The Unearthing (15 page)

George smiled.

“It’s kind of hard not to be,” He said.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. We have a unique business opportunity presenting itself. The Village that’s sprung up around the Ship is all homes and shops. I understand they have a Taco Bell and a couple of coffee joints but little else. We’ve had to shut down some of our businesses because they were being overrun by Villagers.” David George nodded.

“I haven’t talked this over with the Council yet, but I’m positive they’ll agree,” Santino explained, “I’d like to propose that the Band guarantee business loans to Laguna businessmen so they can set up social and entertainment businesses in the Village. The Village is leasing the land from the Laguna Band Council already, so we have no worry about real estate costs. We’re looking at construction and setup costs, only.”

“Interesting,” George replied, “Let me talk it over with some of my people here and get back to you after you’ve thrown it out to the Band Council.”

“Will do. Thanks, Dave. I’ll linx you back this afternoon.” As Santino ended the linx, a message flared to life across his console screen:

You have 1 new text linx waiting.

(1)View now (2)View later

Santino selected to view the message. He read it through once and then directed his console to verify its authenticity by tracing it back to the sender. When that was completed Santino read the message again. Then he requested hard copy and holding the paper print-out in hand read it a third time.

“Jesus,” Santino rasped, stunned. After the Ship unearthed itself in his back yard he’d not believed anything could possibly surprise him. How wrong he had been. The message read:

Dear Mr. Santino,

His Holiness by the Grace of God and Jesus Christ our Lord, Pope Simon Peter requests your attendance as a special advisory delegate to the forthcoming Vatican Council.

His Holiness believes that as Chief of the Laguna Band and an accredited Shaman of the Acoma People, your insight to this most pressing matter of Faith will be invaluable. That you live in proximity to the Ship and were present during the Unearthing has also been heavily considered in your favour, as a delegate to this Council.

The Fourth Vatican Council will begin in a few weeks’ time and we request that you reply to this invitation by the deadline listed below, either by reciprocal World Grid linx or by postal service.

We thank you Mr. Santino, for your attention to and consideration of our invitation and pray that you will see fit to join us in Rome for the conference.

Yours respectfully,

Br. Simon Gage

Delegate Liaison Vatican IV

♦♦♦

There was no longer any question; they were face to face with a door. The tiles to either side door were strange, rectangular runes, each carved with a different alien symbol. Complicating things further was a second set of glyphs, these circular and divided into three different sub-types: One type was perfectly round, the other two oval; one oval along the horizontal, the other along the vertical. Round, oval, tall or wide, each glyph-type had only five characters: An empty “ring” glyph, another with one quarter full, a half-glyph, three quarters filled and a full one. Aiziz and Andrews were all over the symbols which were arranged in six different groupings: one for the runes, three for what were evidently numeric glyphs and two combined. The two combined rune groupings were to the left of the door, the four separate sets to the right. Aiziz pulled a small handheld device from her pack. It consisted of a small console screen and a laser pen. She switched the device on, adjusting the width of the beam to its widest and began sweeping it across the surface of the door. Each pass recorded part of the alien script into the device, layering the next pass onto it, flawlessly.

“I’ve never seen writings like these,” She said, “There are certain similarities to ancient written languages that I’ve studied, but it’s unlikely those similarities are anything but coincidental.”

Echohawk approached, studying the scriptures on the door.

“I doubt that we’ll be doing any comparative studies with Earth languages,” He paused, realizing what he had said and chuckled, “Now,
there
’s a phrase I never thought I’d use: ‘Earth languages’.”

“Funny thing, the way reality catches one up, isn’t it?” Andrews remarked, “Earth languages…alien languages…I doubt that comparative study will yield an interpretation of these symbols. But I do expect that there will be some kind of universal primer. Not here on the door of course, but inside the Ship itself.”

“The primer will do us little good inside the Ship if we’re locked outside,” Aiziz said, “Unless you know how to decipher this and get us in.”

