Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (40 page)

“But?”

“Some people think we were preceded by an earlier, more advanced civilization, that it was wiped out by a global catastrophe, and that became the source of our legends of a universal flood. What if that’s what happened to your family’s First Gods?”

“You’re talking about the Sea Kings,” Jess said. Every member of the Family was aware of history’s fringe theories describing a fantastical advanced society in the dim past, if only because some of those theories owed their origins to certain misremembered stories of the Family itself. “Sometimes they’re called Atlanteans.”

“As in the Lost Continent?”

“Exactly. But you can file those stories with Ironwood’s aliens. There’s no solid geological record of a global catastrophe in historical times. Not even in the Family’s records.”

“What about all those mammoths flash-frozen in Siberia?”

“Urban myth,” Jess said. “Lots of mammoth carcasses in Siberia, but—without exception—there’s significant decay. All that’s left is bone and tusks, hide and hair. There’s never been a perfectly preserved find. That young mammoth they dug up on television a few years back? It froze before rotting because predators had torn it open and eaten its internal organs. Wasn’t much more than a shell.”

“Then how about a huge meteor or comet impact?”

“Again, lots of those in historical times, but most impacts cause localized effects, not global.”

“You said ‘most.’ So some aren’t?”

This was her territory of expertise. “There’s a good case for a series of significant impacts eight to ten thousand years ago. Some of them might be connected—parts of the same body, a shattered comet or meteor, striking different locations at almost the same time. Others . . . well, their timings are too far apart to be anything other than individual events.

“But there is one well-documented impact that took place about twelve thousand nine hundred years ago. Something big detonated over the Great Lakes region of North America. Some say it coincides with what’s called the Younger Dryas—an anomalous cooling period that lasted over a thousand years in the northern hemisphere. Sort of a localized version of nuclear winter. There’s evidence to suggest that particular climate change was responsible for disrupting the continent’s Clovis culture.”

She stopped to explain. “They’re the first people to establish themselves in historically significant numbers in North America.”

David was still with her. “But it took a thousand years?”

Jess nodded. “The cooling lasted that long. Clovis culture probably collapsed over a generation or two.”

“So not an instant catastrophe?”

“Well, there’s suggestive evidence of huge fires in regions that were close to the projected impact point. But overall? No, not instant, at least, not in the way other impacts affected other people.”

“So, if there was no global disaster to wipe out the First Gods, what do you think happened to them?”

“They didn’t vanish without warning. The
Traditions
say that they
told
us they were leaving. To go to the White Island. And they promised to come back. They just didn’t say when.”

“Or why.”

Jess hesitated. David couldn’t know he’d just touched on the real mystery of the Family. One that had cost Florian her life—and threatened his, and hers. “Or why,” she agreed.

Thankfully, David’s attention was back on the image of the ancient map. “What we do know is that they marked the location of the Cornwall temple on this. And I saw the same cross on an island in the Mediterranean, in Africa, India . . . I know there were others, but I didn’t see everything I shot. Who knows what else they marked?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jess said.

David pressed the key to start the program.

In less than a minute, the Haldron mainframe quilted together sixty-seven separate images. The completed picture—an extraordinary world view—filled the screen side to side.

The first thing David did was click on the command that rotated the image, so that north would be at the top.

“Where do we start?”

Jess took a deep breath, excited, apprehensive. “Cornwall.”

David expanded that section of the map, and they began. In less than twenty minutes the two of them completed the work of lifetimes. Twelve temples around the world.

“Anything else?” David asked.

In addition to the four already known, the digitally preserved map showed the same bladed cross marking a location on Malta, two in Africa, and one each in Tibet, Indonesia, the American Southwest, the tip of South America, and the maritime region of Canada. Red lines drew connections to all of the temple locations accessible by sea. Black lines marked overland routes and linked ports, none of which were temples. The map showed more than forty separate locations on those routes.

However, beyond the twelve temples marked with the bladed cross, there was no thirteenth site that suggested the location of White Island.

“Jess, what language were the
Traditions
written in? Originally, I mean.”

“The earliest one we know of is in cuneiform, like I said. Before that, we’re not sure. But, whatever written language it was that the First Gods gave us, it’s most likely the source of all the other written languages that appeared around the world, all at the same time. Same thing for agriculture. The fertile triangle in the Middle East, rice cultivation in China . . . agriculture began around the world, all at the same time. Standing stone observatories. All of those things are their gifts to us.”

“Right.” David drummed his fingers beside the keyboard. “What I
was wondering was, is there any chance ‘White Island’ could be a mistranslation, or have other meanings?”

“It’s not quite that simple.” A strange thought struck Jess. This was like a children’s lesson, one she had had to learn herself. Because the term itself didn’t come just from the
Traditions.
David had asked her earlier how her Family had managed to keep all their secrets, and the truth was, they hadn’t.

“In some ways, if you think about it, my Family’s really not so different. Lots of cultures tell the story of how they were given gifts by mysterious visitors. The Aztec legends say that strangers came from a place called Aztlan. That’s been translated as ‘White Island.’ The dwelling place of Hindu yogis with supreme knowledge was called Shveta-Dvipa. That also means ‘White Island.’ And the Tibetans—they believe a ‘White Island’ will be the only part of the world to escape disaster because it’s the eternal land. So it’s not just us.”

David wheeled around to stare at her, as if she’d just said something striking. “But land’s not eternal, is it?”

“Sorry?”

“You know what’s wrong with this map?”

