Phobos

by Steve Alten

  “Sam.”

  “Sam what?”

  “Samuel Agler.”

  “That’s correct. You are Samuel Agler. How did you get here, Sam?”

  “Through the wormhole.”

  Julius and his son look at one another like two kids on Christmas morning.

  Laura grips the back of Sam’s head, keeping his face close to hers, occupying his entire field of vision with the radiance of her eyes.

  A puzzled look crosses Sam’s face. “Lilith?”

  “Stay focused. You mentioned a wormhole. Is that what destroyed the Earth?”

  “No. It was the singularity. A black hole. You saw it, too, Lilith. You were there. Only—”

  “Only what? Focus on my eyes and tell me.”

  “He cut off your head.”

  “Who cut off my head? Sam, look into my eyes and tell me who cut off my head.”

  “Seven Macaw.”

  19

  If suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet, outside in the universe [ … ] we’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries …

  —PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN,

  “REMARKS TO THE STUDENTS AND

  FACULTY AT FALLSTON HIGH SCHOOL

  IN FALLSTON, MARYLAND,”

  DECEMBER 4, 1985

  The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.

  —MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, “SOVIET YOUTH,” MAY 4, 1990

  MAJESTIC-12 (S-66) SUBTERRANEAN FACILITY

  15 MILES SOUTH OF GROOM LAKE AIR FORCE BASE (AREA 51)

  NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  We call them EBEs—Extraterrestrial Biological Entities. You and your former pal, Julius Gabriel, would probably know better than us how long they’ve been coming to Earth. Maybe they consider our planet a vacation resort.”

  “I highly doubt that.” Pierre Borgia rests his heels on his uncle’s desk. “Julius, Maria, and I discovered overwhelming evidence of contact with extraterrestrials in oral traditions, as well as stone carvings, petroglyphs, and other reliefs found throughout most ancient cultures. The dominant theme of these encounters clearly focused on seeding our species with knowledge. Of course, that seeding takes on a more literal meaning if you read a passage in Genesis 6: ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; the Nephilim and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.’ Nephilim translates as ‘fallen ones,’ as in ‘fell from the sky.’”

  “Sons of God … breeding with the daughters of men? Christ, no wonder some of them look like us. Clever bastards, using our DNA to infiltrate our world.”

  “The Bible isn’t even the oldest message regarding extraterrestrial contact. Images of spacemen found in caves in Tanzania date back 29,000 years. A seven-thousand-year-old petroglyph discovered in Querétaro, Mexico, features four alien figures bathed in beams of light reaching up to a large flying saucer. Artifacts found in Iraq, dating back to 5000 BC, include Sumerian gods that look like reptilian space travelers, similar to the gods worshiped in ancient Egypt. An art exhibit in the British Museum includes pottery and other clay figures with lizard heads attributed to the Ubaid culture during the same period. The Nepal artist responsible for the Lolladoff plate clearly shows a disc-shaped vessel and a small gray alien next to it.

  “More fascinating and harder to dismiss are the more recent artistic renderings originating from Europe. A 1350 painting called The Crucifixion hangs above the altar at the Visoki Decani Monastery in Kosovo; it depicts Jesus on the cross with a UFO passing across the background sky. A fourteenth-century Madonna and Child fresco features a similar spaceship, as does a fifteenth-century painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio entitled The Madonna with Saint Giovannino. The Bayerisches National museum houses a tapestry called Summer’s Triumph that was created in 1538 and clearly shows several disc-shaped objects along the top of the scene. A naval illustration in a volume entitled Theatrum Orbis Terrarum depicts a sighting by two Dutch ships in the North Sea of two disc-shaped objects moving across the sky. The French actually minted a coin in 1680 that features a hovering UFO.”

  “Pierre, do I look like I give a damn about some frog coin?”

  “Sorry, I just thought … I mean, I spent fifteen years studying this stuff, and you did recruit me as an anthropologist.”

  “If that’s why you think you’re here, then you’re as dumb as my brother. Wake up, son. You’re here because the faction of companies that control this little venture of ours need a future liaison in the White House, not another geek with a slide rule and a degree. We’re sitting on technological advances that will affect the future of this planet, including a nonpolluting power source that could replace the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries tomorrow if it fell into the wrong hands. You think we’re gonna just sink the US economy by lettin’ the oil companies take it on the chin? Not on my watch, and not on yours. No sir, when the time’s right, the military industrial complex and Big Oil will disperse these advances as we see fit and at a substantial profit, leveraging these technologies so we can control the global economy and keep the damn Russians and Chinese under our thumbs.”

  “Exactly what do you want me to do while I’m here?”

  “First and foremost, I need you to be a check and balance during the interview sessions with our extraterrestrial pals. There are too many bighearted liberal tree-huggers wearing lab coats around here who believe in unicorns and think energy should be provided free to everyone. These eggheads have no idea how the real world works. Most of ’em think we’re dealing with Hollywood’s version of E.T. To date we’ve catalogued more than sixty different types of beings, most of them dead, of course. We don’t know if we’re dealing with friend or foe, competing species or subspecies, or beings from another dimension. Like I said, some E.T.s look so human they could easily assimilate into our society.”

