleven million years. No other explanation made sense. But he knew that the date of origin would eventually need to be proven in order to satisfy the scientific community. “Will I ever get that chance?” he wondered.
“If this is as old as that cliff, doesn’t it actually change our place in the universe?” Gale asked.
“I couldn’t argue with that statement.” His entire career, exploring ancient layers of earth all over the planet, had not prepared him. This wasn’t just another stone artifact of a sophisticated society that had survived millennia; it wasn’t just the missing link of evolution; in fact, it wasn’t just proof of the Cosega Theory. The casings and the Eysen made them all, and every other fact of science, history, or religion a lie.
“I can’t believe someone carved these symbols eleven million years ago,” Gale said, rubbing her hand over the intricate circles and lines. “I mean my mind can’t even fathom one million years.”
“A few years back, I worked with a team in Australia researching the oldest known piece of earth. It was a tiny speck of zircon crystal 4.4 billion years old. I was in awe of the incomprehensible age of the thing, but that was the universe at work. This casing was done by human hands.” He pulled his laptop out of the pack and plugged it in. “Everything society believes today tells us that this casing would have been carved by apes eleven million years ago. Modern man didn’t exist yet!”
As spectacular as the casing was, it paled next to the Eysen with its highly polished black metallic look and eerie glow. He set the Eysen atop a pillow, in the center of the table, next to the casing, and the Odeon. During his career, he’d seen nearly every substantial artifact from history’s grandest civilizations that archaeology had uncovered, but all of them combined did not come close to the beauty, mystery, or impact of the three objects before him. Rip realized he’d been holding his breath and finally exhaled. He and Gale fell into a reverent silence; as if the whole world hushed, while they took in the enormity of what they had.
Other than the three inlaid gold lines on each, the Odeon and the Eysen were featureless, unlike the ornate carvings in the casing. The Eysen possessed a depth; the lights they’d seen a few days earlier divulged a deeper secret.
“Ready?” Rip looked at Gale. “Let’s see what the sun shows us.”
Leaving the casing behind, Gale carried the Odeon, and Rip the Eysen to a small deck behind the house. They carefully put the objects down, and waited.
Chapter 20
Sean ran for four or five miles before slowing down. Within a couple of hours, he arrived at Jefferson Davis Highway and found the Greyhound station. Sweat dripped from his face when he reached the ticket counter. Forty minutes until the next bus for Virginia Beach. I can do that, he thought, he had just enough cash for the $46.50 ticket. If all went well he’d be at his parents’ oceanfront house at 68th and Atlantic Avenue by six p.m. This was something he needed to tell them in person; he dreaded his mother’s reaction.
Two hours into Sean’s trip, Barbeau, still in Erie, gave the order for the SWAT unit to storm Josh’s house. The Virginia State Police had surrounded the house within six minutes of Sean’s getaway. Half an hour later, the FBI showed up and negotiations began. For almost four hours they tried to raise their target with all methods available, Sean being too important to risk killing.
Barbeau didn’t like the coincidence of Josh Stadler’s death. It worried him that organized crime or someone else might be involved. He might be missing something big. Sean could get him to Gale and Rip. The Jeep was already being printed and dissected. Barbeau, in constant contact with the field commander throughout the siege, finally ran out of patience. They were desperate to talk to Sean.
Snipers were in position on nearby roofs, TV film crews had tape rolling as tear gas canisters were shot into every window. Moments later, SWAT officers kicked in the front door and smashed the sliding glass door from the back. Barbeau waited on the line for almost eight minutes until he heard, “Negative, target is absent.”
“What is this, the Keystone Cops?” he shouted into the phone. Most of a day had been wasted on a major lead for nothing. How had Sean Stadler escaped? People would be suspended. There had also not been a single sighting of Gaines or Asher, in Pennsylvania or anywhere else since they left the camp. “All we’ve got is an empty get-away vehicle and an old bowl carved out of rock,” Barbeau barked.
Hall just stared at a yearbook photo of Sean and muttered to himself, “This scrappy kid is going to give us a boatload of trouble.
Nanski and Leary got the report and were told to give Pennsylvania one more day and then return to Virginia to pick up Sean’s trail. “Sean Stadler is the best chance we have of finding the professor,” Pisano told them. The Fredericksburg standoff made the networks’ national feeds, reporting that a suspected terrorist had eluded the FBI. However, law enforcement officials were refusing to release a name or a photo of the suspect; citing national security concerns. Nanski and Leary watched it on CNN, a typical story – all photos and fluff – s
hort on facts.
