Lasser
and Bakhashaf filled us in on the cavern and its City. We sat spellbound,
listening to the impossible.
“It
began as a limestone sinkhole thousands of years ago,” Lasser said. “Admittedly
the sinkhole was a big one, perhaps a hundred meters in depth, with a small
opening at the top, about one meter in diameter. Occasionally wild animals like
foxes and desert cats, wandering through the desert at night, would
accidentally drop into the hole – to their deaths.
“Geological
formations like this are quite common in Arabia. I’ve explored many of them
myself. There’s a famous sinkhole over in Oman: it’s called Majlis al-Jinn, or
the Meeting-Place of the Jinn. It’s a huge chamber, one of the biggest in the
world, and its opening at the top is about 125 meters above the chamber floor. Felix
Baumgartner and others have used it as a BASE jumping site.
“But
I’m not much for parachutes. I’ve been lowered down into that cavern by rope,
and you can take it from me: Majlis al-Jinn is impressive, but it’s nothing
compared to this place. You see, this cavern has been enlarged from its natural
state – dramatically enlarged.”
Bakhashaf
said: “When the jinn found the sinkhole, it suited their purposes. They needed
a hidden base, where humans were unlikely to find them. But the chamber was not
big enough. So they began expanding the sinkhole, and building the City.”
“At
first they concealed the opening at the surface with optical illusions –
imaginary dunes, bogus rock outcrops. But eventually, over the centuries, a
natural sand sea, driven by the winds, covered the entire area, and the jinn
devised a portal system – a kind of sand whirlpool – that would temporarily
suck the sand away from an enlarged aperture and allow their aircraft to come
and go.”
Bakhashaf
smiled: “Those ‘flying saucers’ the world knows so well – the UFOs…. They
aren’t spaceships! They operate only inside the earth’s atmosphere! There is a
hangar not far from here. We met some of the pilots!”
“The
secret would have remained for millennia more,” Lasser said, “if it hadn’t been
for the oil exploration teams and their seismic surveys.”
Wait
till the world hears this, I thought.
I
imagined the jinn “aircraft” zipping up to the surface, past the inhabited
structures around them. I thought about the towering buildings outside our
quarters, set on levels above levels, and the vast, soaring expanse of the
cavern, with its natural dome, and an automated portal at the center of its
highest point. I sat there silently, as did my colleagues, marveling at the
power of this hidden species of intelligent beings.
I
took Mubarak’s hand, and as his fingers closed around mine, I imagined, or
think I imagined, a scene from the distant past. Huge laser-like instruments
melted away the walls of the limestone cavern. Other beams of glowing
particles, turquoise in color, rose up from the floor and created great
structures, glistening, inhabitable buildings complete in structure and detail.
They seemed to be using the substances in the earth that surrounded the
sinkhole: limestone, granite, desert sand. The process had to be some kind of
mineral transformation, carried out on a grand scale – a kind of modern
alchemy….
Annette
Braverman sat alone in a conference room at the U.S. Consulate General in
Dhahran, staring at the image on a large screen at the end of the conference
table. The image was that of the President of the United States, and he seemed
troubled. His lips began moving; there was a slight delay in the sound, due to
a satellite issue, but his words soon matched the movements of his mouth.
“So
you haven’t heard anything from Goddard or Keller or anyone?” he asked.
“No
sir,” Braverman said. “But there is no need for concern at this point.”
The
President frowned. His long thin face, with drooping cheeks and soulful eyes,
reminded her of a bloodhound.
“This
is a very important time for all of us, Annette,” he said, though she needed no
such reminder. “Our future may hinge on the actions of that small group. I
frankly feel very helpless in this situation, and wish there was more I could
do.”
“I
understand, sir.”
“I
have the utmost confidence in Devereaux, and in Professor Goddard. I know you
are very confident of the abilities of Dan Keller. Let’s hope we are contacted
soon, and that everything works out for the best.”
