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Authors: Stel Pavlou

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BOOK: Decipher
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Scott grinned, a touch smugly. He finished off his lecture with a simple, quiet question to the audience. “Anyone here still want to be Christian?”
 
It was sometime later that Scott found himself inside a wooden box. Clean and white, the whole approach was airy, instead of the dark and murky confessionals of Old Europe. Barely masking a schoolboy chortle, he announced: “Bless me, Fergus, for I have sinned.”
The hatch behind the grating slid back with a vicious clap. “Yes, yes. Cut the crap.”
There was a sigh, followed by a dull tapping sound. It stopped for a moment, then continued. Scott sat forward and peered through the grill at the priest beyond. He could see him rolling his eyes, while fishing around inside his black cassock for a Zippo. He was mumbling some sort of an apology to the heavens as he tapped out a cigarette.
“What're you doing?” Scott asked. The first puff of smoke drifted over. He could smell it was a good brand of cigarette. Almost certainly European.
“Calming my nerves. I can't believe the sort of hornet's nest you've managed to stir up, Richie, my boy.” He tried to spit out a shred of tobacco but it was sticking to the tip of his tongue. He brushed at his cassock. “A real big fucking mess.”
They eyed each other. “Let's eat,” Scott said.
 
They strolled across the neatly cut glade in the center of the Grove, heading for the Associated Student Body building where there were better cafeterias and a livelier atmosphere.
The Grove was a magnificent piece of parkland at the
heart of Magnolia University. It may have been March, but it felt like summer in Mississippi. The sun shone brightly through the trees and left beautiful dappled spots of shade on the ground. For the most part, the students wore shorts and T-shirts. In his priestly guise Fergus seemed to be taking it all in with the serene air of a good Catholic gentleman. Which for the most part he was.
But Scott knew him better than that; they'd grown up together, after all. Scott knew the date, time and telephone number of the girl Fergus had lost his virginity to. Fifteen years later and Scott still couldn't accept that his best friend had become a man of the cloth. And as for that girl jogging down sorority row, was she wearing any underwear?
“You're a married man, Richard, stop embarrassing yourself.”
“Separated,” Scott grunted, kicking the grass in lazy strides and digging his hands in his khaki pants. “What happened to us, Fergus?”
“You and me? Or you and Jessica?”
Scott winced at the mention of his estranged wife's name. His friend really did have this priest thing down to a fine art. Fergus had flown in from Vatican City especially for his lecture and would be going back in the morning, but somehow Scott got the impression their friendship had nothing to do with Fergus's decision to come here.
Fergus reached for another cigarette and scratched his head. “Look, Richie, that was an interesting lecture you gave, but are you honestly trying to say that the Catholic Church was involved in a sixty-year conspiracy to keep the Dead Sea Scrolls suppressed?”
“And others.”
“Absurd. We can't even keep our own clergy in order, so who the hell was supposed to be trustworthy enough to sit on that particular time-bomb? Ireland's government fell in 1994 because some priests turned out to be pedophiles. I
know
the Church is fallible.” He paused, then: “Yes, there was a conspiracy, but an academic one. I agree, it's indefensible. A gang of pompous old asses refusing to release the documents until they'd had first crack at translating them. But what you came out with today … well, I can't see the Church crumbling over that one. You know what people are like when they
hear a new crackpot theory—they ignore it. Like the one about Jesus going to Britain and starting a school, or the one where he married Mary Magdalene and moved to France—”
“I happen to like that one.”
“And then there was that half-assed theory about how he'd been trained in the mystical arts of Egyptian magic. People will believe what they want to believe. And they believe in Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
I
believe. Richie, you're throwing your career away on bullshit!”
“You're changing the subject.”
“The Church obviously means a lot to you, or you wouldn't put in this much effort.”
