Changeling (29 page)

Sedona, Arizona—Two days later

The call came
just after noon.

Jade had been lounging poolside, an activity, or more accurately a lack of activity that under normal circumstances, she would have found unbearably tedious. After the events of the past week however, lying out in the open with nothing buy sky above her, was just what the doctor ordered, literally as well as figuratively. The urgent care provider she’d seen the morning after her “climbing accident” had prescribed a regimen of rest and relaxation, along with ice, physical therapy and some heavy duty painkillers. She wasn’t keen on the ice treatments, but she was developing a new appreciation for sunbathing

The spa resort where they had booked a suite was just a thirty minute drive from Bell Rock and the hidden ruins beneath. They had not gone back to the site, which had been closed by the Forest Service due to “seismic instability,” and at last report, it would be several weeks before the popular tourist destination was open for business again.

Jade wondered if it would still be as much of a draw now that the source of all the paranormal activity associated with the place had been destroyed. She supposed it would. Stories of the Bell Rock Vortex, coupled with the human capacity to believe the unbelievable, would sustain the phenomena long after Jade was gone from the earth.

She had just returned to the room when Professor’s phone rang. He muted the television, which was tuned to a cable news channel, and answered. “Hey, Tam.” He glanced at Jade and then said, “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

“Jade?” Tamara Broderick’s strong voice crackled from the device, but Jade couldn’t tell if her tone was one of disapproval or awe. “You do have a knack for kicking the hornets’ nest, girl.”

Jade settled onto the couch beside Professor. “Hey, if it wasn’t for me you’d have no idea the hornets were even there.”

“Simmer down. It’s a mess, but I’m not unappreciative. The problem is figuring out who I can trust with this. God da—” She stopped herself. Tam had a smoker’s relationship with profanity—she was always trying to quit. “Frigging shapeshifters.”

“Changelings,” Jade corrected.

“They aren’t able to change shape,” Professor said. “It’s all just theatrical makeup and method acting.”

“I’m not stupid,” Tam shot back. “I know what they are. That little package you sent us is the gift that keeps on giving.”

It took Jade a moment to realize Tam was referring to Eve, the Changeling prisoner Professor had captured in Tasmania.

Tam was still talking. “We’ve got a list of probable infiltrators that includes at least two members of the President’s cabinet. That’s just in our country.”

“Well that explains your good mood,” Jade remarked.

“When does the roll-up start?” Professor asked.

“There’s not going to be a roll-up,” Tam said, wearily. “If we started arresting senior political figures and pulling their masks off, the world would come apart at the seams.”

“You can’t just leave them out there.”

“Actually, we can.” She paused as if trying to figure out how to deliver an unpleasant message. “There’s going to be a negotiated phase-out.”

Jade exchanged a worried glance with Professor, but neither of them interrupted Tam’s explanation.

Tam explained that, in order to keep the secret of the Changeling conspiracy a secret, the infiltrators would be given the opportunity to voluntarily relinquish their positions of authority in exchange for a promise of amnesty and resettlement in the witness protection program.

“How do you know they’ll go for it?” Professor asked.

“Why wouldn’t they? They can’t hide anymore, and you’ve utterly dismantled their
raison d’etre
.” She paused a beat. “You have, right?”

“The Vault was completely destroyed,” Jade said, letting Tam draw her own conclusions.

“These people are dangerous,” Professor intoned. “They’ve held power for a long time. They aren’t going to just roll over and give it all up.”

“We had all better pray they do,” was Tam’s grave reply.

Jade wondered if it really mattered. Despite Roche’s conspiracy theories, it seemed unlikely that the Changelings had ever wielded absolute control over the world’s governments and economy. She wasn’t sure that was even possible. In any case, if the Changelings were removed from power, someone just as unscrupulous would probably take their place.

Power corrupts and nature abhors a vacuum
, Jade thought.

Tam was speaking again. “Do have any insights into what made the thing tick?”

“Infrasound frequencies can be used to induce a dream-like state,” Professor said, authoritatively. “People in that state see what they expect to see.”

“That doesn’t explain how Jade knew the vault would be in Arizona.”

Professor had no ready answer for that.

“It’s not the first time we’ve found something we can’t explain,” Jade said with a shrug. She had no inclination to speculate further. “What about Shah?”

