The Apocalypse Script (10 page)

“
Whoa,” he said.
“You’ve got
a
cave?
”

Ridley shrugged. “I thought all
men had these nowadays. Have I overdone it?” He winked at the other
man, adding, “Only a small portion of the cave is beneath the
hotel, of course. Most of it is offset to the east, beneath the
parking lot.”

Ben whistled his approval. The old
man had made some serious upgrades to what nature had provided. The
electric lights that illuminated the space were attached to a
lattice of steel girders that floated fifty feet above them, the
girders supported by rows of steel columns. The cavern’s natural
floor, uneven and slippery, had been supplanted by an elevated
platform of steel grates. Through the small gaps in the grates Ben
could see the rock floor beneath them, smooth, shiny, and wet. From
seemingly everywhere he could hear the gentle trickling of
water.

“
What are those?” asked Ben,
pointing at a row of metal boxes along a far wall. They looked like
the ice cream coolers.

“
Ice boxes. The hotel’s builders
used this cave for cold storage,” said the old man, walking onto
the landing. As he did so the grates shifted slightly, filling the
cavern with dull, metallic echoes.

“
The cave has a constant
temperature of approximately fifty degrees. You’d be surprised how
long ice will last even during the summer months. Also, a stream
runs through the cave and pools at one end before draining back out
into the mountain. Its water is safe to drink. In a pinch, the
hotel’s former owners could simply insert bottles and jars into the
stream to keep the contents cool.”

“
Over there,” Ridley said, nodding
at a series of metal doors built into the cavern’s wall, “are the
food supplies, a medical center, and some other facilities. Those
are not original to the hotel, of course.”

A medical center,
wondered Ben?
Food
supplies?
“Are you a
survivalist?”

The other man regarded him with
amazement. “All humans are survivalists, Ben. Some are simply
better at it than others. Here we are.”

They stopped in front of a door
that had a black porcelain panel next to it. “The door at the top
of the stairs,” he said, “is a
Class
5
vault door, as are most of the ones you
see around you. They are quite tough but not
impenetrable.”

“
How do the porcelain panels work?
Fingerprint analysis?”

“
That and a DNA match. They also
check respiration and perspiration levels, that kind of
thing.”

“
A DNA match? I didn’t know such
systems existed.”

“
They are used by a few
intelligence agencies and the system itself is classified, but with
the right connections, anything is obtainable.”

Ridley opened the door and Ben
followed him into a room the size of a two-car garage. The walls,
floor, and ceiling were concrete painted white. Large fluorescent
lights, motion-activated, flickered to life overhead. Running
perpendicular to the vault door were four rows of polished oak
display cases with glass lids. Visible inside the cases were
collections of flat black stones ranging in size from a few inches
to almost a foot in diameter, each a quarter inch to an inch
thick.

Ridley motioned the other man to
join him at one of the cabinets. The scribe grasped a bronze handle
on the forward edge of the lid, pulled it open and reached in and
withdrew a specimen. He handed it to the visitor before the younger
man could put on the gloves he’d brought with him.

Ben turned the tablet over in his
hand. “I’m not familiar with this type of stone. What is
it?”

“
The tablets are carbonaceous
chondrites. There are some variations to the molecular structure
that remain unexplained but which seem to give them unique
properties, like resistance to erosion. The variation exists only
in these tablets.”

Ben drew a blank. “Carbonaceous
chondrites?”

“
Meteorites. The tablets are
carved from meteorites that have undergone some kind of
refinement.”

“
That’s…well, odd.” He thought
about it a moment longer. “Do you have a magnifying
glass?”

Ridley nodded at a stout oak table
in one corner of the room. “There’s a magnifying lamp right over
there.”

Ben walked over to the table,
flipped on the lamp, and put the tablet in his hand beneath it.
Just as he had seen in the photographs, he now saw a confusing
network of thousands of etched lines in a rainbow of colors. Lines
that sometimes ran parallel to one another, sometimes
perpendicular, and sometimes at angles. Lines that bent and swirled
and looped. Yellow lines that crossed red lines, but not green
lines. Red lines that crossed green lines, but only after having
crossed yellow lines. Red lines that curved back on themselves at
the corners, whereas violet lines never curved back on
themselves…

Patterns
,
he confirmed. There were patterns.
Rules?

Maybe.

He said, “Why did you conclude that these etchings
represent a written language?”

“
I have good reasons to believe so
which I will share with you if you accept the assignment. Don’t you
find the lines peculiar?”

“
Yes, but they could represent a
million things other than a writing system.”

“
I doubt that is what your
instincts are telling you.”

The old man was right. Letting out
a breath, Ben said, “What
can
you tell me about the inscriptions, then? The
cuts worry me. They look machined.”

“
I understand your concern. In
fact, there is absolutely no variation in width or depth at any
point in any inscription. The engravings were made with a level of
precision that exceeds what we are capable of today with lasers or
computer-aided instruments.”

Ben stood erect. “You don’t expect
me to believe that.”

“
I’ll produce the lab reports for
you.”

“
Can you also provide
documentation as to when and where the tablets were
found?”

“
Yes. Our society keeps impeccable
records.”

Flipping off the lamp and
reluctantly returning the tablet to the case the old man had
withdrawn it from, Ben said, “I can’t say the tablets are
authentic, not with such a cursory review. The precision of the
cuts is bothersome to say the least.”

“
But you would like to study them
at length?”

Ben took his time in responding.
“Yes.”

“
You can agree to my
terms?”

Ben nodded. “If I need to join
your organization, I will.”

