As far as Irvine could tell, the man was dressed in leather. How long he had lain there, Irvine didn’t know for sure but he could make a guess. This was one of the party that had put Excalibur here millennia ago. Rather than discouraging him, the presence of the body gave Irvine a boost of energy. If men like this, with ancient equipment, had conquered the mountain so long ago, surely he could go farther. One of the man’s hands was clutched to his chest and on a finger Irvine could make out a large ring, with an eye carved onto the surface.
Irvine reached the edge of the ridge. Beyond was the top of the Kanshung Face. Irvine blinked, trying to clear his eyes. There was a thin ledge, less than six inches wide, leading out onto the top of the rock wall. It went straight for about fifty meters, then disappeared around a rock-and-ice cornice. Below was a vertical drop as far as he could see. The wind was sending plumes of snow off the summit, whipping the white flakes around.
Irvine stepped onto the ledge, arms spread wide, the weight of his pack like a hand trying to pull him off the mountain. He shuffled his feet, slowly making his way along the edge. It took an hour to reach the spur, all the while the wind and the pack striving to separate him from the rock face.
The cornice was the worst. Reaching around, Irvine could tell it was two feet wide. The ledge disappeared completely and the rock was smooth. He couldn’t tell if the ledge continued on the other side. He had to trust that it did. Below was air.
Irvine took several deep breaths, only to realize there was very little oxygen flowing into his mask. He tried to remember when he had switched over to the last bottle, but his mind couldn’t compute the time.
He swung his left leg around the cornice, feeling the momentum take his body. He was committed as he followed through with his left hand. His left boot scrabbled for a hold, but his foot was so frozen he couldn’t tell if it had found purchase or not as he lifted his right foot and let go with his right hand, his body sliding around the cornice. He fell, was convinced he had failed and would continue falling, when a shock slammed up his left leg as the boot landed on a ledge. His hands scrabbled to keep his body from tipping over.
He hugged the side of the mountain so tightly, the right side of his face froze to the rock. But he didn’t even feel it. His eyes were glued to what was just ahead. The ledge widened to six feet deep, almost a cave. Set in the rear of this indent in the side of Mount Everest, frozen into a sheet of ice almost a foot thick, was Excalibur, sheathed in an ornately carved scabbard.
Irvine moved closer, ripping skin from his face as he pulled from the rock, now unaware of the dangers of falling, his mind and body drawn toward the sword. He stumbled and almost fell, before he noticed that on either side of the sword was a body, frozen to the mountain. Irvine looked down. The one on the right was dressed in brown leather and furs, the same as the previous one he had found.
The one on the left also had furs, but underneath was a black robe fringed with silver. The man’s face was aged, his hair and thick beard white. In his frozen hand was a long wooden staff.
The two bodies flanked the sword, dead eyes open, staring out over the world. Each man had a ring similar to the previous body’s. Strangely, each man’s face was twisted with a frozen smile that had endured for millennia.
Irvine turned his attention back to Excalibur. He pulled his mittens off and pressed against the ice. Encased in the ice, the sword’s handle glittered in the waning daylight. The metal was shiny, unmarred by the elements. He understood now why legends had grown up around it. He felt an urgent desire to touch it, but the ice denied him access even to the scabbard.
Irvine suddenly realized he had no feeling in his hands. He tried pulling them back, but they were stuck to the ice. With all his will he pulled his arms back. He blinked with almost bemusement as three fingers on his right hand and two on his left simply cracked off and remained frozen to the ice. He felt no pain, just a distant dullness from his elbows down.
With great effort he slid to a sitting position between the two bodies. Irvine slumped back against the ice. The rays of the sun were horizontal and soon it would be gone. The wind, strangely enough, had died down. It was eerily quiet; the only sound he could hear was his own gasping for oxygen in the thin air.
He sat back, totally exhausted. Still he summoned the strength to turn his body ever so slightly so that he was looking at the mountain, at Excalibur. A slight smile touched his blood-spattered lips. And that was how he died.
CHAPTER 8: THE PRESENT
Turcotte ignored Yakov, Che Lu, and Mualama. He walked into the room where Duncan was seated in a chair, a blanket wrapped around her slight frame. His fatigues were dusted with sand from his sojourn into the desert and where sweat had soaked through the camouflage material, the sand was crusted in place. “You’re back,” Duncan said, a hesitant half smile on her face. She started to get up. “Mike, I’m telling you the—”
“Shh—” Turcotte said as he lightly put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back into the chair.
But that didn’t stop Duncan. “I’m telling you the truth as far as I know it.” “I know. I think I’ve got an idea what was done to you. When we infiltrated Majestic-12’s base at Dulce,” Turcotte said, “we found that they were conducting experiments on abductees, including Kelly Reynolds’s friend Johnny Simmons. Mind experiments using Airlia technology.”
“Dulce was destroyed,” Duncan said.
“Yes, but they got the basic technology from the Airlia. They were working on EDOM — electronic dissolution of memory. Majestic was using it on abductees to wipe out their real memories of being captured by Nightscape, and then implanting false memories of disinformation.”
Duncan frowned. “Are you saying my memories are false? That everything I know is a lie? Electronic signals implanted in my brain?”
Turcotte tapped the CIA folder. “We know your memories are a lie, Lisa.” A nerve twitched on the side of her face. “I don’t have a son?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Duncan was shaking her head. “It can’t be. It just can’t be. I remember him. I remember all of it. Damn it, Mike, I remember giving birth to him. The pain. I watched him grow up. Maybe some of my memories are false, but others true? All of it can’t be a lie.”
Turcotte remembered how Johnny Simmons, Kelly Reynolds’s friend who had gotten her involved in the whole Area 51 mess, had killed himself after they’d rescued him from an EDOM pod at Dulce. To have one’s past taken away and replaced with a set of lies was undoubtedly devastating. It took away a person’s sense of self. Duncan had just learned that her family was not only dead, they had never existed.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she finally said. “Why would Majestic have done this to me? I ended up putting in motion the forces that destroyed them.”
Turcotte shook his head. “I’m saying the technology and techniques used on you are similar to the EDOM Majestic used. I’m not saying Majestic was behind it.” “Who, then?”
“That’s a very good question,” Turcotte said. “If we can figure that out, maybe we can figure out who you really are.”
Turcotte went to the door and motioned for Quinn to come in. “How far has Dulce been excavated?” he asked the major.
Quinn checked his PDA, accessing the CUBE mainframe. “They’re down to the bottom level.”
“So they’ve uncovered the EDOM pods and research area?”
Quinn nodded. “And the guardian that corrupted Majestic. It’s being held under heavy guard but it doesn’t seem to be active. Just like the one in the Mission under Mount Sinai seems to be off-line.”