Chapter 35: "You're so like your father!"
9 days after the fall
The first scream took just over an hour. The only reason he knew this was the clock on the computer screen before him. Righetti had ordered the removal of Juliet to a separate room. One close enough for him to hear the scream, without knowing the cause. Cal wondered whose imagination was better at thinking up reasons for that scream: his or Righetti's. What he was imagining was bad enough, but if anyone was going to think up something worse, he was reasonably certain it would be Righetti.
The computer had yielded no clues, but from his bound position, he could only direct the guards on how to search through the collected furniture and files that sat before him. He had tried explaining that the search would go faster if he could look himself, but Righetti had just laughed. Anything small enough the guards had brought to him, but for the larger items of furniture he had to make do with looking on as they followed his instructions and described what they saw. It had not escaped Cal that the furniture he and Juliet had searched in Ibrahim's apartment was also in the group. How long had Dorna been watching them?
Another scream rang out. Cal didn't bother to bite back the answering roar rage wrenched from him, or the curse that followed it. He could feel the ropes, now binding his wrists again, burning his skin as he twisted and turned, trying to free even just one hand. A low laugh echoed through the room from loudspeakers high on the walls. Righetti's voice rolled around the room.
"You wish to kill me, Doctor Banks?" Righetti chuckled. "Oh, I know you do. You think killing me will stop the screams. But you know the only thing that will stop the screaming. Find me the manuscript, Doctor Banks. Find it, and then the screaming will stop. This I promise you."
Tears rolled down Cal's cheeks, hot tears that cooled quickly and fled to oblivion in the dusty floor. It wasn't here. It couldn't be here. There was nowhere left to search. Nothing. Nothing that his mind would dredge from his memories of Ibrahim. Every time he searched the halls of memory, he found Juliet, not Ibrahim. Every sight was replaced by vision of her bruised and bleeding in a chair. Every sound echoed with the sound of her screams. It didn't help that just when he thought he'd got past one such memory, reality presented him with a new, explicitly real, moment to replace it.
Once again the soundtrack to his worst nightmare played through the loudspeakers. Once again the red mist descended. Only once his breath failed him did he hear the change. The screams were different. Shorter. Deeper. Punctuated by the sound of something heavy hitting flesh. He felt sick. Then it hit him. The screams were different.
They weren't Juliet's.
XXXX
"We're coming in to land," Vincent reported, interrupting Cal's account. He cast wary eyes over the pair. Juliet was pale, but Cal was flushed. Whether it was the memory of frustration, or the ghost of unexorcised anger, it made Vincent wonder how many times the memory had played out in Cal's mind at night, robbing him of any meaningful rest. That, at least was something he could understand, and it explained a lot.
The jet descended on the small runway. They were still some distance from the temple, but this was the nearest landing site. A jeep would be waiting to drive them most of the rest of the way, to the campsite Solomon had set up all those years ago. It was in the same spot as Haley's had been: the nearest reasonably flat clearing to the temple. Although Vincent had heard much of the place, both from Solomon and de Molay, he had never been there in person. In fact, the only person on the jet who had visited the place before was Nikko.
Nikko sat beside Vincent through the drive to the site. Cal and Juliet continued their work on the Eratosthenes map in the back, their murmured discussion a constant background to the intermittent jolts and thuds of the road. It was as well that Vincent hadn't needed a navigator: the usually smart-mouthed, vociferous younger Zond had settled into pensive silence. Even the arrival at the campsite, the halting of the vehicle, and the sight of gear being unloaded again in the place he had last visited with his mother, failed to draw a comment from him. Vincent watched his charge wander to the soot blackened space at the centre of the site and look from its inky shadows to the cobalt sky above. The sun was sinking. Whatever internal issues Nikko was dealing with, they would have to leave now if they were to get to the temple before nightfall, or leave the last leg of their journey to another day. If Dorna were also on the trail of the city, and he was sure they were, time was not a luxury they had to spare.
"Nikko," said Vincent, his hand landing on the younger man's shoulder like an anchor to this world. "Come on: we have to go."
A walk through a rainforest is made so much easier when one person in the group can clear the route with just his mind. The cobalt blue of the sky had darkened by the time they arrived at the temple, but not by half as much as Vincent had feared. Solomon's expedition notes had given clear instructions on the safest route into what remained of the structure, but when Nikko led them down a different route, Vincent didn't argue. With flashlights shining, they followed where he led, stepping cautiously where he trod until they could go no further. A slab of rock, larger than any of the tumbled stones of the edifice so far, lay slanted down towards them. This was it: the stone his father had been unable, with all his resources and knowledge, to move.
