Prime (30 page)

FIFTY-FOUR

Twenty-five meters further down the tunnel, Sasha Therion had reached
her destination. While King and Parker fought, she had pressed forward, using
the laptop screen to light her way. She arrived at a small, unremarkable
looking cavern.

She saw a few stalagmites, looking like
deformed white mushrooms growing out of the floor, but the feature that
immediately drew her attention was man-made. In the center of the chamber,
someone had laid down a circle of stones, each about the size a man’s head. It
looked like it might have served as a campfire ring, but instead of charcoal
remnants, the entire circle—about six feet in diameter—was filled with soil,
and poking up from the crumbly surface were the desiccated fibrous stalks of
plants that had once grown here, in defiance of all the laws of nature.

This, she knew intuitively, was where Bacon and
al-Tusi had conducted their experiments. This was the Prime—the place where
life had begun—or as near to it as any human had ever come.

Not in this cave of course. When the spark of
life had first caught, some three and a half billion years ago, the surface of
the Earth had been a very different place. The land mass that would eventually
become the continent of Europe would not be thrust up from the Earth’s mantle
until hundreds of millions of years later. The calcium carbonate that comprised
the limestone walls of the cave network itself was an accretion of organic
material—the skeletons of aquatic life forms settling to the ocean floor and
compressing into sedimentary rock—and so the cave itself could not have existed
prior to the genesis of life on Earth. Life had not begun in this cave, nor had
it necessarily begun in the physical space the cave now occupied, but there was
nevertheless something important about this place, something that was not bound
to the fickle whims of geology.

There were many places like it, places long
known and revered by humans even before the rise of civilization—power spots,
rivers of invisible Earth energy, ley lines, vortices. They were places where
the laws of nature could sometimes be bent, if not broken altogether. On a day
lost to time, so long ago that the span of years was incomprehensible to the
human brain, those laws had been distorted in a very special way, at this
particular place, and the tinder of life had become a wildfire.

Sasha stood above the ring of stones, one
hand extended as if she might be able to feel the unique energy of the Prime.

Oddly enough, she could feel something…a
tingling in her skin, like the vibration of a tuning fork. She closed her eyes
and savored the moment.

She had, at long last, arrived at a solution,
discovered the common factor that would enable her to simplify the impossibly
complex variables of the human equation. She had found the Prime.

She sat cross-legged in front of the stone
circle and set her laptop in front of her. As she opened the hinged screen, she
realized that the strange vibration wasn’t coming from the Prime, at least not
directly. It was coming from her computer, which was still streaming out the
tonal frequency that had—in conjunction with the proximity of the Prime—made it
possible for her to pass through solid matter. Now, the ground upon which she
sat was starting to resonate to the same frequency, growing warm as the
molecular bonds holding the stone in a solid state began to loosen.

She quickly closed the sound file, but at
that very moment, an explosion ripped through the softened rock.

Fifty meters away
and about ten meters above the Prime
location, the Chess Team had forced their way into Chauvet Cave and were now
fighting for their lives. As the frankensteins poured through the entry, Bishop
fired a 40-millimeter high explosive grenade from the XM320 launcher attached
to his carbine. It had been an act of pure desperation; Bishop had known that
the grenade might trigger a cave-in, collapsing the entrance and sealing them
inside, but he had judged that a preferable fate to being overrun by the
frankensteins.

What he
could not have known was that the floor beneath him had been undergoing a
subtle transformation; the stone was softening, and in some places, it had
turned completely into
a molecular
slurry. When the
small grenade detonated, its explosive energy ripped into the weakened stone
and shattered it.

A section of
the ceiling right above Sasha was
pulverized, raining a fine powdery grit down onto her. Beyond that impenetrable
dust cloud, long black fissures were appearing in the limestone as the cavern
started tearing itself apart.

Sasha’s sense of triumph was also on the
verge of self-destruction. She huddled over the computer, taking shallow
breaths to avoid inhaling too much of the choking dust, and fought back the
rising tide of panic.

The solution, literally within her grasp, was
about to be stolen away again, this time forever.

No.
I won’t let that happen
.

She opened her eyes. The air still felt thick,
but she could see the computer screen, and that was all she needed. Putting her
face close so she could see the keyboard, she began inputting the solution.

She had worked it all out during the days
that she and Parker had been on the run. The Voynich manuscript had provided
her with all the information she needed about the musical notes that had the
greatest effect on the Prime, so it had been a simple thing to isolate the
relevant frequencies.

“Sasha!”

Parker’s voice reached out through the gloom,
but she ignored it. She didn’t need his help anymore, and she certainly didn’t
need an unpredictable variable showing up now, not when she was so close to the
solution.

