Invaders: The Chronowarp Page 16

  It took a few more questions from the Iraqi, but soon enough it was just the Eshom and me in the chamber.

  “You’re inside the captain, aren’t you?” I asked, just to make sure.

  The captain’s eyes turned a molten color of silver for just a moment. It was a terrifying exhibition, and it showed me the worst.

  “How…?” I asked, my mouth turning dry. “You were in the Swordfish when the torpedo destroyed it. That happened on the other side of the planet.”

  The captain staggered back until he collapsed into a chair. What had caused the reaction? Could I use this against the Eshom? The officer took a handkerchief from a pocket and mopped a suddenly sweaty face.

  “That was a close run moment,” the captain said hoarsely. He looked up at me. “That’s when I knew I wanted off this dirt ball. It is much too cold and wet. I despise your planet.”

  The Eshom had to be lying. Yet a part of me wanted to believe him. It made sense after a fashion. This was a wet world. I’d seen his Hell World in the vision, a hot place. Earth would be a cold and terrifying place to someone like him.

  A small part of me shouted inner alarms.

  “You murdered Tony,” I managed to say.

  “That was an unfortunate occurrence. I was still so angry at my millennia of imprisonment. I have become calmer since then.”

  I remembered my encounter with the Eshom, the feeling of an abyss-like hunger. Could one change so quickly? That didn’t seem possible. Yet, the Eshom was an alien. Aliens would not have Earthlike reactions.

  “How did you manage to travel here so fast?” I asked again. “Your being here strikes me as too coincidental.

  “It is far from that,” the captain assured me. “I had aid from the native technology. While many of the aboriginals use cell phones, many still use landlines.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “When a person holds a phone, speaking to another, there is an electrical connection between them. It is a simple matter for me to follow that electrical path.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you expecting me to believe that you have your host phone a person in Iraq, say, and you can travel through the landline in an instant?”

  “I can travel as fast as a phone signal, yes.”

  “Right…” I said, beginning to envision how it might have worked. The Eshom might have controlled a person in Alaska, had them phone a person in Washington, D.C., leaped there to that person, and later entered the captain of a base in Iraq near our crash site.

  “If you want to go home,” I asked, “why do you keep murdering humans?”

  “I…am eager to return home. I am trying to practice restraint so that I harm no more intelligent creatures.”

  That was good of him, but that didn’t jive with the earlier abyss-like hunger. Could the Eshom be tricking me?

  I rubbed my forehead. I still felt a pressure, although it wasn’t as strong as before.

  “Don’t you want to get back at the Polarions for imprisoning you for so long?” I asked.

  “The CAU field agent has an excellent memory,” the captain said. “She told me about your accomplishments and the Polarion teaching machine. You seek an ancient site. I am here to help you find it.”

  “So…so you can go home?” I asked.

  “That is correct.”

  “What about Kazz and Philemon, and the Guard ship?”

  “That is not my concern.”

  “What is your concern?”

  “I have told you. I want to go home.”

  “How?” I asked.

  He told me the procedure, and he told me how he could use my help.

  Could I believe that? The pressure had left my forehead. That meant something, although I wasn’t sure what.

  “Yes,” I said in a hoarse voice. “Bring the Iraqi back. Let me help you go home.”

  -42-

  Jenna did not return. The sergeant and his soldiers did not return. The Iraqi reappeared in the shirt and tie. He’d taken off his lab coat. Maybe the prospect of one hundred thousand dollars had accelerated his heart rate.

  The silver-haired man was a blocky individual. He had intelligent eyes and a way of pondering that let you know heavy wheels turned in his mind.

  His name was Doctor Ali Hassan. He was a famous archeologist and historian who had worked for the Hussein regime. He was one of the leading experts on ancient Iraqi history, including the Sumerians, naturally.

  Doctor Hassan returned with a sheaf of maps. He spread several on the big conference table. One map showed Ancient Sumer. I studied it carefully. None of those locations rang a bell for me. I said as much.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” Hassan said.

  I wasn’t sure how to explain it so he could believe me. Then, inspiration struck. “Which are the oldest Sumerian cities?” That seemed like a good place to begin my search.

  He thought about that, which surprised me. It seemed like an easy enough question for a hotshot archeologist.

  “Well…” he said, “if you desire the oldest as given in the oldest clay tablet, that would be the five antediluvian cities.”

  “I’m not familiar with that word.”

  “Antediluvian,” he said, “before the flood.”

  “What flood?”

  “The Flood,” he said, “with a capital ‘F’.”

  “You don’t mean Noah’s Flood?”

  “That is one version of the universal myth,” Hassan said. “Anywhere you go on Earth, you’ll find a Flood legend in early prehistory. Even more surprising, those legends usually have similar facts. One of the more common is the anger of the gods due to man’s immorality. Another prevalent motif is the one man or the one family that must save life in some fashion, most often by constructing a boat or ship to ride out the deluge. In the Sumerian rendition, it is the Flood of Zisudra. He is the Sumerian archetype of the biblical patriarch Noah. Zisudra was much like Noah. Actually, it was the other way around. I’ve debated Creationists on the topic. They claim Noah’s tale is the older story, but I don’t believe either of you gentlemen are interested in that.” He looked from me to the captain.

