BOLD INDICATES NEWLY WRITTEN WILL NEED CHEAKING
Pt 2.
Click for index
CONTINUES FROM SPECTRUM 1
Cartwright had been left in the hands of the lab assistant who was even now preparing the samples of saurian tissue for analysis.
"This will give you a view of the sample right down to the sub atomic" the young man said over his shoulder.
"How’s it going?"
The voice came from behind them. They turned to see Adam who had just entered the lab.
"We’re ready to begin" Cartwright said, seating himself at the control station. "Okay, lets start with disease. Maybe it was a virus."
The technician was obviously well versed in the functions of the machine.
"Can I make a suggestion" he said. "We can simply instruct it to search for any anomaly. It will inform us if it finds anything."
Cartwright nodded in agreement. He wanted to do the analysis himself, but he also wanted the results as quickly as he could get them.
The technician changed places with him and began to operate the key pad After a few seconds he stopped and folded his hands in his lap. "Now we wait" he announced.
The machine was completely silent. Cartwright began to doubt that it was even switched on when suddenly the screen became active.
"It’s found something" the technician announced. Another key was pressed and rows of numbers were replaced by an image of the creature’s DNA. One section of the code was flashing. This enlarged as the remainder retreated back into a smaller window in the top right hand corner of the screen.
All three studied the image and information in front of them. Adam picked up a phone that was nearby and pressed two digits.... "Sam, Teryl, you better get in here."
The assistant had been ushered out of the lab. Sam, Teryl and Adam were studying the screen while Cartwright paced up and down behind them, one hand in a pocket of his trousers, the other tangled in his hair.
"It suffocated" he exclaimed. "The anomaly your equipment found in the mothers gene sequencing meant that the animal’s respiratory system couldn’t process enough oxygen to keep it alive."
"And the sample from the infant is the same." Teryl asked.
"Yes" Cartwright replied.
She straightened up. "If the infant had it as well it suggests that the mother passed it on" she said.
"Yes" Adam hesitantly agreed. "But the problem with that is that the mother should never have survived to reach maturity and sire any offspring. She would have been born and died shortly later like the infant. Even if it skipped a generation the result would have been the same. The mothers mother would have died as an infant."
"Then the fault must have appeared later" Sam stated. After the mother matured. The infant would have developed in the womb with the fault, surviving only because of the oxygen supply from the mother. Once it was born and separated from the mother, its malfunctioning respiratory system would have killed it."
Cartwright knew very little about the field of genetics. "But why didn’t the mother die while she was carrying the infant?" he asked.
"It would have taken a while for annual cellular replacement to manifest the fault in the mother" Teryl replied. "Long enough it seems for her to sire the infant. She obviously died not long after or even during the birth from the fully blown fault."
"What could have caused this" Cartwright asked.
"The examples of genetic mutation we see in species today are usually the result of environmental poisoning by us" Teryl replied. "Sixty five million years ago if the cause was the same, it would have to have been from an external source."
"What!" Cartwright said. "You mean non terrestrial?"
Teryl nodded.
"The question we have to ask" Adam said, interrupting. "Is was this an isolated occurrence. Or was it widespread. Perhaps global."
"Hang on" Cartwright interjected. "Are you suggesting that this is what wiped out the dinosaurs! .The extinction’s are supposed to have been the result of a meteorite impact that dropped global temperatures."
"That’s the accepted theory" Sam broke in. "But it has not been proven."
"Yes it has!" Cartwright insisted.
Adam, Teryl and Sam looked at each other.
"There is no doubt that a large chunk of rock hit the Earth sixty five million years ago" Sam stated. "What is in doubt is that it caused the extinction.
"How can you say there’s no doubt." Cartwright said angrily. "The KT boundary layer proves it. Fossils of dinosaurs before the KT layer and none after it."
"You’re missing the point" Adam said.
"And what exactly is that that?" Cartwright asked none too politely.
"There should be fossil remains right up to and within the KT layer itself."
Cartwright shook his head, uncertain of Adams point.
"Think about it" Adam continued. "You’ve got dinosaurs, millions of them roaming about the planet. Then one day the Earth is hit by a massive body of rock, which apart from creating a nuclear winter and poisoning the oceans, also set off a firestorm that burned everything. It is these burned remains that constitute the KT layer found in rock strata all over the world. Again, the point is, the dinosaurs supposedly existed right up to the impact. There should therefore be fossil evidence of the them right up to and within the KT layer. There is no such evidence. There are remains close to the KT layer. But as you should know, close in geologic terms is a long time. Two centimetres of sediment could represent a hundred thousand years or so. The theory that a meteor or cometary impact caused the extinction episode is a scientific myth passed on from before the millennium. A theory that up until now has had nothing to challenge it."
Cartwright opened his mouth to reply then stopped. What Adam had pointed out was true. He had simply never thought about it before. The need for an explanation had led him to a false belief.
But, he realised, this in itself didn’t mean that they were correct either.
"You still need a cause" he stated, an element of arrogant triumph present in his voice. "Without that al you have is speculation."
"We have one" Teryl stated.
"You do!" Cartwright responded.
"The transmission" She informed him. "The genetic irregularities in the vegetation" she reminded him. "They are world wide. The same alteration around the whole planet" she stressed. "We have a genetic alteration here." She gestured at the screen. "And we have something that we know can alter genetic material, the transmission. If the transmission can affect DNA on a planetary scale today, perhaps it did the same sixty five million years ago. Your non terrestrial cause."
"Are you telling me you think this transmission of yours is of alien origin" Cartwright said, astounded. "And anyway, I thought you said that it was only detected two hundred years ago"
"We have no idea how long its been present" Teryl replied. "Or whether its natural to the earth or not."
"The feeling we get" Adam began. "Is that it is not a natural by product of the planet. All we know is that it’s a transmission of unknown content emitting from the location of the earth. The obvious question you have to ask is where is the transmission going and to who. Given this, if the transmission is the cause of the extinction’s, it implies that the genetic alteration was intentional......I don’t think you could find a better cosmic ‘Kilroy was here’ if you tried" he finished.
"I concur" Sam stated.
"Me too" agreed Teryl."
Cartwright was becoming increasingly agitated. "They concur." He said incredulously. He walked over to a nearby table, lay down and stared at the ceiling
"Intentional alteration! By aliens" he mocked.
"I didn’t say that specifically" Adam replied calmly.
"This is ridiculous" Cartwright said. "You’re writing a sci-fi novel!"
There was a silence.
"So which do we go for" Adam said, ignoring Cartwright who clearly had nothing constructive to add. "The biggest mistake in evolutionary history or an intervention?"
"There’s more" Teryl added. "One thing we haven’t considered yet. There was a gap in the chain of life after the dinosaurs vanished. It was the mammals that evolved to fill that gap. That’s us."
Adam looked at the image of the dinosaur DNA on the screen. What had they found and what were they going to find out because of it?
"I need to sleep" Cartwright announced.
"I’ll show you where." Sam said, offering to act as his guide once again.
Adam had remained in the lab after the others had left, going over what they had.
Two dinosaurs with the same genetic fault, a fault that could very well have been an intentional alteration, carried out by something or someone who had come to earth sixty five million years ago and was still here in effect through the presence of the transmission.
It was Cartwright who had suggested that the anomaly was of alien origin. Adam hadn’t wanted to jump to any conclusions, but the search for another explanation had come up empty. The anomaly seemed to be an alien artefact.
He wondered at the level of technology required to carry out a planetary extinction so precisely? Whatever that level was, whoever they were, they had apparently had it sixty five million years ago. How far had they come in millions of years since then he wondered? They would have moved far beyond the level they’d had then. In fact to a human today they may appear to be what we would call gods.
Who were these evidential aliens detectable only by their effects. And the big question of course was. What interest did they have in Humanity?
He realised the danger of forming a theory of this size and implication on one piece of evidence, but there seemed to be no other option. Something had happened in the Earth’s past, something enormous in its implications.
An oscilloscope hummed away in the background. Adam, his attention drawn by the sound, looked over at it.
There was a sign wave tracing its repetitive journey across the circular screen, appearing on one side, doing a half circle to the centre of the screen then another opposing half circle to the Opposite side. He stared absently at the hypnotic motion.
It began to happen again, the feeling of disassociation.
