For six nights, Davila and Peter shared the cramped quarters of Saul's tack shed, hidden in the aspens at the meadow's edge. The place smelled like lanolin. In his youth, Saul had been a rider and a roper on a sheep ranch in Idaho. Saddles, ropes, blankets and bridles festooned the walls and rafters. A big electric heater, powered by Saul's hydrogen fuel cells, kept things warm. Peter and Davila slept on a steel-spring twin bed beneath the paned window, their bodies' warmth a salve for their wounds, the heavy wool blankets a shield against the constant noise of helicopters circling the mountain.
At dawn on the seventh day, Davila woke with a start.
"It's OK," whispered Peter. He lay his hand on her warm back. "It'll pass." The sound of helicopters had rekindled her nightmares from the desert, of suffocating in her own blood, of drowning in the sand. In the pale light, the long scar between her ribs looked dark and fresh.
She gathered the blankets beneath her chin. "No. Listen."
The helicopter was getting close, its heavy rotors knocking at the air and rattling the shed's brittle window. Throwing on their clothes and shoes, they ran through the crusted snow to the house.
Saul and Demi were already on the front porch. They stood and watched as a Black Hawk helicopter approached form the east and hovered low over the far end of the long meadow. It settled in the frosty grass, rotors whining down, and out jumped two soldiers wearing camouflage biohazard suits and respirator masks. One stood guard with an automatic rifle while the other reached up to help down a man in a brown business suit. He in turn reached up to help down a woman wearing a long skirt and puffy jacket. Together they approached the house, flanked by the two soldiers.
"Good morning," Dr. Brisling called out as he neared the porch. His grizzled face was no longer swollen, and someone had fixed his glasses, but his eyes were bloodshot, and his brown suit looked as if he had slept in it.
The woman was about Brisling's age, tall, Black, graceful, her gray hair pulled up in a bun. In her free hand, she carried what looked like a fishing tackle box.
Brisling stamped his feet and hugged himself, shivering. "Can we come inside? It's colder than a witch's tit out here."
Saul pulled his granddaughter close. "They're not here for Demi, are they?"
"Believe me, no one cares what happened at the summit. Can we talk?"
"As long as those soldiers stay outside."
Brisling turned to the armed men. "You heard him. Wait outside and stand guard."
"Yes, sir!" They took up positions at either end of the long porch, weapons ready. Brisling shrugged his shoulders. "What can I say? They reinstated my old army commission."
Inside, Demi stoked the fire while Saul ushered the woman to the couch. She sat near the stove, tackle box on her lap, Brisling beside her. Saul took his usual spot in the armchair, while Peter stood by the wall of framed photos, Davila fidgeting next to him. She had been waiting all week for news of the artifact the FBI confiscated, the Mustard Seeds, the Seeds of Salvation.
Brisling laid his hand on the woman's and spoke softly to her. "These are the good people I told you about." Then he introduced her as Genevieve Gervin, staff epidemiologist for the CDC's Global Disease Detection Branch. "She and I are heading up the president's special task force on JCAV."
"Is that where you've been?" asked Peter.
Brisling removed his glasses and rubbed his temples. "Where to start?"
"You can start by telling me why there's a US Army helicopter sitting in my front yard," Saul said.
"It's the only way on or off this mountain. They have it locked down pretty tight."
"They're blocking our satellite connection too. We repaired the cables, but there's no signal. No internet, no email, just the radio."
Having stoked the fire, Demi sat on the arm of Saul's chair, her long legs stretching to the floor. "Why are those soldiers wearing biohazard suits?" she asked.
Brisling scoffed. "They think they're going to get infected." Whipping around, he parted the curtains to a blast of fresh morning light. "Where's the plant?"
"I asked Demi to burn it," said Saul.
Brisling let the curtains fall and turned back around. "Not that it matters."
The woman called Genevieve added her hand to Brisling's and spoke in a sweet southern accent. "Go on, Royal."
Davila continued her fidgeting.
