Nothing New Under the Sun Read online

  He pulled his special digital camera from the desk and mounted it on a small tripod to photograph the bird. For the next hour, he took a series of photographs at different levels of magnification and uploaded them to his desktop computer for closer scrutiny.

  As he enlarged the shots, Carter could see the marks of hand tools on the bird. Someone had spent a long time fashioning this creation. He would need to confer with other researchers in his department, but if this artifact was as old as he suspected, it was a major find. He couldn’t tell the exact age, but he was sure it was not created in the last 500 years.

  The level of detail was hard to believe. This hummingbird was far more realistic than anything he’d seen before. The feathers were created so that each one had a level of precision only visible with magnification. He toyed with the idea that this might be some kind of fake artifact meant to fool him, but a phony one would not have this level of skill in its creation. Three-dimensional printing had just appeared on the market, but to build this artifact up from a computer design would have cost more than any hoaxer’s budget would tolerate. It would take an SLS machine to do this job, and he was unaware of anybody who had developed one that could print with gold. And, why reproduce the marks and errors of a skilled artisan? No, this hummingbird figure had to be real, and pre-Columbian.

  He gently returned the hummingbird to its box and looked at the container. Nothing on the package showed where it had originated, other than the Peruvian postal stamp. Could this be one of those ‘ooparts’ - out-of-place artifacts? Most of those turned out to be misidentified or fakes, such as the famous crystal skull of the Incas. He had to put the box in a safe place. The gold in it alone would make the artifact a tempting object for anyone who wished to score a quick buck.

  He got up and prepared a mug of coffee from the machine behind him. Wonderful thing technology, it gave the human race nuclear weapons and coffee machines. As he added the cream from his small office refrigerator, Carter looked again at the photographs. He had another thought and uploaded a copy of the images to his online secure cloud repository where he stored most of his valuable documents.

  He sat back with his hands folded behind his head, contemplating lost advanced civilizations antedating written history. His grandfather, who raised him and instilled in him a sense of wonder for ancient civilizations, regularly suggested there was more to the past than anyone cared to admit.

  Carter had a collection of documents about lost civilizations, ancient astronauts and the wisdom of the Great Old Ones. He remembered a movie he watched as a young child where an archeologist found the lost battle-ax of a conquistador revived after being struck by a lightning bolt. In Europe there were so many tales of sleeping kings and Holy Grails, it was a wonder one couldn’t just stick a shovel into the ground and find one or more of them.

  But then again, there were plenty of artifacts that just didn’t fit the era or strata where they were discovered, or didn’t make any sense to modern day scientists. There was the ancient battery discovered in Baghdad by Wilhelm Konig in 1938. It was anyone’s guess what it was used for. Was this an invention by the ancients, or were they working from an older design they couldn’t understand? The Byzantines had invented napalm, but no one today knew what its exact composition was. He also knew about a team of investigators who built a model aircraft based on pre-Columbian figurines in an attempt to prove the ancient Tolima civilization had jet aircraft technology. The model really did fly. Also, there was the ancient Indian flying machine or ‘vimanas’ to contend with . . . those drawings were too technical; the information was much more than what would be relevant only to pilots for them to be fantasy. Similar unexplained objects were also discovered in Costa Rica, Brazil, and Argentina.

  Then there were the gold spirals found in the Ural Mountains of western Russia around 1991. Gold prospectors had brought them back from a trip to the Narada River. Some of them were as small as 1/10,000 of an inch. The initial studies on the spirals inferred the micro-objects were shellfish, but this proved to be incorrect. It was indeed gold. No one was able to figure out where the objects had been made, or how. Some researchers thought they might be over 20,000 years old.

  The hummingbird figurine had come from Peru, where the Lost Golden Garden of the Incas was supposed to be located. The Spanish conquistadors claimed to have discovered a city with an entire garden constructed out of gold, silver, and gemstones. They reported every aspect of the garden, which was sacred to the Inca royalty, was made from precious metal and precious stones. Even the roots of the plants were reproduced in gold or silver. The garden even displayed animals, hand tooled from gold which resembled the originals in every way, shape, and form.

  “We did not know if they were living objects fashioned from gold or statues,” the Spanish Knight Don Carlo Del Mache had written back to the King of Spain in the year 1565.

  Most astonishing of all were reproductions of tigers and lions, animals not native to Peru or anywhere else in South America at any time in the past. The Spaniards were thunderstruck by what they saw as they entered the sacred city. Present day archeologists wonder if the conquistadors were mistaken in their accounts. Others speculated that the Incas had traded with the Middle East using some sort of unknown technology.

  The Inca royalty had tried to hide what they could from the greedy invaders since the Spaniards tended to melt down the gold and send it back to Spain. The monks accompanying the conquistadors considered all the artwork produced by the Incas to be pagan idolatry. Some people felt the Spaniards account of the garden of gold was mistaken for the sacred Inca city of Coricancha. I wonder if the hummingbird came from this golden garden of the Incas.