“Sasha, are you there? Can you hear me?”

Go
away
.

She didn’t say it aloud at first, but when
his inquiries became more urgent, she realized that her refusal to acknowledge
him was making him more persistent, and might embolden him to interfere with
what she was trying to do. “I’m fine, Danny.”

“Thank God.” The walls groaned again,
releasing another small shower of dust. “Where are you? Keep talking so I can
find you.”

“No. Don’t come any closer.”

“Why not?
What’s wrong?”

“I found the Prime. I can fix everything, but
you need to just leave me alone for a little while, okay?”

There was a long pause, and Sasha was just
starting to believe that maybe he had complied with her request when he spoke
again. “Sasha, what are you talking about?”

She sighed. His questions were making it hard
for her to concentrate, hampering her efforts to enter the new frequencies. Why
couldn’t he just go away?

“Sasha, what is it you are trying to fix?”

Exasperated, she smacked her palms against
her thighs.
“Everything!
I’m trying to fix everything,
okay? Does that answer your question?”

“And how are you going to do that?” He was
speaking softly, but at the same time his voice was getting louder as he moved
closer, trying to pinpoint her location in the near-total darkness. Maybe he
couldn’t see the glow of the computer screen in all the dust. She decided not
to answer any more of his questions.

“How is the
Prime
going to help you do that?” he continued. “Are you trying to come up with your
own Elixir of Life?
Something to heal everyone?”

“Ha!” It was out of her mouth before she
could think to suppress it. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle any
further outbursts,
then
she went back to typing.
Almost done
…

Parker must have heard her.
“Something else then?
Not a cure for disease, but maybe a
new disease?
A new Black Death?
Is that what you want
Sasha? You can tell me. I can understand why you might feel like you need to do
that.”

His declaration surprised her.
“Really?”

“Sure. I get it. Life sucks sometimes.”

“It’s the chaos I can’t stand. It was all
just a big mistake.”

“What do you mean by ‘a mistake?
’”

She realized that he was toying with her,
trying to keep her talking so he could find her. She shook her head, trying to
shut him out. She went back to work.

“Sasha, tell me more about the chaos? I need
to know more if I’m going to help you fix it.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, speaking
slowly so as not to enter the wrong data.

“I might. You like things orderly, right?
Precise?
That’s why you’re a mathematician. You like solving
equations. You like things that make sense.”

Maybe
he does understand
.

“And people… Well, people are unpredictable.
And with everything you’ve been through, I think it’s perfectly understandable
that you want to…you know, bring some order to the world. Let me help.”

“I don’t need your help,” she declared. She
could hear his footsteps crunching through the grit on the floor.

“Of course you don’t. But I want to help. I
want to be a part of it.” Sasha felt his presence beside her. He knelt next to
her and peered at the screen. “What are you working on there? Are you going to
use the Prime to create a new plague? Is that how you’re going to fix things?”

She looked over at him. His face was a mess
of dust and blood, and he looked positively ghoulish in the diffuse glow of the
computer screen, but there wasn’t even a hint of accusation or condemnation in
his eyes.

“No,” she said finally. “The plague isn’t a
solution. It’s just another variable; unpredictable like all living systems.”

“Go on.”

“Life was an accident, Danny. It was a
mistake.
A statistical impossibility that somehow happened
anyway.”

“Some people would call that a miracle.”

She shook her head. “Not a miracle.
Just something that happened; a random spark that caught fire and
is destined to burn itself out.”

“I know it might seem bad sometimes, but it
doesn’t have to be that way.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She felt no emotion now.
No fear at what would happen, and strangely, no satisfaction. “Three and a half
billion years, that’s how long the fire has been burning. We think we’re so
important—the center of the universe, but the universe doesn’t even know we
exist. Life is a plague, an infection that threatens the perfection of the
universe. And it all started right here, with the Prime. But I know how to
solve the equation.”

“How?”

She looked into his eyes.
“Simple
math.
You subtract known values from the equation until nothing is
left.”

His mouth formed the word:
subtract
.

“The Prime isn’t just this place, Danny. It’s
the constant that makes all the variables possible. It’s fixed in all
dimensions, time and space.”

“Then how are you going to…to solve it?”

“The Prime is only one factor. There is
another; the frequency that made life possible. We’ll never know what caused
it…the wind maybe?
Cosmic rays?
Who knows, but it was
the catalyst. The frequency and the Prime combined to equal life. I can’t
subtract the Prime from the equation, but I can nullify the frequency, and that
will change one factor to zero.”

