EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

Tension faded into a past memory. Fear and doubt drifted off. This was a great start. The question of why I was there, alone, was in all our minds. With gestures and drawings, I explained to them what had transpired the night before. As soon as I used the word “mafia,” they both sat back, mouths open wide, and gasped “ah.” This was enough explanation. To convey everything was a laborious effort of words, gestures, and expressions. Time between words often dragged like crawling in mud. Strange how much harder it felt to remain silent with someone to whom you can’t speak, as if the silence was wasted space. This was how I had gotten started ten years earlier as an eighteen-year-old searching for treasured rocks in other countries. In almost every case there was an elder with the wisdom and knowledge and a younger scout, willing to learn, able to help, and a lot of time was spent hacking out ways to communicate the mission. No matter how rough, it always seemed to fall together, creating bonds of friendship for life.

Once he understood the need to find Zen, Sharif slowly rose to his leathery, sandaled feet, his desert robe hanging to his ankles. He told Khal I would be safe in his home. Khal looked at me with release in his eyes and said, “Ok, see you.” I pointed to my watch and he answered by making a leapfrog gesture on his outstretched arm, replying “tomorrow.”

Uneasy and reserved, I replied with “Ok, see you,” and as he walked away with deliberate direction, he waved over his shoulder as if to mimic my gesture from this morning. The tide of fear and insecurity rushed in again as I watched my voice, Khal, turn and walk away.

My Berber host and newfound friend was speaking with two soldiers with machine guns. He pointed at me in their conversation and they all laughed; then the two sauntered off talking and chuckling to each other as they glanced in my direction. I had a good feeling about things, but would have given anything to know what was said.

I speak Arabic, but Berber is like a language from another planet. Here on the edge of the sand, most speak Berber and those who speak Arabic cannot understand Berber. Berber people, their language, and customs, all seem to come from another time and place. Tough, resourceful, tenacious survivalists, they are perfectly suited for life in the harsh, relentless, unforgiving desert. I can understand a simple life living close to the earth and living happily with so little, but watching them come out of the desert, seeming to appear from nowhere, bringing rocks from the center of the continent and beyond, I can’t help wondering why anyone chooses to live in such a harsh environment. It is said they have just walked across the continent. How long did this journey take? Why would they do it? What were the dangers and the risks? How many countries did they cross? The heat of the day, the cold at night, the bare rock, sand, mountains, wind, the creepy critters—things that go bite in the night. How do these people set out for months of trekking in a pair of sandals? What is out there to draw them? Berbers rarely remain in villages for long before they set out again across the globe. It’s as if villages along the edge of the desert are there to supply the nomads. And if the nomads didn’t exist, the villages would not be there.

Somewhere out there within walking distance for these people is the “Cradle of Life,” the place it is said that humans first came from. And somewhere out there on the surface of this endless ocean of sand and rock is a fallen stone from the sky, which holds within its matrix the evidence of life elsewhere in the cosmos, or better yet, evidence of where life here on Earth came from. The quest is to get that rock into the hands of science. Looking out over thousands of miles of desert horizon, I feel drawn to its legendary magic. There are feelings of wondrous memories and the spirits of millennia of generations of people who lived their lives in the Sahara. One can feel the magical energy from those millions of ancient lives. It’s a feeling of worlds long since gone that are still there in spirit.

Sharif was a serious, steady, taciturn man who said more with a look than most can say with hundreds of words. As we walked together my mind wandered. I felt this simple man was far more worldly than he let on. More than knowing how much trouble I was in, he seemed to know just how much I needed his help. I didn’t ask for his help; he simply took the job as if he had waited for my arrival. Also, he knew Zen very well and this made him my best chance of reconnecting with my guide and good friend.

