The Covenant of Genesis

Chase traversed the opening, Sophia following, and jogged after Nina as she started down the tunnel. ‘Slow down, will you? You don’t know what’s down there.’

‘And I won’t until I see for myself, will I?’

‘You won’t see anything if a big fucking rock falls on your head,’ he chided. ‘You’re so mad keen to find the Garden of Eden that you’re rushing things.’

She waved her hands in a mixture of enthusiasm and exasperation. ‘That’s because it’s . . . it’s the Garden of frickin’ Eden, Eddie! If it’s real, if it’s down that tunnel, then it changes everything! And I’ll have found it!’

‘We’ll have found it,’ said Sophia, giving Chase a pointed look.

‘All right, we’ll have found it, whatever! But this is our only chance to reach it before the Covenant. Unless you want to block up that hole behind us?’ She read his expression. ‘Yeah, I thought not. So come on!’ She set off again.

Chase blew out a long, frustrated breath. ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Sophia as she strode past. ‘You’re the one who wants to marry her.’

The remaining dust soon cleared, the tunnel curving back and forth as they progressed along it. The daylight from the entrance faded. But the torch beam wasn’t the only light . . .

Nina stopped, Chase and Sophia flanking her. She switched off the flashlight. Another source of illumination became clear - ahead. ‘It’s daylight,’ she whispered. ‘And listen - can you hear something?’

Chase strained to pick anything out over the residual ringing in his ears from the two missile explosions, but Sophia cocked her head curiously. ‘It sounds like running water.’

‘In the middle of a desert?’ said Chase dubiously. But now he could hear it too.

Nina relit the torch. ‘It’s not far away.’ She set off again, quickly stepping up to a jog in her eagerness to see what lay ahead. Chase had little choice but to keep pace.

They rounded another curve in the tunnel . . . and emerged into a vastly larger space, stopping in sheer amazement at the sight that greeted them.

‘My God,’ Nina whispered. ‘We found it.’

34

The Garden of Eden

‘Jesus,’ said Chase. ‘This can’t be real. Can it?’

‘It’s real,’ Nina replied, awed. ‘It’s really real.’

The cavern was huge, a massive space within the mesa, the walls sloping inwards to form almost a dome of rock overhead. But it was not complete; there were holes in the stone ceiling through which sunlight poured, great beams slanting down to illuminate the ground below.

To give life to the ground below. The tunnel emerged by a slight rise in the southwestern corner, giving them a view across the colossal chamber - and the lush green jungle filling it. Steam rose from the trees where sunlight touched the leaves, swirling as it rose . . . to condense on the rocky ceiling and drip back down on to the vegetation below. The source of all the water was easy to see, a large lake occupying most of the cavern’s southeastern corner, streams leading from it. The sound of running water came from a small waterfall dropping into a giant chasm that split the entire chamber seemingly in two, just east of their vantage point.

Sophia arrived behind them, for a moment also overcome by the incredible sight. ‘That’s . . . that’s incredible.’

‘You’re not kidding,’ said Chase. He walked to the edge of the chasm, looking down into it. And down. And down. The bottom was out of sight, lost in darkness. Only the distant rumble of churning water told him that there was any end to the fall. His gaze tracked along the opposite edge of the jagged canyon, a great tear in the ground that had even ripped a hole in the chamber’s southern wall. It narrowed as it cut through the jungle to the north, but the tree cover meant he couldn’t see if it extended all the way to the far wall.

Nina’s attention had been seized by something rising above the trees at the cavern’s eastern side, however. ‘Oh, my God . . . Eddie, give me the gun.’

‘What, you going to shoot something?’

‘I want to see it.’ She took the Lee-Enfield and looked through the sights at the shape in the far-off shadows.

A face stared back at her.

She stiffened in momentary surprise before the object in the cross hairs resolved itself. It was another statue, a representation of the Veteres’ god, like the one they had seen in Antarctica. Although it was unmistakably the same figure, the design of the giant sculpture was different, in some odd way simultaneously more primitive yet more refined. More naturalistic. Yet for all that, the shape of the skull and the facial features were just as elongated and stylised as on the statues in the frozen city.

Beyond the statue was a plateau, the top of a domed structure just visible on it. She moved the sights down, seeing that the statue had one hand held out, palm up as if scattering seeds, just like its counterpart at the South Pole. This one, however, was not within a temple - instead a circular wall, reaching almost to the lake’s shore, surrounded its feet.

‘It’s another statue of their god,’ she told Chase and Sophia, passing him the rifle so he could see for himself. ‘Looks even bigger than the one in Antarctica.’

‘The original?’ Sophia suggested.

‘Could be. And if it’s anything like the other one, there might be another library there - another Tree of Knowledge.’

‘Of Good and Evil,’ Sophia added. ‘We’re in the right place, after all. Watch out for snakes.’

Nina gazed across the jungle at the towering statue. ‘We need to get over there.’

Chase lowered the gun, pointing it into the chasm. ‘Bit of a jump.’

‘Maybe it’s narrow enough to cross further along. Come on.’ She walked down the small rise into the dry stream bed, which was abruptly truncated by the ravine, almost directly across from the waterfall. ‘Must have been a pretty big earthquake to cause a rift that deep.’

Ahead, several large boulders lay on the rocky ground, moss clinging to their sunward sides. Chase looked up. Directly overhead was a hole in the ceiling. ‘Probably made that too.’ The other holes above ranged from car-sized to easily large enough to fit a helicopter, some sections of the roof Swiss-cheesed with openings. ‘One more big shake and the entire ceiling’ll come down.’

‘It’s survived for well over a hundred thousand years,’ said Nina. ‘Why would it collapse now?’

‘Because we’re here? Stuff does have sort of a habit of going buhkoom around you.’

‘That’s so not true,’ Nina said, annoyed. ‘It only happens when idiots deliberately try to destroy things.’

Sophia cleared her throat. ‘Far be it from me to name the person who brought down the roof of the Tomb of Hercules . . .’

‘Oh, shut up.’ They continued, reaching the edge of the jungle. Condensation pattered down as they moved into it. ‘It’s incredible,’ said Nina, scientific wonder quickly overcoming her irritation. ‘A perfectly balanced ecosystem.’ She stopped, turning to the shafts of sunlight. ‘Look how the vegetation’s densest underneath the sun’s path during the day. Enough light gets in to sustain photosynthesis.’ They moved on through the thinner vegetation along the edge of the chasm.

The ravine narrowed as they progressed. On the far side, another large boulder had dropped from the ceiling, a great wedge of stone half buried in the earth and protruding out over the incalculable fall below. ‘Ay up, that might be handy,’ said Chase, pointing ahead. A tree had fallen, its trunk spanning the gap.

‘It looks a bit slippery,’ Nina noted dubiously as they reached it. The wood was slick with moisture and entwined with creepers.

Chase examined the broken end of the log, then the ground beneath it, before testing the wood with his foot. ‘Feels solid.’

‘You first, then,’ Sophia said.