That brought a momentary silence to the tent, allowing them both to hear the nearby crash of waves on the rocky coastline. Nabinger shifted uncomfortably. “There’s more going on than UNAOC is letting out to the media,” he said. “The Oversight Committee is trying to track down any other artifacts from the Airlia that might have been left here. It appears Majestic-12 wasn’t the only ones keeping secrets. There’s some talk the Russians might have had a crashed Airlia craft all these years and that some countries and perhaps even some international corporations uncovered other things the Airlia left behind and have been working on them in secrecy.”
“Damn, I thought we were past that secret stuff.” Reynolds looked at him. “You haven’t been taken over by the guardian, have you?” She had a grin on her face, but there was an undercurrent to her words.
“If I was, would I know it?” Nabinger said. “General Gullick and the others on Majestic thought they were acting for the good of the country. According to the MRI scans of my brain nothing seems amiss.”
“You said there’s word others have artifacts?” Kelly asked. “How come they’re not coming forward now that everything’s in the open?”
“They, whoever they are, lose control if they do that. Think of the economic potential if someone cracks the secret to some of the Airlia technology. UNAOC is trying, but it’s not getting the greatest cooperation. I think the Navy is trying to uncover the foo fighter base because after what the fighters did to the lab at Dulce, anyone who controlled that power would be top dog on this planet. Also, the isolationists are pretty strong in some countries and they feel UNAOC leans too far toward the progressives.”
Reynolds shook her head, but she knew that was the way people were, particularly people in power. “So what have you been doing when the oversight people haven’t been trying to use you to turn on the guardian?”
Nabinger held up a file folder stuffed with pictures and computer printouts. “I still have the high runes as a source of information. Getting access into the guardian would certainly be nice, but, remember, I’m an archaeologist.” He paused, then looked at her. “I think everyone is too worried about the future and not enough about the past.”
“That’s because we’re going to live the future,” Reynolds noted.
“But you can’t understand the present if you don’t understand the past,” Nabinger argued.
Reynolds frowned. “I thought we had a pretty good lock on the past from what you learned when you accessed the guardian. Aspasia and the rebels and the Kortad and all that.”
Nabinger slapped a photo on the cot between them, pinning it down with a coffee mug. “That’s an underwater shot off Bimini, where Atlantis, or Airlia Base Camp if you want the unromantic term the Oversight Committee has adopted, was located. I was interested in it because that must have been where the Germans got their information about the bomb in the Great Pyramid.
“The runes had been damaged, but I’ve had one of the UN’s computer experts reconstruct and digitally enhance it. I’ve got enough to work on a partial translation now.”
“And?” Reynolds asked. “What’s it tell you?”
“It makes mention of the Great Pyramid. And there may have been a drawing that showed the lower chamber where the bomb was hidden. But it also makes mention of the Kortad,” Nabinger said.
“I take it that it’s not good news?” Reynolds asked.
Nabinger frowned. “It’s kind of funny. The more I study the high runes the more I think I understand the language and the syntax, but some things just don’t make sense.”
Reynolds waited, sensing the uncertainty in her friend.
“This one panel talks about the coming of the Kortad. And the next panel gives information about the atomic weapon hidden inside the Great Pyramid. But there’s more than references to just the pyramid and the Kortad. The panel refers to other places, but I can’t understand the geographic code system the Airlia used for our planet. It’s more complex than latitude and longitude.”
Nabinger had picked the photo up again and was fingering it. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just so frustrating, uncovering one word after another, not being exactly sure of the meaning of the word, its tense, its proper syntax. Now I’ve uncovered a system I can’t crack. When I thought I was dealing with ancient artifacts and dead cultures I could bear being patient, but this is different.”
“You’re still dealing with a dead culture,” Reynolds noted.
“What makes you so sure of that?” Nabinger cut in. “One thing that no one seems too concerned about that concerns me greatly is what happened to the Airlia? Did they just disappear? Commit mass suicide after secreting away the mothership, the bouncers, and the guardian computer? Why’d they leave the guardian on, then?
“And what about the rebels? What happened to them? We know they directed the building of the Great Pyramid as a space beacon, so maybe they were the pharaohs. Maybe their descendants still walk the Earth?”
Kelly Reynolds smiled. It had been a favorite topic of speculation around the press tent. “Maybe we’re all descended to some degree from the Airlia,” she said. “We don’t exactly know what they looked like other than that they had red hair and a humanoid form. The statues on this island weren’t exactly built to scale.”
“I don’t know,” Nabinger said. “But what I do know is that whatever the UN’s Alien Oversight Committee decides to do about the guardian and the mothership is going to affect the course of human history more than anything else that has ever happened. And I’m not sure I feel much better about these UN people than I did about Majestic. The big players on the Security Council have loaded the committee with their people, and they seem to be doing a lot of talking in secret.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Kelly Reynolds said, tapping her laptop. “To make sure the truth gets out. Majestic worked in total secrecy; at least here we have some openness.”
“That’s the big question,” Reynolds said. “What is going to happen next?” She was looking down at the photos. “I’ve got a stupid question, but why did the Airlia bother to write all this high rune stuff down if the guardian computer has a record of it all? Seems kind of primitive for a race as highly developed as they were.”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Nabinger said.
“And what have you come up with?” Reynolds asked.
“I don’t know,” Nabinger replied. “I think the high rune language in many places was written by humans copying the Airlia, but I’m not sure.” He gathered up the photos. “By the way, do you know where Mike is?”
“No. He was in D.C. with Lisa Duncan testifying, but when I tried to call him from the airport before I came back here, I was told he was off on a mission.”
Nabinger nodded knowingly. “Yeah, well, I’d like to know exactly what he’s up to now. You can bet he isn’t sitting on his butt wondering, he’s doing something.”
CHAPTER 4
At the same moment that Peter Nabinger was wondering where he was, Captain Mike Turcotte was sipping a cup of coffee in one of the ready rooms on board the aircraft carrier USS George Washington.
Turcotte could feel the steady drum of the engines reverberating through the floor panels. The George Washington was the newest carrier in the American Navy’s inventory. The most recent of the Nimitz class, it displaced over 100,000 tons of water and was cruising south at thirty knots from its normal duty station in the Persian Gulf. Off the starboard bow lay the coast of Ethiopia.