“So she’s a god?” Diana took a step back as Miriam lowered her head. Her hair whipped around, standing up straight like daggers, and with her hands at her side and the fiery aurora all around her she seemed the embodiment of Greek myth, a deadly harbinger descending from Olympus.
“Enough,” Miriam said. “We’re ready, the weapon needs to be activated. Now.”
“Why?” Diana snapped. “The comet won’t break apart for another seven years by my calculations, then we have some time after that until the first impact. We don’t need to destroy the comet, only the fragments that pose a danger.”
“Hold on,” Montross said. “Back to the god thing. She can’t touch this artifact because she — and I’m guessing the other what did you call them, Custodians? — are unable to physically interact with it?”
“No,” Caleb said. “She can touch it, and be touched…can be killed even.” He smiled. “As happened with your colleague.”
“Wait, you got one of them?” Montross perked up.
“Not me…”
Miriam shrugged. “He let his guard down, collapsed the visual alternatives and lost his grand focus, or he would have seen that ruse coming. It doesn’t matter, his part was done.”
“And you’ve seen everything now, have you?” Montross took a step sideways, considering one of several possibilities he had envisioned: namely tackling Caleb, snagging the Tablet then threatening its use — or destruction — if they didn’t power down.
She grinned. “Everything.” And with a nod, six tiny red dots alighted on Diana’s face, and several more on Montross’s heart. Sharpshooters, from somewhere in the shadows.
“Don’t try anything,” Caleb told him, then spoke to Miriam. “I’ll do it.”
“Caleb!”
He held up the Tablet, pointing it at the Custodian. “Just answer Diana’s question. Why does it have to be now?”
“We can wait,” Miriam said. “But there is no point, and the longer we delay, the less chance there will be. The alignment is now or the comet will pass out of the exact range where we can still create the bisecting interference patterns to cause its destruction. Wait too much longer and it will be protected by other planetary gravitational forces or the influence of the sun. Then we need to try again next year.”
“Okay, then if we have time….”
Miriam fumed at him. “You’re not as all-seeing as you like to think you are. You and your ‘team’, scanning for this earthquake or that little terrorist bombing, never asking the bigger questions, seeing what can’t be seen.”
“I thought we’ve done a pretty good job of saving the world,” Montross pointed out. “Again and again. We don’t need you.”
Miriam shook her head. “You can’t comprehend, but now is the time. We will wait no longer.”
“You were willing to wait until the other team found this Tablet’s counterpoint. So…”
“You’ll have to get in the chair.” Miriam pointed now, and electricity danced off her fingertips. “You or your half-brother. No more discussion.”
“Or else…?”
The dots circling Montross’s heart converged into a neat crimson disc.
“I’m not seeing my death,” he said. “So either Caleb’s going to do as you say, or we’ve got a surprise up our sleeves that even I don’t know about.”
“I’ve seen everything,” Miriam said, this time without a smile.
“Keep thinking that,” Montross challenged, then looked at Diana, standing there helplessly, afraid to move. But not to talk.
“There’s a warning,” Diana said, mustering her courage. Maybe to Caleb more than Miriam. “On the comet. The writings…I deciphered them.”
On his way to the chair, Caleb hesitated.
“I think,” Diana said, “they’re warning us to leave it alone.”
He frowned, then shook his head. “That’s not enough to tell us anything. Who put it there? Maybe it was someone with our destruction in mind. Marduk’s clan from the ancient time, covering their bases in case later descendants learned to remote view all these threats.”
“I don’t think so, brother.” Montross waved a hand at the chair, then pointed to Miriam. “There’s something she’s not telling us. I don’t trust her. Look how they went after us. They’re using us, threatening us, hell they’re going after your son. There’s no urgency, they want something else.”
Caleb snapped his head around, then concentrated. Glared at Miriam. “You’re tracking their plane?”
“Good,” she said. “Glad you found that on your own, or I was going to have to nudge you in that direction. The Tablet is already enhancing your sight. You’ll need it.” She glided to the throne-chair. “Sit, merge with it and see the nodes, the gridlines crisscrossing the earth.”
“Caleb!” Montross spat the word. “Don’t give in. This is wrong. Listen to Diana.”
Diana spoke as loud as she could, finding the strength while so many guns were pointed at her. “We have the facility at HAARP. The structures on the moon and Mars, we can prepare, we can use that Tablet if we have to, but only to shoot down the larger fragments coming our way.
“Don’t,” Miriam urged. “Listen to yourself. Your heart, you know what is true. You know what will happen if you can’t stop all the fragments. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. What even a minor impact could do.”
Montross groaned and now it was his turn to reel. He wasn’t sure if it was something she did or all this electro-plasma madness in the room exciting his senses, but suddenly he saw rapid-fire glimpses of: fiery bombardments, massive hurricanes and darkening skies, immense craters amidst demolished cities…the world on fire even as floods ravaged coast after coast.
“It has to be done, and has to be now.” Miriam said.
Caleb thought for a moment, again running through possibilities. He didn’t trust Miriam at all, but Diana’s concerns didn’t seem to make sense. The warning on the comet… There had to be a way to determine what it really meant.
The Emerald Tablet felt so light in his grasp, and the vibrations up and down his arms, reaching his spine, tingled and relaxed him to the point his mind was infinitely calm.
With a steady step, he went to the machine and took his seat. He heard protests from Diana and Montross amid the crackling of the energy outside and the humming of the chair. Without making eye contact with Miriam, whom he was sure was smiling, Caleb took a moment, and freed his mind, and focused on the objective.
Icarus. Show me…
He saw it roaming deep space, moving inexorably through cold vastness of black until the distant yellow sun appeared, growing larger and larger, and vapor and dust began to dissolve… The surface, so dark, nothing could be seen, not until…
Closer. The sun nickel-shaped and tinged orange. A tiny ringed planet off to the right, a slumbering neighbor drifting in the cosmic sea.
Still too dark on the comet’s surface and clouded with vapors and dust.
Closer.
See, see… Caleb willed it, moving his sight this way and that…until…
His eyes flew open, still seeing the last image. That of…
Son of a bitch.
…a blank screen of pure blue.
Nothing else to do. Back at square one. Whoever put the artifacts there and left the message didn’t want to be seen. Were they doing it at the time, in ancient days, to protect themselves? Or was it something else, something he couldn’t understand? Something more recent?
The bell spun, the lightning crackled. His friends watched in horrific anticipation, and Caleb was aware of everyone and everything in the room and beyond: upstairs, outside, further below. The inner workings of everything, the power centers and the communications arrays and how the dimensional devices functioned.