Exodus Code
For al the Woodies in the world and beyond.
‘He may be above;
He may be below;
or, perchance, abroad in space.’
Inca prayer
‘Time moves in one direction, memory in another.’
Wil iam Gibson
1
Southern Coast of Peru, 1930
A HAWKER HORNET banked out over the Pacific, cut a tight circle, and swooped inland over the red cliffs of the southern Peruvian coastline.
‘It’s about to get rough, my friend,’ said the pilot.
His passenger secured his goggles over his eyes then adjusted the straps of his shoulder harness. A dense morning mist wrapped around the top of la Madre Montâna, reducing the pilot’s visibility to inches and the temperature in the open cockpit to bloody freezing. The wind gnawed at the passenger’s face and neck. Shivering, he slid down in the seat, turning up the col ar on his coat, but it wasn’t enough to warm him or shrug off the uneasiness that had been swel ing in his gut since they’d taken off minutes ago from the airstrip at Castenado. The feeling wasn’t dread so much as discomfort, a sharp piercing pain in Captain Jack Harkness’s gut.
The Hornet’s wooden frame bucked in the air currents of the southern Pacific. Jack’s stomach flipped. A sudden drop lifted him off his seat, thumping his head on the cross bar of the wings.
‘What is it you want to show me that’s worth this?’ Jack yel ed over the noise of the propel ers.
‘I promised you amazing, didn’t I?’
Jack grinned at the handsome pilot. ‘Renso, we already were.’
Shifting forward, Renso guided the Hornet towards the jagged cliffs that to Jack looked like the gaping maw of a brooding monster. He’d seen far too many of those in his time. Jack sighed, slouching down in the rickety bucket seat.
‘Ready?’ Renso asked.
‘Does it matter if I’m not?’
Renso laughed, flying the Hornet straight into the cloud of mist. Almost immediately the smal biplane was shrouded in a damp cloak of grey. Jack shivered again and the sensation that earlier he couldn’t name uncoiled itself from his stomach, crawled into his chest, up into his throat, settling painful y behind his eyes. Jack put his head down and moaned.
Food poisoning, he thought. Had to be.
‘Al right back there, amigo?’
Cold sweat was beading on Jack’s forehead, and a burning sensation was knotting the muscles at the base of his neck. His eyes were stinging.
‘Fine. I’m fine.’ But Jack was far from it. In fact, he hadn’t been feeling anywhere close to fine since he arrived on the South American coast at Renso’s request two days ago.
Seconds later, the plane shot out the other side of the fog into a shocking blue sky. The scene displayed beneath Jack jolted him from his reverie, and he stared down into the basin of the mountain.
‘What the hel is that?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’ said Renso. ‘I thought if anyone would, it’d be you.’
JACK GAZED IN astonishment at three vast glowing rings of igneous rock pulsing deep inside the bowels of the mountain. He knew there’d been an eruption back in January and, at first, he thought the rings were smouldering magma from that. But the closer the Hornet dipped, the more clearly he could see that each ring was seething, spinning, shifting in and out of the other. He could hear their syncopated rhythm in his head. It sounded as if the mountain had a heartbeat. The effect was mesmerising.
‘Can you get me down there?’ he asked, forcing his attention from the rings.
‘No place to land,’ said Renso. ‘It’d be a long hike to get up here from the nearest canyon. But I can manage closer.’
Renso pul ed back on the stick, the propel ers whined, the engines coughed and the Hornet lurched violently. For a beat, Jack thought the plane had died, but then Renso corrected his manoeuvre, punching the Hornet into a vertical climb.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Trust me, Jack. This wil get you closer.’
‘Not now, Renso. I don’t think I can take any more of your tricks.’
‘You love my tricks,’ grinned Renso. ‘Brace yourself!’
With al the skil s of the best WWI dogfighter Renso had once been and the crop-dusting pilot he now was, he flipped the Hornet, cut its engines, and sent them into free fal . The plane spiral ed dangerously towards the face of the plateau and the spinning rock.
‘Stop showing off. Bring her up, now!’
‘Don’t be such a backseat flyer, Jack,’ laughed Renso, pul ing back on the stick. The Hornet nosed up, inches before its wings strafed the pitted plateau.
‘Better?’
‘Not much,’ whispered Jack, his breathing laboured. Every exhalation was squeezing his chest. It was the air, he realised; it was even thinner up this high than he’d reckoned. Dropping his goggles around his neck, Jack wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. Leaning out of his seat, he peered down inside the basin of the mountain. He pul ed a notebook from his coat’s inside pocket and began to sketch the rings. As he sketched, each stroke of his pencil set off a chime in his head, like the distant notes of a half-remembered tune. Jack frowned, the drawing dancing before his eyes. The closer he looked, the faster the rings appeared to spin through each other. Cautiously, Jack touched the paper with the point of his pencil, feeling it contort like India rubber, sending the rings dancing from the page into the air before settling down.
