The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3

by Christopher Cartwright

  Billie smiled. Their language was unique and totally unrelated to any other extant tongue. Based on just eight consonants and three vowels, the Pirahã had one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possessed such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations. They had no name for numbers or colors, although they occasionally joined two words to make the description of a color, such as blood-stone or bone-powder. They used morphological markers that encode aspectual notions, such as whether events were witnessed, whether the speaker was certain of its occurrence, whether it was desired, whether it was proximal or distal, and so on. Yet, none of the markers encode features such as person, number, tense or gender.

  One of the other splendid features of their language which particularly separated it from all other spoken languages in any civilization currently living or not, was the fact that it was entirely devoid of any type of grammatical recursion – an attribute that every other language in the world shared. Grammatical recursion basically means that a story may have a subordinate idea or ideas inside. For example, in English, one might say a simple sentence such as, Michael has an earthy spear. Adding recursion to that sentence might lead the speaker to include the following, Michael, whom you know very well, has a brown spear. The recursion can continue almost indefinitely. For example one could say, Michael, whom you know very well, has an earthlike spear and it’s lying there beneath the tree. But of the three sentences, only the very first could be understood or communicated by the Pirahã.

  Billie watched as one of the children, now full from the fish, patiently hand carved an airplane he’d seen in the sky, out of a piece of wood over the course of a number of hours. The same child, as with the rest of the tribe, was incapable and uninterested in drawing even simple shapes or pictures in the sand. Yet he was masterful at modelling complex shapes or designs. Once he finished making his airplane, he played with it for a few minutes before discarding it and walking away. She watched the boy disappear into the forest.

  A moment later she stood up and strode down to the river to quench her thirst. She reveled in this time, with these strange people, because she knew the beast would return soon – and all of them, herself included, would once again be cast under its strange spell.

  It would be coming for her – for all of them – very soon. The thought terrified her, while at the same time enthralling her and sending her heart into a flutter. It was nothing more than a cheap gimmick designed to enslave the primitive Pirahã tribe. There was nothing mysterious about the creature they called the Black Smoke. The thick smoke which engulfed the jungle like a blanket. It was immediately followed by an incredibly distinct and strange sound, which could be heard for miles – and, like the Sirens of Homer’s Odyssey, it drew all souls who heard it to follow.

  She thought about the creature for a moment. The smoke could easily be explained by someone burning damp leaves. The voices were those of mortals and not Gods. The persuasiveness of those voices was enhanced by some chemical being burned. The smoke of any number of hallucinogenic, neurotoxic, or psychotropic plants had the power to enslave.

  The one thing she couldn’t understand was the collective power the monster achieved with the primitive tribe, herself included. It was as though they were all hypnotized. She’d never been reduced to submission by anything or anyone before in her life. No one since the first grade right through to her most recent employer, Sam Reilly, had found a way to make her obedient.

  But the Black Smoke rendered her powerless.

  The thought of losing control again terrified her, but there was something else there, too. When she considered fleeing now, there was definitely a good chance she’d survive, but she couldn’t force herself to take the risk. It wasn’t because she was afraid of dying. Better to die than become something’s slave for an eternity. So why didn’t she want to run? Was it because she liked the idea of being subservient to the creature again? Even if she wanted to escape, she didn’t even know how far she’d have to go to escape its net. She was frightened by what it would do when it found her, but most of all she didn’t want to disappoint the creature. She laughed at herself at the thought. The creature – she was thinking of it as a living breathing thing now – was just smoke.

  And there she had it. Something about the smoke was comforting. It was addictive, and she needed the generalized warmth, comfort, pleasure and satisfaction it provided. She recalled the euphoria at being able to perform a series of ancient masonry skills, which she’d never been taught. This, she realized, was how the Master Builders had achieved the construction of the pyramids. Not like a heroin addict needed the drug to feel okay, but more like she wanted to please it. She wanted to prove that she could build the most spectacular temple in the world. That she had been honored to be chosen to be part of this great process.

  She could not run from it any more than a child could run from its mother. When the depth of her situation had become complete, she realized why the U.S. Military was so concerned about the Master Builders. Why they had spent so much money funding Sam Reilly’s research in secret. They knew about the mind controlling drugs the Master Builders had developed – they had the power to control the human race, turning everyone into puppets.

  That was the final thought, which made her decision for her. No matter what she wanted, Billie needed to escape. She needed to get back to civilization. Someone needed to know of the most terrifying threat to the human race. She filled her bottles with water, and packed her backpack with the last of her food. Her pleasure and her joy were irrelevant given the situation. She needed to escape. She needed to get word to Sam Reilly, before it was too late.

  Billie took her first step into the jungle and away from the Pirahã tribe, and then she stopped, because the jungle darkened with a thick cloak of smoke. Through the forest, she heard the strange and eerie whistling of four hundred Pirahã. It was somewhere between the high pitch scream of a child and the piercing trill of an exotic bird. A voice in her head told her it was time to resume the work.