Nothing happened for a long two minutes, while Gale and Rip stood watching the artifacts. Then, suddenly, purple and yellow lights emanated from the otherwise solid black Eysen. And while the Odeon appeared unchanged by the sun, the Eysen’s light show continued to build. They moved back several feet to what they thought might be a safe distance. “I wonder, I mean this…” Rip’s words collapsed, he could not believe what he was seeing and kept looking away from the Eysen to the house, the trees, anything to maintain his grip on reality. A mystical event unfolded in front of them, standing became a burden, and they sank to their knees.
The lights grew in brightness, and other colors appeared – violets, pinks, aquas, yellows, golds, etc. The colors formed circles, figure-eights, triangles, diamonds, then more complex patterns, faster and faster, until they saw incredibly intricate geometric shapes. The lights merged until no black remained in the top half of the Eysen. And then, astonishingly, an image appeared.
“Oh, God, can you? Are you seeing this? Gale, my God! I just . . . Can you see it’s a picture, it’s showing us a picture.” Rip laughed nervously.
Tears ran from Gale’s eyes as she held her face. She opened her mouth to respond, but no sound would come. Then the image came into focus, the display showing perfect resolution, higher than any high-def they’d ever seen, and, in that absolute clarity, they saw the planet Earth.
Suddenly, they heard music, an opera, a tenor. They took their eyes off the Eysen for the first time and looked at each other in wonderment. For an instant, they thought the music came from the Eysen, until it grew louder, coming from the trees – a man singing opera. Rip glanced back at the Eysen; the Earth image rotated slowly inside. He threw the shirt it had been wrapped in over it just as the man emerged from the woods singing the best-known aria from Puccini’s La Bohème.
“Oh, Jesus, it’s Topper.” Rip exhaled. He realized he’d been terrified. They were wanted, federal fugitives; Josh had been murdered by someone, the same someone now pursuing them. In their possession they had some kind of window into the past. Rip’s heart pounded.
Gale took his hand. “Your hands are ice-cold.”
Topper waved when he saw them.
“I’ll be right back.” He ran the Eysen and the Odeon back into the house, stashing them in the backpack, which he stuffed in a library cabinet.
“I see you two have introduced yourselves,” Rip said, returning outside and finding Gale and Topper in conversation on the deck.
Gale nodded. She still hadn’t recovered from the Eysen.
Topper hugged Rip. “We just needed some R and R,” Rip said, making quick eye contact with Gale to make sure she hadn’t already said something else. “And we really don’t want anyone to know we’re out here.”
“This is the place for all that.” Topper winked, and began to lead Gale toward the pond. “You know I carved that bridge, did it maybe thirty, thirty-five years back. Ripley was just a little thing then and his mother didn’t want him crossin’ that water on some ol’ boards he’d laid out.”
Gale looked back at Rip, hoping he had a plan to get rid of Topper so they could return to the Eysen. Rip, still dazed from the sight, shrugged and followed. It was muggy, temperatures in the eighties, humidity even higher. The three of them slowly crossed the bridge and walked the property for more than an hour, talking about Rip’s childhood. Once Topper discovered that Gale worked for National Geographic, he recounted many of his favorite issues, most from before she’d been born.
“Topper, it’s been great seeing you,” Rip finally hinted at a farewell.
“Oh,” he looked hurt. “I guess I need to be gettin’ back to tendin’ my garden.”
“But you’ll join us for dinner tomorrow, won’t you?” Gale asked, trying to repair his feelings.
“I’d like that, Miss,” he said, with a lingering stare. “Y’all watch the trees, leaves are blowin’ back. There’s a storm coming up.” The aria picked up again as Topper disappeared into the woods.
Chapter 21
With Topper gone, Rip retrieved the Eysen. This time, he yanked the umbrella out of the patio table and rested the Eysen in the hole. Gale brought out a big salad and sourdough bread. They pulled up chairs and watched as the sequence that had captivated them earlier repeated itself. “Obviously, this thing is solar-powered,” Gale said. Rip, still feeling completely overwhelmed by the impossible experience, took notes. Once the earth began to rotate, they could see the planet looked different than the modern Earth they knew. From the vantage point of the North Pole, a smaller and more circular ice cap existed, and a striking difference could be seen in the continents. There seemed to be only two large land masses. They could pick out features from coastlines like Greenland and South America but everything appeared closer together. “Rip, these images are taken from above the planet, from space.” The details of the features were almost identical to satellite photos.
