Talos calmly reached out and grabbed the old man by the arm as he tried to run past the last of the great Titans.
"You will stay to see the end result of your witchery, old one!"
As he spoke, the floor beneath them opened and lava spewed forth to cover the running slaves and cowering guards. Then, a rush of seawater swallowed even the eruption as portions of the giant cavern disappeared into the void that had opened beneath them. The last to fall was the great paddlewheel.
A mile above the cavern, Androlicus watched as the great columns started to tumble inside the Empirium Chamber, but the immense crystals that made up the geodesic dome held firm against the natural forces arrayed against it.
As the old man watched the end of the world start to unfold around him, he quickly reached for the knife he had saved for the inevitable conclusion of his civilization. He raised the sharp blade high, but just as he started to strike his chest over his beating heart, the city started to slip and rise. His last thoughts as the ceiling of marble crushed the life from him: The treasure is our salvation, and we will live on.
As panicked citizens ran from the crumbling walls, they had no sense of the cataclysm that was literally sucking their great island from beneath their feet. At first it was just the outer edges that vanished in an eruption of lava and seawater, then more and more went as trees would in a strong wind; first a wave of earth rose thirty feet as it smashed toward the main city, then the very ground broke in and fell.
All at once, with nothing below the island to hold its weight, it simply folded up like a book closing, and the great three rings of Atlantis, a thousand kilometers in diameter, slammed together, burying the intact Crystal Dome in its center as the main island slid beneath the waves. Atlantis vanished into fire and water. And as the earth settled and a terrifying silence grew, the two tectonic plates beneath the island started to settle into their new homes, fifteen kilometers from their original position.
Ten thousand years of civilization disappeared in less than three minutes, the seafloor swallowing it whole. The earthquake--the largest in the history of the planet--had other effects as the great shaking coursed along the fault lines that had been so meticulously and wrongly mapped for hundreds of centuries. The twig-and-mud huts of Egypt and Greece were vaporized as the earth jumped and settled. The sea emptied around the isles of Sparta, creating a large barren spot that would five thousand years later become the Sparta plain. The sea rushed from the shores of Africa and drained into the gaping maw of the wounded earth. The sea retreated as the coastline of modern northern Egypt saw the light of day for the first time, and then the earthquake swallowed whole the barbarian slaves that had come so near to freedom. A population of nearly a million souls was cut down to twenty thousand.
The wave of power continued through the large mountains to the north, crumbling and crushing the barbarians beneath tons of rock, to set their own civilizations back four thousand years. The full length and breadth of Italy made its first appearance as its leading edges fell into the void, but would soon be covered by the retreating waters, until again it rose from the unsettled sea a month later.
The fault line continued to crumble all the way to the Pillars of Heracles. The wave of earth actually made the small mountain range of the pillars jump and then quickly collapse back, creating a difference in height of one-quarter mile in its features and separating the future land of Spain from its African neighbor. The great western ocean started its run into the Atlantean-Africanus Plain, washing away all the features of ten million years. The great sea filled the void left by the Atlantean science, coming together with tidal force that sent water and earth a kilometer into the air, creating, through rain and smoke, a new ice age.
The waters vented their murderous rage into the lands of barbaric Troy and Mesopotamia, creating a great new sea where only a freshwater lake had been before, and would become the great Black Sea. Still the waters roared forth, creating their own weather system, which, on their march east, created the rains and the great flood that would eventually lead to the legends of Gilgamesh and Noah.
The sea took forty days to recede into the basin where the continent of Atlantis once sat. The rush of seawater crushed the lives of almost everything living north and south of the Mediterranean. In the south, the flood still followed the jagged line of the Nile River into Ethiopia, where the remains of a once-great civilization would be buried for thousands of years in a bleak landscape of desert.
The earth would rumble and shift for five years as the world of the West and Middle East settled into the vast area the modern world would come to be known as the Mediterranean Basin.
The Age of Enlightenment was over and the battle of man was just beginning. The last act of a surviving boat crew and citizens of Atlantis, the last of the great Greek gods as they were once thought of, was to bury, on behalf of a forward-thinking Androlicus, the great secrets of science and technology, the very history of a vanished world, and a dire warning of consequence of mind and arrogance. But most of all, the great treasure of Atlantis was safe, and the very means to end the world were hidden a thousand miles from where the Ancients had invented it, where Androlicus hoped that the great chart could never be matched with the weapon again.
However, the arrogance and the desire of some men to hold sway over their brothers would arise repeatedly, as sure as the sun had risen on that last day of the Ancients.
GREECE
46 BCE
The ancient temple lay in ruins. Built by the Greeks who had perished fighting the Atlanteans over thirteen thousand years before, it had seen the soldierly faces of Achilles, Agamemnon, and Odysseus and heard the scholarly voices and teachings of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, who had never known of the Greek civilization before theirs. Now the trampled and time-worn marble floor was crossed by the leather-clad feet of Gaius Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.
Pompey hugged his friend in a powerful embrace. The gold-embossed eagles on their chest armor came together with a soft sound, almost as comforting to the old soldiers as a mother's soothing voice had once been in their young ears.
