The Covenant of Genesis (37 page)

Trulli could only think of one group of people who might be looking for them.

‘Nina! Eddie!’ he shouted into the radio, the urgency in his voice immediately catching the attention of Baker and Rachel, who looked at him in concern. No reply. ‘Eddie, can you hear me? The Covenant are here!’

The radio remained silent, the warning unheard.

‘
I
can see daylight again,’ said Chase, leading the way. ‘Yeah, but will we be able to get out?’ Nina wondered. The crust of ice covering everything in the frozen city seemed to be thickening, icicles hanging longer and lower.

‘Somehow I don’t think so,’ Sophia said, aiming her torch ahead.

They had reached the end of the passage, the cold azure light illuminating the exit . . . and also revealing that it was blocked. Glassy ice covered the arched opening, angling claustrophobically down to the stone floor.

And even if the ice had not been there, getting out might still have been difficult. Nina could make out the silhouette of what appeared to be a barred metal gate inside the archway.

‘Bollocks,’ Chase murmured. ‘End of the line.’

‘We should have brought those gas cylinders with us,’ said Sophia. ‘We could have melted through.’

‘Wouldn’t make any difference. Look how thick it is. Take days to get through all that - even if we could open the gates.’

Nina was more interested in what lay to one side of the gate. ‘There’s something here, in the ice.’ She directed her flashlight at it, trying to make out the objects. ‘They look like bowls, metal bowls.’ A word in the Veteres language appeared to have been painted on the side of the largest.

‘Something here an’ all,’ Chase said from the other side of the archway. ‘It’s another record player.’

‘Weird. Why have one here?’

‘Maybe it’s the gate guard’s iPod.’ He turned his attention to the buried gate. ‘Reckon this is the way to the tree of life?’

‘Well, we had the tree of knowledge, so . . .’ Nina tailed off. ‘Huh. I just realised how biblical that is. In the Book of Genesis, the Garden of Eden contained the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge.’

‘The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, actually,’ Sophia corrected, moving back down the passage.

‘Well, you’d know about the second one,’ sniped Nina, before turning back to Chase. ‘That’s kind of a coincidence, though. If it
is
a coincidence.’

‘So these people might have had something to do with the Bible?’ Chase asked.

‘I don’t see how; the time gap is way too big. Even the oldest parts of the Torah only date back to around the tenth century BC. But . . .’ She frowned, thinking. ‘Some sort of race memory, maybe? An idea that passed down over a hundred thousand years . . .’

Sophia’s urgent voice dismissed her musings. ‘Over here! There’s another room!’

Nina and Chase jogged to her. Behind one of the pillars was a narrow gap in the wall, a low passageway. ‘Can you see what’s inside?’ Nina asked.

‘Only that it’s not very big. I can see the back wall.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ said Chase. He began to break away the icicles obstructing it.

 

‘Eddie, come on!’ Trulli yelled into the radio. Still no response.

He looked up. The two Hercs had flown overhead, and were now circling back round.

‘It’s probably just a supply flight on its way to Vostok or Dome Charlie,’ Bandra said patronisingly. ‘They didn’t expect to see anyone here, so they’re overflying us to make sure we’re all right.’

‘If they didn’t know we were here, how come they were heading right for us?’ Trulli shot back.

‘Does it matter? Why, are you expecting trouble?’ The Indian scientist’s smirk fell when he registered Trulli’s serious expression. ‘
Are
you?’

‘Why do you think I’m trying so hard to get hold of Nina and Eddie?’

‘Well - but why would there be trouble over an archaeological find?’

The Australian gave him a look of disbelief. ‘Haven’t you ever read anything about Nina? People are
always
trying to kill her!’ He gave the walkie-talkie one last try, then glared at it in disgust. ‘The radio in the plane’s got more power - I’ll try to hook this up to it and get through to them.’ Another glance skyward. The C-130s had angled away, turning into the wind. They would pass a couple of hundred metres from the site. ‘I don’t know how they found us in the first place, though.’ Bandra’s expression became shifty. ‘What?’

‘That, ah . . . that may be my fault,’ Bandra admitted. ‘Last night, when we returned to the ship, I . . . I contacted UNARA.’

