It is easy to forget that this is a period piece, taking place as it does over ten years before the present. (Although the Cairo chapters should have been a tip-off, depicting as they did an Egypt before the Arab Spring.)
So plush Cthulhu dolls are anachronistic. But I wanted to talk about the turn of more recent years away from "alien" and back towards "demon." As well as many fascinating archaeological discoveries over the last decade that are strangely appropriate to the tale.
On a side note, the Carter scene was impossible to write. I went through twenty re-writes, scrapping thousands of words at each pass. I painted myself into far too many corners in the last few chapters to ever be able to get out of them gracefully.
Socorro, New Mexico: 34°3′42″N 106°53′58″W
US-550 unrolled beneath the tires of Ark III. It was a divided highway here, the pavement fresh, the land around them green and cut with frequent arroyos. Lara was riding in front again. She found Stan's silences companionable. It gave her space to reflect.
She hadn't seen San Antonio. This wasn't the one in Texas, of course. The one in New Mexico was part of an unincorporated community and had a population of less than a hundred. Newbery kept driving after picking her up — it turned out he'd had his entire team split up and driving back and forth down 380 looking for her — and the convoy didn't stop until they were in Socorro.
Socorro. Appropriate enough; the name was Spanish for "aid" — 16th-century Spanish settlers had given the name to a pueblo of friendly Piro following their own struggle through the Jornada del Muerto. Newbery had pulled over at last on a side road leading to the VLA, nearly under a hovering UFO created in scrap metal and advertising a recycling yard.
That sort of thing was getting to be a familiar sight. While passing through Hatch, a few miles North of Las Cruces, they'd seen a giant fiberglass man holding a model Airstream trailer in one hand. A Muffler Man, someone had said. It was another of those peculiar touchstones of American culture, like watching "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas eve, or eating hotdogs at a baseball game. Roadside Americana, they called the wild and wonderful assortment of giant men, dogs, pigs, and dinosaurs, swoop-roofed diners and 1950's petrol stations, plus the odd Mystery Spot and other roadside attractions. New Mexico had a lot of Muffler Men. It was second only to their obsession with the chili pepper.
Lara didn't quite share the enthusiasm. A good Googie building might attract her eye. She didn't care for the style but had to salute the panache. But the others? The Hatch RV Man had been an oddly-proportioned giant with a huge square head and a jaw that would make Superman proud, with a furtive smile that would keep some people awake at nights. He hadn't just entered the Uncanny Valley, he'd hit the ground and started digging.
She'd come out of her daze in a compartment that, for all the Star Trek decor, was a well-equipped sick berth. When Ark III stopped under the flying saucer Wentworth gave her a proper examination.
Dehydration and heatstroke were Lara's major issues, although he gave her the usual cautions about mild concussion. The cut on her head was shallow and would not need stitches. She also noticed a new pain where her shirt appeared to be stuck to her ribs. "I guess I'm not the only one who can count coup," she murmured.
"What's that?" Wentworth might be more used to dealing with animal ailments, but he'd noticed her pain and was properly attentive.
"I tussled with a jaguar out there," Lara said.
"A…jaguar?" Wentworth's eyebrows went up. "I mean, big cats are rare enough. Although there have been cougar attacks in the past…"
Lara cut him off. "A cougar doesn't change his spots."
"Cougars don't have spots."
"Exactly." She took the hem of her shirt in both hands. "I suppose you want this off so you can take a look at my chest."
The zoologist visibly blushed. "That will be quite all right…" he stammered.
"You don't know me nearly well enough?" Lara kept a straight face.
"I'll send Sarah in." Wentworth made a run for the door.
Sarah, at least, didn't argue taxonomy. She was more concerned in getting the shallow but stingingly painful scratches cleaned out. "You don't want scars there," she said. "Not the way I've seen you dress."
"I don't scar," Lara said.
"Huh."
"No, really. See here? 9mm NATO from an MP5K at short range." Sarah said nothing. "Here, 3rd degree burn from a broken high-voltage cable." Sarah merely rolled her eyes. There was no mark there, either. "And here? I was cut by a rotating blades on an 11th century booby trap." Then there was the velociraptor bite — but that was really pushing it.
"So. How's the finger?"