“There’s actually no need for us to decipher this information right now,” Andrews said, “All we need to do is open the door. And the aliens that built this Ship have left us everything we need to do so right here.”

“What do you mean?” Echohawk asked, “How can we open the door if we can’t make sense of the inscription on the door?”

“I said earlier that we’d be faced with a combination lock,” Andrews replied, “And that is essentially what we have here.”

“How, exactly?” Aiziz asked, growing impatient. The other members of the SSE were pausing in their tasks to regard Andrews.

“It’s simple really,” Andrews said, “The symbols to either side of the door would indicate the aliens who built the Ship have a base-five numerical system. Look at the round glyphs. They cannot be anything but number sequences. The runic text accompanying the glyphs is most likely irrelevant to the task at hand anyway. This door was designed to be secured but I doubt it was designed to keep others out; In fact I’d go so far as to say that it was meant to be opened by us.”

“By us?” Echohawk asked.

“I think I see where he’s going,” Aiziz said.

“By us,” Andrews confirmed, “We all agree that the Ship was running a program when it unearthed itself. The Ship executed that program and unearthed itself, giving us deliberate access to the Pyramid via the Ramp. The Ramp leads to the door before us. Aliens intelligent enough to engineer the Ship would probably realize their language would not necessarily be known to us. Therefore they must have left us a puzzle that we could solve. The sets of runes and glyphs along the doorframe are that puzzle. It is therefore quite unlikely that the runic script we see is a set of instructions. I’ll defer the question of what that message must therefore be, to Doctor Aiziz. That they are connected is evident. The individual runes and glyphs are laid out to the right of the door and to the left we have two sets of combined runes and glyphs.”

“Each of the two combined sets is laid out differently,” Aiziz concluded, “Though both resemble alphanumeric keypads. If they’re an input device, the test Professor Andrews is speaking of can only be a sequential pattern recognition test.”

“And once we determine the pattern and sequence we’ll have access to the Ship,” Andrews concluded.

♦♦♦

Lieutenant-Colonel Margaret Bloom had again spent the last few days in a holding pattern. She’d been shipped out to DIA headquarters at Bolling Air Force Base in DC, been assigned to barracks and had been left there to rot. She’d spent days drifting, waiting to be called to Harrod’s office for some sort of assignment or duty. Nothing. Bloom had found herself spending her time drifting between the rec room and its game consoles, Grid connections and vid screens and the Officer’s Club with its alcohol, pool tables, dart boards and where her rank bought her a thousand dollar credit line at the bar. She had access to the airfield but no flight privileges so she oftentimes found herself hanging out with her fellow fighter jocks, including some old wing mates who had become instructors. Her linx was always in her ear, always standing by for the call that never came. Finally this morning Bloom had received word. She’d been in the rec room in a simulator game, heavily involved piloting a deep space fighter called a
Starfury
, hence the name of the game, when her linx chimed.

“Shit!” she swore absently, pausing the game in mid assault on an enemy frigate. She put down the control pad for the game, pressing a switch behind her ear on her headset.

“Bloom here,”

“Lieutenant-Colonel,” Harrod’s voice came, grating in her ear, “Report to my office immediately.”

“I’m on my way General,” She said. At last; things were moving, again.

“Sit down, please,” Harrod said. He didn’t look up from the central console on his desk. He keyed a switch and behind him a wall-screen rolled out of its recess. Its flexible fabric rippled as some unseen bump on its roller repeatedly hit the groove of the track it was in. The screen drifted to a halt and flared to life. Displayed on it was Bloom’s service record.

“I’ve been reviewing your file Lieutenant-Colonel, trying to decide what is to be done with you,” Harrod said. He looked up at her briefly then resumed reading from his console.