“Latest intel puts him in Tehran. He’s gone back home.”

“So we can’t get to him?”

“Bigger fish to fry,” Tam said. “He was never much of a threat, and from what you’ve told me, he has reason to hate the Changelings even more than we do. Whether he meant to or not, he did us all a huge favor by destroying the vault.”

“Not sure how I feel about him,” Jade said, thinking aloud. “I don’t think he even knew whose side he was on.”

“Maybe we’ll run into him someday,” Professor said. “And you can ask him.”

Jade shrugged. “Or not. I’m just glad it’s all over.”

When Professor did not respond, she looked over and saw him staring at the television. On the screen, a graphic banner announcing “Breaking News” was flashing over stock footage of naval vessels on the ocean. The crawl beneath the picture said, “Possible debris from Flight 815 found.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”

Tehran, Iran

But for the
mountains towering behind the city skyline and the signs on the shops—Farsi written in the elegant Nasta’liq script—Atash Shah might have believed he was back on Park Avenue. The affluent Zafaraniyeh neighborhood in northern Tehran was every bit as modern, and almost as cosmopolitan, as Manhattan. It even had a synagogue, which probably would have astonished most Westerners.

It had been a long time since Shah called this place home, but there was nowhere else to go.

He recalled a line from an old poem.
Home
is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in
.

The reunion with his family, and particularly his father who had never approved of his son’s travels—both literal and philosophical—had been a little strained, and Shah sensed there would be many more tense conversations in the days to come, but for the moment, things appeared calm.

Deceptively so.

His entire world had foundered. He was in exile. Everything he owned was gone, his possessions abandoned along with his New York apartment. He did not know if the authorities in the United States would seize his assets or pursue criminal charges against him, and it seemed prudent not to find out. He still had a controlling interest in the Crescent Defense League, though whether it could or even should continue remained in doubt.

After what he had learned under Bell Rock, he wasn’t sure of anything.

The dream of a second Golden Age of Islam—an era of spiritual and secular prosperity, an end to the destructive schism between Sunni and Shiite—was dead for him. He believed it was possible, probably even inevitable, but he would have no part in bringing that dream to fruition. He would never be the promised Mahdi.

How could he, knowing what he now knew?

It was all a lie. Islam. Christianity. The holy writings. None of it could be trusted.

Raina shuffled into the sitting room of the furnished flat they had rented, carrying a tray with a delicate silver tea service. His wife had been extraordinarily supportive through everything, which only deepened Shah’s sense of guilt at having been led astray by the wanton seductress Gabrielle Greene.

Gabrielle was dead by his own hand, but her poison was still in him.

I will make it up to Raina
, he promised himself, yet he knew not how.

“Atash,” she clucked. “Drink some chai. It will calm your nerves.”

He managed a wan smile. “Thank you, my wife.”

She decanted a small amount of the amber liquid into a cup and passed it to him. He had never been much of a tea drinker. Coffee had always been his beverage of choice, an appropriately hyperactive drink for his hyperactive existence in New York.

Maybe it’s time to turn over a new leaf
, he thought.
A new drink to begin a new life.

He took a sip. It was mildly spicy from the addition of zardamom pods and cinnamon, and just sweet enough to make him wish that it was more substantial.

This will take some getting used to
.

He had just finished a second sip when a knock at the door startled him. They were not expecting visitors. With the possible exception of his parents, who believed it was his place to visit them, not the other way around, no one even knew of the apartment.

He jumped to his feet in alarm, and nearly toppled over from the resulting head rush.

“Atash, calm yourself,” Raina said. “It is only the groceries. I cannot make a home if I have nothing to cook. Finish your tea, then you can help me put things away.”

Shah sat down quickly, fearing that he was about to black out, but the wooziness lingered. He tried to place the tea cup on the table, but misjudged the distance, spilling its contents onto the floor.

Behind him, he heard Raina speaking to the deliveryman. “You are early,” she scolded, though not too harshly. “Five more minutes and he would have been out.”

What
?

He jumped up again, whirling toward the door, and then promptly collapsed onto the floor. He could feel the puddle of warm tea soaking into his clothes, but his limbs were completely unresponsive. A black fog was settling over him, but just before the light went out completely, he saw his wife and the man that she had just admitted to their apartment.

Her voice reached out through the ether. “Oh, Atash. You almost ruined everything.”