When we approached Sharif’s house, I snapped out of my wandering trance and nothing looked familiar. Once we stepped inside, it was like coming home, and there was little Fatima smiling and waving hello. She seemed more at ease with my appearance this time, but still she stood half hidden behind the edge of a door frame. Standing in the entrance to the house, Sharif called to Maryam to come help with my wounds. We sat in the kitchen while she bandaged the three slices and one hole in my arm. Burning stiffness was setting in, and the warm compression of the bandages felt good on the stinging cuts. The hit that lifted the arm had left a sizeable hole that continued to drain blood, heartbeat pounding under the gauze over each wound. Maryam had laid some kind of seaweed ointment on top of each opening to help prevent infection and kill the pain.

There was an invitation to sit on the floor in the main room, and instantly hot tea and food were brought to the table in the center of the room. It seemed that those in the house knew a guest was coming. Sharif’s son Zed entered the room to greet us and spoke in his limited English. I hardly knew these wonderful people, yet they felt like family. Lunch was a king’s feast. Sharif sent one of the younger boys off on an errand with a handful of food. Soon he returned and I could see behind him in the shadows of the entryway the outline of my dear friend and guide Zen. His ear-to-ear smile illuminated the room, his eyes glistening with emotional relief and reserved delight.

Zen is young, tough, and tenacious, his thoughts and actions based in pure emotion. Pride and loyalty mean everything to him. His greatest ambition is to be completely trusted by those closest to him.

There were hugs and pats on the back, laughter, and great smiles. After the meal Zen was pulled into a lengthy conversation with Zed and Sharif. I sat watching; it was easy to see that they were discussing a subject that would soon be presented to me, but Zen’s English is “small,” as he puts it, and this would be a lot to condense into “small” words. Just then they all turned to face me. Zen asked me to wait for the words. He said, “The words he does not know. But Sharif has an old picture, he must find it.”

So after two to three hours of broken sentences in three or four languages, gestures, and sketches, the picture was presented. It was so worn and tattered that I could hardly make out what was in the photograph. One could see from the outline that it was a stone resting on a small table. Zen pointed to the stone, looked at me, and said, “This is your Mars rock! This stone they see fall and they find. Is not this why you are here?”

There it was, the Holy Grail of meteorites. I had heard of this legendary stone years earlier. The shape and size had been described in detail. A small fragment had been chipped from the mass when it fell, revealing the interior matrix. The green and black crosshatch pattern and color was always a telltale indicator that the finders had another piece of planetary basalt and most likely a Shergottite. Shergottites are a group of meteorites named after the original fall of this type of material named Shergotty, which fell on August 25th, 1865, in Gaya, Bihar, India. After putting several landers on planet Mars, scientists have confirmed that these and a rare few other groups of meteorites originated on the Red Planet. This origin makes these stones priceless research material.

Since early childhood, my fascination with rocks from space was unquenchable. I have read countless papers and attended every lecture on the subject at local universities about this mythical stone. It is said to have fallen into the Cradle of Life in what is known as the heart of the Sahara. How can I be holding a picture of what appears to me to be the Holy Grail of all meteorites? This stone, it is said, was seen to fall to Earth many thousands of years ago. Legend has it that after the stone was recovered and preserved, this part of the world changed from lush life-filled forests and waterfowl-inhabited inland seas to the desert we know today. Sandstone cliffs covered with carvings of jungle wildlife as well as artifacts made by the hands of men testify to this dramatic change. My interest is not in the legends of this stone’s terrestrial history, but rather in its extraterrestrial history. If this meteorite truly is a Shergottite, then locked inside its unweathered matrix there might be clues to the beginnings of life itself. But how does Sharif have this picture? It’s as if he knew I was coming. This stone has become a religious icon to the desert people. No one of the so-called modern world has ever laid eyes on the legendary specimen.

Life loses all other meaning as I am consumed by the interest in this stone. This was my Rosetta stone. It might very well have been that this was in fact the Holy Grail that the Knights Templar had quested after for lifetimes. Descriptions of all other possible artifacts that might have been the grail were obscure at best, the most convincing being a chalice. But I had a description of a shape and size and color and origin, and this photograph matches all of those details. What is the Grail; was it the bringer of life somehow or maybe life change on a global scale? It also makes sense that the stone was revered and protected for so long. It had its own legend, but only limited detail had leaked out of its existence. After all the stories and rumors, it seems that for the first time I am getting close. Everything feels different this time. This feels close to the truth. There is a brief passing of time between the search for a stone and that instant when it is laid out before you when you know it is really going to happen. This never takes long enough to think about what comes next. If that event has happened often enough, then one can feel the truth coming. It’s the feeling of opening a long-buried treasure chest, and the bounty within illuminates the faces around it. You know it’s there before the lid is opened, but the years of searching create a doubt that only the final moment can erase. The feeling is palpable; the truth is being able to reach out and touch your goal.