  The Black Smoke had returned.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The helicopter rested its skids on the deck of the Maria Helena. Sam opened the door and stepped out while Genevieve was still in the process of shutting down the engine. It was another warm day, late in the summer. A cold breeze suggested a change was coming. The sky above was clear but dark clouds were on the horizon suggesting the change would be violent when it arrived. Hurried by the weather, he entered the ship’s main structure.

  Spotting Matthew first, he asked, “How was your vacation skipper?”

  “Good,” Matthew said. “What I got to take of it. You recalled me a week early.”

  Sam shrugged. “Hey, no one said I was easy to work for. But the pay’s all right and you get to go to some amazing places.”

  “The pay’s modest and the places you take us to usually nearly get us killed.”

  “Hey, you’re still here.” Sam was always surprised by how conservative his skipper was. Their job was dangerous, but so far he hadn’t lost a single one of the crew. “Have you seen Tom?”

  “Down below. He’s looking at launching the Sea Witch II within the hour.”

  Sam glanced at the dark storm clouds on the horizon. “Will they have time?”

  Matthew handed him the synoptic charts from the communications room. “The weather report says he’s got twenty-four hours.”

  “All right, that’ll have to do.”

  Sam walked down the steel stairs into the dive-room. He spotted Tom and Veyron going over the dive plan next to Sea Witch II. The submarine was a bright yellow Triton 36,000/3. Cables were already secured to its lifting hooks, ready to maneuver the sub into the water for launch. It often reminded Sam of a futuristic hovercraft. It had twin yellow hulls and a large borosilicate glass dome in the middle that housed up to three divers. Two pilot seats were located at the f
ront of the bubble, and one passenger crammed behind to form the shape of a V. The dome provided 270 degree visualization. The unique glass had been slowly built over nearly eight months, using boron instead of soda-lime, which gave it the unusual property of compressing upon itself the deeper it went. At the back of the dome, a square box stood out like a small doghouse. Inside a very expensive ROV– Remote Operated Vehicle or basically an underwater drone – was attached to an umbilical tether like a leash.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” he greeted both men.

  “Welcome back,” Veyron said. It was an acknowledgement of his presence and then Veyron immediately returned to his calculations for the dive.

  “Sam!” Tom smiled, genuinely pleased to see him. He turned to a man who strolled over from the opposite side of the submarine. “This is Peter Smyth. He was the first to locate the Mary Rose and is keen to stay with us while we complete our search for the map to what we think is the Third Temple.”

  Sam shook Peter’s hand. “Good to have you on board.”

  Tom said, “Peter and I were about to take the Sea Witch II down to the Mary Rose and then run the ROV out to see if the stone tablet is in her lower decks. There are some interesting things I’d like you to see. Did you want to join us?”

  “To dive to 3000 feet and search an old shipwreck?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Absolutely.” Sam looked at Veyron who was eager to launch the submarine. “Elise is shore side in Istanbul. She has my samples from the ancient lava tube I looked at and she’s carbon dating them at the Marmara University. If she gets an answer for me before I return, have Genevieve take the chopper and bring her in. I want those answers as soon as possible.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Tom piloted the Sea Witch II in a direct line to the bottom. On the way down, Sam filled him in with what he’d found in the lava tube and Peter brought Sam up to date with everything he’d learned about the Emerald Star and the pyramid inside the Kalahari Desert. The entire journey took thirty minutes. He checked the depth gauge at 2800 feet and reduced his descent until 2950 feet. Once there, he leveled the submarine and hovered motionless.

  He turned to Sam. “All right, you ready to look at this thing?”

  Sam nodded. His eyes were wide and his jaw set firm, with a slight glint of a smile that betrayed his wonderment. Some things, Tom realized, one never got bored with.

  Tom flicked on the powerful floodlights, which hung out from above the dome like a pair of giant bug-eyes. The Mary Rose lit up in front of them.

  Sam gasped. “I’d heard about the salinity, but had no idea how much it would preserve the wreck.”

  “Told you that you needed to see some things in person,” Tom said.

  In front of them the Mary Rose stood upright in the silty seabed. The individual planks of wood that made up her hull were undamaged. All four masts of the Spanish galleon were entirely intact and a series of ropes showed how the great vessel was rigged. The intricate wood carvings of the helm flickered in the light, as though a restless ghost was commanding her through the dark. The wood was so well-preserved that chisel and tool marks were still visible on individual planks. Rigging materials, coils of rope, tills, rudders, and even carved wooden decorative elements survived. It was conceivable the ship might have been sunk a year or two ago, but in 1653? The concept was absurd, and yet that made it no less true.

  If there was any doubt left in their minds about the age of the ship, it was shattered when the brass bell located amid ship, hanging from the main mast, bore the name, Mary Rose.

  Sam said, “I heard the high levels of salinity preserved some of these ships, but I had no idea.”

