The Link (59 page)

“Why don’t you forget your afternoon shift?” Robert suggests. “One of the crew can handle it.”

John is about to argue and Robert knows that he is stepping on fragile ground. But John’s exhaustion overcomes and he only nods and says, “I guess.”

Before he leaves the motor home, Robert gets a fresh handkerchief from his cupboard and runs across the bio-feedback control. He hasn’t used it since they came to Arizona.

As he puts it away, he looks back at John lying down. It makes him feel badly that, as his brother’s health declines, his improves.

He is almost to the shaft when he hears excited voices.

He goes down to find Joseph, Norman and Ann looking at a sight which is both awful and touching.

The skeletons of a woman and two children, the woman’s posture that of a mother trying to protect her young, her arms around them.

“Just the way I saw them,” Ann says, almost reverently.

Robert puts his arm around her in the way the woman has her arm around her child.

“These are from the Motherland,” says Joseph quietly.

Robert looks at him.

“This was an outpost,” Joseph tells them.

“The Motherland?” Ann asks.

Joseph will say no more but climbs from the shaft.

In it, he sees a priest in a vivid robe standing in a dim interior, waiting for him. He moves toward the tall figure.

To discover that the priest is holding his hands like the brass sculptured hands.

And that, floating in the air between his palms, is a crystal globe.

As Robert stops before the priest, the man’s face unseen in the shadow, the crystal globe begins to glow.

He wakes up. It is after two a.m. Rising, he goes outside.

He is almost to the dig when he sees Joseph sitting cross-legged in the moonlight, eyes closed.

Robert knows he must not interrupt whatever the Hopi is doing and, turning, he goes back to the motor home.

As he enters, John is just emerging from the bathroom.

He sits with Robert in the booth and tells him, in a soft voice, that he doesn’t think he can stay much longer.

“All this exercise and fresh air is killing me,” he says.

Robert doesn’t know what to say. He puts his hand on John’s and holds it there.

September 10. Robert drives Ann and John to the nearest airport.

“I’ll be back soon,” Robert tells his daughter, embracing her. “We can’t dig too much longer, the weather’s going to change.”

He promises to keep in touch and contact her as soon as he gets home.

“Dad, I’d like to live with you if I could,” she blurts, holding on to him tightly.

He looks at her. “Sweetheart, that is not a bad idea,” is his reaction.

Her face brightens. “
Really?”

He nods. “We’ll talk about it when I get back.” “Oh, yes, yes,” she says, hugging him fiercely. His farewell to John is less happy. “John, if you need me, tell me and I’ll come,” he says. “You belong here, kid,” John tells him. “Not with me.” He still can’t embrace Robert easily. He pats Robert on the back. “Finish it up,” he says. “Find what Pop was looking for.” “I will,” Robert says.

Later, he tries to telephone Cathy from the airport but she is neither at ESPA nor her apartment.

“I hope to God she’s not back in England,” he murmurs to himself.

A shock awaits him as he comes into the motor home that afternoon. The sight actually makes him jump.

Lying on the table is something they have dug up in the shaft that day.

The rotting remnants of a priest’s robe. The one he saw in his dream.

He walks to the dig with the mail he’s picked up from the post office. There is a letter for Norman from Amelia.

“She’s coming out!” cries Norman in delight, reading it. “At last; someone to share my dementia with.”

Robert smiles and pats Norman on the shoulder, then looks for Joseph, finds him by the shaft.

He tells the Hopi that he saw the robe in a dream the night before. When he describes the dream, Joseph tenses.

“We must be getting close then.” Joseph says. “To what?” asks Robert.

Joseph tells him that a key belief in Hopi mythology is that this area contains a network of underground tunnels.

“Is that what we’ve been looking for?” Robert asks him. “Partially,” says Joseph.

Robert looks at him in silence for a while, then says, “Do these tunnels lead to the ‘hidden place’?”

Joseph takes him by the arm. “Come with me,” he says. He leads Robert up the hill to the temple ruins. There, they sit beside each other on a section of broken wall, looking down at the dig.

“The mythology of my people says that our ancestors came to this continent from a land across the sea,” he says.

“Where?” asks Robert.

Joseph takes a worn map from his trouser pocket and unfolds it. It is a map of the Pacific Ocean and the western portion of the United States.

He points at islands in the Pacific. Raratonga. Mangaia. Tonga-Tabu. The Gilbert and Marshal Group. The Caroline Group. Panape. Swallow. Kusai. Lele. The Kingsmills. The Navigators. The Mariana Group. The Marquesas. Easter Island. Hawaii.

