The Auriga Project Page 10

  The orchids had no medicinal use, but they were beautiful and Ixchel admired them. This time, Eliana was more careful. She reached out and grasped the stem and, using a sharp rock she fished from the river, she cut two and placed them in her basket.

  She walked back toward the trail, going straight through the trees instead of back along the river to the worn-down laundry area. She stepped slowly, enjoying the fresh mossy smells and the feel of the soft lu’um between her toes. She searched the ground for feathers. Most of the birds here were very small, so the women treasured large, brightly colored feathers. Eliana picked up a green one and wound through the trees absorbed in the search for more.

  When she looked up again, she didn’t know which direction the river lay. Straining, she heard no burble or rush of water. The forest was deeply silent.

  When she first arrived, Eliana had been terrified of being alone in the jungle. Citlali had explained that there was nothing to be afraid of. When Eliana gave it some thought, she could not recall having seen any sign of predators in her many weeks in Kakul. Apart from the wild turkeys, a few birds, and the jaguar on the night of the sacrifice, she hadn’t seen any other animals.

  Now, rational or not, her fear of the forest returned. Swallowing hard, she fought down her panic and forced herself to stop spinning in circles. She looked up through the canopy and saw that the sun was rising to her right, in the direction of the ocean. She put the rising sun to her left and walked south, paying closer attention to her surroundings. After a few minutes that seemed to last an eternity, she came out of the trees onto a trail. It was narrower than the trail leading to the laundry spot.

  Looking down the trail, she saw thick foliage and made out the shape of an archway overgrown with vines, hidden among the vegetation. Had her eyes not been trained to spot hidden structures, to piece shapes in the dirt into imagined artifacts in her mind, she might not have given it a second thought.

  Now, she couldn’t unsee it.

  She had stumbled on a gateway to Uchben Na.

  The reactive part of her mind screamed at her to turn tail and flee like a frightened child in the opposite direction. Back into the woods, for chrissakes, anywhere but Uchben Na.

  Yet her logical mind, the archaeologist in her, was intrigued. She had never seen the stone city in the daylight, and the sun sparkled through the canopy so beautifully. What did those relief carvings on the inside of the archway depict? Who spent so much time and loving energy to carve them?

  Stepping around a crumbling column supporting the deep arch, Eliana pushed aside a handful of vines. She saw a hand, a berobed set of legs, perhaps a sandaled pair of feet. As she pared back the vegetation, the full figure came into view. Instead of a face, the figure’s head was covered in a circular mask—a helmet of some kind? And a floating ball hovered just over his shoulder.

  Eliana’s brow scrunched down. The vines and fungus growing on the wall made the relief difficult to see. Its outlines were weathered and worn. If she had the time and the tools she could cut away the vines, expose the relief, and carefully scrape off the moss until the picture became clear once more.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said a deep voice in the language of Kakul.

  Eliana jumped. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. Chief Dambu stood on the city side of the arch. The scabs were gone where Amon’s ring had blasted him, and off-colored scars remained, marring the intricate designs of his tattoos. Eliana nodded.

  He approached on sandaled feet that padded as quietly as a jungle cat, until he loomed over Eliana.

  “What’s in your basket?” he asked.

  “Presents for…uh, for Ixchel,” she said.

  He grunted. He reached out to put his hand on her shoulder but hesitated and let his arm fall to his side. He circled around her, back to his original position. Beyond him, Eliana saw the cornice of a small, square structure with a flat open area atop it. Its stairs had been crushed by a toppled statue whose head had tumbled three feet from its body. Eliana could make out no features on the face of the statue either. Apart from a few cracks from the fall, its surface was perfectly smooth, and not because its edges had been worn down by the weather.

  Dambu took a step closer. Eliana involuntarily stepped back.

  “What…” she said, casting about for something, anything to talk about. “What are you doing here?”

  “Searching for Xucha.”

  Had he lost his mind? Eliana didn’t know how to respond.

  “My ancestors carved these walls,” Dambu said after a moment, reaching out and letting his fingers caress the vines and the reliefs hidden beneath them. “They built this city.”

  “What happened?” Eliana asked.

  “They disobeyed Xucha. He brought a plague down and banished them from the city. He blotted out the sun and punished them for their actions.” The chief exhaled heavily through his nose. “Like I was punished.”

  “You mean…your son?”

  He dipped his chin sadly. “He is dead because of me.” Then he pulled his shoulders back and gazed up at the underside of the arch.

  She followed his gaze to where the vines ended and the arch curved across to its other side. At the center of the curve, a carved triangle pointed across the arch to two orbs of distinctly different sizes—a pyramid pointing at two moons.

  “And yet,” Dambu said, “you live.”

  Eliana glanced around. They were alone except for the soft buzz of insects and the occasional chirp of a bird.

  “Ixchel is waiting for me,” Eliana said. “I have to go.”

  The chief said nothing. He remained still as she hurried away from him, down the trail with Uchben Na at her back. Once, glancing over her shoulder, she saw him staring after her, his large form dwarfed by the ancient, partially concealed stone structure. When she looked back a second time, he was gone.