They faced off on the lawn. Scott still had his fists planted firmly in his pockets. His tie flapped lightly against his crisp pale-blue shirt in the breeze. He smirked. “Religion, Fergus, is like a disease of the human mind. It's like rabies. You get bitten and suddenly there's this great foaming at the mouth, all sense and reason thrown to the wind. There's a lot of shouting and then you bite someone else in all the madness and it gets passed on down the line across generations, and national boundaries. Forget AIDS. This stuff kills millions.”
Fergus simply took a long drag on his cigarette.
Scott said: “Ever heard of the Church of Simon Kimbangu?” The priest shook his head. “It's on the west coast of Africa. Simon Kimbangu was a militant who believed in democracy. The government considered him a revolutionary and arrested him, but his followers, believing he'd gone to heaven, set up a church in his honor. Prayed to him for salvation. They did any damn idiotic thing except bother to take the twenty-minute walk down to the local jailhouse where Kimbangu was starving to death. And even more insane—the church still exists today! Think about it! Why did the Crusaders lay siege to a castle at Hosen Al Akre for three days before realizing it was populated by sheep?” Scott suddenly asked innocently. “Religion, that's why.”
Fergus glowered. “Religion,” he corrected, “is the closest we can get to the beginning. To knowing where we come from as a species. And why we're here.”
“Why are
you
here?”
It was as pointed as it was grim. And Fergus's mood altered to accommodate. “I came to let you know that as of
this morning, the Vatican is the major benefactor for the Anthropology Department at Washington State. In order to conclude the deal certain prerequisites were required. One of which was to shake up the Epigraphy wing.”
Scott's face drained.
Fergus gulped. “They let you go. There's a letter already waiting for you in your hotel room. I'm sorry.” He took a final drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out with his foot.
 
They let him go. It wasn't entirely unexpected, but the manner in which they delivered the message was a jolt. Sending Fergus was a stroke of genius.
“Dr. Scott! Dr. Scott!”
Scott spun on his heel to see November Dryden racing across the lawn toward them. The sun made her skin look like fine porcelain, and her body moved with a rhythm all of its own. He tried to focus on that and shift his mood into another gear but it wasn't happening. “November,” Scott said in a daze. “What can I do for you?”
Her chest heaved as she got her breath back. She glanced nervously at Fergus, who was busy enjoying the air, and tried to smile but she was a Southern girl through and through. This was a man of the cloth and deserved respect. Scott made a mental note to himself. November was a smart young woman. He had to make sure that when the tour was over, he would set aside some money and sponsor her to get a place in college, well out of state. She'd been mentioning she wanted a shot at a research assistantship. Maybe he could swing something.
“You forgot your package,” she said breathlessly. “You know—the one from your lecture?”
November handed over a large brown paper package which Scott immediately ripped open. It contained a set of documents, photographs, articles—a whole geological report on global flooding by a women named Sarah Kelsey. But then he found the covering letter.
“What is it?” Fergus asked warily when he saw the expression on Scott's face.
But Scott wasn't about to tell him. His mind was racing as he took out the slip of paper from inside. It was an itinerary. Hotel and flight details. But the really important feature was
the handwritten note on the back. To the average Joe it didn't mean a thing, but to Richard Scott it meant the world. And that the world itself was about to have a very rude awakening.
He started across the lawn, lost in thought before he realized he'd left Fergus standing there. He turned and met the priest's gaze. “Tell the Board they didn't fire me,” he called out steadily. “I quit.”
Then he picked up the pace. Re-reading the note.
Civilization was said to have begun in the third millennium Before the Common Era, or Before Christ, with the advent of a writing system called cuneiform. Before that point, writing was thought to consist of crude scratchings and ill-thought-out pictographic symbols. Any evidence of a complex language and writing system
pre-dating
cuneiform would therefore mean a major re-think of the dawn of civilization. Every history book would have to be thrown out the window.
It would be earthshattering.
All the note said was:
Am in possession of pre-cuneiform text. Request your immediate assessment. Yours truly, Ralph Matheson.
 
Scott beckoned to November as he backed up across the lawn. “Still want that assistantship?”
