The warriors released their spears and backed away from her.
She set the chariot down, and ventured into the camp.
There was no bowing and groveling this time.
Up ahead, the chief’s shanty had grown as well. The simple lean-to had morphed into a temple with stone walls, built directly into the rock cliff.
She marched toward it.
The villagers lined up on each side, keeping their distance, fighting to see her.
At the threshold of the temple, the guards stepped aside, and she entered.
In the altar at the end of the cavernous room, a body lay. A circle of the black humans knelt before it.
Kate paced to them. They turned.
From the corner of her eye she saw an elderly male making his way toward her. The alpha. Kate was amazed that he had survived so long. The treatment had produced remarkable results.
Kate glanced back at the dead body, then read the symbols above the altar. Here lies the second son of our chief. Cut down in the fields by his brother’s tribe, for greed of the fruit of our lands.
Kate quickly read the remainder of the text. It seemed that the chief’s oldest son had formed his own clan—a group of nomads that roamed the countryside, foraging.
The chief’s younger son had taken over the fields where this tribe hunted and gathered. The younger son was seen as his father’s successor, the next chief. They had found him dead in the field, and the trees and shrubs picked clean. He was the first victim of the older brother’s raids, and they feared there would be many more. They were preparing for war.
“We must stop this,” her partner said into Kate’s helmet.
“And we will.”
“War will sharpen their minds, enhance the technology. It is a cataclysm—”
“We will prevent it.”
“If we separate the tribes,” her partner said, “we can’t manage the genome.”
“There is a solution,” Kate said.
She held her hand up and projected symbols onto the wall.
You will not take retribution on the unworthy. You will leave this place. Your Exodus begins now.
Kate opened her eyes to see David staring at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She wiped sweat from her forehead. The memories were changing her more quickly now. Taking over. She was becoming more of what she’d been in the distant past and less of the woman she had become, the woman who had fallen in love with David. She pulled closer to him.
What can I do? I want to stop this. I opened the door, but can I close it? It felt like someone was holding her down and pouring the memories down her throat.
Kate stood in another temple. She wore the suit, and the humans before her crowded around another altar.
Kate looked out of the opening of the temple. The landscape was lush, but not as fertile as it had been in Africa. Where were they? The Levant, perhaps?
Kate walked closer.
The stone box on the altar; she had seen it before—in the Tibetan tapestry, in the depiction of the Great Flood, when the waters rose and consumed the coast, wiping out the cities of the ancient world. The Immaru had carried this box to the highlands, she was sure of it. Was this the treasure that waited in Malta?
The members of the tribe rose from the ground and turned to face her.
In the alcoves flanking the temple’s main corridors, Kate now saw dozens of members of the tribe kneeling, meditating, seeking the stillness.
They would become the Immaru, the mountain monks who had carried the Ark into the highlands, who had kept the faith and tried to live a life of righteous observance.
Kate walked down the aisle.
“You know what must be done,” her partner said.
“Yes.”
At the altar, the crowd stepped aside, and she climbed the stairs and peered into the stone box.
The alpha, the tribe’s founder and chief, lay there, still, cold, finally dead. His countenance was eerily similar to how it had been on the day when Kate had first seen him, in the cave, when he brought the rotting piece of flesh to his mate, when he collapsed against the wall and lay dying. She had hoisted him up then and saved him. She couldn’t save him now.
She turned back to the masses gathered around the altar. She could save them.
“This is dangerous.”
“There is no alternative,” Kate said.
“We can end this experiment, here and now.”
Kate involuntarily shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t turn back now.”
When she had finished the modification, she stepped off the altar. The attendants swarmed around her, rushing past the box. They brought something out—a stone top—and placed it upon the box.
She watched as they engraved a series of symbols on the side of the Ark.
Her helmet translated them:
Here lies the first of our kind, who survived the darkness, who saw the light, and who followed the call of the righteous.