He thought some more, found what he wanted. Then he smiled.
“Perfect,” he said, and left his body.
31
Stumbling along the ice-covered ramp, his toes still tingling inside his fresh and warm boots, Caleb leaned on the soldier and for a moment as they approached the doorway carved expertly into the incline of the massive pyramid, he thought about just shoving the man over the side.
Consequences be damned.
Although he knew three things that made such a move preposterous.
One: his true enemy was ahead, waiting just inside. All in scarlet, older than this body he was using currently, so killing the shell would accomplish nothing. Two: the twins were inside, and the other members of the team were far too far away to act. And third: whether it was curiosity, pride or just plain admitted arrogance, he wanted — no, needed — to see what was inside.
The fact that he was receiving visions tying the inception of his quest, those many years ago in Alexandria as a wide-eyed, naive and bitter college grad, to this current objective, where the weight of the world and perhaps the fate of humankind rested with him, meant he had to proceed.
“Do you know what’s inside yet?” said the man at his right, helping him along with no great sense of urgency. In fact, there was more an air of humility and reverence for where they were about to go.
A flash: and Caleb saw the recent visit of some dignitaries, all bundled up. One with a shepherd’s staff, another with a guard detail, told to remain behind. Similarly, they entered, heads bowed, hearts on their sleeves. As if the mere validity of this perfect architectural wonder’s very existence alone, at this location on the earth, shattered the entirety of their beliefs and faiths.
“I…” He paused for a breath, taking in the cool air sweeping up the thirty-degree incline of the pyramid, spinning ice particles into the sunlight, causing rainbows and stars to sprinkle into his vision.
“Can’t see it? You must know its age, that where we’re standing used to be at a much different latitude.”
“That, I do know,” Caleb said, feeling a bit of energy returning. Strength coming back, and along with it, his thoughts and reasoning, and memory. “A lot of theories out there, placing Antarctica as Atlantis before a pole shift, before the earth’s axis shifted — whether due to a cometary strike or just the sliding of the molten core tipping the continents in some massive upheaval.”
“How long ago?” asked the soldier in that otherworldly voice.
Caleb shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Plato’s ten thousand years, or hundreds of thousands. Millions, if you believe the fossil records showing evidence of modern man alongside the dinosaurs. Then maybe…”
“You have a lot of maybes, for a guy who can see anything, anywhere and anytime.”
Caleb glared at him. “I also fell into a frozen bay, had my friends shot, and I’m a little too preoccupied about my imminent demise to focus.”
Laughing, the man hauled him ahead. “Well then, there’s something to be said for the element of surprise.”
He steadied Caleb as they neared the entrance, where the archway, carved with absolute precision, loomed at a height over fifteen feet. The winds swirled but avoided the dark aperture, where a soothing warmth exuded. He smelled the hint of something citrus, carried along a humid breeze.
Apples?
Then the snow cleared from a center block in the arch and revealed the one sign carved deep into the basalt in the otherwise unadorned arch.
“Oh no,” he said. “That again.”
He’d come full circle for sure.
“Now do you know?” came the voice in his ear, as the soldier pushed him gently ahead. It was clear that now, Caleb walked alone. He had a glimpse of a shape ahead, a figure waiting in the shadows. A hint of red.
“The Caduceus. I’m guessing it’s neither a doctor’s office or a barber shop up there, so…”
A vision formed in his mind: a serpent slithering through vegetation, weaving through thick bushes, lush plants and vibrant crops, scaring off insects and birds as it heads into a great shadow of something impossibly tall and wide.
Caleb shivered. Hesitated, then let everything out of his mind.
No more seeing. No more questing.
The end of all his searching was straight ahead.
This enemy was right.
If what he believed was through that doorway, looming and living and thriving inside this pyramid as old as time itself, then there was no more need for the right questions. The right frame of mind, the right anything.
There was only action.
One foot in front of the other.
Enter the unknown and see for yourself.
Experience the truth.
About everything.
Inside, the darkness stubbornly remained as he walked alone, and the ice gave way to tempered stone, almost like marble but with a soft feel that felt like he had left the tundra and stepped onto a playground surface. Dim lights flickered in his vision, and a figure in red stood still like a statue until he could adjust and see.
“It takes a few minutes,” came the voice, and now above the red neckline, Caleb saw the charm, burning green and radiant. Soothing, powerful, alluring. It banished the shadows the more he stared, and it cleared his blind spots, lifting a veil.
As close as he was to that power, to the merest fragment of the very thing that had resonated throughout the ages, he still felt too terrified to look away. Although something of its nature had been in his possession more than once (and had caused the tragic death of his Lydia, as well as nearly destroying the planet under Mason Calderon’s schemes), and he should have been used to it, he couldn’t summon any other emotion than abject fear.
Raiden kept speaking, and Caleb heard every word, but his eyes and his full attention were riveted not only on the walls and the frescoes popping into view like a child’s glow-in-the-dark stickers, but on the relics, the statues and the artifacts lovingly arranged along the descending and winding path…
…around the open center of the pyramid, which had been built around the Tree.
The Tree.
A dead, fossilized or petrified thing of monstrous beauty and sickly grace, like a twisted parody of what Michelangelo would have gracefully set in a sunlit Eden-esque scene. Hundreds of feet tall, this entrance level came in at about its midpoint, and in the gloom, backlit by the emerald-hued radiance clinging to the network of branches like diseased moss, he couldn’t see the extent of its width, or even the far wall.
“Impressive, isn’t it Crowe? You stand before the oldest living thing on the planet. Although, to call it ‘living’ may be a stretch.”
“Petrified,” he whispered.
“Almost,” Raiden replied. “We’ve had our world’s best scientists and biologists come here to examine it. X-ray spectroscopy, bark sampling, outright chain-sawing…” He grinned, teeth flashing green in the radiance. “None of that worked, of course. Can’t break it with conventional means, or rather — it won’t let you.”
“Won’t?” Caleb moved closer to the edge, where there was no railing, just a sense of a great height over darkness and gloom. The jade radiance gradually diminished into the black, and looking down, he felt like Jack at the top of a beanstalk whose base was nowhere visible.
Raiden bent down, picked up a piece of rubble. Hefted it, then tossed it high into the branches above. A flare of brilliant crimson-orange shot out and back toward the path of the toss, searing the air and causing Caleb to flinch back. Sulfur assailed his nostrils and the glare stung his eyes.