“The same reason as us,” Borger replied. “In case of a catastrophe. But right now, we can’t go very far. They can. And if you’re going to locate a seed vault anywhere, I’m guessing you’d want to do it on a planet that you knew could sustain you.”
Everyone turned back to the columns in front of them.
Alison broke the silence with a whisper. “So what do we do now?” She looked back and forth between the three men, none of whom answered. “Guys?”
To her right both Caesare and Borger finally shrugged. She looked to her left. “John?
Clay blinked but continued staring, transfixed.
“John?”
Quietly, he inhaled then spoke under his breath without taking his eyes away. “Beware of the leap.”
“Huh?”
“Beware of the leap,” he repeated, louder.
“What leap?”
“It’s what Palin said to me before we came back through.”
Caesare looked at him curiously. “What does it mean?”
“We’ve seen what those plants can do. Which was probably nothing compared to the water itself.” He turned to the others. “And that water is only touching the glass in here. What do you think the solution inside those tubes is capable of?”
No one answered.
“We could be talking about something so far beyond our current abilities and understanding that it would seem like magic.” Clay scanned the entire room again. “Commander Lawton was so amazed by the DNA in those plants that she was sure countries would go to war over it. How far would they go over something like this?”
Caesare squinted at Clay. “All the way.”
Clay stood thinking. “You’re right. So, the question is how many lives is it worth? A thousand? A million?”
“There could be a lot of good,” Borger offered.
“Would it be worth it, Will?”
Borger shrugged.
“Would those who died still think it was worth it?” Clay sighed. “A lot of advancements are vindicated as the cost of progress. But it’s an easy question when you’re only asking the survivors, isn’t it?”
They continued to watch Clay, each of them silently thinking.
“Who knows what would be unleashed from these things. Or from the DNA they’re protecting.”
“It’s a sleeping giant,” said Caesare.
Clay looked at them, gravely. “Who thinks we should find out?”
When no one raised their hand, he looked back up at the nearest tube. The glowing green mixture struck him as having an odd beauty about it. In the end, Palin had tried to warn them about what they might find. About wisdom. How often did humans really learn? What about governments?
“So what do we do?” asked Alison. “It won’t be long before people start showing up.”
Clay’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I say we leave it alone.”
“Someone else will find it, John.”
“Not if we bury it.”
Caesare raised an eyebrow. “Bury it? Bury it with what?”
Clay turned and peered outside. The rain was still pouring. “Didn’t our Chinese friends leave some bulldozers behind?”
Caesare stared at him. “John, we can’t bury the whole damn cliff.”
“We don’t have to,” he replied with eyes still fixed outside. “We only need to bury the sign posts. Or better yet, remove the boulders.”
“Then how will whoever put it here find it, assuming they ever come back for it?”
Clay frowned. “If we don’t hide it, there might not be anything for them to come back for.”
72
It didn’t take long. Two of the earth movers were still operational. Moving only a few pieces from each of the three boulder groups, their shapes appeared as random as any of the others.
After redirecting the water leak, and with another press of their makeshift magnet against the wall, the heavy door clicked and slid smoothly back into place. The vertical seams appeared to change very little, with only small jagged pieces missing from the separation. Ironically, it made the cliff face look more natural than it had before.
When the four returned to the helicopter, they were soaking wet. They smiled when they stepped inside to find Dulce awake, lying against DeeAnn. Even as tired as the small gorilla was, her warm eyes managed to open wider when she spotted Caesare.
No one said anything. From the chair, DeeAnn observed the faces of the others and decided she didn’t want to know what they’d been doing outside. She just wanted to leave.
She had been through hell. But she still had Dulce. And she and Juan were both alive. It was more than enough for her. Now she just wanted to go home.
She watched Borger sit down in front of his laptop. Clay followed and stood behind him. After a few minutes, Borger leaned back, sharing the screen with him.
“I’d say it’s pretty unrecognizable.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Alison and Caesare came over to take a look and nodded in agreement.
Caesare looked at his watch. “Who wants to get out of here? We should still have enough fuel to make it down the other side of the mountain to Georgetown.”
Clay motioned outside. “Good, I’ll follow you down. I need to return the other one.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Clay smiled at Alison. “How could I give up my favorite copilot?”
Borger was fast at work on the last piece. He was getting into the system and removing the video data recorded from the ARGUS satellite. He wouldn’t remove everything, just the data covering the top of the mountain back to the satellite’s launch date. In fact, he wouldn’t even delete it. The NSA, not surprisingly, kept copious backups of their data. Instead of the deleting the files, he would corrupt them and leave them in place. With a little extra help from Borger, the corrupted versions of those files would soon replace all of those in the backups, leaving only unusable files in the NSA’s repository. Hopefully, by the time they realized the problem, it would be too late. And Borger would remove all traces as to who did it.
With any luck, the distraction over the sinking of the Bowditch would give him enough time to finish.
Less than fifteen minutes later, both helicopters lifted off the ground and banked left in tandem. Together, they smoothly descended the north side of the mountain and headed for the thin blue line of ocean on the horizon.
73
General Wei stood in front of his large office window with his hands crossed behind his back. Outside, the smog had lightened enough to allow most of the citizens to go back outside again. Long gone were the clear blue skies he remembered from his youth. It had all changed. It seemed the poisonous smog was now simply a cost of progress for Beijing, and many other cities. The industrial progress of the country had been too much and too fast for nature to keep up. And they were now paying for it.
There was a knock on the door behind him. He replied and turned to see his secretary enter, escorting in the young lieutenant. Wei knew him only by reputation and examined the man’s strong, youthful face. A face that many still had, one of unswerving love for his country and army. Wei wished he still had it.
Wei’s secretary ducked back out, closing the door. He continued studying the man and his wrinkled uniform. “Has anyone else seen this?”
The lieutenant’s dark eyes were like stone. “No, sir! I brought it straight from Lieutenant Chao.” He held out his arms and offered the small box to Wei.
The seal was unbroken. “You’ve done well, Lieutenant. You will receive a personal commendation for this.”
Wei kept his bemused expression from showing. In a few hours, a commendation with General Wei’s name on it was more likely to harm the man’s career than help it. Nevertheless, he saluted and dismissed him.