His eyes drifted around the lab, coming to rest on the screen displaying the mathematical vector of the DNA anomaly.
Adams eyes locked onto it.
Awareness of his surroundings began to fade, continuing to the point where even his awareness of his body dissipated. Until all he was aware of was perception itself.
Something began to happen. Scenes began to flash past. A sky lit by an unnaturally bright white light, dinosaurs stampeding in panic all around him. More scenes rushed past too quickly to make any sense of.
It stopped. He was high in orbit above the Earth, falling towards the South American continent. Mountain ranges and vast plains of grass were spread out below him. The crown of a single volcano began to stand out from the landscape below, surely he was not going to end up inside it. No, he was falling slightly to the right of it.
He was able now to discern detail and the ground shot up at him in response. He became aware of a figure standing directly below him.
Suddenly he was floating in front of an old indian dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Adam recognised him. It was the person who had been in his car the day before.
He’d walked around the corridors for a while after leaving the lab, the experience of the vision or waking dream still in his head. He was not unduly troubled by the event itself, many people reported similar experiences, interpreting them as tools to understand their lives.
What was distinct about his experience was that it was directly linked to the conclusions drawn by the anomaly. Stampeding dinosaurs. And the light in the sky, that could have been the arrival of the alien race responsible for the transmission.
Most prominent in all this though was the face of the old man. Who was he? This stranger he had helped. There had been nothing obviously unusual about him except for his calmness. Most of the worlds population had been reduced to such a state of paranoia that social contact was fraught with danger. It was his apparent age that had encouraged Adam to stop, it seeming to be the last bastion of what would have been considered normal behaviour half a century ago.
It seemed now though that this old man had done something to him. Precisely what though, Adam had no idea.
He looked at his surroundings. He had wandered into the area where the sensitives worked. It was quieter here than anywhere else in the complex.
The sensitives represented the foundation’s alternative technology that Teryl had hinted at to Cartwright. He could see a group of them through a smoked glass wall. They were seated in rows from where they fulfilled their various tasks. The major one of these was to monitor the transmission, something they had been doing through the generations for the last two hundred years. A task, which in all that time had shown up only one change in the transmissions constancy. It had happened only three days ago, a subtle change that had caused an uneasy sense of expectation to run through the complex.
Cartwright had slept but it had been a disturbed sleep. He had gone to bed in total disbelief at the conclusion these people had arrived at. Science had been thrown aside for outrageous guesswork. His anger had surfaced and found its only target, Adam, Teryl and Sam with their ridiculous propositions.
He’d drifted off to sleep eventually, unaware that his was anger was misdirected. He was angry with himself for not being able to explain what they had discovered. It had turned outwards towards the others, simply because he could not admit he didn’t know.
He tossed and turned, embroiled in the midst’s of a dream. The others were laughing at his disbelief of what they were saying to him. They whispered amongst themselves in a fashion that implied they knew something he did not.
"Tell meeee" he heard himself shout over and over.
Adam had walked for hours. Getting nowhere, he had decided to check what he’d seen during the experience against a map of the Area he had seen during the vision.
To this end he had gone to Teryls office where he was now studying a map of the south American continent displayed on the wall screen.
He replayed the memory of the descent over and over until he was certain. Then opening his eyes, he compared what he’d seen with the map.
Everything matched. The old man had been standing at the foot of a mountain chain that ran along the West coast of South America in what had been Southern Argentina.
Well Adam thought to himself. At least we have an idea of where to go next.
He de-activated the screen and sat back in the chair. A magazine was lying in the middle of the desk. He picked it up and turned it over. It was the magazine from his car. The one the old man had been looking at. Teryl must have brought it in with her. He flicked through the pages. His mind was too busy to pay any real attention to its contents so he closed it and tossed it onto the desk.
As the magazine hit the desks surface the picture on the front cover captured his attention. He found himself unable to pull his eyes away from it.
He remembered. Or more precisely he failed to remember, anything that had happened after the old man had dropped the magazine onto the floor of the car. The next thing he could remember after that was when he had been asked to stop.
Whatever had been done to him, the old man must have been done during this period of blankness.
The door opened and Teryl walked in.
She looked at him closely. "Are you okay?"
He looked at her. "There’s something I have to tell you" he said after a moment.
She raised an eyebrow. "And what’s that?"
"Yesterday" he began. "I gave a lift to an old man. While he was with me in the car something happened to me."
"What do you mean happened to you" she said, concerned.
"Ever since then I have been experiencing periods of" he hesitated. "Well disassociation seems the best way to describe it. It happened again just before you came in."
He could see she didn’t understand what he was talking about.
He looked down at the magazine that was still lying where it had landed just before Teryl had entered.
"It has something to do with that" he said, indicating the magazine. "With the picture on the cover."
Teryls brow furrowed. "I don’t understand" she said.
"Neither do I" Adam replied.
He relaxed, closed his eyes and tried to remember everything that had happened.
It was just after" he paused. "Just after the old man dropped the magazine onto the floor of the car. The picture on the cover, it means something."
He opened his eyes, leaned forwards and picked up the magazine.
"The four fundamental forces" Teryl replied as if it were obvious.
"Yes I know. But its meant to be something else" he insisted.
Teryl shook her head. "I still don’t understand" she said.
He closed his eyes again.
"The radio was switched on" he recalled after a moment. "Thats where the other meaning came from."
"I thought you said it came from the cover" she said.
"It did" he replied, opening his eyes. "But it came from the radio as well..... It also has something to do with an oscilloscope and part of a conversation about atomic structure I overheard earlier."
"Adam" she said, concerned. Your not making any sense."
"Believe me" he replied. "I know."
"He sat back in the seat. "There’s more."
"Yes" Teryl responded expectantly.
"After you Sam and Cartwright left the lab I hung around for a while, going over what we had discovered. During this period my attention was caught by the mathematical representation of the anomaly. I became transfixed and had an out of body experience during which I experienced a vision."
"Continue" Teryl said quietly.
He related to her what he had seen.
"I wonder at the commonality between what we’ve found in the DNA sample and what you saw" Teryl commented.
"Me too" he replied
"Adam" she said. "Do you think this vision could be some kind of message?"
Adam nodded. "The old indian in the vision. He was the same man who was in my car yesterday. And thats when this." He indicated the magazine. "All began."
She looked at the magazine. "Pieces of a puzzle" she said to herself.
"Pardon?" Adam said.
"It sounds as if you’re being shown the pieces of a puzzle" she repeated.
He looked up at her. "Could be" he replied. "Although without the big picture I have no idea how to assemble the pieces, if that’s what they are."
"Well at least we now have a lead" he added after a moment.
He activated the screen, recalled the map then got up and indicated the position he had established just before she had come in.
"This is the location I saw during the vision. This is where we’ll find him. He said something to me in the car about a journey, he asked me if my journey was a long one. I thought it was strange at the time, he didn’t seem to believe me when I told him no."
He looked at her. I’m going there as soon as possible."
"Yeah, looks like I’m going too" she confirmed after a moment’s thought. "What about Cartwright though?" she added. "If you tell him any of this he’ll simply write it off as an hallucination."
"I’ll deal with him" Adam replied.
*
Garrick was aboard his ship high in orbit above the North American continent.
In this there was nothing unusual. There was always a Line ship within minutes of the Earths surface, placed so as to be able to deal with any situation that might arise.
What was unusual though was the fear he had sensed in the First councillor before he had departed the habitat.
It was the anomaly that had generated the fear he had seen in Jonars eyes. He had no idea what information the anomaly contained. Although whatever it was it obviously threatened the Pure Line if Jonars disposition was anything to go by.
It had been his ancestor that had dealt with the anomalies first appearance just over a century ago. This was his first exposure to it and he was disturbed by the effect that it was having.
Everyone on the habitat knew that they were in the final stages of the end game. Perhaps this is why Jonar had been so unsettled by its reappearance.
He nodded to himself. Yes. Something so astounding, that its revelation could destabilise the carefully constructed parameters within which the population of the planet below were constrained.
He was just about to start contemplating what this information might be when the door slid open and Janus his Exec walked in.
Janus stood waiting patiently, which was extremely difficult to do considering his arrogance and homicidal tendencies. He was a square block of a man. A shock of red hair atop a bullet head. Garrick had always thought he would have made a good boxer had he not been in the service of the Council.
