The Mayan Resurrection (50 page)

Enough!

‘That’s it, Jake. I’m sick of these games.’

‘Games?’

‘Games, neurosis, whatever you want to call it. Maybe you had Manny Gabriel spooked, but Samuel Agler wants nothing to do with it—or you.’ He removes his headpiece, tossing it on the ground.

‘Immanuel—’

‘This Hunahpu gene may allow us to focus inward better than the next guy, but it’s screwing with your mind. Mom warned me years ago that it could lead to paranoid schizophrenia—and now you’ve got it in spades!’

Jacob looks up at Dominique, who backs away from the viewing glass. ‘Our mother has no idea what she’s dealing with.’

‘I think she does. Our father was locked up as a mental patient, diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic. Mom was his intern.’

‘Our father was not schizophrenic. His sentence in that asylum was based on bogus charges.’

‘Believe whatever makes you happy. Keep playing your combat games, only do it without me. See, Samuel Agler has a life, and it’s not here.’ He strips off the body armor and heads for the exit.

‘Computer, lights.’ The arena loses its violet hue. ‘Manny, look around. Do you honestly believe NASA would invest millions of dollars in a facility like this just to humor me? Do you really think all this is part of some schizophrenic delusion?’

‘Jake, you live on a government installation, just as we did on Longboat Key. You train in a holographic suite, using a program you designed after the
Popol Vul
’s story. That doesn’t
make it real, and it doesn’t impress me either. Heck, you should see some of the training facilities we have at the University of Miami. Blows this shit away.’

‘Manny—’

‘All this Mayan Underworld crap, it all began with our grandfather and his stupid journal. He’s long gone, and so is Mick. Personally, I’ve accepted the fact that our whole family is nuts. Mick was a schizoid, Mom suffers from severe depression, I’m living under a false identity, and you—well, you’re the head squirrel. I love you, man, but I have to go. Have a good life.’

Jacob shakes his head in disbelief, then looks up at Dr. Mohr. ‘This is going all wrong. I need to show him.’

Mohr’s voice sounds metallic over the speaker. ‘Jake, we talked about this. Your brother doesn’t have clearance.’

‘He’s my brother. He has more right to see GOLDEN FLEECE than anyone on this base.’ Jacob jogs out of the arena into the corridor. ‘Manny, er, Sam, before you go, I want to show you one last thing.’

‘Give it up, Jake.’

‘It won’t take long, I promise. Humor me one last time.’

Jacob takes his arm, leading him down a long subterranean corridor. They stop at a steel door guarded by two heavily armed soldiers.

‘Morning, sir.’

‘I want to show my brother GOLDEN FLEECE.’

The guards look at Immanuel, then at each other, unsure. The guard on the left says, ‘Sir, your, uh, your brother doesn’t have clearance.’

‘Contact Dr. Mohr. He’ll approve it.’

‘Forget it, Jake,’ Manny says. ‘Whatever it is, I’ll see it another—’

‘Contact Mohr. Now, please.’

The guard activates his comm link. ‘Excuse me, Dr. Mohr, but Jacob insists we allow his brother inside to see GOLDEN FLEECE.’

‘Request denied. Escort Jacob and his guest to my office immediately.’

The guard looks at Jacob. ‘Sorry, kid.’

In a blur of movement, Jacob lashes out with two vicious karate chops, striking each guard along the carotid artery.

The unconscious men slump to the floor.

‘Damn, Jake, you trying to kill them?’

‘They’ll be fine. Come on.’ He presses his palm to an identification pad.

The heavy steel door swings open.

Jacob grabs his protesting twin by the arm, leading him inside.

‘Yo, man, that was not cool. This is NASA. I don’t need trouble with the PCAA.’

‘Thirty seconds.’ Jacob pulls him down a short recess leading into an immense facility. ‘Just take a quick peek at what’s inside, then I’ll leave you alone for another six years.’

‘That’s not what I’m … oh … oh … shit.’