‘You
what
?’ Trulli shouted.

‘
I’m
the leader of this expedition, not Dr Wilde! I sent a detailed email to New York to complain about the way I’d been treated!’

‘And did you tell them about the find?’ Bandra’s guilty countenance was all the answer he needed. ‘Well, that’s bloody marvellous! You’ve just led the bad guys right to us!’

‘Bad guys?’ Bandra snorted. ‘This isn’t some Hollywood movie!’

‘Maybe not,’ said Trulli, pointing at the approaching planes, ‘but what do you call that?’

The rear cargo ramps of both aircraft had lowered. Men and machines poured from them, white parachutes snapping open to send them drifting towards the frozen plain like a line of dandelion seeds.

‘Get to the plane,’ Trulli warned everyone. He ran for the parked tilt-rotor, clutching the radio.

 

The last icicles smashed on the cold floor. Chase crunched over them and emerged in the room beyond. He switched on the lantern as Nina came through the low opening, followed by Sophia. ‘Another one?’ Nina asked, seeing one of the primitive gramophones in a corner.

‘Yeah. They really like their decks. But I don’t think that’s what the room’s for.’ He lifted the lantern higher, illuminating one wall.

Nina’s eyes widened. ‘My God!’

It was another inscription, blocks of text scribed into a layer of plaster. But this one featured something the one in Australia lacked.

A map.

It was not an accurate cartographical representation; instead, it was more like a linear account of the various places visited along a journey, what appeared to be coastlines strung out along its length between points labelled with more ancient writing. Nina recognised numbers and compass bearings: the direction and number of days’ sail from each point?

‘The land of cold sand,’ said Sophia, pointing to the symbols at one end of the map. ‘This is where we are now. Antarctica.’

Nina traced the route back. It was apparently a long voyage across open sea to another land - Australia? Then up the coast to . . . ‘That might be the site north of Perth. If it is, then . . .’ Her excitement rose as she continued. ‘This could show the spread of the Veteres culture across the world - if these at the end are Antarctica and Australia, then these other coastlines would be Indonesia, Southeast Asia, India . . .’

‘Which means,’ Sophia said, looking at the other end of the map, ‘this is their
origin
. The point they expanded from. Where it all began.’

‘God, yes,’ gasped Nina. Heart pounding, she ran her finger along the frosted wall. Westwards from India along the coast of what was now Pakistan, Iran, the mouth of the Persian Gulf . . . which at the time of the Veteres would have been closed off by the lower sea level, the Gulf itself nothing but an inland lake. Along the coast of the Arabian peninsula, another settlement there—

‘Oman!’ Sophia cried, stabbing a finger at the mark. ‘That’s the site I visited with Gabriel eight years ago, it must be. The Covenant had destroyed it.’

‘Looks like they missed quite a few, though,’ said Chase. There were at least a dozen places given as much prominence as the Oman site, and numerous smaller ones.

‘They’re still there to be found,’ said Nina.

‘Unless the Covenant has already found them,’ Sophia pointed out.

Nina’s finger moved faster across the map. ‘They can’t have got them all. Arabia, across the entrance to the Red Sea, up its coast . . . and then they go inland.’ She looked at the others. ‘Into Africa. That’s where they came from. Africa!’ The trail of the Veteres to the coast crossed a river, leading some distance inland back to its origin: three trapezoidal symbols, the topmost having four winding lines - more rivers? - running outwards from it.

‘So that’s why their statues look like that one you used to have,’ Chase realised. ‘Same people.’

‘Different times,’ Nina replied. ‘These people had already moved out of Africa at a time when we thought early humans were only just starting to form the most primitive societies, in places like Ethiopia and Sudan.’

‘That would fit with the map.’ Sophia stood, regarding the text above it. ‘The first words here are something like “The journey of the people of God, from . . .” I assume that’s a name. The name of their homeland, maybe. But the first line ends with “to the land of cold sand”.’

Nina looked over the words with her. ‘They left it in case their people ever returned - a reminder of who they were and where they came from. It’s their whole history.’

Sophia read on. ‘More mention of beasts, as well - the word appears quite a lot. They certainly seem to have had trouble with their animals.’

