Journey Into the Flame (32 page)

“What are we looking for?” Jogi asked.

“We have only the clue Deya left for Camden.” Mr. Perrot took the note from his pocket and read it out loud: “ ‘My garden pond will point the way should I pass.’ ”

Jogi looked around again. “I don’t see anything that looks like a pond here.”

“Pond!” another voice cried. Babu had returned, his cane in one hand and a small jug of water in the other. Mr. Perrot moved to take the jug and helped him sit on a stone bench. “The other man wanted to see the pond, too. When Deya returns, she will restore the garden. My son will also help.”

“Someone else was looking for the pond?” Mr. Perrot asked. “When was that?”

“Yes, another man came looking for Deya’s pond. Just yesterday, it was,” Babu continued. “Would you like some water? When Deya returns, she will restore the garden.” His mind was jumping from thought to thought.

“What did this man look like?” Mr. Perrot asked.

Babu did not answer right away. Instead, he moved the jug of water closer to him on the bench. “They were taller than you,” Babu said. “Would you like some water?”

“No, thank you.” Mr. Perrot understood that he could not push too hard. “Could you just show us where the pond is?”

“There, behind those pillars.” Babu pointed with his cane. “When she comes back, she can tell you all about it.”

Jogi and Mr. Perrot walked over to the dry dirt area encircled by the six pillars. “He’s right. Looks like someone was here already,” Jogi observed. “All of the weeds and dirt have been removed from this shallow area, which must have been the pond.”

“She wrote that the secret was in her pond,” Mr. Perrot said, as he walked to the center of the cracked basin. “There was definitely something written here.”

“Whatever it was, it looks like it was chiseled away.” Jogi bent down and grabbed a handful of broken-up cement. “And recently, too.”

“You found Deya’s message,” Babu said, his cane still in hand, as he joined them by the ravaged pond.

“We did, sir,” Jogi acknowledged. “But it has been destroyed—perhaps by those men who came yesterday. Do you recall what it said?”

“Yes, yes—yes,” Babu said, but he hesitated. Mr. Perrot and Jogi waited patiently for Babu to explain. But all he said was, “Perhaps Deya will tell you when she returns.”

“It is really important, sir,” Jogi said gently, trying to coax the words from the old man’s fading memory.

“She will tell you when she returns,” Babu insisted. Jogi looked at Mr. Perrot in disappointment. “She can fix the rubble there,” Babu continued. “She will restamp as she did once before.”

“Restamp?” Mr. Perrot said. “Was the message stamped into the concrete?”

“Yes. She did all these words that way.” Babu pointed to one of the six concrete pillars surrounding the empty basin. “I was an iron smith, you know. I made the stamps for her.”

Mr. Perrot saw that words had been stamped into the pillars. “Perfection is an illusion theorized by your personality,” one of them read. Mr. Perrot knew the line well. “These are all quotes from the
Chronicles
,” he told Jogi. “Babu, do you know where those stamps are at the moment?”

Babu nodded. Then, without a word, he turned and walked toward the house, using his cane to assist his wobbly legs. Mr. Perrot and Jogi followed.

37

You must learn to separate your emotions from your cause. Only then will you allow the greatest possibilities to occur in your life.

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

G-LAB, 8:00 A.M. LOCAL TIME, 2 DAYS UNTIL FREEDOM DAY

As the elevator arrived, the sound of its hydraulics could be heard. The doors opened, revealing a tiny, one-meter-square car. It seemed to be new, clean, unlike the rest of the building. Logan and Valerie squeezed themselves in, letting the doors close again behind them. The elevator started to descend slowly.

“How did they build this without anyone knowing?” Logan wondered out loud, standing behind Valerie. The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened back up.

“I think we found G-LAB,” she said.

Logan followed her, amazed by what he saw. They were in a hexagon-shaped room with antiseptic white walls on which video display monitors had been installed. A long stainless-steel table with twelve chairs around it occupied the center of the room. A large holographic projection pad sat in the middle of the table. The room was quiet except for a low humming noise whose origin was unclear.