"So, old friend, why have you asked to see me in this place where our ancient ancestors plotted and dreamed so much? I thought you would have been more comfortable meeting at one of the villas of your wife's family, and maybe a just a little closer to home."
Julius Caesar broke the embrace and smiled at his friend as he turned away and removed his scarlet cloak. He walked over to a fallen pillar and slowly sat, placing his cloak beside him. His hair was askew, and Pompey could see that he was perplexed about some matter.
"I have news, brother. News that will astound even you, the down-to-earth Pompey, sensible Pompey, wise and wonderful--"
"Okay, old friend, you have my attention. No need to spread the olive oil on the bread further," Pompey said as he removed his helmet and sat next to Caesar.
Gaius looked at the older man and smiled. It was an honest look that Pompey had seen many times before in child and man. It foretold an idea, of which his old friend always had an abundance.
"The old stories told to us about the Ancients, our forefathers--remember listening to them as children?" He looked at Pompey and grinned. "Not that you ever were a child."
"True, true. I remember listening to the stories with you upon my knee, but please, continue," he said, looking at the rising moon.
"One particular story from the Ancients intrigued us as boys more than most. You know of which story I speak?"
"Of course: we used to dream about the great power. You speak of the Wave?" He looked from the moon to his friend.
Caesar nodded and then slapped his friend on the leg.
"Your mind isn't as addled as rumor would have it. Yes, the wave." His gaze went from Pompey to the worn marble floor. "What would you say if I told you I have been searching for the forbidden hiding place of the library of our ancestors?"
Pompey stood so suddenly that his helmet fell from his grasp and
hit the hard floor of the temple. The noise was so loud in that revered place that both sets of personal bodyguards turned their way. Pompey looked back at the soldiers until they looked away. Then he returned his fatherly stare to Gaius until the younger man looked up.
"You know searching for the scrolls is forbidden. Have you gone mad? If the rest of our brothers and sisters find out, they will have you banished and shunned. Brother, tell me you jest."
Caesar stood slowly and took Pompey by the shoulders and held him in place.
"For you and the others it is easy, your families are like stone, while mine was weak and always without the funds to make the family Juliai as powerful as the rest of you."
Pompey shook off the embrace and turned away.
"Because the family Juliai," he turned back to face his friend with a sad look about his features, "has always been dreamers, Gaius old friend. You and your fathers have always sought the easy way to power. The rest of the children of Atlantis have always been there for support, but we cannot continue to throw money at your dreams. We share the consulship, isn't that enough?"
"Mere money is no longer a problem."
"Yes, we know you married into wealth, and I hear you are doing wonderfully in Gaul and Britannia, and that alone should be enough--but not with you, Gaius, wealth isn't what you seek. Do not look so shocked. You may fool the rest of our brothers and sisters, but this is me, old friend, I know what it is you seek, and this quest will lead to your destruction."
"I have many soldiers seeking out the scrolls of our people, and now I have knowledge of where they were hidden." Caesar walked a few paces and then turned. "We are allied not only by marriage and blood but by power. With the tales that were told about the power of the wave we could rule all the earth, bring all mankind together for--"
"The first family of man will not abide this, Gaius," Pompey stated sternly. "Remember the last renegade of the Ancients, our brother and my joint consul Licinius Crassus? He too dreamed of the power of the old story. The families of the Ancients made him pay for his adultery to our new faith by never returning to the old way, and now you, Brother Gaius, now you. My friend, you are diving blindly into black waters I and the others cannot allow you to swim."
Caesar faced his friend, the man who had married his daughter, Julia, and frowned.
"You will not stand by me, brother?"
The light of knowledge suddenly filled the eyes of Pompey. "Spain! I had heard that you sent that little monster Antony there on some sort of mysterious mission. It was he who found the trail of our ancestors, is this not so?"
"My time spent in that horrible place had its merits. Spain is the hiding place and we will find the scrolls."
Pompey shook his head in shame. "If you continue this madness, I will have no choice but to inform the rest of the society of your actions to discover the old ways. That will end you, Gaius; it will end us."
Caesar looked at his friend and then reached down and removed his cloak from the fallen pillar and swung it so that it barely missed Pompey as he clipped it around his shoulders.
"I must return to Gaul, there is an uprising there."
"Gaius, please do not do this thing. The family of man will send troops to Spain to thwart any effort you may make to recover the old scrolls. You will be banished from the brotherhood of Ancients!"
"I have more than just a few of our brothers and sisters on my side; they are not afraid to rise again as many of you are. I ask you one more time, Pompey, join us in the quest," he placed the golden helmet on his head and then his right hand went to his sword, not hiding the threat the action well conveyed, "or there will be war among us, and that will destroy the family of the Ancients forever. Is that what you want?"
Pompey's eyes were on the ivory handle of Caesar's sword, and then they moved upward to his determined eyes.
"I see far more than you know, Gaius. I see ambition that would allow no interference from the family, even from me." Pompey slowly picked up his fallen helmet and placed it on his head. "I will thwart you, Gaius, even unto the destruction of our ancestral heritage. Even unto splitting us into two factions, one against the other. Leave the Key and the scrolls in their place, I beg you one last time!"