Ten years earlier, at the age of eighteen, I made my first journey here to try to recover a rare stony-iron meteorite that had fallen in this area. Stories had made it through the scientific community that someone had recovered a piece from a recent witnessed fall and that it was possibly a mesosiderite, a fairly valuable type of stony-iron. I had seen this as an opportunity to acquire some valuable trade material while providing research material out of the field, fresh from space. After I spent weeks networking, a young man presented me with the first specimen: a gorgeous fusion-crusted fresh-fallen stone. There was no mistaking that this was a piece of that recent fall event. That young lad was Zen, ten years of age at the time, and beaming with pride to show his recovery to someone who had traveled halfway round the planet to offer him money for it. Zen is like a younger brother to me now. We have grown up together. We were both just kids on an adventure together then and now. I had no business instincts, just a passion for collecting space rocks and a love for adventure.

I saved every penny earned doing paper routes, caddying the local golf course, stacking firewood for a local boat builder, and painting houses during the summers. The goal was to buy a car at age sixteen and pay for college early. But a broken leg right out of high school set me behind my peers, and lying around reading books filled my head with wanderlust. This rock fell about the time my leg was healed, and I saw the chance for travel and possible profit. Weeks later in an unfamiliar land, I was holding in my hands a melted black rock that just a few weeks earlier had drifted aimlessly through the vacuum of outer space.

This encounter with Zen would be the beginning of a long and thrilling relationship. Now, here we were once again working together to recover all or part of a treasure fallen from the sky. I learned early on to always make the effort to be extra generous. To always take care of those who take care of you means you will always have help when you need it. When we left Sharif’s home yesterday, I quietly handed his son Zed a gift of dollars for his children. I gestured at the children while shaking his hand filled with the gift. One can only assume that Sharif had learned of my generosity with no expectation of a return, and that the gesture had won his admiration. This fine man was relaying information about a stone that had been legend for millennia. How was I given to be this fortunate? This part of the world was invaded by countless empires through the ages. But why would invading hordes wish to conquer a land of rock and sand? Is it possible they had searched for the magic of this stone? If this meteorite was that important, then how could I ever get this close? In this part of the world there are stories of the limitless power of this stone—from healing children with polio to protecting the land and its people. Will I ever get closer than this, and is there a chance of ever obtaining even a small fragment for research?

One of countless legends had described that this stone was the entire contents of the Ark of the Covenant, and the powers of the Ark were imbued by the stone. All of this tied into so many stories from other legends. I stand stunned by the flow of thought and possibilities. Zen and Zed had come to share that Sharif held me in esteem as an expert on meteorites and that he felt that my efforts were purely noble to get a piece into the hands of researchers. That night after dinner we sat around a small fire and drank tea. It was story-telling time, and I shared with the mesmerized group that there is a new “space race.” It is no longer about getting people onto other planets. The real space race is to be the first scientist or institution to find concrete evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. For now we don’t have the technology to travel to other planets safely and quickly, but space rocks brimming with valuable information come to us. When a meteorite falls through the Earth’s atmosphere, it melts in a fusion fireball caused by compressed atmospheric gases ignited by friction. This fireball forms a glassy crust on the meteorite, sealing valuable rare gases and volatile or soluble minerals within the matrix. There can also be bubbles sealed in impact glass in the matrix, glass created by the same event that ejected the chunk of rock from its parent planet. This glass can have that planet’s atmosphere trapped within those bubbles. The night was filled with endless questions deftly testing the depth of my knowledge about meteorites.