invented the wheel and a script called cuneiform. The Indus Valley script, known as Dravidian, hasn’t been fully deciphered even today.”
“How big were these cities?” Ethan asked.
He was surprised by her answer, never having known that such ancient cities could harbor populations of up to forty thousand people. Nor had he known of the complexity of their technologies: that the Indus civilization had built domestic bathrooms, flushing toilets, and drains using burned and glazed bricks; or that it built public basins with two layers of bricks with gypsum mortar and sealed by a layer of bitumen, a remarkably astute method. The Mesopotamians had built docks and seaworthy vessels for trade, and had developed extensive irrigation comparable to modern agriculture.
“Okay,” Ethan said, “but so did the Egyptians, right, and they came later?”
“The Egyptians rose at about the same time,” Rachel said. “Egypt’s first king, Menes, ruled some five thousand years ago in its capital Memphis, but the kingdom was ancient even then and had already developed its hieroglyphic script, again apparently out of nowhere.”
Ethan frowned.
“And you don’t think that this could have happened naturally?”
“It’s possible,” Rachel conceded, “but it should have taken longer than it did, and it seems that the ancients suddenly acquired knowledge sufficiently advanced to still be used today.”
The Babylonians, Rachel explained, were descended from the Sumerians, and their mathematics was written using a sexagesimal numeral system: one which has as its base the number sixty. From this derived the modern-day usage of sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, and three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle.
“Which remains after almost eight thousand years,” Ethan said.
“Along with various customs and traditions,” Rachel agreed, “which are continued today in recognizable forms.”
“And Lucy thinks that another species,” Ethan guessed, “perhaps an extraterrestrial species, gave them knowledge, which they then passed down through time ever after?”
“If it seemed crazy before, it doesn’t now after what Lucy found,” Rachel said. “I’ve spent some time researching all of this since Lucy first mentioned it months ago, long before she disappeared. There have been many books written in the past that have attributed all manner of activities to alien visitors from distant planets, from the founding of Atlantis to building the pyramids. All of it was rubbish, of course.”
“So what’s the difference here?” Ethan asked.
“Real historical events that match the supposed myths of a thousand religions,” Rachel said. “We are familiar only with the religious histories that survive to this day, but they have existed in many differing forms for millennia. Oral tradition was the only way for ancient civilizations to record their past until scripts suddenly appeared simultaneously around the world: the Neolithic script, Indus script, Sumerian and Bronze Age phonetics all appeared around six thousand years ago. In all of their creation myths, these early civilizations almost identically describe Gods who came down from the skies and passed to them great knowledge.”
Ethan himself had read of the legends of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Amerindians, and Japanese, describing such visitors as traveling in fiery chariots, flaming dragons, or giant glowing birds that descended noisily from the sky.
A loud thump reverberated through the fuselage.
Ethan looked at the sun-baked runway flashing past outside. “So we don’t know who hired Lucy to go digging in the Negev for alien remains, but whoever it was must have known what they were looking for.”
“I doubt that she would have abandoned her original research on a whim.”
Ethan unbuckled his seat belt and turned to face her.
“I need to know everything you know about this,” he said. “When someone vanishes, the first forty-eight hours are the most critical and they’ve already passed. Knowledge is our only resource now because X never marks the spot.”
Although Ethan could still see doubt shadowing her expression, Rachel unbuckled her seat belt and looked at him expectantly.
“What do you want to know?”
BEN GURION INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
ISRAEL
That’s crazy,” Ethan said.
“Why?” Rachel challenged. “Just because it sounds ridiculous doesn’t mean it’s not correct or even likely.”
The main terminal of Ben Gurion International was dominated by a circular glass-vaulted ceiling from which poured a cylindrical sheet of glittering water. The waterfall drained into a pool that reflected light across the domed roof in a shimmering kaleidoscope of color. Ethan had the impression that he was passing through a giant fish bowl as he walked with Rachel toward the airport meeting point.
“Yeah,” Ethan conceded, “but UFOs in the Bible?”
“And in all other ancient creation works. Ezekiel speaks of such events in the Bible,” Rachel said, and her