Black Wings Of Cthulhu: Volume Two Part 20

"You mean a few hard 'its is the same as a lot of little 'its," Sikes said.

"You've got it. What this machine does is project energy down into the stone, and then read the resonance that energy produces in the aligned molecules. The greater the alignment, the stronger the resonance. A computer a.s.sembles the data into an image."

"It's sort of like ground-penetrating radar," Sikes said.

"It uses a completely different band of projected energy, but the overall idea is similar."

"So you can use this 'ere machine to recover any image that was ever impressed on any stone surface, even after it gets worn away by erosion?"

"In theory," Amundson said. "In practice, it's not so simple. Some images are carved using regular pressure instead of struck using hammers. Some types of stone work better than others-usually the denser stone yields a better result."

"Why won't the impacts of the chisel when the face was cut away spoil the image?"

Amundson raised his eyebrows and glanced over his shoulder at Sikes. The little man was no fool.

"Because they were all uniform, more or less. They will be picked up by the scanner, but they will be like a curtain of background noise. The computer will be able-should be able-to strip away that curtain and reveal what lies beneath it."

"Won't that be a sight," Sikes said, staring at the little red dot of the laser as it scanned back and forth across the face. "We'll be the first people for thousands of years to see what it looked like."

Amundson shrugged. The excitement for him was in the technical challenge of recovering a clear image. A face was a face. Undoubtedly the image on the colossus would be strange and uncouth, like most primitive art, but what would it signify in the scheme of things? The world was littered with old statues, each bearing unique features. What was one more such image, more or less? He only hoped it would be grotesque enough to catch the eye when printed in the newspapers.

"How long is it going to take?" Sikes asked.

"About two hours to scan. Then the computer will need another four hours or so to process the data into a coherent image. It should be ready by late afternoon."

"I can 'ardly wait," Sikes said with sincerity.

You and me both, Amundson thought. Everything in his life was riding on the outcome of this test. If it failed, he could always run it a few more times, but he knew that the imager would either yield a result on the first scan, or it would never yield a good result. Conditions were perfect.

"WE'LL KNOW IN A SECOND," AMUNDSON SAID.

He had moved his processing computer into the main tent and set it up on the cleared dining table. Almost everyone in the camp was waiting to see the image when it finally formed on the monitor screen. Laski stood behind him, with his wife and Gani close on either side. The grads milled behind them, and the Mongolians cl.u.s.tered on the other side of the long table, their faces curiously apprehensive. Many of them fingered the small stone disks as though they really were protective talismans. Amundson got the impression that, were it up to the superst.i.tious diggers, he would never be permitted to display the image of the face.

"It will be in black and white," he said to those behind his chair.

A buzzer sounded in the bowels of the computer.

"Here it comes," he said, unable to prevent his voice from rising in pitch.

The image began to appear on the monitor in horizontal strips, painting itself across the screen from top to bottom. When it was about a fifth of the way down, Amundson released the breath he had been holding unconsciously and relaxed the knotted muscles in his abdomen. It was going to be all right. He couldn't see what the image was yet, but he could see that it was a clear, coherent image, and for him that was all that mattered. The test was a success. It was not quite as sharp as a photograph, but he had never expected that degree of clarity.

They waited in silence as the gray bands continued to paint themselves onto the screen.

"It's human," Gani said.

"So it is," Laski said with excitement. "I was expecting something monstrous, but it's human."

"It looks female," Anna Laski murmured.

"No, it's male," Sikes said.

"It looks female to me," Luce told him.

Amundson wondered what she was seeing. The face, which by now was more than half visible on the screen, was clearly the face of a man. It was startling in its sheer ordinariness. It might as well have been a contemporary snapshot of anyone in the tent. Indeed, the more he looked at it, the more it seemed familiar to him. He wondered where he had seen the face before.

Luce laughed nervously.

"This is a joke," she said.

Amundson turned in his chair to look at her.

"What do you mean?" Laski asked.

"Well, look at it. It's a joke, that's all. You got me, Professor Amundson. You got me good, guys, you really had me going. I thought this was a real test."

"What are you talking about?" Amundson demanded.

She stared at him with wide blue eyes, the half-smirk frozen in place on her lips. She looked at the others.

"Come on, guys, funny is fun, but this is enough."

They all stared at her. She pointed at the screen.

"You used a picture of my face. Good one, you got me. Now turn it off."

Laski glanced at the computer screen, then back at the blonde grad student.

"Are you feeling quite well, Luce? Perhaps you had better go to your tent to lie down."

"It's my face," she said loudly. "Do you think I don't recognize my own face?"

"My G.o.d," Anna Laski said. Her fingers rose to her lips. "My G.o.d."

Amundson looked back at the screen. The face had almost completely formed itself in grayscale. It was a lifelike representation of a middle-aged man with short hair.

"My G.o.d," Anna Laski said more loudly, backing away from the screen.

"Jesus, I see it now," Sikes said.

"See what?" Laski demanded. He turned to his wife. "Anna, what do you see?"

"It's my face," she said. "I didn't recognize it at first, but it's my face."

Her husband looked at the image.

"It is a man's face, my dear. If nothing else, the beard should tell you that."

"Look again," Sikes told him in a faint voice. "Look 'arder."