He let out a long breath, “You’re right. It’s impossible.”
“So either this belonged to an advanced civilization that traveled into space, or someone brought it here from another planet,” she reasoned. The earth revolved inside the Eysen as they continued to deliberate the implications of their discovery. At least ten minutes went by before they realized that nothing new was happening, the Earth was simply going round and round. They studied the image, which appeared three-dimensional, and was confined to the top half of the Eysen. The lower portion remained black. Rip picked it up and the image portion shifted so that it stayed on top no matter how he held it. “It’s like a needle on a compass always pointing north,” Gale said.
“Like there’s an outer skin or something,” Rip added. Almost immediately, the Earth stopped spinning and began to grow smaller. As it shrank, other planets came into view. First Mars, and at almost the same time, they noticed the moon revolving around the Earth. The scale continued to shift; Venus and Mercury came into view, then the Sun and the other planets in the solar system. He moved the Eysen in his hands to get a better angle and the image zoomed in onto the surface of Mars. It showed far more detail than our current mappings of the planet, and something else, something extraordinary – green. There were large sections of green vegetation on Mars!
“It must be heat-sensitive or something. I think my movements are causing the images to change,” he said.
The Carolina sky grew darker as thunderheads moved in. The imposing clouds quickly smothered the sun, but the Eysen kept flashing images. He moved his hands and got pictures from a jungle, an island during a volcanic eruption, and more planetary tours. The Eysen seemed to be displaying the composition of a large crater being analyzed when the first raindrops hit. The sky suddenly opened into a deluge and they reluctantly dashed inside.
Even in the house, the images continued. A series of moving pictures flashed showing what appeared to be dwellings – round and perfectly smooth – almost matching the surrounding grounds and vegetation. They wanted desperately to see inside one of the structures but as soon as he moved his hands, it switched to a large shark swimming. He slid his fingers up the Eysen and the scene changed to a huge forest fire.
“It’s like an interactive issue of National Geographic!” Gale exclaimed.
“Jesus, look at this,” Rip said slowly. The screen now showed rows of symbols like those carved on the casing. “Gale, get the casing, quick.” She ran to the library. “Never mind,” he said deflated. “It’s gone off again.” They would have to wait until the sun returned in the morning.
“But we don’t have to stop.” Gale said. “Don’t you see? The Eysen has stolen the show, with its mysteries and lights, but it just showed us that the key may be hidden in the carvings of the casings.”
“Maybe you’re not just another annoying reporter,” Rip said, reaching for the casing. “What do circles represent? I mean not just to us, but throughout nature, across time?”
“Infinity. The circle is a symbol of completeness, an unbroken line wi
th no beginning, no end. And there are those who see it as representing the divine or God.” She touched the casings lightly, tracing the patterns. “See these circles with the dots in the middle? That is an actual ancient symbol for the source or God.”
“You know a lot about symbols?”
“I believe there’s more to the world than we can see, than we know.”
“Are you religious?”
“I prefer the term spiritual.”
“Hmm. What else do circles mean? The sun, earth –”
“Other planets.”
“The moon, Saturn’s rings.”
“Ripples from a pebble in a pond. Circles appear all throughout nature; flowers, oranges, rings of a tree, sand dollars, eyes – pupils and irises. I’ve even seen crop circles with some of these patterns.”
“Crop circles? Great! Another reason for my peers to ridicule me,” Rip said.
“I did a story on them; they’re real.”
“Sure, some can’t be explained, but there have been enough that were hoaxes that mainstream science has all but given up on them.”
“Yeah, feed us enough lies and we forget what’s true. One day they’ll deny the Eysen ever existed,” she said.
Rip didn’t respond.
“The circles look like orbits, maybe planetary alignments,” Gale said.
“Hmm. Are you into astrology, too?”
“The study and movement of heavenly bodies is astronomy, not astrology,” she replied.
“The circles are a language, a message.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ve been looking for this thing for almost twenty-five years and no one would put this much work into decorations. It has a purpose and that is to preserve and convey information.”
“Couldn’t they just do that through the Eysen?”
“Maybe, but what if the Eysen didn’t last? And, perhaps, like you said, the casings are a key to unlocking the Eysen.”