  The captain said nothing.

  I said, “Not today.”

  “In any case,” Dr. Hassan said, “the five Sumerian antediluvian cities are Eridu, Badtibira, Larak, Sippar and Shurrupak. You can see them on this map here.”

  He pointed at a map. I noted the cities’ locations.

  “Were all those cities wiped out in a flood?” I asked.

  “Not all, no.”

  Leaning on my elbows, staring at the map and the five cities, I searched my mind and possibly my heart for a Polarion-embedded clue.

  After a time, I straightened, slapping the table. “Not here,” I told the captain.

  He remained silent.

  “Are there any older sites?” I asked the doctor.

  “Not in the archeological record,” Hassan said. He gave me a strange look. “What exactly are you looking for?”

  I glanced at the captain.

  He remained silent and now motionless. I studied him out of the corner of my eye. The captain seemed to be radiating…something. I didn’t see that on his features, but I sensed it.

  I picked up the map and stared at the five cities. Where was this ancient Sumerian site I had to find? If Hassan couldn’t tell us…

  “Are there any wild theories?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Hassan said.

  I didn’t understand, either. I was searching for a clue but didn’t know where to begin.

  “Tell me about the Sumerians,” I said.

  Hassan pinched his lower lip. “Theirs is the oldest recorded civilization. That record, the oldest found to date, began in the Fourth Millennium B.C. They were a dark-haired people, noted for their—”

  “Where did they come from?” I asked, interrupting.

  Hassan pinched his lower lip tighter, shrugging, at last. “That is o
ne of the more peculiar mysteries regarding the Sumerians. They arrived on the scene full blown, as it were. They had advanced mathematics and other sciences. Naturally, given such a condition, many charlatans have concocted wild theories about them. I won’t tell you what the Creationists believe. But maybe you’d like to know what Dr. Reese had to say.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Hassan smiled as if he were embarrassed. “I would not bother with such a tale, but you are paying me one hundred thousand American dollars,” he told the captain.

  The captain glowered with his arm folded across his chest. It took him several beats to realize Hassan had addressed him. The captain looked up blankly, finally smiling faintly and saying, “Yes, of course.”

  Hassan seemed crestfallen. I wasn’t sure why.

  The captain seemed to divine the reason. “Let’s make this official,” the captain said with enthusiasm. “I shall write out a promissory note.”

  “No need, no need,” Hassan said half-heartedly. “I believe you about the money.”

  “But I insist,” the captain said. He sat down, pulled out a notebook from his back pocket, scribbled in it, tore out the page and handed it to Hassan.

  Hassan read it carefully. Just as carefully, he folded it in half and put it in his shirt pocket. He seemed more animated again.

  “Yes,” Hassan said, while rubbing his hands together. “Dr. Reese has concocted as wild a theory as any of them. He subscribes to the belief that the ancient Sumerians lived in the Persian Gulf. Of course, Reese isn’t saying the Sumerians were aquatic in nature, but that due to the last Ice Age, the water levels in the Persian Gulf were considerably lower back then. The five antediluvian cities were there, according to Reese. In the end, as the last Ice Age glaciers melted, the Persian Gulf flooded with water. He believes there was a great and sudden flooding in areas of the Gulf basin. This flooding would have happened elsewhere on the planet. Reese argues that here is the germ for the universal flood legends. He would go so far as to say the legend of Atlantis would tie in with the general mythos.”

  “That hardly makes sense, though,” I said. “How can he claim the five antediluvian cities were in the Persian Gulf when those cities are ancient sites on the mainland?”

  “Reese would explain it like this. There is a city named York in England and a New York in America. Many colonists from the homeland name places in the new land exactly what they were in the old. That is a human trait. According to Dr. Reese, the precursors to the Ancient Sumerians fled the flooding Persian Gulf region. They’d already developed their culture and now rebuilt their destroyed cities, giving them the old names. It is a rather elegant fable and answers many Sumerian mysteries.”

  “But you don’t believe it?” I asked.

  “No,” Hassan said. “I am a highly respected historian. I do not subscribe to such outlandish tales. Yet, you seem to like it.”

  The intellectual dig didn’t bother me. Was the idea outlandish? A Homo habilis stealing my Galactic Guard ship was outlandish, yet it had happened.

  “Where exactly do you think the antediluvian cities would have been situated?” I asked.

  The captain turned his head, regarding me. Some of the radiating sensation seemed to dissipate at that point.

  “Well…” Hassan said, dubiously. “Let me see your map.”

  I handed it to him.

  Hassan set it on the table, frowning severely. Finally, he took a pen out of his pocket, clicked it and began to draw small circles in the Persian Gulf. He even named them, using the pattern of the five named cities on their sites. Once done, he handed the map back to me.

  I put the map on the table just as Hassan had done. I could already feel a stirring in my mind. I believed I was on the right track. My mouth was dry as I stared at the marked-in possibilities. The circles could be no more than that: possibilities. And yet…could the precursors to the Ancient Sumerians have lived down there during the last Ice Age?