“Again, I have to ask how they built this place without anyone
knowing,” Logan said. “And how did they get all that equipment down here?”

Valerie didn’t answer. She had activated her PCD and was speaking into it. “Luke, I think you and your team missed a little something at the Army research building. Logan and I found a sparkling new elevator behind the file cabinet on the south-facing wall of the main floor. It goes way down to what appears to be a high-tech laboratory. Get back here as soon as you can.” Logan heard Luke cursing as the device clicked off.

Logan and Valerie walked over to the stainless-steel table and gazed around the room. The elevator in which they had arrived occupied one of the room’s six walls. Three of the other walls had fortified doors—one was marked “Library,” another “Maze Room,” and the third “Testing Suites.” More than a dozen monitors were mounted on the two remaining walls, and all but one of them was dark.

“Look at that display,” Logan said. “Is that blood it’s showing on the walls?”

A caption on the display indicated the “Hall of Mazes.” Valerie readied her weapon as they walked over to the door marked “Maze Room.”

Logan tried the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. “Looks like we need some sort of access card.”

Valerie pulled a card from her pocket. “Took it off the doctor. It says his name was Serge Malikei,” she said, as she slid the card through the reader and opened the door, revealing two identical narrow hallways that turned at forty-five-degree angles every four meters or so. The white walls and closed doors in the hallways were marred by reddish-brown stains.

“What is this place?” Logan asked, as he walked a little ways into one passageway and then the other, feeling disturbed by the blood-smeared walls and the hallways’ odd angles. “It reminds me of the corn mazes our parents used to take us to when we were kids.”

“I remember those,” Valerie said. “But those mazes always had a way
out. I’ve tried to open about five of these doors, and they’re all locked. And judging by the blood here, no one escapes unless the doctor wants you to. As much as I want to, I don’t think we should go any farther. Let’s go see what’s behind doors number two and three.”

Logan followed Valerie back into the hexagon-shaped room, where they walked over to the door marked “Testing Suites.” Valerie once again used the doctor’s card to gain access, and they entered a medium-sized, immaculate white room with a padded armchair similar to the ones found in dentists’ offices. A hydraulic foot pedal could be used to raise and lower it. On a table nearby was a set of computer monitors whose wires were connected to hundreds of small bio-sensors embedded in the chair. A tray of syringes and vials of green liquid lay next to a sink in the corner. Directly in front of the chair was a holographic projection device. Logan set his backpack down and sat in the chair, which he found surprisingly comfortable. Suddenly, the holographic projector fired up, and the computer monitors began to display a multitude of information.

“What are you doing?” Valerie set down a vial of green liquid and turned her attention to the now-active displays. “Looks like the chair tracks all of your biometric readings. Heart rate, blood pressure, even your brain activities.” She pressed a button labeled “Image Cycle.” Immediately, the holographic device began to project a reel of images in front of Logan. “It looks as if this device records your biometric reaction to what you’re looking at.” Logan’s metrics suddenly spiked. “It appears you like blondes,” she added with a grin.

Embarrassed, Logan hopped out of the chair, and all of the displays went dark.

“Come on, sit back down,” Valerie said. “Let’s see if we can figure this thing out.”

“How about we see what’s over here instead?” Logan walked over to a door marked “Storage.” Valerie was still fiddling with the biometric machine. He pushed open the door. “You’d better come over here!” he called, moving back from the door as soon as he saw what was behind it.

Valerie drew her gun and quickly joined him in the storage room. The two of them were surrounded by twelve vertical-standing containment devices, each housing a naked body in some kind of yellow gelatinous liquid, six males and six females.

“These are some kind of advanced bio-coffins, similar to the ones we use at the WCF lab,” Valerie said, analyzing the information displayed on the biometric screens attached to the containment devices. They showed temperature and viscosity readings. “This is insane,” she said, visibly disturbed by the sight. “This is evil. Who do they think they are? How can they run hideous experiments on people?”

“History is filled with crimes that were committed in the name of science,” Logan answered. He was also deeply disturbed by what he was seeing. He studied the placards at the top of the containment shells. “Look at this. They have a male and a female from each of the different races of humanity. Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Australoid, Negroid, Capoid, and T-noid,” he read aloud. “I never heard of this last one, T-noid.”

