“After netball it is, then. A bit of fascist-watching to round the afternoon off. We’ll take lunch and a bottle.”
The officers were about to go when their trucks came into view across the water. From where they sat, the vehicles looked like tiny matchbox toys as they entered the compound, but the comparison never occurred to them. Such thoughts do not commonly exercise themselves in minds such as these. The officers finished their drinks and watched as the compound’s gates closed behind the last of the trucks. Then they got back into their black cars and set off along the road around the bay, leaving clouds of dust hanging in the air behind them.
In the leading car, the General, permanently assigned by his government and his uncle (in this case, the same thing) to the standing army of the United Nations, turned up the air conditioning and loosened his tie. The gin had made him sleepy.
His lethargy was due to more than just the drink, though. He had been feeling haunted all day. The previous night, while he slept, he had dreamed.
There was a huge room… It had walls of dark, finely carved stone and a high ceiling lost somewhere in a darkness that seemed to gather around him like a cold, shifting fog. In the dim light he saw obelisks, twice as high as a man. There was no one in the room, but it lacked the stillness that it should have had. There was a sense of being, of something, which slowly coalesced, taking on a form that was invisible but palpable, that brushed against him like seaweed swirling in a tide. The sensation of voices, a hot, dry rustle of moth wings, fluttered around his head…
When he woke, he couldn’t remember anything of what the voices had said. That had frustrated him at the time, and the memory of it frustrated him now. There was an urgency, he could recall that much. He felt, in his dream and afterwards in the shower, and as he put on his uniform, that they – whatever
they
were – were trying to tell him something. There was something in the whispered dialogues that made him feel uncomfortable.
In the end he gave up, as practical men should do when confronted with dreams. He had a lot to do.
The General was the only person here who knew everything about the operation. Everyone else, including the archaeologists, knew enough to do their job, and no more. The bigger picture was not their concern.
Of course, there had to be some people whose jobs demanded that they know more than they could be trusted with. It was unfortunate. Sometimes it was possible to clean their brains out – there was technology more than equal to the task; but sometimes memory removal wasn’t possible or appropriate. Sometimes it was necessary that someone disappear. But the General was a reasonable man, and he tried to keep those losses to a minimum.
They were approaching the gates of his new command.
* * *
“THIS IS THE PLACE,” says Thead, checking the map, then looking through his sextant, and then through his telescope again, checking and rechecking.
Thead is used to the idea that he is doing an important thing. This place was promised to them a long time ago. They might not know exactly what awaits them, but over successive generations, the ship’s crews have made up stories among themselves. It is those stories that have kept their faith alive through the centuries, and it is those same stories that stir their blood now.
In the direction of the sun, an ocean reaches out towards the horizon. Below them, a coastline meanders slowly away in both directions, indented by bays and inlets. A town, sheltered by the surrounding hills, hugs the edge of one the larger bays. In its streets they can see life, tiny, like fleas crawling through the fur on a dog’s back.
“Thead,” says Bark after they’ve spent a few minutes looking in silence, “where are we? What does the map say? Where should we look now?” He wants to ask what they should look for, but no one knows, and they all know that no one knows, so there is no point in asking.
Thead is happy now that his opinion matters. “I can’t be sure. We’re in the right area, according to the map. More, I can’t say. There is nothing more on the map that can help us. Nothing that I can see, anyway.”
“We’ll moor the ship there,” says Bark, pointing to the opposite side of the harbor. “Away from the town, above those dunes.”
They cross the harbor. Bark is enjoying himself. This is a great moment in history, even if it is just the history of the ship, not Big History. It’s as close to a Great Moment as any of them have ever been, with the possible exception of Bark himself, who can recall from somewhere the investiture of some kind of emperor, sometime in something called the Middle Kingdom. Something like that. It was a long time ago, in one of his other pasts.
Near the dunes, Onethian, always first in line to do any physical work, flexes his muscles and leans into the winding gear, letting the anchor descend to the ground. It lodges in the branches of a tree, and the Senator and Sahrin join Onethian as they begin winding the chain in.
The ship descends towards the ground. The three of them strain at their task, and it isn’t long before their skins shine with sweat. “Get lost, old man,” grunts Onethian. “You’re getting in the way.”
“Leave him alone,” says Sahrin as the Senator puffs obediently away and sits down.
Kali, drawn from below deck by the sound of the winch, goes to one of the viewports and immediately calls out.
Below them, sitting on a ledge of rock among the sand dunes, are three people.
The ship, along with themselves, is invisible to the local inhabitants, so they aren’t concerned about being noticed by the three on the ground, but there is still an element of surprise in seeing some of the locals so soon. And for them to be, from this distance at least, the same as the crew; that is to say, human, or at least the same basic shape – that in itself is unusual.
Now they need to make another decision.
* * *
A FEW DAYS LATER, after netball and as arranged, Bryce and Reina stopped at Tommy’s place on their way to the dunes. We’ve got a couple of bottles, they said, and bring some smoke, some of that leaf you had the other day, and we’ll lie in the sun and watch the boys at the camp work. Good enough, said Tommy, who wasn’t doing anything anyway. He’d just had a couple of tattoos removed, and didn’t feel like working.
“More bloody army, mmm. Foreign again, yeah? Or were they ours?” Tommy was saying a short time later. He was pretending to be interested for Bryce’s sake, and as usual he wasn’t doing a very good job. They were in Reina’s pickup, heading around the bay towards the dunes. Tommy was sitting between Bryce and Reina, trying to roll a smoke, and failing because the road was bumpy. “Ah, fuck it,” he said, folding the plastic bag back into his pocket.