Annette
looked up at the video image of the President. She knew him to be a consummate
politician, an expert in the convoluted ways of Washington and in horse-trading
with the U.S. Congress. But she wondered if this whole affair might be beyond
his well-known skills as a political leader. Who, after all, is equipped to
handle a pivotal encounter with another intelligent species? What if we screw
this up?
The
President clearly had nothing more to say, and was keeping the video connection
alive simply for the human contact of it. Braverman thought he must be
fundamentally a very lonely man – surrounded by experts, aides and sycophants,
but hesitant about what steps he should take when the fate of the whole world
was at stake. She didn’t envy him at all.
“The
second I hear something, Mr. President, I will get back to you,” she said.
After
a pause, the President replied: “All right then.”
Jinn
had brought us hot mint tea and fresh fruit, and we continued our conversations
among ourselves, seated on couches in the corner of that vast room. As we
talked, two figures entered the room from a far-off darkened passage and walked
slowly toward us. As they approached, Keller jumped to his feet.
“Art!”
he shouted. “Dahoum!”
He
looked at us and said with genuine emotion, “It’s Art Vallentine and Abdul
Rahman Dossary – the missing geologists!” Keller led the way. We surrounded the
two men and welcomed them back into human company. Keller did the
introductions.
The
two geologists looked none the worse for wear, though a bit confused – not by
the strange setting, but by our presence. They wore clothes supplied to them by
the jinn: simple, brightly colored jumpsuits that shone with a metallic gleam.
“How
did you all get here?” Vallentine asked Keller. “Did you get sucked down in
that whirlpool?”
“No,”
Dan said, “we came through a cave network, from the Najran area. Tell us about
the whirlpool.”
We
sat Vallentine and Dossary down on one of the couches and listened to their
story. Arthur described their
frightening descent into the whirlpool of sand. Both of them were convinced
they were going to die. Vallentine had jumped from their Hummer and was trying
in vain to climb out of the growing vortex. Dossary stayed in the vehicle, and
rode it down into hell – or wherever they were going.
Both
men lost consciousness, and awoke sometime later in a small oval cavern chamber,
lit with a soft, greenish glow. They lay on large, overstuffed cushions covered
in what seemed like silk, and they were dressed in brightly colored jumpsuits. Dahoum’s
outfit was lapis blue, and Art’s was deep burgundy. They were wearing strange
footgear, clinging “socks” with a supple, leatherish feel. Soon afterwards,
they met their first jinn, a pair of beings in idealized human form, and were
told briefly where they were and why.
“They
hinted someone was coming for us, but they were never specific,” Dahoum said.
“We never expected to see you folks.”
“They’ve
been feeding us with familiar Arabian foods,” said Arthur. “We’ve been quite
well treated, but we’ve been isolated, and haven’t seen much of this place. I
don’t know what to believe. First we get sucked down into the earth by a
whirlpool of sand. Then we end up in some futuristic prison, staffed by spirit
creatures, if that’s what they are. This whole thing creeps me out.”
“When
you do get the tour,” I said, “it will blow your mind.”
Dan
Keller asked Vallentine: “Where are your camp workers? The three Pakistanis?”
“After
the whirlpool, we never saw them. Apparently, they didn’t get sucked down to
this subterranean world. We were told the camp crewmen were taken back to
Haradh, none the worse for wear. We weren’t told how.”
“I’ll
believe that when I see it,” said Dossary, shaking his head.
I
told the geologists: “If our hosts, the jinn, told you the three men are safe,
then they are safe.”
“Goddard…”
Arthur said, thinking about my last name. “Are you related to Matt Goddard? He
used to be a petroleum engineer at Aramco.”
“He
was my father,” I said. I explained that Dad had died about a decade earlier, a
few years after retirement, hit by an unexpected cerebral aneurism at my
parents’ home in Austin, Texas. “I grew up in Dhahran.”
“I
didn’t know he had passed away,” Vallentine said. He seemed to be genuinely
saddened. “Matt was a great guy. Very well liked by his colleagues. I don’t
think I ever met you, though….”
