Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King Page 2

  Batman slipped open a pouch on his Utility Belt and pulled out a pair of miniature binoculars. Taking his eyes off Green Lantern for the first time, he trained the 50X binoculars down the valley, tracking the massive spoil-pile that marked out Superman and Wonder Woman's progress. They had almost reached the outskirts of the city, a feat of power akin to building the Great Wall of China in a morning.

  Marveling at the sheer strength that allowed them to excavate this engineering wonder with their bare hands. Batman snapped the binoculars shut and replaced them in their pouch. These beings can shift planets in their orbit, he'd thought more than once in his many years as a League member. What am I doing working with them?

  Manhunter and the Flash reappeared silently by his side. The site was clear. It was time.

  This is it, Lantern, Batman thought. Let the dam go!

  The energy field faded and vanished, and Green Lantern shot high into the air under the power of his ring.

  For an endless second, nothing happened. No water spouted from the holes. The cracks in the dam face seemed frozen, checked in their relentless expansion.

  Then, with a roar like some maddened behemoth, the waters broke free. There was a thunderous snap, like a giant whip cracking, and, almost in slow motion, the whole dam face crumbled into little more than a sandpile.

  A mighty cataract of seething, roiling water poured from the collapsing dam, carrying thousands of tons of concrete with it. A wall of water fifty feet high swept into the craggy valley side, gouging out a half-mile section. The wave crashed over the hydroelectric plant with the intensity of a tsunami, smashing down walls and buildings as if they were toy bricks.

  As Batman had realized, there was no way the tail-race and riverbed could cope with the sudden inundation. The angry waters churned as they plunged into the channel dug by Wonder Woman and Superman, spilling over the sides in massive waves, scouring away the earth and soil of the valley sides, ripping out century-old trees, carrying away rocks as big as houses.

  But the channel held, funneling the waters until a ten-foot-high wave raced down it at almost a hundred miles an hour.

  Minutes later, Superman and Wonder Woman hovered in the air over the city harbor, watching as the waters of Lake Gotham swept through and plunged headlong into the sea. If any ships were put in danger, they wanted to be on hand.

  "Excellent." Wonder Woman nodded her satisfaction. The setting sun glinted off her tiara and the amulets she wore on her wrists, making her look every inch the Amazon Princess that she was. "There's no damage caused except the digging of the channel itself, and we can fill that in once the waters recede."

  She soared higher in the air, beckoning for Superman to follow. "Let' s join the others."

  Seconds later, they stood with their companions on the crag, looking down on the scene of destruction. More than half the dam had disappeared, carried off by the raging flow. The surging waters had settled slightly, but it would take days for the man-made lake to drain off completely.

  "So . . . why wouldn't you let us fuse the dam?" Superman asked Batman.

  "There were suspicions when the dam was built," Batman told them all. "Substandard materials. For every rip you fused, a dozen others would have opened."

  Batman turned away, then thought better of it as he recollected J'onn J'onzz's subtle reminder that they were a team. "I wasn't withholding information from anyone," the vigilante continued. "There just wasn't time to explain. All in all, we did a good job."

  "Maybe better than you think," the Flash grinned. "We might even be rewarded for services to archaeology. Look down there–"

  He pointed to the valley side just below the dam, where the broiling water had swept away thousands of tons of soil and vegetation.

  Revealed there, in the last bright rays of the setting sun, stood a hundred-foot-tall truncated stone pyramid. It seemed out of place–so alien and enigmatic. Shafts of mellow purple light played for a moment across its stonework. Then the sun was gone, and the pyramid remained shrouded in darkness.

  CHAPTER 2

  Descent into Darkness

  Gotham County, October 19

  "Incredible!"

  Jenny Ayles stood on the top of the pyramid, a flat platform about thirty feet square, her head turning slowly to take in the panoramic views. Night was falling, and the surrounding Gotham Hills seemed to glow deep purple in the fading light. The planet Venus shone brightly just above the horizon, and the first stars were already twinkling softly in the rapidly darkening sky.

