Area 51

CHAPTER 27

Just north of Monument Valley, Capitol Reef National Park was right in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. This time of year it was virtually deserted. In fact, in a few weeks the gates would be locked for the winter snows. The lack of people, and out-of-the-way location, were two reasons Turcotte had selected it as their meeting point. The location put a lot of distance between themselves and Dulce.

He drove in past the empty Ranger station and followed the road around. At the first campsite he spotted the van.

Kelly was standing outside, stun gun in hand, watching his truck. She relaxed when she saw him step out. There was a concrete walkway at the end of the campsite, going along the top of the cliff on which the site was located. It afforded a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains — or would have if the sun was up.

“Good to see you,” Kelly said.

“How is everyone?” Turcotte asked, stretching his arms out.

“Johnny’s semiconscious. Whenever he gains consciousness, he’s delirious. I don’t know what those people did to him but it’s bad. Von Seeckt’s sleeping inside. Nabinger is looking at photos from the mothership hangar.”

“Has he gotten anything?” Turcotte asked.

“What about you?” Kelly asked in response. “What happened? What was done on sublevel one?”

“I don’t really know,” Turcotte answered honestly and vaguely. He walked to the side door and slipped in, Kelly following.

“What have you got?” he asked the archaeologist.

“Better wake up Von Seeckt,” Nabinger said. “He’ll want to hear this.”

It took Von Seeckt a few minutes to get fully awake and then they all gathered around Professor Nabinger. He held a legal pad covered with pencil marks. “First you have to understand that my knowledge of the high rune language is very rudimentary. I have a very small working vocabulary, and to compound that fact, there are symbols here that — although I believe they mean the same as similar symbols from other sources — have slight differences in the way they are marked.

“The other problem is that the symbols that represent what we could call verbs are most difficult to make out because of the variations in tense, which change the basic symbol.

“Beyond the simple deciphering of the symbols and the words they might mean,” Nabinger continued, “there is an additional problem to working with a picture language. The ancient Egyptians called hieroglyphics ‘medu metcher.’ That means ‘the gods’ words.’ The word hieroglyphs, which is Greek, refers specifically to the drawings in temples. It is difficult for us in the modern day to understand a language that was developed to explain the religious and mythical—”

“Wait a second.” Turcotte was tired and had had a long night. “You’re talking about hieroglyphics now. Let’s stick with the high runes and what they say.”

Nabinger was tired also. “I’m trying to explain all this to you so that you can take my few translations in the proper context. It would be wrong of us to superimpose our own culture and ideas upon what was written by a culture with a totally different set of values and ideas.” He tapped the photos. “And here we are dealing with what appears to be an alien culture. We don’t have a clue if their perception of reality is the same as ours.”

“We’re flying their ships,” Turcotte noted. “It couldn’t be that far off.” He thought of the pyramid and the golden glow above it and mentally reconsidered his last statement.

“And not only that,” Kelly added, “but didn’t you tell us earlier that it appears this high rune language was the precursor to all of mankind’s written languages and probably served as the starting point for those languages? So if the roots are common, we must be able to understand it better than if they were totally alien.”

“Yes, yes,” Nabinger said. “But there is just enough of a common root for me to decipher some of this text. This is—”

Turcotte placed a large hand on Nabinger’s shoulder.

“Professor. It’s late. We all need to get some sleep. But before we sleep we need to decide what we’re going to do next. To do that we need to know what you have, as good as you have been able to get it.”

Nabinger nodded. “All right. There were two main stones set up in the cavern. Those are the two I have spent all my time on. There are others I will have to get to tomorrow. But here is what I do have.

“Please note where I have question marks after certain parts. That means that I am not quite certain of what—”

“Just show it to us!” Turcotte said.

Nabinger slid the first page under the small dome light.

“That must refer to the mothership,” Von Seeckt said. “The negative with the question mark in the first sentence — you don’t know for sure what that word is?”

“A verb,” Nabinger said. “It might be cannot or should not or will not.”

“Makes a bit of difference,” Turcotte noted. “I mean, what if the damn thing just broke? That would cover the old won’t, wouldn’t it? What if these aliens got stuck and their triple A plan didn’t cover Earth? And maybe that’s why that thing shouldn’t get cranked.”

Kelly put an arm on Turcotte’s shoulder. “See? You said ‘shouldn’t.’”

“Hard, isn’t it?” Nabinger said.

Turcotte rubbed the stubble of his beard. “Yeah, I get it. All right, go on.”

“No idea what was arriving?” Kelly asked. Her hand was still on Turcotte’s shoulder.

“It was a special symbol. One that I had never seen before,” Nabinger said. “From the basic set of the symbol I would say it represented a proper noun: a specific name. I’ve designated each unidentified symbol by a different letter before the question marks to show that they aren’t the same. As you will see on the next page, one of the noun symbols does repeat.”

“So they decided to leave us alone?” Kelly said.

“But obviously that didn’t happen,” Von Seeckt said.

“That bomb had to get into the pyramid somehow.”

“Yes,” Nabinger agreed. “And the high runes all over the planet. Somehow humans picked up some of that.”

“Probably because it didn’t work out the way they had planned. Apparently everyone didn’t go along so easily with getting stuck on Earth.” Nabinger turned over the last page.

“So they fought among themselves?” Kelly said.

“Looks like it,” Nabinger said.

“And in the end they did their duty,” Turcotte said.

“But not perfectly,” Von Seeckt said. “We are still dealing with the repercussions.”

“I’ve got a stupid question,” Turcotte said. “Why would the people who built the mothership leave their messages on stone tablets?”

“Because that’s what whoever was left there had to work with,” Nabinger said. “This is big,” Kelly said. “Bigger than what they have at Area 51. This means history is not at all what we think it is. Hell evolution is not what we think. Do you know how that will affect people? Think about religion? About—”

“No “ Von Seeckt disagreed. “It is not bigger than what happening at Area 51. That is the first problem. Because in just under three days they are going to try to fly the mothership, and the marker left by the people who abandoned the mothership says don’t do it. We’ve got to stop it.”

“I’ve got another stupid question,” Turcotte said.

The other three waited.

“Why is Gullick in such a goddamn rush to fly the mothership? That’s bugged me from the very beginning.”

“I do not know,” Von Seeckt said. “It troubled me ever since he came up with the countdown to fly it. It was ridiculous. He wanted to fly it before we even ran a basic series of tests on it.”

Turcotte felt a pounding on the right side of his head.

“Something isn’t right about all this.”

“Ever since they went to Dulce early this year,” Von Seeckt said, “it all changed.”

Turcotte thought of the pyramid, the vats, the golden glow. The small orb that had destroyed the helicopter he was on in Nebraska. Too many pieces that didn’t fit. The only thing he knew for sure was that this was bigger than him right now.

“Let’s get a little sleep first,” Turcotte suggested. “We’re all tired and we’ll be able to think better with a couple of hours of rest. We’ll decide what to do in the morning. We still have forty-eight hours.”