At a motion from the Eye, one of his men yanks the woman away. He pushes her to her knees and pulls out the same bloody scimitar that had just seen action.
“No!” her husband yells, but he too is restrained, dragged away from the girl until she stands there, arms splayed, hands empty.
“You’re my gift,” the Eye says. “But you must understand that I have to ensure your compliance. I leave the choice to you, Hummingbird. Your mother or your father. Which would you have stay in this world?”
She turns to him, and now meets his cold one-eyed stare.
“No,” the father yells. “You can’t make her choose. Take me, kill me.” He struggles, almost frees himself but then the butt of a rifle slams into his back and pins him to the rocky sand.
“Choose,” the Eye repeats, stepping closer so his hulking shadow envelops the girl. His robes flow and whip in the rising winds and sand devils blow around them both.
“Please don’t…” the mother whimpers.
The girl looks over to her, a cry on her lips. “Mother—”
“Good enough for me,” the Eye says, and nods to his man. The woman’s head scarf is tugged back. Her neck exposed and then torn in a jagged, swift cut as the blade digs deep. Flesh and muscle parting, blood escaping. Her eyes go cold with surprise and then… acceptance.
The Hummingbird turns away, an unvoiced cry in her throat.
The father whimpers his breath into the rocks.
And the girl focuses not on the object of her hatred, but on a lone boy standing in the crowd. A grime-faced curly-haired boy her own age. A boy trembling with fear, but whose eyes hold such emotion. He struggles against the clutches of his parents, who hold him back from running to the girl…
-His one friend.
The Hummingbird shakes her head slightly at him as if to say, ‘not now’.
“It is done,” the Eye says matter-of-factly. He points to the girl’s father. “Break his legs, bind him and bring him with us.” Then he kneels down, takes the girl’s chin in his hands and uses a dirty thumb to wipe a tear from her eyes. “You’ll do as I say from now on. You keep us safe, and your father lives. These villagers live. Fail me, and they all join your mother.”
With a flourish, his black robes whipping around, he scoops up the Hummingbird, sets her on his horse and climbs in the saddle behind her. With a joyous shout, he races toward the cliffs.
“And now, my sweet. You will help us navigate the tunnels, and when we have found a place of safety deep within the mountains, my brethren will join us, and our work can truly begin.”
Into the cavern, darkness covering them. A seeping of blue forms around the edges of the vision. Closing over the sparkling reality of everything in the center. The white of the horse’s mane, the thickness of the leather harness, the saddle, and the shaking little hands that hug the horse’s neck, drawing comfort from petting the magnificent beast.
“You will sleep,” the Eye says, “only when I let you. When I am in slumber you must cloud our presence—in the past, the present and the future—as I know you can do. Just as you hid yourself and your parents from me for months. You will do all this, and your father will live.” He strokes her hair as the veil of blue encircles the entirety of the vision. And his last words follow Phoebe out of it…
“The Eye and the Hummingbird. You and I, child. We will be unstoppable.”
#
Complete BLUE.
Phoebe pulled back. Twitching, eyelids fluttering. Dimly aware of the plane descending, the pressure tightening in her eyes. Stay in it, she thought. Focus… retreat, find something…
Back in the clearing. The villagers disbanding, returning to the fields. Tending to the dead. Saying prayers and moving on.
Except for one.
The curly-haired boy.
He slips away from his parents as they go to mourn and prepare the funerals. Scrambles toward the wall of caves, the place that holds such mystery for him, even though for others the caves are used merely for shelter, for makeshift homes.
He follows the tracks of the one-eyed man. Enters the cavern and quickly makes his way after them. Descending deep into the mountainside. Coming to a branching trail, narrowing passageways.
He follows the light ahead, dimming. But he sticks to the shadows and creeps along.
#
Blinking, Phoebe stirred and opened her eyes. Yawned and popped her ears.
Gotcha, she thought. The boy is the key.