“Nullify?” He nodded slowly. “You’re going to
create a phased wave to dampen the original one. And if, as you say, we are all
linked through time and space to the Prime, eliminating one factor will pull
the plug for us all.
For all life on Earth.”

She gazed up at him, impressed by how quickly
he had figured it out. “You’re very intelligent. I wish I’d met you sooner.”

He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “I
want to hear all about this, but first we need to get out of here, okay?”

“No need,” she said. She could feel it now, a
tingling in her skin…an itch like pins and needles. “It’s already started.”

Parker jerked back as if he’d been stung.
“Sasha, you’ve got to stop it. Turn it off now.”

She gazed back at him. “Turn it off? Why
would I—”

Her voice caught in her throat as the itching
sensation blossomed into a spike of pain—a baptism in liquid fire.

The agony was transcendent, but it lasted for
only an instant. Then the calculation was complete, and Sasha Therion was no
more.

FIFTY-FIVE

Bishop had called out, warning them of what he was about to do. It was
madness to fire a grenade inside the cavern, even as vast as it was, but what choice
was there? The frankensteins had taken the entrance and were massing for an
assault that Chess Team would never be able to repel. No one answered, and
evidently taking the silence as assent, he had leveled the launcher and fired.

Queen heard the hollow pop as the spherical
package of high explosive shot down the tube. She curled into a defensive ball
in anticipation of the chaos that would follow.

The grenade exploded right in front of one of
the monstrosities. There was a dull thump and a cloud of acrid smoke, and then
the shockwave hit.

Queen was well outside the grenade’s kill
zone, but the energy of the blast slapped her to the ground and reverberated in
her gut. She thought that was the worst of it, but then the ground beneath her
fell.

She scrambled away from the crumbling floor,
flinging her arms out in a desperate attempt to find a handhold, but everything
she touched was moving, falling into the abyss that had opened beneath her.

Yet she was not falling.

She felt a strain in her right arm, the burden
of her body weight suspended by that single appendage, and she realized that
she must have snared something solid…but no, her fingers were curled into a
fist around empty air.

“I’ve got you, babe!”

She couldn’t see the face of her savior, but
there was no mistaking the voice. Rook had somehow managed to snare her wrist,
and now he held her, dangling over the brink of the newly formed fissure.

With a mighty heave, he pulled her up. She
felt the rough stone edge of the abyss scraping against her body, and then she
was on solid ground again, collapsing on top of her rescuer.

She pushed him away. “If you ever call me
‘babe’ again,” she rasped. “I’ll cut your balls off.”

“Hey, slow down
chica
,” he replied smoothly. “We should get to know each other
better before you try getting in my pants.”

With a growl, she snared his goatee in the
darkness. She pulled him close, stopping just an inch from his face, causing
him to suck in and hold a quick breath. If he puckered, their lips would touch.

“Keep dreaming, big guy.”

She let go of his beard, and he smiled
broadly. “If I dream about you, I’m going to have more nocturnal—”

The rest of his quip was lost as a peal of
thunder boomed through the cave, and both of them scrambled back from the edge
of the fissure. Then the noise sounded again, and Queen realized that it was
the report of Knight’s Barrett.

Squinting through the dust and smoke, she
could make out pinpricks of light, marking the locations of Bishop and Knight
respectively. Both men were firing across the cavern, over the yawning void of
the fissure where at least five of the frankensteins were shaking off the
effects of the grenade and preparing to move.

Queen breathed a curse, and raised her
carbine. Bishop’s grenade had improved the odds a little, but it hadn’t been
the equalizer they needed.

She played her light toward the fissure that
had nearly claimed her. It was a good fifteen feet across, a ragged split in
the limestone, sloping down almost vertically, with few handholds. An ordinary
man would not have dared attempt to leap across the gap. Even an Olympic long
jumper would have been daunted, but the frankensteins, fueled by steroids, and
fearless, would be able to skip across it like girls playing hopscotch on a
playground.

The expected charge however, did not come.
Instead, the creatures moved out along the perimeter of the cavern, keeping to
the shadows and staying low behind stalagmites for cover, heading for the
narrow end of the crevasse.

“They’re trying to flank us,” she shouted,
and the implications of that realization hit her like a slap. When the
frankensteins crossed to their side of the cavern, the team would be trapped.

“They’re smart,” Rook remarked in a low
voice.
“Too smart.
Like they’ve got
some kind of hive mind.”

She had been thinking the same thing.

“Well, your highness, any bright ideas?”

“All for one,” she said, nodding toward
Knight and Bishop. “We fall back as far as we can and form a defensive line. If
they want us, they’re going to have to get through a wall of lead.”