Lara winced. "Ah…" It was time to come clean on the little stratagem she'd played at Hueco Tanks. "I didn't actually injure it…"
She was pleased to see her linguistic guesswork had been correct. Sarah was fluent in Pilipino, the Manilla dialect of Tagalog. She got five minutes of swearing out before she started repeating herself.
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: 36.06°N 107.97°W
The last thirty miles were on dirt road. Newbery leapfrogged a camera team ahead to get footage of Ark III showing off in its natural environment; wreathed in a haze of thrown dust, knobby tires chewing at the dirt, body twisting on the articulation to follow the tight curves. All it needed, Stan had remarked, was the great Jerry Goldsmith sound track.
After checking in at the small visitor center they continued along Canyon Loop Drive another six kilometers and parked the convoy as best they could on the dirt turnoff. Pueblo Bonita was a short scramble up a low rise of bare dirt and scattered ocher scree.
Even with her injured leg Lara was first over the rise. "Isn't she beautiful!" she exclaimed.
Wentworth huffed up to stand beside her. "Who?"
"This," Lara gestured, delighted. "I always call a new tomb 'she,'" she amplified.
"Okay," Wentworth said. "And yes, it is. I mean she is." He scratched his head. "But…tomb?"
Lara colored. "I was three years old, okay?" She still hadn't turned from admiring the spectacular Ancestral Pueblo ruins. "'Shrine,' 'Temple,' and 'Permanent Structure of Probable Ritual Significance' are hard to say. I started calling everything 'tombs' when my parents first brought me out to one of their excavations." It wasn't the only habit she'd kept from her very early years, she reflected, clasping a hand around the jade necklace.
Words didn't do justice to Chaco. One really had to be there, under the bottomless New Mexico sky, amid the warren of warm brown walls, ducking under lintels as low as those in a Japanese tea house. Pueblo Bonita was a semi-circle of some six hundred rooms, among them the huge circles of several Great Kivas. The walls towered three times the height of a person, the meticulously fitted stones of the facade in horizontal courses not dissimilar to that of the rambling shield walls of some European castles.
They weren't, of course, entirely alone in admiring her. Few indeed were the ancient megastructures that didn't have some presence of modern humans at them. One other car was in the turnoff, and a hiking party was approaching from the West.
"Odd," Lara said, most of her attention still on the ruin. "They don't look like they're from around here."
Wentworth made a little chuckle. "Isn't that kind of the definition of tourist?" he said.
Lara stirred herself. "I meant I'd expect more Americans to visit here. It is part of their heritage." Literally, for some; it was easy to forget of archaeological sites like these that living members of the culture that built them were still around. These weren't remnants preserved in amber, they were living sites that still held significance to real people.
Wentworth removed his battered hat and scratched his head in a rather Will Rogers gesture. "Most Americans," he said, "Don't think of this as part of their culture. I don't know how it is today, but when I went to school, American History started with Plymouth Rock. With maybe a chapter in the beginning of the book on French fur traders and Spanish missionaries. Or as a guide at Monk's Mound once told me, the Mayflower is in History. Cahokia is in Natural History."
He thought about it some more. Replaced his hat. "Basically, the native peoples are described as part of the background, like the mountains and grasses; backdrop to the story being told of European colonization and the eventual formation of a unique national identity. But that might just be an artifact for how high schools here split American history from World history."
"Or European history, for the same reason; the purpose is to share a common set of touch-stones, origin myths if you would, about the evolution of modern Western Civilization. History is at least part Civics; it was considered more important to learn about Athenian experiments in democracy than it was to learn about the campaigns of Shaka Zulu."
Wentworth nodded agreement. "From what I've heard, though, your countrymen don't draw the same kinds of lines. They hew to a strong sense of being British while being aware of the parade of peoples from the Celtic Britons through Saxons and Norman invasions and so forth. Even up to admitting the legacy of the Roman Empire."
Lara chuckled dryly. "The Romans are usually described as an 'occupation.' That's part of our shared mythology. And I think you underestimate the romanticism about the old blood." She had to admit to having a rather jaded perspective herself. As an archaeologist, and especially one taking the extra long view, few peoples today were currently occupying the land they'd first set foot on. The story of humanity was one of waves of colonization and counter-colonization, famine and abandonment or outright war and genocide. The richer lands had been fought over by so many one could spend an hour just listing the various peoples that had passed through.