“It’s not precise?” Jess could see that. How could it be, given the age of it and the conditions under which the First Gods had charted the world? Of course it couldn’t match modern cartographic techniques.

“Maybe the differences aren’t a matter of precision.” His face alight with some idea, David turned back to the map on the screen, touching it as he spoke. “England joined to Europe. Sicily joined to Italy.” He glanced back at her. “At Cornwall, the sea level nine thousand years ago would’ve been at least sixty feet lower. So how low would it have to be for the world to look like this map?”

Jess thought back to her most basic introductory courses in geology. “Well, England and the continent were definitely joined by a land bridge. Another twenty to twenty-five feet down would be enough to expose it—but that would’ve been another thousand years or so even earlier than that map. Sicily and Italy, I’m not sure. Whenever they were last joined, it could be a function of sea level, or of earthquakes, or some combination of both.”

“So we’ve got a map that’s obviously important. It shows the location of the temples, but not the White Island. And it seems to be based on charts that were prepared at least a thousand years prior to it being painted on that wall.”

Jess couldn’t tell what he was driving at, if he was driving at anything. “That’s
if
our assumptions of dating are correct. Maybe the temples were
built nine thousand
eight
hundred years ago. Then there’s not as much difference between the time the charts were drawn up and the map was painted.”

“Still, there’d be a difference, Jess, and if they were making charts over, let’s say a few centuries, then the mapmakers would have to have been aware of a pretty significant rise in sea level over that time.”

Jess still didn’t get it. “Okay . . .”

“So the land isn’t eternal.
This
map’s going to go out of date.”

“This map? There’s another?” Jess looked at the screen again, wondering what she had missed. “Is it painted over something? Like a palimpsest?”

David grinned, almost as if he were teasing her again. “Not over something.
Under
it.” He reached into his pocket, but before he had brought out what he was searching for, Jess had it.

“The dome,” she said. “The disks on the ceiling are a star map.” The name had been there all along. “
That’s
why it’s called the Chamber of Heaven!”

David held out the metal ceiling disk he’d retrieved from the chamber floor. It had eight tacklike points on one side, presumably to hold it in place in the plaster. On the other side, it was simply a highly polished disk of some silvery metal that remarkably hadn’t tarnished.

“To make a map of the world as good as this, your ancestors would have to know navigation, which means they’d have to be good astronomers.”

“The sun map,” Jess said. Her thoughts tumbled over one another. “Carved on the meteorite. They
knew
the planets orbit the sun. They
knew
Jupiter had moons, that Saturn had a ring.”

David nodded. “To see the moons and the ring, they had to have telescopes at least the equal of Galileo’s. They also had some pretty good math to work out the orbits.”

He laid the disk on the desktop beside the keyboard, used a trackball to move the map to one side, and started typing.

“Let’s put together the photos of the ceiling map.”

David’s next words made Jess forget their need to outrun the ruthless killers who were after them.

“You know, if we can figure out a date for when that map was made . . . when we see the pattern of the ceiling stars, we should be able to figure out where you’d have to be to see them.”

“A location,” Jess said. Then David said what she was thinking.

“Maybe
the
location. White Island.”

“What’s the plan?” Roz asked. “Good Cop, Bad Cop? Or Bad Cop, Worse Cop?”

“Not necessary. I think this one’s going to be easy.” Lyle peered through the glass partition into the infirmary of the Lakenheath RAF Base, home of the U.S. Air Force 48th Fighter Wing. On the only occupied bed inside, Holden Ironwood Jr. was patched up and on a morphine drip.

“Famous last words.”

“Watch and learn, Roz. And don’t let any medical staff through that door once I’m in there.”

“Yes, sir. No matter how loud Junior screams.”

Lyle didn’t comment. He slowly and silently turned the doorknob, waited a moment, then jerked the door open noisily.

On the bed, the patient’s eyes fluttered open, but since he could only turn his head slowly, exactly how much of his delayed reaction was due to drugs, and how much to injury, Lyle didn’t know. Nor did he particularly care.

He held his ID up, though he doubted the groggy man could read anything on it. Again, not important.

“Jack Lyle, Air Force Office of Special Investigations. We’re going to talk before you’re processed.”

The man on the bed licked his dry lips, running his tongue along the edge of the stained dressing that covered his face from his cheek to his mouth. According to the medical reports, Ironwood’s son had been shot twice—a graze to the shoulder and a more serious hit through his left calf. He’d also suffered multiple scrapes and superficial puncture wounds along the right side of his body. The injuries were consistent with being trapped in the partial collapse of the tunnel the rescue workers had found him in. Plus, his left arm was broken in three places, and his left shoulder dislocated. The face scrape was an added insult.

“Wh–at?” Holden Jr., a.k.a. J.R., spoke slowly, but, according to the monitor beside his bed, his heart rate had definitely speeded up.

“Processed,” Lyle repeated. “I’m turning you over to the MPs this afternoon for transport to Leavenworth.”

J.R. was becoming more awake with each passing moment. “Leavenworth?”

“Military prison.”

“I’m under arrest?”

“No. You’re a captive.” Lyle always enjoyed this part.

J.R. struggled to sit up, failed, his panic growing. “Wait, wait, wait . . . start over.”

Lyle identified himself again, then said, “You are an enemy of the United States who has been captured and who will be—”

“No! Stop it!”

Lyle waited.

“I’m not an enemy. I’m a U.S. citizen.”

“Who’s involved in a conspiracy to steal vital defense-related assets and sell them to foreign powers. You got caught. You’ll be spending the rest of your life in Leavenworth.”