Area 51: The Reply-2 (10 page)

Che Lu stood still in the dilapidated store, watching her young charges buy food for the journey, as she listened to the faint echo of a phone ring on the other side of the world. Finally there was a click, and a distant voice spoke in English.

"This is Peter Nabinger. I'm away from my office, but I do check my machine daily. Please leave your name, number, and a short message and I'll get back to you as quickly as possible."

There was a beep and Che Lu spoke in hushed English. "My name is Professor Che Lu. I am the head archaeologist with the Imperial Museum in Beijing. I understand you can read the high rune language. I have oracle bones in my possession that I believe are inscribed in that language. They were found near the Imperial Tomb of Gao-zang at Qian-Ling. I am going into that tomb. I believe 89

the tomb may be connected with the Airlia somehow. If you wish to find me, I will be there."

She put the phone down and turned to her students. "Let us continue on our way."

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It had analyzed the data, received a little over three days ago, quickly, in less than four seconds. The various courses of action, though, were more difficult to determine. More data had been needed. Power had been allocated to sensors, and the wealth of transmitted electronic material that flowed out of Earth's atmosphere had been the target. That took time, and when it was done, there was no clear-cut answer, only probabilities.

The probabilities were weighed and the machine made a decision. A message had been sent to Earth in reply, then the master program was activated. It would take time for the program to run its course.

Waiting didn't bother it. First, because it wasn't alive and second because it had spent millennia waiting to activate the master program. A few more days would not matter.

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Lisa Duncan handed a file folder with a red top-secret cover to Mike Turcotte, then took the seat across from him. They had the entire forward section of the specially modified Air Force 707 to themselves. Behind them the bulk of the aircraft was filled with communications equipment and the military personnel who manned it.

Turcotte picked up the folder and thumbed through. He glanced up as he read the first sheet. "When did you find out there was a transmission to the guardian?"

"Just now," Duncan said. "I've been so busy reporting our find to UNAOC and getting us this flight back to Easter Island that it was my first chance to catch up on things."

The plane was currently somewhere over the Indian Ocean and flying east.

They'd left UN Forces securely holding the Terra-Lei compound and UNAOC

scientists cautiously puzzling over the strange ruby sphere.

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"It just got released worldwide," Duncan added.

"Great," Turcotte said. "Sometimes I think we'd get better intelligence if we just watched CNN."

Turcotte looked at the second page and read the block letters of the message from Mars.

GREETINGS

WE ARE OF PEACE

ASPASIA

END

"What the hell does this mean?" Turcotte asked.

"That's the part of the message that was in binary and obviously meant for us," Duncan said.

"Aspasia?" Turcotte read out loud. "He's long gone."

"Maybe the computer on Mars doesn't know that. Maybe it's just reacting to the message the guardian sent out and playing back a recording. The important thing, though, is that we now have communication with the computers."

Turcotte turned the page and looked at the photo of the Face on Mars. The next page had a summary of information about the Cydonia region.

"This is some weird stuff," he said.

"Certainly not what anyone expected," Duncan said. "Another guardian computer on Mars?"

"Besides the one we know about under Easter Island," Turcotte said, "there was one from Temiltepec that got destroyed in Dulce. Who knows how many of these things there are? Why did we have to wait to get this?" Turcotte asked.

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"Why didn't we get informed before UNAOC made it public?"

"UNAOC didn't want any leaks."

"So they don't trust us."

"You keep talking as if you weren't part of UNAOC," Duncan said, leaning back in the swivel chair bolted to the thinly carpeted cabin floor.

"I'm a soldier in the United States Army and I've been ordered by my chain of command to do this. I'm not happy about it, but there wasn't a happiness clause in my enlistment contract." He looked at her. "You had a seat on Majestic-12.

Were you a part of that?"

"You know I wasn't," she answered, a dark line appearing across her forehead.

Turcotte held up his hand. "Hey, don't get upset. I'm just a dumb soldier and that was a rhetorical question. I know you weren't part of what Majestic was doing. But in the same manner I'm not part of what UNAOC is doing." He pointed at the top-secret cover sheet. "This tells me UNAOC is starting to do the same thing Majestic did; thinking it knows better and keeping the truth a hostage to their own aims, even if those aims are public relations."