"But I take your point about the teaching of history," she said. "It seems a shame that more Americans don't seem to be aware of the spectacular heritage they have."
"Pity Coronado never saw this," came a voice from behind them. It was Newbery, striding powerfully up the hill. "It is no Seven Cities of Cibola. But it might have sufficed."
He came up to stand beside them. "What you were saying, Barry," he said. "It's not quite right. This is New Mexico. Around here, they are a lot more open about their past. The state's effectively bilingual, for one thing. There are people here who proudly trace their heritage back four hundred years to Spanish colonials. And look at the state flag; the colors are from the royal standards of Spain and there's a Pueblo sun symbol on it."
"Point," Wentworth said good-naturedly.
"Several states with a stronger Spanish heritage teach more of the deeper history in their high schools. California, for one example, goes out of their way to teach about the Ohlone peoples. But then it is harder to ignore that part of the past when you have preserved mission buildings from the eighteenth century right there in the middle of town."
Lara's gaze had gone distant. This wasn't just an issue for New Mexico or California. It was an issue for the entire human race. Her thoughts were being confronted again with Dr Hawass' conundrum. What changed in your picture of yourself, your people and their history and accomplishments, when you extended history back enough to include the alien parasites who had camped on this world and quite possibly seeded civilization?
And the Goa'uld…the Goa'uld were only the latest (said the Galali Key and the Wraith Stone). The discoveries she had made lead her to believe Earth itself might have been contested in turn a by long line of interfering aliens.
And those aliens…might even be us.
Surrey, England: 51.15°N 0.25°W
Sam sighed. Twice.
The first was a sigh of contentment. She was floating in the middle of an Olympic-sized pool under conservatory-like glass, surrounded by flowering green plants. It was cool and peaceful and quiet with just the soft susurration of water and muted sunlight and a girl could really, really get used to living like this.
The second sigh was one of exasperation. Alister. He got under her skin. And she wasn't quite sure why. Okay, the look was off-putting; the silk shirts and fashionable jackets and long hair was a look she'd learned to be wary of back in college. She was surprised he didn't have a soul patch, too. But he'd been a perfect gentleman. As had Zip, in person. The pair of them were full of surprises.
She suppressed a twist of guilt. She really should go to see how Zip was doing. She wasn't good with the whole hospital visit thing. Except for her father; the only problem she'd had spending time with him in his illness was finding enough time away from her job and responsibilities. Of course now that shoe was on a strangely different foot; it was his responsibilities to the Tok'ra that kept him away from her.
She also felt guilty about relaxing into the sybaritic pleasures the sprawling estate made so readily available. But she needed to clear her head. She had a lot to think on.
This wasn't a job, she felt, that played to her strengths. Like it or not, though, she was the officer on site. Especially since his successful break-in to the Gate Room, Horus the Elder was high on the SGC's Most Wanted list. And Countess Croft's strange little group could be their best lead to finding him. Sam needed to be here to liaise.
If what Janet and the others had theorized was true, Horus might be able to get his hooks into the Asgard. And no insult meant to the Tok'ra, but that ancient and highly advanced race was Earth's best ally against the Goa'uld. As a problem, it wasn't up in the existential class, but it sure trumped any other responsibility she had at the moment.
Sam sighed louder. She'd really prefer to be back in her lab. There was a stack of tantalizing alien technology to dig into there and learn the secrets of. She had a fleeting thought of having some choice bits sent out to the Abbingdon Estate, but that had so many potential problems. Technically, much of NATO was in on the secret of the Stargate, but the US had not been open about sharing all the details with even it's closest allies. That was going to, Sam reflected, blow up in everyone's faces one day. A secret this big was very hard to keep.
As for liaising here — Sam reflected it might have gone a little more smoothly if she hadn't teleported into Britain wearing her Air Force uniform and full kit. At least she'd left the P90 back on the Tel'tak!
Good thing anything that happened at Abbingdon was automatically escalated to well above any local authority. The reason why was mysterious. Sam wasn't that familiar with English Royalty, but she was fairly sure covering up shoot-outs wasn't normally one of the perks.