The scar on Janus’s left cheek twitched in his effort to control himself. He hated Garrick simply because he was his superior. He had only one superior and that was the Council. As far as he was concerned he had been put with Garrick to watch him.
Garrick waited afew moments, indirectly watching Janus’s twitch before finally acknowledging presence.
"Report" he said flatly.
"Only one of the individuals has been successfully identified" Janus informed him
"And the other two?" he asked.
"Unknown." Janus replied.
"I see. That will be all, continue with your duties" he said dismissively.
He waited for Janus to leave the room and then activated the recording the observation sphere had made before it had malfunctioned.
Unknowns.
Although he had never come across them before he had of course heard of them, individuals who showed up only always as corpses, unrecorded non-people who were never allowed themselves to be taken alive.
The theory was that they represented a hidden society within the social mass, although if this was so, no evidence of their location had ever been found.
His thoughts returned to those that had occupied his mind just before Janus had interrupted him with the information of the Unkowns involvement. He had been wondering at the possibility that the timing of the discovery of the anomaly now, in the final stages of the end game might have had something to do with Jonars unease.
He understood that Jonar carried the weight for the success of the plan on his shoulders, so it was understandable that he would be experiencing a certain amount of stress. But he could not see what could go wrong at this stage of things. The only real threat came from discovery. And that was highly unlikely. Exposing the Mix to various conspiracy theories had served to disarm anyone with any threatening information. They were condemned as lunatics and if of any real threat, terminated. No. Jonars reaction to the re-discovery of the anomaly came from some other unknown element within the plan. He was almost certain that something was about to happen. Something of which he was unaware and therefore very likely something he was not included in.
The anomaly apparently held some sort of answer. The unknowns had left the site before the bomb destroyed the evidence. Perhaps they had managed to save some of the remains. Perhaps they had the answer.
PYRAMIDAL PONDERING
CHAPTER FIVE
She woke from the dream. The familiar tones of its memory fading as she came fully round.
In the dream, she had just been retrieved after her mandatory year in the world. The world, unlike her, that Adam had been born into.
"Their insane" she’d kept saying. The faces around her, her rescuers, nodding solemnly.
It was shortly after her return that Adam arrived at the foundation. His previous position had become untenable and so he had accepted the place offered to him. Even though it meant plastic surgery and cutting all links with friends and family. Leaving everything behind, even his identity.
She was a bloodline relative of one of the foundation’s originators and had spent all her life within its protective environment. It was just after returning from her three years in the world that Adam had arrived. What had initially been mental stimulation from his company quickly grew and they now worked as a team whenever they could. It was as close to a relationship you could get to if you accepted the duties the Foundation offered.
Before this, the realm of intimate relationships had been closed to her. She had secretly hoped that the mandatory three years of world experience would provide this missing element. It had proved otherwise.
Leaving the Foundation at twenty had been a shock. Realising almost immediately that the people she had been used to were the exception. Those she met outside were ill, taken by a kind of madness that was inherent within the system. Each birth was a new induction into this self possessed insanity which rested on a foundation of deception. Everyone she met was living in one kind of a fantasy or another that emulated the undercurrent of greed that shrouded the planet.
She had spent the last six months before her return to the sanctuary of the Foundation in the desert, unable to take any further part in what she had witnessed.
Adam had helped her through the three more months it had taken her to recover and it was during this time she realised why she, and the others like her, had this experience imposed on them. Curiosity, pure and simple. None of them actually wanted to go, but their curiosity would always have distracted them and needed to be satisfied. To do otherwise would have been foolish. You need to be with the Foundation one hundred per cent or not at all.
She looked out of the car window. They were travelling along one of the few serviceable highways that would take them to the city. The edge of the six lane road was dotted with vehicles that had either broken down or been deserted. A few of them nothing more than piles of rust.
She turned in her seat and looked at Cartwright. He was as he had been before she had fallen asleep, unhappy and scared. He looked at her.
"So tell me about your Foundation" he said.
Teryl took a moment before beginning. "After Galileo was nearly burnt at the stake by the church for his data that showed the earth was not at the centre of the universe, certain people, including him, realised that their progress was being hindered and decided to conduct their observations covertly. To that end, there is a great deal known that is not known."
"So the Foundation and has been in existence for the last four hundred years" he said.
She nodded. "That’s right."
"I gather your understanding of the universe is based on something called hyper dimensional physics?"
"Yes" she replied.
"Enlighten me" he said.
"Describe an atom as you understand it" she said.
"An atom is a packet of energy" he replied.
"Hyper dimensional physics teaches us that what we perceive as an atom, is infact the event horizon of a vortex, the origins of which appear to be outside the universe" she informed him.
"Outside the universe! There is nothing outside the universe" Cartwright protested.
"I said appears to" she responded. "Its just a theory. But the idea is that we may not be perceiving the whole of the universe."
"Of course were not" Cartwright interrupted.
"No, what I mean is that what we perceive may only be a part of a much larger reality and that the visible universe is just part of that larger reality spectrum."
"like we only see part of the radiant energy spectrum, visible light" he clarified.
She nodded. "So outside in this context only appears to be. The outside is part of the inside we cannot see." She paused. "As I said. It s just a theory."
"From what I gathered at the foundation and what you’ve just said" Cartwright responded. "A theory on which you base your science. Why do you treat it so lightly?"
"Theories are theories because they have no proof" she replied. "The truth will speak for itself. All we have to do is be open to that truth."
"And you think that popular world science is not open to the truth."
"Barely" She replied. "It’s done an excellent job of observation and description. But it does not follow that if you can describe something that you necessarily understand what you are describing."
Cartwright opened his mouth to reply then closed it again.
He wouldn’t have cared to admit it, but he knew there was some validity to her opinions. He just couldn’t accept that he had been living in ignorance all his life.
"I’m sorry if I’ve upset you" she said.
"No. Not at all" Cartwright lied.
He looked out of the window again.
They were entering the outskirts of the expanse that had been Los Angeles.
The original city had become the exclusively guarded domain of the ‘have’s’ as the rich were known. Their brightly lit towers glimmered on the horizon as they drove through the outskirts of the mega-city, the part of the urban sprawl that was little more than a slum.
The living conditions improved as they had moved closer to the centre. It was a truly economically designed city.
The guarded towers of the economic elite were much closer now. Night had descended and the moon was hanging low in the sky like a huge eye staring out over the city.
Now that they were in close they could see the gulf between the extremes of society. Only a few miles away now, the giant towers of steel and glass challenged the night sky, generating enough light even at this distance to cast a shadow and wash out the usual blue glow of the moon.
"If balance is order, then I suppose you could call this order" Adam said.
"What do you mean?" Cartwright asked.
"A lot of people with very little and a few people with a great deal" Adam replied.
Cartwright looked out of the side window. The deserted streets looked almost third world.
"Where is everyone" he asked.
"It’s the big night" Teryl replied. "The opening of the VR theatres. They’re dotted all over the place. Almost everyone, the ones up in their towers and the ‘throwaways down here, will be trying to plug themselves in tonight."
They turned a corner and sure enough there was a VR theatre one block down. By far the brightest building in sight, its renovated exterior looked brand new compared to those of the other dilapidated structures that surrounded it.
	Queues of people were lining the Street on both sides of the building.
As they drove passed, Teryl saw the look of expectant hope on many of the faces of those waiting. They were street people, poorly dressed, some even in rags, seemingly unable to afford the price of entry to this contemporary house of worship. She had read that the cost of entry to a theatre was linked to the average earnings of the area in which it was situated. Once again the elite and the hopeless would be paying through their respective noses for the experience. Very clever she thought, make sure the cost is within everyone’s reach thereby maximising profits. The elite had no contact with the rest of the city and so would have no idea that they were paying so much more. They probably wouldn’t care even if they did know, thinking in their arrogance that their service was better.
"The elite in their towers" she observed. "Wired in because their bored and want to escape. The cast off s, wired in because their desperate and want to escape. A commonality. All in subjection to the machine."
"Helo something" Cartwright said.
"Pardon?" she said.
"There’s a word I’m trying to remember that describes what you just said" he replied.
"Helotism" Adam informed them.