  12

  Breaking and Entering

  Amon called Reuben back twice more, but the line went straight to voicemail.

  He covered his face with his hands and fell limply from the chair to the cold concrete floor. He lay there and replayed in his mind the moment he reached for Eliana, the look of shock and awe on her face, and the feeling of slamming into unforgiving steel.

  When his back couldn’t handle the hard floor any longer, he sat up and glanced at the digital clock on the wall. It was midnight. When the digital numerals jumped from 12:00 to 12:01, a curious idea struck him.

  A desperate idea.

  His eyes darted between the transponder prototype and the clock, and back again. It was a new day. He inhaled, holding his breath for a suspended moment. He let it out. It was a new day, and his desperate ideas were all he had left.

  It only took a couple hours to connect the transponder to a small digital clock using a wire and electrical connector. It was even clunkier, this prototype extended from a prototype. He chuckled nervously. Streamlining their products had always been Reuben’s specialty.

  However, it took another three days of tireless developing, testing, and tweaking to build the software needed to activate the Hopper automatically and integrate it with the timer. The control unit was missing all sorts of protocols required for automation. He’d have to be very, very specific for it to work well, so he hard-coded the translocation destination into the forked version.

  His new timer-activated prototype passed the basic tests his engineers had written for it, plus a few more he wrote himself to make sure the new timer features were working properly. He supposed that meant all systems checked out.

  Looking at the screen, his vision swam. Whether the dizziness was a result of a lack of sleep or the fact that he only had a handful of protein bars left, he couldn’t be sure. Maybe both.

  There were risks, of course. No one was able to double check his work. He could have a blind spot in his tests. The clock could fry in the translocation. He could drop the transponder or step on it, or any number of other tiny casualties.

  Not to mention real-w
orld repercussions. He could be incarcerated for breaking into a NASA facility, even one he formerly had clearance to access. If they caught him or he didn’t manage to find a way to isolate the meteorite sample for the translocation back into the lab—well, he kept himself from wandering too far down that road.

  The phone buzzed.

  “How you doing in there, Amon? Hungry yet?” Fowler asked in a crooning, sickly sweet voice when he answered the phone. She had developed a nasty new habit of checking in with him at 7 a.m. each morning. She was five minutes early today.

  “I have enough organic, locally sourced smoothies to swim in. If I had a bathtub, I could turn my dream into a reality.”

  “You won’t last forever,” she said.

  “Like hell I won’t.”

  “You know we could blow down these steel-reinforced doors any time we want to, right?”

  “Then why don’t you? Does Montoya have bad aim?”

  She repeatedly tried to talk him out of the lab. Amon’s refusal had become the kind of familiar banter you repeated with friends who knew you always took the same stance on a certain political subject, a kind of game they played together, repeating it for different variations of the same outcome.

  But at least she called. Truth be told, he looked forward to the brief moments of human contact, even those full of veiled threats and sarcasm. Lucas, who spent much effort early in Amon’s isolation to maintain close contact, hadn’t rung since Reuben spooked. Amon knew what it took to serve as CEO of Fisk Industries, how much time that role consumed. Especially when times were tough.

  So he didn’t begrudge Lucas. Times were the toughest they’d ever been. Amon wanted to be there for his employees, for the company, but his absence couldn’t be helped. So he was glad it could be Lucas instead.

  Amon waited for a while after Fowler disconnected the call to increase the chance that she wouldn’t be in hearing range when he activated the Hopper. The high-pitched whine of the machine charging up wasn’t unusual. Amon often spun it up to run diagnostic tests. But he was worried she would suspect the worst and didn’t want to give her any advantage if it was within his power to prevent doing so. If she somehow divined that he’d gone through the Translocator this time, there was nothing to keep her from taking more drastic steps to end her siege.

  Finally, Amon set the timer for forty-five minutes, hoping that gave him enough leeway. The Hopper came to life with a squeal, and he walked into the sphere, the transponder in his pocket already counting down.

  He felt the familiar jolt, closed his eyes against the light, and when he opened them again he was standing in the middle of the east wing women’s bathroom on the first floor of the NASA facility.

  It smelled like antibacterial soap, the kind you could buy in bulk for $1.29 a gallon. He sniffed. NASA needed to stop being so cheap. Millions of dollars of research equipment lived in this building, and they refused to shell out for nice soap.

  He chose the women’s bathroom because there was less chance of crossing paths with another person when he reassembled. NASA had managed to attract some top female talent in recent years, a far cry from their male-dominated inception; Amon’s company often competed with them to recruit talented young scientists. But apparently, the riveting field of meteorite studies didn’t attract many females.

  He peeked out the door of the bathroom and ducked back in when he saw shadows. Getting to the one woman he did want to cross paths with while he was here wouldn’t be difficult—as long as he was careful. Audrey’s office was located down the hall.

  During his visit six months ago, when he mentioned in passing how a rare gem like she’d found would make a great ring to replace the one Eliana had lost, Audrey had given him the sample she took for her own personal collection. Not exactly in line with departmental policy. Amon had initially refused, but Audrey insisted. After all, they were friends. What was a fragment of space rock between friends?