She felt the frustration rising again. Daniel should really be doing this. He and the Colonel had spent time in the Countess' company and been privy to some of her secrets.
Alister had said as much. Unfortunately after Alister dropped his Atlantis bombshell she'd been dragged off to deal with ambulances and suspicious cops and many, many more phone calls - calls that quickly escalated to a nose-bleed level she suspected even General Hammond wasn't entirely comfortable at. By the time she got back to them Daniel was on a flight back to Colorado.
This wasn't getting her anywhere. She shook her head. Which was surprisingly refreshing, as she'd momentarily forgotten she was still in the pool. She heard a discrete cough.. "Would madame," said the same voice, "Care for an iced tea?"
Sam kicked upright. "I would," she dog-paddled for the side of the pool, "and thank you, Hilary."
Teal'c was heading for the gym. He believed his friends would call his current mood "grumpy." He could feel the tension in his muscles, and he knew that the truly observant, like his mentor Master Bra'tac, would be able to see it in his stride and the hang of his arms.
Major Carter was unhappy. Mister Zip was injured, as was Lady Croft's First Prime (in position, and in fighting spirit, if perhaps not in prowess).
He opened the door and dropped into a combat stance. Ah. The figure within was not alive. Teal'c relaxed again (but only so much). Then an approving look spread slowly across his features.
There was a practice dummy installed. And new racks held an assortment of the delightfully barbaric weaponry the Tau'ri had invented over their long history of war. It was just what he needed.
The butler magic had struck again.
Zip had been lucid when she visited. Lucid, and cranky. "You'd better have brought my laptop," he'd called out the moment he saw her. "Radio Wey is not doing it for me." He had a room to himself in the new-looking Dutchess of Kent wing.
"I'll talk to that…friend…of yours," Sam had said. Winston had apparently made excellent contingency plans. Hilary had simply shown up - although looking a little rumpled and hastily packed (most un-butler-like!) and if it hadn't been for heightened security (and strained nerves) all over the place, he would have stepped in so smoothly not even breakfast would have been interrupted.
The other turn-over had gone less smoothly. Zip, in one of the rare moments of lucidity between bouts of painkillers, had apparently asked an old buddy of his to drop by and see what he could do about the mansion's damaged IT structure. A scruffy-looking young man had arrived at the door unannounced, electronics parts spilling from his bags and a maniacal look in his eye. It had only gone downhill from there; currently he was banished to a trailer on the grounds.
"So..." Sam had ventured lamely, "How are you?"
"How am I? What do you think? They've got me on so many different antibiotics...but hell with that, I should be asking how is Winston! I'm worried about the old guy."
"He's in good hands," Sam had assured him.
"Where is he?"
"That's..." Sam paused, embarrassed, "We don't know." The Tok'ra had been operating a Fifth Column against the Goa'uld for millennia, and had raised paranoia to a high art. Every few months they had a habit of suddenly pulling up stakes, closing every base the SGC had a gate code to, and going radio silent.
Unfortunately they'd done this right after Jacob brought the injured Winston to one of their bases.
"He's not here?" Zip made as if to look around.
"He's…off world," Sam said lamely.
"Off-world, eh?" Zip was amused. "You say that so easily. You people!" His gaze was already going unfocused. "Oops, looks like the morphine drip is kicking in again," he said.
Sam had surprised herself by staying until he was asleep. More complications, she thought ruefully. Her life had certainly gotten interesting over the last few years.
Teal'c was on a new quest. He rose and bathed as per his usual routine. Then he silently returned to a hallway near his room and found a corner where he could remain unobserved.
A cart wheeled up, pushed by a young female Tau'ri. And The Butler was following behind. He had a notebook, the Jaffa saw. He was reading out of it, flicking pages rapidly to various indexed spots. "…Both a creamer and the bowl of mini-moos," he was saying. "And make sure the water is hot before you leave."
Having picked up his quarry, Teal'c followed as they followed the cobbled path to the East Gardens. Teal'c was intrigued, realizing with another flash of near-awe that the guests had been so carefully led they had never even realized there was a whole stretch of the lawns they had never seen. More of the Butler Magic.