And then she noticed Orlando, eyelids moving rapidly. His hand, wielding the pencil, was a blur of motion, creating a series of lines and diagrams, twisting trails through a maze.
“You’re seeing it too,” she whispered, but Orlando kept drawing. His lips were dry, cracked, and his face slick with sweat. Phoebe couldn’t help but smile. His face, so scrunched up tight, muscles in his neck taught. His curly unkempt hair falling over his face. Before she knew it, she found herself touching his hair, brushing it with her fingers as he dreamt.
“Sweet and productive dreams, my prince.”
#
Orlando zeroed in on the boy at once. At first he was but a shadow, a darker silhouette, like a jellyfish bobbing in the blue depths. But the motion was there, pulling at the remote-vision.
Ask the right question, get the right answer. Orlando smiled as he dropped deeper into the trance, willing himself to see it—to follow someone outside of the shield, someone else who tracked the girl. Come on, come to focus. Ah, there you are.
The boy, returning to the caves at night. With a knapsack full of an assortment of dried meats and a few nuts, a dirty bottle of water, an oil lamp, and a blanket. He stopped before the great sandstone cliff and gazed up at the hollow niche. He had been born after the statues’ destruction, but he often came here in the starlight and used his imagination, dreaming up a magnificent protector, a wise and living god to care for the village. And especially for Nadjee, the one they called the Hummingbird.
He moved forward into the cave and retraced his steps from earlier. He had played in these caves all his life, searching out their deepest regions, following miles of twisting passageways, until the rebel Taliban took up residence in some of the outlying tunnels and set up traps and mines. His older cousin, Jalik, had lost a foot in one of the subterranean passages last winter and then his parents had forbade any further play or exploration within the sacred mountain.
But this was different.
He scampered inside
And Orlando followed. Unconsciously sketching the map, diagramming the layout of branching corridors, dead-end caverns and places where the boy noted spring-mines or stepped over wire-triggered explosives.
On and on he moved, cautiously, reverently as if he made his way through the winding intestines of some immense, slumbering deity.
He slowed at one point, glancing to his left into a deep shadowy recess. The darkness blurred and the boy retreated, his back against a wall.
A haze of bright blue pierced out from the shadows—an instant before obscuring the figure of a man in white robes. A kindly face, a bald head and a long beard. A hand reaching out…
What the hell? Orlando thought, grimacing in a migraine-like vise of pain.
But then it was gone—the blue fading, fading, replaced by the dim orange glow of the oil lamp off the dusty rock cavern walls. The boy, moving again. He glances back, toward that alcove and the murky shadows. Shakes his head, then continues.
And Orlando resumes his sketching.
After another twenty minutes of winding passages, twists and turns, the boy slows. Extinguishes his lamp, and eases toward the faint glow at the end of the descending passage.
He creeps to the edge, where he hears soft voices.
It’s the girl’s voice, and the boy smiles, almost chokes on his gratitude for her safety. But then he hears her words…
“Don’t hurt him, please don’t…”
“Sorry, little one.” The Eye’s voice. “He’s managed to track us, and can’
t be allowed to live.”
“No, please no, please!”
The boy freezes, then scampers back.
But he’s too slow.
Armed men turn the corner and descend upon him.
The last thing he—and Orlando—hears is the swishing of blades. Quick. Painless.
Then darkness.
#
Temple shook him, and when Orlando opened his eyes—streaming with tears—he forced himself to focus on Phoebe to help ground his dislocation.
“You’re back,” she said. “Back. Just relax. Take a deep breath.”
“They killed him,” he whispered. “Just a boy, they…”
Phoebe gripped his wrist. “The boy following the Hummingbird?”
Orlando nodded gravely. “Just killed him right there.”
Temple took the pages off Orlando’s shaking hands. “This it? The way to her?”
“Yeah. I saw it all so clearly. But I’d say you have to move fast. I’m not sure how they knew the kid was coming, but if they can see him, maybe they’re sensing us too.”
