Mualama was running his hands along the side of the black tube, feeling the seam.
“How did you know it was here?” Lago asked. “You told me how you found this site, but how did you know there was a site to begin with?”
Mualama sat down on the tube, resting before finishing the excavation. “I didn’t know it was here.” He tapped the tube. “I learned… as Burton did… that something was here, but I wasn’t sure what I would find.
“I… as Burton did… believe that there is a link between many legends in this part of the world. That things that seem unconnected are connected. The presence of the Airlia on this planet gives more credence to that belief.”
“A conspiracy?” Lago asked.
Mualama shrugged. “I am not a big believer in coincidence. I believe in cause and effect. I believe that there is a purpose to things. But first, let me test your knowledge.”
Lago rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything.
“Look at the earth we removed to get to the stone. Compare it to the strata on the side of the hole. Then the dirt we removed to get to the coffin and the depth. Do you think the stone marker was placed on the coffin when it was buried?”
Lago compared the two. “No. They’re different.”
“Good. You dated the hole as being between two and three thousand years old, based on what we removed from on top, but the strata on the side leading to the depth of the coffin is different, as you’ve noted. How long do you think this coffin has lain in the ground?”
Lago checked his notes. “This can’t be.”
“Trust the evidence in front of your eyes, not your flawed knowledge base.”
“According to the data, the coffin was buried around ten thousand years.”
“Why do you say that cannot be?”
“Because civilization…” Lago paused. “It’s an Airlia artifact.”
“It certainly appears so. You did your research on this part of the world in graduate school, right?”
Lago nodded.
“Africa is too often left out of the annals of history, especially in America. Yet it is most likely the birthplace of the human race.” Mualama saw that Lago was about to say something, and he raised a hand. “As you know, it has a legitimate claim to the oldest fossils of Homo genus. For example, America can claim humans only thirty thousand years ago! Not long at all when we talk in terms of hundreds of thousand of years.
“Of course,” Mualama continued, “we know so little because we’ve found so little. Pieces of a skeleton here, fragments of an artifact there. We base our entire theory of the development of man on depressingly little factual evidence, yet we call it science and we call it truth. How many times in the past century has the current accepted ‘theory’ been radically altered by a new discovery?”
“The textbook we used at university was published not long ago,” Lago said, “and it had several errors in it.”
“Not errors,” Mualama corrected, “but outdated ‘facts.’” He tapped his foot on the top of the tube. “I wonder what facts this find is going to change.”
“But it’s an Airlia object,” Lago protested. “Not human.”
“Consider,” Mualama said, “how many things have been discovered that could not be explained. What if someone had found this site before the news of what was in Area 51 and the existence of the Airlia came to light?”
Lago bit his lip as he considered the question. “I suppose this would have been the thing that proved we had been visited by aliens.”
Mualama emphatically shook his head. “No! You are young and naive. View our society as a deep river, running between stone banks. Do you know what it takes to change the course of that river? To change people’s perceptions?
“Even now, with a mile-long alien spacecraft circling our planet, there are many who would close their eyes and say it isn’t there. If a mile-long mothership that anyone with a toy store telescope can see clearly doesn’t change those people, you think something like this”… he tapped the tube… “would?”
“Burton saw something that changed his perception on everything around him. And he was told something… I believe he was told about the aliens having been here on Earth. He dedicated his life to tracking down the truth.”
“Did he find it?”
“I think he found out part of it, but not the entire story. And it is the entire story we need.” Mualama leaned forward, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. “Let me tell you some things. I have kept my eyes and my ears and, most important, my mind open for many years. And my mouth shut.
“There have been things found that do not fit. There is a dig in Australia where archaeologists found evidence of Homo erectus, Neanderthal, and Homo sapiens all in the same era. Stages in the development of man that are supposed to be hundreds of thousands of years apart, yet lying in the same time strata.
“There are two places where Homo skeletal remains were found at a layer below that of Neanderthals. How can that be? There have been numerous strange finds like this. Have you read of any of them?”
Lago shook his head no.
“Of course not,” Mualama said. “Because anyone who published such so-called idiocy would be labeled a crackpot. But because of what he had experienced, Burton questioned the status quo. And there have been others. Professor Nabinger was a man who questioned what he saw, who looked where others were too afraid to look. His investigation in the Great Pyramid was based on his discovery of an after-action report hidden in the Royal Museum Archives of Hammond’s 1976 expedition that discovered residual radiation in the Great Pyramid. Of course, Hammond didn’t publish that report for fear of ridicule and because he couldn’t explain his findings. But now we know the reason he found that radiation… the Airlia had left an atomic weapon in the lowest chamber. And I think that Nabinger was not able to do all he wanted at Giza. There is more to the Plateau than meets the eye, and… ” Mualama stopped himself, as if suddenly realizing where he was and who was with him.
“But…” Lago hesitated.
“Go ahead,” Mualama prompted.
“But, like you just said, that radiation was due to the Airlia. That thing you’re sitting on is also Airlia, based on the high rune writing on the marker. But the fossil remains… what do they have to do with the Airlia?”
“Good question,” Mualama said. “It is one I have been asking myself often. And I don’t have an answer. Yet. But I believe they are connected. Perhaps our past is not what we think in more ways than we could begin to conceive.” Mualama abruptly changed the subject. “Do you know of the kingdom of Axum?”
“One of the earliest empires in the world,” Lago recited. “It was founded around the first or second century before the birth of Christ. The empire covered most of what was now Ethiopia and Kenya. It traded with Greece and Rome during its heyday, while at the same time making contact to the east to India and even China.”
“Very good,” Mualama said. “You get a B. It is an empire few people know of. Mostly because it was here in Africa and because it was an empire of dark-skinned people, not the most popular or delved-into subject around the world’s history courses. But at its height, Axum rivaled any of the kingdoms it traded with… Rome, China, India.
“One subject I have been very interested in is the various legends of Axum.” He pointed a long black finger at Lago. “We archaeologists are like detectives. We must investigate the past, and in order to do so, we must gather as much information as possible. I have found the best way to do that is to research the myths and legends of an area. Because there is often much more truth to legend than people realize.
“Many years ago, when I was a student like you, my professor at the University of Dar es Salaam sent me north to Ethiopia. My dissertation was on Axum, and he told me that to do a proper job I must go there, to the land that was the center of Axum’s power.