The reason was obvious. Groundwork was going on here. The tread marks of heavy equipment and the smell of exposed earth was enough to expose that. At the end of a set of deep tire marks sat what was apparently a recent delivery, and the subject of much discussion between The Butler and various contractors and someone that looked like they should be working in a museum.
A steel box on tracked wheels. If it wasn't for the rhomboid shape and the way the tracks went all the way up and over the hull, Teal'c would think it was that heavy, earth-bound fighting vehicle the Tau'ri called a "tank."
It was time for another try. "Alister," Sam said. "We need to talk. My command is still waiting for something useful to come out of this trip."
"Certainly," Alister said, all polite and eager to help. "I was really hoping we could wait until Daniel returned, however."
"I don't know when that will happen," Sam said, holding on to her temper. "What did you say to him, anyhow?"
"It wasn't me!" Alister had spread his hands. "He saw something in that printout you brought with you."
"It is satellite imagery from an experimental naquada detector," Sam had told him. "It is extremely preliminary data, needs extensive clean-up, and in any case this is output of a specialty field. I respect Daniel's intelligence but this isn't something an outsider can just pick up and expect to read."
"So this blob here," Alister was as it happened dragging the printout in question with him, "might not be anything?"
"That's probably the Antarctica Stargate," Sam had said. "We already know about that one."
"And this one?"
"You called it Thera," Sam had said. When Alister didn't reply immediately she cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Today, it's the Greek island of Santorini," Alister explained. "There was a colony there of the Minoans. The Minoans were a mysterious civilization. Based on Crete, had a huge trading empire across the Mediterranean. We still can't read their writing - Linear A - but they seem to have been really into bulls."
Warming to his subject, he continued. "We don't even know what they called themselves. Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos (and engaged in some highly suspicious rebuilding of the palace there to a painfully Victorian aesthetic), linked what he found to the legendary King Minos. Him of the Minotaur, Ariadne, Thesus...and on the fringes, Daedalus the architect and his son Icarus who discovered wax was a poor substitute for a good glue."
Teal'c had come up silently during this recital. Sam had made the subtlest roll of the eyes in his direction. He did his well-practiced stone face back at her.
"The real Minoan civilization collapsed mysteriously in about 1,400 BCE. The answer may have have been as simple as overrun by the Mycenae - the ancestors of the Classical Greeks whose exploits, such as the Trojan War, form so much a part of the epic Homeric oeuvre. But there is also suggestion that the Thera eruption had something to do with it. The timing is suspicious."
"Thera was a volcano?"
"A massive eruption, on the scale of Vesuvius or Krakatoa, the 'Bang heard 'round the world'; Krakatoa was heard five thousand kilometers away, raised tsunami waves fifty meters tall, and killed forty thousand people. The ash and dust darkened the skies for years, - like the 1816 Tambora Eruption, which caused global cooling, the 'Year without a Summer.' And indirectly led to Dracula and Frankenstein, at that."
"And that's what happened to the Minoans? Minus Dracula, that is."
"Maybe. What is certain is that the eruption blew apart the island, the remainder sinking below the waves. So lots of people have suggested that might have been inspiration for Plato's tale."
"Wait…Plato, sinking below the waves; I know this one. Atlantis." She looked Alister straight in the eye. "You said something about Atlantis. About it being worldwide. That night, before Daniel took off leaving me to try to make sense of all this."
"Yes, I…may have said something about that. That naquada map of yours sparked my imagination. I may have become a little over-excited." He chuckled self-consciously. "Call it my George Smith moment."
"Alister." Sam spoke deliberately. "Tell me about Atlantis."
Alister took a deep breath. Ran a hand through his hair, settled his lapels. "Right, then," he said. "Somewhere between 469 and 348 BC the famed philosopher Plato wrote the Dialogues Critias and Timaeus. In those Dialogues one character relays a tale that was told to his grandfather by the Athenian statesman and poet Solon, who in turn had learned the story from Egyptian priests during his travels there."
"The character of Timaeus may have been based on Archytas of Tarentum, a Pythagorean who is said to have invented a steam-powered flying machine. The bulk of his dialogue is a response to a question Plato proposes as a character within his own story; a question on the nature and strengths of a Republic."
"And he mentions Atlantis where in all this?"
