Part 4 (1/2)

'I see your point.'

'Good. Now I reckon it's time to cook up some more eggs, don't you?'

Breakfast continued and the conversation levels slowly returned to normal: By the time the conversation turned towards breaking out the frequency generator and antic.i.p.ating what might be found, only two small groups were not entering into the animated discussion. They were, predictably, the two farmers and the three soldiers. Each of these two small groups sat some way apart from the rest, sc.r.a.ping breakfast from bowls; the farmers in silence, the soldiers laughing amongst themselves. Occasionally members of the groups would exchange significant glances. I realized the situation was not resolved yet.

After breakfast Denton and Noorbergen deployed the frequency generator.

This consisted of a computer, a printer, a number of seismic probes, an equal number of metal spikes and a whole load of wires and satellite dishes to connect them together.

Denton explained how it worked as I rubbed dirt across the breakfast pans to clean them.

'The basic component of matter is the atom, right? You know the deal - all sorts of particles, different weights, some positive, some negative, all in motion in or around the nucleus.'

I murmured a.s.sent, continued to scrub. None of Denton's words made the slightest sense to me but she had a nice voice. Since my argument with Bernice I had been pining for a bit of female attention - well, female attention from someone not old enough to be my mother.

Denton continued, 'Atoms combine to form molecules, right? A complex arrangement of electrons...o...b..ting positively charged nuclei. With me so far?'

'Like this you mean?' I swirled the pan I was holding. A whirlpool of dust circled a stubborn patch of egg glued to the middle of the pan.

Denton grinned ironically. It wasn't quite the response I'd hoped for. 'Close enough. Anyway. These rocks, right, contain different atoms. Different atoms for different metals. So your radiation wavelength caused by the motion of these different atoms is of a different frequency for each metal.

Yeah?'

'Absolutely.' I nodded, scrubbed, reached for another pan. 'What we've got here -' Denton nodded towards the open crate full of equipment '- is basically a transmitter. We connect it to these probes, right, and punch a signal into the ground. Water is the best medium but damp soil will do at a pinch. When the signal comes back we can tell what kind of molecules it bounced off of. We can set the receiver here -' she tapped the computer '-to screen out frequencies we don't want.'

I decided it was time to show how quick a study I was. 'So you can build up a picture of the ground. A three-dimensional picture?'

Denton connected various components together and booted up the computer. 'You got it. We could find a rowing boat by its rowlocks if it's buried in these hills. You want to help?'

This was more like it. 'Sounds more interesting than cleaning pans. What can I do?'

'Grab that mallet and those metal spikes and go bang them in the ground for me. About half a mile apart should do the trick. I'll come and set the probes in place when you've finished.'

I blinked. Had I heard her right? h. Right. This mallet here?'

'Uh huh.'

and these spikes?'

'Please.'

'These heavy spikes?'

She smiled. 'Thanks, Jase. You're a star.'

Trapped by my own efforts, I had no choice but to pick up the three metal spikes. I walked in the direction Denton had indicated. As I walked I muttered, 'sod, sod, sod', in time with each step.

Five hundred and seventy-three sods later I hammered the first spike into the ground. It felt good to hit something that couldn't hit back.

The second spike was harder since the ground sloped uphill.

The third was almost impossible, as the hill was even steeper here.

Eventually all three spikes were positioned. By this time I was positioned a good hundred or so feet above the camp and about half a mile from it. I perched on a rock to have a breather. It was hard drawing breath this high - but the view was worth it. Beyond a fold in the rock wall I could see the plateau spread out, a crumpled cloth of rock and hills, shallow valleys, grainy speckles that were sheep or goats further down among the sporadic farms. Turkey. And across the border - what was that? Armenia? I tried to remember something important about the local social-political-economic setup. Nothing came to mind. That sort of thing was really Benny's area of expertise. I was just a tourist.

A military jet flew overhead, white contrail stretching across the blue-grey sky. Concorde had made a trail like that when we'd arrived in France.

Paris had been fun, for a while. Being tourists had been fun. For a while.

I watched the contrail blur until it was lost amongst the clouds.

I tried to remember the good times Benny and I had shared in Paris. I couldn't. Well, there was that time in the gift shop - but no. She hadn't actually been there, had she? Well, not at the start, anyway. After a moment I found I couldn't remember when the excitement of the honeymoon had worn off - to be replaced with restlessness, and a nerve-racking claustrophobia.

I sighed. I knew what it was.

Early-twenty-first-century Earth was boring. s.e.x was boring.

No. Not quite.

s.e.x with Bernice was boring.

I wondered when our marriage had begun to fail.

At that moment footsteps crunched on the rocky hillside. Jules Noorbergen trudged into view carrying the last of the seismic probes. He smiled when he saw me, hunkered down beside me in the lee of the rock, eyes shaded, gazing out across the torn and barren landscape.

Without speaking I pointed at the metal spike I had just hammered into the ground. He fitted the probe to the spike, activated it and adjusted the high gain antenna so it was aligned with the camp.

He muttered quietly into a walkie-talkie.

'How long will this take?' I asked when Noorbergen had put the radio back into the pocket of his windcheater.

'Matter of minutes for a first approximation. They'll have a detailed map of the local area by the time we get back to base camp.' He took a moment to study the view. His curly hair stood up on end, lifted by a stiff breeze. His angular face was lit by a thin shaft of sunlight so that for a moment he seemed on the verge of a tremendous revelation.

'Excited?'

'You betcha. Equipment like this has never been used for this sort of job before. It could make the difference.'

'What kind of difference?'

'The difference. Between success and failure.'

'You really think we could find the Ark?'

'Maybe. Yeah. Just maybe.'

'What about Benny's expedition? They've got the same gear haven't they?'