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ALSO BY JUDITH &
GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS
Icefire
Quicksilver
Freefall
The Chronicles of Galen Sword
SEARCH
A NOVEL OF FORBIDDEN HISTORY
JUDITH & GARFIELD
REEVES-STEVENS
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Cornwall 7,312 Years B.C.E.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Cornwall 7,322 Years B.C.E.
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Havi Atoll 7,418 Years B.C.E.
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Malta 7,567 Years B.C.E.
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Patagonia 7,794 Years B.C.E.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Antarctica 7,794 Years B.C.E.
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Antarctica 10,800 Years B.C.E.
Acknowledgments
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
Book design by Jonathan Bennett
SEARCH. Copyright © 2010 by Softwind Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reeves-Stevens, Judith.
Search : a novel of forbidden history / Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-37744-1 (alk. paper)
1. Human beings—Origin—Fiction. 2. Geneticists—Fiction. 3. DNA—Research—Fiction. 4. Conspiracies—Fiction. 5. Secrecy—Fiction. I. Reeves-Stevens, Garfield, 1953– II. Title.
PR9199.3.R428S43 2010
813′.54—dc22
2010020607
First Edition: August 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For John Bullicz
and for the treasures he left behind—
Adam, Justin, and Robin
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
—T. S. ELIOT
SEARCH
CORNWALL 7,312 YEARS B.C.E.
When it was known that the last of the shadowmen had sailed from their stronghold at Kassiterithes, the people of the oak began their attack, and even the innermost walls of stone were breached by dusk of that first day.
Fields of wheat blazed beyond the wooden stockades that formed the outer walls. The flames sent thick ropes of black smoke to dim the setting sun, bringing on night too quickly and too soon.
The bronze swords and battering rams of the oak people smashed through interior doors never meant for defense. Their torches set fire to the blasphemous tapestries torn from the walls. The library of scrolls and sewn parchments and map rubbings from the Hall of the Navigators itself became ash.
The shadowmen’s followers scattered, rushing through supply tunnels built into the cliffs to avoid the winter snows. Some escaped that way. Some did not. Unarmed, those that were captured were savagely cut down. Their heads were carried on spear points, and there was no reason for it but hatred and fear.
By the time the stars shone weakly through the pall of dying smoke, the slaughter was over. Blood slicked the cobbled passageways, and desperate handprints smeared smooth stone walls, each block so perfectly aligned. Sword and axe scored intricate frescoes, erasing the story record of those who had built this place and how they had come here. Braziers in the great halls were overturned, and the intricate plumbing of clay channels and pipes shattered, so that fire-lit water spilled freely from common baths and latrines as if the crashing sea outside were already returning to reclaim its own.
In the end, after mutilated bodies had been heaped on burning pyres, only one last thing remained to be done—find the treasure that all men knew was hidden here.
The leader of the oak people, chieftain by blood and by combat, began the search, his sword sheath still dripping red. His full russet beard was braided with the knucklebones of adversaries he had killed in earlier battles. His pale cheeks were daubed with ocher mud. His leggings, foot wraps, and stiffened chest plate were made of deer and bear hides. The bark-and-tinder torch he carried high, wrapped in cedar cord, sputtered loudly, sending hissing droplets of rendered fat to sizzle on his scarred forearm without his notice. All he could think of was uncovering the secret trove that would enrich his power and ensure it would pass down to his sons, and to theirs.
At the farthest point in the deepest passageway, he found the carved pair of doors he searched for. As the stories had told, they were bound by iron bands and were themselves made from thick oak planks carved with oak leaves, colored green and red.
That the defilers of his land had dared to conjure the essence of the sacred tree enraged the chieftain. The oak was painted on his chest plate in deer’s blood and charcoal, identifying his line and his kin. It had no place here.
He kicked at the doors, and they sprang open. All the stories said that the shadowmen’s greatest treasure would be found here, but even this vault was undefended. What fools the masters of this place had been.
As he stepped into the arch of the doorway, the chieftain saw the pale amber flicker of an oil lamp. Instantly, he drew his sword, eager to kill again.
But only a follower waited within, head bowed, hands clutched to her chest in subservience. Her hair was the color of dried grass, and her skin was as pale as his own. Her telltale white tunic, hemmed in thin strips of purple cloth with strands of purple string at each corner, was the mark of one of their concubines. Once, she’d been
a child from his own village or another nearby, given in trade years ago. Despoiled, she was worthy now only of death. He stepped forward to dispatch her.
