The Alien Element Read online

  She managed to secure funding from an archaeological society associated with her alma mater, put together a competent exploration team from her old contacts in the field, and go through the nine-month application process with the Mexican government. After today, she could continue the search for answers to her burning questions about the Kakuli people in the Yucatan Peninsula, the ancestral homeland of the Mayan people.

  She finally reached the building where the small lecture hall was located, dashed up the steps, and yanked on a polished brass handle. As the door opened on smoothly oiled hinges, a murmur of voices filled the air.

  She may have been late for her lecture, but that only enhanced her entrance. A hush fell over the crowded room. Judging by attendance, word had spread that she wouldn’t be continuing these guest lectures next year, as originally rumored.

  Eliana stopped a few feet from the open door to catch her breath. After composing herself, she strode purposefully into the room. The sound of the door latching echoed across the quiet room.

  Eliana heard only the sound of her footsteps as she crossed the floor to the lectern in the center. She took a second to carefully stow her messenger bag on a low shelf, fix her hair, and adjust the microphone down to her height.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. “I see that there are far more of you here than have been attending class for most of the semester. Many new faces. Thank you for coming. I’m sure we’re breaking all the fire code regulations.”

  Gazing up at the gathering of students, Eliana noticed that not a single seat sat empty. In fact, students even sat side-by-side on the two columns of steps leading up through the theater-style seats. They stood behind the back row and gathered at the doorways.

  No pressure, she thought. A vibration came from her messenger bag, where her phone was stored. She ignored it.

  “Since you’re already here, and this is my last lecture, you are welcome to stay. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  The tension in the room eased visibly, and Eliana saw a few guilty grins light up the young faces at the back of the room. Laptops opened, the backlit logos of the computer companies shining down at her.

  She rested her forearms beside the microphone and began the speech she had prepared. “Our topic today is a continuation of the theme of this series—how Mayan art and architecture has influenced the modern world. Specifically, in this lecture we’ll be examining what we can learn about complex societies and economics by studying the decline and abandonment of many major cities in the southern Maya Lowlands during the ninth century CE.”

  The lecture progressed from there, and Eliana fell into her groove. This was a topic she had been fascinated with since she began her career in archaeology, so it was easy to talk passionately about the details, from when the Maya entered the cultural consciousness of Western civilization in the early 20th century to the restoration of the pyramid at Chichen Itza. She showed them the jade mask of Palenque, evidence of the advanced mathematics of the Maya astronomers, photos of the codices and ancient scripts that, to this day, no one had been able to decipher or catalog in full.

  It was a topic that had recently taken on more personal color, but she kept her own theories out of it. So far she had only told Amon and a few people close to her what she’d really experienced on Kakul. She couldn’t lay her theories on her students—not without more concrete evidence—without coming off as a kook and losing any shred of credibility she had.

  An hour passed in the space of a breath. As she began to wrap up the lecture, one young woman who had been typing furiously on a laptop the entire time began to fidget restlessly. Eliana knew her.

  “Now—questions?” Eliana said.

  The fidgety girl’s hand shot into the air. Eliana tried to keep her face relaxed in a neutral smile. So much rested on a teacher’s expression. She’d been this girl once, and it wouldn’t be kind to embarrass her for her enthusiasm, even unintentionally.

  “Is the research you’re doing in Mexico connected to your disappearance last year?”

  The question stole the breath from her lungs. Eliana blinked and felt her face flush. She closed her mouth and inhaled slowly through her nose.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fisk,” the girl said. “It’s just—I had to ask. The newspapers last year said you came back wearing jade and shell jewelry and dressed in coarse-woven cloth, and I’ve heard rumors that—”

  A door opened and shut. The girl hesitated. Someone cleared their throat.

  Eliana held up a hand. “It’s okay, Margaret,” she finally said. “I suppose someone had to ask eventually. The research my team is doing in Mexico is exploratory in nature. We’re trying to map the undocumented ruins in the more remote regions of the Calakmul Reserve. That’s all. Those jungles are incredibly dense, and we believe they still may contain some interesting discoveries about the Mayans.”

  The girl’s face dropped, obviously disappointed. But she smiled and nodded, apparently satisfied with that explanation.

  It wasn’t a lie—more like an evasion. How had this young woman put the pieces together? Not even her research team had the full sense of Eliana’s suspicious about the Kakuli people. She had kept those cards close to her chest. Eliana would have to tell Renee about this student. A girl with that kind of intuition—not to mention her passion—showed promise.

  “That’s all for today,” Eliana said. “Thank you all for coming. Be sure you register in advance for the next guest lecture you attend.”

  With a rustle of bags and papers, the students all rose at once and filed toward the exit. The shy girl, Margaret, averted her face and hurried for the exit. Eliana turned to try to catch her attention, but when she turned around, she looked straight into a familiar face.

  “Renee!” she said. “I thought we were meeting later for lunch.”

  Her former mentor and current president of the University proudly wore a trim red pantsuit that reminded Eliana more of a politician than a linguist. Renee probably felt that her new position demanded she dresses the part.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I snuck in at the end,” Renee said. “I didn’t want to miss your last appearance. The students are completely enamored with you, you know.”