In the back of his mind, Nikko registered the cessation of footsteps behind him. Every other part of his brain was focussed on the rock before him. Beyond that rock lay the chamber where his mother had disappeared. Beyond that rock lay the answers, he believed, to so many questions. He didn't dare give voice to the tiny spark of hope, ignited by his dream, of what else lay beyond there. He closed his eyes.
Focus.
He breathed: in, out, just as Vincent had taught him.
Focus.
His teacher's voice echoed through his mind. There was no way he could hear the word in his head and not hear it in Vincent's voice now.
Focus.
Nikko saw the great slab of rock in his mind.
Focus.
He imagined it rising: returning to its previous position. He saw the smaller stones untumble themselves from around his feet, shoring up the slab on columns that showed only the faintest cracks in their smooth sides.
Focus.
He heard the grinding of ancient masonry returning itself to its proper position, the murmured amazement of his companions. He heard his mind become their reality.
Focus.
Nikko opened his eyes.
The sight before him swept him back a dozen years. It was there: the temple. Not just the chamber, but the whole building. It was as if time had moved backwards. Maybe it had. He had little enough idea of the limits of his new abilities. Nikko looked up, searching the ceiling for any signs of collapse. He could see none. Still, he didn't dare look away from the chamber. Instead he changed his focus to the familiar solar system built into the door on the far side of the room.
"Stay here," Nikko ordered, stepping forward into the room.
"I'm coming with you," stated Vincent, as simply as if he had said the sky was blue.
"I have to do this alone," Nikko argued, still not looking round. "I'm the only one who can."
"I can't lose you here, Nikko," countered Vincent. "The last person to touch that sun was never seen again."
A flame of anger flickered in Nikko's voice. "I know that. I also know the only person to have stood in this chamber while it flared and survived is me. I can't lose anyone else to it. Whatever happens to me in there, you stay here. I don't know what will happen to the temple if I vanish. I might be the only thing keeping the ceiling up. I need you to get Cal and Juliet out of here if that happens."
Behind him, Nikko heard Vincent sigh. "You're so like your father!"
A smile curled Nikko's lip. He stepped forward into the room. No footsteps followed him. Another few strides and the door was before him. A heliocentric solar system, earlier in origin than any other depiction on the planet. At least, anything they had found. His hand floated up to the sun almost without his knowledge or consent. He stopped it. A glow had blossomed in the protruding hemisphere: a familiar glow. His mother had placed her hand upon the sun and had vanished. Why? Because she was not him? Or had she made a mistake? She thought this place was an entrance to the sacred city. What did he think? Nikko stilled, running his mind back over all the clues. All the versions of the story echoed through his mind, the voices of their tellers mingling into one asynchronous chorus. He searched the symbols on the door, only half certain what he was looking for. His eyes flitted over the mostly concentric orbits: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, something else. Before the display broke into the irregular depths of the Oort cloud, partly sharing its orbit with other, smaller, rocky objects, was a tenth planet. Pluto was hard enough to spot from here, but this system showed ten planets, not nine or eight. Nikko frowned, his hand moving to hover over the unknown planet. Was this where the 'lonely god' had come from, like some errant David Bowie character? Or was it simply the case that the people who built this doorway knew more of what existed out there than modern humans? No light hummed into life below his fingertips here. He continued his search of the door, scanning each orbit in turn, then remembered the glyphs at the side. Dragging his eyes away from the solar system, Nikko cast them over the carvings around it, first one side, then the other. Some were glyphs he recognised. Others were new to him, yet somehow familiar. One in particular caught his attention. It was a man with a bow. Sagittarius.
Nikko's hand dropped to the carving, following the line of the drawn bow to the nock of the arrow, then up along the line of the arrow and onward, following its trajectory. It was not the tenth planet that the arrow pointed to. Neither was it the sun. In fact the arrow did not line up with anywhere on the door. Nikko followed the line over and across to the far side of the door, to a glyph that he felt he should remember but could not. It was worn by time, but the shadows of his flashlight threw what features remained into stark relief. Within the bounds of a raised ring, there was the image of a five pointed star.
Sagittarius, the archer, had once shot down a star.
Nikko reached up to the star and let his hand fall upon it. The world went white.
