Ancients

'Dammit, that's not exactly saying nothing.' The president turned away, examined the note again, then tossed it onto his desk. 'We have freedom of the sea here and I am not going to allow a buildup on the border to go unchecked. I can't,' he said as he turned and faced his adviser. 'The task forces continue. I'm not leaving those boys without naval support. Send a message to the Koreans that it is in their hands. Get away from the border. Allow relief efforts in and then we can talk.'

He watched the secretary leave and then looked out at the clouded sky through the window. He shook his head as he was beginning to wonder if there was a serious attempt by an outside or otherworldly influence out to thwart his every move toward peace. He knew that he needed help from someone he trusted beyond any other in assessing all that was happening. He hoped he had it coming from Nevada.

EVENT GROUP CENTER

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA

Niles attempted to smile but failed. He removed his thick glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

'What are your immediate orders to the Group, Virginia?' he asked, finally looking up at the two women. 'It's all over the news about that listening post in the Sea of Japan picking up those strange signals just before the quake hit. So that crazy bastard may have reason to believe the stuff he's spouting.'

A knock sounded at the door and one of the secretaries stepped in and offered Niles a note.

'The president just sent this over, sir.'

Niles took the offered note and excused the assistant.

Virginia calmly took a seat and then looked Niles straight in the eye.

'Thirty-two people, Niles--that's what we lost this morning in New York. Compared with the nation's losses in Korea and those two carrier battle groups, and all those poor souls in Korea, a very small number. I will follow orders of course and do what I'm ordered to do. But I refuse to just forget about our own people in New York.'

Niles waved his hand for her to continue. He was still looking at the president's note.

'The science departments will be put to work finding out if this ridiculous claim by the Koreans could be true in the fact that the earthquake that struck there was manmade and intentional. But computer sciences will be allowed to have fifty percent of the computing power of Europa to help find the killers of our people, and to find out how they could have known about us, and why those artifacts recovered from Westchester were so important.'

'Thank you, Virginia,' Niles said as he replaced his glasses.

'It's not for you, or me, or even the Group. I just don't want to be the one to explain to Jack why we're not looking for these murdering bastards.'

'My thoughts exactly,' he said. Then he looked at Virginia closely and slid the note over to her. 'But the priority here is no longer finding the murderers of our people. Keep that segment of research small.'

'Why?' Virginia asked as she picked up the note and started to read.

'Because now we don't just have North Korea claiming this stuff; it seems the Russians also picked up a strange signal seconds before another quake. This one happened just an hour ago and explains the president's mood.

'What is it?' Alice asked.

'The Russian port of Vladivostok has just been wiped off the map.'

The shipment of artifacts and maps had finally arrived and been transferred down to the sciences level to be carefully cataloged and photographed.

Sarah McIntire had been there at the dock to greet Jack, Carl, and Mendenhall and to offer her condolences on the loss of Lance Corporal Sanchez and the other members of the Group at the New York warehouse. Being secret lovers with the colonel, had not prevented Sarah from getting an icy and distant look at first from Jack as she looked into his eyes. After a moment, he had come around and nodded his head and then lightly touched her right shoulder before moving off to report to Niles. Sarah had started to tell Jack that Niles had been ordered to Washington, but then she'd thought it would be better if Virginia informed him. After speaking with Carl for only a moment her curiosity had gotten the better of her and she'd taken the elevator down to level thirty-two to see the wonders that had been recovered in Westchester for herself.

Ten minutes later, Sarah was watching the Cataloging Department as they lifted items out of their transport crates. Others had joined her and were oohing and ahing at some of the more brilliant pieces. Soon the overhead speakers called most away, as the individual departments were receiving their new assignments, per the president's orders.

As a geologist there was one artifact in particular that Sarah spied that made her pulse race. Two men had lifted a large, framed maplike parchment from an art sleeve. As she stepped closer to the thick glass, she saw that it was a rough rendering of the world, as an ancient society would have painted it. The colorful scope of Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, and Asia was almost as she knew them today, except for the strange ring of islands in the center of the Med. Depictions of North and South America looked as if the mapmaker had drawn them after looking into a fun-house mirror. They were wobbly and misshapen, as if a child had drawn them.

What really caught her eye and gave her the feeling that she should recognize something on the strange, ancient atlas were the lines that coursed through it. They seemed familiar to her somehow.

Sarah tapped on the thick glass and got the technicians' attention. The white-gloved navy specialist waved when he looked up and saw that it was Sarah. He knew her from Saturday-night poker. Sarah pointed at the eight- foot-by-five-foot map and waved for the two technicians to bring it closer to the glass. The men exchanged looks, shrugged their shoulders, then hefted the heavy frame closer so that Sarah could view it better. Then the man Sarah knew hit the intercom.

'I know what you're looking at. It's that strange island in the middle of the Med, isn't it?'

Sarah did not respond. She took in the strange lines, wondering where she had seen them before. Then she smiled thinly and looked at the man through the glass.

'What's that, Smitty?'

'That's what I'm saying, the island with the rings around it.'

'No. I mean, yeah, that's a little strange, but I'm interested in the lines going through this weird world more than the ringed islands.'

'Maybe some sort of latitude and longitude markings. They're a little screwed up, but that may be what they are.' The tech looked from Sarah to the map he was helping to balance in front of the glass.

'Yes, they are latitude and longitude markings, but the thicker lines running beneath them--they zigzag crazily throughout all the continents and all the oceans. What in the hell are they supposed to be?'

The techs shrugged, and then as they saw their supervisor coming and they shooed Sarah away and lifted the large map over to a table where the photographer was at work.

As McIntire walked away, she could not help but feel that she knew exactly what those strange lines were. She tried to concentrate but the wisp of memory flickered just at the edges of her mind.

Jack sat at the conference table with the other department heads of the Event Group. Most were still curious as to why Niles Compton had been relieved and flown to Washington. Virginia had stunned them even further when she told the gathered doctors, physicists, engineers, and computer and historical staffs that they would not be devoting their full resources to looking for the people who had murdered their colleagues in New York. Instead, most departments were now under the direct, personal control of the president. When the protests started, Virginia rapped her knuckles on the polished table. As she did so, she took in Jack at the far end, who had not uttered a word.

'Everyone, listen. We are close to a full-scale escalation in Korea. Many soldiers, just kids for the most part, have lost their lives already. Soldiers like the ones we lost this morning. We will do as the president has ordered. The department heads excluded, they will report to Pete Golding in the computer center and he will coordinate the effort to find out who killed our people. The rest of your teams will put their effort on the problem of this wild claim of the Russians and Koreans. After the quake in the waters just east of the Russian coast, you can see why this is a priority.'

'And that claim is outrageous, Virginia,' Clark Ortiz of the Earth Sciences Department said. 'A science-induced earthquake? Hell, even if someone could target something like a country, how in the world could we even begin to initiate a seismic event?'

'Lieutenant McIntire, any ideas on the geology side of things?' Virginia asked.

'We can model recent seismic activity on the computer, but to actually start an earthquake? No. It would