Because I spilled the tea
?

His thoughts were as muddled as everything else, and it took him a moment to connect what he had seen in that last glimpse before his eyesight failed, and what was now happening to him.

She drugged me. Raina drugged me
.

“It was yours for the taking,” she continued, only now there was a hard edge to her words, a tone he had never heard in all their years together. “We worked so hard to prepare the way. Oh, we knew you weren’t ready, but that cretin Roche forced our hand, and then had the audacity to tell Jade Ihara about it before we could put him in the grave. But still, Gabrielle showed you such wonders. How could you do this to us? Why?”

The questions must have been rhetorical. There was no way he would be able to respond, and he knew she was not speaking to the man she had just ushered in.

Yet, in a way, she was. He had caught a glimpse of the visitor’s face in the instant before the drug took away his vision. A face exactly like his own.

“You almost ruined everything, Atash,” Raina repeated. “Fortunately, you can be replaced.”

End

If you enjoyed Changeling, try
Destiny-Book 1 of the Myrmidon Files

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We’ve always believed that the best stories are built on a foundation of truth, and this one is no exception. Now it’s time to separate what is real from what we’ve made up.

Archimedes
—We’ve only scratched the surface of Archimedes’ genius. His discoveries, which include establishing the value of pi (the ration of a circle’s circumference to its diameter), are the basis for calculus and physics, without which most of our modern scientific advances could not have been made. One scholar made the observation that, if more of Archimedes’ writings had survived, we would already be living on Mars. Sadly, most of his writings were lost to history, the parchment books scraped clean and written over during the Middle Ages.

The Archimedes Palimpsest, mentioned in this novel, is real. It was discovered in a monastery just before World War I, the ancient Greek writing barely visible on the parchment which had been cleaned and resized, and used for a medieval prayer book. It has only been in the last decade that modern fluoroscopy techniques have made it possible to read one of Archimedes’ most important works. The part about a Vault and a timelock that can only be opened every thousand years is our invention, but if Archimedes had wanted to create something like that, he probably could have.

The war machines described in the prologue and in the Arkimedeion museum, including the Archimedes Claw, used to pick up entire warships and then drop them down, smashing them to pieces in the harbor, are believed to be real. The heat ray, an array of parabolic mirrors capable of focusing the sun’s light into a sort of laser beam for setting ships on fire, has long been attributed to Archimedes, but it is unlikely that he actually created such a device, or that it would have worked as suggested. In 2006 the MythBusters television program ruled the Archimedes Heat Ray “busted.” In 2009, in conjunction with students from MIT, the show revisited the “myth” and found that, while it was technically possible to create such a device, it would have been of extremely limited usefulness in warfare.

The Arkimedeion Museum in Syracuse is a real place, but the layout of the museum and its contents are the authors’ creation. Sadly a research trip was out of the question and descriptions of the facility are limited to a number of less than favorable visitor reviews, some of which complained that many of the interactive exhibits were not functional. As rule, we like to avoid presenting real world locations in a negative light, but those reviews seemed like an opportunity for a little exercise in “what if?”

Skulls
—Strange elongated skulls found on the Paracas peninsula in Peru have long aroused the interest of UFO enthusiasts who see an astounding similarity to the shape of the heads described in most reports of encounters with the extraterrestrial “grays.” One story, widely circulated on the Internet, mistakenly claims that DNA tests on the Paracas skulls indicate that they are not human. That story is a fiction, though not our invention. What is factual is that the skulls do exist, and are an example of what was once a wide-spread body modification technique practiced not only in South America, but all over the world, even well into the 20
th
century. And yes, elongated skulls were found in the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum on the island of Malta.

Certain cultures, probably for purely aesthetic reasons, would wrap the heads of infants tightly with blankets and ropes, or bind them to boards, in order to flatten and reshape the skull. Because the human head stops growing at a very young age, the desired effect can be achieved in a relatively short time, with no physical damage to the brain.

Many of the aforementioned UFO enthusiasts accept this explanation, but wonder if perhaps the reason these ancient people wanted to change the shape of their heads was to look more like their “gods” who they believe were actually alien astronauts. In the case of the Paracas culture, the same culture responsible for creating the Nazca Lines, large geoglyphs which can only be seen in their entirety from high altitude—a low flying spacecraft perhaps?—the question should not be lightly dismissed.