“Maybe not,” Temple said, as he used his PDA to snap digital pictures of the pages. He tapped a few keys, and the image appeared on the main screen, the pages merged. “Let’s hope not at least. But with this diagram, hopefully we can get in and get her out, quick.”
“There was something else,” Orlando said, getting up. He touched the screen. “At this point, there was something strange. Everything got all blue again, but I swear I saw some kind of bald monk coming out of a hidden recess and touching the boy. Almost as if he knew…”
“What?” Phoebe stared hard at him.
“Knew maybe that the child was going to die. Not sure what he did, but…”
“Blue,” whispered Phoebe. “So this monk guy, he was a shield too. One of the terrorists?”
Temple shook his head. “Bald’s not their style.”
“Then who?”
“Not sure,” he said. “But anyway, we’re landing.”
“Okay,” Orlando said, breathing more relaxed now. “So me and Phoebe can just hang out in the plane while you guys go get her, right?”
Temple smiled devilishly. “And miss out on all the fun? I have a feeling we’re going to need your skills even more down in those tunnels.”
“Come on!” Orlando said.
Phoebe grasped Orlando’s hand, and when he saw her face he sighed. “Fine, I feel like I’m kind of vested in this now. And besides, I want to see that one-eyed son of a bitch pay.”
7.
After they left Xavier, Caleb led Alexander along the side passage he had viewed before saying goodbye to his half-brother.
“We’ll see him again,” Alexander said, his voice hushed in the gloom of the narrowing passageway. Caleb felt a cool breeze brushing across his face from ahead, and knew somewhere up there was an opening to a deeper chasm, some abyss that tapped into the water table far below, with caverns and small tunnels leading to the surface, most of them too small for humans to fit through, but which provided enough ventilation to breathe. At one point, he had seen a glimpse—in the far past, or more recently, he wasn’t sure—of a line of robed figures carrying torches, descending along a narrow ledge towards a sunless sea. A dock, and Egyptian-styled boats moored against the port, waiting to take passengers to some mythical destination.
“I hope you’re right,” Caleb said, shining his light ahead, and keeping his free hand on Alexander’s shoulder, keeping him close. He couldn’t lose Alexander again. Not after finding him, not after what the boy had been through. How he’d been forced to grow up in a hurry. He thought of Genghis Khan’s tomb, and what Alexander had needed to do.
“Son…”
“Dad, don’t worry. I’m fine.”
“You know what I want to talk about. Now that Xavier’s not here, I—”
Alexander looked up at him, and the shadows draped over his face, covering his eyes. “Which thing do you want to talk about? The fact that I have two brothers I didn’t know of, that I saw Mom die, or that I… killed a man?”
Caleb stopped moving, turned toward him and dropped to a knee. He lowered the light and in the soft reddish glow off the confining sandstone walls, he looked into Alexander’s eyes, even as his own were welling with tears.
“I’m so sorry. About all this. Your mother…”
Alexander suddenly lunged forward and threw his arms around Caleb’s neck, crushing him in a desperate hug. And Caleb realized he hadn’t had a moment to grieve. Neither of them. Not since a week ago when this all began, when the fire took Lydia, and Alexander and the Tablet both were snatched from his lighthouse.
They held each other for a long time, neither saying a word until the light started to dim; Alexander pulled away, wiping the dust and the tears from his face. “Come on Dad, we’ve got to help him.”
Caleb nodded. “You’re okay?”
Alexander tried to smile. “No. But hey, we’re Keepers, right? Comes with the job.”
“It’s why they pay us the big bucks.” Caleb stood, rubbing Alexander’s hair. “But soon, we’ll talk. About her. About Xavier and those twins. About everything.”
“How are you, Dad?”
“What?”
“Well, you just found out your old girlfriend’s still alive. And she’s pissed at you, and you’ve both got twins you didn’t know you had. Doesn’t that change things?”
“It does. And I can’t… Can’t even imagine what Nina’s going through now. To know they took her children, kept them from her.”
“From you too.”