“Yeah!” she replied enthusiastically. “Why?”
Scott reached into the package and plucked out two airline tickets. “Pack your bags. We're going to Geneva.”
It was still dark when she got the call. She swung herself out of bed about fifteen minutes later and had a piping hot shower. She downed a shot of
kvass
for breakfast and pulled on two layers of underwear. Her sweater was thick and heavy and her parka went taut when she zipped it up.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Long dark hair. Dark eyes. Signs of a tan and a dimple in her chin. She felt drained; this assignment was killing her. “God, you look like shit, Sarah,” she spat at herself. “Why, thank you, Sarah,” she grumbled. She tried to make the coat look a little baggier. A little less full. It was stupid, she knew. Under all that there wasn't a lot of her anyway. But it helped to show it off. “Come on, Sarah. Smile, you bitch.” She forced a grin. It hurt. How the hell had she wound up in Siberia? This hadn't been in the grand plan of her youth.
She slammed the drafty wooden hotel door shut as she went.
The 4x4 they'd loaned her for the job had seen better days, but the lights were good and the suspension held up to the mud-track roads. It took forty minutes to get from the hotel and upriver out to the site. When she did get there she found a hive of inaction. Around the periphery, trucks were still being loaded up with rubble and hauling out. But in the center, work had stopped. The cranes were idle. Floodlights lit up the equipment but she couldn't see any workers. As she climbed out of the 4×4 she could hear voices shouting instructions in Russian dialects and human whistles screeching out as the workforce tried to coordinate their efforts.
She had to trudge on foot over the mud rise, past the
Rola Corp
. sign and down to the main construction site. More lights had hastily been erected. From a distance it looked like a UFO had landed—but Sarah hoped for the Martians' sake that they hadn't. This project was so far behind that she was liable to march straight up to them and smash in their little green faces. She did not want to hear about any more delays. She just wanted to get her job done and get back to the States.
There was a bulldozer down in the pit, past steel and concrete foundations. It had stopped, but the engine was still ticking over. Slapping a plastic yellow hard hat on, she pushed past a couple of workmen and made her way to the front where all the attention had gathered. Her mouth hung open when she finally got there.
“Hey, Sarah. How ya doin'?” came the big, grinning welcome of Steve Lustgarten, the foreman. He was struggling to loop a steel cable around a thick trunk of frozen fur.
The whole scene was starting to take on primordial qualities as the steam from everybody's breath clung to the air. They were all gathered around a huge, magnificent creature that had walked the tundra long ago. At least fourteen feet high, it was staring straight at her, its eyes black and glassy, as though it was close to tears. The creature was in a sitting position, reared up on its front legs. It had an elegant, dignified expression on its face. Its matted fur was long and shaggy. It looked almost regal, frozen solid. Its ivory tusks extended out like the last vestiges of a cry for help. Its trunk was curled and it had decayed buttercups hanging from its mouth. It had been eating buttercups when it had died.
“That's a mammoth,” Sarah announced, surprised. She moved to the left and could see where part of the body was missing. It looked ripped away rather than rotted. It was hollow now, except for the remnants of a fetus. She had been pregnant. There was no smell, except for the mud and the river.
Steve grinned again, with a nod. “Yeah. Isn't she a beauty?”
Sarah was furious. This was all completely lost on her. She dug her fists into her pockets, and screwed them up into balls. “No. There is absolutely nothing beautiful about a twelve-thousand-year-old frozen elephant! You called me out here, in the middle of the fucking night to see a goddamn woolly mammoth? You gotta be shittin' me! That's precisely why I didn't want to come to fucking Siberia in the first place. I hate Siberia. I hate Alaska. I hate the Canadian north. You can't dig a fucking hole to piss in without running across a thousand fucking extinct, fucking frozen animals. If it's not mammoths it's saber-toothed tigers. You know, last year I found a fucking mastodon? I'm sick of this!”
