“Go on.”
“Ergotamine is a molecule that shares a structural similarity with neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and epinephrine and can thus bind to several receptors acting as an agonist.”
Sam said, “In English!”
Elise smiled, patiently. “It means the powder has the ability to affect everything the human brain perceives.”
“So is the black powder LSD or not?”
“No. But it does come from a similar fungus new to science — something that no biochemist in the world appears to have ever seen. Aren’t you happy, you discovered a new drug?”
Tom looked up from the report. “All right. So the ancient ones used to sit around tripping on this black smoke, is that it?”
“Not exactly,” Elise said.
Sam asked, “What then, does the neurologist think its purpose was?”
“Okay, I’m going to have to refer back to LSD, because it’s the closest chemical compound we have to the black smoke and the two share remarkable similarities.” Elise waited for Sam and Tom to look like they were ready to follow her again. Having received it, in the form of a slight nod, she continued. “The effects of LSD are most noticeable in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for, among other things, thought development, sensory perception, and communication. LSD appears to blur the lines between each form of incoming sensory information.”
“Meaning?” Sam and Tom asked in unison.
Elise said, “You might see the sound, hear the color, feel the sight with your fingertips, or taste the music. LSD affects all parts of your sensory perception by turning up the intensity, like if you took an old television set, and turned up the intensity to make the colors brighter.”
“Okay, it still sounds like the black powder was there to give people a trip. Are you telling me it served some other purpose?” Sam asked.
Elise swallowed. “I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m merely passing on what a leading neurologist believes.”
“And what does she believe?” Sam asked.
“It was once hypothesized that the cerebral cortex was once able to receive a different sort of information. Something close to high frequency sound waves.”
Sam asked, “For what purpose?”
Elise said, “If the cerebrum was intensified, this part of the brain might be able to transmit and receive information at a frequency that human ears can no longer perceive.”
“Are you talking about a form of telepathy?”
She nodded.
“How?”
Elise said, “Through high frequency wavelengths no longer able to be recognized by the human brain.”
“But evolution made it shrink?” Sam asked, without hiding his skepticism.
“It appears so.”
“But why would evolution remove something that would have obviously been useful?”
“It’s not telepathy in the same form as what fantasy books or science fiction would have us believe. Instead, it was more of a rudimentary means of communicating feelings or senses, such as, danger, run, hide, and feed. Simple feelings. The receiving person would then intrinsically feel the same. It would be like a sixth sense. They weren’t sending and receiving information in the form of words.”
Tom looked at Sam. “Does that sound like something familiar?”
Sam said, “Christ! Billie’s being controlled by this drug!”
Chapter Fifty-Four — The Temple of Illumination
It was approaching the end of summer and a thick layer of snow, the first major snowfall, covered the entrance to the crevasse on the plateau of Mount Ararat. Sam cleared the space and abseiled down into the lava tube. With him, were Tom and Dmitri. Dmitri of course had grudgingly agreed to join the expedition… he had no other means to find the remaining Four Horsemen.
Sam had agreed — it was worth the risk — he knew the information that Dmitri had would be critical to discovering the nature of the relic and finding Billie. He maintained a strong sense of mistrust for the man, but also accepted the fact Dmitri didn’t kill him or Tom when he had the chance inside the buried pyramid of the Kalahari Desert.
Twenty minutes later they reached the deepest part of the lava tube, where the recess in the wall perfectly matched the Death Mask. Below which, were four additional smaller recesses carved into the obsidian wall — one for each of the Four Horsemen.
Tom glanced at the dead body still lying at the very end of the lava tube. “Who’s the stiff?”
“That’s War.” Sam flicked the light of his flashlight across the room, where the thick yellow jacket was about all he could make out from the distance. “He fell to his death a number of years ago.”
“And you left him here?”
“You got a better idea?” Sam asked. “We’re trying to find Billie and this is the last link we have, so I wasn’t all too keen on letting the authorities come and investigate a murder here.”
“Suits me fine.” Tom had a strong moral compass and that included putting the need of his friends who were in trouble first.
Sam removed the Death Mask and stared at Dmitri. “Well Death, are you going to tell me what’s going to happen when I place the mask in the alcove?”
Dmitri said, “No.” His face was impassive and unreadable. His mind trapped in an event from long ago.
“All right.”
Sam placed the golden skull in the alcove. He waited as nothing happened. The skull remained there, its hollowed eyes staring out vacantly at him. Sam studied the skull. Nothing had changed. He felt it, expecting the gold to have turned hot like when War’s pendant was placed inside the recess. Yet this time, nothing happened.
Tom shined his flashlight across the skull. “Did you see anything?”
“Not a thing.” He turned to Dmitri. “Should we be expecting something to happen?”
Dmitri remained silent and shrugged. It was obvious he either didn’t know, or if he did, wasn’t going to share his information.
Tom fixed his flashlight onto the ceiling above the Death Mask. “Hey, did you see those numbers before?”
“Numbers?” Sam shook his head. “No.”
He glanced above. There were a series of Roman Numerals. Like the ones seen inside the king’s chamber of the pyramid within the Kalahari Desert, the sizes of each number changed to ensure a visual appearance of a pyramid. There were three lines of numbers, with the top being the shortest and the bottom being the longest.
Tom said, “It looks like it’s almost the same set of numbers.”
Sam looked at the photo he’d taken on his phone. “Not just similar, these are the exact same numbers.”
Dmitri said, “What a coincidence, hey?”
“What does it mean?” Tom asked. His voice firm as he spoke.
Dmitri shrugged again and Sam started to grin.
Tom said, “Do you know what it means?”
Sam shook his head. “Not a clue.”
“Then why are you smiling?” Tom asked, without hiding his frustration.
“Because I just remembered where I saw those numbers before.” Sam withdrew his handgun and pointed it at Dmitri. The Glock 31 doesn’t have a safety. His finger hovered just above the trigger. “No more games. You need to tell us where these numbers lead to.”
“Why do you suddenly think I know anything about the damned number?” Dmitri asked. “Besides, if I did I’ve already said I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Because when I clicked on the photo on my phone the digital recognition software noted three previous images were a close link. Do you know where I’d previously taken a photo of this number?”
Dmitri shrugged, treating the question as rhetorical.
“The most recent time was inside Harper Smith’s journal, where he referred to the number that, without it, the Black Smoke would be irrelevant. In the journal, there was a second note that Death sought this number as much as the Death Mask.” Sam looked at Tom, who was already in the process of tying Dmitri’s wrists together with cable ties. “But it was the first photo I ever took of that image that makes it so valuable to us now.”