“How come we haven’t heard anything from China before now?” Kelly asked.
“Same reason the Russians just offered up their crashed Airlia craft,” Nabinger said. “Probably keeping it secret for their own reasons. Or, even more likely, the Chinese don’t know they have Airlia artifacts. Traditionally, the Chinese are very reluctant to do any sort of archaeological work.”
“Remember the third foo fighter did a flyby over China,” Turcotte said. “You can be sure the guardian knows something we don’t.”
“The guardian knows a lot of things we don’t,” Nabinger said.
Turcotte looked at him. “There something you aren’t telling us?”
The professor shrugged. “Hell, I got hit with so much when I was in contact with the guardian, there’s a lot that I don’t know I know.”
Turcotte wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but he didn’t think now was a time to push Nabinger, especially with the way Kelly was acting. He went back to thinking about China. “One of those foo fighters overflew the Great Pyramid, where the rebel Airlia left an atomic weapon. Another overflew Temiltepec, where the rebels left their guardian computer. What do you think could be in China? Who left you the message?” Turcotte asked.
“An archaeologist named Che Lu. I know of her. She’s head of archaeology at Beijing University.”
“Well, whatever she has can’t be that important now,” Kelly said. “Hell, we’ll have the man himself here soon to speak for himself.”
“The man?” Turcotte asked.
“Aspasia.”
“Why do you call him a man?” Turcotte didn’t wait for an answer. “He, if we can call it a he, is an alien. Not a human. Not a man.”
The tent went silent for a few seconds, Kelly staring at Turcotte in surprise, her face turning red with anger.
Before she could retort, Lisa Duncan spoke. “How would high runes in China fit into all this? I think we need to back up and take a hard look at things with a new perspective. Especially now that we have what appears to be Chinese writing in Africa next to high runes near the ruby sphere. What’s the connection?”
“The high rune language”—Nabinger laughed —“well, we call it a language now, but actually no one knew it was until just a month ago. I’d been studying hieroglyphics, the earliest known form of writing, for many years, particularly that in the three pyramids at Giza, and I noticed that there were some markings that didn’t fit traditional hieroglyphics.
“I expanded my search and found examples of that writing at other places on the face of the planet, although I didn’t have access to data from China. But all the examples I did find seemed to come from the same root language. And the dating of the various sites indicated a written language that predated the oldest recorded language that is generally accepted by historians.
“The problem back then was trying to answer the question: How could the same written language be in places so distant from one another in an age when man was frightened of sailing out of sight of shore? Because it made no sense, no one bothered to pull together all the various high rune artifacts and sites to build a working base for deciphering the writing. Of course, now that we know the Airlia were here, it makes perfect sense.”
“Sort of like this Face on Mars thing made no sense to NASA,” Turcotte asked, “but now it does?”
“Right,” Nabinger said. “It was a question of accepting the data and ignoring the limitations of man at the time. Anthropologists have always argued how civilization began in such remote places as Egypt, China, and Central America, all at roughly the same time period. The popular theory was the isolationist theory of civilization. Isolationists believe that the ancient civilizations all developed independent of one another. They all crossed a threshold into civilization about the third or fourth century before the birth of Christ. Isolationists explained the timing by arguing natural evolution.
“Of course, now we know this most likely isn’t true. The Airlia did have some effect, and that is most likely why civilization prospered in those distant places at the same time.” Nabinger’s eyes became unfocused as he retreated inside his own thoughts. “From what I saw in the guardian, I believe that there were humans on Atlantis where the Airlia had their home base and that some of those humans escaped when Aspasia destroyed Atlantis to stop the rebels. These humans dispersed and were the ones who began civilization at various places and gave us the myth of that island.”
“Then the Airlia did interfere with our development as a species,” Turcotte said.
“They certainly must have had some effect.” Nabinger opened his eyes. “After all, they were here for over five thousand years. Atlantis had to be the place where their effect was the greatest. This one-starting-point theory is called ‘diffusion.’ Basically it means that all those civilizations were started by people from a single earlier civilization.”
Turcotte leaned forward. “Let me ask something. How did the rebel computer get into that temple in Temiltepec? And the atomic bomb inside the Great Pyramid? Wasn’t that the work of the rebel Airlia, not humans fleeing Atlantis?”
“I don’t know,” Nabinger answered. “It would seem likely.”
“Well, if Aspasia went to Mars to snooze for a couple of millennia, then where did the rebel Airlia go?”
“I assume they died out,” Nabinger said, but it was clear he had not really considered it.
“Maybe they’re snoozing somewhere too?” Turcotte said. “Maybe they’re snoozing in China?”
“Oh, give me a break,” Kelly said.
“Maybe the guardian is worried about that and level in Dulce. Maybe they recovered the bodies of rebel Airlia in the temple at Temiltepec along with the rebel computer? Maybe that’s why Guardian I had the foo fighters take the lab out. Maybe Majestic was trying to thaw the aliens out or jump-start them or whatever?”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Kelly repeated. She was pacing back and forth, the plywood floor squeaking under her boots. “Why don’t we stick with the facts?”
“Which ones?” Turcotte asked. “If any of the rebel Airlia are still around somewhere, what if they’re coming awake also? What if these two sides pick up where they left off five centuries ago? What if this Che Lu professor has stumbled onto something significant and dangerous? Based on this marker we found in the Rift Valley, there’s a good chance whatever she’s onto is linked to the ruby sphere we found, which seems to be linked to the mothership, according to what Peter just translated.”
“I don’t know what is in China,” Nabinger said. “But it could help me decipher the Airlia Earth coordinate system if I can pinpoint the location.” He had an atlas in his hand and was searching through it. “All Che Lu said was she found some high runes and she was going into the ancient Chinese tomb of Qian-Ling to investigate further. I’ve heard of Qian-Ling.” He proceeded to briefly fill them in on the mountain tomb’s background.
“The runes she found could be a whole lot of nothing or just copied religious text, as is much of what is in the Great Pyramid. They could…” He paused, his finger moving over the glossy page that showed a map of China. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. He spun around on the stool and reached into his battered leather backpack and pulled out the spiral notepad with his high rune notes.
“What is it?” Turcotte asked.
Nabinger was thumbing through the pages of his notebook, the paper filled with hand-drawn high rune symbols. “You aren’t going to believe it. I don’t believe it myself.”
“What?” Lisa Duncan and the others crowded around.
Nabinger stopped turning pages. He looked from the map to the paper several times, then up at the others. “It’s been right there all this time and I never saw it. Hell, I never looked. And even if I had looked I probably would—”