Alister winced. "Really, this would be much easier to explain to a fellow academic. There's just so much shared background I have to go over first to contextualize what I am about to say."
"You and I know he took the first plane back to Colorado," Sam said sharply. "He said something about 'Behistun.' Is that a word that means anything to you?"
"The Behistun Inscription," Alister replied promptly. "It's the Rosetta Stone of cuneiform. Darius the Great had it carved in Old Persian, Babylonian cuneiform, and Elamite. The story itself is fascinating; it's Darius' attempt to put the proper spin on his ascension to the throne. Depending on who you believe, Cambyses II went mad from an infected leg wound and killed his brother Bardiya, then a Mede named Gaumata showed up claiming to be the real Bardiya, alive after all…at least, until Darius killed him."
"The story of the discovery is equally fascinating. Of course it was known in antiquity. Tacitus mentions it. Other Europeans had studied it but it took Sir Henry Rawlinson, an Army officer of the British East India Company, assigned to the Shah of Iran at the time, to climb up to the Babylonian section of the text with some circus-like acrobatics involving ropes and planks and an un-named local boy who was even braver than he was."
"Iran?" Sam interjected. "Behistun is in Iran?" No wonder Daniel had left; there's no way General Hammond would give him permission to launch an expedition there, not in the current political clime. Daniel had almost certainly gone back to Colorado Springs to argue it out in person.
Or at least she hoped he had. Daniel had always been headstrong, but since he had been subjected to repeated exposure to a Goa'uld sarcophagus that had shown signs of blending into something she reluctantly had to call arrogance.
Alister was still talking. "Since the Persian kings named in the inscription occur in Herodotus, Rawlinson and others were finally able to crack the inscription and that gave the first real foothold into Babylonian Cuneiform, and from there into the even harder Akkadian. So the door was open into a wealth of ancient writings, including the Epic of Gilgamesh."
"It was the chapter on the Chaldean Flood that caused pioneering Assyriologist George Smith to suddenly exclaim, 'I am the first man to read that after more than two thousand years of oblivion.' This was in the library of the British Museum, mind you. Then — according to Budge — he ran about the room in great excitement, beginning to remove his clothes."
And there Alister stopped dead. Sam looked up at him from under her bangs and smiled slowly. They both knew he had overplayed. The anecdote was amusing, but he'd made his game obvious.
"You are lucky you have me here," she told Alister, "And not Colonel O'Neil."
Alister blinked, still trying to play stupid. "He knows less history than you?" he offered a guess.
"He has a shorter temper," Sam said. "He would have shot you by now."
"Well, as I was trying to explain, textual analysis of the Dialogues indicates…"
"Oh, stop," Sam said. "My students used to try to pull that kind of crap on me, too. Sure, you and Daniel are practiced in a complex field. But you aren't unique there. I'd like to see either of you correctly apply the Navier-Stokes equations to solve a pogo problem in a liquid-fueled rocket motor. Heck, I'd be impressed enough just to see you work with Jacobi elliptic functions, and that's undergrad level."
Alister tried to reply. Sam stopped him. "You are hiding something. You didn't mean to let slip what you did when you first mentioned Atlantis, and you've been throwing up walls of distraction every time we've brought it up since."
"I could…Daniel…" Alister said.
Sam threw up her hands. "Teal'c, look menacing."
Teal'c changed absolutely nothing in his stance and expression.
Alister wilted. "I give," he said. "Now, here's what we really know about Atlantis…and her last queen."
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: 36.06°N 107.97°W
"Wentworth," Lara said. "Tell me about Newbery's 'giants.'"
The zoologist shrugged, uncomfortable. They were still at Chaco, the pair of them alone as most of the group had retreated into whatever shade they could find to wait out the hottest part of the day.
"First off," Wentworth said at last, "He has his core beliefs, but it is hard to untangle them from the stories he tells. Because what he says is tailored to the moment and to the audience. I'm not even sure he uses 'giant' in a literal sense; he might be meaning it spiritually, or technologically."
"As in, an advanced and ancient race?" Lara suggested.
"Well, sort of. There is assumed to be such a race. A progenitor race, or at least an advanced race that set humanity on the route to civilization. But much of the discussion and theorizing centers on their progeny."