“There’s no such thing as
our
army, mate,” said Bryce. “You should know that by now, with all the bloody lectures I’ve given you. They all belong to the ruling class. The elites, if you want to use the modern term. Armies always have, always will. These guys are UN, they belong to the big State, the new one. They’ve got zip to do with us, that’s for real.”
“Yup,” replied Tommy.
“Yeah, yup,” said Bryce. As usual, he was frustrated by his friend’s indifference, but he’d gotten used to it when they were in the army together. “I suppose you won’t care about them until they do something that fucks you up personally.”
“Fair guess, mate. Do you want some of this?” Tommy had found a joint somewhere.
They turned off the main road and took a smaller track. After a couple of minutes, the track ended. They got out of the pickup and walked into the sand dunes.
After a short walk across the sand, they reached their favorite outcrop of rock. It was easy to get to, comfortable, and gave them a good view of the military encampment. Once they were settled, Reina pulled a pair of binoculars out of her pack.
A few of the soldiers were still unloading equipment from the trucks, even though it was a few days since the convoy had passed through town.
The stuff was being taken into a tunnel that both Bryce and Tommy knew well. For as long as they could remember, it had been a local landmark, where the local children would play all the games that children play anywhere when such a wonderful resource as a cave is available. It was – or at least it had been before the soldiers arrived – a short cave, about fifty feet long, with a gently sloping floor that ended with an impassable rock face where the roof had collapsed some time in the distant past.
Things must have changed. They had watched from their hiding place over the last few months as the cave had swallowed huge amounts of equipment. Building materials were taken into the tunnel and never reappeared. They had seen tons of tailings being taken in trucks to the water’s edge and dumped.
They had all sorts of theories that came and went, depending on what they saw, what the latest whisper in town was, or what their mood was. Tommy’s interest was casual. If Reina and Bryce hadn’t been interested, he wouldn’t have bothered coming out here. Reina agreed with Bryce; there was something going on. Whether or not she cared much about it was another matter.
* * *
PAST THE POINT where the rock fall had been cleared, a string of lights illuminated ancient walls, sloping down and fading into the distance.
They had found a lot, but as for knowing what the tunnels meant – the answer, it was hoped, was somewhere below them. That, at least, was what the drones had been told. As far as they knew, they were here to dig up the secrets of the past, to move long lost knowledge to the surface in container loads of rubble and artifacts.
A new tunnel had been built near the entrance. It branched off from the old one and housed the offices and research areas. The rooms here were lit, heated, sealed, and entirely functional. This was the General’s first stop.
He stopped briefly at a door that bore his name. He went into his new office and dropped his case on the desk. So, this was going to be home for a while. He looked around. They’d set it up well enough. It would do. He turned and left again, heading further down the corridor to the research labs.
The archaeologists were there, sorting through artifacts that had been brought up from the lower levels. The objects were piled together on long tables, waiting to be classified according to whatever system had been contrived for the exercise; an intellectual folly which the General was happy to have no part of.
Bisset, the chief archaeologist, was there. Middle-aged and paunched, he usually made up for a lack of hair by using too much oil, but working here must have been getting to him, and he had let what was left of his hair do as it wished. It was sticking out like a frizzy gray halo, making him look like the mad scientist he almost was. He was holding a fragment of something up to the light and turning it around slowly, dictating notes to one of his staff.
He glanced up as the General approached. “You’ve arrived,” he said, dispensing with formalities. “You’ll want to take a look at these. They’re only the small ones. Here are some photos of some of the larger pieces that have had to stay down below because of their size.” He indicated a pile of prints. “There are thousands of the things, and we’ve only just scratched the surface.”
The General thought back to when the first samples had been put in front of him. It had been several months ago, in Bisset’s office at Mount Weather.
“This is strange stuff. I’ve never seen anything like them. What do you make of them? Not a fair question, I suppose,” he had asked the archaeologist.
“On the contrary, it’s a very fair question,” Bisset had replied. “Mysteries like this have been around for a long time, though they never get much of an airing in public. The Smithsonian’s got a lot of it, but only our own people have access to it. As far as we know, this is the largest collection that’s ever been found at a single site. Even Acambaro is nothing compared to this.”
Bisset had shifted his attention to a small group of clay figures. Two human figures, male and female, were standing side by side, facing a lizard-like creature slightly taller than them and standing on its rear legs, supported by its tail. The three of them could have been having a conversation.
There was enough knowledge on this table to rewrite all of human history. But history, of course, could not and would not be rewritten. The future was more important than the past, and the present would take whatever shape was needed to provide the required future.
“We’re going to have a strange few months, aren’t we, Professor?” The General picked up a ceramic of a stegosaurus.
“It looks that way,” Bisset replied. “The items on this table, including the one you’re holding, were found under rock at least two million years old. And the tunnel system itself is at least as old. This changes a few things.”
* * *
BARK, ONETHIAN AND THEAD have joined Kali to see what has attracted his attention. Sahrin and the Senator come over as well. The whole crew is there.
Below them, the ground appears to be alive. A pulse rises and falls, like heat existing on some other scale of temperature. Trails of comings and goings are almost visible, as though what is happening is just around the corner of perception, asleep in a dream of its own. Bark feels something familiar in the scene
.
The activity on the ground surrounds a cave entrance at the bottom of a cliff.
“Playtime?” Onethian rubs his muscular hands together like the idiot he can be sometimes.
“You could try being a little more serious,” the Senator says, displaying a rare moment of resistance.
“I could,” grunts Onethian, “but I’m not going to.”