Entertainment he thought. Okay when you could tell it from the real thing. But these VR experiences were offering something as realistic as real.
Teryl stared out of the window as the car continued through the streets.
They turned another corner. A group of people came into view, they were dancing around a fire, the flames flickered through their moving legs.
Adam saw them too. They seemed to him to be moving in slow motion
Cartwright broke the moment. "How are we going to get across the war zone?" he asked.
Adam had given this considerable thought. America’s forces were divided between the Eastern front and the smaller conflict with combined South American forces. A year ago the Governments of Brazil and her allied nations had refused the ultimatum to stop the cutting down of the rainforests. The American government had realised, all too late, that the reduction in oxygen producing forests represented a threat to national security. The refusal to submit to the demands resulted in the mobilisation of forces on both sides. As with the Eastern conflict they too were at a stalemate. The greater perceived threat posed by the Eastern Alliance meant that the nation’s forces on the Brazilian border were heavily undermanned, making them roughly equal to the size of the combined South American allies.
"I don’t know yet" he replied. There were ways around the problem but most of them were illegal and therefore risky. "We’ll hole up overnight. I’ll make some contacts in the morning, see what they can come up with."
The sign caught his eye. Most of the fluorescent tubes had died. Enough were still working however to identify the building as a hotel. He pulled the car over and parked.
Cartwright inspected it through the side window. He wasn’t impressed. "Here?" he said doubtfully.
"It’ll do for now" Adam replied.
Standing outside the entrance it didn’t look any better, a square grubby building in a row of similar structures.
Adam went first and held the door open for the others.
It opened to a corridor that took them through the building to the reception. There was a desk in one corner. The remainder of the area was taken up with benches, most of which were occupied by sleeping down and outs.
"Can I help you." The man’s voice had come from underneath the desk and had sounded more like a statement of regret than a question.
It’s owner appeared.
He was a tall skinny man wearing a string vest with a waistcoat on top. His skin was the palest Teryl thought she had ever seen.
The look on his face was one of almost disgust. He’d recognised them as Out of Towners, the privileged few who had not been forced to live in the cities like so many others. They were the closest thing to the elite he was ever likely to meet and, as far as he was concerned, fair game.
"Like I said. Can I help you?" he repeated.
"We’d like two rooms please, a single and a double" Adam said.
"Oh, I don’t know that we can put people like yourselves up. Our rooms, I mean, they’re dirty".
Teryl ignored the hint of sarcasm. "We don’t mind, just for tonight’ she said.
The attendant opened a large book he had been leaning on. "Well let’s have a look then."
Cartwright who had been standing in the background gestured Adam. "Why are we taking this? Let’s just go somewhere else."
The attendant was busy studying his bookings.
"We’ll get the same treatment wherever we go’ Adam told him. "He knows that and he knows we know it." He paused. "It’s been a while since you’ve been into the city hasn’t it?" he then said.
"Three years" Cartwright replied. "But it was never like this."
"A lot’s happened." Adam stated. He went back to the desk, the attendant seemed to have come up with something.
Cartwright sat down on the end of one of the benches. What had Adam meant, he thought, ‘you’ve been busy’, was he accusing him of being out of touch?
He put the thought aside, uncomfortable with it.
A couple of porn mags were lying next to him on the bench. He picked one up and began to flick idly through the pages. He would never admit it to anyone but stuff like this had been a provider of more than just idle entertainment to him.
Teryl was leaning over the desk. Cartwright found himself looking at her. Not just looking but staring, imagining. He got up and walked over to the desk.
"You can’t stay here. This is our place!"
The outburst had come from behind them. They spun round to find one of the vagrants standing defiantly in front of them.
"We don’t want no OTS in here" he raged.
A few of the reception’s other occupants began to stir. Sleepy eyes focused on them. None were friendly.
They backed up against the desk as the irate individual moved towards them. The attendant stood behind them laughing as the performance unfolded.
"Hey! We just want rooms’ Cartwright said loudly.
The enraged man turned to his associates. "They want rooms." He chuckled to himself... "Lets give em rooms." Someone at the back of the group gave a whoop and danced over to a door marked ‘Boiler Room - No Admittance’
"Here’s a room" he shouted madly."
"We’re leaving" Adam said quietly and immediately moved towards the corridor followed closely by Teryl and Cartwright.
"Hey!, where ya goin? Don’t you want your rooms?" the leader mocked.
"Guess not" the attendant replied.
The street was still empty as they exited the hotel. The lamp above them blew out and plunged them into darkness.
"We can try somewhere else" Teryl said.
"Well we certainly can’t stay here" Adam added.
The sound of raised voices could be heard coming from the hotel’s interior. They got back into the car quickly, eager to be away from the violence they could feel brewing inside the building.
"It’s getting worse" Teryl said to herself as they drove away.
Adam’s attention was drawn from the road by an insistent buzzing coming from the car’s security system. He activated the screen.
"The car weighs too much" he told them. "Did anyone bring anything with them from the hotel?"
"No" Teryl and Cartwright replied in union.
"Locate excess weight" Adam instructed the car.
A three dimensional image of the car appeared on the screen. A red dot marked the location of the object that had triggered the security systems.
"It’s a passive tracking device" he informed them. "We’ll have to dump the car."
"But there’s no-one in sight" Cartwright protested.
"Trust me" Adam replied. "If we stay with the car we’re dead."
He pulled the car into an unlit side street and cut the drive unit. Teryl and Cartwright got out. Adam activated the security measures then got out himself. Anyone gaining access to the car now would trip the alarm, in turn activating the strobe light and low frequency sub-sonics that would render the intruder unconscious in seconds.
"Where to now?" Cartwright asked.
Adam looked round. Any direction seemed as good as any other.
"This way." He opted to stay in the shadows as long as they could, there was no other cover.
He led them along the street until they came to an alley. It ran for about two hundred metres where it joined another street that ran parallel to the one they were now leaving.
Teryl entered the alley last, glancing over her shoulder to look at the car one last time. Another car appeared from around the corner they themselves had come round only a few minutes before.
"Adam" she hissed, throwing herself flat against the wall. "They’re here."
He moved over to where she was and peered round the edge of the building.
Sure enough another car had appeared, some of its occupants were even now examining his car. One bent down and retrieved the tracer from the underside of a wheel arch.
"Let’s get out of here" he whispered.
They headed off down the alley, careful to avoid the pools of light created by the occasional lit window.
He heard a scream of pain. Someone must have tripped the alarm. Whoever it was would be regretting it in about six hours he thought to himself.
They reached the end of the alley and emerged into another street.
"We should try and get as much distance between us and them as possible" he said.
They turned left and hurried down the empty street.
"There they are!"
As in the hotel, the shout had come from behind them.
They turned, expecting to see the owners of the tracer bearing down on them, weapons brandished. Instead they saw the occupants of the hotel.
They had only gone one block before abandoning the car. The down and outs anger must have continued to grow, spurring them on for a hunt.
There were about twenty of them moving towards them. Some were staggering, one was almost being carried, obviously hoping to observe the beating his associates seemed intent on dealing out.
"Run" Adam said quietly.
They turned and took off away from the rag tag hostiles.
Shouts erupted from the group as they realised their prey was escaping. They began to move faster, none however were healthy enough to match the pace of their escaping targets.
Adam took a look at their pursuers. They were falling behind as he had hoped they would.
"Adam!"
He looked to where Teryl was pointing. A car had appeared. It had stopped without pulling onto the road, part of its rear was still hidden in the alley it had emerged from. He realised its occupants were watching them.
"It’s them" he shouted and changed direction to guide the others across the road and into another alley.
They were now running at right angles to the pursuing mob who began to close on them. As they entered the alley Adam took another glance at the car. It had begun to move, turning right towards them. If the mob got to the alley first and slowed the car down they might make it.
They were twenty metres into the alley when the mob appeared in almost comical fashion. Some of them were exhausted. One tripped and fell, rolled over and stopped moving.
The sound of the car’s engine announced its presence. A moment later it came into sight, entering the alley just behind the mob who seemed oblivious to its presence.
Adam studied the alley in front of them. It looked as if it thinned slightly a few metres ahead. He was certain the car would not be able to get through.