Then he hesitated, awed by this room.
His eyes fixed on the domed ceiling, more than twice his sword’s reach above him. In the light of his torch and the concubine’s lamp, he saw the gleam of hundreds of small disks of silver, their arrangement matching some of the patterns of the stars at night. The circular, plastered wall beneath was overlaid with other patterns: swaths of brown and green against blue, cut by black lines that arced across the blue from point to point. Why anyone would do this made no sense.
Contemptuous of what he couldn’t understand, the chieftain scraped his sword across the wall nearest him, destroying the profane art, then thrust his torch at the silent woman. She retreated, seeking refuge behind a round stone table set in the center of the vault.
The chieftain’s interest quickened: The table’s twelve inscribed wedges each held an object. He slashed his torch across the table, spraying fat and burning sparks of tinder, then growled in sharp frustration. Only one of the objects looked valuable—a square of gold a hand-stretch across and three fingers thick, with the death’s-head face of a shadowman embossed upon it. The other objects were common: a lump of pitted rock, a long wood dowel jacketed in tin and fitted with a slender haft, a coiled and knotted rope; craftsmen’s tools, nothing more.
With his torch he backhanded the tin-wrapped wooden dowel, and from the sound it made when it hit the floor, it was hollow, weak—useless. With his free hand, he took the gold square, at once realizing by its lack of weight that it wasn’t even solid. Instead, it was a pile of gold sheets, held together on one side by cords of sinew.
Growing anger sweeping through him, he flipped roughly through the thin layers of gold, finding only a different, meaningless pattern on each, some like the ceiling stars, others like the pointless shapes on the painted wall, and almost all bordered by rows of small symbols of no meaning to him.
“Where’s the rest of their treasure?” he demanded.
The woman’s voice was steady, but her eyes showed fear as she answered in the language of his own people. “This is their treasure.”
The chieftain let his rage explode. He slammed the worthless stack of golden sheets on the table and shouted at her. “The shadowmen had a ship. My sons watched them load it. They took no treasure with them. Where did they hide it?”
“This is all there ever was.” She dared meet his eyes again. “All that’s needed.”
“Liar.” At least he’d found gold here, as paltry an amount as it was. The concubine might know of other vaults. He edged around the table, slowly swaying his sword and his torch, each a snake poised to strike.
The woman backed away from him, her hand grasping at something that hung from her neck on a leather cord.
It was the hated symbol of the shadowmen—a cross formed by a circle above a diamond sail. They painted it on the sails of their ships. In their temples and circles of quarried rocks, they carved it out of stone. The woman’s cross was silver, though, and could be melted and reworked into a proper symbol worthy of sacrifice to the spirits of the green.
“Give me that! I’ll make it serve the true gods.”
“Not my gods.” The woman’s back was against the wall.
The chieftain stepped closer. “You serve theirs?”
“They have none.”
Fearless as he was in battle, the chieftain felt a thrill of unease in the presence of her sacrilege. “Then there’s none to save you or them.” He raised his sword, and only then did he hear the faint rasp of a foot on stone and turn his head to the open doors just as the spear flew at him.
It struck his unprotected side beneath his uplifted arm, and he grunted, dropping his sword, his chest pierced by a thunderbolt of icy cold.
Sword arm useless, he toppled sideways against the curved wall, his torch sparking against the floor. With his other arm he strained to reach around and yank the spear free. Because of his girth and his chest plate, his trembling hand closed on nothing.
In the failing light of the torch and the glow of the oil lamp, the chieftain could just make out the two figures who now stood over him. The woman and—a youth. The spear-thrower. A stripling not yet grown had felled a chieftain.
Even worse, his killer was one of them: shadow-dark skin like no man of oak, black eyes narrowed by lowered lids, hollow cheeks and flattened nose.
“I saw you leave,” the chieftain wheezed, each breath an agony. “All of you . . .”
“They returned to their home,” the woman said. “To the White Island.”
Uncomprehending, the chieftain watched as she pulled apart the circle and the sail to reveal a slender silver blade. “Then who is . . .”
“My son.” She put the blade against his throat. “The shadowmen have no gods, because they are gods. And they gave us their bond they will come back to save us.”