Phantom Time
—The Phantom Time Hypothesis is real thing—that is to say, someone has proposed it, therefore the proposition exists. According to historian Herbert Illig, Holy Roman Emperor Otto II and Pope Sylvester II conspired to fabricate nearly three hundred years of history—corresponding to the years 614 to 911 CE—in order to place their respective reigns on the cusp of the new millennium, which it is supposed, would have given them a great deal of influence over faithful Christians. The primary evidence for Phantom Time is the adjustment made during the transition from the Julian to Gregorian calendar. Supporters of the hypothesis also claim that there is very little archaeological evidence that can be reliably dated to this period, and when challenged, call into question the accuracy of dating methods. They also correctly point out that most of what we know about the Middle Ages derives from written histories, many of which have a suspiciously fanciful flavor.

There is quite a bit of evidence against the hypothesis, but then that is exactly what we would expect from such a well-thought-out deception. The central argument however, namely the discrepancy in Pope Gregory’s adjustment of the calendar in the year 1582, only works if we assume that Gregory was correcting for the accumulation of every extra leap year day added since the inception of the Julian calendar in 46 BCE. Since the purpose of the Gregorian calendar was to avoid confusion about when to celebrate Christian holidays, it is far more likely that Gregory’s scholars would have chosen a more relevant starting point, such as the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, which established, among other things, the dates for those holidays.

While Phantom Time probably isn’t a supportable proposition, it raises some interesting questions about the trustworthiness of history, particularly with respect to contemporary sources.

Fogou
—Like skull deformation, the practice of creating underground chambers was ubiquitous in the ancient world. Many scholars favor a utilitarian explanation, and indeed, these chambers could have been used for food storage or a refuge from enemy attacks—survival bunkers for ancient preppers. Others believe they served a ritual purpose, a (figurative?) doorway to the Underworld or transition point to another realm. Neither explanation can be discounted simply because the cultures that made these chambers and tunnels left no written explanation for their purpose. From the fogous of Scotland, to the erdstall tunnels of Europe, to the kivas of the American southwest, these underground vaults remain a mystery that may never be solved.

Which brings us to….

Hal Saflieni Hypogeum
—Until the recent discovery of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, the megalithic temples of Malta were considered the oldest structures known to man, some dating back over 7,000 years. The Hypogeum is just a little more recent—the site has been dated to 4000 BCE—and is the only known subterranean temple from the prehistoric period, which makes its unusual acoustic design all the more intriguing. The auditory properties of the Hypogeum described herein are real, up to a point. Research has confirmed that the Oracle Room resonates at 110 Hertz, a frequency known to produce trance-like effects. That this was understood by architects living before the creation of written language is nothing short of amazing. And yes, as mentioned earlier, elongated skulls were discovered among the human remains buried in the Hypogeum.

Infrasound
—The lower limit of human hearing has been established as 20 Hertz, though by the time most of us reach adulthood, the ability to hear lower ranges will have diminished considerably. (If you’re curious about this, you can find phone apps, like the one Jade used, to produce a range of frequencies. The results may surprise and discourage). Any sound below 20 Hz is called infrasound, and while we cannot hear infrasound, it can produce unusual physical effects—ranging from nausea to extreme anxiety to outright panic. The connection between ghost sightings and infrasound in the 17-19 Hz range was first suggested in 1998, and ongoing research between infrasound and allegedly haunted houses has been very promising.

The idea that infrasound might be manipulated to produce very specific hallucinations, as described in this novel, is well beyond the limits of what is possible. For now.

Bell Rock
—Located just south of Sedona, Arizona, Bell Rock is one of several magnificent red limestone buttes that tower over the desert landscape. It also happens to be the site of an “energy vortex,” one of several purported to exist in the Sedona region. According to local lore and too many anecdotal reports to count, encountering a vortex may cause a wide range of emotional and physical reactions. Some feel rejuvenated. Other describe a strange humming sound. Still others report seeing strange lights in the sky. There are even stories about a gigantic alien spacecraft concealed inside Bell Rock. While the vault described in the story is completely fictional, the similarity between the effects of infrasound and the Sedona vortices is, to say the least, intriguing enough to explore in fiction. And if you ever happen to be in Sedona, maybe you’ll get to experience a vortex encounter firsthand!