Frank just shrugged, “I know, but who says it can’t be bigger. We know nothing about how the archways or pillars work. This boat definitely dropped here, and I don’t see any rivers or oceans around. There’s still the remains of some oars, and you can see where people sat to row, so it’s a galley, but there’s no place for chains.”
Frank went over to where the steps joined the sand. He suspected that this was the top of a larger building, maybe a pyramid. Frank started to dig away some of the sand from the steps with his hands and quickly exposed another step. Amy and Paul came over to help him and the three of them quickly exposed a second, third and fourth step. He stopped. Amy and Paul stopped too.
Amy quirked an eyebrow at Frank. “How big is this?”
Frank stood and looked at each of the other stairs, “We’re looking at the top of a pyramid that’s buried in the sands. It could be huge! There could be a whole city buried here.”
“Now what?” asked Amy as she put on her hat. She could feel the heat of the sun burning her scalp through her hair.
Paul was looking at the horizon. He pointed to some hills in the distance. She saw them, partially hidden by the heat haze, dancing on the horizon. “Those are the only hills in sight so they must be the ones that Simon was talking about. They’re a long way from here, maybe five or six hours. Be careful with your water. Small drinks as you feel thirsty.” With that, Paul picked up his backpack and stepped down on to the sand. Amy put her backpack back on and set out along Paul’s tracks. Frank grabbed his backpack and took some final pictures from the top of the first dune.
After three hours the hills scarcely seemed closer to Amy. Paul was ahead of them on top of the dune looking back the way they came, pointing, “What’s that?”
Amy and Frank finished climbing to the top of the dune and turned to look. Amy could see a line of reddish cloud on the horizon, bright on top and dark underneath. Frank pulled out his binoculars and looked at the cloud. He passed the binoculars to Paul, and after a brief look, Paul passed them to her. She could see that the clouds were moving towards them. “Any ideas?” she asked.
Paul answered, “I don’t know much about deserts but I think that’s a sandstorm. We need to find shelter.”
Amy looked back along their tracks across the dunes, “Can we make it back to the pillar and shelter in the boat?” She passed the binoculars back to Frank.
Frank watched the sandstorm in the binoculars for a few seconds, “The storm would get there before we do.”
Paul examined the hills ahead of them. “We need to go to that rocky hill, it’s the opposite direction from the storm, it’s the closest shelter.”
Amy thought about what Simon had said. “Simon warned us to stay away from the rocks because of the spiders.”
Paul looked back at the storm, “I know. We'll be careful not to get bitten. It’s our only chance. We need to get down off these dunes and run along the gravel; we’ll make better time down there.” Amy saw that the gravel between the dunes led off towards the hills.
Paul didn’t even wait for them to agree; he was off, scrambling down the side of the dune using his staff to stay balanced. Amy followed, sliding down the sand; at any other time this would have been fun. Frank followed them down the face of the dune. As soon as Paul was at the bottom, he started across the gravel at a jog. Amy was right behind him and felt the gravel rolling under her boots. “This is gonna hurt!” she groaned.
* * *
Amy, now caked in sweat, followed Paul into the rocks; her legs hurt, her shoulders and back hurt from the backpack, and she was gasping for breath. He led them to a group of rocks that had fallen so that they created a space under them, a cave that faced away from the storm. The floor of the cave was mostly sand, and Amy could see a number of large bones. Frank picked one up, gasping, “These are old, so no animal in the cave now.”
Paul was detaching the tent from his backpack, “Help me put this up. If we get inside the tent, it’ll keep the sand off, and allow us to breathe.”
Amy helped Paul and Frank put the dome tent up inside the cave. By the time the tent was up, the wind was howling across the front of the cave and the first traces of sand were tickling on Amy’s skin. She pushed the backpacks and staffs into the tent, and crawled in. She pulled out her pillow and sleeping bag and lay down, exhausted. By the time Frank and Paul joined her, the wind was shaking the tent in spite of the rocks around them, and sand was drifting in the opening.