  "This view can't have changed all that much since the pyramid was first built."

  Beside her, Jenny's companion nodded agreement. "Nearly five thousand years," Peter Glaston murmured. "More than a hundred and fifty human generations." He glanced up, raising his right hand to point to the brightest star. "Of course, the land might be the same, but the night sky was very different. Polaris wasn't the Pole Star then. It was one of the stars in the constellation Taurus, I think."

  "And tonight we'll find out if the ancients recorded what they saw in the architecture of their pyramid," a skeptical voice broke in from behind them. "Right, Peter?"

  Jenny and Peter started. They hadn't realized Robert Mills, professor of archaeology at Gotham University and leader of their little expedition, was standing so dose. Instantly, Peter became defensive at the faintly mocking tone in the older man's voice.

  "You might find it far-fetched, Professor," Peter said evenly, his lanky frame turning to acknowledge Mills's presence, "but you can't deny it is a possibility. And you've always taught us to investigate every aspect of an artifact."

  Mills didn't reply. Casting his eyes to the side, Peter could see the renowned archaeologist's handsome face as he appraised the night sky, now filled with a thousand glittering stars. The aquiline nose and prematurely silver-gray hair gave Mills a distinguished, almost aristocratic look that men envied and women admired.

  "I mean, look what they discovered about Stonehenge," Peter went on, irritated with himself for being so sensitive to Mills's unspoken criticism.

  It had been rumored for centuries that the massive stones that made up England's most famous neolithic monument were somehow connected to the night sky. But confirmation had to wait for the creation of computer software that could accurately plot the changes in the night sky due to Earth's tilt against the solar plane. Now, archaeologists were turning up established and potential stellar alignments at ancient sites all over the world.

  "A possibility, yes. But not a probability," Professor Mills said smoothly. "We mustn't allow preconceptions to color anything we might find."

  Peter took a deep breath. Sensing he had more to say, Jenny grasped his arm and squeezed it lightly, a gentle hint that he'd said enough already. Peter was the professor's star student, and they'd always argued in friendly, if heated, fashion. But their relationship had deteriorated seriously since the previous year.

  Jenny sighed. Peter and Robert had good cause to dislike each other, and she had given them that cause. With increasing frequency, she found herself trying to act as a buffer between them. Somehow, it was easier than facing up to what had happened and sorting it out like intelligent adults.

  "We should join the others," Jenny found herself saying. "They'll be cursing us for slacking while they do all the work."

  She took a step away, tugging on Peter's arm for him to follow. Obstinately, he didn't budge, and Jenny's heart sank.

  "One of the reasons our profession advances so slowly," Peter said, choosing his words carefully, "is that certain older archaeologists refuse to approach their work with an open mind."

  Robert Mills smiled, his expression invisible to the others in the darkness that swathed the landscape.

  "I'll check with Lorann and the guys," he said amicably, as if unaware of the accusation and insult in Peter's words. Flicking on the heavy-duty flashlight he held in one hand, the professor walked away across the pyramid's flattened top.

  It was almost a month sin
ce the Gotham Dam had burst and its swirling waters divulged the mysterious structure. What the expedition had established was astonishing. Radiocarbon dating of vegetable fibers found in the structure's foundations pointed to its having been built approximately forty-five hundred years ago–the only such pyramid ever discovered in America. Unlike the Great Pyramids at Giza, this one had been built in steps, in the same fashion as the pyramids of Central and South America, or the ziggurats of ancient Babylon. Europe's largest Stone Age structure, Silbury Hill in England, had been similarly constructed. Ten feet of rock, ten feet of chalk with soil infill–the process repeated until the pyramid stood a hundred feet high, ending in a flat, rocky platform about thirty feet square.

  Reconstruction of the dam was due to begin in another three or four months, after the structural engineers had finished their investigations. In the meantime, Robert Mills and his select team of top students had been asked to excavate and analyze as much of the site as they could in the brief time left.

  They had found an enigma, wrapped in a mystery.