Brisling nodded sternly, addressing the group. "I'm afraid we have bad news . . . and news that will be disturbing for some of you."
Genevieve cleared her throat, face expectant.
"Fine," said Brisling. He pulled his hands from hers and squared himself up with Saul. "I'm sorry, OK? I'm sorry for being such an ass beforeâall that stuff about you people and your . . . traditions. That was way out of line. I apologize."
Saul's gaze settled on the back of his granddaughter's hand, his expression blank, dark eyes smoldering. For some reason, Saul's demeanor reminded Peter of Wy-am, the great falls at Celilo, roiling away in the dark, a hundred feet below the river's placid surface.
"But I'm still an ass," Brisling added with a raised finger and a wry smile for Genevieve. "In case any of you were wondering."
Davila could wait no longer. "What happened to the artifact the FBI took?"
Brisling nodded through with a close-lipped smile. "I'll get to that soon enough. But first the bad news, because it affects all of us in one way or another." He drew a deep breath then clapped his hands to his thighs, exhaling. "So, we're now reasonably sure that every human being on the planet is infected with JCAV. And if something isn't done, and soon, seven billion people are going die in very short order, three months at the outside."
It took a moment for the number to soak in. Seven billion.
"That's what Jason Dayan told me," said Saul. With each passing day, Saul had shared more and more of what Dayan told him at the summit, every outrageous word of it.
Brisling turned his palms up and shrugged his shoulders. "And you still believe he had nothing to do with making JCAV?"
Saul plucked at a loose thread on the arm of his chair. "I didn't want to believe it."
"I don't blame you for not wanting to believe any of this. The virus Jason Dayan unleashed in 1992 is worse than anything the CDC ever dreamed of. It's so far off my Oh Shit scale, I had to come up with a completely new one. I'm calling it the Holy Shit scale. I'm not joking. This thing is right up there with God's flood from the Bible."
"That's why he was getting our people off the grid and onto solar and wind energy. That's why he was educating our youth in science and engineeringâso we could rebuild civilization. He said a girl was going to lead us, someone called the Foundation."
Brisling shook his head incredulously. "That son of a bitch really thought he was God, whispering in your ear like you were Noah."
Saul brushed the loose thread onto the floor and laid his hand on Demi's, but he said nothing.
Outside, the sun was rising bright, insistent upon the curtains.
Brisling sighed. "Anyways, things are really accelerating now. It turns out that when JCAV spreads from person to person, it doesn't reset its molecular clock. So, if you picked it up ten years ago, you have ten years left, not twenty-five like we thought. Kids are starting to get sick now, even babies. They lagged behind because JCAV's molecular clock ticks just a little bit slower in young people. But whoever designed this thing wanted it to hit all at once, like a wave."
He paused, hands on knees. "It's only a matter of weeks before we all start getting sickâwell, most of us anyways. It'll start with little things, emotional outbursts and forgetfulness. Then seizures, psychosis and death."
Peter took hold of Davila's fidgeting hand. "Is the CDC working on a treatment?"
It was Genevieve who answered. "Our task force is organizing a network of international labs to develop something, but it's slow."
"Too slow," Brisling added. "And too late, I think. Even if we develop something, it'll be impossible to get it to seven and a half billion people. We'll have to ration it." He seemed to shiver at the thought.
Davila ripped her hand from Peter's and shouted at the doctor. "Tell me what happened to the artifact!"
Brisling gestured for her to calm down. "All right, all right. So, the FBI handed over your chunk of wood to the National Security Agency in Maryland, the NSA. It turns out the spherical object inside was a lead orb covered in gold leaf. That's why it was so heavy. But lead and gold are the perfect materials if you want to shield something against environmental radiation."
"Shield what?" she said.
"Seeds. Nestled inside the two halves of the orb was a leather pouch containing five tiny seeds."
Saul's head snapped upright. "Jason Dayan had a pouch with five seeds in it."