They are standing at the entrance to a mammoth factory, twenty storeys high, as wide and as long as six football fields. But it is the object at the center of the facility that causes Immanuel Gabriel’s heart to race, his muscles to turn to jelly.

It is an enormous spacecraft, 722 feet long, its dagger-shaped, warship-sized hull composed of shimmering, mirrorlike gold panels. The monstrous keel is situated twenty feet off the ground, resting on a series of rubber-tipped concrete-and-steel racks.

Manny sucks in slow breaths, forcing himself not to hyperventilate.
No way … this isn’t real. It can’t be
—

The forward two-thirds of the starship’s ‘blade’ morphs into the rear one-third ‘hilt,’ where two colossal assemblies are mounted along either side of the vessel’s tail section, each bulbous structure as large and as high as a three-storey building. Several technicians in white suits are working inside the alien engine, their lights revealing a wasp’s nest of charred, afterburner-shaped housings, each orifice no less than thirty feet in diameter.

‘This is the
Balam
, the starship the Guardian piloted to Earth 65 million years ago.
Balam
was a Mayan deity, represented by the jaguar, who protected the community against external threats. The vessel was excavated years ago from a subterranean chamber in Chichén Itzá. The great teacher, Kukulcán, who was in fact the last of the Guardian survivors, instructed the Maya to erect his pyramid over the site—’

Immanuel feels the room spinning.

‘—and the ship is also armed with an ion cannon. Our father used the weapon to defeat Tezcatilpoca on the winter solstice of 2012.’

Immanuel drops to a knee, his lungs struggling for breath. He lies back on the cold concrete surface, staring up at the ceiling, which seems a mile away.
God, please, this can’t be real …

‘Manny?’

Immanuel squeezes his eyes shut.
Come on, Mule, wake up, just wake the hell up
—

Jacob drags him onto his feet. ‘Now don’t go schizoid on me, bro. Our deeply depressed mother wouldn’t like that.’

‘Jake … I can’t do this … I’m not ready—’

‘Yes you are. Come on, I’ll give you the tour.’ Jacob puts his arm around Immanuel’s waist, steadying him as he leads him toward a small gantry rising halfway up the port side of the starship. He lowers his voice. ‘The reason the government invested so much money into my so-called dementia is this ship. They don’t give a rat’s ass about
Xibalba
or the Mayan prophecies. Project GOLDEN FLEECE is all about reverse engineering this starship to see how it draws energy from our planet and deep space.’

‘No … this isn’t real—’

‘We were kids when NASA finally excavated this vessel and transported it, quite covertly, to Kennedy. Problem was, they had no way of accessing it—at least until I came along.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The Guardian designed the entries into the ship with a genetic code. You and I are the only ones capable of entering and commandeering the vessel. NASA was forced to give me
carte blanche
in exchange for my cooperation.’

They reach the gantry and board a small open lift. The elevator rises five stories to a gold panel marked with a three-pronged alien candelabra, the insignia glowing crimson red.

‘The Trident of Paracas,’ Manny whispers. ‘I remember this from Julius’s journal.’

‘The sign of the Guardian.’ Jacob points to an eight-foot-high access plate. ‘Go ahead, close your eyes and command the entry to open.’

‘How?’

‘Just imagine the panel opening.’

Immanuel closes his eyes. Concentrates.

Nothing happens.

‘Concentrate!’

‘I am, asshole!’

‘Here, watch.’ Jacob closes his eyes. A second later, the panel retracts with a gush of compressed air, revealing a passageway.

‘You’ll get better with practice. Come on.’ Jacob leads his twin inside.

The interior is dark and warm, the corridor’s arched ceiling rising a good thirty feet above their heads. The curved walls are barren and smooth, composed of a highly polished, translucent black polymer. Behind the tinted glasslike surface Manny can make out elaborate circuits and machinery.

‘The ship is divided into different levels. We’re on the upper forward section, heading toward the bridge. These curved walls are actually interface panels linked to a central command computer, which in turn, responds to the frequency of our Hunahpu thought-energy patterns.’