As Adam had hoped the mob was delaying the car, its horn blared demandingly in the confines between the buildings. No-one got out of its way and the engine roared as it accelerated into the group of down and outs.
Two went straight over the roof. One unfortunate individual found himself under the wheels of the vehicle. A nasty crack ended his screams of protest.
Adam, Teryl and Cartwright had reached the section of alley where it thinned, it looked indeed as if their pursuers would have to resort to a foot chase. Of course, they could have another car waiting at the other end of the alley, but they had no choice but to proceed.
There was the sound of metal under extreme duress. Adam took another look. The driver of the car had had his vision obscured by one of the vagrants who had been clinging onto the bonnet and had driven into the restricted section of alley. The car was jammed now between the walls so that none of the doors could be opened. The alley kinked and the last thing he saw was one of the car’s occupants trying to kick out the windscreen.
Teryl could see the other end of the alley now. The fear and adrenaline in her chest was preventing her from breathing properly. She expected to see another car pull up and cut them off from freedom at any moment.
She burst out of the alley. No more vehicles appeared to threaten them. There was another alley directly ahead but instead of running for it Adam took a left turn down the street.
They had gone about fifty metres when a spherical object dropped out of the air in front of them, bobbing on a suspensor field. Adam nearly ran straight into it. They stopped and backed up against the wall of a building. It was just a matter of moments now before their pursuers would appear under the direction of the sphere’s operator.
"They’ve got us" Cartwright announced fearfully.
A beam of light pulsed from the sphere, terminating in a doorway they were standing next to.
"What’s it doing?" Cartwright asked.
The beam of energy began to flash insistently on and off, pointing into the doorway.
"It looks like it wants us to stand in there" Teryl said.
As if in confirmation another beam flashed out, hitting the wall on the opposite side to them from the doorway. This one left no question as to what they should do. There had been a flash of light when it had hit the wall. Smoke was rising from a small hole it had made in the building’s stone work.
They moved cautiously into the darkened doorway, the sphere positioning itself so that it could see both them and the Street.
They heard the sound of footfalls followed by the voices of their pursuers in intense conversation, probably with the sphere’s operator. The sphere ducked into the doorway.
Cartwright jumped back in response, raising his hands as he did so to protect himself from the perceived attack.
It stopped directly infront of him.
"What’s it doing?" he whispered.
Adam had no idea. He tried to hear what was being said back up the street but they were too far away. H too was wondering what was going on.
Moments later they heard the sound of their pursuer’s feet running across the street and into the alley opposite.
"I think they’ve gone" Adam offered.
As if to confirm this the sphere moved back out into the street. Adam followed it out and began to examine it.
There was an optical net running around its circumference. The beams of energy had been emitted from one of these lenses which seemed to act as both its eyes and weapons.
It moved, proceeding slowly up the street away from the alley their pursuers had apparently taken. They followed. Whoever was operating this seemed to want to help them.
Adam wondered as to the motives of this unknown individual.
He noticed for the first time that they were opposite an air aid centre. One of the huge servicing areas that dealt with the supply balloons sent South over the war zone to maintain the nations sympathetic interests there.
About twenty or so of the torus shaped balloons were scattered around the launch field.
A service crew was driving away from one of them, a launch seemed imminent. In fact as they watched, one of the balloons on the far side of the field began to rise gracefully into the air.
The sphere stopped again, hesitated then moved away from them towards the high voltage fence that protected the installation.
It was about halfway across the road when it suddenly accelerated towards the fence.
It hit, exploding as it did so.
When their eyes had recovered from the flash generated by the spheres destruction they could see that it had created a hole big enough for them to get through.
"Come on" Adam shouted.
"Where are we going?" Cartwright exclaimed.
"On one of those balloons, it’ll take us over the war zone" he replied.
The edges of the destroyed fence were still sparking as they cautiously passed through the perimeter.
Adam looked around.
The closest balloon was only about two hundred metres away.
"This way" he said, heading off towards it at a run.
Teryl followed immediately, glancing round to make sure Cartwright was following. He had not moved.
"Come on" she shouted.
Cartwright was watching Adam running across the open field.
He knew he should be following but his feet seemed to have failed to realise this fact. Perhaps they have the right idea he thought. If I stand still enough maybe all this will go away.
Suddenly Teryl was infront of him.
"Move. Now!" she shouted, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the fence.
"Can’t I just go home" he said pathetically.
A gunshot rang out. He looked round. There were some men running up the street. One of them was firing at them.
"Oh!" he said, his sense of reality returning.
He turned back to Teryl. She was running in the direction Adam had taken.
He ran after her.
It felt to Cartwright like the longest two hundred metres he had ever seen. In his panic he nearly convinced himself the balloon was actually getting further away.
Another gunshot rang out behind them. Teryl turned her head. Their pursuers who must have been drawn by the sound of the explosion, they were filing through the gap in the fence.
Adam had reached the balloon, passed under the floatation torus and headed for the gondola, the base of which was suspended at about chest height.
He could see the hatch. It was only afew metres away. He leapt and grabbed the operating handle. His fingers found the target. He gripped and pulled.
The door was hinged at the base. It flew open sending him down underneath the gondola.
Cartwright was the first to reach the open hatch, virtually throwing himself through the opening. Adam scrambled back onto his feet and boosted Teryl into the gondola. Finally he dragged him inside, helped by Teryl.
The firing had not stopped. Shells were thudding into the armoured hull. They sat and waited for either launch or capture.
"Come on" Cartwright screamed desperately.
The gondola shuddered as the balloon launched, their stomachs sinking as the positive buoyancy of the balloon threw them skywards.
Like the others, Adam lay on the deck gasping for breath. He rolled over and looked out of the still open hatchway.
The city was shrinking away beneath them. He could just make out the figures of their pursuers standing staring up at them. As he watched they became indiscernible from the field. Eventually it too became just another part of the city.
The fleet their balloon was part of floated around them, some at higher altitudes, others lower. Programmed to follow a specific flight path they would move south now, out over the ocean and then eventually inland again there by avoiding the war zone.
Cartwright moaned.
"Are you okay?" Teryl asked.
He looked up as Adam glanced around. Both he and Teryl were now looking at him.
"No I’m not okay" he said angrily. "There are people trying to kill me." He put his head down and stared at the ceiling.
"Well" Teryl began. "If the actions of that sphere are anything to go by we seem to have a friend."
"Or two enemies who are also enemies" Adam replied.
He turned to look out the view port once again. They were getting quite high now, about two thousand feet he reckoned. It was beginning to get cold. He located the manual lock and pulled down hard on the handle. The pneumatics forced the hatch closed, the locks engaged and the gaskets expanded. They were now pressurised. It was fortunate the builders of the gondola had included this in the design of something that was supposed to be un-manned, they would be going to much higher altitudes.
The view port in the door hatch was the only window and the moonlight filtering through it cast a cold blue light around the cabin.
Adam had no idea what they were going to do once they got to their destination. If they landed with the balloon they would be put into the hands of the authorities and probably sent back. He looked around. There was a metal box about the size of a suitcase suspended on two of the support stansions that ran from floor to ceiling. Crouching over to avoid banging his head he made his way over to it. As he suspected the box was locked.
"I need something to open this with" he said.
"What is it?" Cartwright asked.
"The navigation controls" he replied. "We’re going to have to re-program the guidance system or we’ll be arrested when we land. I want to delay our descent by a few minutes so we set down further south. Ten miles should give us time to get away."
Cartwright got up. He didn’t want to end up in the hands of their pursuers of only an hour ago and so made his way behind the navigation controls to see what he could find.
What he found was that part of the floor was actually two doors. He pulled them open and a light came on illuminating the contents of the storage bin. There was a box of E rations. But more importantly. Two parachutes.
"I found some food" he said. He closed the doors and came back around to where Adam was examining the box. He didn’t know why, but mentioning the parachutes didn’t seem necessary.
Teryl was searching for something to break the lock with. She had to feel around as there were too many shadows to simply look for a suitable object. Her hand touched something cold. Yes, it was a bar of some sort. It had fallen into a gap between the floor plate and the wall.
"I’ve got something" she said. She moved into the moonlight. "It’s a crow bar."
Adam took it and went to work on the lock. Put in more as an afterthought it gave little resistance before it popped off. One piece flew across the gondola and nearly hit Cartwright.