"Yep. The FBI found it on his body. We've already compared those seeds with the seeds from the orb, and with the plant growing in that lab down in Portland, the same species you had growing on your windowsill. They're all identical, the same JCAV-producing species Jason Dayan engineered in his labs years ago."
"How is that even possible?" said Davila. "The wooden cube was over two thousand years old."
"We don't think it was," said Brisling, turning to Saul. "If what I hear is right, some random old woman approached you with it, asked for an appraisal so she could sell it."
"She was a tribal elder."
"Right. But she couldn't tell you where she got it, could she?"
"No, but she said it was a family heirloom."
"And then she just changes her mind, asks you to bury it somewhere secret. Didn't you find that odd?"
"A little. But it's what she asked."
"And when she died, didn't you think it also strange that none of her family came to claim this extremely valuable artifact, or even ask about it?"
Saul said nothing.
"So, what makes you think Jason Dayan didn't give that woman the artifact and ask her to call you?"
Saul looked confused. "What are you getting at?"
"I'm saying that this whole goddamned thing is an elaborate hoax, perpetuated across decades by one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men."
"That's insane."
"Insane? That's precisely what Dayan was, clinically insane. Engineering a virus to wipe out humanity generally buys you that diagnosis. But tell me what's crazier: all that malarkey about time-traveling Magi and the Kingdom of God, or a man who used his technology and wealth to fulfill his own twisted vision of justice, to feed his psychotic delusions of godhood?"
"But how could the Old One be a hoax? He was ten thousand years old. You saw the carbon-dating results."
"We've already been over this. Dayan put those seeds inside the body after it was pulled from the ice. Hell, for all we know, he could have taken that body from a morgue somewhere, paid off those college students to say they found it in the cave, then faked the carbon-14 results. You can come up with a thousand scenarios more plausible than the cockamamie bullshit he shoveled you."
"What about the rest of those scientific reports you read?"
Brisling waved it off. "Easily falsified."
"What about the Old One's spider-silk garment?"
"So? Jason Dayan was wearing one too. He probably developed the material in his labs. Dayex Corporation was decades ahead of the competition."
Peter could see it now, the shimmering blue fabric taking a shotgun blast at point-blank range, shedding the lead pellets like rain. Demi had said it was a Ghost Shirt, the mythical armor Lakota warriors believed could stop the bullets of enemies. That is why it stopped Peter's shotgun blast but not the bullet from her rifle. It was hard to tell if she was joking or not.
Davila drew a sharp breath. "But I saw it. I touched it."
Brisling clicked his tongue and reached into his jacket pocket. Taking out a stack of photos, he handed it to Davila. "I was told you'd want to see those."
She rifled through them, breathless.
"The FBI found that when they raided Dayex Headquarters a week ago. It was in a secret vault attached to Jason Dayan's office."
She looked up, eyes huge. "The Ramallah Ossuary! It's all here, the inscription, the bones, the blue material, everything. Just like I remember it!"
"And all a hoax. I've been fully debriefed by the Israelis. Your people now believe Dayan faked the whole thing. He purchased an authentic first-century ossuary and had the inscription forged. I guess this type of thing happens all the time, people trying to fake religious relics and all that. Then he found an actual first-century skeleton and wrapped it up in his spider-silk pajamas."
She fell back against the wall, nearly knocking down the framed picture of Wovoka. "But the Palestinians found it in Ramallah years ago."
"And what proof do you have of that? A charcoal rubbing, some photos, and a handful of rumors. According to your own Mossad, none of those things were discovered until recently, right around the same time the ossuary mysteriously surfaced in one of Saddam Hussein's hidden caches."
"No." She covered her mouth.
"I hate to be the one to tell you all this. I know how much you've suffered because of that artifact." Brisling took a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. "If it's any consolation, the Mossad and the IAA were fooled too, just like you, just like all of us. They ended up making a fake copy of a fake ossuary."
Peter curled his arm around Davila's shoulder. "How did Dayan get the ossuary? Did Gryphus give it to him?"