  "We've all heard the legends surrounding Silbury," one of the other students, David Rymel, had said. "A giant king buried at the center, a hidden chamber filled with treasure. Any chance of that here, Professor Mills?"

  They were digging a trench into the side of one of the chalk layers, their progress impossibly slow as every trowel of soil was painstakingly sifted for artifacts. They'd found a pea-sized bead of black jet, some charred animal bones, and a single broken deer antler with a crude spiral incised on it.

  "Unlikely," Robert Mills replied. "Remember, nothing was ever found at Silbury. Still, it's not completely impossible," he admitted. "Only a full-site sonic scan would reveal if there's anything inside, and unfortunately, that's a resource we don't have this time around."

  Under Mills, the same team had spent the previous summer on excavations at Sipin in northern Peru, working on vegetation-covered ruins that dated back more than two thousand years. It was a well-funded operation, meticulously planned, and it paid off in spectacular fashion. They'd found elaborate tombs buried deep inside the ruins, in several layers, and a rich profusion of priceless jade face masks and jewelry.

  "The Gotham pyramid is much older than its counterparts at Sipan, and of completely different structure," Mills went on. "They were tombs, especially built to house the bones of the tribe's religious leaders. Our pyramid would appear to have been built for a different purpose entirely. Religious, perhaps."

  "That's what they always say." There had been a sneer in Peter Glaston's voice, one that was often there these days, Jenny had reflected sadly. "When they don't know what something was for, they say it had 'religious' or 'ritual' significance."

  "Then perhaps you could enlighten us, Peter," Mills said coldly, for the first time visibly stung by the younger man's criticisms. "Why do you think the pyramid was built?"

  "I can't say for sure, of course." Peter rose to the challenge. "But I can make several suggestions. First, the chalk/granite makeup: alternate layers of organic and inorganic material. Almost like a gigantic storage battery. But what kind of energy would such a thing store?"

  Peter's eyes were alight as he took off on one of his flights of fancy. Speculative archaeology, he called it.

  He'd continued, the words falling over themselves to get out: "Well, science has recently shown that Earth energies do exist"–he cast a quick, knowing glance at his teacher–"despite most archaeologists having denied it for years. There's piezoelectricity, generated by the grinding of quartz rocks under the surface. On a small scale, Japanese scientists can now duplicate it in the lab, where it manifests as plasmoid light.

  "Then there's telluric energy, the flow of natural energy from points of varying resistance on the earth's surface. Almost every sacred site ever found has stood on one of these flows–raising the possibility they might once have formed a worldwide grid. And the magma mantle, deep in the earth's crust, may have properties we can't even guess at."

  Peter paused, noting the skepticism on the faces of his audience before plunging on with his theory. "It's suspected that at least some of these energies are capable of interacting with electromagnetic fields . . . such as those generated by the human brain."

  "Phew, Peter!" Lorann Mutti, the youngest and prettiest of Mills's team, whistled. "That's some stretch of the imagination you're calling for. How exactly do you think it affected humans?"

  "Who knows?" Peter shrugged. "But if things like this pyramid were built to store the energies, someone must have been able to use them. My guess is that the shamans, the tribal priests, somehow used it to cause hallucinations in their people.

  "Imagine the degree of control they'd have if, for instance, they could make people see a giant representation of whatever gods they worshiped. Or maybe the shamans could directly access the energies–which would explain how supposedly primitive tribesmen could move stones that weigh tens, even hundreds, of tons."

  "Interesting theories, Peter," Mills had observed, "but as you admit, not a shred of proof. And definitely not the sort of thing to be preserved in the archaeological record. So we've no way of ever knowing–"

  "Yes, we have," Peter broke in. "If we can rediscover precisely how they harnessed the earth energies, we can replicate anything they did."

  Lorann Mutti laughed. "We have super heroes," she pointed out. "Superman and Green Lantern. Do they count?"

  "If you won't take me seriously, then what's the point?"

  There was anger on Peter's face as he turned and strode away. Jenny had hurried after him, trying to soothe his ruffled feelings. She knew that it was more than the jokes of his peers that was upsetting him.