"You don't trust UNAOC?" Duncan asked.

Turcotte stared at her hard. "Do you, Lisa?" It was the first time he had ever used her first name. If she noticed, there was no indication.

"No, I don't. They didn't bother to brief me on the crashed craft the Russians gave up to UNAOC. Now, that simply might have been a bureaucratic oversight, but then again it might not

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have. Our experiences the last two weeks have made me a bit more paranoid than I was."

Turcotte laughed. "You were pretty paranoid when I first met you."

"I was doing my job." She pointed at the folder. "I'll tell you one thing about that message, though. It will give the progressives a shot in the arm, and UNAOC is solidly in their camp."

"Why?" Turcotte asked.

"The UN has to be. It's an organization that's trying to bring the world closer together and foster peace. This whole Airlia thing could be the catalyst for that."

Turcotte snorted. "What, a computer says 'We are of peace' and we're supposed to believe it?"

"We'll be at Easter Island soon," Duncan said. "Let's see what's going on when we get there. I don't know if it's going to matter much whether the computer says it's of peace or not, since there's not much it can do on Mars."

"Yeah, well, the one on Easter Island sure did a number on the lab in Dulce using the foo fighters," Turcotte said, "and they're talking to each other."

"Better look at the last page of the report," Duncan said.

Turcotte flipped the page. "Hell, the damn things are flying again," he remarked as he noted the report on the strange flight of the three foo fighters.

He reflexively looked out the small round window next to his seat, half expecting to see a foo fighter flying off the plane's wing, but there was nothing but blue sky.

An officer stuck his head in the compartment.

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"Ma'am, there's been a reply from the Easter Island guardian to the message from Mars."

"The text?" Duncan asked.

"The entire message was in the same cryptic format that we still haven't been able to figure out from the first message," the officer said. "No specific message for us. Humankind, I mean."

"Great," Turcotte muttered. "So now they're talking to each other and we have no idea what they're saying."

Peter Nabinger was looking at the explosion of data the sensors ringing the rim of Rano Kau's crater had just picked up from the Guardian. This message was much longer in duration than the first one, lasting almost a full three minutes of highly compressed data.

Nabinger paused as he reviewed the incomprehensible numbers and letters of the reply. They still hadn't deciphered the first one yet. Nor had they been able to decipher the message sent from Mars, other than the binary part. Nabinger stared hard at the screen, scrolling through, looking for anything that might be familiar or indicate that the computers were using the high rune language.

After twenty minutes he pushed back from his desk in disgust. This wasn't his field and wasn't what he should be doing. He felt like he was missing something important. He shoved his spiral notebook of high rune translations into his leather backpack and stood up. He walked out of the UNAOC operations center and went to the press tent, his mind a fog of swirling letters and numbers.

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"Things seem to be jumping," Kelly Reynolds greeted him as he came up to the entrance to the tent. The other reporters were at the UNAOC operations center, waiting to hear the official word if anything broke on the latest message. Kelly knew that any official word would come out of the UN in New York, so she'd stayed at the tent, hoping that Nabinger would show up.

She joined him and they walked toward the rim of the crater overlooking the Pacific. From their vantage point they could see the entire island. Roughly triangular in shape, Easter Island was less than fifteen miles across at its widest point. It had been given its English name by a Dutch explorer who happened to land there on Easter Day. Looking down, Kelly could see one of the ahus or stone burial platforms that supported a row of four of the large megaliths. Each was over thirty feet high and weighed over twenty tons. It had always been a great mystery not only how the statues had been moved to their locations from the sides of the volcano where they were carved, but why they were carved in the first place.

"Do you think the Airlia helped move the statues?" Kelly asked, sensing Nabinger's dark mood.

"Huh?" Nabinger looked down. "No. It's been proven that using trees as rollers and ropes and a system of pulleys, the early islanders could move them."