Wentworth made a face, then. "Sit down," he suggested. "Because this is about to get ugly. It's the same territory you explored so concisely when you were talking about hyperdiffusionism. These are murky waters for me!" he suddenly burst out. "I'm a cryptozoologist. I look for rare and forgotten megfaunal species. Can you blame me for not being interested in turning over some of these rocks?"
"I don't blame you for anything," Lara said. "As far as I am concerned you are a professional doing your job. Even if some mainstream zoologists might disagree. But, Wentworth," she sat, intentionally close to him, "This is important. I may need help, and I need to know how far I can trust him."
"Okay." Wentworth took off his hat again, wiped sweat from his brow in a comfortable, oft-practiced gesture before replacing it. "Giant humanoids are a part of many Native American mythologies. Take the Paiute, who have the Si-Te-Cah: red-haired cannibalistic giants. There's another, more peaceful race of giants that appears in their Creation myths as well. Some of course go the other way, describing a race tinier than humans. The latter are often a trickster race, showing inter-cultural commonalities with the elves or fairies of various European beliefs."
"Giants appear in the beliefs of many cultures," Lara nodded. "Take the Jötunn of Norse mythology. Their interaction with the Æsir is complex. And as for creation myths, in the same tradition Earth itself is the literal flesh and bones of the dead giant Ymir."
"Another mention is in the Bible. Sort of. There are a few actual giants described, such as Goliath, but there are also two cryptic mentions of something called Nephilim. That word is sometimes translated as 'giants.'"
"Yes, the Nephilim. Depends on which version you read, and whether you even think the different stories refer to the same thing, but they are the progeny of supernatural beings. Generally angelic, but again interpretations differ."
"The problem is," Wentworth stopped, gathering his thoughts. "You have to understand something about American Evangelicalism. It's the idea of Biblical Inherency."
"I know about that. It's the believe that the discovery of every scrap of Greek text, every Council of Nicaea, every translation into the vulgate or into (stilted) modern English is guided by the Holy Spirit."
"In the kinds of groups I'm talking about," Wentworth said, "Inerrancy is conflated with literalism. This is why Young Earth Creationism has such a stranglehold on so many in the United States. Every word in the Bible must be read as being exact truth. To do less is to doubt the word of God."
"You mean, what that particular church has decided the exact meaning of a phrase is, is — quell surprise — exactly true."
"And that's why there's such interest in literal 'Giants in the Earth.' In the early days of paleontology many fossil specimens were misidentified as humanoid giants. Even a few attempts to calculate their heights based on bits of femur; I remember one such early researcher declaring that Eve stood fifty-three feet tall!
"There's also an underlying idea here of The Fall. That people were better back in the past, physically as well as morally. It was taken as a given that humans in Noachian times were impressive of stature as well as in lifespan. The Bible goes out of its way to give the lifespans of the Noachian Patriarchs — as well as assure the reader of their continued virility."
"It's an idea that comes around more than you might think," Lara said. "Although sometimes I wonder how much of the early Medieval writing was inspired by having the actual ruins of an obviously more advanced society all around them. Of course, between wars and the Plague they had plenty of other reasons to think the world was on the last stages of the long slide from Grace, and the last trumpet would be sounded within their lifetime."
"But getting back to the Naturalists," Wentworth said. "It was an interesting period for science. The larger motion was towards using scientific tools to better understand the glories of Creation. But a smaller backwash was to ape these scientific tools and use them to prop up an increasingly entrenched biblical literalism. And unfortunately that later attitude is still with us in some quarters."
"To be fair, there are Vedic scholars who have chosen similar blinders. It isn't a mistake of just one isolated sect."
"I bring this up because among some circles the word 'Giants' is a signifier," Wentworth said. "Newbery has an audience among American Evangelicals, and they form part of his funding stream. If he said he was searching for Sasquatch that would be one thing, but specifically naming 'Giants' lets that audience tell themselves he agrees with their philosophy and aims."
"But get back to the Nephilim," Lara suggested.