Paul closed up the tent, “That was close!”
Amy was exhausted, and lay there listening to the howling of the wind. What would have happened to them if they’d been caught in the open?
* * *
Luc was pacing back and forth outside the office when Sammy arrived. Sammy had dug deeper and deeper into what was going on over the past months, and thought he had some answers for Luc now. He’d already told Luc that there was some heavy stuff about what Amy was doing, hoping to reduce the shock.
The briefing took an hour, examining surveillance reports and schedules, laboratory tests, and photos. Luc was as professional as when they had worked together in Army Intelligence. At the end Sammy needed to go back to the key points, hopefully pushing Luc towards the astonishing conclusion that he had come to.
“Before I give you the final two items, I’ll recap what we have. The sapphires have a unique crystal structure and color. The gemologists had never seen anything like them before. We’re returning all but one to you, we’re using that one for additional tests, and you told me the six sapphires sold for a little over $2,500 each, over $15,000, and the purchaser is anxious for a new supply. In the leather bag were pieces of grass and fern, and some soil. This type of grass grows only on the prairies of southern Russia. The fern is unknown, but requires a hot humid climate. There was not enough soil for complete analysis, but it lacked any of the normal soil bacteria and had been sterilized somehow.”
Sammy pushed forward the leather bag that had contained the sapphires. “The leather bag itself was hand-made, and the mark punched into the bottom of the bag is similar to seals found in the Sumerian city of Uruk, dating from around 3300 BCE. The leather is not cow, horse, or donkey hide, and appears to be from a large bird, perhaps an ostrich, except that an ostrich doesn’t normally produce leather this thick. The ties holding the bag together were made from the sinews of the same type of bird. The DNA from the bag and the ties matched each other, but don’t match any known bird.”
“The x-ray of the staff,” Sammy pushed forward the set of photos, and an x-ray of the staff, “from the airport showed a secret compartment in the wide end with eight gold beads. The staff visually appears to be wood, but it isn’t. We don’t know what it is made of as we weren’t able to scrape off a sample, it was too hard. A pouch in the old man’s backpack now in Frank’s home included eight beads of most kinds of metals; calcium, aluminum, tin, carbon, zinc, iron, lead, copper, and silver. That’s a key system that creates over a trillion codes, but we don’t know what it is a key for. We have no idea what would require that type of security. Both Frank’s and Paul’s staffs have eight gold links, from one of Amy’s gold chains we’re guessing, in the bottom of drilled holes, which were sealed with caulking. Nothing special there.”
“The three leather journals Frank has been studying have a cowhide leather binding and hand-made paper pages. Each page of the first two journals is filled, and the third journal is half full. The writing is similar to Sumerian, with one symbol, made up of one or more tapering lines, being one word, and with some word symbols being diagrams. It was written with dark blue ink and a small brush. The other journals were blank exercise books that you can buy at any Mexican store. They include hand written dictionaries, initially from Spanish to the symbols, with English added later opposite the symbols. The dictionary shows that the journal sentences are gibberish, some form of substitution code. There is no record of the old man in Mexico, so we extended the search to the US, Canada, and Europe
, with no luck. The archeologists that study Sumerian are a small crowd and none of them are missing, so he’s not one of them either. Frank has strong encryption on his laptop hard drive and files, so it will be hard for anyone to decode them, including us, if ever. We’re the third party to copy the hard drive in Frank’s laptop, the geeks could tell somehow. That’s what alerted us to others being interested in Amy and Frank.”
“As far as we can tell, there are two groups watching Amy, and Frank. You authorized a brief visit to Halifax and that confirmed that Frank was being watched as well, but we couldn’t determine if it is the same groups. It’s a safe assumption that they’re also watching Paul, but we would have to get someone in Italy to confirm that. We haven’t been able to identify the first group yet, or what their reasons for watching Amy are. We have new information on the second group of watchers.”
Luc asked, “Who are they?”
