“I was just saying,” said Thead, “that the one who did it was over there. I saw her.” He pointed again to the spot where he had seen Sahrin, happy to demonstrate that he knew something of value.
“Well, no shit.” Theo raised the RPG to his shoulder and before anyone could say anything, fired a grenade towards the doorway Thead was pointing at. He didn’t use ordinary grenades. These were souped-up versions, made especially for him by the weapons techs back at Mount Weather. When the projectile exploded, it demolished an entire side of the building, and set fire to the buildings on each side of it. The upper floors promptly caved in, collapsing onto the shattered remains of the ground floor. Fire spread, and within seconds the row of buildings was an inferno.
The Gores laughed and slapped each other on the back. Alexis got the whole thing on film.
The General went back to the radio and called in the other helicopters. It was time to clean up.
After a few minutes, they arrived, and their cargo dispersed through the streets of the island. The gentle, meditative sound of occasional gunfire wafted through the air.
* * *
SAHRIN WOKE. She lay still for a moment as the dream she had been having faded away. She sat up and stretched her arms, then with a start remembered where she was. She was underground, and it was now many hours since she’d followed the creature into the depths of the tunnels, away from the cavern full of the other sleeping Nefilim.
Good call,
she thought to herself. That was real sensible, to have gone there in the first place.
Idiot!
Sleeping soundly a few meters away was the Nefilim, whose name, she had learned, was a strange sound, the best rendition of which she could manage was something like
Obirin
. Its full name was a lot longer than that, but Obirin would do, it had said.
“Where are we going?” she had asked.
‘We’re going to meet some others,’
was the reply.
‘It is some distance, and you must trust me.’
Until then, Obirin had said, he would explain as much as he could. And he did. As they walked and climbed through tunnels and rock formations, some natural and some artificial, Obirin had begun Sahrin’s education in the prehistory of the Earth.
‘Not all the Nefilim are united. Also, not all of us have been hibernating for the last few thousand years. There have been others, who have lived their lives deep underground. If everything has gone according to plan, they will have been alerted to the awakening that has happened, and they will be expecting me and some others of us who think the same way to come and meet with them. We will decide there what must be done next.’
“Done about what?”
‘The awakening means that this world, which is as much ours as anyone’s, is about to experience great changes. Much is about to happen, but it is doubtful that the rulers of the surface, the human leaders, will want the masses of their people to know the truth of what is happening. They have never been able to admit that this planet has a history that is much longer than is generally known, although the rulers themselves have known of it for a long time. Much less so will they want the populace to know that it is not a dead history but a living one, and that that history has awakened, and is about to assert itself.’
Sahrin thought that Obirin was assuming that she was a local, that this was her planet.
“I’m not from here, from this planet, I mean,” she said. “I came here with some others in a ship. We sailed here…”
‘Yes, you’re one of the aether pilots, aren’t you. You were seen arriving. Your presence here aroused much interest.’
“I am. And were we? And among whom? We followed the directions on the map that one of our crew had been deciphering, and it’s been our undoing. Unlike the locals, we have an understanding of your race, even if it’s a second-hand one. Your species traveled widely in the past, and there are traces of you in the myths and legends of many races.”
‘True,’
replied the Nefilim.
‘And the contribution we made to the affairs of those who we ruled was not a happy one, unfortunately. At its height, we ruled many systems and many cultures, and the Nefilim were harsh masters.’
“While it lasted it was effective, I guess. But it was cruel, judging by the tales that outlived your empire.” Sahrin changed the subject. “I remember hearing a story once, when we were trading in the Enstrai Cloud. According to the legend, there would be a time when the Nefilim would be resurrected, reborn, and that it would happen when their two homes moved together. Has that got anything to do with what’s happening now? And if the Nefilim are being reborn, does that mean that they’re going to want their empire back as well? And what homes? Why two?”
‘So many questions. How human.’
They were walking along a narrow path. The top of the cliff it was cut into disappeared into the darkness, but its lower reaches were very visible. A hundred or so feet below them, a river of molten lava flowed into a sinkhole at least two hundred feet across, forming a lake of fire that spat and boiled furiously. The air burned. Her lungs felt scorched.
‘Yes, the two homes are moving together. This planet is regarded by our race as part of our heritage. Earth, as the humans call it, was the first planet we ever traveled to. It was the first because periodically it is the closest habitable object in space to Marduk, which is what we call our own world. Marduk has a long orbit that takes it out on a huge arc into the coldest and blackest space. It spends three and a half thousand of this planet’s years in space, after which time its orbit brings it back into the reaches of this system. The last time this happened was three and a half thousand earth years ago.’
“Then it’s about to come again? Or it’s here already… do the Earth-humans know?”
‘Some of them know. The ones that rule know, of course. They have always known. Those that study know. The scientists will know that something is coming.’
“And what is going to happen?”
‘The Nefilim population on Earth have been sleeping for twenty eight thousand of this planet’s years. The two planets have been in close proximity to each other eight times during that period, but now, there are other factors in play which are causing the awakenings to happen.’
‘The earth-humans might like to think that they alone have instigated the process, but there is more to it. The humans have been watched and guided in everything they have done.’
They had passed the lake of fire several days ago, and had traversed several caverns lit by small ferocious-looking creatures that looked like a cross between a bat and a firefly which flew far above their heads, making strident shrieking noises but never coming near them.
Finally they emerged from the caverns onto the coast of an underground ocean.