  He peeked out the door again. The white-tiled hall seemed empty now, quiet. He stepped quickly around the corner and almost ran into a security guard.

  “Hello,” Amon said, nodding to the man. He was skinny, young with a sharp chin. Amon moved briskly past him, trying to act like he belonged.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” the guard said. “Where’s your badge?”

  “Sorry?” Amon said, patting at his clothes like he was looking for it. “I must have dropped it. I’m a guest of Audrey Murphy. Her office is right there.”

  The guard’s eyebrows scrunched into a V shape. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re Amon Fisk.”

  Amon sucked in his breath through his teeth. He nodded.

  “I thought you were locked up in your basement or something.”

  “Heh. Can’t believe everything you see on TV.” Amon shrugged, backing away. “I really must be going.”

  “Well. I…”

  Amon slipped into Audrey’s office and leaned his back against the closed door.

  “Amon!” Audrey said, standing from her desk, her frizzy red hair swinging in a loose ponytail. “I thought I heard your voice. How did you get in here?”

  The guard banged on the door. “Ms. Murphy?”

  “Help,” Amon mouthed.

  Amon sank into a chair facing her desk while Audrey pulled the door open and leaned her body against the door frame. “Hello, Barry. What can I do for you?”

  “Is everything okay, ma’am?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “I need to see his guest badge.”

  “Oh. I think he dropped it on the floor. You have it there, don’t you Amon?”

  “That’s right,” he said, pretending to reach down under the chair. “I’ve got it.”

  Barry hesitated. “Well…”

  “Thanks so much, sweetie.” She closed the door in his face.

  Barry waited for a moment. They saw his silhouette reach up to knock again through the frosted glass in the door. But he seemed to change his mind, and they listened to the sound of his footsteps carrying him away down the hall.

  “What’s up with them?” Amon asked.

  “Ugh, I don’t even want to talk about it. New agency policy. The extra cost for rent-a-cops is coming out of our budget. It’s unbelievable. We can’t even afford to buy nice soap for our staff bathrooms, but we have to pay for them.”

  “Audrey, I need your help,” Amon said. His hand brushed over the awkward bulge of the transponder in his front pocket.

  Audrey pushed her glasses up against the bridge of her nose with one finger and squinted at him. “Is this about Eliana?”

  He nodded. “You remember that meteorite sample you gave me? For her new ring?”

  “Of course.”

  “I suspect that’s what caused the Translocator to malfunction. It interfered with the targeting process somehow. I’ve been trying for weeks to pin down her location, but I can’t do it without another meteorite sample to test against.”

  “By golly, that’s a wild theory.”

  “That’s what Reuben said.”

  Her eyes widened. “Reuben,” she breathed. “Is that why he contacted me and tried to visit? You should have told me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to put you in a position where you had to cover for him.”

  “But…” she said. Her lips parted, and she glanced to the side, reasoning through the problem like the scientist she was. “Carbonados like the kind found in that meteorite are a result of shock metamorphism. The shockwaves and heat of a high velocity astronomical impact turns the carbon deposits in the meteorite into black diamonds. They’re rare, and the polycrystalline structure is incredibly durable, but I don’t see how they could interface with electronics.”

  Amon threw his hands up. “It’s the only working theory I’ve got right now.”

  She pursed her lips. “You’re lucky you came early. Almost no one else is here yet. Come on.”

  He followed Audrey to a familiar clean room made almost entirely of glass and metal. In
the entryway, they donned latex gloves, face masks, slip-on covers for their shoes, and lab coats so that only their eyes were visible.

  The dress code was protocol, Amon knew, but it was also better this way. If someone else walked in while they were looking for the meteorite they needed, there was less chance anyone would recognize him like the guard had.

  In the next room, a checkerboard of fluorescent lights flickered on one by one, chasing the shadows away. The lab’s floor plan was a rectangle divided into two equal squares. The far square housed six distinct testing areas separated by glass walls. In one, an integrated system of glove box isolators meant to reproduce atmospheric conditions found in outer space stood empty.

  The near square, in which they stood, was used for storage. Sparse and spacious, glass-doored chrome cabinets lined the left wall, housing thousands of meteorite samples in individual hermetically sealed containers.

  Audrey went straight to the corner, opened a bottom drawer, and carried a box the size of a small fish tank to a chrome table in the middle of the room.

  “Here it is,” Audrey said. “HB-Z404.”

  She removed an oblong rock with gloved hands and dragged over a microscope. The size of an overlarge football and pockmarked with small craters, the meteorite sample weighed nearly thirty pounds.

  “This is the same one you took the original sample from?”

  “That’s right. It’s truly an amazing find. Before we discovered HB-Z404, the only carbonados we’d found came from Brazil and parts of Africa. They dug this one up deep in the ice of Antarctica. It’s ancient, and the meteorite was so big they only sent me a small chunk of it.”

  She scraped a few bits onto a glass slide and placed it under a nearby microscope. “Nothing unusual about the polycrystalline structure,” she said. “The quality of the material is amazing, I’ve never seen another carbonado so clear. Usually, they look more like coal than the diamonds we’re used to. But this one seems like a normal diamond to me. Are you sure it was her ring?”