Caleb squeezed the flashlight tighter. “But that’s it. I don’t know what they did to them. How they were raised. What they’re like.”
“I think I do,” Alexander said. “I’ve seen them a lot. Thought they were just part of my imagination. Imaginary friends to help when I was lonely. But these playmates, they were always mean to me, even in my dreams. They’re not nice.”
Caleb lowered his head. “I know. But they’re young. They haven’t been with their real parents yet.”
Alexander started walking down the shadowy corridor. “Well,” he said, “you better hope you get to make an impression before they meet their mom. Then, it’s all over.”
#
“Where are we?”
Alexander shined his light around like a light saber, trying to ward off the darkness. He couldn’t tell how large this chamber was, but it had to be huge. Couldn’t see the walls anymore, and the ceiling—if there was one, was way up high, beyond the reach of his beam that just faded into the hungry darkness. There was something in the center of the room, another massive block or pillar of some kind. Caleb was shining a light at it, inside a square-shaped opening in which there was something that looked like a chair. Carvings and symbols far stranger than mere hieroglyphics adorned the sides.
Caleb moved forward into the structure. He turned and gently sat in the stone chair.
“Dad, wait.”
“It’s ok. It’s not trapped.” Caleb looked around, and Alexander had the impression that his dad was sitting in a cockpit of sorts. Except there was nothing else in there except a slot, a groove in the arm of the chair, by his right hand.
“Its… different,” Caleb said. “I believe we’re directly under the main pyramid. And this…” He looked up, then shined his light up there, and Alexander understood. The interior of the pillar, or shaft, was hollow.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. It just goes up straight.” He turned off his flashlight, closed his eyes. “Hold on, I’m getting something, seeing more of it…”
Alexander closed his eyes, reached out into the darkness as if to pluck his father’s vision like a piece of fruit. Absently, he switched off his own flashlight. And now in complete darkness, a new light sparked behind his eyes.
#
A man sits where Caleb had been. This one is dressed in full Egyptian splendor. Colorful breastplate, long golden skirt. Bracelets, necklaces.
A crown with two asps in its center. Except he’s glowing, with arching tendrils of electricity or plasma pinwheeling over his body and arcing about the interior of the shaft.
Clutched in both hands is a familiar item:
The Emerald Tablet.
Then there’s a sound, a grunting, then a low moan as the Pharaoh sets the edge of the Tablet against the slot in the chair, and eases it down. There’s a massive sound, a piercing pitch that compliments a deep rumbling vibration.
The chamber fills with light—hot, intense white light, energy great enough to tear flesh and bone apart and pulverize every cell, and yet… The king is unscathed. Still sitting calmly, head back, mouth open. It’s as if he’s directing the energy. Focusing it, sending it up. Up the shaft, and out.
A flash and Alexander’s mind is outside-
-the great Pyramid. Alone on a lush, grassy plain. Dawn, and the sun is just emerging over a thick forest in the east, past the width of the Nile. There is a deep, lush jungle where the other two pyramids should be, and the causeway leading up to the Sphinx has been neatly landscaped, the trees and bushes pared back from the great marble stones. And the Sphinx itself—different. Its head is larger, leonine, and proportional to the immense body; it faces the rising sun, and its eyes hungrily follow the dawn.
But then the golden capstone above the smooth, reflective walls of the Great Pyramid begins to glow. Brighter and brighter. Turning from gold to silver, blindingly bright.
And then a beam stabs out, straight up and out, thrusting into the azure-violet sky…
…arcing toward a single pinpoint of reddish-white light. A faint star.
A planet.
“Mars!” Alexander whispered as he came back to the present. Caleb’s light was back on. His father rubbed his eyes, and cautiously traced the slot with his index finger. “Did you see it?”
“I… saw something. A man where you’re sitting. Putting the tablet in there, and then directing some kind of light beam out the top of the pyramid, toward what I think was Mars.”
Caleb cocked his head, looked sharply at Alexander. “You really…?”
The Cydonia Objective mi-3 Page 6