  Peter spoke, with the confidence of a man who’d been studying the Black Sea and her depths for the past two years. “During the last Ice Age the Black Sea was really the Black Lake. As the planet warmed and sea levels rose, saltwater from the Mediterranean began spilling over a rock formation in the Bosphorus Strait. This meant the Black Sea was now fed by saltwater as well as freshwater rivers, resulting in two distinct layers of water – an oxygenated upper level with less salt and a lower level with plenty of saltwater and no oxygen.”

  Sam said, “That’s amazing. In most seawater, wood and rope are among the first things to decay. But here they look entirely untouched. All right, time to get the ROV out, and find our stone map.”

  Tom set Sea Witch II to hover automatically, locking in a depth alarm – something that would alert him the instant their depth substantially increased or decreased – and then turned his focus to the computer monitor that displayed the image seen from the front of the ROV. There were two monitors. The first one showed the primary view, while the second one was split into five barely visible views – above, below, left, right and behind. Any of them could change the primary view so that the larger image was the one they viewed.

  Sam switched the machine on, and the sound of its multiple propellers spinning suddenly whirred. The ROV was stored facing outward, in the same way you would park a car in a garage so that the exit was easier than the entry. The view on the primary screen was set to the frontal camera so it even looked as though you were peering through the windshield of a car.

  Tom watched as Sam expertly navigated the ROV toward the shipwreck. His right hand made minor adjustments to the joystick like a kid playing a computer game. That was Sam though – a kid through and through, playing a game. The only difference was his toy was worth nearly two million dollars, and the stakes were life and death.

  The ROV hovered over the top deck. Sam said, “I don’t believe this. There isn’t even a way inside. The damned hatches are still intact!”

  Tom scanned the deck. “There! The aft castle has an entrance hatch.”

  “I see it.” Sam whirred the ROV toward the hatch.

  Peter asked, “The question is, can you open it?”

  Sam grinned at the challenge. “I can open it.”

  Sam changed the primary view to the left side. He hit a buoyancy maintenance button – similar to the one Tom had used to keep the Sea Witch II in an exact position – and then turned to a new joystick. Sam maneuvered the single robotic claw until it reached the hatch. A moment later the claw gripped the handle and pulled.

  The entire hatch came free from its rotten hinges. Tom said, “That’ll work.”

  Sam returned the primary monitor to the dashboard view and entered the aft castle. He then turned to Peter. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where this stone tablet was stored?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but in Hammersmith’s journal he wrote that the stone map was seen as a gift from the gods. It was a map that was supposedly going to take them to great treasures. Where would you keep a treasure map secure from the greedy crew of a seventeenth century pirate ship?”

  “The captain’s quarters!” Tom and Sam said in unison.

  The Mary Rose had two decks that ran the length of the ship’s hull, plus an additional level in the aft and fore castle. Traditionally, the aft castle housed the captain’s quarters, but there was no telling that her original Spanish builder conformed to the normality of her time.

  Tom watched as Sam maneuvered the ROV into the aft castle. Despite the surprising preservation of the outside hull and rigging, the inside of what might have once been the captain’s quarters had been reduced to a mass of silt. There was no sign of the stone tablet or any other definable structure.

  Sam took the ROV down into the main deck, which ran the length of the ship. The ROV was equipped with a low amplitude sonar transducer in its belly – which basically meant that she could receive a graphical display of any structure below and in her immediate vicinity. The ROV took two sweeps of the first deck, without any sign of a stone structure. It then whirred through another opening amid ship that led to the second deck. Sam took another sweep of the sonar through this level, but the only stones it located were the broken ones in the bilge used for ballast.

  “I don’t believe it!
” Tom said. “We’ve overcome so much to find this, and the damned thing was never here to begin with.”

  “All right,” Sam said, heavily. “I’ll take her back in and we’ll return to the surface. That storm’s coming, we might have to postpone another dive for a few days.”

  The ROV turned and slowly retraced its path back to the open deck. It whirred loudly as it approached Sea Witch II. Tom glanced at the third monitor, where the sonar image provided a simple view of the terrain below. He went to switch the transducer off and then something stopped him.

  “Wait!” he yelled.

  “What is it?” Sam asked.

  Tom pointed at the monitor. “Does that look like something to you?”

  Sam and Peter both studied the screen. It looked very much like the head of a tomb stone, only much smaller.

  He watched as Sam descended the ROV until it was hovering just above the stone. The primary view was switched to the camera pointing straight down. The stone had been chiseled to form a very specific shape, but there was nothing written on it.

  Peter asked, “Can you turn it over?”

  Sam nodded.

  Tom found himself unintentionally holding his breath. A moment later the ROV’s grappler tipped the stone over. There beneath them was a perfect delineation of the west coast of Africa and a whole bunch of numbers he couldn’t read.

  Chapter Thirty- Nine

  Sam stepped out of the submarine and onto the Maria Helena. He immediately set up a cleaning trough to wash the stone. He used a low pressure water jet to remove the silt until the image was clearly visible. The African coastline was unmistakable. This had to be the ancient map that Hammersmith had written about – the one they’d lost when the Mary Rose sank in 1653.