  Carter pulled out his smart phone and called his grandfather, Will Devereux. This little piece of archeological mystery was something that would definitely excite Grandfather Will. His grandfather traveled in less rigorous archeological circles and could often be found in the company of travelers and seekers of adventure. Just last year he’d financed a trip to the Greek Islands to locate the lost Minoan civilization of Atlantis. They hadn’t found anything, but his grandfather vowed to return next year with a submersible.

  “Carter!” the voice on the other end of the line greeted him. “How good of you to call! We’re looking forward to your visit next week. Anything new and exciting in Beantown?”

  He smiled at his grandfather’s little slight at Boston. Will Devereux, although American born and bred regarded himself as a Quebecois these days and they looked down on the upstart nation to the South. They often said, “Vermont should never have joined that rebel alliance. Nothing good has come out of the state since they declared independence from Quebec in the 18th century.”

  “I’ve got something to send you, Grandfather. Look in your cloud account; I’ve uploaded some pictures of a hummingbird artifact that arrived in the mail earlier today. It appears to be pre-Columbian, and I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.”

  “Why, thank you, Grandson. I’ll look for it. See you up here next week.”

  ***

  At approximately 10:00 on that same morning, Carter was involved in a collision. Although it was not the kind normally reported in the local news, it would have a greater impact on the future of human civilization than any other collision reported in the news on that day.

  Carter taught an undergraduate class, Introduction to Historical Methods, and needed to get to the lecture hall before his students arrived. Unlike most of his colleagues, he didn’t mind teaching the introduction classes. He found them an excellent way to put the students on the path to scientific reasoning and it helped to identify the bright minds that would in due course make significant discoveries. One of his former students was a featured commentator on one of the educational channels and credited Professor Devereux as his inspiration to further his studies and obtain a doctorate degree.

  Books and laptop computer in hand, Carter was doing his best to keep the golden hummingbird off his mind when he turned the corner and ran into another moving object. Books and flash drives flew through the air, but they both were able to grab their laptops before either of them hit the ground. Carter took three steps, righted himself, and turned to see whom he slammed into. It bothered him he’d been so careless. His pursuit of tai chi was supposed to keep this from happening. Master Hong would have laughed at his student’s maladroitness had he been present.

  Carter whirled around to help the person whom he struck, praying it wasn’t a senior administrator. An incident like this would not be a good thing for a person of that position to have in mind during budget talks. The person he collided with was down on bended knee and slowly rising, having retrieved what had been lost. As Carter walked toward the figure, he could only see a green business suit. Then she turned around to face him.

  He was speechless. Standing before him was one of the most beautiful women he had ever faced.

  She was a vision in scarlet. She appeared to be in her late twenties and was nearly six feet in height. For a moment, Carter, who stood six-four, was enveloped by a vision of an ancient warrior princess emerging from a burning castle. The woman he faced had flaming red hair tied back with a dark green ribbon. She possessed a heart-shaped face, her eyes were emerald green, and the nails that gripped the books and laptop matched them. Her physical proportions conformed to the golden ratio.

  Most of the college staff dressed down at this University, feeling the title of ‘Assistant Professor’ allowed them to look any way they wanted. Carter was one of the few who wore a suit and tie, as did this vision of beauty in front of him. Could she be an instructor of some type? Hardly, with her look of professionalism.

  “Could you watch where you are going?” she snapped at him. “You damn near knocked me over. Do you
have any idea how much that laptop cost me?”

  “I’m really sorry,” he apologized. “I was on my way to a class full of freshmen …”

  “I’ve got a class to teach too,” she retorted, “and I’m late already.” She turned and walked away.

  Carter stood watching her divine form and then noticed she had a bit of a limp.

  “Did I cause that?” He ran to catch up. “My apologies again. Are you hurt? Can I help you carry your stuff?”

  “Don’t worry I’ll survive. Try and not collide with any more people today.” She turned again and continued on her way, high heels clicking on the concrete.

  “I think I’ve just met a goddess, a Valkyrie,” He mumbled as he watched her vanish into the trees. A smile played on his face at this thought of the fierce Norse warrior maiden of antiquity, a daughter of royalty, with flaming crimson hair who would choose those who die in battle to spend the night with her in heaven.

  He made sure to take a more conservative turn around the next corner and continued to his lecture room.

  Dr. Mackenzie Anderson was angry. It was her first lecture, and not only was she late, but her foot was now stinging, and that annoyed her intensely. “Wretched fellow - tall dark and handsome - far too pretty - probably a bear of very little brain.”

  ***

  He returned from his class, dropped some forms off to the department’s secretary, and checked to make sure the golden hummingbird remained locked in his desk – no reason to leave it lying about. Then, all thoughts of it vanished as he sat down at his computer and pulled up the staff profiles on the University Intranet. A few minutes later Carter located his goddess again.

  There she was in all her glory: Dr. Mackenzie Anderson, the adjunct researcher in human molecular biology, Department of Genetics. He looked at her stunning picture and rubbed his eyes to make sure this was the same angry woman he’d encountered. She had been with the department since receiving her doctorate three years ago. Why wasn’t this woman pulling down the big money working for a pharmaceutical company?

  He picked up his phone and made a call. “Hello,” he said when a voice answered on the other end. “I would like to have a dozen white roses delivered to someone at the University, and I would like the arrangement delivered today.”