The Russian workers couldn't speak English, but they could sense she was upset. The murmuring ceased abruptly and they all stared at the half-crazed American lady. Steve left the loop to dangle and straightened up. He was frowning now, annoyed.
“I
didn't call you, Sarah. Someone else did. Go piss
them
off. I don't get to see too many of these things.” He delved into his pocket for a camera and handed it to a Russian. “Now if you don't mind, I wanna take a picture for my kid before the museum people drag it away.” He posed like a big game hunter next to the massive creature.
Sarah suddenly felt very sorry for it. She turned her back.
She could hear her name being called, but she couldn't figure out from where. Seconds later two guys in hard-hats and big green rubber boots were waving their arms about trying to remain upright while they slid and stumbled down the black mud bank. As they drew closer she could see that the smaller, thinner one of the two was dressed in a suit and a gray Crombie. The other one was dressed sensibly. “Sarah Kelsey? Ms. Kelsey, is that you?” the man in the suit was calling out, trying to keep his hat on.
“Yes, it's me,” Sarah said frostily.
“The geologist, right?”
“Yeah.” She whirled around when she heard a chainsaw spark into life. She glanced at two of the Russians ripping into the carcass, then turned back to the men. “Are you the people who called me?”
“Yes,” he smiled. “Yes, we are.” He stuck out his hand, but she eyed it distastefully. “Jay Houghton.” He rubbed his hand absently on his coat. Perhaps it had been dirty. His eye caught something peculiar. He was like a child. “Wow, is that a mammoth?”
“I dunno. What do you think?” she asked sardonically.
“It sure looks like a mammoth.”
“Well, then I guess it must be one.”
There was more shouting as a few more Russians came tearing over the hill with an oil-drum on wheels, a fire raging inside it. Someone else carried the ketchup and the barbecue sauce. The guy with the chainsaw started cutting up steaks and slapped them on the grill mesh they had fastened to the top of the drum. Lustgarten was horrified.
“What're they doing?”
Houghton looked visibly sick. He put a gloved hand over his nose as the smell and the smoke wafted over. “Good God!”
“I thought they were museum people!” Lustgarten yelped. “They can't eat it!”
“Oh, come off it,” Sarah snapped at him with a scowl. “That's more steak than these people have ever seen. Of course they're going to eat it!”
The guy next to Houghton was laughing. He puffed on his cigar and watched with some amusement. Lustgarten tried
to stop the Russians, but they just elbowed him out of the way. Offered him some barbecued mammoth, but he wasn't having any of it. They ignored him from then on. He might be their boss, but the guy obviously had no appreciation of the finer delicacies.
Houghton coughed on the smoke. “How long has that thing been in the ground?”
Sarah was climbing the bank. She turned back. “Twelve, maybe fourteen thousand years. At the very least.”
“And they're gonna eat it? They must be crazy. It'll kill 'em.”
Sarah just shook her head. This guy Houghton was an idiot; she could tell that much already. “I doubt it,” she said. She took another step but they weren't following. Hadn't they read the report on this place? Mammoths were turning up all over this region. There was a famous case from 1902 when one had been found in a bank just down the river from here. The same river. “It was super-frozen,” she explained.
“Huh? It was what?”
“The Arctic isn't cold enough to freeze something the size of a mammoth without ice crystals forming in the blood and spoiling the meat. That mammoth was supercooled. The temperature had to be around minus 100°C. It was dead inside thirty minutes, and encased in permafrosted silt about the same time. Perfect preservation. The meat's fine. It's just … very old.”
Houghton was stunned. “How's that possible? What could cause that kind of destruction?”
“And before the advent of the refrigerator …” the guy with the cigar chipped in.
“How the hell should I know?” Sarah shrugged.
“Well, uh, you're a geologist, you must have some idea.”
Sarah wasn't listening. She was climbing the bank. Houghton eyed the mammoth again. “I wonder what it tastes like,” he mused.
“Chicken,” the other guy smirked, and puffed on his cigar.