“On all of these,” he says, “are remains of a civilization. Great stone temples. Cyclopean walls. Stone-lined canals. Paved roads. Immense monoliths and statuary.”

Removing a felt pen from his shirt pocket, he draws a line connecting all the islands.

A continent is drawn. Joseph taps it with a finger.

“The Motherland,” he says.

Robert stares at the map.

“Lemuria?”
he says, incredulously.

“It has been called that,” Joseph says.

“Why do you call it the Motherland?” Robert asks him.

“What does a mother do?” Joseph answers with another question.

“Gives birth?” says Robert.

“Exactly,” Joseph says. “Brings life into the world.” He folds the map and puts it away.

“This is what we dig for,” he tells Robert. “To see this with our eyes.”

The dig continues. It is getting hard now as the soil grows rockier. Norman gets a follow-up note from Amelia giving her flight number and time of arrival.

The day arrives and an excited Norman leaves to pick her up. Robert asks him to try and reach Cathy by telephone while he is gone. He is beginning to fear that she
has
gone back to England without telling him.

The afternoon of the same day, Joseph comes to the motor home while Robert is eating lunch and knocks on the door.

Robert invites him in and brings him a cold drink. They sit together in the booth.

And Joseph takes something from a burlap wrapping in his hands. It is a tablet they have just uncovered. He has cleaned it off.

He shows it to Robert who is so stunned he cannot react at all.

Inscribed on the tablet is the four-bladed scythe complete to the last detail.

After recovering, Robert gets the ornament found at his father’s dig and shows it to Joseph. “I don’t know why I didn’t show you this before,” he says.

Joseph strokes the ornament. A deep breath shudders in his chest.

“This is a symbol of the Sacred Four,” he says.

“What are they?” asks Robert.

“The Creator’s commands that evolved law and order from chaos,” Joseph answers.

He points at the symbol as he speaks.

“The circle in the middle is the Creator,” he says. “The hieratic letter in the circle stands for the Creator’s powers.

“The direction of these powers is from West to East and the arrow heads on each blade show that these powers are still active.

“The steps inside the blades stand for the Four Great Primary Forces.

“When the blades turn, they form a circle symbolizing the universe.

“This figure is the key to the movements and workings of our universe.”

Robert waits, then asks, “All these things happening to us—what do they mean when you add them together?”

CLOSE ON his face as we hear the words which have begun each segment of our story. Joseph’s voice saying, “All these happenings—each one of them—are evidences of a greater truth. Traces of the ultimate reality.”

“Which is—?” asks Robert.

“The link,” says Joseph, “between Spirit and Matter. God and Man.”

The silence is so heavy as they sit looking at each other that the honking of the horn as Norman returns makes both of them jump.

Robert takes a deep breath to recover, then goes outside.

To see, with astonished delight, that Cathy is in the jeep with Norman and Amelia.

He sprints to her, embraces and kisses her hungrily, all cosmic matters wiped away by the joy of seeing her.

She hugs him tightly. “Oh, I’ve missed you!” she tells him.

Robert hugs Amelia then, tells her how happy he is that she’s come to Arizona to join them.

Then, as Joseph comes out of the motor home, he introduces the women to him.

Later. A chipper Norman is showing Amelia around the site area. “Think we have an item here?” Robert asks Cathy as they stroll together, arms around each other.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Cathy says. She speaks of her conversation with Amelia on the plane. “She’s a lovely, bright woman,” Cathy says. “But terribly lonely. Meeting Norman has been very good for her.”

“God knows it’s good for him,” he says. “He’s cheerier than I’ve seen him since we got here.”

They sit together on a boulder, watching the sunset. Cathy leans against him, kisses his cheek. “You look so wonderful,” she says. “You’re so tan.”

He kisses her and they talk about their relationship. As a matter of fact, she admits she was seriously considering going back to England. She actually had the telephone receiver in her hand to call the airline for a reservation when it hit her.

Whatever their differences, she just can’t visualize a future without Robert.

She sighs, pressed close to him. “I just hope we don’t argue
all
the time,” she says.

He chuckles. “I can promise you we won’t,” he says. He murmurs in her ear, “And speaking of that, fortunately Norman and Amelia haven’t reached a point in their relationship where our taking the back bedroom of the motor home will inconvenience them.”

They kiss passionately. “I hope we don’t shake the thing over,” she says.