The Covenant of Genesis_A Novel

  “No worries.” He reached into a drawer and took out a stack of different ones, fanning them out like a pack of colorful playing cards.

  “That’ll do nicely.” This time, it was Chase’s turn to grin. “They’re not stolen, are they? Don’t want to be racking up a fortune on some little old lady’s card.”

  “Nah. Got a load of dummy accounts set up, so you just pick a name you like. Don’t use it too often, though. First unpaid bill, and alarms go off.”

  “Won’t need to, hopefully. Either we find what we’re looking for, or …” He let the unsaid alternative hang in the air.

  “Got you, mate,” said Bluey, briefly downcast. “Hey, what about your fiancée? Will she need a passport as well?”

  “Probably, but she’s got something else to sort out first.”

  “No probs. Just bring her in. All right, then—time to take some snaps!”

  NINETEEN

  Okay,” said Trulli, “where do you want to start?”

  “Good question,” Nina replied. At the engineer’s apartment, she was using his computer to run the GLUG program, cycling between it and UNARA’s survey of Antarctica, the rocky landmass hidden beneath the desolate ice cap laid bare by the probing radar beams. “It must be somewhere in eastern Antarctica—it’s the nearest place to make landfall from their settlement in Australia.”

  Trulli zoomed in on the appropriate section of the radar map, the edge of the Ross Sea on the left side of the screen, the Shackleton Ice Shelf on the right. “Still a bloody big area to cover. The coastline’s twelve hundred miles long!”

  “Let’s see if we can narrow it down, huh? You got the sea level data from a hundred and thirty thousand years ago?”

  “Give me a sec,” said Trulli, calling it up. A few clicks, and a yellow line was overlaid on the map, inland of the current icy coastline. “There.”

  “Okay, so we need to find any underground lakes within … the inscription translated as just ‘near’ the sea, so let’s say five miles.”

  Trulli zoomed in further, adjusting the program’s settings so that underground lakes showed up in a vivid false-color magenta, impossible to miss against the dull gray shades of the buried rock. “You do realize that the lake might not even be there anymore?” he asked as he scrolled along the coast. “If a glacier moved over it, it’d erase anything that was underneath.”

  “If it has, then I’m wasting my time and the Covenant’s already won,” said Nina. “But if it’s still there, we’ve got to find it.”

  “And if you do, then what? It’ll be buried under God knows how many feet of ice.”

  “We’ll have to drill down to it somehow. Maybe we could borrow your equipment once you’re finished.”

  Trulli chuckled. “Yeah, I’m sure Bandra’d be happy to do that.”

  “Bandra?”

  “Dr. Bandra. The expedition leader.”

  “I thought you were the expedition leader?”

  “I’m the technical leader,” he explained. “Bandra’s the scientific leader. As long as the project’s still officially in a test phase, I’m in charge. Soon as Cambot’s good to go, he takes over.”

  “Cambot?”

  He smiled. “My latest gizmo. Combination ice borer, mini-sub and semi-autonomous robot. Just what you need for poking about under miles of ice—and he’s environmentally friendly, too. No need to fill the drill shaft with thousands of gallons of freon and avgas to stop it from freezing up. Really cool, if you’ll pardon the pun.” His attention snapped back to the screen. “Oh, hey. Got a lake here, about two and a half miles from the old coastline.” He switched from an overhead view to a three-dimensional topographic map, the magenta blob of the lake now seeming to hang some distance above the bedrock.

  “That’s not it,” said Nina as he rotated the map to view it from other angles. “The city was in a valley, which they flooded—so the lake has to be on rock rather than ice. We’re looking for something that’s surrounded on at least three sides by the terrain.”

  “That’s not the fella, then.” Trulli returned the image to an overhead view and continued searching. “But yeah, Cambot still needs a final test before we can let him loose on a proper scientific survey, so we’re going to drill into a lake that’s not of any scientific interest. That way, if anything goes wrong we won’t accidentally screw up a million-year-old ecosystem. If everything works, then we move on to Lake Vostok. Two and a half miles of ice to drill through—should give Cambot a real workout!”