“My sons . . . their sons . . . will avenge me,” the chieftain gasped as he felt the bite of the blade, then nothing else as the false stars spiraled into darkness and he died thinking only of his sons, their sons, and vengeance.
But his body was never found, nor was the treasure understood.
Until the day the gods returned . . .
ONE
“Is that human?”
David Weir was dying, and the reason was on his computer, even though he didn’t understand it. His finger moved reflexively to strike the key that would blank the screen, but he stopped himself. Too late.
“Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know anyone was still here.” He turned, covering his surprise. It was almost ten on a Friday night. Last time he’d looked, all the workstations in the lab’s open office space were empty, computer screens dark. He’d been so lost in his search, he hadn’t heard approaching footsteps—unusual for him. His mother used to say he had better ears than a dog. As a child, he’d been able to detect his father’s pickup make the turn onto their street five blocks away.
“Budget hell.” Colonel Miriam Kowinski hefted the thick green binder she carried. From his one year’s experience as a civilian technician in the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, David knew those two words were as much of an explanation as his boss would be giving him.
The colonel leaned forward to peer more closely at his screen, then frowned. “Mitochondrial DNA. But some of the markers are wrong.”
“It’s a reference sample.” The lie came easily.
“Chimp?”
To the untrained eye, the electrophoresis patterns on his screen would resemble smeared, ghostly photographs of banded worms lined up side by side, some sections dark, some light, with a scattering of small numbers and letters running to either side, spelling out gibberish. Kowinski, though, wasn’t just another army bureaucrat. She was a trained forensic biologist. It would be foolish to underestimate her.
“Closer to human. Neandertal.” David held his breath, gambling that the colonel’s expertise didn’t stretch to extinct hominins.
“Really.”
“Yeah. A twenty-nine-thousand-year-old Neandertal baby. From the Mezmaiskaya fossil.”
“Is this a personal project?”
David knew why she asked. The lab’s primary mission was to identify the remains of American military personnel through DNA analysis, not just for present conflicts, but for wars past. Beyond that, if resources and personnel were available, the lab could use its expertise to aid outside researchers in cases of scientific or historic interest. It could also help other government and law-enforcement agencies carry out drug tests, develop forensic evidence, even determine parentage in child custody cases.
However, “personal projects” were just that—personal and unauthorized. Illegal.
“No, ma’am. It’s part of that new quality assurance protocol I’m developing.”
Colonel Kowinski regarded him impassively. She’d folded her arms over her budget binder, holding it close.
Despite the late hour, her olive drab jacket was still buttoned and crisp. Her sleek salt-and-pepper chignon might as well have been molded from plastic, not a hair escaping.
“Go on.”
David couldn’t tell if his supervisor wanted to hear more because she was interested or because she sensed, correctly, that he was lying. Either way, he felt ready. The old saying was true: Imminent death did have a way of concentrating the mind.
“The lab’s been collecting DNA from every recruit since 1992. That’s just over three million samples.”
Kowinski tapped her budget binder with a short, polish-free nail. “I’m aware of the statistics.”
“Well, statistically, there’s always an error rate in sequencing DNA samples to create a genetic profile.”
The colonel said nothing, and David continued. “Out of three million samples, we can estimate a few thousand of our profiles will be incorrect. Since it’s expensive to repeat the sequencing of all three million to look for just a few flawed results, I’m hoping a mathematical analysis of the profiles in our database will find the errors instead.”
“The Neandertal connection, Mr. Weir. It’s late.”
David pushed on. “We know the mitochondrial DNA in every cell of every human in almost all cases passes directly from mother to child, without sexual recombination with the father’s DNA. So, technically, every person on Earth today can trace their genealogical descent back to a single female who lived in Africa about a hundred and fifty thousand years ago and—”
“Mitochondrial Eve.” Kowinski interrupted to remind him he wasn’t shining a visiting politician.
David instantly jumped ahead to details he hoped would distract her even more from what was actually on his screen. “Okay, so when we compare nine hundred and ninety-four key mtDNA sequences from people around the world, the average number of those sequences that differ between any two people is eight, and the maximum is twenty-four. That’s how closely related every person is—less than a three percent difference.
“MtDNA from Neandertals, though—that differs from modern humans by twenty-two to thirty-six sequences, with an average of twenty-seven.”