“I
was away at college, and grad school,” I said. Those tumultuous years seemed so
far in the past that they belonged to someone else.
“So
why are you all here?” Dahoum asked. “What the hell is going on?”
“The
jinn are revealing themselves to the world,” Devereaux said. “Or at least to
the Americans and their allies. They seem to be about to announce something. A
world-altering event, perhaps. We’re down here on a mission sponsored by the
U.S. and Saudi governments, aimed at establishing contact with the jinn and
determining where we go from here. We’re about as new to this place as you are.”
“Do
you have any way of communicating with the outside world?”
“Not
at the moment. Sorry.”
Mubarak
– the only one of us who really knew what was going on – sat off by himself,
expressionless, quietly observing the conversation. I wished I could get inside
his mind. He looked at me for a second, and I thought I saw a spark. A spark of
what, I wasn’t sure….
“This
is crazy,” Vallentine said. “I’m not sure I buy it. I’m not sure I believe in
this jinn stuff.”
“Well,
it really doesn’t matter whether you or I or anyone believes it,” Devereaux
said grimly. He was clearly stressed, and was fighting to stay calm. “Something
is going to happen, and we will have to deal with it – whatever it may be.”
Mubarak
Awda took me by the hand and escorted me out of the room. We soon passed into
the great cavern of the City, alive with lights and movement. We crossed an
expansive plaza and entered another building, this one immense in size,
egg-shaped, windowless and colored sea-green. Before long the two of us were
sitting together in a comfy little room, talking intently.
“Tomorrow
our leaders will make their announcement,” he said. “I want you to be ready for
this, because it involves you personally, more than you know.”
“You
have to help me out here, Mubarak,” I said. “Surely you can tell me something.”
Though
I was the one doing the pleading, his eyes seemed to be begging me for
something. Acceptance, I supposed.
“When
the announcement is made, everything will change,” he said. “I’m asking you to
stand with me.”
“That’s
a strange way of putting it,” I said lightly. But his expression remained
deeply serious. “Of course I’ll support you,” I added.
“More
than that,” Mubarak whispered. “I need more than that.”
I
took his hand. It was cool and reassuring. I avoided his dark brown eyes,
because I knew that if I stared into them, I would plunge deeper than I wanted
to.
I
suddenly thought: Was he proposing to me? My God, I thought, he can’t be
proposing! I was really fond of him, and in a strange way we had once been
intimate, had made love … but for God’s sake, he’s a freaking jinni! My head
began to spin, I felt dizzy, and I took a deep, deep breath.
“Slow
down, sport,” I told him. “Let’s just take things as they come, one event at a
time. We’ll handle the big announcement tomorrow, and then we’ll see where it
leads.”
Mubarak
smiled, and sat back. He studied me for a moment, then stood up suddenly.
“Come
with me,” he said.
He
took my hand and we left the room. We passed through a series of winding
passages, and emerged into the great cavern that enclosed the city of Iram. We
were several levels up from the bottom plaza. We walked the streets of the
city, passing many jinn. Some walked, like us, and took human shapes. Others
were vaguely humanoid glows, in various colors, moving above and below,
unrestrained by topography.
We
soon reached a gateway, and passed into an impressive hall, with a dome
overtop. In the center of the hall, on the gleaming marble-like floor, far below
the great dome, sat a white sphere about three meters across. The hall seemed
empty of life. We approached the sphere slowly. When we reached it, the
boundaries of the sphere became hazy, immaterial, and we entered the white
object. This action seemed totally normal, and I was surprised how calm I felt.
We sat down in the sphere, and I realized its inner skin was like a viewing
screen in a theater. Suddenly we were looking at a landscape, a spring meadow, with
distant, greenish mountains, and puffy white clouds scudding across the blue
sky. If it was a video, it was incredibly realistic. Three dimensions, and
sounds too. I heard the wind. In fact, I thought I could smell the wildflowers
in the grass.