Jack’s vision cleared as he stared at the pattern.
‘They look like hieroglyphs,’ said Jack, scribbling intently. ‘Kind of familiar.
My ancient Egyptian isn’t so hot these days.’
Renso raised an eyebrow. Like a lot of things Jack said, he didn’t know if it was an outrageous lie, or an even more outrageous truth. He glanced down at the pattern smouldering in the landscape beneath them. ‘Egyptian? Given the land we’re flying over, it’s more likely to be Incan.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Jack. ‘Could be.’ As he talked, his hand sketched on, every movement of the pencil playing out more of that tune in his head. Despite the buffeting wind and the jostling of the plane, Jack drew on.
Renso glanced back. Jack’s notebook pages were fil ing with words, geometric shapes, drawings of what looked to Renso like a series of odd lines and circles and lines of musical notes. It looked as if someone else was control ing his hands; they were moving furiously across the pages. Renso knew Jack wel enough not to question his capabilities, but stil something was not quite right about Jack’s demeanour.
When Renso looked into the maw al he could see was an odd smouldering rock formation. No movement. No pulsing and certainly not forming any of the shapes that Jack was sketching. Keeping the Hornet as tight to the basin as he could, he asked, ‘Jack, are you sure of what you’re seeing?’
‘If you’re asking do I know what this is and what it means, then no,’ said Jack. ‘Not yet. I’ve seen al sorts of things, met al kinds of life. Don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that could carve something like that out of the inside of a mountain, though.’
As he spoke, Jack realised that that was exactly what he was looking at.
‘One thing I do know, though – whatever it is, whatever it means, it’s been in that mountain for a very a long time.’
‘How do you reckon that?’ Renso’s voice sounded odd to Jack, distant and confused. Jack swal owed, tasting vanil a and cinnamon when he did.
Renso pul ed the plane above the basin, trying to present Jack with as many angles as possible.
‘The Spanish Conquistadors destroyed most of the temples and the holy sites that were part of this landscape when they came to the Americas. They stripped the surface of these mountains searching for gold and silver centuries ago. See that dark line running through the centre of the plateau?’ Jack nudged Renso’s shoulder and pointed up ahead. Renso nodded, pul ing the Hornet higher, the line Jack was pointing to stretching out more clearly in front of them. ‘That’s a vein of ore and that’s not something you’d normal y find at the surface of a mountain. You’d find it under its surface.’
‘So these rings have been hidden until now,’ said Renso. ‘That’s what I thought.’
‘I real y need to get into that basin, to get a closer—’ Jack’s throat tightened. He choked out ‘look.’
‘Jack? Are you sure you’re al right?’ asked Renso, turning the Hornet to approach the basin from yet another angle.
‘Fine,’ croaked Jack, ignoring the lone voice in his head, his voice he was sure, that kept saying, ‘No you’re not, Jack. Something real y bad is happening to you.’
Jack shook his head to clear the solo voice that in a heartbeat became two voices and then three and before Jack could shut them out, a chorus of voices al sounding like his were taunting him about how bad he was feeling, how awful flying was, how loud his heart was beating, how breathless he felt, and how things were only going to get worse.
Worse, Jack – much, much worse.
Renso seemed to be oblivious to his passenger’s growing anguish and panic. Jack forced himself to concentrate on what the pilot was saying.
‘Al I’m sayin’ is that if these rings had been visible for a while, I’d’ve noticed them sooner because I’ve been flying this route at least once a month since winter.’
The stabbing pain behind Jack’s eyes was worsening as the voices were getting louder, and then they stopped, at least until Renso banked the plane into another turn and came over the basin and the rings from the south. When the Hornet swooped over the mountain once again, Jack could swear he was hearing music deep inside his head. A thin violin melody. Jack leaned back in his seat, and squeezed his eyes closed. The music was a lament of some kind. It sounded familiar, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t place where he’d heard it before. And then the deep chords of the strings dropped behind a voice, a woman’s, melodic and rich, cut into the strings, harmonising with the music. The sultry crooning was enthral ing.
When Jack glanced at Renso, the man was concentrating, silently, on the Hornet’s controls. The music and the woman’s voice ascending together in Jack’s head, beautiful, heartbreakingly so. Jack’s mother’s image danced in front of him. Squeezing his eyes closed against her memory, he could feel her pain and her suffering in every bone of his body. When the Hornet swooped across the plateau once again Jack felt enveloped in anguish for everything he’d ever done. Hopelessness squeezed his throat closed. He was choking, his breath labouring again. Then the music in his head swel ed to its crescendo, its beauty washing over Jack in ribbons of blue directly above Renso’s head.