"Is there anything up there, Mr. Cleave?" Purdue asked with a slight raise in his voice. He figured that, even at a louder volume, his voice could not provoke the damage already tested by Dr. Gould's scream. Sam shook his head. They could hear him say, "It is just a drawing and flat rock here."
"Would it not be a cruel joke of the Nazis to send us all the way here in a hunt for the Spear of Destiny, all the while withholding the information that the item in question is a mere depiction of the relic instead of the real thing?" Calisto smiled, amused thoroughly at the possibility. In truth, this was the first time such a possibility had even crossed Purdue's mind and it sent a dreadful jolt of shock through his entire body to imagine it true.
Nina afforded Calisto a look of warning and a very subtle shake of the head. Inside she hoped that the dark-eyed femme fatale would not take it as an insult, for fear of being stabbed by an animal bone or something. Calisto was sharp enough to recognize that Dr. Gould was trying to convey Purdue's upset at her remark. She promptly ceased her chuckling and went to get her water bottle for a drink and another dose of Diamox to aid her with the awful effects of the thin air. She was feeling a lot better after her last gullet purge.
More frustrated than before, Purdue looked up at Sam and did not seem to care as much about the volume of his voice anymore. "Sam, come on down, then. We have to get going," Purdue said, his voice cracking under the upset of it all. The entire atmosphere changed. Dave Purdue was always positive, always driven to find another way, but he looked utterly defeated. After being betrayed by Eickhart and his goons, after almost getting his party killed, and the loss of Jodh, he had come through all that only to find nothing to show for it. Something else, something far more pressing than his bruised ego, also bothered him. It was extremely important to him to find the Holy Lance, or something at least of equal significance, and now his bodyguard brought to his attention the most basic deduction for their predicament — and he overlooked it. His teeth ground together as he paced back to where Gary was preparing to bring Sam down while the women packed up the rest of the gear. Purdue was deeply disappointed and to a small measure, afraid.
Chapter 25
With everyone below preoccupied with their respective duties, Sam took a moment to gander around the massive chamber one last time. He felt like Indiana Jones, being in such an exotic location and hunting an ancient relic. As a serious journalist he dared not reveal his whimsical side, but that did not mean he did not entertain it once in a while. His right hand pushed against the cluster of stalactites protruding from the side of the grotto as he gently turned in mid-air to face toward the interior.
Straining to balance himself, Sam positioned his camera in his hands while he rocked from side to side on the rope. The view from up there was stunning and he understood where the chamber got its regal name. Through the viewfinder of his camera he framed the best composition and snapped the picture. Sam wished he had his panoramic with him for the beauteous pan of visuals before him. But he only had his basic camera with him, which had to take quite a few pictures in succession to fully capture the scene.
The ceiling was unremarkable, save for the antiquated doodle that he would snap from the ground once he was back down there. However, the ornate stalagmites growing from the floor of the cavern were especially beautiful, towering at different heights as they reached for the meager light coming through the crack above. In the sunlight their moist surfaces glimmered like strewn stars left to sparkle on the extremities of the pointy shapes, presenting very subtle differences in bluish hues dictated by their individual ages. Sam did not even realize that he smiled. Another fantastical image appeared on his memory card. He zoomed out to get an overall picture of the chamber just before Purdue and Gary started loosening his cord and his eye caught something.
"Gentlemen!" he shouted, as softly as he could. "Wait. Hold the rope. Wait a second."
Purdue knew that expression. His face lit up immediately when Sam's eyes went stiff in their sockets and he eagerly honed his lens on something.
"What, Sam?" he pressed excitedly. Nina and Calisto stopped what they were doing and looked at the dangling journalist seven stories up. "Mr. Cleave. Report, please," Purdue reiterated with immeasurable curiosity.
"You know, I am no geography aficionado, but I think I am looking at a map!" he said absentmindedly as he moved the camera lens to view the floor of the cavern. "Move to the side, please."
The group moved against the walls. By the third shot Sam was convinced that he saw what he thought he did. More and more it became familiar, obvious. Purdue started getting fidgety, "I really must insist, Sam. What are you seeing?"
"I see a map," Sam smiled, arms outstretched like a game show host. His attractive smirk folded into dimples and his dark eyes came alive.
"A map of what?" asked Gary, not buying any of it. "I think you're just reaching now."
"Nope. From up here, at this angle in the Godwomb, I clearly discern the coastlines of England and Scotland, Norway, Germany… it's the North Sea!" Sam beamed.
"These are random stones and craters, Mr. Cleave," Calisto said, from where she sat on a rock with her jelly beans. "How do you know it is not just coincidence that your mind is associating the formations with something you have seen before. It is a known fact in neurology that the mind projects what it perceives on unrelated things with the correct stimuli."
"I have to concur, Sam," said Nina as she stepped forward to speak to play devil's advocate. "You are expected, stressed on, to find some association to the Spear, to uncover its location. So your mind grabs the closest thing to relate it to location. Of course your cognition will provide a map," Nina ranted on in her bossy lecture voice, but Sam became deaf to her psychoanalysis and gestured for the two men to bring him down. Dr. Gould soon realized that her theory was redundant at this point. Sam was still smiling as he was lowered and she gave him a look of thorough vexation, which completely failed to intimidate him.
"Let me see!" Calisto pounced on Sam to seize his camera. She grabbed his hands and maneuvered the camera to see. It was the first time the bodyguard had touched him and he found her surprisingly soft to the touch. But his smirk vanished in the lash of Nina's glare and he pretended not to enjoy Calisto's odd ways too much. Purdue lurched over her shoulder to see and for a moment they studied the images of the cave's terrain.
"I see it!" Purdue exclaimed, elated.
"Oh, you see it because you were told what it is, Dave," Nina snapped, remaining cynical.
"Come see, Nina," Calisto invited her and stepped out of Sam's forced grasp to make way for the petite academic with the feisty demeanor. Skeptically Nina leered at them all and took her place next to Sam. Her eyes scanned the image for but a moment before she had to admit irrefutably that the floor of the Godwomb matched the North Sea map of Deep Sea One's control room with uncanny accuracy.
Nina was at a loss for words. She simply nodded, "I see, yes."
"All right, so now we know it's a map, but what are we supposed to do with it?" Gary asked. The others mumbled and shrugged among themselves.
"Well, we have to find a pinpoint on the map," Purdue said, as he held the camera screen up to properly investigate it.
"And coordinates," Calisto chimed in, tossing her last jelly beans into her mouth. "The North Sea stretches a good 750,000 square kilometers. It'll be a hell of a search," she remarked in her dry way.