  The Polarions had built the Greenland base when the far-northern Earth had been warm. Argon had called present-day Greenland Thule. Yet, that hardly made sense given Hassan’s explanation. If Greenland had been warm, that would be the opposite of an Ice Age, which would be starkly freezing.

  I kept staring at the map nonetheless. During an Ice Age, with more of the Earth’s waters locked in glaciers, the shorelines around the planet would naturally be lower than they were now. Why wouldn’t people have built cities at those ancient shorelines?

  “Well?” the captain asked, maybe more harshly than he’d intended.

  Dr. Hassan flinched, looking troubled.

  “Here,” I said, actually believing I’d discovered something. “I need to go here.”

  All three of us stared at my finger on the map, pressing against an area of the Persian Gulf.

  -43-

  After my absurd pronouncement, the captain moved swiftly.

  He escorted me back to the Hummer, minus Jenna and her guards, and off we went, back to the American compound. Soon enough, I found myself in a cell with a cot and stainless steel sink and toilet. No one guarded me. The bars did that. I wondered at the captain’s abruptness. I wondered why I was being held incognito.

  I didn’t see Jenna, didn’t talk to a soul.

  I lay on the cot with my hands behind my head. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that I’d made a grim error in pointing to the location. Given the possibility I’d really found an ancient site, I shouldn’t have told the Eshom.

  I slept eventually and found food in a tray upon waking. I devoured the food and slept again soon thereafter. My body must have needed it. Maybe my mind needed it, too. The slaughter of the Ukrainians and the crash landing—

  I sighed when I woke up the second time. The knife battle with the Ukrainians had been bad. There were no two ways around that. Even though the Ukrainians had worked for Hap, they had been Earthmen.

  I wondered what the monkey alien was doing now. I thought about Kazz and Philemon, Rax and Debby.

  Debby and I shouldn’t have fought so much. We should have been kinder to each other. I’d been crazy about Debby six months ago. Why had things changed so much between us? Was that the way of men and women, or did the two of us just not get along anymore?

  I’d had friends who told me a guy should get to know a girl for at least six months before he made hard and fast judgments about whether they were good for each other. Six months gave one time to see if the other person had a crazy side.

  Debby definitely had a crazy side. We’d argued fiercely the last few weeks. Before that, we’d had spats. What couple didn’t? Did that mean I should dump her?

  That seemed like such a callous word. Whatever I decided about Debby, I didn’t want it to be callous. What did she think? Was she worried about me? Was she glad I was gone?

  No. I didn’t believe that.

  As I lay on the cot in the dark, I thought about Jenna, too. If I chased her, and let’s say I caught her, would she and I be at each other’s throats in six months? How did you know if a woman was right for you? How could you tell what a woman would be like ten years from now?

  I guess you couldn’t know. It was a gamble, a throw of the dice. Sometimes you won. Sometimes you lost, and sometimes you lost your shirt in the process. I knew because I’d been divorced.

  The main door to the cells opened and lights came on.

  I sat up.

  The captain walked into the main room alone. What had taken him so long to show up?

  He studied me through the bars. He looked bad, used up. His face had lines that hadn’t been there before. He had bags under his eyes. Those eyes were bloodshot.

  “You’re eating up the captain,” I said.

  “It is a temporary process,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay.” Did the Eshom think I believed that?

  “I’ve decided to let you try for the chrono—” He cut himself off.

  “The what?” I asked. “I’m supposed to look for a g
iant watch?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said. He looked down, shrugged, and pulled a piece of paper out of a briefcase at his feet. He handed the paper to me.

  I unfolded it. It was a drawing of a complex piece of equipment. A man was drawn beside it in order to show the scale. The thing was the height of a man with a flower thingy on top and various mechanisms along the tubular side.

  “You expect this thing to be down in an ancient Sumerian fairytale city in the Persian Gulf?” I asked.

  “More importantly,” he said, “you think that.”

  Did I? Maybe. I hadn’t fully decided.

  “What did you call it?” I asked.

  “A chronowarp,” he said.

  “That sounds cool. What does it do?”

  The captain stared at me, finally saying, “Bends, accelerates and slows down time among its various functions.”

  I lifted the paper with the drawing. “And this can do all that?”

  “If it still works,” he said.

  “No. Not even the Polarions could have something so small do all that.”

  He hesitated before saying, “You’re right. The chronowarp is a component to a larger machine.”

  “The chronowarp must be the critical piece, though. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” he said, sounding reluctant. “You are right.”

  “If you get this…chronowarp, you’re going to leave Earth and never come back?”

  “Yes,” he said, with greater conviction this time.

  “What if I don’t get this chronowarp for you?”

  “Let us not indulge in childish displays,” he said. “You find and bring me the chronowarp, and I will give you Jenna.”

  “You’re holding her?”

  “The CAU is holding her. They believe she may be a traitor to the cause.”

  “Because of what you told them about her?”

  “Does it matter why they believe what they do?”

  I decided it didn’t. The key was that I wasn’t going to get anything done in the jail cell. If the Eshom let me out…that was going to be his last mistake.