He paused coming out of the room. A breeze had kicked up, snapping and tangling Tisa’s hair around her head. She’d removed her glasses and faced the salt-tinted wind with her eyes closed. Her mouth was slightly parted, as if tasting the air. He was struck again by her beauty and how innocent she looked when he could not see her eyes. He committed the moment to memory.
Tisa felt his presence and quickly put on her glasses. She turned to face him. She looked guilty. “Do you want to talk here?”
Mercer grinned. “Nope. I want a drink. I spotted the hotel bar two floors above us.”
Five minutes later they were seated at an intimate table overlooking the caldera. The night had turned chilly and tall gas heaters threw coronas of warmth over them both. Not trusting an unfamiliar bartender with his usual, though not usually popular, vodka gimlet, Mercer had a double vodka and soda with a standing order for at least two more. Tisa drank water.
“Okay, now we can talk,” he said, feeling the knots of muscle at his shoulders losing a fraction of their rigidity. “Tell me about the tower.”
“In order for you to understand, I have to give you a little background. Do you know anything about acupuncture?”
Mercer hadn’t expected such an odd question and was taken aback. For a fleeting moment he was back in an underground cell in Panama with a psychotic Chinese torturer named Mr. Sun, his skin pierced with hundreds of tiny needles that Sun used to induce unimaginable pain from all parts of his body. The memory was fresh and while Mercer hadn’t been physically harmed, the mental scars still felt raw. The old terror welled up, forcing him to swallow heavily at his drink to cleanse his throat. “I know a bit.”
Tisa hadn’t seen his discomfort. “Then you know that the body is connected by force lines that transfer a person’s chi, or essence, and that these pathways can be manipulated to relieve stress or pain.”
“Or to cause it,” Mercer said mildly.
“There is a dark side to the art,” she acknowledged. “But used properly, acupuncture is a proven healing technique that works on animals as well as people. Do you believe that?”
“How’s this? I don’t not believe it.”
“Good enough. Now, what if I told you the earth was like the human body and that it too has pathways for a chi force.”
“Are you talking about magnetic lines?”
“No, not a tangible force. Something more” — she sought the right word and failed — “intangible.” She paused again. “I will give you the proof in a while, but for the sake of this discussion, accept that the earth has a life force, like a person.
Mercer nodded. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. For now.”
She shot him a secretive smile, as if she would make him pay for his skepticism. “This force is very real, you’ll see. Now if someone can detect the force and understand how it concentrates in certain places on the earth’s surface, they can also manipulate it.”
Mercer raised an eyebrow. “Acupuncture for a whole planet?”
“Exactly!” Tisa was delighted he understood.
“Please don’t tell me you built the tower as a giant acupuncture needle to ease earth’s aches and pains.”
She frowned at his mocking tone. “In a sense, that’s exactly what it is. What I’m about to tell you can be verified by checking oceanographic data. Over the past fifteen years a new ocean current has developed in the Pacific that is raising mean bottom temperatures.”
“Yes, I know. I spoke with scientists aboard the Sea Surveyor. My theory is that your group knew about it, and also knew that a large hydrate deposit was right in the current’s path. You built the tower to keep it stable.”
“You do understand. Methane hydrate can exist in only a very narrow range of temperatures and pressures and the new, warmer current would eventually cause a tremendous release. We had to do something. The tower uses the current itself to power machinery to chill a special liquid that keeps the deposit from erupting. Some methane manages to escape, however. That’s what I thought the Sea Surveyor would find and follow back to the site.”
“You said that you monitor other sites for your organization.”
“The Order.”
“Yes, the Order. Are there other towers like the one I was just at?”
“That’s the only one, but I think I know what you’re really asking. Are there other installations that can be used to harm people? The answer, I’m afraid, is yes. But I don’t know if my — if the splinter faction I mentioned has tried to gain control of them. I doubt it because many sites have full-time employees. The tower was easy for them to commandeer because it ran autonomously.”
“If you knew about the current and the methane hydrates, why not tell the world? The UN or someone? Why do it yourselves.”
“Because that is what we do, or at least that’s what we’ve been doing for almost twenty years.”
That shook Mercer and he asked incredulously, “Your group is a hundred years old?”
“Oh, gosh no. Its roots date back almost five hundred years. It’s only been the past two decades that we’ve done anything other than monitor the earth’s chi.”
“Five hundred?” Mercer rocked back in his seat. He had assumed the Order had only formed recently, another New Age fringe group speaking of chi and force lines. Five hundred years made it feel more like a religion.
“Yes, since the time of Admiral Zheng He and China’s treasure fleets.”
“I’m not familiar with—”
“Not too many people are,” Tisa said. “Zheng He was a eunuch slave who became one of China’s greatest military commanders. From 1405 to 1433 he was in command of seven epic journeys that ranged as far as the Persian Gulf, Madagascar and the mainland of Africa. Some say he went to South America too, and there’s archaeological evidence to back that claim. His ships were the most magnificent ever built and the largest too. The treasure ships were four hundred feet long at a time before Christopher Columbus used a puny ninety-footer to discover America. If I’m not mistaken, Admiral He’s ships were the biggest until the Industrial Revolution.”
“I had no idea.”
“You’re the victim of a Western-biased education,” she said to tease. “This period during the Ming Dynasty was the only time in China’s history that they looked beyond the Middle Kingdom and sought trade with other nations rather than wait for traders to come to them. The Ottoman and Persian empires were in full flower and the trade of goods and knowledge were unprecedented. The Ming navy was the most powerful in the world and stood poised to dominate the sea-lanes had they chosen. No nation could have stopped them. And then the emperor decreed an end to ocean commerce and China once again closed her borders to all but a few struggling along the Silk Road. The fleet of ships was destroyed, crews and captains who’d seen the distant lands were put to death. Much of what had been brought to China was burned.”
Mercer was enthralled with her story, imagining the vast wealth the Chinese must have accumulated. “Why?”
“No reason need be given. No one dared question the orders of the emperor. But one man did. He was a Confucian scholar named Zhu Zhanji, a master scribe in the emperor’s court who decried the destruction and risked his life to spirit away the best of what the traders had brought back. The cache included scrolls and texts gathered from the four corners of the globe, works of advanced mathematics being developed in the Arab world, as well as priceless pieces of art, ivory carvings, gems and tons of gold. It was a storehouse of knowledge and human ingenuity, perhaps the greatest ever amassed.”