'No, it's here.' Conrad wiped his brow and looked up the walls of the well. 'I know it. We haven't gotten below the water table yet. Step back.'
Serena moved aside as he lifted his heavy shovel into the air like a man with a sledgehammer at a county fair about to ring the bell and impress his girlfriend. 'What are you doing?'
'This is a false bottom.' He brought the shovel down on the stone bottom of the well. Sparks flew from the thunder of the blow. Conrad lifted the shovel up again and brought it down even harder, and she heard a loud crack. 'Help me lift these out.'
It took a half hour to haul up the stones, and another hour of digging before Conrad's shovel produced a distinctive clink. He had struck something metal.
It was the globe.
Conrad set the shovel against the wall of the well, pulled out a cigarette from the pocket of the shirt he had lifted from a homeless man and lit it.
Serena stared at him. 'What the bloody hell are you waiting for!' she said, worried that Max Seavers and his armed dupes could be on top of them any moment.
Conrad took a slow drag from his cigarette and blew out a perfect ring of smoke. She watched the 'O' hang in the air, expand and break up as it floated away into nothingness. Finally, he spoke:
'Brooke said something else back at the Hilton.'
She could feel her stomach tighten. He always did this-chose the worst moments to bring up something he had been turning over for hours, days, weeks, or even years. 'Not now, Conrad. Please.'
'She said you knew something about my blood. Something you've always known. Something I had to see to believe.'
Serena took a deep breath, walked over, and removed the cigarette from Conrad's mouth. She took a slow, deep drag, returned the cigarette and blew smoke back in his face. 'You really want to play this game now, of all times?'
'Yep.'
She got down on her knees in the bottom of the well and started digging desperately with her hands while Conrad watched her. 'It's not your blood so much as your DNA.'
'You had my DNA analyzed?'
'After Antarctica,' she said, her voice tightening.
'What did you take from me?'
'A lock of hair,' she said. 'We can do this later, Conrad. Please help me. Help yourself.'
'Why did you have my DNA analyzed, Serena? You didn't really believe what my father said there, did you? There's nothing special about my DNA. You don't think I had myself tested? I've seen the numbers, read all the tables. No unusual strands or combinations, Serena.'
'Conrad, you're impossible!' She could see the top of something metallic just beneath the dirt.
'You know something I don't, Serena? You usually do.'
'It isn't explained in analysis, Conrad. You have to see it.'
'What the hell are you talking about, Serena?'
She rose to her feet and looked at him. 'You want to know, Conrad? Fine. Your DNA strand spirals to the left.'
'Of course it spirals. That's what the double-helix is all about.'
'Except that the DNA of every indigenous organism on planet Earth spirals to the right.'
She watched his hard face, watched his penetrating eyes study her, until his mouth softened and he dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. 'So what do you believe, Serena?'
'I don't know what to believe now, Conrad. Only that I love you and want to be with you if we get out of this mess. I realized that the moment I thought it was you who was dead in the room and not Brooke. But we have to pull out whatever is under our feet and get it before Seavers does, or we're history.'
She wrapped her arms around Conrad's neck and leaned up and kissed him full on the mouth. She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest and his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her tight. Then he slowly let go and she looked up at his face, grim with determination.
'Let's dig this thing up.'
44
CONRAD DUG a channel around the globe with his hands while Serena brushed the surface protruding from the dirt with a rag. Soon the outline of North America, etched across the northern hemisphere, came into view.
'Look!' Serena said excitedly. 'This is clearly the terrestrial globe-it shows the land, not the stars. How do you open it?'
'Like this.' Conrad pushed the blade of his knife under the edge by the equator and pressed hard. There was a crack and the hemisphere began to move beneath his hand, opening like a lid to reveal a sealed wooden cylinder. 'Here it is.'
They climbed out of the well and knelt on the dirt floor of the cave. Conrad removed a scroll from the wooden cylinder and began to unfold it.
'You're smudging it with your dirty hands,' Serena scolded. 'Let's get out of here and look at it someplace safe.'
'Your hands are just as dirty as mine, Serena.' He refused to budge. 'And no place is safe until we know what this thing says. Right here, Serena, right now. Information, not preservation.'
She flashed a light on the document. 'I hate you.'
'Get in line, it's a long one.' He angled the document to the light.
The paper was like the star map, almost a parchment. But this was no map. Rather, it was a formal document, written in English, with a bold sort of preamble. Certain dates and titles from 1783 had been amended and initialed in 1793.
'A Treaty of Peace,' he began to read, 'concluded this Present Day ye eighteenth day of September One Thousand Seven Hundred amp; Ninety Three between the Regency of New Atlantis and its Subjects and George Washington President of the United States of North America and the Citizens of ye Said United States.' He looked at Serena. 'The Regency of New Atlantis?'
'The Alignment,' Serena said. 'A regency is simply a person or group selected to govern in place of a monarch or other ruler who is absent, disabled, or still in minority.'
'So they're saying there's some new Caesar waiting in the wings to take over the world?'
'We in the Church prefer to call him the Antichrist.'
The preamble was followed by a series of articles Conrad had a hard time following. He handed her the treaty and took the flashlight.
'You're the linguist and expert on international treaties, Serena. What's this New Atlantis?'
'The federal government,' Serena said, scanning the articles. 'This treaty says that the federal government has the right to secede from the United States on July 4, 2008, and form its own entity, New Atlantis, the very superpower that Sir Francis Bacon predicted would arise in the New World through its technology and power. The United States of America would be dissolved and power would be returned to the states.'
'Holy shit. If it's legal, this thing's nuclear.'
'You mean neutron: the regimes would change, but D.C. and all public lands acquired by the federal government since its inception-about one-third of the country, mostly in the West-would remain as territories of New Atlantis, including all U.S. military bases both here and around the world. Meaning the New Atlantis would have the means to enforce its will on the former United States and the rest of the world.'
He shook his head. 'The U.S. Supreme Court would never back it.'
'How could it?' she said. 'If anything, this Charter is not only unconstitutional, it's anti-constitutional. It clearly holds itself as both the precursor and successor to the U.S. Constitution. But it definitely looks genuine. As such, it's an embarrassment to America and casts doubts on its very founding at a time when its critics are