"You sat in the wrong place" Adam joked.
"Yes I did" Cartwright replied flatly.
The door opened to reveal a control panel built into the inner surface. Above this was a screen which was displaying their position and planned route.
Adam studied the control panel for a moment and then hit a button. A new window appeared with the legend Navigation Control.
"Good, no password" he said.
He accessed the program and quickly found the area dealing with the descent parameters. The balloon was programmed to descend ten minutes after receiving a signal from the ground. He assumed if it didn’t receive this it would return automatically to the aid centre. He erased the old instructions and entered the new ones.
"Okay" he said a minute later. "We’ll start our descent fifteen minutes after the others, that will put us twenty miles downrange. By the time anyone realises they’re one balloon short we’ll be long gone.
"I’m going to eat" Cartwright announced. He leant back against the metal wall and opened the box of rations, the contents were basic but welcome, he was starving. He pulled one of the packets out and read the label. Satisfied he handed the box to Teryl.
She took one of the packages. ‘Soup’ it announced on its label. She looked at it then put it back in the box. "I’m not hungry" she said.
Adam absently took one of the packages when offered, but he too, although not having eaten for hours just wasn’t hungry. He handed the box back to Cartwright who took another package, opened it and sucked the contents noisily into his mouth.
Hours had passed. Cartwright was sleeping heavily. Teryl and Adam were sitting on either side of the hatch quietly watching the world below.
They were at maximum altitude, high above a thick cloud layer that was illuminated by the moon which was fast reaching its zenith. Adam watched the shadows of the fleet as they moved south.
"Are you tired?" she asked.
"No" he replied, glancing over at Cartwright who was curled up fast asleep.
"Me neither" she said. "I should be. I haven’t slept for more than two in the last forty eight hours.
She pushed her hands through her hair. "I’ve been thinking" she announced.
"What about?" Adam asked.
"About the mob, back there in the city. Many of those people were prosperous house owners before the economically enforced migrations to the cities. Left with nothing its understandable they would become bitter. But their hatred for us seemed too real, almost comically artificial" she finished.
"As you said. Their worlds have fallen apart" Adam said.
Teryl was not convinced. "No, its more than that. Its part of what’s going on on the world scene. Arguments between countries, individuals and people at odds with themselves.
Peace is something that can happen. But for some reason it doesn’t. Its almost as if something is preventing it from happening."
She looked over at Cartwright who was still sleeping. "Do you think he’s going to be okay?" she asked.
Adam studied Cartwrights sleeping form. "Like those people. His world’s falling down around him. What we found in the dinosaur DNA and the implications of that are destroying his view of reality. He feels threatened and as a result is becoming belligerent and aggressive. It’s instinctual fallout, being easier to go from belligerence to violence than from passiveness to violence
Cartwright was still asleep. Teryl had closed her eyes as well but only to rest them. Adam had been left to occupy himself.
He’d searched the gondola to see if there was anything else of use to them. A search that had produced two items, another lost tool and a child’s toy, a three dimensional wooden puzzle. Finding nothing else he had sat down and begun to assemble the puzzle.
It had taken him only a minute to find the pattern. Completed it made a pyramid.
Under normal circumstances he would probably have put it down and found something else to do. But the gondola offered few distractions and he needed to be busy.
He sat now studying the pyramids shape, turning it to view it from different angles. He had seen the great four sided pyramids the Egyptians had built for their god kings. He’d also visited the structures in South America. They had impressed him as they had everyone. But as to the question what were they expressing, there had been no satisfactory answers.
He studied its form. Three sides and a base, four surfaces in all.
He recalled everything he knew about pyramids.
Apart from the physical shape itself there was the mathematics contained within. When the mystical number P1 had been applied it had been discovered that a pyramid was infact a representation of a sphere. Both the great pyramid at Giza and the pyramid of the Sun in Central America shared this similarity, the builders had obviously had a desire to represent a sphere with a three dimensional structure using flat surfaces. He stopped. Something crossed his mind, a new perspective. Three dimensions? He pulled a pen from his pocket and drew the numbers 1, 2, and 3, one on each side of the wooden puzzle.
He forgot all about his recollection of the facts. He was onto something.
If the three sides represent the three dimensions of space, what would the base represent? It was linked to the Earth. Linked to time he realised. He wrote the word time on the base. In this form the pyramid now described the three dimensional universe.
There were other representations of pyramids of course. The occult pyramid for example, with its thirteen levels and the eye near the tip.
He drew an eye on each of the sides. What was the eye meant to represent he wondered. We see the world with our eyes. They are our primary source of information about the world. Then it hit him. Perception. When you perceive,as represented by the eye, you do so in three dimensions, represented by the three sides. The base represents time, the medium in which we perceive.
Where is all this coming from he wondered to himself.
He looked at the tip. It would represent the cutting edge, the now. The effects of what we do now spreading out into the future along the three surfaces, the three dimensions of the universe. Drawing the effects of our causes to us out of what we perceive to be the future. Forming that future.
He continued to study the pyramid. If a pyramid was a mathematical representation, a model of the physical constraints on perception, the question was. What was doing the perceiving? There was only one element left. Consciousness.
He was still holding the toy infront of his face. He relaxed and let it drop into his lap. A pyramid. A model of the universe, of the boundaries reigning over consciousness.
"Adam?" Teryl had opened her eyes and was watching him.
"Do you remember our conversation about the magazine cover?" he asked.
"How could I forget" she replied. "You were trying to describe a link with something that had happened while you were with the old indian. Something to do with the picture on the magazine cover and a radio broadcast."
"It also had something to do with an oscilloscope’ he added.
"Yes. I remember" she said encouragingly.
"Ever since the car I’ve felt distracted to greater and lesser degrees" he began. "As if I’m meant to be realising something."
He held up the wooden pyramid for her to see. "It happened again" he stated. "The same as before, only this time it was allowed to come to fruition.
He handed her the toy and then explained what had taken over his thoughts.
"The Ancient Egyptians built four sided pyramids for their god kings" Teryl said after he finished. "Kings that were considered to be God men, men with an extra dimension. Hence an extra side to the pyramid" she offered whilst continuing to examine the structure.
Adam became silent. He was beginning to get frustrated.
"You still have no idea what this and the other events are meant to show you?" she asked hopefully.
"No" he replied, letting out a long breath.
She glanced out of the view port. "It should be morning soon" she said.
He looked at his watch. "In about an hour and a half."
There was still cloud below them. Teryl studied its smooth surface. It looked like freshly fallen snow.
The balloon’s shadows had become much larger. We must be closer to the clouds she thought, perhaps we’ve even begun the pre-decent pattern. Then she noticed something off to one side. Following the course of their shadows was a much larger one. It was gaining on them slowly, but closing none the less.
"Adam, come and look at this" she urged.
Cartwright stirred as Adam moved over to the hatch. He sat down next to her and looked out the window, curious as to what had gotten her sudden attention.
"No, down there. Look at our shadows" she instructed.
He stood up to get a better view downwards. It took him only a moment to find what she had seen. "Shit... There’s something above us. Something big" he said urgently.
"What?" Cartwright had woken up and had heard what Adam had said. He rushed over to the window, tripping on something unseen as he stumbled across the gondola. He had just woken from a particularly bad nightmare where he’d been in the dark.
He reached the window and looked down. There was indeed a large shadow that had already blanked out the tell tale signs of the other balloons. As he watched, the remainder of the smaller dots were covered by the looming presence of what was above them. He dropped to the floor, straining to see what was there.
"Oh my god" he screamed, jumping back from the window and scrambling to the other side of the cabin. He looked terrified.
Adam looked to see what had spooked him. He had to lie on the floor but could clearly make out part of what must be a huge object directly above them. From what he could see it was circular, apart from the joins where the plates
Met the surface appeared to be smooth.
"It’s a ufo" he said. His face grim.
Teryl took a look, not because she disbelieved him but because she had to see for herself.
There it was, looming above them, bigger than anything she had ever seen in the air before.
"I’m getting out" Cartwright shouted.
He darted behind the navigation control and opened the doors to reveal the two parachutes.
"We can’t get out" Adam said.
He pulled the chutes out. "Two of us can. There are parachutes" he said desperately.
"But that would leave one of us behind" Teryl said.