  Chapter 2

  Freydis

  Carter piloted his Piper Seminole to match the flight plan he’d filed with the Canadian customs office after he landed in Quebec City. The customs officers knew him from the frequent stops he made on his way to his grandfather’s property in the mountains to the north. The twin-engine plane only needed one pilot to fly it and had a range of 1,000 miles on a tank of gas.

  His grandparents raised him as a collision with a gas truck killed his parents when he was just eight years old. His older brother and sister, who were in the car, died in the fiery explosion as well. No one knew how it happened - the accident investigators claimed the truck had lost control on a dry road and swerved into the oncoming lane, colliding with the smaller car driven by his father. As fate would have it, Carter was visiting with his grandparents at the time of the accident and never returned home.

  They sold his parent’s house and placed all the contents in storage. Carter melded into the lives of his loving grandparents, Will and Diana, attending school and developing a lifelong love of archeology imparted to him by his grandfather

  His grandfather’s ranch, Freydis, consisted of 50,000 acres with no access roads. Grandfather Will liked his privacy and didn’t feel like having to run people off his land. He’d purchased it after Diana passed away suddenly and he wanted some peace and quiet. It became a summer retreat for Will and his still young grandson, Carter. A couple, Ahote and Bly, about 20 years younger than his grandfather, were the only other permanent inhabitants in close proximity.

  Freydis had its own airstrip, which showed up on a satellite photo, but nowhere else. Will and his friends’ mode of transport to and from the farm was a four-seater Piper Cub airplane.

  The older Devereux had been part owner of a private satellite company. His company had placed several secretive satellites in geosynchronous orbit for a few discrete affluent customers looking to organize a private and secure communication network - a place to hide data and communications from their corporate competition. When Internet technology took off big time in the late 90’s, several of the new companies came to him for help with their own communication networks. Grandfather Will’s fortune continued to expand, and he sold his share in the company to a group of investors for an untold amount of money. Carter wasn’t certain how much his grandfather was worth, but he knew the old man had no money worries at all.

  Although Grandfather Will was a trained aerospace engineer, he had a love of archeology. When he cashed out of his company, he was able to move north permanently to his summer retreat on the land he bought after Diana’s death. In his spare time, he was a regular backer of archeological expeditions to unexplored places on Earth. His face routinely appeared in any number of journals and websites devoted to the frontiers of archeology.

  Ahote was raised on a Hopi reservation in Arizona. He’d met Will many years ago, and they became good friends. Ahote and his wife, Bly, sold the salvaging company as soon as they’d cashed out enough of their share of the gold to live comfortably. They visited Will on the ranch for a few days where they fell in love with the place, bought the adjoining property, and moved into the nice comfortable log cabin about a mile away from Will’s place.

  Ahote’s seafaring and wild days were over. He settled down to the things he really loved: Bly, hunting, fishing, and horseback riding in the woods. Bly took to farm life like a duck to a pond. She soon had a few goats, milk cows, chickens, and a flourishing vegetable garden.

  While Carter had banked most of his take from the salvage of the Viking longship, he did use some of it to complete an underwater survey of the site. But, even after the divers examined every bit of sand, bringing up and cataloging every artifact they found, they still couldn’t figure out why the Viking ship was there. It led him to question much of what he learned about human history while at college. Additionally, why did the documents he uncovered at the Spanish Naval Academy list the wreckage as that of a galleon hauling gold? Even more than that, what was a Viking longship doing down as far south as Florida, and using gold for ballast?

  Until the time when Ahote and Bly settled on their property, Will’s ranch went nameless. One night shortly after their arrival over a bottle of good red wine, the three of them agreed that such a beautiful place couldn’t go without a name any longer. After a few more glasses of wine and consideration of many possible names, Ahote came up with the winning suggestion.

  “The Viking longship Carter and I discovered was also nameless, so Carter called it Freydis, after Freydis Eiriksdóttir, who took part in the Norse exploration of North America. Apparently she was a warrior with fiery red hair.” Ahote laughed.

  “Then Freydis it will be.” Will settled the matter.

  ***

  As Carter taxied the plane to the end of the runway, he could see his grandfather standing at the hangar to greet him. He contacted the air traffic controller at Quebec City to let them know he’d safely touched down and confirmed when he would return to the United States. He dreaded the return trip. US customs agents were much tougher than their Canadian equivalents.

  “So where’s the lady friend?” he heard his grandfather say as he opened the door to the cockpit and looked around inside

  “Gramps!” he laughed. “Is there anything you don’t know?” He pulled his bag and briefcase out with him. The satellite link from the ranch was top notch, and he planned to get some work done while visiting.

  “I make it my business to know things,” his grandfather grinned as he helped Carter transfer the bags to the electric cart he used to get around on the property. To keep the land as undisturbed as possible, Grandfather Will utilized the most modern alternative power sources available. All power was supplied on Freydis by two wind generators, a number of solar panels and a hydroelectric generator operating from a stream not too far from the enormous log cabin that hooked into universal power supply batteries. He did have a diesel generator as an emergency backup, but Carter couldn’t remember ever seeing it in operation.