The Star of Arnuwanda lay untouched under the oilcloth until the plate had been emptied. Gabriel wiped his fingers on the sides of his pants and picked it up, turned it this way and that under the light. “It’s quite a find,” he said, finally. “And your figuring out how to use it—it’s impressive, Joyce.”
She walked over to him, a slight swagger to her step. “You don’t know how I used to dream about hearing those words come out of your mouth. When I was fifteen and sixteen and hearing about the things you were doing. When I was twenty or twenty-five, for that matter. The great Gabriel Hunt, impressed.”
“Well, I am. Once we’ve gotten it and you both home, I’ll want your help identifying the three locations—”
“My help?” She snatched the Star out of his hands. “At home? What are you talking about?”
“I think it’ll be safe for us to sleep here tonight,” Gabriel said, “though we should probably sleep in shifts, in case our faceless ghosts make another attempt.” He looked over at Noboru, who nodded. “Then tomorrow we’ll drive you to the airport, you can take the Foundation’s jet back to the States…”
Joyce was shaking her head. “Who the hell do you think you are? You think you can walk in here and take this away from me?”
“We’re not taking it away from you, we’re sending it back with you—”
“I don’t mean the Star, goddamn it! I mean the find!”
“The find nearly got you killed tonight,” Gabriel said.
“And? How many times have you nearly gotten killed? How would you feel if when it happened some big hero swept in and carried you to ‘safety,’ i.e. the sidelines, while other people finished what you started?”
“Any time someone wants to save my life,” Gabriel said, “that’s fine with me.”
“Sure,” Joyce said. “But you wouldn’t fly home afterwards and leave the rest of the expedition to someone else.”
No, Gabriel said, to himself. But to her he said, “I promised Michael I’d get you home safely.”
“Don’t you think I should have a say in this? Jesus. You’re worse than they are.” She began wrapping the Star up again. “You want to put me in a cage, too. At least the cult respected me enough to try to kill me.”
Noboru stepped forward, put one hand on Gabriel’s arm and one on Joyce’s. “If I may—”
“What?” Joyce snapped.
“I think she’s right,” Noboru said.
“Oh,” Joyce said, as Gabriel snapped, “What?”
“If this cult operates internationally, she won’t necessarily be safer in the U.S. than here. As long as they think she has this thing, they’ll keep coming after her. And if we send it back with her, they’ll be right. Meanwhile, if that map’s correct, what everyone’s looking for is somewhere around here. If we’re going to have to face them somewhere, better to do it where we can put an end to it.”
“Thank you,” Joyce said, with a tone of satisfaction. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
“All that business about liking your job,” Gabriel muttered, “and not wanting to make Michael angry…?”
Noboru shrugged. “He won’t like it any more if they kill her back in New York.”
Gabriel nodded. Noboru was right, of course. And so, for that matter, was Joyce. If someone had ever tried to take something like this out of his hands, he’d never have stood for it. But—
“It’ll be dangerous,” Gabriel said. “You might get killed. I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep you alive the next time.”
“—and airplanes can crash, and peanuts can give you anaphylactic shock,” Joyce said. “Life’s a thing of risks. You know that better than anyone.”
“You’re so right,” Gabriel said. “Next time we’re facing a dozen men with swords and a bowl of peanuts, you can deal with the swordsmen, I’ll handle the peanuts.”
They stared at each other in tense, unblinking confrontation till a grin broke out on Joyce’s face. “I’m picturing you throwing yourself on a bowl of peanuts,” she said, “like a soldier on a grenade.”
“Well, we really wouldn’t want you to go into anaphylactic shock,” Gabriel said.
“I wouldn’t,” Joyce said. “That was just an example. I’m not allergic to…”
But Gabriel had already turned away. “You want the first shift or the second?” he asked Noboru.
“Either’s fine with me,” Noboru said. “But first I’d be grateful if someone could tell me just what this ancient treasure is that everyone’s getting so excited over.”
“You mean the Three Eyes…?” Gabriel said.
“No,” Noboru said. “I mean whatever it is that the Three Eyes unlock.”
“The Spearhead,” Joyce said.
“It’s a weapon,” Gabriel said.
Joyce shook her head. “It’s much more than that. Hold on a sec, I want to show you something.” She went over to the corner of the room where they’d piled her books earlier, rummaged through them and pulled one out. She flipped through the pages and said, “When Teshub gave the Spearhead to the Hittites, the first thing they were supposed to have done with it was turn it on their enemies, the Kaska. In 2005, the Kaskan city of Sargonia was excavated in the northern hill country between Hatti and the Black Sea.” She handed Gabriel the book, open to a photograph of the excavated village. In it, Gabriel saw a stone structure, its pillars and walls black and cracked, the rest of it in ruins. “That was a temple,” Joyce went on. “The stone was charred and baked all the way through by some sort of extreme, concentrated blast of heat. And you see that at the bottom?”
There was a reflective pool surrounding the base of the temple. “What, the water?”
“That’s not water,” she said. “It’s glass.”
He looked up from the photograph.
“Whatever destroyed Sargonia was strong enough, hot enough, to turn the sand around the base of that temple into glass.”
Gabriel looked at the photograph again, studying the reflective surface. On closer inspection, he saw what might be faint fissures or cracks—something you wouldn’t see in water.
“Of course, we don’t know what did this,” he said. “We don’t know that it was the Spearhead.”
“Of course,” Joyce said. “But we know something did. And how many things in the ancient world could?”
“Lightning?” Noboru said, looking at the photo over Gabriel’s shoulder.
“You’re on the right track,” Joyce said. “A bolt of lightning might fuse the sand in a limited area, right where it struck. But not an area that large. A thousand bolts of lightning, though, directed simultaneously at a single target…”
“The wrath of the storm god,” Gabriel said.
“Precisely,” Joyce said. “Teshub was a storm god the way Thor or Zeus were storm gods. He wasn’t the god of rain or wind or hail, he was the god of thunder and lightning. And what is lightning but raw, unbridled electricity? A sufficiently strong blast…it could do to Sargonia what you saw in the photo. If it had the power of a small nuclear reactor.”
Noboru whistled softly. “Sounds like a weapon to me.”
“Sure,” Joyce said, “if you use it to attack a city. But what if you used it to power a city? I think the Spearhead is a source of power—not military power, not necessarily, but electrical power. Some sort of natural generator. And according to the descriptions in Hittite literature, it required no fuel to operate, gave off no byproducts—just pure, clean energy.” Her eyes lit up as she spoke about it. “Can you imagine the good that kind of technology could do for the world? Think of it. Cheap, efficient energy. No pollution, no radiation. You could use it to power entire nations. It could power water purification plants, hydrobotanical gardens. It could wipe out the need for oil, coal, gas, nuclear energy.” She touched Gabriel’s hand. “That’s the potential of this discovery. It could change the world.”