Part 49 (2/2)
Watching it all first from Jack's helmet camera and then from the camera that Lachlan had been wearing, they watched in horror as the ultratiny figures of Jack and Switchblade fell away from the tip of the immense pyramid, dropping down into the abyss, before they both disappeared from sight.
”Daddy...!”Lily cried, leaping at the screen. ”No!No, no, no...!”
”Jack...” Zoe's eyes filled with tears.
”Huntsman...” Wizard whispered.
Sky Monster pointed at the screen. ”Look, he laid the Pillar before he fell! He did it! The crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d did it...!”
But then an alarm siren blared out in the c.o.c.kpit and Sky Monster went to check on it and he called, ”Zoe! Wiz! We have incoming South African aircraft! F15s! We have to get out of here!”
Despite their tears, Zoe and Wizard hurried off to man the wing guns, leaving Lily staring at the monitor-alone, frozen, stunned-sobbing deep wrenching sobs and searching for some sign, any sign, that her father was alive but knowing in her heart that he could not possibly be.
”Oh, Daddy...” she said again. ”Daddy...”
Then theHalicarna.s.sus powered up and they took to the air, flying north this time, away from southern Africa, fleeing yet again, uncertain and unnerved by the knowledge that now without any shadow of a doubt, they faced the remaining challenges of their quest- the placing of the last four Pillars in March of 2008-alone, without Jack West Jr.
THE END OF THE 6 SACRED STONES.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
WRITING A NOVELcan be a somewhat solitary experience: you spend months alone at the keyboard, lost in the world you have created. I happen to find this enormously fun, which is why writing novels is the best job in the world for me.
But when you decide to write a book with ancient Chinese characters and j.a.panese military language in it, you have to call for help, and this is where I get to thank those many people who helped me along the way.
As always, my wife, Natalie, is the first to read my stuff and her comments still manage to be both insightful and gentle. Having read all my books in draft stage plus all my screenplays, she's now really quite an experienced ma.n.u.script reader!
To my good friend John Schrooten, who (again) read this one while sitting in the M.A.
n.o.ble Stand at the SCG while waiting for the cricket to start. The cricket commenced and he just kept on reading, so that was a good sign! Great friend, great guy.
For technical support, I am indebted to Patrick Pow for getting the ancient Chinese scripts from China, and to Irene Kay for putting me in touch with Patrick.
For the Chinese language tips, my thanks go to Stephanie Pow. Likewise, since I know no j.a.panese, I have to thank Troy McMullen (and his wife and sisterinlaw!) for their help!
I read many books while researchingThe 6 Sacred Stones -from works about s.p.a.ce and zeropoint fields to more esoteric books about Stonehenge and other ancient places. I'd like to make special mention, first, of the works of Graham Hanc.o.c.k, which I just love and would recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who wants to view global history from an unconventional pointofview, and second, of a little gem of a book calledStonehenge by Robin Heath. It was in this book that I first saw the theory that connects Stonehenge to the Great Pyramid through a series of rightangle triangles.
I must also send out my heartfelt thanks to Peter and Lorna Grzonkowski for their very generous donations to the Bullant Charity Challenge. The twins in the novel, Lachlan and Julius Adamson, are named after their nephews.
Likewise, Paul and Lenore Robertson, two longtime supporters of my work and another couple who do an enormous amount for charity, for their donations at not one but two ASXReuters Charity Dinners! Paul, I hope you don't mind that I made you a smooth talking doublecrossing badguy CIA agent!
And last of all, I thank The WAGS, a great group of guys with whom I play golf on Wednesday afternoons, for their generous donation on behalf of Steve Oakes, the leader of this motley crew. In return for their kind donation to charity, I named a character at the start of this book after Oaksey, and promptly riddled him with bullets. As the boys say, no one likes to see that, but such are the dangers of having a character named after you in a Matthew Reilly book!
To everyone else, family and friends, as always, thank you for your continued encouragement.
-Matthew Reilly Sydney, Australia September 2007 AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY.
THE WRITING OFTHE 6 SACRED STONES.
SPOILER WARNING!.
The following interview contains Spoilers fromThe 6 Sacred Stones.Readers who have not read the novel are advised to avoid reading this interview as itdoesgive away major plot moments from the book.