He didn’t care; he wanted out and, more so he realised, he wanted Teryl. Then he noticed the gun. It had been sitting under the chutes so that he hadn’t seen it before now. He looked at it. The answer was obvious. He grabbed the gun and pointed it at Adam.
"Put this on" he said, kicking the other chute towards Teryl.
"No" she said firmly.
"Put it on or I’ll shoot him." He waved the gun at Adam.
The object above had blocked the moonlight from the cabin. The only light now was coming from the storage bin.
Cartwright was standing between himself and the light and all Adam could make out of him was a dark shadowy outline.
He didn’t want to hurt him, but Cartwright had apparently stepped over the edge and with it had gone any sense of reason. He looked around for something to use as a weapon. He had left the crowbar over by the control box, well out of reach. He could see nothing else useful in the darkness.
"Better do it" Adam said looking at Teryl.
She reluctantly picked up the spare chute and began to put it on. Suddenly the gondola began to shake. The light in the storage bin blew out and they were plunged into darkness.
Quickly shrugging the chute off Teryl spun round once to gather energy then released it in Cartwrights direction.
He was trying to put his own chute on and had momentarily relaxed his grip on the weapon.
The mass of the chute hit his arm and knocked the gun out of his hand. Realising he had now lost control he made a dive for the access hatch.
"No" Adam shouted. "We’re pressurised in here."
He made a grab for Cartwright, but with the amount of violent shaking and the darkness, he missed him ending up sprawled on the floor plates.
Teryl had been thrown backwards when she’d let go of the chute, tripped on something and ended up tangled in some cargo meshing. Realising what was now happening, she struggled to regain her footing.
With unbelievable luck Cartwright somehow managed to reach the hatch without losing his balance. He grabbed the emergency open handle. As he did so the gondola stopped shaking. Adam and Teryl were shouting something about explosive decompression. He wasn’t listening. He pulled down on the hatch release.
It blew out, pulling him with it.
Teryl and Adam grabbed for the nearest solid object and held on as the decompression blast dragged them towards the open hatch. It lasted only a moment before the pressure equalised. They scrambled to the hatch and looked out.
Cartwrights body was falling away from them, his arms and legs waving madly.
A blast of air battered them, a smaller version of the craft above them hurtled past following the unfortunate Cartwright. It reached him and matched his descent in a fraction of a second. A beam of energy lanced out from the ship and enveloped the falling figure. The small ship came to a stop, hovered for a moment then began to ascend rapidly, pulling Cartwright with it. As it got closer they could see him struggling against the force that had him held firmly. He passed only a few metres away from them. His face was a mask of absolute terror.
The balloon began to shake again. Teryl moved away from the open hatch. She was beginning to feel the effects from the lack of oxygen, becoming light headed, she didn’t want to fall out.
Adam stayed where he was, his neck muscles straining as his head was buffeted by the wind. He tightened his grip on a stansion. He too was beginning to loose consciousness.
"The torus has been cut free" he shouted. His voice sounded strange to his oxygen starved brain.
As he spoke, the hydrogen filled torus with its payload, now free of the gondolas mass drifted away. He could see the object clearly. As he had thought it was round, easily half a kilometre in diameter. It loomed over them blocking out most of the stars.
The only visible light was from an opening on the curved underside. A beam of light, the same colour as the one that had held Cartwright, connected the gondola to the opening.
He tried to speak, to tell her what was happening. But his mouth refused to work.
The last thing he saw before loosing consciousness was the ship’s interior. Smaller craft of varying sizes were sitting in what could only be called a hanger. He caught sight of a number of conventional aircraft amongst the saucer shaped craft. Not conventionally powered though he guessed as he finally passed out.
Adam came to. There was a hissing sound and a mask over his face. Oxygen. Someone was giving him oxygen. He opened his eyes. A human face looked back at him.
Teryl was lying next to him, her eyes were already opened. She looked at him. She was okay.
The gondola was next to them. The stansions that should have connected it to its torus were cut through about a metre above the gondola itself. The cuts were mirror smooth.
Adam regained full consciousness.
They were lying on the floor of the hanger. There was one individual tending to them. Adam examined him as best he could from his prone position. He appeared to be human. Others stood around them. Dressed in black skin hugging one piece outfits. The head gear they were wearing gave no indication if they were human or not. They were clearly armed.
Shouting erupted behind them. Adam strained his head round to see Cartwrights struggling form being carried away by four more of these human shaped figures.
"Adam."
Teryl’s concern pulled his attention back to their own fate. Another human type had appeared. He stood by their feet and examined them with eyes that gave nothing away.
"You will come with me now" he ordered.
Adam looked at Teryl. They had little choice. The attendant gathered together his portable oxygen unit and backed away.
"Now" the newcomer repeated.
They climbed to their feet and were escorted away from the gondola.
FATEChapter
Seven
Teryl had become increasingly concerned after being separated from Adam. She knew their immediate futures were probably going to be very short and that it was just a matter of time before they would meet their fates. None the less, she had decided to remain calm, not wanting to miss any opportunity that may present itself because she was too busy being frightened.
The suited guide had led her through more corridors after they had put Adam in a cell. She had begun to wonder where they were taking her when Red Head as she had named him stopped. The door had been just like every other one they had passed. He’d pressed his thumb against a small pad in the door’s frame.
The door slid open and she was ushered inside.
She was standing now in a room that seemed to function as an office. The walls appeared to be the standard undecorated metal the rest of the ship was built from. It was dimly lit and took her a moment to realise there was a desk in one corner. A figure seated there was getting up.
As human as the guide looked, he was nondescript with hair that had turned prematurely grey if his apparent age was anything to go by. She continued to study him.
She sensed something odd coming from the man. He was extremely curious and she felt even though he had power over her, that there was no immediate threat from him. It seemed to contradict everything else that was happening.
"That will be all. See to the third one yourself" he commanded.
The human looking escort seemed bothered by the order but turned and left with the two guards without saying anything. The door closed behind them.
He studied her eyes for a moment before speaking. "Sit" he eventually said, indicating a chair situated in front of the desk.
Teryl walked over and sat down.
Satisfied, he moved back to the desk and seated himself.
"To begin with, let me assure you I am as human as you, as are the crew. My name is Garrick. Beyond that I am not going to explain anything. You are here to tell me what I want to know.
Teryl looked him directly in the eyes. "And what do you want to ask me?"
"I’m not going to ask" he replied. "I’m going to look. It’s the only way to be certain."
"And how are you going to do that?" she asked.
He thought for a moment before replying. "The technology I have at my disposal is somewhat advanced. One of the results is that information contained in someone’s brain is no longer private."
He sensed Teryl’s sudden unrest. "Oh, don’t worry. There’s no need for pain anymore. I can extract exactly what I want without any damage."
"It still sounds like rape" she stated.
"Perhaps" he replied.
When she had tensed at the implication of torture Teryl had realised the chair she was sitting in was her prison. Some force was holding her in place. She could breath and move her head, but every time she offered any force, a resistance field of some sort engaged and pulled her firmly back into the chair.
She had no idea exactly what this individual had meant by advanced technology. The implication was clear though, he could access her mind. It was time to switch it off.
As a child she had been taught by her parents how to meditate, to quietly sit and find the place where the mind’s effects could not be felt. This she did now. With this shutting down of the senses her awareness of the room vanished and she herself, the compendium of parts that made her, faded too. All was calm.
Garrick rose from his seat and walked over to her. She had obviously realised she had no way out and had closed her eyes. In his experience most people reacted like this. Some did become violent but the seat’s restraint field rendered them harmless.
The interface for the probe was hidden behind a small door in the back of the seat’s headrest. He de-activated the lock, opened the door, pulled out the shallow bowl shaped interface and placed it on her head.
With that he fitted his own interface before settling back into his seat again.
The probe began aligning itself with the subject’s brain resonance.
It took only afew moments before the probe announced its readiness with a perfunctory beep.
He closed his eyes and saw the familiar grey of the start of the process.
He could now access Teryl’s mind as easily as were his own. All he had to do was think about what he needed know. If there was anything there the probe would find it and show him.
He formulated the question in his head. The dinosaur remains. The anomaly. He transmitted.
The probe fell and with it went Garrick. There had been nothing for it to grasp. The deep meditate state Teryl was in had left nothing but a void for the probe.