  “If they look just like us, how do you know they’re extraterrestrials?”

  “Physically they’re superior to us, with a heightened sense of sight, hearing, and especially smell. Their eyes are aquamarine blue, almost turquoise, and they glow like a cat’s iris in the dark. They also communicate telepathically. All of these life forms do. Fortunately, we’ve been able to recruit some reliable human telepaths of our own to question them. Your job is to keep the interrogations focused on their technology.”

  “Exactly who or what am I interrogating?”

  “One of the Grays. Grays come in different sizes, but they all share the same basic DNA structure—big eyes and hairless grayish bodies. We’ve had our boy a little more than seven months. His vehicle crash-landed in Moriches Bay in Long Island, New York, back on September 28, 1989. There were nine Grays on board, he’s the only one that survived—assuming he’s even a he. There’s no nuts hanging from the branches, if you know what I mean. Everything’s internalized with these beings … what fun is that? Still, they’re vastly superior to us. Lockheed’s rocket scientists don’t last long with them; they get easily overwhelmed. For the E.T.s, it’s probably like teaching algebra to their pet dog. Strike that. We’re probably more like dogs with big teeth than lovable pets.”

  “If it’s so difficult, why not stick to interrogating the more human E.T.s?”

  “Try bringing one in alive. On the rare occasions a Nordic may crash and survive, they off themselves rather than face MJ-12. We’ve done autopsies, of course, that’s how we learned about their sensory organs. And their blood type: Rh negative.”

  “Rh negative? You’re sure about that?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. What’s so important about that?”

  “Uncle Joe, I know your interest is strictly on the military side and you recruit personnel based more on clearance levels than talent, but you really need to get some informed medical people inside your little coven. The Rh factor is a protein found in human blood that links our genetic h
eritage to primates, specifically the Rhesus monkey. About eighty-five percent of the world’s population is Rh positive, meaning the evolutionary link exists. The mystery that has puzzled scientists for decades is understanding what limb of the tree the other fifteen percent of Homo sapiens originated from. It was actually the Rh negative factor that launched my postgraduate work out of Cambridge with Maria and Julius; it was only after Gabriel morphed our work into his nutty Doomsday prophecy that I left them.”

  “That, and the fact that he ran off with your fiancée.”

  “The hell with that. They married, she got sick and died, it’s over. But if these extraterrestrials are all Rh negative like you say, then my work has real meaning. Go back to that Bible passage in Genesis. If the Nephilim bred with ancient women, then it would have formed a subspecies of advanced humans … perhaps as far back as thirty thousand years ago, a time period that matches those cave paintings. The injection points were regional, specifically ancient Egypt and parts of southeast Asia, with nomadic tribes following a land bridge during the last ice age into North America. There they would have crossbred with American Indian tribes, as well as the Olmec, the mother culture of Mesoamerica. Ever see one of those ten-ton Olmec heads? The facial features are clearly Asian. These genetics were rooted in the Maya, Aztec, Inca, and Egyptian cultures that succeeded where other tribes failed. Their leaders—Kukulcan, Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, and Osiris—were clearly described as possessing Rh negative characteristics that included an extra vertebra, a superior IQ, an acute sensory system, and azure-blue eyes. Oh yes, each of these leaders also possessed an elongated skull.”

  “Yeah, we know about the long skulls, the Grays share that, too. Not sure I agree with the E.T. theory regarding Rh negative humans. Fifteen percent of six billion people is an awful lot of E.T.s.”

  “E.T. heritage, there’s a difference. A purebred child or a generational hiccup would be far different.”

  “A hiccup?”

  “A child whose maternal lineage was strongly linked to one of the injection points and whose DNA surfaced against the odds. Like when two brown-eyed parents have four kids, and one of them has blue eyes that can be traced back to great-grandparents. The Rh factor represents a separate genetic highway on-ramp from our past, and the evidence is overwhelming. For instance, did you know that when a mother with Rh negative blood is pregnant with an Rh positive child, the mingling of the two types can cause an allergic reaction called hemolytic disease, which can lead to the infant’s death? The child’s Rh positive blood cells attack the mother’s Rh negative blood cells as if it were an alien intruder. Clearly, there was a genetic circumvention during the evolution of Homo sapiens that added these characteristics to our DNA pool.”

  “If that’s the case, then I guess we ought to be grateful the reptilians didn’t interbreed with us, too. Some serious anger issues with those dudes.”

  “Are they hostile?”

  “I think the Nordics keep them in line, but they don’t do well in captivity. None of them do. We’re only allowed to interview the Gray twice a month and never for more than three to five hours at a time, based on how he’s holding up.” Randolph glances at his watch. “So, Alice, are you ready to meet the Mad Hatter?”

  “Enough with the Alice in Wonderland references, Uncle Joe. This isn’t child’s play.”

  “Maybe not, Pierre, but it can be maddening.”

  NAZCA, PERU

  The roof of the Gabriel abode is a flattop affair that has served as Michael Gabriel’s bedroom for the last six months. A second inflatable mattress has been added to accommodate the stranger known as Sam.