Clapping his hands together,
Ridley said, “You’ve made me very happy, Ben. We shall get to the
bottom of this mystery together, yes? Anything you need, you will
have.”

Lilian was waiting for them in the
Great Hall.

“
You’ll accept the assignment?”
she asked, looking back and forth between the men.

Ben reluctantly nodded. “Yes, and
I’ve agreed to join your, um,
club
.”

He was almost embarrassed at how
happy this seemed to make her. “Thank you, Ben! I’ve made dinner
arrangements for us in town tonight to celebrate. Is that
acceptable?”

“
Dinner? Sure.”

“
The
Ziggurat?
”
asked Ridley. Lilian nodded and gave him a knowing
look.

“
But Lilian,” the old man said,
“our guest must be exhausted, especially after that interminable
drive up the mountain. He tells me he hardly slept last night. Ben,
would you be opposed to flying into town tonight? There’s a helipad
in the back and the pilot isn’t doing anything else.”

For a moment Ben wasn’t sure what
to say. A helicopter ride to dinner?

“
If it’s not an inconvenience,” he
managed.

Ridley seemed relieved, as if
there was a real possibility that Ben would refuse the offer. “Not
at all. Would you also do me the favor of being my guest while you
study the tablets? I can send for your things or have Mr. Fetch
meet you downtown to retrieve whatever you need.”

“
I hadn’t really expected to spend
the evening here,” Ben said, looking at Lilian
accusingly.

“
Please, Ben,” said Ridley. “Think
how much time will be wasted if you spend the next week driving up
and down that mountain! As you can see, I have plenty of
room.”

Ben pursed his lips. In for a
penny, in for a pound. “Sure.”

The man in the red robe slapped
him on the back again. “Excellent! You may stay in the Chambers
Suite in the north turret. It’s six floors up but I’ve had
elevators installed in each of the turrets. Your room has fresh
linen and towels, that sort of thing.”

Looking at Lilian, Ben said, “I’m
not sure what to do about clothes. I’m fairly certain there’s no
helipad on top of my apartment building and I’m assuming that I’m
underdressed.”

Lilian nodded. “Check your room. I
took the liberty of obtaining a few items for you in
advance.”

“
What? But how did
you-”

“
You’re a reasonable man. I
assumed a hundred million dollars to do what you love and do best
would convince you to stay. It wasn’t so wild a guess, was it? So a
few weeks ago I flew a man with your exact dimensions to Savile Row
to serve as your surrogate. Not that it was easy to find a man with
such broad shoulders. I had to make inquiries with half the
modeling agencies in the country. It took weeks!”

Ben was momentarily at a loss for
words. Eventually he said, “You’re predicted everything that would
happen today.
Weeks
ago.
”

“
That’s right.”

“
Apparently I have no secrets,”
Ben mumbled, disquieted.

Lilian kissed him on the cheek and
whispered into his ear, “Don’t fret. Soon, you will have
many
.”

The name of the thirty-something
man standing outside the arrival gate at Denver International
Airport was Moros. Tall, lanky, and undeniably handsome, he wore a
loose-fitting, pinstriped Italian silk suit with a red kerchief
poking out from the left breast pocket. On his feet was a freshly
polished pair of gray Forzieri shoes. His shiny auburn hair was
styled in the latest “controlled chaos” fashion made popular in
southern Europe and his androgynous facial features were accented
with just the right amount of rouge and crimson lipstick. Black
eyeliner framed his almost fluorescent silver eyes.

Moros impatiently examined the
Jaeger-LeCoultre on his wrist, but as he did so, a hunter green
Porsche 918 Spyder navigated haphazardly between two stalled taxis
and came to a stop in front of him. A young, red haired woman in a
white jacket and sheath dress jumped out of the driver’s side and
rushed towards him. She wore wire-rimmed spectacles that sported
dime-sized orange lenses.

“
Mr. Moros?” she asked when she
reached him.

“
Miss Fetch,” he replied in an
accent the woman could not place, “you are eight minutes
late.”

“
Yes sir, sorry, the traffic-” she
began, but abandoned the apology when his expression warned her it
was unwelcome. She changed course. “Do you have any luggage,
sir?”

“
Of course not. I don’t tote used
clothing around the world in plastic boxes. We’ll obtain what I
need on the way to the hotel.”

“
Where would you like to
go?”

“
Finshim’s
, to start,” he said,
naming an upscale clothing store on the city’s
outskirts.

“
Sir, it’s Sunday morning,
Finshim’s doesn’t open for four hours.”

Moros said, “That is a problem
that either you will fix or I will fix. Which shall it be, Miss
Fetch?”

The man’s expression was
frightening. Miss Fetch, who in another reality was called Barbara
Volker, tried to mask her intimidation. She failed and looked
away.

“
I’ll fix it, sir,” Miss Fetch
said in a tiny voice, pulling her phone from her purse. “If you’d
like to have a seat in the car, I’ll make the necessary
calls.”

Moros’s expression was suddenly
benevolent. “A superb answer. For the briefest moment I thought you
were destined for the gallows.”

Miss Fetch opened the passenger
door of the Porsche and the man slid agilely inside and began an
examination of his nails. She was tapped on the shoulder before she
could punch the first button on her phone. Turning, she found
herself dwarfed by a huge man in a police uniform who had
positioned himself between a large “No Parking” sign and the
Spyder.

“
Oh,” she said, flustered, “I’m
about to move.”

“
Miss Fetch, right?” asked the man
in a gravelly voice.

Puzzled, she lowered her phone and said, “That’s
right.”

“
Going to Finshim’s?”