“I just last week confirmed that the people we’ve photographed are part of a sophisticated criminal group known as The Organization. Both the FBI and the Secret Service are investigating some illegal money transfers. I was told that those members of The Organization who talk to outsiders disappear permanently, as do their wives and children. That means no one is going to talk, just like with the Japanese gangs; you remember them? The Organization uses threats, torture, and murder, to get their way. This outfit has me worried, and I think they pose a real risk to Amy. The Organization is apparently aware of the first group, but the first group doesn’t seem to be aware that they’re being watched. We don’t know why The Organization is watching Amy, but what happened yesterday gives us a clue.”
Luc was frowning, “Yesterday? Yesterday Amy was meeting Paul and Frank in Mexico. What happened?”
Sammy cleared away the leather bag, reports, and the photos. “We followed Amy and I have something to show you. That’s why I asked to meet with you as soon as possible.” Sammy opened up his laptop and used the fingerprint reader to start it. “We put a radio tracker in Amy’s hiking boot at the university. We used that to follow her yesterday. With the tracker, one of our team is able to stay ahead of her most of the time. As he walked through a jungle clearing with some ruins he realized that people were watching him from the jungle. He continued on the trail and when he was satisfied that he wasn’t being watched any more, he doubled back through the jungle to the clearing. There was a pair of observers at the edge of the clearing, and a number of wireless video cameras in the trees. The observers were obviously not aware of cameras, and in the report he called them amateurs. But it does mean that both groups knew where she was going to, and the clearing is important. Our investigator was able to sneak in and get this.”
Sammy started the video and Luc watched intently. The video showed Amy standing in a clearing in the jungle. The video was taken through a bush so it was partially obscured. In the shot were the two building floors and the remains of the building walls around them, showing clearly in the strong sunlight. Amy looked around the clearing before moving to the center of the nearest floor. Amy looked down at her feet, adjusted her backpack, and then using her staff, tapped a number of times on the floor. Luc gasped as a black dome appeared around Amy, and then after maybe 30 seconds, it disappeared. Amy was gone. The clearing was empty.
Luc was upset. “What happened to Amy?”
“I think she’s fine Luc. The people watching her didn’t seem surprised by the black dome or her disappearance. Watch this.”
The video continued showing a man stepping out of the jungle with a camcorder in one hand, saying into a cellphone, “All three are now through. All used the same sequence of taps.”
Sammy asked, “Do you want to see it again?”
“Yes, and you’d better tell me what’s going on!” The military officer had given way to a concerned father.
This was a side of Luc few people saw. Sammy was careful not to smile. He restarted the video, adding his comments as it played. “Amy isn’t looking around at something new, she’s been here before. She’s checking that no one is around. Now she’s careful to stand in a particular spot, the exact center of where the black dome will appear. Amy’s not just tapping; she taps a particular rhythm, what the watcher called a sequence. The watcher also said, ‘All three are through now’, which means that Paul and Frank went through before Amy arrived. The dome is twenty feet or more in diameter, and you can see its shadow. Amy does not leave the back of the dome.”
Luc was anxious, “OK, so tell me.”
“My team is monitoring the radio tracker frequency, watching the ruins, and the other watchers, and Amy hasn’t come back yet.”
“Come back from where?”
“From where there are ferns that grow that no one has seen before. From where leather is made from a bird the size of an ostrich, but no one has seen it before. From where sapphires have a unique crystal structure. From where a language is used that died out on Earth thousands of years ago.”
Luc’s leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers rubbing his forehead. He suddenly tensed and looked up at Sammy, “You said ‘on Earth’! You think she’s not on Earth?!”
Sammy prompted, “What do you think?”
Luc closed his eyes for a second, “So who was Simon?”
Sammy nodded; Luc had focused on the key question quickly, “Yeah. We checked around the area. Many knew the old man; they thought he was some kind of hermit, a holy man. They told of teaching him Spanish, and later English. They also told of his awe at seeing cars and busses, and of not understanding what a plane in the sky was. He’d disappear for weeks at a time and then just as suddenly return. In the journals, at the beginning of each one, are two symbols. The first symbol is for a hill, and the second symbol is a verb, for finding or seeking. The linguists think it is his name. Hill finder, or hill seeker.”
