“This one”—Fleidman seemed bothered that Ariana was asking questions of Van Liten in his museum—“was found in an ancient Mayan Pyramid in Central America.”
Ariana stared at it, sensing something, the empty eye sockets looking back at her. “Why isn’t it on display?” she asked.
“Well…” Fleidman seemed at a loss, and Van Liten answered.
“Because they can’t explain it. Correct, young man?”
“It’s simply an artifact,” Fleidman said.
“It is not simply an artifact,” Van Liten said. “Can’t you sense the power in it?”
“There are some strange aspects to this,” Fleidman allowed. “We’ve analyzed it, and the carving is perfect, which is difficult to explain, given the dating of the pyramid it was found in. You see, to carve quartz, which has a hardness of seven on a scale of ten, with diamond being a ten, you need something harder than seven. No ancient society we know of had such tools. Also, the carving, what little we can tell of it, seems to go against the natural axis, although that is very difficult to determine. As I mentioned, if you carve against the grain, the quartz should shatter. Obviously, in this case, it didn’t.”
“That’s because there is no carving.” Van Liten said.
“They don’t occur naturally, growing on trees,” Fleidman snapped. “Where do you think they come from?”
“That I am not sure of,” Van Liten said. “At least I am willing to admit my ignorance.”
“Quartz has interesting properties,” Fleidman said, trying to get back to an area where he was an expert. As he went on, Ariana had to almost bite her tongue to keep from speaking.
“Quartz is the second most common of all minerals,” Fleidman said. “It is composed of silicon dioxide. It is the primary constituent of sand. It crystallizes in the rhombohedra system. It exhibits interesting properties, one of which is the piezoelectric effect, which means it produces electric voltage when subjected to pressure along certain lines of axis. Therefore it has important applications in the electronics industry for controlling the frequency of radio waves.” He reached out and turned the skull on its stand under the light. “In addition, it has the optical property of rotating the plane of polarized light.”
“It also goes through structural transformation when heated,” Ariana said. “Low quartz, when heated to one thousand sixty-three point four degrees Fahrenheit becomes high quartz, which has a different crystal structure and physical properties. When cooled, high quartz reverts back to low quartz.” She pointed at the skull. “It would be interesting to see what properties these skulls have as high quartz.”
Fleidman seemed disconcerted by her detailed knowledge of geology. Ariana had spent most of her adult life working for her father, searching the world for valuable minerals. She had been drawn into the entire gate phenomenon because of a search for a diamond field in northwest Cambodia, where her plane had been downed inside the Angkor gate.
“How many skulls do you have?” Ariana asked Van Liten, deciding now was not the time to tell what Dane had seen happen to Sin Fen.
Van Liten reached into her leather briefcase and drew out five photographs, which she spread across the table in front of the skull. “Five pure ancients.”
“From where?” Ariana pressed as she checked the pictures. All five were almost exactly the same, with some slight differences in size. All were very realistic, exact approximations of the human skull.
“One from Central America. One from Russia. One from Mongolia. One from Canada. And one from under the Atlantic.”
“All found near pyramids?”
“The origin of some I have no idea about other than general vicinity,” Van Liten said. “I bought two on the black market, where naturally, the sellers were loath to say where they obtained them. I own Shui Ting Er, which was found in Mongolia inside a large burial mound. I also own what is called the Jesuit Skull, which purportedly has an association with the Jesuits and Saint Francis of Assisi; and a skull found in a burial mound in Russia that contained artifacts from the Scythalians.
“You have to understand, though, that just as I have purchased these skulls, I believe they have traveled far from their original sites. A crystal skull is rumored to give great power to whoever possesses it, so it is impossible to determine where each one originated or how many people have possessed each one over the course of the ages.”
Ariana turned back to Fleidman. “Anything else you’ve discovered about the skulls?”
“I’ve told you all that we’ve learned.”
Ariana was frustrated. She knew that Dane had sent her here instead of accompanying him to Japan to get her out of the way. Why does it matter about the skulls now? She wondered. They are an end product, worthless. She checked that thought. As they were now, they were worthless, but that didn’t rule out other possibilities.
“Have you ever checked the skull for muon emissions?” she asked Fleidman.
“Muon emissions? No.”
Ariana doubted he even knew what muons were. She turned to Van Liten. “What else do you know about the skulls?”
“There are several theories,” Van Liten said. She glanced at Fleidman. “Most are considered rubbish by the scientific community, but there are events occurring now around the world that scientists are having a very difficult time explaining, are there not?”
Ariana nodded. “Go ahead.”
“There are those who believe the skulls are a form of — for lack of a better word — a computer, or a critical part of a larger computer, perhaps a hard drive, so to speak. These people believe that the skulls record everything that occurs around them and perhaps, even draw in the memories of those who touch them, thus making them a recorder of history.”
Fleidman snorted, but Van Liten ignored him as she continued.
“Other people claim the skulls were brought to our planet by extraterrestrials. Others suggest that they were made by people who live inside the Earth. They propose that there are twelve pure skulls, each representing one of the twelve tribes of people who dwell there.”
Ariana fought to keep her reaction to herself, while Fleidman had no such compunction.
“A hollow Earth theory?”
“I’m just relating various theories,” Van Liten said, “not saying whether they are valid or not.”
Ariana considered that. It wasn’t as far-fetched as she would have thought a month ago. It would definitely seem to ancient people that the gates were doorways into the Earth itself.
Van Liten continued, “In many of the theories, though, the numbers twelve and thirteen do crop up. There seems to be some acceptance, even among radically different theories, that there are twelve pure ancients, along with a thirteenth master skull, and that if they are brought together, something momentous will happen.”
“Are there any—” Ariana began, but then she paused.
“Yes?” Van Liten pressed her.
“Are there any rumors that these skulls are someone’s real skull transformed in some matter?”
This time Fleidman’s snort of disgust was loud. Ariana spun toward him. “Doctor, we have a very reliable eyewitness who saw this transformation.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“You’ve seen what happened in Iceland, right?” Ariana didn’t wait for an answer. “These skulls are related to the gates, so I am most definitely not joking.”
“Most interesting.” Van Liten seemed to get taller as she straightened. “Yes, there have been similar stories. When did this occur?”