Small waves of clear water lapped quietly at a long shoreline. Sahrin tasted it, and found it fresh and cold. They had both been hungry in the small tunnels, and had wiped condensation from the walls to slake their thirst. Now, beside the underground sea, they found strange fungi, all different shapes and sizes, like nothing that Sahrin had ever seen before. They stopped and rested, and ate their fill. The flesh was sweet, even if the appearance of the fungi did little for her appetite.
“Why did your race go into hibernation?”
‘The answer to that lies in the changes that are about to befall this part of the universe. Eight orbits ago, our scientists found an object in space which puzzled them greatly. It was far away, so at first, their interest was merely academic. They identified the new object as a massive cloud of photons, stretched across a vast area in a belt. They set about analyzing this phenomenon, and soon found that it was heading, at great speed, in this direction. Towards this system. As you might expect, this lent some urgency to their investigation of its qualities.’
He stopped, and thought for a few seconds. Sahrin bit into a piece of fungus.
‘When its path was calculated more precisely, they found that the photon cloud was going to arrive in this planetary system at the same time that Marduk would be at the perihelion of its orbit, and at its closest aspect to earth.’
‘The research that we – for I was one of the scientists who worked on this project – undertook indicated that the photon belt had some unusual qualities. It would absorb any light it encountered, both from the stars and our own sun. We calculated that both planets were going to pass through the cloud, and that it would take three Earth-days. Both Marduk and Earth would experience total darkness during this time. Of course, without sunlight, the temperature would plummet. But the real effects would be on the living creatures that were exposed to the photons. DNA would be subjected to a shifting range of frequencies, stimulating a resonance effect…’
“I’m not understanding you,” Sahrin broke in. “I’m not a scientist.”
‘The photon belt was going to effect some changes on living creatures – all races of creatures. We recognized straight away that this would have implications for our own race, and also for the humans and other life of Earth.’
‘When Marduk is moving through the far reaches of its orbit, far from the warmth of the Sun, Nefilim hibernate. We freeze solid, so that all our physical life processes are suspended. Out of the three and a half thousand earth years that equal one of Marduk’s cycles, we spend all but five earth years in this frozen state. For those five short years, the Nefilim can live like any other creatures.’
“Are you asleep?”
‘During the hibernation? No, I don’t think you could call it that. We are still conscious, and we live on the mental plane while our bodies have returned to the ice. Marduk becomes a planet of ghosts while it travels in distant space. When we realized that the photon cloud would transform all life by raising its frequency, we decided that we wanted to see it for ourselves, and not leave it for our descendants. Since it was possible, we did it.’
“How long do you live?”
‘We don’t age while we are in suspension. However, we age very quickly when we are awake to the physical world. Four or five cycles is an average life span. So, we tend to value highly the time that we spend out of the mental plane, as it is literally killing us.’
‘We were curious, like scientists anywhere. So, the race allowed its natural ability to hibernate to be augmented by technology, so that we would be suspended for the eight cycles, and would awake when the cloud was almost upon us.’
“And no doubt it’s almost upon us?”
‘Yes. This planet will enter the photon belt in a few days. Marduk will enter it soon after.’
“And where is Marduk now?”
‘It is coming. At the moment it is on the other side of this planet’s moon, but it should be visible after the photon belt moves on. It is a most unusual coincidence of astronomical phenomena.’
“Sure sounds that way.”
‘But don’t think that the interest that the Nefilim have in the photon belt is purely for the sake of science. We – they – haven’t become ghosts for the last twenty eight thousand years for the sake of knowledge alone.’
Sahrin wondered what other reason there could be, and what Obirin’s role was in all this. He was a renegade of some kind, but for what cause? If he was a rebel, what was he rebelling against?
Her questions would have to wait. Obirin was indicating that they should be moving again, and now he preferred to walk in silence.
They saw no signs of life initially, but that was about to change. Obirin told her that they were making their way to an island. After a long walk along the black and red sands of the beach, she saw it, surrounded by a cold mist that had settled on the surface of the water. As they approached, she made out the dark shapes of buildings piled together like stacks of wood and stone awaiting some more organized use. By the time they had reached a pier where someone seemed to have had the foresight to leave a boat, they could see figures moving among the buildings and along the beaches of the island.
They climbed into the boat and Obirin began to row in long, powerful strokes. As they drew closer, Sahrin saw that the people on the island were not necessarily people at all, or rather, that while a few of them seemed normal enough, many of them seemed to be mutations, incredible mixtures of animal and human life.
She felt a shiver of apprehension pass through her. In all her years of travel through the distant reaches of time and space, she had never seen anything like this. What was going on here?
Which is the question she asked Obirin.
‘There is nothing to fear,’
he replied.
‘You will soon see.’
Not given a lot of choice, Sahrin quashed her fears and turned back towards the front of the boat. Three creatures were coming down to a pier to meet them. When the boat was close enough, one of them threw a rope. Obirin caught it and tied it to the prow.
The creature that threw the rope was perfectly and utterly ugly. Its head was sunken deep into a barrel chest, so much so that its eyes, no more than deep red gashes in its skin, were the only features of its face that were elevated above its square shoulders. Its nose was missing, the holes of its nostrils flush with the skin, and its mouth, no bigger than its eyes, worked ceaselessly, shaping words which, Sahrin realized as the boat was made fast, were quite understandable.
“You must hurry,” it was saying. “They have been waiting for you. Waiting for you, yes, they have, now hurry, we’ll show you the way, yes we will, although you could no doubt find it yourself, yes, yes you could, it’s not a big place, this, and there are people to ask by the hundred, there are…”
The speaker’s two companions were no less strange. One of them, who stood back and fidgeted restlessly, had the head and naked torso of a young woman, but the legs and feet of a large bird, with which she continually scratched at the ground.