  “The only downside is that you have to live in Antarctica for weeks to do it.”

  “Well, it’ll be an experience, won’t it? And at least there I won’t be snacking all the time.” He patted his stomach. “I could stand to lose a few pounds, don’t you think?”

  She smiled. “Not my place to say. Oh, is that another lake?”

  Trulli switched back to the 3-D view. “Yep. Maybe a quarter mile from the old coastline, and on the rock to boot. Fits your bill so far.” He rotated the image. “Definitely in a valley … and the seaward end looks a bit crook, if you ask me.”

  “Could it be a dam?”

  “Maybe, but I can’t say for sure, not at this resolution.”

  “How deep is the lake?”

  Trulli checked. “Not very. Maybe sixty-five feet at the deep end.” He adjusted another setting, revealing the shape of the ice above it in translucent, glasslike form. “Some weird shapes, though. The ice on top of the lake’s mostly flat, but there’re these indentations in the ceiling. Wonder what … ah, I know!” He clicked his fingers. “Volcanic vents, that’s it. They warm the water and it rises up and melts the ice above them. Not enough to reach the surface, though—the lake’s about a hundred and thirty feet down.”

  “Volcanic vents?” Nina echoed, remembering something. She quickly went back to her notes on the inscription. “‘Tiny mountains of fire,’ of course! Can you get in any closer?”

  “Yeah, but the resolution’s not high enough to show any details.” He moved the virtual camera closer to the lake, then changed the color of the water so it too was translucent, revealing the shape of the terrain in more detail.

  “There’s something in the lake,” Nina noted, almost elbowing Trulli aside to get a better look. “See, there—something on the ground. It could be a building.”

  “Or it could be a rock,” Trulli pointed out. “The resolution’s only about fifteen feet per polygon; anything smaller just gets averaged out. And there’s still a hell of a lot of coastline to go; there could be plenty of other lakes. You ought to check everything else out before you get too excited about this one.”

  Nina had to concede his point. “Okay, okay. But mark this site so we can come back. I’ve got a feeling about it.”

  He gave her a sidelong look. “The kind of feeling you get when you’re about to find something amazing?”

  She smiled. “That kind, yeah.”

  “The kind of feeling that usually means somebody’s going to try to kill you?”

  Now she pouted. “All right, smart guy. Just mark it, will you?”

  There were indeed other underground lakes along the Antarctic coastline. But none of them matched Nina’s deductions so closely.

  She zoomed in on the image. If it really was the location of the lost city, then it was well positioned. The coastline of that era had a large bay that would give boats shelter from the fierce conditions in the open ocean, and the valley in which the lake had formed would have provided further protection from the harsh winds sweeping the continent. Given its latitude, outside the Antarctic Circle at sixty-six degrees south, it was even possible that the considerably warmer climate of a hundred and thirty-five millennia earlier would have allowed vegetation to grow. The inscription had certainly made reference to trees.

  It was the right location. Somehow, she was sure of it. And without knowledge of the recordings contained on the cylinders, there was no way the Covenant could find it. It was her discovery, hers alone.

&nbsp
; The problem was, how could she possibly get to it? She was still suspended from the IHA, so its resources were unavailable—and besides, telling the IHA about her findings would, she was sure, result in their being passed on to the Covenant in short order. Plus, Antarctica was hardly a place that could be visited on a whim. Expeditions took time and planning—and money—to organize.

  So the only way to get there would be—

  Her cell phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Hi, love.” Chase.

  “Where are you? Did you meet your friend?”

  “Yeah, we just finished. Got everything sorted, for the moment. Are you still at Matt’s?”

  “Yeah. Eddie, listen, I know where the city is. I’ve found the site in the Antarctic, I’m certain of it. We need to get there and check it out.”

  A sarcastic snort came from the other end of the line. “Right. I’ll just pop into the travel agent and get some tickets to the South Pole.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Just get over here. You’ve got the address?”