"But they do represent the Airlia?"

"A legend of the Airlia," Nabinger said vaguely. "You've seen the Mars message?" Nabinger said, changing the subject.

"UNAOC just released it worldwide out of New York," Kelly said.

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"You know our guardian sent a reply a little while ago?"

"Yes, but UNAOC is controlling all information. Plus, there's not much to report on that, is there?"

"No," Nabinger agreed, "there isn't."

"What about the foo fighters flying again?" Kelly asked.

"Two of the flights I can figure out," Nabinger said.

"What do you mean?"

"Their flight paths. One checked out the Great Pyramid at Giza where the rebels left the nuclear weapon, and the other overflew Temiltepec where the rebels left their computer. The guardian is taking a look-see at where the rebels once were."

"What about the third flight over China?"

"I don't know about that," Nabinger said. "There may be something hidden there we haven't uncovered yet. I've tried correlating those two specific sites with the general area in China against the Airlia 'coordinates' I have, but it doesn't work. I need a specific site in China to be able to do it." Nabinger rubbed a tired hand along the stubble on his chin. "What's the reaction in the outside world?" he asked. "I've been so busy in the op center, I haven't had a chance to see or hear anything."

"Mixed," Kelly said. "On one hand people are happy about the peace thing, on the other they're disappointed that it just appears to be an old recording by a machine on Mars."

"It's not an old recording," Nabinger said.

Kelly perked up. "Why do you say that?"

"Because it was in binary that we understand

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with our present technology," he said. "That message was directed toward humans.

My best guess is that our guardian here sent the first message to Mars four days ago, including information it had gathered about us. The computer on Mars analyzed the information and sent a reply back to us and the guardian."

"Guardian Two is what they're calling the one on Mars," Kelly noted.

"Hmm, yes," Nabinger said, but his attention was obviously elsewhere.

Kelly considered calling in to the news service that the message wasn't old, but she realized someone else had to have figured that out already and it would hardly be news.

"Hey," Kelly said, tapping him on the arm. "What's the matter?"

"Huh? Nothing."

"You've been wandering around in a fog for the past couple of days.

Something's up."

Nabinger shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just bothered by . . ."He paused as they saw several people running toward the press tent.

"Something's happening," Kelly said. The two of them ran toward the green canvas tent. They pushed their way in behind the other people staring at the small TV set. A broadcast of CNN relayed from the American naval task force offshore was playing. They caught the broadcaster breathlessly repeating her news:

"This just released from UNAOC in New York City. There has been a second message from the Guardian Two computer on Mars. The entire text of this new message is in the binary form that part of the first was in. We are waiting on the transla-

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tion of the message that has been promised us by a UNAOC spokeswoman. It will .

. ." The announcer paused. "Yes, it is coming in now. We will put it up on the screen for you to read as we get it."

In bold black letters, words began to scroll up the screen.

GREETINGS

WE ARE OF PEACE

WE HAVE WAITED LONG FOR THIS

BUT NOW WE CAN COME BACK

NOW THAT YOU ARE READY

TO JOIN US

WE WILL AWAKE

AND COME BACK TO YOUR PLANET

ASPASIA

END

"Oh, my God," Kelly muttered as the inside of the tent broke out in bedlam.

She staggered outside with Nabinger. "They're up there," she said, looking into the sky. "They've been up there all this time. That's where they went!"

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Those are the statues of the sixty-one foreign ambassadors and rulers who attended the funeral of Gao-zong," Che Lu said as they slowly drove down the wide dirt road that led to Qian-Ling.

"How come their heads are gone, Mother-Professor?" Ki asked, staring at the large stone figures that stood in rows at the side of the road.

"No one knows," she said. Her attention was focused on what lay directly ahead. Rising up in front of them, over three thousand feet high, lay the mountain that was Qian-Ling. It was the largest tomb in the world, dwarfing even the pyramids of Egypt and the large dirt mounds in the Americas. The sides of the mountain were covered in trees and bushes, but it was easy to see that it was not a natural formation, as the sides had a uniform slope leading up to a rounded top.