Houghton shot him a glance. He didn't seem to know if he was being played with or not. He looked for Sarah. She was heading away from them, back to her 4x4. They climbed up out of the pit behind her. But Houghton couldn't
help but pause briefly and take another lingering look at the mammoth. Dignified even in death. “Wow.”
Lustgarten was raising his fist, directing the driver in the cab of the bulldozer to shift into reverse. There was a mechanical roar as they started to drag the animal out of their foundations. Houghton did a double take and realized they were losing Sarah. He chased after her.
 
“Ms. Kelsey! Wait up, please! This is important. This is company business.” He slipped on the mud. Tried not to land on his ass. “Ms. Kelsey!”
Ripping the driver's side door open, she said: “I'm just getting my purse, is that okay with you?” She slammed it shut again. Reached for a cigarette. The other guy accommodated with a light. She eyed him suspiciously. No wonder she didn't recognize him—he was wearing a ski mask. She couldn't see him. “Who're you?” she demanded.
“Bulger,” he said. “Jack Bulger. Chief Field Engineer with Rola Corp. We're practically family.”
She sucked down some smoke. Nodded. “Oh.”
“Gee, Ms. Kelsey, I'd really appreciate it if you could explain more about this super-freezing business,” Houghton said. He was acting like a real nerd, but he was far from actually being one. He was too slimy. She was only just starting to realize that about him. He eyed her stonily. “I'd be
real
appreciative. After all, you're supposed to be the star of the company, but just how much geology do you really know? Only the company's thinking of downsizing and I'm here on orders from the highest regard.”
She blew smoke. That had caught her attention. “How high?” she asked.
“The highest.”
A cheap test. Maybe he wasn't so stupid after all. What the hell. “Okay,” she said, leaning against the car, “all over the arctic tundra, from Siberia to Alaska, people have been finding frozen animals, hundreds of thousands of them, all caught in the middle of something, taken completely by surprise. They were running, or eating, or whatever. In any event, their deaths were not slow. They were sudden, within minutes. They're encased in silt, not ice. They were not
swept down rivers, they were entangled in masses of trees, vegetation, boulders. Real Wrath of God-type stuff. You ever read your Bible?” Houghton nodded. “Well, the only thing that could do that, about the only thing that fits the description, is Noah's Flood.
“But it had to have been more than just a flood, because most of the mammoths in this region were found eating buttercups, grasses—stuff you can only find in temperate areas. Not arctic tundra, which suggests that Siberia has moved, shifted its entire position. But we know that's impossible. However, we also know there are ashes in the silt, so there was burning. Possibly volcanoes, which would explain the extreme cold if enough dust was hurled into the upper atmosphere and obscured the sun on a large enough global scale. That, Mr. Houghton, is what my geology tells me.” She puffed again on her cigarette. “It's all in my report,” she said. “You should call up Head Office and order a copy.”
It had taken her six years on and off. Collecting statistics and working on a coherent synthesis.
In 1940, in the Tanana River, in the Yukon, Alaska, hundreds of thousands of mammoths, mastodons and bison were found in twisted, torn heaps. Piled with splintered trees and four layers of thick volcanic ash. But no mere volcanic explosion could have caused such massive destruction.
In one particular century, 120,000 years ago, findings imprinted in limestone just off the Bahamas showed that the ocean rose twenty feet above today's sea levels. Then plunged thirty feet below that soon afterward. Considering average sea levels rose between one and five millimeters a year, the recorded fluctuation was massive. And the only solution—put forward by Texas A & M University—was a sudden melt and refreeze of the Poles. But by what mechanism?
Jacques Cousteau found a series of underwater caves in the same area with huge stalagmites and stalactites—proof they were once above water. The unusual structure of the stalactites showed that a geological upheaval had occurred around 10,000 B.C. As a result, the earth's crust in that region became tilted at an angle of fifteen degrees. The caverns were now hundreds of feet below water, and one was almost
spherical in shape—an indication of one of two things: volcanic activity, or manmade underground explosions.
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