  “Yeah. What do you mean, you’ll take care of it?”

  “I think I’ve got a way. Or I will have, in about five minutes.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of Trulli reentering the apartment. “See you soon. Bye!”

  “Nina, wait—”

  She disconnected and went into the next room as Trulli took a couple of bags of groceries into the kitchen. From the brightly colored packaging inside them, she guessed he hadn’t been stocking up on fruits and vegetables. “I thought you were giving up on snacks while you were in the Antarctic?”

  “Well, I’m not there yet,” he said with a grin. “Might as well get a few home comforts for the trip.”

  “Speaking of the trip,” she began, wondering how he would respond, “can you show me your test site on the map?”

  “Sure, no worries.” He followed Nina back to the computer. The screen still showed the lake she had been examining; he switched to the overhead view and zoomed out, scrolling farther inland. “There we go.”

  She glanced at the scale. The test site was just over forty miles from “her” lake; in the vastness of the frozen continent, that was practically nothing. “What were the criteria you used to pick that particular lake? You said it was of no scientific interest.”

  “That’s right,” said Trulli, nodding. “Lake Vostok’s huge, and it’s over half a million years old, so if there’s any life down there it might have evolved completely differently, which is what the expedition’s going to try to find out. But the test site needed to be a lot newer and smaller, somewhere that couldn’t support its own ecosystem, so if anything went screwy we wouldn’t damage it.”

  “How much younger?”

  “Dr. Bandra reckoned a hundred and fifty thousand years old was the cutoff point. So we found a bunch of lakes that fit the bill, and I picked one that looked like a good test for Cambot.”

  “You picked the lake?”

  “Yep.”

  Nina put an arm around his shoulders. “Matt … what would you say to trying a different test site?”

  “What, at this short notice? It’d—” He suddenly realized where Nina was heading. “Aw, what? You must be joking!”

  “I wish I were. But really, is one underground lake that much different from another?” She scrolled the map back to the other lake. “I mean, this one’s less than a hundred and fifty thousand years old, it’s small, it’s not even that far from where you were going to go … and there might just be something absolutely incredible at the bottom of it. You can kill two penguins with one stone.”

  “I don’t want to kill any penguins!” Trulli protested. “For Christ’s sake, Nina, I’m flying out there with a five-million-dollar robot tomorrow—I can’t just say, ‘Oh, by the way, fellas, I’ve decided to change the test site!’”

  “Why not? You’re in charge. And the expedition isn’t actually on site yet, is it?”

  “No, they’re still at sea. But—”

  “So it doesn’t make much difference, does it? Just say that you reviewed the map data and found a better site.”

  “Dr. Bandra’d go absolutely mental,” he said unhappily. “And what if something goes wrong? If Cambot carks it because the conditions aren’t what he was designed for, then that’s five million dollars down the Swanee, and probably my balls on the block for it!”

  Nina pressed on. “But if I’m right, then not only do you get to test out your robot, but you also find the most amazing archaeological discovery since Atlantis. And how would you rather test your cameras—looking at bits of rock and ice or the ruins of an unknown civilization?”

  “Yeah,” he snorted, “one that’ll get me killed if I tell anyone about it.”

  “Which is why we’d need to keep it quiet until it can be revealed to the world in one go—we make it too big for the Covenant to silence. Once it’s exposed, then the genie’s out of the bottle, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Matt,” she said, moving around so they were face-to-face, “this could be the most incredible find ever. Bigger than Atlantis, even. But if we don’t find it before the Covenant, it’ll be lost forever, because they want to destroy it. We have to find it.”

  “But what if you’re wrong and there’s nothing there?”

  “Then you’ve annoyed this Dr. Bandra by changing the test site. But your robot’ll still get its workout, so you’re no worse off. And,” she went on, conviction lighting her eyes, “I don’t think I am wrong. And, y’know, I’ve got a pretty good track record with this sort of thing.”

  Trulli tipped back his head to stare up at the ceiling in resignation. “Oh, Christ. All right. I’ll think about it.”

