The Unearthing (17 page)

“
Welcome to the Committee, Minister,” he said

The most important acts of a civilization, be they atrocities against life or acts of compassion beyond understanding, are always done in the name of the greater good. And no one who acts in the name of the greater good believes they are wrong. That is why right and wrong are so often indistinguishable.

SEVEN

THE GREATER GOOD

Gabriel Ashe knew this was a Dream the same way He always knew He was Dreaming. His last memory was of taking High Communion, a cocktail of narcotics hallucinogens and dangerous stimulants. It was a combination of drugs that would have killed lesser men. It brought Him instead closer to Bliss, though not always peacefully. Ashe didn’t remember if He’d partaken of the flesh. He probably hadn’t unless the Angel of the Lord had demanded a sacrifice. For this was indeed a True Dream, sent to Him when he took High Communion. He would know soon enough whether such sacrifice had been required.

He was in a dark desert, the sky overhead black with thickly flowing clouds moving slowly across the horizon. Flashes of purple lightning backlit the clouds occasionally spearing the earth, searing it, making it scream. And of course the shining light in the darkness of this most unholy night was the Ship. It reigned in the valley below Him like an evil king. He was standing on the precipice of the Shorn Mountain, the sheer drop to the Ship seeming to fall on forever. How long would He fall if He was pushed and the Angels weren’t there to catch Him?

“Do not test the Lord your God, Gabriel Ashe,” The voice as always, preceding itself slightly, echoing in reverse, compelled Him to face its source, to watch the Angel appear. To Gabriel Ashe it seemed that the Angel unfolded from a rift in the air in front of His eyes. One moment there was nothing then a bubble the shape of the Angel and then the form of the Angel filling the bubble, ballooning into existence.

“They seek to break the great seal on the Ship,” The Angel said, turning to look down upon the infernal vessel, “It goes against the will of the Lord for this to happen. They must be stopped, and the Ship made to serve the Lord’s Plan.”

“I will stop them,” Ashe said, “If you will but tell Me how.”

The Angel inclined its head towards Him.

“Ask,” the Angel said, “And ye shall receive.” And Gabriel Ashe received.

He woke hours, perhaps even days later, back inside the compound bought and built in a matter of days by the United Trinity Observants. Ashe didn’t bother trying to guess how long he had been in the Dreamstate. He was never sure and it never really mattered. It had been long enough though. He could tell by the dried blood and the smell of rot and death. Apparently he had taken a sacrifice for the Angel. Once He would have found this disturbing. But that had been before His Baptism, before His Father revealed Himself to Ashe. Now He saw this as what it was: the law of the Lord. The girl’s body was torn open, her eyes gone an opaque white, no longer seeing; the terror and pain of her final moments glazed over in a dull expression of death on wan, decaying features. She and Ashe were naked both, their clothes discarded as her life had been. He didn’t remember offering the sacrifice and wasn’t sure if He’d partaken of her flesh before or after rending it for the sake of the Angel, or if He’d fucked her at all. No matter. The Angel had once again shown Him the way. Ashe found His legs and unlocked the door of His private suite. His most trusted Apostles were there, their faces as always nervous and uncertain.

“Take the offerings and burn them,” Ashe said, “In the proscribed place and in the proscribed manner. I must cleanse Myself, break My fast and speak to the Congregation and the Open Church.”

“As you say,” His Apostles complied, heading into the room to take care of the remains of the faithful departed inside.

The Open Church of the United Trinity Observants was the public face of Gabriel Ashe’s cult. It was here in the Congregation’s new home in the Village that people came to hear the Word of the Lord Most High Jesus Christ from the lips of His Son Gabriel Ashe. Like most of the other buildings in the Village the Open Church was built of corrugated tin and polywood beams. There was little to distinguish the Open Church from most Christian houses of worship; a large crucifix stood behind the altar, a pulpit stood off to the left and pews surrounded the altar on three sides. Certainly this surface similarity to most Christian sects is what drew so many from the Village to Ashe’s sermons. The rumours of sex and drugs in Ashe’s cult doubtless attracted many others, but Communion was reserved from the Converted; all that most people received at the Open Church was prayer and Ashe’s disturbing, charismatic sermons.

