Clive Cussler - Blue Gold

"The priests have made a decision. You're to be killed in the morning. They'll spend the night getting their courage up and building the pyres to burn you."

Gamay's mouth hardened. "Sorry we can't stay for the barbecue," she said. "If you would point us to the nearest canoe, we'll be saying good-bye."

"Impossible! You wouldn't get ten feet now."

"Then what do we do?"

Francesca mounted her dais and sat on her throne, her eyes glued to the chamber door. "We wait," she said.

The ancient ship hung in space as if suspended from invisible cables, its multi-decked hull outlined by shimmering spiderweb lines of gossamer blue. The great square sails were bowed full, and ghostly pennants fluttered at the masthead as if tossed by a freshened breeze.

Hiram Yaeger leaned back in his chair and studied the spectral image hovering over a platform in front of his horseshoe shaped console. "It's beautiful, Max," he said, "but the detail needs sharpening."

A soft and disembodied feminine voice filled the room from a dozen speakers set in the walls. "You only asked for a blue print, Hiram." There was the hint of petulance in the tone.

"That's right, Max," Yaeger said, "and you've gone far be yond that. But now I'd like to see how close we can get to the finished product."

"Done," said the voice.

The ship's hull solidified like a specter materializing from ectoplasm. Its hull blazed with gold that highlighted the elaborate carvings covering the sides from stem to stern. Yaeger's eyes lingered on the beak head, crowned by a wooden image of King Edgar, the hoofs of his charger trampling the seven fallen monarchs whose shorn beards bordered his mantle. Then he studied the astronomical panels that represented the glories of the

Olympic gods, going back to the high stern, embellished with biblical figures. Every detail was perfect.

"Wow!" Yaeger said. "You didn't tell me you had programmed the full picture. All it needs now is a couple of dolphins."

Instantly, simulated seas appeared under the ship, and at her bow a pair of dolphins leaped and splashed. The three-dimensional image spun slowly as the whistles and twitters of the dolphins filled the air

Yaeger clapped his hands and laughed like a child with de light.

"Max, you're brilliant!"

"I should be," the voice replied. "You created me."

Not only had Yaeger created the vast artificial intelligence system, but he had programmed his own voice into the original program. He didn't like talking to himself, so he modified it into Max's female tones. The computer system had developed a feminine personality all on its own.

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Yaeger said.

"Thank you. If you're through I'll take a break to allow my circuits to cool down. Holograms always exhaust me."

Yaeger knew Max was prone to exaggerate and that the ship represented only a tiny fraction of the capacity in her circuits. But along with a feminine version of his own voice, he had programmed in some human traits, including the need to be appreciated. He waved his hand. The ship, the roiling seas, the leaping dolphins vanished in a blink of the eye.

Yaeger turned to the sound of applause and saw Austin standing there clapping his hands.

"Hi, Kurt," he said with a grin. "Have a seat."

"Quite a show," Austin said, easing into a chair next to Yaeger. "Right down to the vanishing act. I doubt even David Copperfield could make a full-blown English capital ship disappear."

Yaeger was truly a magician, but his sleight of hand was per formed with computers rather than a top hat and wand. He was an unlikely-looking magus, dressed with a studied scruffiness in Levi's jeans and denim jacket over a plain white T-shirt. Beat-up cowboy boots adorned his feet. Yet he presided like a master sorcerer over the vast computer network that covered nearly the en tire tenth floor of the NUMA building. The National Underwater amp; Marine Agency oceans center stored and processed the most enormous amount of digital data on oceanography and related sciences ever assembled under one roof.

"That was nothing," he said with boyish delight. Excitement danced in the gray eyes behind wire-rimmed granny glasses perched on his narrow nose. "Wait until you see the treat Max and I have planned for you."

"I can hardly wait. That was Sovereign of the Seas?"

"Right. Launched in 1637 at the orders of Charles I. One of the largest seagoing vessels constructed up to that time."

'Also one of the most top-heavy, as I recall. She had her top deck cut down, which was appropriate, given that Charles lost his head."

"I'll add the modifications later. The new program will be available for the nautical archaeology department of any university that wants it. Max has been making a list of hundreds of old vessels. We feed their plans, architect's renderings, dimensions, history, everything we know about a vessel, into the computers. Max pulls it all together into a holographic reconstruction. She'll even fill in missing details when information is incomplete. Max, would you mind telling Kurt what you found with the material he gave us?"

The face of a lovely woman appeared on the huge monitor just beyond the platform. Her lips parted in a white smile.

"I'd come off my coffee break any time for Mr. Austin," the voice said flirtatiously.

The air above the platform shimmered with blue light at the nexus of lasers scattered in the walls. Stud by stud, beam by beam, but with lightning speed, the flashing lasers assembled a long open ship with a single square sail.

"C'mon." Yaeger got up, and they walked onto the platform. Austin's vision blurred for a second. When it cleared they were

standing on the deck of the vessel looking toward the gracefully upturned bow. Circular wooden shields adorned the sides.

"This is the next evolution in the program. Not only will you be able to see the ships in our inventory, you'll be able to walk around on the decks. The virtual perspective changes as you move. The simplicity of design made this one fairly easy. "

"I'd say I'm standing on the deck of the Gogstad ship."

"Correct. Built in Norway between A.D. 700 and 1000. The original ship was seventy-nine feet long and was constructed entirely of oak, something a bit more substantial than light beams. This is a half-scale model."

"It's beautiful," Austin said, "but what does it have to do with the material I gave you?"

"I'll show you what I found."

They walked through the shimmering walls back to the con sole.

"It wasn't hard getting some data on the Mulholland Group," Yaeger said. "As your dead lawyer friend told you, the company is involved in hydraulic projects. I had to dig around, but I found that it was part of a larger corporation called Gogstad. The logo of the parent company is the ship you see be fore you." The hologram disappeared, and a stylized version of the ship appeared on the monitor.

"Tell me more."

"I asked Max to start playing around with Gogstad. I didn't get much on the company, but apparently it's a huge trans national corporation involved in all kinds of stuff. Finance. Engineering. Banking. Construction."

He handed Austin a computer disk. "This is what I found Nothing startling. I'll keep trying."

"Thanks, Hiram. I'll review it. In the meantime I've got an other favor to ask of you and Max." He related his visit to the Garber center and his interview with the pilot's son. "I'd like to know if this plane was ever built and what happened to the I pilot."

Max had been attentive again. A photograph of a large wing shaped craft appeared on the screen.

"This is a picture from the Smithsonian files of the YB-49A, the last Northrop flying wing bomber to take to the air," the low voice purred. "I can give you a three-D rendering, like the ships."