Amundson wondered if they had all suddenly gone mad. There was no question about the gender of the face. It was definitely male, but clean-shaven. There was something maddeningly familiar about it.

"You say you see a beard, Professor?" Sikes asked him.

"Yes, a short beard much like my own."

"I see no beard," Sikes said.

"That's absurd," Laski said. "It's right there. You see it, don't you, Gani?"

The Mongolian shook his head. He was strangely silent, but there was fear in his eyes. The same fear was mirrored in the faces of his countrymen on the other side of the table. The tent had fallen still.

"It's my face," Joseph Laski said in a leaden voice.

"It is all our faces," Gani said.

Amundson stared at the screen. Recognition leapt out at him. How could he have missed it? The image on the screen was his own face, its eyes staring impa.s.sively back into his. It was like looking into a mirror-or better to say, like looking at a black-and-white photograph of himself. A mirror reversed his face from left to right, and he had become accustomed to seeing it that way. That was why he had failed to recognize himself instantly.

"It can't be all our faces," he said, his voice lifeless in his own ears. "I never scanned any of our faces. In any case, it's only one image-it can't be all our faces at the same time."

"But it is," Sikes said.

One of the Mongolian diggers began to jabber in his own language at Gani, who responded in a soothing tone, but the man was in no mood to be placated. Gathering his courage, he walked quickly around the table and stared at the image on the monitor. For a few seconds he did not react. Then he screamed and began to babble at the other diggers. Gani put a hand on his shoulders, and the man flinched as though burned with hot iron. He backed away from the monitor, unable to take his eyes from it until his back pressed against the side of the tent. The touch of canvas on his shoulders galvanized him. With a cry he ran from the tent. The other Mongolian diggers quickly followed, leaving only the archaeologists beside the table.

"There has to be a scientific explanation," Amundson said, his eyes captivated by the image on the monitor.

"Ma.s.s hallucination," Luce said.

"I've been on LSD, I know what it feels like," Dolan said with a shake of his red head. "This is no hallucination."

"But how is the image being formed?" Amundson asked. "How can it be different for each of us?"

"Maybe it isn't an image at all," Sikes suggested. "Maybe it's something that makes an image in our minds when we look at it."

Amundson bent over one of the machines on the table.

"What are you doing?" Sikes asked.

"I'm printing out a hard copy," the engineer murmured. "I want to see if it has the same effect as the image on the monitor."

The printer generated the black-and-white copy in a matter of seconds. Amundson took it from the rack and held it up for the others to view. They unconsciously backed away a step when he extended it toward them.

"It's the same, still my face," Luce said.

"And mine," Anna agreed.

"Mine, too," Sikes said.

Amundson stared at them, barely able to contain his excitement.

"Do you know what this means?" he demanded.

They gave him blank stares.

"It means we're all going to be famous."

THE SOUND OF BANGING FROM OUTSIDE THE TENT DREW their attention away from the sheet of paper.

"I'll go see," Gani told Laski.

He left the tent. After a minute or so they heard excited shouting in Mongolian, followed by the sound of a single gunshot. When they rushed to the door, they were in time to see the three camp trucks speed away across the desert, leaving fantails of dust in their wakes.

"They've taken all the trucks," Luce said in bewilderment.

Gani staggered from the communications tent. There was a patch of redness on his left thigh.

"Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds shot him," Sikes said. He hurried over to support the archaeologist beneath the arm.

"They smashed the radio," Gani told Laski, pain in his voice. "I couldn't stop them."

"Well, they're gone," Laski said.

The reality of their situation slowly sank home. Without a radio there was no way to call Mandalgovi and report the incident, and without the trucks there was no way to leave the camp. It might be days before anyone in the town sent a truck to investigate the radio silence. On the plus side of things, there was no shortage of food and water in the camp. The main concern was for Gani. They managed to stop the bleeding from the bullet wound, but it was a serious injury. He needed a hospital.

Anna Laski moved the injured man onto the bed in her tent, which was larger than the camp cots. She appointed one of the grads, a quiet girl in gla.s.ses named Maria Striva, as his nurse. He had collapsed almost immediately after leaving the communications tent, and continued to lapse in and out of consciousness, but whether from pain, shock, or loss of blood, none of them was qualified to tell.

As dusk gathered, the others returned to the main tent and sat around the table with Laski at its head. Sikes silently served them coffee while they talked.

"We might as well go on with our work," the archaeologist told the students. "This dig is too important to abandon over one incident. In any case, there's not much else that we can do."

"It will be difficult without the diggers," White pointed out.

Laski nodded.

"Which is why we will go slowly. We don't want to miss anything or, G.o.d forbid, have an accident. As you all know, we've almost finished clearing the tunnel of rubble. The echo gear indicates a sizeable chamber beyond. We should be able to break through to it tomorrow, even without the diggers."

White nodded and looked around at the other grads to gauge their mood.

"We're game," he said.

"Good." Laski turned to Amundson, who sat with the printout of the scanner image face down on the table in front of him.

"Run another scan," he said.

"The result will be the same," Amundson told him.

"Run another scan anyway. We need to be absolutely certain this isn't some kind of chance artifact of the machine itself."

Amundson did not argue. The order made sense. In any case, what else was he going to do with his time? He was not a trained archaeologist and therefore could not help with the excavation, even had he felt inclined to offer his services as a digger.