Before Patterson backtracked and slammed the door shut in her face she saw an open space that would have been large enough to comfortably house several average-sized passenger jets, of the type that would normally take her to Egypt. Large scaffolds filled three quarters of the space, with rockets or missiles in various stages of completion in each one. The closest scaffold to the door held a complete rocket, the tip of which was roughly twenty yards away and ten above her. From the distance to the floor of the hanger, she fancied she must have been on the third or fourth floor of the building.
Just as the door was shut, she saw a gigantic Stars and Stripes on the opposite wall, flanked by two logos. On its left was the smaller of the two, the familiar logo of NASA. On its right, several times larger, was a name she had not heard of before: DEFCOMM. Written in bold white text across a black background, the O was the planet Earth, with the USA dead-centre.
“We’re not going in there,” Patterson said sternly. He continued down the corridor, keeping her slightly behind him and to his left so he could still see her in his peripheral vision.
A few moments later, they reached a lift. He entered a long sequence of numbers on the keypad and pressed a button marked B3. She could tell because of the momentary weight loss that the lift was descending rapidly. She guessed that the B stood for Basement, so they may have descended six or seven floors, but she was surprised at how quickly. The doors slid open after less than ten seconds.
All thoughts of lifts and their mechanisms left her when she saw what the lift doors had revealed.
“This is the Agency’s control centre.” Patterson said flatly.
“Are you working for NASA,” she asked in awe. Before her were spread out dozens of computer terminals in semi-circles facing a huge screen, like seats of congress facing the leader of the house. On the big screen was a video-feed of two people in space suits leaning over a pile of dirt and rocks.
“No, this is better than NASA, they’re a little behind the times. What we’re seeing here is the direct feed from the crew of the Clarke on the surface of Mars. NASA sees the same picture in seventy-five minutes, which then gets sent to the other space agencies around the world.”
“Why do you get to see it earlier?”
He said nothing in reply, so she made the assumption that whatever the reason was, it wasn’t legal.
“How can you intercept such data? Surely someone would find out?”
“Someone nearly did, but it’s exactly because it’s so unthinkable that it became so easy. All of the messages sent to and from Clarke are sent via a network of secure satellites stationed around Earth. Breaking through their security model is impossible. Unless you built the satellites in the first place; then you have an advantage – you can get to all the data without anyone ever finding out about it. That way they can then censor out what they don’t want people to see, and make up what they do.”
“Why would you want to do such a thing?” she asked.
“They do it to gain control of information.”
Gail noted the correction. Dr Patterson was a mystery to her – he was obviously implicated in Mallus’ dealings, but was also distancing himself from him. And then there was the message he had written to her when she had been strapped into her bed.
“Look, Patterson, I get the fact that there are some dodgy things going on here, I get the fact that you didn’t want me to be here in the first place, that’s obvious. But answer me this: why does the Agency need me here? What can I do or offer that is any different to what is already being done?”
He smiled gently. “Under these circumstances, I didn’t want you here; but while I have a broader understanding of the Book of Xynutians, you have studied the Book of Aniquilus in infinite detail for ten years. The Agency believes, I believe,” he corrected himself, “that the book of Aniquilus is a set of rules, without which you get the Book of Xynutians.”
“Like the Ten Commandments and Revelations?”
“Not exactly; the Ten Commandments are Old Testament, and Revelations is New, which in that respect is like the two books, yes. But Revelations is something that it was suggested would happen regardless at the end of times. I believe that the Xynutians are an actual example of what will happen in our worst case scenario. I had difficulty believing the whole concept, to be honest, until I started looking at the Book of Xynutian pictures in detail. And now, I don’t doubt a word of it. Because it looks like we’ve found Xynutian remains on Mars.”
He walked up to a young man seated in front of a computer terminal and spoke to him quietly for a few moments. The operator nodded and started tapping commands into the terminal.
“Watch this,” he said.
Gail watched as the main screen of the control room split in half. On the right hand side she could see two astronauts in what looked like a dune buggy, driving through an arid desert. The pale blue-grey sky looked cold and lifeless. The camera filming the scene panned steadily as it followed the vehicle and its occupants from left to right.
The left half of the display was totally different: the camera was jolting from left to right as it made its way through a narrow corridor and under a low archway. The route ahead of it was lit by a torch beam, which brought Gail to the conclusion that the camera must be mounted somewhere near an astronauts visor. She was seeing what he or she was seeing. In front of the camera another astronaut emerged from the darkness holding a shovel. The torch beam bounced off the astronaut’s visor, but as it changed direction she glimpsed the excited features of a middle-aged man, his grin taking up half of his face.
“On the right is what the world sees. A computer generated mission to Mars, perfect in every conceivable way: Captain Marchenko and Dr Richardson on a routine outing to drill ice cores from the bed of an ancient frozen river. On the left is what is actually happening on Mars: Dr Richardson has just entered what they have called The Gallery for the first time, and Captain Marchenko is coming to greet her.”
She looked at the two feeds for a moment. “How do I know it’s not the other way round? What if the reality is the dune buggy, and the faked images are the Xynutian remains?”
“Why would we do that?” he asked.
Gail had to admit that she couldn’t think of a reason.
“But the world knows that they found the Stickman on Mars. That’s why I went to Egypt in the first place. Why would the world accept that they would simply return to drilling ice cores?”
“Because since you have been with us, the images captured by Beagle 4 and broadcast so readily to the media have been debunked. Dismissed as fakes by the scientific community. They were an attempt by the European Space Agency to cause a sensation, and I believe that attempt is failing.”
“No help from you, of course.”
He looked at her sideways and raised an eyebrow. “Please pay attention to the video. This was recorded this morning, and should give you all the convincing you need.”
As Gail watched, Captain Marchenko led Dr Richardson’s helmet camera down the dark corridor until it stopped abruptly at a dead end. Marchenko pointed eagerly towards where the dirt-covered floor met the perfectly smooth walls. As Dr Richardson’s camera refocused, Gail began to pick out familiar shapes, and her heart sank. Embossed in the wall, at waist-height, was a small procession of humans. From their clothing it was clear they were Xynutians, but with a difference: these were not Egyptian caricatures as in the Book of Xynutians, but detailed, lifelike renditions. They were being marched towards the dead-end of the corridor, and towering over them, almost squashing them into the dirt-floor, was the Stickman, Aniquilus.