“What do you mean, the races of humanity?” Valerie asked.

“Some anthropologists theorize that you can divide the people in the world into five races based on their physical characteristics,” he explained. “The theory was very controversial. It’s been argued back and forth for years. Since ninety-nine point nine percent of all humans are made up of the same genetic material, there’s very little that differentiates all of us. I had to study it for an art class.”

Valerie gave him a skeptical look.

“My instructor said it would help when drawing the human face. He was pretty out there . . .”

Valerie nodded. “And you said you don’t recognize the last one?”

He shook his head.

Valerie heard the elevator doors closing and the car ascending to the first floor. “Come on,” she said. “That’s Luke.”

Logan followed her back out to the main lab. When the elevator descended and the doors opened, Luke and one of his team members stepped out, lowering their weapons.

“Damn, check this place out,” Luke said, an amazed expression on his face. Valerie led him to a corner of the hexagonal room.

The elevator made several trips, bringing more agents to G-LAB. Among them were local WCF lab technicians, who began gathering evidence from the maze and the testing rooms. There was still one door that Logan and Valerie had not opened. While Valerie spoke to the team, Logan took the doctor’s ID badge from her coat pocket and went over to the door marked “Library.”

38

The child wishes to be older, and the old man wishes again to be a child. But wise is the one who allows himself to be both.

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

BANARAS, INDIA, 7:30 P.M. LOCAL TIME, 2 DAYS UNTIL FREEDOM DAY

Mr. Perrot and Jogi followed Babu to an old storage shed at the other end of the yard. Even though evening was approaching, the sun was still strong, and the heat was sweltering. Babu stared at the shed blankly.

“You were going to show us your iron work, Babu,” Mr. Perrot reminded him, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. “The stamps you made for Deya.”

“Yes,” Babu replied, “that is why we have come here.” He walked into the shed and started to move the pieces of wood and unused building materials. “They are here somewhere.” As Mr. Perrot and Jogi helped him move some of the heavier items, he looked concerned. “Where is my hammer? Where are my chisels? Some of my tools are missing.”

Mr. Perrot smiled, wondering how his old friend could find anything in this crowded shed. But eventually, Jogi lifted a greasy bed sheet from the floor and discovered seven iron templates, each attached to a two-foot-long broomlike handle.

“Yes, yes, you have found them. Those are Deya’s words,” Babu said.

Jogi carried out the iron stencils and laid them on the ground. Then he and Mr. Perrot inspected each one, trying to read the words. They were stenciled in reverse, and some of the letters had broken off, making the phrases difficult to read. “We need a mirror of some kind,” Jogi suggested.

“Stamp them!” Babu instructed. Mr. Perrot and Jogi didn’t quite understand what he was saying. “Stamp them!” he said again, as he walked over to the side of the shed and turned on a garden hose. Mr. Perrot and Jogi could only watch, wondering what the old man was up to. He walked back and dampened the ground in front of the iron stencils. The ground soon turned to mud. “Stamp them!” he said one more time, motioning for them to pick up the templates.

Jogi picked up the handle of each template and pressed its iron lettering into the wet ground. Babu put back the garden hose and sat in the shade of a large banyan tree. It did not take long for the hot sun to dry the mud. Jogi carefully removed each iron stamp to ensure that the impression it had left in the ground remained intact, and before long, all seven were imprinted on the ground.

“Six of these messages are the same as the ones on the pillars,” Mr. Perrot said. “They are all from the
Chronicles
. But this one is not.” He pointed to the fifth message from the left. “This must be the one that was in the pond.”

In the once Great House

Where fire is and ashes rise

Where the ear stone fell

Will hold your prize

“What does that mean?” Jogi asked, looking quizzically at the message. “I suppose that we should assume ‘prize’ refers to the books. The first part, then, must refer to the location.” Mr. Perrot nodded in agreement. “Could ‘fire’ and ‘ash’ refer to a fire pit here on the property?”