“My children, the allies of the Ship are now making ready to open the great seal and descend into the belly of the beast. This should never have been allowed to happen, but it has. The Devil has won this battle. The Ship is idolized as a great treasure unto the World. Even the supposed leaders of the World’s religions are seduced, gathered in the capital of idolatry, Rome, to discuss how the lies they preach can be changed to include the Ship. When their lies are disproved My children, the liars invent fresh lies.” Ashe studied each face. He counted many potential new converts among the audience tonight. And His heightened perceptions allowed Him to see His enemies out there as well. A dishevelled young man whose body belied physical strength and health under the ratty hair, dusty clothes and five-day growth of beard…A woman in a suit, tie askew, hair undone, evidently weary from a day’s work; her eyes betrayed an alertness that did not correspond to the dark circles that surrounded them. There were others but not enough for Ashe to be concerned. He had not done anything yet for them to strike. Their suspicions were all unsubstantiated and they had never successfully instituted a raid against His church. He continued His sermon, marking each face of His enemy. When they went over the video from tonight’s sermon He would concern himself with these people again.

“We have lost the battle to keep the Ship sealed to all but Me, but we have not lost the war against the Devil, My Children,” He said, “We can still and yea, we
must
save the world from itself. We must find some way to shut down this site, to force the world to desert the Ship. Let us pray now to the Lord My Father, Jesus Christ.”

♦♦♦

TRANSCRIPT

INTERACTIVE NEWS NETWORK NEWSCAST

Plain text format

PATH:
INN <>HEADLINES >>THE SHIP >>UPDATE ><

ANCHOR

Good morning. Topping the headlines this morning is the announcement from the Ship Survey Expedition that after several days of intensive study of the alien text found around the door at the base of the Pyramid, they believe they have deciphered the code necessary to unlock it and gain entry to the interior of the Ship.

PATH:
THE SHIP <>S
HIP SURVEY EXPEDITION >>ALIEN TEXT >>INTERVIEW WITH PROF. MARK ECHOHAWK ><

ECHOHAWK

The alien text found around the door into the Pyramid can be divided into two sets of characters. Professor Michael Andrews

PATH:
SHIP SURVEY EXPEDITION <>
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA >>ANDREWS, MICHAEL, PROF. ><

Prof. Michael Andrews, 62, assigned by Professor Mark Echohawk to the Ship Survey Expedition is a theoretical mathematician who was until recently the dean of mathematics at Oxford University. Andrews published a paper that defines the predictable statistical probability of

PATH:
ANDREWS, MICHAEL, PROF. <>ALIEN TEXT<< INTERVIEW WITH PROF. MARK ECHOHAWK ><

ECHOHAWK

Professor Michael Andrews identified the numeric glyphs, the first set of characters and consequently the basis for the Ship Builder’s basic numeric system. Our linguist, Professor Sonia Aiziz has identified the second set of characters, some forty-seven different runic symbols, as the primary characters for the Builder’s written language. The symbols are as yet indecipherable to us but Professor Aiziz hopes that when we get inside the Ship itself we’ll find a primer that bridges the gap between their mathematical language and their written language. Then we will truly be able to begin understanding more about the Ship.

♦♦♦

Bloom shut down her Grid connection and retracted the video boom of her mobile console back away from her left eye. She took one last drag from her cigarette before dropping the stub to the ground and crushing it out under her foot. Break time was over. She made her way past saluting subordinates to the secure underground hangar where the (healed) repaired Bug sat, humming its own counter-harmony to Shipsong. Bloom stood under the Bug. It balanced on four insectile struts a little more than two meters off the hangar floor; there was just enough space for her to walk under. Her subordinates gathered around her as she switched on the camera on her headset. She’d be breaching the cockpit of the Bug in just a few minutes.