  Almost midnight, and the excavation team's patient astronomical experiments had failed to pay off. Using the surrounding hilltops as sighting beacons, they'd been trying to extrapolate the straight lines into space, to see if they aligned with any particular stars. But there was nothing that could be attributed to anything other than random chance.

  Len Dors, the final member of the six-strong expedition, snapped the case shut on his theodolite. "Waste of time," he said curtly. He blew out through his mouth, making the hairs of his burgeoning mustache quiver. "It's beginning to get cold, too."

  A chill breeze had blown up not long after sunset, and though it wasn't particularly strong, they'd been exposed to it on the pyramid top for hours.

  "I vote we go back to the SUV and head for home," David Rymel suggested. He swung the beam of his flashlight, playing it over their equipment. "We can leave this stuff till tomorrow, rather than try to carry it down tonight."

  "Oh, very adventurous." Scorn dripped from Peter Glaston's reply. "Good thing Werner and Evans and a thousand other archaeologists didn't say that–'Ooh, I'm cold, I want to go home'–or we might still not have discovered Troy, or the Tomb of Tutankhamen!"

  Jenny saw Rymel bristle, and hastened to smoothe things over. "That's a little unfair, Peter. It's been a long day, and David's right, we haven't found anything interesting tonight We should go home and get some sleep. We'll all feel better in the morning."

  "I feel fine right now," Peter snapped. "If you want to go, I'll stay here alone. I have a feeling about this place. There's something important here, and I for one don't intend to give up until I find it!"

  "We're not giving up, Peter," Robert Mills added, "just taking a much-needed rest."

  "And we'll be back tomorrow–" Jenny began, but Peter cut her off.

  "I might have known you'd side with him," he accused Jenny, and she flushed. "Well, enjoy each other's company." He picked up a flashlight, snapped it on, and started to follow its beam to the edge of the small plateau.

  "Where are you going?" Jenny cried in alarm.

  "Maybe there are no stellar alignments from the top," Peter muttered, "but that doesn't mean the ancients didn't use another part of the pyramid for their observations."

  "Peter! Come back here!" Robert Mills insisted. The professor moved
to follow him, but Jenny shook her head.

  "Give him a few minutes to calm down," she said. "He's just a little overwrought."

  They saw the beam of Peter's flashlight dip, and a faint motion as he clambered down the rope ladder they'd erected for access to the pyramid's lower courses. As the beam of light disappeared, Jenny felt a sudden chill that seemed to penetrate to her bones.

  The breeze was picking up. It really was time to leave.

  Peter Glaston's mind was buzzing as he lowered himself down the rope, picking out the rungs with his flashlight before trusting them with his weight. He didn't know what was wrong with him lately; he was always arguing, even with Jenny, picking fights for no reason at all.

  A brief memory of the previous summer flashed through his mind. The long hot days in the Peruvian desert . . . the freezing nights under the brightest panoply of stars he'd ever seen . . . and Jenny, her blond hair burnished by moonlight, wrapped in the arms of . . .

  Why couldn't he forget? Why couldn't he just accept the fact that what was done, was done, and get on with the rest of his life? He was an adult now. Why couldn't he control this constant frustration, these unwelcome bouts of rage?

  He had just stepped off the ladder onto the fifth course, halfway down the pyramid's face, when it happened. His concentration wandered and he looked up into the star-strewn sky, idly wondering if perhaps it had been from here that the pyramid builders made their astronomical observations. Suddenly, his left foot slid on some gravel, and before Peter could recover his balance, he was wedged between two protruding boulders.

  Cursing to himself at the pain that stabbed through his ankle, praying nothing was broken, Peter tried to ease his foot free. One of the football-sized boulders was slightly loose, and he trained the flashlight on it as he rocked it from side to side. Without warning, the stone dislodged, freeing his trapped foot and revealing a small hole in the rocky platform below it.

  Peter wrinkled his brow, for a moment failing to appreciate just what he might have found here. Then, with mounting excitement, he angled the flashlight so it pointed down into the cavity, illuminating what appeared to be a buried chamber.