Their conversation continued for a while with Luc looking through the information again and again. Luc asked, “There’s no sign that The Organization is going to act?”
“No sign of that. As they didn’t act immediately when they became aware of Amy, or on this trip to Mexico, my guess is that they are waiting until after she graduates. Less attention that way.”
“This is unreal.” stated Luc, looking into the eyes of his old friend. “Double the teams watching Amy. I want her protected from The Organization and the other watchers!”
Sammy asked, “Do you want to tell Amy?”
Luc leaned back, thinking, “Not yet, we can protect her easier if she’s not aware that she’s being followed.”
Sammy agreed with part of that, “But you will have to tell her?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to alarm Amy or Rosemary too early.”
Sammy had a different opinion, having a daughter about the same age, but Luc was the client, not just a friend. “OK, I can find the extra people to increase her protection, but this is going to get expensive. I can eat the extra cost if you need me to.”
“Don’t worry, those patents I have on military hardware have really paid off. I’m happy to pay in full. At least it’s going to a friend!”
* * *
The wind had stopped and it was dark outside the tent. Frank was working on his laptop; Paul was fast asleep.
“What time is it?” Amy whispered as she grabbed her water bottle. Her throat was so dry she had no saliva.
Frank smiled, “On Earth it’s midnight, but here it’s two or three hours before dawn. The storm lasted for 12 hours. You snore!”
“You try sleeping holding a five foot staff,” responded Amy, as she fluffed her red pillow, deciding to go back to sleep until it was light outside.
* * *
Amy woke as Paul shook her shoulder. Paul was listening to something, “There’s something moving around the rocks.” Listening she could hear clicking and scrabbling sounds. Frank was awake as well.
Paul pulled his knife and sheath out of the backpack and fastened it into his belt. “Grab your knife and staff and follow me.�
��
The storm was gone. The air felt strange, like the electrical charge before a thunderstorm. There was still some dust in the air. It felt even drier than yesterday. Amy grabbed a quick drink of water, and moved to the entrance to the cave. Paul was on her right and Frank was on her left. Amy couldn’t hear anything now. Then there was scraping sounds on the rocks behind her! Amy whipped around putting her staff in front of her. Not behind her, above her, on the rocks above the cave. Amy saw a flash of white between two rocks on the hill, the sounds moved from left to right. Amy saw some movement again and pointed with her staff, “There!” They moved out from the cave to try to see what it was. Paul and Frank moved across the sandy area in front of the cave to get a better view of the hill above the cave.
Paul had his eyes on the rocks looking at something that Amy could not see. “Come to us Amy, and keep your eyes on the rocks above the cave.”
Amy moved out slowly to where Paul and Frank were standing, shuffling sideways so she could keep her eyes on the rocks. There was something there. It was moving slowly down the rocks towards them. It was white with streaks of grey and brown on its legs. Many legs; eight legs! It was a spider? It was a darn big spider! Maybe four feet across the body and the legs were at least four feet long as well. “Do you think it’s dangerous?”
Paul answered quietly, “Anything that big is dangerous.”
Frank was pale. “Spiders on Earth eat insects and even birds. Look at its mouth; it has sharp pointy teeth for tearing its prey apart, and two things to hold its prey.”
Amy saw that the spider was aware of their interest and seemed to be listening to them. Half joking, she said in Galactic, “Are you going to eat us?”
“You’re much too skinny to make a good meal,” said the spider in a strange husky voice, enunciating carefully, as you would to a child.
Chapter 14 – Stay Away from the Spiders
Amy knew her mouth was hanging open but she couldn’t do anything about it. Did she imagine that? She glanced at Paul and Frank; their mouths hung open too. What should she do? Simon said that polite conversation always started with an exchange of their full names. What could she lose? Her life maybe!
Step on the Sun Page 14