  Eliana couldn’t conceal the blush that crept up her neck. She changed the subject. “That girl who asked me about my research, do you know her?”

  Renee inclined her head. “Margaret Jaffray. Yes, she’s an excellent student. Made the dean’s list three years in a row.”

  “Oh, good,” Eliana said. “She’s a bright one. Might have to recruit her for my research team after she graduates.”

  Eliana grabbed her messenger bag and slung it across her body, then reached in and grabbed her phone. She had two voicemail messages, several missed calls, and half a dozen text messages. She scrolled through the texts as she distractedly followed Renee out of the lecture hall.

  “So where would you like to eat?” Renee asked.

  Eliana didn’t answer her. She wasn’t trying to be rude, it was just that the text messages absorbed her whole attention.

  We found something. Take the first flight back. You have to see this with your own eyes.

  Eliana swallowed against the dryness in her mouth. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. She looked up at her former mentor. “I’m sorry, Renee, I’d love to catch up with you but I think—I have to go. Let’s reschedule. I’ll let you know when I’m back in town.”

  Renee stopped, her hands falling loosely at her sides. “Back in town?”

  “Yes,” Eliana said, walking backward toward the door. “I’ll call you!” She turned, not waiting for an answer.

  Eliana booked a flight on her phone on the way to the airport. As the plane left the runway, she forced the hope down inside her chest, trying to keep it contained until she’d seen the evidence for herself.

  3

  Not Quite Right

  “Reuben!” Amon shouted over the electric thrum of the Translocator.

  The clamor of a f
orklift offloading boxes with a metallic clatter swallowed his voice even through his earplugs. The boxes crashed and clanked as two engineers wrestled them onto the platform, through the gap in the concentric sphere of blue-green alloy rings. Filled with steel arms, screws, nuts, rubber wheels, and other tools, the parts would be used to assemble the last of the fabricators for the lunar base.

  Ignoring Amon’s call, Reuben focused on the holodeck, where the controls for the great machine—and the particle accelerator which powered it—were located. Two floor-mounted holographic projectors cast dozens of images and models and graphs of real-time energy readouts around him like a cockpit.

  Reuben reached out to the broad glass touchscreen at the center of the control unit and tapped a button. The concentric sphere of alloy rings that stabilized the molecular disassembly and reassembly process began to spin, gathering speed until they shifted into a semi-transparent blur.

  Simultaneously, a two-hundred-foot-tall, arch-shaped array of silicone and metal nodes that extended to the vaulted ceiling crackled with energy. The noise heightened, filling the vast underground laboratory.

  “Reuben, I’m stepping out!” Amon shouted again.

  The lead engineer turned his body slightly, but his wild white hair and a holographic image of the inventory blocked him from seeing Amon in his peripheral vision. His attention was pulled back to the controls.

  Amon rubbed at his temples, frustrated. Reuben had been more distracted than usual lately. It was a private matter that he didn’t talk much about, but everyone knew that his husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s over two years ago. Lately, he’d taken a turn for the worse, and Reuben was once again showing signs of sleep deprivation and forgetfulness that were uncharacteristic.

  But wasn’t Amon the same? Maybe they could all use a break. Now that the MegaPower nuclear fission reactor was online, the pace of research and construction had nearly doubled. The last few months had been consumed with the construction and shipping of supplies—heavy machinery, mostly, but also the nuclear reactors. Now, the real work began—doing the research the Lunar Terraform Alliance had been formed to do, and figuring out if it’s actually possible to sustain life up there.

  A headache was new, though. That had come that morning while he was double-checking inventory on the fabricator parts. The fabricators were too big to fit in the Translocator, so they had to be shipped in pieces and he didn’t want anything to be forgotten.

  With a practiced swipe of his hand, Reuben locked onto the platform in Dome 2 and pressed another button. A sudden absence that Amon would never fully grow accustomed to came next as the pile of boxes seemed to energize, giving off a blinding brightness. When the light faded, the boxes were gone and the platform was empty.

  A monitor against the left wall showed that the payload had been successfully reassembled on an identical platform—minus the arch—which Dome 2 had been built atop.

  He opened his mouth to call out again but stopped himself. “Forget it,” Amon muttered.

  Pinching the bridge of his nose, he turned and walked out of the room, nodding at two guards in camouflage fatigues who stood on either side of the wide doorway. They nodded back and continued to stand, looking bored with automatic rifles slung casually over their shoulders. Theirs wasn’t the most exciting job, but it was a necessary one. The Lunar Terraform Alliance and their international backers had a lot invested in this project.

  Amon went past the stairwell, opting for the elevator to take him up the four flights to ground level.

  At ground level, Amon passed through the main security checkpoint manned by two more security guards, a replica of the security checkpoints you had to go through at most airports. A conveyor belt fed through an X-Ray detector. There was also a metal detector and full-body scanner.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Fisk,” Roger said, nodding and tipping the brim of a Rangers ball cap at Amon, who nodded back.

  Afternoon already?