"This is where things get really murky," Wentworth said sourly. "There's a real Curse of Ham flavor in a lot of this. There's a lot of different ideas of humans with a different blood in their veins, but most of them work out to show them as contaminated, debased. Especially when the word 'Nephilim' is used to identify them. In the Biblical version, their fathers may have been angels but the very act of creating them is sinful, leading to a sub-human race that is inherently wicked. And, often as not, cannibalistic as well as gigantic, plus magical powers and double rows of teeth."
"Double rows of teeth?"
"Long story." Wentworth chuckled harshly. "I'm not saying there aren't other views. Star Children, other ideas of a special blessing, extra-human powers, etc. At the far end of that trend, we — or rather, the 'right' kind of humans — are the direct unadulterated descendants of the nobel beings who came before. And this is your hyperdiffusionism right there, with the original true blood coming up through Egypt and Greece and finally founding America."
"The Sons of Jepeth," Lara suggested.
"Whereas the Sons of Ham carry the genetic destiny to be slaves — or, at best, forever third-worlders. We've strayed far from the idea of the Nephilim here but the emotional idea is the same. And this is just what you were saying about the hyperdiffusionists. There's a deep and dangerous racism hiding behind something as seemingly innocuous as the Indigo Child.
"Heck," he grinned suddenly, "There's even an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man where Steve discovers the Yeti are the cyborg guards of a hidden alien colony. Like you said earlier, those ideas are out there, and people pick up on them without knowing all the places they connect to."
"So I guess you could say there's a real difference between giants in the earth, and those who still walk upon at," Lara mused.
"Very much so! Even today, a hundred years after P.T. Barnum was carting around his own Cardiff Giant, there are still Creationists hoping to see an eight foot tall victim of the Deluge uncovered one day. The common consensus is the Smithsonian gets there first and has all the revealing skeletons hidden in a sub-basement.
"But live ones walking around? Cryptozoologists are hoping to see the distinctive lope of Bigfoot, and describe him as a peaceful, timid, but hairy offshoot of humanity. Perhaps a living Neandertal or something else already known from the fossil record. After all, homo floresiensis nearly made it to the present day."
"That doesn't sound like what Newbery is searching for," Lara said.
"No," Wentworth said. "He's after bigger game. He's hunting the race Bigfoot descended from, or the race that bred him, or the race he serves. The progenitors, the founders of civilization, the aliens or supernatural beings — take your pick — that had technologies we can only dream of today."
"A great and noble race, finer than man?"
"Perhaps," Wentworth was solemn. "I think that's what Stan wants to believe. I think he inspired his brother more than either of them know. But Newbery is more of a realist. Don't expect him to line up on a hillside wearing tie-dye and waiting for the Good Aliens to bring him to the planet of everlasting Peace and Love."
"More like the planet of everlasting mining for naquada," Lara muttered.
"What was that?"
"Not just yet. They aren't my secrets to be sharing. Well." She stood. "You've come close to making up my mind for me."
"Don't yet," Wentworth urged. "Look, some of this is nasty stuff, but I think for Newbery it is just about the money. Like most of the various conspiracy books, late-night talk shows, and so forth he throws out all the familiar clues but no conclusions, giving enough to every watcher that they can pick and chose what to take home with them.
"He's an explorer at heart. He's a man who never quite grew up from boy's adventure stories. He wants to find those mysteries. He wants to discover those hidden places. He's got the funds, he has a cool vehicle and a team of specialists — he's got everything but the one thing he really needs."
"And that is?"
"The luck," Wentworth said simply. "He doesn't have your knack, Lara Croft. He's a Tomb Raider that can't find a Tomb."
Lara stopped dead. "How long have you…?"
"Since forever. I'm a cryptozoologist. How could I not know recognize one of the few living people who are claimed to have encountered Bigfoot first-hand?"
"Point," Lara said back at him. She turned fully, then. "I'm stuck in the middle of the United States without access to my usual resources. I figured out Amanda's clue while I was walking out of the Jornada del Muerto. If I'm right, lives are at stake, and the clock is ticking."
She pivoted slowly. Pointed towards the horizon. "I need to be there. In the Pacific Northwest. I need transport, and I might need more help when I get there. Conspiracy believer or treasure hunter, in the final analysis Newbery is a man with a truck."
She extended her hand. Wentworth took it and she helped him to his feet. "Well, then," he said. "Let's be at it."