‘Does this thing have a bathroom?’

Jacob smiles. ‘It has everything. But here’s the most amazing thing—this ship is not just a spacecraft, it’s sort of a living composite machine-organism.’

‘A what?’

‘It’s artificial intelligence. At the center of the ship is its brain—a crystalline biological organ situated in a fishbowl the size of a truck. Running out of the brain stem are billions of microcircuits and exotic metal conduits that feed like blood vessels throughout every square inch of the ship. This ship not only reads my thoughts, at times I think it talks back to me.’

‘The Guardian created all this?’

‘No. The ship was made available to them, by who or what I have no idea.’

The end of the corridor opens into a massive, onion-shaped control chamber. Rounded walls radiate a faint electric blue. At the very center of the cathedral-style, domed ceiling is a five-foot-wide passage, which rises straight up like a chimney.

‘Is this vessel … operational? Jake?’

Jacob is standing at the center of the room, his eyes closed.

A pencil-thin blue laser light blinks on above his head, its beam kissing his white hair.

Manny jumps back as the chamber instantly powers to life. Blue LED lights illuminate from behind the tinted walls and floor panels, revealing a myriad of alien conduits and circuits, machinery and biochemical plasma ducts.

‘Listen and learn. We’ll call this first lesson Guardian Astronomy 101.’

A volumetric projection takes shape just above the polished floor, the image—a spiral galaxy, rotating like some luminescent cosmic pinwheel in the vastness of space, hauling more than 500 billion pinpoints of light around its slowly swirling vortex.

‘Welcome to the Milky Way.’ Jacob points to the galactic bulge, a swirling cloud of brilliant cosmic dust. ‘Computer, magnify galactic center ten to the power of six.’

In a dizzying zoom, the galactic bulge expands across the entire chamber.

Immanuel stands within the projection, looking down upon a mist of three-dimensional penny-sized fiery red and orange stars, all clustered around the heart of the rotating maelstrom.

Dead center of the galaxy is a black hole. Like the slow-moving hub of a wheel, the black hole appears to be churning the entire galaxy, every so often inhaling one of the tiny stars into its monstrous onyx gullet.

‘The black hole is our galaxy’s power train. Like the nucleus of a great atom, its gravitational pull serves as the glue which provides the cluster of stars its mass. But beyond the human eye, beyond the third dimension, the black hole provides an even more magnificent service. Computer, invert.’

Instantly the stars blink out, their luster fading to a deep purple hue, as if illuminated by a black light.

Manny stares at the black hole, which now glows emerald green. From within its slowly swirling whirlpool of gravity sprout tiny conduits—veins of energy that span outward throughout the darkened heavens of the Milky Way like cosmic subway tunnels.

Splintering away from these gravitational veins are capillaries, which glow a luminescent crimson. Unlike the larger, thicker veins, these thinner spaghetti-like strands seem to be floating through the dark matter of space on their own, their
free ends twisting and rotating around the cosmic pinwheel like twigs caught in a drain.

‘You are now looking at the galaxy the way it appears in the nexus. Black holes that originate at the center of galaxies were created in the early days of the universe. If you could survive passage through their vortex, you would enter a parallel universe—a higher dimension of spiritual energy where time no longer exists. When we physically die, our souls pass through these higher dimensions and enter—’

‘Heaven?’

‘Something like that.’ He points to the twisting branches shooting out from the black hole’s steep gravitational well. ‘So powerful is the black hole’s mass that its throat, or event horizon, cannot sustain all of its energy. The pressure-relief conduits branching out across the galaxy are called white holes. White holes violently eject matter into space. Those red squiggly lines that move in proximity to the ejected matter are wormholes. Notice that each wormhole has two mouths located in different parts of the galaxy. The
Balam
possesses an antigravity field powerful enough to counteract the effects of a wormhole, allowing the starship to use it as a cosmic shortcut across the Milky Way.’