  A long hall led him to the lobby of Fisk Industries. His phone showed cell signal again and he checked for a response from Eliana. Although he’d texted her to let her know he’d be at work late, she hadn’t responded.

  Looking up from the phone, Amon realized the lobby was filled with people. The traffic and noise had increased until it was nearly as bad as it had been in the Translocator lab. He groaned. It must be lunch hour already. The only thing Amon had ingested all day was coffee, so much of it that his hands had a slight tremor when he held them out, and he felt a little nauseous.

  Scientists and other Fisk Industries employees gathered in the glass and steel lobby. In addition to the Translocator project, Fisk Industries made solar panels and conducted other photovoltaic and energy research. The particle accelerator that powered the Translocator was the bridge between the two ends of the company, and they were all housed in this building—and the other buildings across the campus. They had production facilities around the world, but this was the headquarters.

  People lingered around the waterfall adjacent to the entrance, sitting on the benches there and at the tables by the café, talking amongst themselves. A woman’s high-pitched laughter bounced sharply across the lobby and wormed its way into his ear. He squinted in the sunlight. All of it grated on Amon’s last nerve.

  Seeing his people happy normally made him happy, but he was getting a headache and needed to find a quiet place to relax and maybe lie down for a few minutes.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t visited Audrey in several weeks. She wasn’t prone to chatter, which he appreciated more than usual right now. Audrey’s office was located in a quiet back corner of the first floor, also behind the security checkpoint. He decided to go back and say hi to her, and then sneak in a quick nap in his own office around the corner. Amon turned and hurried back to the security checkpoint, putting his phone and wallet through the X-Ray scanner.

  After Eliana returned home last year, the Lunar Terraform Alliance and NASA had agreed that it was everyone’s best interests to move the carbonados to a more secure facility. Fisk Industries was an obvious choice. The building had ample office space. Amon had tried to hire Audrey once, and had admired her work ever since, so it seemed fitting that she would work in his building not as an employee, but as a colleague and friend.

  In the back halls of the sprawling headquarters building, the lobby’s ruckus receded to a dim buzz, and the pounding ache behind his eyes eased. Amon shoved his hands in his pockets to still the caffeine shakes as he walked slowly toward her lab. The walls here were salt and pepper tile, with geometric green and blue designs running around the corner to Audrey’s office. He was tracing the designs with his eyes, thinking about calling the cafeteria to order lunch, when he caught sight of a small stream of red liquid in a puddle on the floor.

  His stomach clenched, and he gripped the soft cloth on the inside of his pockets with both hands. Ducking low and pressing close to the wall, Amon crept closer and slowly peered around the corner.

  The two guards that were always stationed in front of Audrey’s lab were sprawled out awkwardly on the floor. One lay on top of his rifle, his elbow bent oddly. They each had a hole in the back of their head from which the blood seeped. The wall across the hall was stained with two distinct red splatter marks. Amon laid his hand on the nearest rifle. The barrel was cold.

  A crash of glass came from inside the lab.

  Audrey!

  Amon unbuttoned the pistol holster on the thigh of one dead guard and withdrew the man’s sidearm, a black Glock. He released the magazine and glanced down—it was fully loaded. Amon replaced the magazine with a snap and racked the slide of the gun. The adrenaline now surging through his veins made his hands shake even more. He paused momentarily, considering whether or not to use the guard’s radio to call for backup.

  The thirty seconds that would take could be the difference maker. Audrey was a friend. Amon made his decision. He tapped his hip—where his ID was clipped—against the card reader to unlock
the door, and gently turned the handle, cracking the door a quarter inch. He peered in.

  In the middle of the lab, on a rectangular island with cabinets on all sides, the glass cage of a large glove box isolator had been shattered by a heavy chunk of meteorite—not the large, midnight-black carbonado sample, but a different chunky brown rock the size of a large melon which lay among the mess of shattered glass.

  On the floor, sprinkled with glass pebbles, another form lay sprawled. It was Audrey, fair skinned with a neat red braid trailing along the floor.

  Amon hurried to her side and knelt down, fearing the worst. As he reached her, she twitched and groaned, but there was no blood. Her eyes opened, flicked to the gun, and a flash of fear contorted her face.

  “It’s just me,” he said.

  She stared at him for a long moment, obviously disoriented. Then she tensed as the sound of glass crunching underfoot startled them both. They scurried behind the rectangular base of the island.

  “If I didn’t tell him where the carbonado was, he would have hurt me,” Audrey whispered.

  “Who?” Amon mouthed.

  She pointed back toward the other end of the lab where the sound had come from, patted her pocket, and gave him a weak smile. “But I didn’t give him the key.”

  Amon glanced around the island, and sure enough, a large man in black with short-cropped hair was limping around near the storage shelving at the back, where the meteorite samples were kept. The carbonado was kept in a special locked safe not twenty yards away. The man looked vaguely familiar, but Amon couldn’t place him.

  The man cursed when he saw Amon, his hand darting to his waist. Amon ducked back behind the island. Wood splinters flew into the air near his eyes.

  Gasping, Amon held the gun to his chest and rose to a squat on the balls of his feet. He only had the element of surprise. Go where he least expects.