“—and Atlantis could have shifted to the South Pole,” Tarn supplied. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that hokey theory about how the Earth’s crust is like the skin of an orange and can shift over the core. But it’s nonsense.”
“Then how do you explain this?”
Tarn shrugged, hugging his shoulders. “I’m not yet convinced. We need to dig, expose more of the structure.”
“What about sonar readings? Would they do it for you?” Caleb asked. Then louder into the microphone, “Orlando, when can we get that imaging equipment out here?”
The speaker crackled. “In the morning, I think. The colonel here said he’ll contact Fort Erickson and have them haul out the sensor equipment once the storm clears.”
Tarn grunted. “We’ll see.”
Caleb knelt closer to the head, reaching out to tentatively touch one of the spiked protrusions. “Definitely sun-worshippers. This is similar to the prevalent Greek depictions of Helios, the sun god. I’m dying to see the rest of this statue. Maybe… maybe just a touch…” He started peeling off his right mitten.
“Don’t be an idiot!” Phoebe shouted over his earpiece. “At those temperatures, your skin will fuse to it and burn right off.”
Reluctantly, feeling like he had just been scolded by a grade-school hall monitor, Caleb pulled his hand away and slipped his mitten back on.
Phoebe’s voice admonished, “You weren’t seriously about to touch it, were you?”
“Sorry, got caught up in the excitement. Thinking back to my dive under the Alexandrian harbor, where I had that psychic vision after touching one of the statue heads.”
“Well, try it without physical contact, dummy. Or else wait.”
“But we’ve already tried it,” Tillman said. “A couple trance sessions on the plane, and another in the station. Didn’t see squat.”
Tarn made a scoffing sound. “Self-induced daydreams and fanciful imaginations are no substitute for sound fieldwork.”
“Say what you’d like,” Caleb said, “but we saw this thing, exactly in this position. Orlando can tell you; he was one of the first to draw it when we started actively looking for the remnants of a past civilization.” He had to cut himself off before saying too much, indicating the real subject of their search, being the origin of the Emerald Tablet, the powerful but inscrutable tome that was once safeguarded under the Pharos. The tablet was the one artifact Caleb had kept for himself, believing its power so great that he needed to hide its existence even from his wife and the other Keepers.
Caleb thought for a moment. The questions they had asked on the plane had been broad, maybe too general. The very existence of the Emerald Tablet, hidden now in a vault under his own lighthouse back at Sodus Point, indicated that its creator, the legendary Hermes-Thoth, was a member of some pre-Egyptian, pre-Sumerian civilization, a race that not only pre-dated them, but may have actually given birth to those cultures — to their language, their myths, their very existence. One that had left no records other than those shrouded in legend.
So the latest Morpheus Initiative effort focused on just this problem: if there was an advanced civilization, one that had been eradicated in some tragic cataclysm, where could they find evidence of its existence? Where was the Emerald Tablet created? And what, really, did it do?
A number of hits popped up through the intervening years of searching through the Morpheus Initiative’s efforts, through hundreds of trances and thousands of drawings. But the most consistent and similar image perceived among its members was this vision of an enormous half-concealed statue head, lying in this very position.
And then, almost coincidentally, came the call from Nelson Point in the South Pole. A two-time veteran, Colonel Hiltmeyer had known of the CIA’s Stargate Program, which utilized remote-viewing psychics during the Cold War (and secretly beyond). But while unaware of its previous leader’s extracurricular activities, Hiltmeyer had known enough about the Morpheus Initiative to seek its services when his research team stumbled across this potentially ancient discovery.
Now, Caleb knelt in the ice and crossed his legs.
“What are you doing?” Tarn asked. He had a shovel out and was carefully digging around the eye area.
“Just give me a minute,” Caleb said. “Bellows and Tillman, if you want to give it a try too, maybe just by being in the vicinity, we’ll get clearer visions.” He held out his hands, palms outward toward the statue, then closed his eyes.
Phoebe’s voice came through his speaker. “Orlando and I will try to RV it too. Just keep still so I can focus on the statue.”
“This is nuts,” said Tarn.
“Tell that guy to zip it,” Orlando said over the earpiece. “He’s getting annoying.”
“Hang on,” Caleb whispered, feeling suddenly dizzy. “I’m getting something. I’m in…
… a warehouse. Leaded windows. Dusty floor. Scaffolding around a partial spherical construction, still with lattice-grillwork on half of it, while heavy metal plates are fitted into position.
Looking down from the ceiling, then descending and circling around the structure, seeing teams of workers toiling with the frame, hoisting the sheets and hollowing out the eyes. Workers wearing blue jumpsuits, dust-masks and goggles. A rumbling sound and suddenly a forklift drives forward, preparing to lift the partial head onto a waiting flatbed truck.
Caleb staggered to his feet, scrambling and slipping on the ice. He tried to back up, then toppled forward, clutching one of the protruding sun-ray spikes to break his fall.
“It’s—”
… a partial head, the exterior sealed now, set in the back of a truck as the door slams shut, and the vision wheels around to see the back of a tall, lanky man in a black silk suit, nodding and talking on a cell phone.
“It’s ready. Just as you specified. We’ll ship it to the research station tomorrow and have it transported to the cave by Thursday night. Hiltmeyer’s team is ready for it?”
The man listens, nods, then turns. His face — his too familiar face — pulls from the shadows…
“—a FAKE!” Pushing away from the statue with disgust, Caleb turned to the anthropologist.
But it was already too late.
“Damn psychics,” Henrik Tarn spat, as he pulled off a mitten and with a thin glove underneath fished out a gun from inside his coat. Aiming at Caleb, Tarn tugged at his collar and spoke into his own microphone. “We’ve got to move up the timetable.”
“What!” Caleb began, but then there came a shriek from Phoebe in his earpiece before the microphone shorted out, just as Tarn, sensing Ben Tillman foolishly rushing him, swiveled and shot him point-blank in the chest.
2
Phoebe screamed as Colonel Hiltmeyer and another one of his staff pulled out strange-looking guns, and as soon as Tarn finished speaking, they fired.
“You’ve got to be kidding me” was all Orlando could say before the red dart thunked into his chest, the toxin spread, and he immediately slumped over. Phoebe ducked below one shot from the colonel, then dodged around a desk. No point in hiding, she rose and raced for the back room when the dart struck her leg and she hit the floor.
The red dart, embedded in her thigh, would have brought her down, if not for her artificial hip, thigh and a portion of her calf — all fitted and retro-purposed with a prosthesis after that tragic fall during the Belize expedition.
A quick thought, a plan forming: Fake it!
She let her body go limp, flicked her eyelids, then closed them. She willed Hiltmeyer and his men to accept that she was now tranquilized like Orlando.