‘Soph,’ said Chase from behind them. ‘That word you didn’t recognise, you think it’s a name, yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s here as well.’

Nina and Sophia turned to see him holding his torch over the icy gramophone. Next to it were two of the clay cylinders. ‘So it is,’ said Sophia, looking more closely at the one Chase had indicated. ‘The other characters say . . . I think it’s “the path from”.’

‘So that’s the title of the recording?’ Nina said. ‘The path from . . . from whatever they called their homeland. If we could translate that as well as the whole inscription . . .’ She peered at the second cylinder. ‘What does that one say? Is that “prophet”?’

Sophia confirmed it. ‘I can’t read the other characters.’ She pulled it free of the ice.

‘What does it say?’ Chase asked as she turned the cylinder in her hands.

She looked puzzled. ‘I think it’s “the song of the prophet”.’

Nina examined it. ‘That’s the word for “song”? Because it’s also what was painted on those bowls in the ice.’ She turned to the gramophone, putting her hands on the wheel. Ice ground and crunched - then cracked, the wheel rotating more or less freely. ‘These things were left here for a reason. I think we need to play them.’

 

By the time Trulli reached the tilt-rotor, the new arrivals were landing and collapsing their parachutes with well-practised skill. The Hercules in military livery had borne United States Air Force markings - but the men who emerged from it were not in American uniforms. The vehicles landing on pallets with them were not exactly standard US issue either: they looked like small hovercraft, glossy beetle-black bodywork bearing what appeared to be stubby, squared-off wings.

Five hovercraft in all, and about twenty men.
Armed
men.

He looked for the other expedition members. Rachel had initially hesitated before following him to the BA609, and was still clomping across the ice. Baker dutifully remained at the winch. Bandra, though, was moving to meet the paratroopers. ‘Oh, you stupid bastard,’ he moaned, before giving the walkie-talkie to Larsson. ‘I need you to hook that up to the radio - and get this thing started!’

 

Chase delved into his pack to produce a flare, igniting it and holding the two cylinders beside the sizzling red flame to melt the ice off them. In the small room the light was dazzling and the sulphurous burning smell almost overpowering, but it quickly did the job. Once the cylinders were clear, he used the same trick to remove the ice crusted over the needle and speaker cone before tossing the flare into the passage outside.

Nina turned the wheel again. ‘We’ll have to work it by hand. Hope we can get it to the right speed.’

‘The one you improvised wasn’t turning that fast,’ said Sophia, drying the cylinders and handing them to her.

Nina mounted the first cylinder, the one labelled ‘song of the prophet’, on the spindle, positioning the needle against the cylinder’s groove. ‘Okay. Here goes.’

She turned the wheel, spinning it at what she thought was roughly the right speed. An unpleasant scraping noise came from the copper cone. Chase winced. ‘Sounds like the greatest hits of Fingernails and Blackboard.’

‘Hold on.’ She adjusted the needle and spun the wheel again. This time, she got a result. A slurred, uneven voice came from the cone.

‘That must be the title,’ Sophia told her. ‘But you need to go faster.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Nina spun the wheel more quickly, waiting for the next words to emerge.

They didn’t. What came from the speaker was a
chant
.

‘“Song of the prophet”? You weren’t kidding,’ said Chase.

Nina kept the wheel turning. The music was a long, sustained note, distorted by the inevitable variations in speed of the turntable, but she imagined that, played as it had been intended, the singer would have maintained perfect pitch. The note rose an octave, then dropped two before rising again. Then it stopped. The whole was beautiful, yet somehow unsettling. ‘What was
that
?’ she said. Chase hummed the five-note theme from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
. ‘
Not
that.’

‘A ritual chant, maybe,’ Sophia suggested.

‘Of their prophet. Maybe even
by
their prophet,’ realised Nina. ‘Give me the other cylinder.’

 

Back straight, head held high to show a confidence that was rapidly draining, Dr Bandra strode towards the parachutists. Both aircraft, having disgorged their cargo, were heading away towards the coast. Most of the newly arrived soldiers were engaged in removing the hovercraft from their pallets, but there was a group of five men who appeared to be in charge, standing apart from the others.