  Sam and Laura are alone on the roof, lying on their backs on one of the air mattresses. The midnight ceiling is a tapestry of stars, unimpeded by the pollution of light.

  “Sam, what are you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that the heavens look benign. And I was thinking how nice it felt not to worry.”

  “Such a strange yet telling statement. Perhaps you were a navigator who used the stars to pilot his vessel?”

  “No.”

  “No? How can you be so certain? Before this afternoon you had no idea your name was Samuel Agler.”

  “When Michael called me Samson, the name felt right. I wasn’t a navigator, I wasn’t a pilot. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “And what about this Lauren? Does she feel right?”

  “There was a Lauren. Not anymore.”

  “Not to sound like a broken record, but again, how can you be so sure? Did you see her decapitated like Lilith?”

  “I know she’s gone. I can feel an emptiness in my heart.”

  “And Chilam Balam? You told me earlier that he too felt a similar emptiness.”

  Sam sits up. “Are you ridiculing me? Do you doubt my pain?”

  “No.”

  “Then why is this so important to you?”

  She stands, walking to the edge of the roof. “It’s important because I feel myself being drawn to you both physically and spiritually, yet I don’t know anything about you. My soul tells me you’re a good person, as noble as any warrior; my survival instincts tell me to run away, that hitching my wagon to yours will take me down a path fraught with danger. Part of me likes that aspect, but as any woman would, I need to know that there isn’t a Lauren Agler lying in some hospital bed out there, waiting for her Samson to return to her side; and yes, I’m also worried about a nest of Agler kiddies calling out into the night for their papa.”

  “Laura died. There were no children.”

  “And you know this because it doesn’t feel right.”

  “If you had lost your memory, but you had given birth to children, do you think these gaps in your identity could mask your motherly instincts?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then don’t doubt mine. Because I promise you, if my wife and child were out there needing my help, then I wouldn’t be lying here beneath the stars, I’d be raging into the night trying to find them.”

  “Good answer.” She smiles, brushing away a tear. “Bit of a romantic then, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Am I?”

  “Well now, I suppose there’s only one way to find out.” She removes her T-shirt and shorts, returning to his side.

  Julius Gabriel and his son huddle around the oil lamp, the picnic table covered with images of the Nazca Spiral.

  Michael looks up, hearing his aunt moan. “Hope that roof holds up.”

  “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Leaving the house, they head west past parcels of land covered in rows of huangaro tree saplings.

  “Aunt Laura’s falling hard for him, huh?”

  “A monkey could have figured that one out. Let’s train that amazing IQ of yours on something a bit more difficult. Your friend is a puzzle. Work the pieces for me.”

  “He believes he has lived a life as Chilam Balam, only during a period of time when Nazca was green. Since no such time period occurred in the past, he had to have experienced it in the distant future.”

  “Continue.”

  “As Samuel Agler, he witnessed the Earth consumed by a black hole. Since that also hasn’t occurred, he has traveled back in time through his wormhole to our past.”

  “Therefore?”

  “Therefore, he possesses the means to travel into the future or back into the past.”

  “Go on.”

  “To see the planet consumed required a safe vantage point in space. Which means there is a vessel, or at the very least, the remains of a vessel somewhere on the plateau in which he traveled through this wormhole back in time.”

  “Well done. And we shall search for this vessel tomorrow, only without him.”

  “I’m sure Laura can find a way to occupy him. Which is why you had her fly in from Spain, isn’t it?”

  “Go on.”

  “Laura’s Rh negative, like Mom was … like me. Only the gene’s dominant in her.”

  “Which means we must restrict what w
e tell her about Sam. Remember, son, there are no coincidences.”

  “Like the two of us finding Sam on the Nazca Spiral.”

  “Correct.”

  “You think he deliberately made his way to the icon from his crash landing?”

  “How can you be certain it was a crash?”

  “He couldn’t have inflicted those wounds himself … unless they occurred before the landing.”

  “What about the Fastwalker?”

  “I forgot about them. Julius, you think they were leading him across the desert to the Spiral?”

  “I do.”

  They continue on in silence, father and son—their minds whirring in thought.

  “Pop, there’s something else.”

  “You always worry me when you call me Pop.”

  “Sam … he looks like me.”

  “Yes he does. What does that tell you?”

  Mick stops walking. “The puzzle … it’s a paradox of time.”

  “Fill in the gaps.”

  “Sam is a relation. A blood relative. He’s returned from the Doomsday Event in an attempt to help us prevent it.”

  “There are no Aglers on my family tree and none that I know of on your mother’s. There is no record of a Samuel Agler existing in the year 1990 that fits his approximate age.”

  “You ran his fingerprints?”

  “The day we found him.”

  “Then the name is an alias, a pseudonym to protect his real identity.”

  “And when he discovers his true identity?”

  “Then he’ll fulfill his destiny.”

  “Which returns us to the puzzle with which we began. Who is Samuel Agler? He is an incarnate of Chilam Balam, at least he believes he is. He is a time traveler—a survivor of the Doomsday Event, returning to our past. And he is most likely a relation, A Gabriel, no doubt.”

  “Why not a Rosen? Oh, because of his attraction to Aunt Laura.”