The Covenant of Genesis

‘Volcanic vents?’ Nina echoed, remembering something. She quickly went back to her notes on the inscription. ‘“Tiny mountains of fire”, of course! Can you get in any closer?’

‘Yeah, but the resolution’s not high enough to show any details.’ He moved the virtual camera closer to the lake, then changed the colour of the water so it too was translucent, revealing the shape of the terrain in more detail.

‘There’s something in the lake,’ Nina realised, almost elbowing Trulli aside to get a better look. ‘See, there - something on the ground. It could be a building.’

‘Or it could be a rock,’ Trulli pointed out. ‘The resolution’s only about five metres per polygon; anything smaller just gets averaged out. And there’s still a hell of a lot of coastline to go; there could be plenty of other lakes. You ought to check everything else out before you get too excited about this one.’

Nina had to concede his point. ‘Okay, okay. But mark this site so we can come back. I’ve got a feeling about it.’

He gave her a sidelong look. ‘The kind of feeling you get when you’re about to find something amazing?’

She smiled. ‘That kind, yeah.’

‘The kind of feeling that usually means somebody’s going to try to kill you?’

Now she pouted. ‘All right, smart guy. Just mark it, will you?’

There were indeed other underground lakes along the Antarctic coastline. But none of them matched Nina’s deductions so closely.

She zoomed in on the image. If it really was the location of the lost city, then it was well positioned. The coastline of that era had a large bay that would give boats shelter from the fierce conditions in the open ocean, and the valley in which the lake had formed would have provided further protection from the harsh winds sweeping the continent. Given its latitude, outside the Antarctic Circle at sixty-six degrees south, it was even possible that the considerably warmer climate of a hundred and thirty millennia earlier would have allowed vegetation to grow. The inscription had certainly made reference to trees.

It was the right location. Somehow, she was sure of it. And without knowledge of the recordings contained on the cylinders, there was no way the Covenant could find it. It was her discovery, hers alone.

The problem was, how could she possibly get to it? She was still suspended from the IHA, so its resources were unavailable - and besides, telling the IHA about her findings would, she was sure, result in their being passed on to the Covenant in short order. And Antarctica was hardly a place that could be visited on a whim. Expeditions took time and planning - and money - to organise.

So the only way to get there would be—

Her cell phone rang. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, love.’ Chase.

‘Where are you? Did you meet your friend?’

‘Yeah, we just finished. Got everything sorted, for the moment. Are you still at Matt’s?’

‘Yeah. Eddie, listen, I know where the city is. I’ve found the site in the Antarctic, I’m certain of it. We need to get there and check it out.’

A sarcastic snort came from the other end of the line. ‘Right. I’ll just pop into the travel agent and get some tickets to the South Pole.’

‘I’ll take care of it. Just get over here. You’ve got the address?’

‘Yeah. What do you mean, you’ll take care of it?’

‘I think I’ve got a way. Or I will have, in about five minutes.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of Trulli re-entering the apartment. ‘See you soon. Bye!’

‘Nina, wait—’

She disconnected and went into the next room as Trulli took a couple of bags of groceries into the kitchen. From the brightly coloured packaging inside them, she guessed he hadn’t been stocking up on fruits and vegetables. ‘I thought you were giving up on snacks while you were in the Antarctic?’

‘Well, I’m not there yet,’ he said with a grin. ‘Might as well get a few home comforts for the trip.’

‘Speaking of the trip,’ she began, wondering how he would respond, ‘can you show me your test site on the map?’

‘Sure, no worries.’ He followed Nina back to the computer. The screen still showed the lake she had been examining; he switched to the overhead view and zoomed out, scrolling further inland. ‘There we go.’

She glanced at the scale. The test site was about seventy kilometres from ‘her’ lake; just over forty miles. In the vastness of the frozen continent, that was practically nothing. ‘What were the criteria you used to pick that particular lake? You said it was of no scientific interest.’

‘That’s right,’ said Trulli, nodding. ‘Lake Vostok’s huge, and it’s over half a million years old, so if there’s any life down there it might have evolved completely differently, which is what the expedition’s going to try to find out. But the test site needed to be a lot newer and smaller, somewhere that couldn’t support its own ecosystem, so if anything went screwy we wouldn’t damage it.’

‘How much younger?’

‘Dr Bandra reckoned a hundred and fifty thousand years old was the cut-off point. So we found a bunch of lakes that fit the bill, and I picked one that looked like a good test for Cambot.’

‘You picked the lake?’

‘Yep.’

Nina put an arm round his shoulders. ‘Matt . . . what would you say to trying a different test site?’

‘What, at this short notice? It’d—’ He suddenly realised where Nina was heading. ‘Aw, what? You must be joking!’

‘I wish I were. But really, is one underground lake that much different from another?’ She scrolled the map back to the other lake. ‘I mean, this one’s less than a hundred and fifty thousand years old, it’s small, it’s not even that far from where you were going to go . . . and there might just be something absolutely incredible at the bottom of it. You can kill two penguins with one stone.’

‘I don’t want to kill any penguins!’ Trulli protested. ‘For Christ’s sake, Nina, I’m flying out there with a five-million-dollar robot tomorrow - I can’t just say, “Oh, by the way, fellas, I’ve decided to change the test site”!’

‘Why not? You’re in charge. And the expedition isn’t actually on site yet, is it?’

‘No, they’re still at sea. But—’

‘So it doesn’t make much difference, does it? Just say that you reviewed the map data and found a better site.’

‘Dr Bandra’d go absolutely mental,’ he said unhappily. ‘And what if something goes wrong? If Cambot carks it because the conditions aren’t what he was designed for, then that’s five million dollars down the Swannee, and probably my balls on the block for it!’

Nina pressed on. ‘But if I’m right, then not only do you get to test out your robot, but you also find the most amazing archaeological discovery since Atlantis. And how would you rather test your cameras - looking at bits of rock and ice, or the ruins of an unknown civilisation?’

‘Yeah,’ he snorted, ‘one that’ll get me killed if I tell anyone about it.’

‘Which is why we’d need to keep it quiet until it can be revealed to the world in one go - we make it too big for the Covenant to silence. Once it’s exposed, then the genie’s out of the bottle, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Matt,’ she said, moving round so they were face to face, ‘this could be the most incredible find ever. Bigger than Atlantis, even. But if we don’t find it before the Covenant, it’ll be lost for ever, because they want to destroy it. We have to find it.’

‘But what if you’re wrong and there’s nothing there?’

‘Then you’ve annoyed this Dr Bandra by changing the test site. But your robot’ll still get its workout, so you’re no worse off. And,’ she went on, conviction lighting her eyes, ‘I don’t think I am wrong. And, y’know, I’ve got a pretty good track record with this sort of thing.’

Trulli tipped back his head to stare up at the ceiling in resignation. ‘Oh, Christ. All right. I’ll think about it.’