“I’ve kept you here on hold while I did some checking into your background beyond what’s in your service jacket. Needless to say, what I discovered surprised me a great deal. It’s amazing to me that you’ve been promoted up through the ranks to where you are. Apparently however, your skills behind the stick are seen as redeeming a record that’s been spotted with...incidents where you’ve consistently and constantly challenged your superior officers. Not to mention the number of times you’ve been court-martialled for assault, disobeying direct orders and…other offences.” Bloom said nothing. She’d let Harrod bait her once too often already. He continued.

“Despite your problem with those in authority over you, you’ve handled your own authority quite well. You’re also one of the top aerospace engineers the Air Force has. These things have counted in your favour so far and they are also among the reasons you simply didn’t disappear en route to Bolling. You can still be of use to your government.”

“How?” Bloom asked, at long last.

“Lieutenant-Colonel, as you are aware the DIA is not simply another intelligence and espionage agency like Homeland Security, the NID, the CIA, the NSA, or ConsOp. We are also one of the most important military research and development agencies that the United States controls.”“And if the rumours are true,” Bloom said, “The DIA also operates one of the largest, most well equipped shadow armies in the world.”

“The rumours aren’t true; we operate
the
largest, most well equipped shadow army in the world. But our
primary
concern right now is the research arm of the DIA,” Harrod retorted, “And more specifically your place in it.” Bloom took a moment to look around, studying her service record on the large screen behind Harrod as the console cycled gradually through three-page sets.

“And what place would that be, specifically, General?” she asked, “What is my assignment? And where?”

“The Defence Intelligence Agency monitors thousands of research and development projects in both Government and the private sector that are aimed at improving our nation’s defence capabilities. The Government projects are done at one of four facilities under the DIA’s direct authority. Would you happen to know which facilities I’m referring to?”

“I’m honestly only aware of three,” She said, “Los Alamos, of course; Black Ridge in Texas, which was established after White Sands was nuked during the war and the Cheyenne Mountain facility, which was turned entirely over to research in the 1970s when the Pennsylvania Avenue bunker complex was completed.”

“The fourth is the facility we’ll be en route to shortly,” Harrod said, “You may have heard of it, though doubtless never in any official capacity: the Groom Lake Special Research Facility, in Nevada.” Bloom had to pause a moment. The name was familiar but she didn’t know why. Then it dawned on her:
Nevada
.

“Area 51,” She said, incredulously.

“No,” Harrod replied, “Area 51 is a parcel of land bordered to the north and west by fence, to the south by Area 46 and Area 52 to the east. It is part of the perimeter of the Groom Lake facility. Forget everything you’ve ever heard about Area 51, Bloom. The truth is much stranger than the fiction.”

“Isn’t it always,” Bloom mused, eyes locked on Harrod’s, not knowing whether or not to be urprised, shocked or to have expected anything less from the DIA in general and General Harrod in particular.

“Take a look at this,” he said, keying a sequence on his console. Onscreen, Bloom saw her first pictures of the Bugs.

“They were discovered in a hillside in the Alberta Badlands after the end of War Two, in nineteen hundred forty six. They have been the source of a lot of advances in military technology for a very long time. They’ve also been the source of some of the most confounding mysteries the DIA has ever faced.”

Bloom was looking at images of two waspish craft as they appeared while being pulled out of the hillside. One was smashed, damaged beyond repair. There was the suggestion that they might have once been gold and green in colour, once been quite vibrant. The scale on the screen gave them twenty-three meters in length. The craft were insectile, with flowing lines from the aft section, narrowing towards the middle before blossoming in an elliptical forward segment. The “head” of the craft seemed to be joined to or supported by the rest of the Bug by tapering nacelles that stretched from the mid-section of the craft almost to the tip of the “nose.” Bloom suspected the forward section of the craft was a sensor or equipment array of some kind, possibly made to store ordinance. The pilot--if any--would be housed midway through the craft with the large rear section given over to engines and power supply. The destroyed Bug’s aft section was crumpled. The other one had damage across one side but seemed mostly intact. The images changed, showing the two Bugs in a hangar: the wrecked one being disassembled and components from both being examined and extracted.