Q:Let's get straight to the biggest question of all: how could you endThe 6 Sacred Stoneswith Jack West Jr. falling into a bottomless abyss?
MR:Okay, okay! Yes, I figured this might be an issue, and this is certainly the best place to talk about it. (Hey, I think the interview at the end ofScarecrow saved me from countless emails about what I did in that book!) When I sat down to writeThe 6 Sacred Stones, I asked myself, ”How can I make this book totallydifferent from the others? What can I do that will be completely unexpected?”
My answer: come up with the biggest, boldest, most outrageous novel yet with the biggest, boldest, most outrageous cliffhanger ending imaginable, one in which the fate of the hero literally hangs in the balance at the end of the book (and as those who have read my other books will know, I love a good cliffhanger). This worked out very well when it became apparent to me that the story I had come up with (involving six pillars being placed at six vertices) was going to be too big to achieve in one book. So the ending is merely the midway point of a larger adventure. I've often ended chapters with dire cliffhangers, just think of this as a huge chapter ending!
Jack may well get out of his terrible predicament-indeed one method for his survival has been inserted into the book (and no, it's not Horus) the fun is in waiting to find out how.
The way I see it, it's a bit like waiting for the next season of a TV show that has ended on a cliffhanger. So in the end, I apologize to everyone for making you wait in such an awful way, but I promise it will be worth it!
Q:7 Deadly Wondersand The 6 Sacred Stoneshave seen an increase in the scale of your books (solar rays, dark stars, vast ancient structures). What exactly are you trying to achieve with this series?
MR:What I am trying to achieve is really quite simple: I want to create aLord of the Rings style epic set in our world, in the present day.
I want it to be a story that is part adventure and part myth in which a small group of seemingly powerless characters struggle against the mighty and allpowerful.
There is another reason for it, too, one that is purely for me as an author. In his Introduction toThe Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote of his reason for writing that tale: ”The prime motive was the desire of a taleteller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.”
Same here.
I just wanted to try my hand at a really big epic story: a grand sweeping adventure that spans the globe, that looks out at the Sun and s.p.a.ce itself, that examines the mysterious ancient places scattered around our planet, and in which-most important of all-the protagonists, in the course of carrying out thrilling feats of heroism, endure profound tests of their character. I also just wanted to try to write a long story.
So in contrast to the Shane Schofield/Scarecrow books, which bring back the same hero in separate adventures, the story begun in7 Deadly Wonders and continued inThe 6 Sacred Stones is actually one big story (indeed, this is why the sections t.i.tled ”A Girl Named Lily” begin with Part III in this book, Parts I and II having appeared in the earlier novel).
Q:Tell us about some of the ”mysterious ancient places” that appear in this book and why you chose them?
MR:I love ancient places and ancient things-from the pyramids to the Rosetta Stone. I can just gaze at them all day long-especially when they defy explanation.
Having explored the Great Pyramid and its fellow ”Wonders” in7 Deadly Wonders, I decided to focus on some of my other favorite ancient places in this book, among them Stonehenge, Abu Simbel, and the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River in China.
(There are, of course, many others that I love just as much, but I'm keeping them for the next book!) I have visited all three of these places.
First, Stonehenge. Seriously, pictures don't do it justice. Those stones arehuge! And the stuff about coastal lichens being on their surfaces is true-it is weird and unexplained!
Abu Simbel is simply colossal, bigger than you can possibly imagine, and built for the same reason the men of Gondor built the Argonath in Tolkien'sThe Fellows.h.i.+p of the Ring: to tell encroaching neighbors, ”Look at how powerful we are in Egypt! Don't even think of crossing these borders unless you can deal with the people who built this monument!” And it's all the better that the UN rebuilt it brickbybrick to save it from the waters of the Aswan Dam.
Finally, the Three Gorges of China. These are simply beautiful. Natalie and I visited them in 2006, solely to research this book. A side trip into the gorges of the Shennong River system (lush, green, misty, and narrow) really crystallised my mental image of the flooded rural hamlet where Wizard finds the entrance to Laozi's trap system.
Q:What else have you been working on? How is theContestmovie coming along?
MR:Earlier this year, I sold a TV script calledLiterary Superstars to Sony, who successfully licensed it to the US TV network ABC.
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