Empire of Gold

Bellfriar laughed. ‘No, no. If a compound is “organic”, then chemically it just means it contains carbon. Meteorites might have carried the precursors of life to earth, though; there was a famous find in Australia, the Murchison meteorite, which contained amino acids. I don’t know if that was the case here – but I did notice something else.’ He turned to Macy. ‘Miss Sharif, can you skip forward to . . . I think slide seventeen?’

Macy tapped the keyboard. Slides flashed on the screen, stopping at an image of one of the statues’ surface taken through a microscope. At extreme magnification, the stone was a fractal microcosm of a rocky landscape, with what seemed almost like man-made features running through it: a fine grid-like pattern.

‘Looks like a developer’s laying the ground for a new subdivision,’ said Nina.

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ replied Bellfriar. ‘I wouldn’t want to live there, though – not a lot of space. The lines are only about fifty micrometres apart, less than the width of a human hair.’

‘What is it?’ Eddie asked.

‘Some kind of carbon matrix infused into the meteoric iron. Naturally formed, of course – it looks artificial, but on this scale so do a lot of processes. What’s interesting is that it’s greatly increased the hardness of the rock, as if the whole thing has been reinforced with carbon nanotubes. Normally, this kind of stone would be around a five or six on the Mohs scale – diamond tops the scale at ten, by the way,’ he added for the benefit of the non-scientists. ‘The statues are actually harder than the porcelain streak plate I initially tried to use to test them, so on the Mohs scale they’re at least a seven – stronger than quartz.’

His description had sparked another of Nina’s memories – this time from personal experience. ‘The rock,’ she began, her cautious, probing tone immediately catching Eddie’s attention, ‘does it have any other unusual properties? Like, say . . . high electrical conductivity?’

‘Actually, yes,’ said Bellfriar, surprised. ‘It’s down to the iron content, of course, but it was higher than I expected. How did you know?’

‘It just reminded me of something I’d seen before,’ she said, trying to sound casual. ‘But it’s not important. What else have you found out?’

Bellfriar returned to his presentation, but Nina was no longer listening, instead running through theories of her own. When he finished, twenty minutes later, she thanked him for his work, then waited for the United Nations officials to conclude their pleasantries, trying not to seem too eager for everyone to leave.

‘What is it?’ whispered Eddie.

‘I’ll tell you in private,’ she replied under her breath, before calling across the room. ‘Macy?’

Macy was shutting down the laptop. ‘Yeah?’

‘Can you take the statues to my office, please?’

‘Taking them back off me so quickly, Dr Wilde?’ said Bellfriar in jovial mock offence. ‘I hope you’re not disappointed that I didn’t pinpoint where they came from?’

‘No, not at all,’ Nina told him as the puzzled Macy closed the case containing the statues. ‘You’ve given me a lot to think about. Oh, Sebastian,’ she added as Penrose was about to leave, ‘can I have a quick word with you? We need to finalise the details of, uh . . . the Atlantis excavations.’

Penrose covered his momentary confusion – the IHA’s undersea archaeological work at the ruins of Atlantis was already under way – and nodded as he left. Macy, carrying the case, went out after him. Nina and Eddie followed, and the four met again in Nina’s office.

‘Okay,’ said Eddie, ‘what the hell was all that about?’

‘A good question,’ said Penrose. ‘I take it you’ve realised something, Nina.’

‘I think so,’ she replied, shoving the papers – and the sandwich – on her desk aside to clear a space. ‘Macy, put the case down here.’

Macy obeyed. Nina opened the case and regarded the two crude statues. ‘When Bellfriar mentioned carbon nanotubes, it made me think of something I’ve seen before. Excalibur.’

‘Excalibur?’ exclaimed Macy. ‘What, the Excalibur? As in King Arthur?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Eddie.

‘Wow! I knew you found King Arthur’s tomb, but I didn’t know you found Excalibur as well.’

‘We did, but we . . . lost it,’ said Nina. That wasn’t quite true, as she knew exactly where it was: she and Eddie had decided to hide it again to keep it out of the wrong hands. ‘But it had some very special properties . . . and they sounded a lot like what Bellfriar just described. Eddie, can you close the blinds? I need the room as dark as possible.’

Eddie began to lower the blinds. ‘We’ve been married for a year and a half – we don’t have to do it with the lights off any more.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Nina, not amused. ‘Ignore him, he’s joking,’ she added to Macy, sensing that the younger, far less inhibited woman was about to ask a very personal question. ‘But one of Excalibur’s properties was that it was made from a superconductive metal – and it could conduct more than just electricity.’

The blinds were now closed, the office in a gloomy twilight. Nina reached for a statue. ‘Okay, let’s see if I’m right . . . ’

She picked it up – and the stone glowed faintly, the light quickly fading to nothing.

Penrose’s eyes widened, and Macy gasped. ‘What was that?’ she said.

‘That was earth energy,’ said Nina. ‘It’s a network of lines of natural power that flow around the planet, and converge in certain places. If you’re in one of those places and the earth energy is strong enough, you can tap into it and use it – if you have a superconducting material to make the connection.’

‘Should Miss Sharif be seeing this?’ asked Penrose, a stern tinge to his voice making it clear that he thought she definitely shouldn’t.

‘I’ll vouch for her,’ said Nina, giving Macy a quick reassuring smile. ‘Besides, she discovered this statue, and I