The engineers had been all over the machine like ants; they’d examined the outer hull of the craft, opening what few access ports there were and trying uselessly to cut open the Bug’s skin elsewhere for a look within. The hatchway into the twenty-three meter long craft led to a series of three crawlspaces and a round, sealed room that Bloom could only guess served as the cockpit. Two of the crawlspaces led back to the engine compartment where even now techies were looking at alien machine components, trying to understand their function. The third crawlspace led past the cockpit along to the front of the craft and the sensor node. After being given a brief tour of the Bug by her new staff, Bloom had been brought up to speed by the engineer immediately subordinate to her; a fellow by the name of Brubaker.

“The dead Bug’s given us a lot of insight over the years; a lot of scanning and imaging systems came from what we found in the sensor node in the forward section of the craft,” He explained, “Stealth shielding came from the outer membrane of the Bug’s hull, liquid crystal video and three-d imaging technology from the cockpit. But with the power and propulsion systems in the aft of the Bug completely destroyed and the second Bug inactive until now, all we were really able to do was catalogue parts.”

“No attempts were made to reproduce the power or propulsion systems based on what was found in the second Bug?” Bloom asked.

“Several times,” Brubaker replied, “However we’ve never been able to duplicate its power supply. There are also several types of material, including some radioactive elements that we’ve never been able to synthesize. And a lot of those materials have changed since the Bug went active.”

“Changed, how?”

“Well the outer skin of the Bug’s become impenetrable; we can’t cut through it. Some of the internal systems and relays have changed; liquids flowing through conduits where there were none before…relays between systems suddenly made of a different material…we’ve brought in a biologist to examine the Bug because we think that it’s at least partially based on organic technology.”

“You think the Bug’s alive?”

“At least partly, yes.” Bloom nodded and consulted the engineering study logs on the Bug on the data pad before her.

“Tell me about what happened the last time someone tried to access the cockpit area,” She said, “The report wasn’t too clear.”

“We had someone climb up into the cockpit as soon as the Bug had finished…repairing itself. As the tech climbed inside the access hatch sealed automatically and the chamber started filling up with an unknown liquid.”

“The report said the chamber flooded and tried to drown him.”

“It’s a little confused,” Brubaker said, “When the floor started rising he made for the hatch. He described a thick, yielding liquid substance that tried to form itself around him, amoeba-like. When he got out of the chamber though, he was perfectly dry.”

“Before the Bug was active there was never anything like that reported,” Bloom said, “In fact the cockpit was just bare chromatic grey walls; a small, hollow room.”

“That’s right.”

“And there’s been no other…attempts…made in other parts of the Bug, to grab anyone.”

“Also right,”

Bloom nodded. “That’s what I thought. Fine; there’ll be a team meeting first thing tomorrow. Once everyone’s gone over the Bug and studied the systems connecting to the cockpit I’ll be climbing in.”

Now Bloom pushed open the hatch that led into the small cockpit. It was a grey-walled spherical room, a little more than two meters wide and tall. Bloom wore a small atmosphere canister on her back connected to a face mask. Climbing inside, Bloom put the mask on and opened the valve from the canister. She stood, looking around.

“I’m in,” she said into her mic, “I’m stepping towards the center of the floor.” She was calm. Bloom fully expected she knew what would happen next. The floor seemed to liquefy around her feet, slowly rising up.

“The floor’s moving now,” she said, “Climbing up…” The liquid rose to her knees and kept climbing. As it reached her hips Bloom raised her hands instinctively. She felt herself beginning to float. She was nervous but not overly worried. She had techs on the other side of the chamber door to get her out if need be. The chamber was filling quickly now, but she was no longer rising. Bloom judged her position to be about halfway between floor and ceiling. The liquid was warm; nearly body temperature, and the sensation was of slipping into a hot bath. Suddenly the liquid reached her neck and went up around her head. She felt a moment’s panic, but there was a space between her head and the membrane and it seemed as though fresh air was passing through the space. Bloom found she had use of her arms again. She pulled her mask off and inhaled fresh air.