  “Think fast, Malkovich. You’re flying out tomorrow. Oh, and we’ll be coming as well. Me, Eddie and … someone else.”

  “What?” Trulli demanded, sitting up sharply. “Oh, come on! I can’t do that!”

  She fixed him with an intense, determined gaze. “If you’re worried about supplies, we’ll bring everything we need. Hell, I’ll pay for any extra fuel myself if I have to. But I’ve got to be there. I have to see it for myself. You know I do.”

  He pressed a hand to his forehead. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. The ship does have some free space—there’re fewer people involved in the test stage than there will be at Vostok. But you can deal with Bandra when he starts complaining. And he will start complaining.”

  “I can handle him,” she assured him, before kissing his cheek. “Thanks, Matt. I knew I could rely on you.”

  “I’m just a sucker for redheads, aren’t I?” he said, sighing.

  Chase and Sophia arrived at Trulli’s apartment half an hour later. Trulli greeted Chase warmly, before regarding his companion with interest … and a hint of puzzled recognition. “I’m Matt,” he said. “Matt Trulli.”

  “Yes,” Sophia replied, somewhat dismissively. “I know who you are.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. You used to work for my husband. My late husband, I mean.”

  Nina shot her an exasperated glare as the gears turned in Trulli’s head, making him step back in shock. “You remember that part where we said about keeping your mouth shut?”

  Trulli turned to her, jabbing a finger nervously over his shoulder at Sophia. “That’s—that’s Sophia Blackwood!”

  “Yeah, I know,” Nina answered.

  “She tried to kill you!”

  “I know!”

  “The news said she was dead!”

  “The reports were premature,” Sophia told him, with a wolfish smile. Trulli backed away still farther.

  “Sadly premature,” said Nina. “Still, it doesn’t matter. We’ll be moving on tomorrow.”

  “Where to?” Chase asked.

  “Antarctica.”

  He was surprised. “And how’d you arrange that?”

  “Matt agreed to help us. He’s flying out tomorrow, and we’re going with him.”

  “Just like that?”

  She
grinned. “You’re not the only one who can be charming and persuasive.”

  “Right,” he said, sounding distinctly dubious.

  Nina wasn’t keen on his tone. “What?”

  Chase turned to Trulli. “Matt, can you keep an eye on Sophia while I have a word with Nina in private? Just don’t let her get hold of anything sharp and pointy.”

  “Uh … sure,” Trulli said uncertainly, leading Sophia into the next room.

  “So Matt’s taking us to Antarctica, is he?” asked Chase when they had left.

  “Yeah. Look.” Nina pointed out the lake on Trulli’s computer. “I think that’s where the lost city is—it matches everything I’ve worked out from the inscription.”

  “And he’s okay with changing his plans so you can take a look?”

  “Apparently so, seeing as he said yes.” Nina folded her arms. “What’s up with you?”

  “I’m just a bit worried.”

  “About what?”

  “About you.”

  “Me?” Nina said, surprised. “Why?”

  “Don’t you think you’re pushing things too hard?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, twisting Matt’s arm to get him to take us to Antarctica at five minutes’ notice. What about everybody else there? They’re not going to be quite as happy to help when three new people turn up and start pissing around with their expedition—especially when one of them’s a bloody terrorist!”

  “Matt’s in charge, and he says it won’t be a problem,” Nina insisted. “And I didn’t twist his arm. I just asked, and he agreed to help. Like he always does.”

  “And what happens when the other people on the expedition complain? He’ll get fired.”

  “Matt’s a smart guy. He’ll be able to find other work with no trouble.”

  Chase made a disbelieving noise. “That’s not the bloody point! Have you heard yourself? You’re so determined to find this place, you’re not even thinking what might happen to anyone else. Yeah, Matt could get fired—or a fuck of a lot worse. Did that even occur to you?”

  “Of course it did,” said Nina, offended—and, for a moment, uncertain about whether or not it had. It must have, she quickly rationalized. If it hadn’t, that would make her as bad as Sophia …