"Return to Rome, old man, and from here on out, stay out of our way. I came to this sacred place to convince you of our true calling, that our race must--must, I say--be the dominate force on this planet. But alas, you have become a timid old man, not deserving of being an Ancient."
Pompey watched Caesar turn away, his scarlet cape blotting out the rising moon as it fanned out in his haste. The old shoulders of the Roman coconsel slumped as he watched his friend leave. The younger Gaius was right about his age, he was tired, but he knew that he would have to invigorate not only himself but other brothers and sisters of the Ancients in an attempt to stop Gaius from finding the scrolls.
Gaius Julius Caesar turned back one last time and saw his friend among the ruins. The face he could not see, but the determined stance of Pompey in the moon's glow told Caesar that they would meet on the field of disharmony, and the Ancient family of man would divide forever.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
JUNE 1875
Karl Von Heinemann cursed his colleague and best friend Peter Rothman. The argument had gone on for days and he was tired of it. He paced in the study of his large home and turned on him once again.
"Yes, the artifacts were found by you. But you are being shortsighted in thinking this is but an archaeological find. It is much more than that, can't you see? Give me two years, that is all I ask, then you may go public with what you found in Spain. After all, it was I who led you to the papers of Caesar, without which you never would have narrowed the search enough to find the treasures."
The younger man sat in the overstuffed chair and packed his pipe. He, too, was frustrated from days of arguing. Heinemann was not only his friend and mentor but his financial benefactor, without whose generous funding this very argument would have been moot.
"The site is still open and we are not sure if all the artifacts have been recovered. What if," he turned in his chair and looked at the older man, "and I say this knowing how tenacious my colleagues around the world can be, the site is found and one of them announces the news of this discovery? I, and I daresay you, will be the loser in that event, and all for the sake of charts and graphs and a device? One that, if constructed, could only be used as a weapon? I daresay the idea is sheer madness."
"Delaying the announcement and results of your dig a few years is not that much to ask. After all, the twenty thousand marks released to you financed this great discovery. Hard and real science must take the lead here, not the fanciful dreams of a dead civilization!"
Peter stood so suddenly that his tobacco pouch slipped from his lap and fell to the Persian rug.
"How dare you--how dare you even suggest your work is the only real science! We piece together history from what we dig up out of the earth, and this discovery we have made is a complete and utter alteration of everything we have come to learn about the past, and you daresay yours is the only real science! The art of war, sir, is no science; it is an evil that must be stopped before we discover a quick and sure method of self-destruction. We keep the secret of the Key and the Wave from the rest of the world, and bring them together with the magic that is our history."
The old professor's eyes widened and his lips were set in a grimace of outrage.
Peter let his shoulders sag. He regretted the words as they passed his lips and now he feared he had caused irrevocable damage to the most important man in his life. If not for Karl's work with the armaments industries, he would never have had the funds to find the treasure trove of artifacts in Spain in the first place. He knew himself to be a hypocrite in accepting the very money he was now ridiculing; after all, it was Von Heinemann who had reached out to the other side of the family of Ancients in an attempt to heal the old wounds between the Juliai and themselves.
"Perhaps you are
right, even though your words are disrespectful."
Karl's words caught Peter off guard. Had the argument come down to showing this brilliant man what it was he was asking of him? Had he seen the light of this phenomenal find for what it was?
"My words were foolish and said in anger, my old friend. I respect you and your work more than any man in the world, and I say that not because you are my financier for my research but because you are truly honorable and a brother that few of the Ancients, on either side, understand. We need this disharmony between us to stop, but in order to do that, it's not knowledge of the weapon we need, just the words of our people that have long been silenced."
"When do you plan on announcing your discovery to the world?"
Peter smiled, thinking that he had finally won over the old man. He felt nothing but relief as he once again sat down and looked at his mentor.
"The question should be stated correctly as: When will we make the announcement? You must be by my side. It was your grant and your foresight that saw the potential and it was you who came across the trail of Julius Caesar's attempts in Spain to find the treasure trove that led me to the find. Your scholars have deciphered our ancient tongue, so I insist you be there for the accolades. This can only help bring your Juliai Coalition and my side of the family back together to live in harmony with the rest of the world. The old ones of your side, as you said, no longer desire control of the world the way some of our ancestors did. The purification of the races, I hope, is a thing that will continue, but at a more reasonable pace."
Karl nodded, gracefully accepting the invitation to join the young archaeologist in his press release about the results of his dig in Spain.
"If I may ask, all is secured at the site in Spain and at the warehouse where the items have been moved?"
"Yes; the men you sent to Spain have the site under complete guard twenty-four hours a day. It helped immensely, actually buying the barren property under a false corporate name, and what could be more secure than one of your munitions depots for the storage of the artifacts and scrolls? My side of the family will of course be notified of our joint operation, and they will undoubtedly be pleased the rift has been sealed between us. I daresay they will insist joyfully on joint control of the find."
Ancients (event group thriller) Page 3