He went into shock. The odd falling sensation he had on waking was nothing compared to this. He lost his mind in the void. He was naked
Someone was laughing. He turned. It was the Jonar, standing where Garrick had last seen him on the habitat. He was holding a string operated puppet, jerking the strings here and there, the legs and arms jumping in tune with the ever increasing demands. He saw the puppet more clearly. It was himself. The small wooden face was grimaced in agony.
Now there was a scream. Suddenly he was lying on a bed in a grubby little room looking at a full size version of the puppet Jonar had been playing with. The frozen face of the puppet loomed towards him. He realised he was the one who was screaming.
Again he was in the void. He felt another experience sneak up behind him and leap onto his back. The razor sharp claws of another terrifying event ripped into him.
*
Garrick opened his eyes and looked at the chronometer on the desk. Only a few moments had passed. The probe must have switched itself off. The interface had removed itself from the woman’s head and was waiting to be placed back into the seat. She was unchanged, eyes still closed.
Like a dream, what he had seen had told him very little. None the less he was in no doubt as to what it had meant. The Council had been lying to him. He was not one of the Line.
Like the ones on the ship or the habitat who thought they were still on Earth going about their daily tasks, the interface translating reality into an assumed reality experienced by them and accepted as real. This is how the Council had kept him while he had been aboard the habitat. He realised now that the years he had spent enjoying himself had been an illusion, awaken from this artificial life to serve as a slave, how the calls to duty had always woken him from sleep. And that the windowless room he had never been bothered by, because he was hardly ever there, was his cell and that he had in reality almost always been there.
*
Adam had been put in a cell where he was now sitting. He had no idea what had happened to Teryl or Cartwright. He assumed they too were incarcerated.
The cell itself was dark and cool. The only piece of furniture a shelf that he was sitting on. It acted as both seat and bed.
He sat in silence. He had detected no sense of movement since he had been placed in the cell and had no idea if they were still within the influence of the Earth.
Who are these people he wondered to himself.
Apart from the strangely attired guards, everything he had seen on his way to the cell had confirmed that the crew of this ufo were human, even the smell had been right. The armed escorts were the only ones whos cosmic racial identities remained in doubt. The headgear with bulbous protrusion over each eye gave them an insect like appearance that Adam hoped was a purely artificial effect.
From what he’d seen on the hanger deck who ever these people were they regularly operated inside the planet’s atmosphere as the conventional looking aircraft demonstrated. He stopped. But that didn’t necessarily mean they inhabited the planet. Were they aliens after all? Human aliens. Had he found the Hidden Ones?
If he had, it was their technology that was responsible for both the radiation signature at the cave site and the destruction of the remains.
The question was why were they afraid of what could only be the anomaly revealed by the remains? It clearly had nothing to do with them. Infact the only thing that had led him to them was their fear of it, if they had taken no action he wouldn’t be here. That they were powerful was in no doubt, but they were clearly not a wise people and whoever they were, he was forming a very low opinion of them.
He was in no doubt that he had finally found the Hidden Ones. Not as he had thought a group of people plotting to gain world control. But one who probably already had control given the level of technology he had seen.
This went much further than he had ever suspected. What was the agenda of the no longer Hidden Ones?
He lay down, closed his eyes and relaxed into silence. Awareness of the room and his body ebbed away.
Suddenly there noise. He opened his eyes. He was outside, no longer in his cell, but on Earth.
He looked around. A huge pyramid towered above him.
Something pushed him from behind. He turned.
There was a group of men behind him, about ten or so. They had stopped and were looking at him. There was something not quite right about them. He was just about to focus on this oddity when the event ended abruptly.
The cell returned. Its occupant though was different.
He sat there waiting to see if it would happen again.
What was going on? The experience had been like the vision he’d had at the Foundation, only more, he felt that he had actually been there. The memory of it was beginning to contract. He felt it slipping away. In fact the only images he could remember were of the pyramid and the others walking behind him. There had been something strange about them. What was it? He concentrated on the memory. It was no good, it was becoming fuzzier as the seconds past. Eventually it faded completely, leaving only the image of the pyramid as a reminder that it had actually happened.
Had it been some kind of hallucination? Were their captors playing tricks on his mind in an attempt to disorientate him. Teryl had voiced many of her concerns about the wave of the new technology that was breaking, how it could affect perception of reality and therefore belief. She was right, he had no way of proving he was sitting in this cell and not plugged into a machine.
Or he wondered. Had this been another one of those mysterious anomalous events that had been occurring ever since he had picked up the old indian.
He realised something. Up until now he had not considered the possibility that these internal events were relevant to what was happening around him in the outside world. But what if they were. Not disparate, but very relevantly connected to an as yet unrecognisable bigger picture.
The door of the cell opened and two armed guards stepped through.
Adam studied their strange attire. He realised now that the protrusions over the eyes had nothing to do with their racial identity. They were human. The shape of the headgear part of a technology that cut them off from reality, or at least the truth of reality.
One of them gestured to the door with his weapon. Adam got up and stepped into the corridor. The two guards followed, flanking him as they guided him away from the cell.
*
The seat had released Teryl but she had opted to remain where she was. She had realised there was something wrong with her interrogator as soon as she opened her eyes. He had tried to appear calm, but his eyes had darted around the room as if he had been looking for something.
He had said nothing and was sitting now, elbows on the table, his chin resting on the backs of his hands. His eyes were staring at the edge of the desk. What had happened too him she wondered.
The door opened. She turned to see Adam being ushered in by two guards who left without entering, the door closing behind them.
Adam stood there. There was a man sitting at a desk, apparently unaware of his presence. He had seen Teryl as soon as he’d entered the room. She seemed unharmed.
"Are you all right?"
"I’m fine" she replied. "But I don’t know about him." She nodded at the silent figure. "His name is Garrick. He tried to probe my mind. There’s a device built into this chair. When the probe finished and I opened my eyes I found him like this."
Garrick was watching and listening. He had spent the last few minutes forcing the shock of the experience as far down as he could, feeling he would go mad if he let it overwhelm him. For the first time in his life he realised he was not in control.
"What can you tell me about dinosaur remains?" he said suddenly.
Adam and Teryl both jumped. He had given no indication
that he was about to speak.
"No threats or torture?" Teryl asked.
"No" he replied.
"Before that" Adam said "tell us what’s happened to our friend."
Garrick spoke without looking at either of them. "Your friend was quite mad when he arrived on the hanger deck. My exec, you’ve both met him, attempted to scan his mind. The safety protocols on the probe however prevented anyone from risking their own sanity. He is as far as I know sitting in one of our cells."
"Now", he continued. "The dinosaur remains."
"Why should we tell you anything?" Adam asked.
"Because, if you don’t, you’re never going to get off this ship, because I want to know, and because I helped you" he stated.
"The observation sphere" Teryl exclaimed. "You’re the one who crashed it.... why?"
"Because I’m curious and I wanted to know where you would lead me" he replied.
"But you’re not going to harm us to find out what we know" Adam re-stated.
"No I’m not." He moved, sitting back into his seat.
Adam was becoming impatient. He was close to actual confirmation of what he already knew.
"Perhaps first you could tell us who your masters are and why are they so afraid of sixty six million year old dinosaur remains?"
"That is my question too" Garrick replied. "All I know is that there is something they refer to as ‘the anomaly’. I assume it’s something that would show up only when the remains are analysed. As to what it is and how it could threaten them. I have no idea."
"So there have been other finds" Adam said.
"Yes" Garrick replied. "Quite afew."
Teryl looked at Adam. "So the effect was global" she said to him.
"Effect. What effect?" Garrick demanded.
"First" Adam repeated. "Your masters."
Garrick was staring at the edge of his desk. "Your world. It’s trials and joys are designed and executed by them" he began without looking up. "Everything that happens does so in answer to their desires."
He hesitated. Remembering what they had done to him. "They call themselves the Pure Line and originate from the Earth’s pre-history" he continued. "They are the oldest, strongest, force in the solar system. Controlling now without contact, like a ghost in the machine. They view Humanity as an invading force. One they want to take the planet back from."
He was still staring at the desk. He looked up at them. The looks on their faces confirmed that he should continue.
CONTINUES SPECTRUM 3