"No, he sold it to him. Gryphus never had any interest in the ossuary. But he realized the value of what he'd stolen, so he immediately put it up for sale on the black market. Jason Dayan was the buyer. He snatched it up before the Mossad even knew who stole it. Dayan must have been impressed with Gryphus, because he appears to have hired him on the spot, as his personal assistant and hit man."
Davila's hand fell from her mouth. "But why? Why would Dayan do any of this?"
"Because he was a goddamned psychopath, that's why. All this time he's been feeding his delusions of godhood, weaving himself into an increasingly elaborate mythology created by his own twisted imagination."
Peter raised his hand. "Hold on. The wooden cube goes back way before Jason Dayan. It's mentioned in a medieval document my dad translated. It's mentioned in the Vindolanda Tablet, and that's two thousand years old. How could that be part of his hoax?"
"Does either of those documents actually mention a wooden cube or anything resembling it? No. They only mention something called the Mustard Seeds, the Seeds of Salvation, well-established symbols for Christianity. The Israelis and our historians both agree on this. The Mustard Seeds have nothing to do with the wooden cube, even if it were two thousand years old, which we now know it can't be."
Peter let go of Davila and rubbed his face with his hands. It was all too much to process. In a matter of minutes, Brisling had systematically dismantled everything they thought they knew, everything they had bled for, everything their fathers had died forâall figments of a lunatic's imagination. Yet one thing remained intact in its mystery, untouched by Brisling's cold logic. "What about the Sons of Simon? Why would Dayan kill them? Why kill my dad? Why try to kill me?"
"Another deadly facet of Dayan's delusion, I'm afraid. I'm sorry about your dad. I only found out a few days ago."
"What facet? What are you talking about?"
"There's something about the orb I haven't told you yet. The outer gold leaf was inscribed with a message."
"A message?" said Davila.
"I haven't actually seen it myself. Those NSA spooks won't let anyone near it. But they did tell me what it says. In fact, it's the main reason Genevieve and I are here."
"And?"
"Well, the inscription is in at least a dozen languages, ancient and modern, and a couple they don't recognizeâinvented by Dayan, of course. But the ones they do recognize all say the same thing. From the smallest of seeds, the Kingdom of God."
Davila furrowed her brow. "But that's simply the Parable of the Mustard Seed, rephrased."
"That's what I said, but the NSA linguists disagree. They're telling me that in each instance, the word used for seed is a technical one often reserved to describe a man's seed, if you know what I mean. They think the phrase, the smallest of seeds, refers to molecular seedsâDNA."
Peter stepped forward. "The mutation! The mutation all the Sons of Simon carry. The mutation Jason Dayan was trying to eliminate from the human gene pool. That's what the Mustard Seeds are."
And there it was, the answer to his father's riddle, semina sinapis. He turned to Davila. "You were right all along."
"Oh, come on," said Brisling. "It's just another layer of Dayan's delusion. He probably found some harmless genetic variant in your family tree and wove it into his mythology. Haven't you been listening to anything I've said?"
Genevieve touched Brisling's sleeve. "Royal, please."
He crossed his arms and looked away.
She opened the tackle box on her lap. Inside were needles, syringes, and glass collection tubes. "Peter, come on over. We'll need you to sit down."
Brisling sighed, unfolded his arms and stared at Peter. "If those NSA spooks want a closer look at your DNA, they can have it. I don't know what the hell they expect to find, or how it could possibly help us, but that's why Genevieve and I came all the way out here. We need a sample of your blood."
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Author's note:
Thank you for reading Chapter 46!
This chapter is dedicated to @kemorgan65 for her helpful comments about the ending of this story, and for figuring out the riddle of the Mustard Seeds before anyone else.
Do you buy Brisling's explanation, or is it too much of a stretch?
Reading this chapter again, I can see how much I borrowed from the ending of the movie, Contact, one of my all-time favorites.
I'd love to get your feedback on this chapter.
-Frode
Image taken from theoldcoyote.tumblr.com