Mubarak
said in a quiet voice: “The sphere allows us to review history, to see what is
past, what has happened. We are going back very far, into the times of legends,
when truth is hard to separate from the imagined. This is the time before mankind,
before Adam, as some say, when there were only jinn.”
Suddenly
we were moving up into the mountains. We overflew many villages, passed stone
castles and fortifications. And we saw hundreds, thousands of inhabitants, many
of them – not humans, but jinn. These, I was sure, were the many types of jinn
that were spoken of in later times: afreets, marids, ghouls and common jann.
Most I saw as gauzy shapes, echoes of reality, often vaguely like humans or
beasts, but many times not. The farther we went up the mountain slope, the more
jinn we saw. They were living their lives, as families, clans and tribes. They
met in marketplaces, held assemblies. They raised walls, as if by magic,
pointing with their fingers as stone blocks moved slowly into place. They flew
over the fields, seated in the air as if cross-legged on flying carpets, or
swooping with their arms extended, like great birds. Some traveled the roads on
immense, tamed beasts – giant sloths, shaggy primordial elephants, woolly
rhinos and frightening creatures I did not recognize. Despite the innate strangeness,
it all seemed so normal!
“This
was the way we lived before mankind,” Mubarak told me. “We preferred the old,
low mountains and their rich, green vegetation.
These climes became the Mount Qaf of legend, the green emerald mountain range
surrounding the world, the primordial home of the jinn. So our life continued
for eons. Then, suddenly, the humans appeared, and everything changed. For a
while, we ignored them, thinking we had a clear advantage. They were primitive,
and lived in just three dimensions of space. They could not shape-shift. They
could not slip between dimensions and travel across continents instantaneously.
But the humans were persistent – sometimes relentless. Like us, they possessed
the power of free will, and they exercised it, sometimes shocking us with their
boldness. They expanded quickly upon the Earth, like a rampant tumor. Sometimes
we fought them, or tried to frighten them away. But our efforts were
half-hearted. It was not long before we were forced into hiding, and we took on
a new role with regard to mankind.”
“A
new role?” I asked.
“As
guides,” Mubarak said softly. “We were told by our leaders that this was indeed
our destiny.”
“So
… you are our partners, our helpers.”
“Yes.”
“And
all that we have achieved – as a species – has been done with your assistance?”
“Much
of it. Though most humans don’t know this. And will never know. Those who
believe in jinn think we do evil and mischief. A few of us are wrong-doers,
certainly. But most of us are not.”
I
sat silently in the sphere, watching the pre-Adamic jinn living their lives,
and I thought about the implications of what I had just heard.
We
stood outside the sphere. Mubarak this time took both my hands. His own hands
were warm and dry, and in their grip I seemed to feel an electricity, a force
of some kind, passing between us.
“Now
I would like you to experience the dimensions beyond your own. Your senses are
aware of these dimensions, but human brains have trouble processing the data.
Perhaps someday your species will be able to experience the full array of
natural dimensions. But for now, I need to possess you – temporarily – in order
for you to experience the real world. Is this acceptable to you?”
My
heart began racing. I was not sure of this, but I wanted to know.
“Okay,”
I said.
“Close
your eyes,” he said.
There
was a long silence. I felt Mubarak’s presence. Somehow, he became a part of my
consciousness.
“Now
open your eyes.”
I
opened them. I gasped. I was staring at Mubarak, and he looked the same, but
different. There was richness, a brilliance to him. A depth…. I cannot describe
this, but I could see him from all directions, even directions I was not aware
of, inside and out. More than that, I experienced him. Yes, I could see his
human form, his face, his body. But I also saw – was this insight? – what he
really looked like. His jinn nature. And then I realized: This was how the jinn
were able to possess us…. All they had to do was to sense us, to perceive us, to
experience us…. My gaze drifted to the buildings around us. They too were
brilliant, and oh so experienced. The colors! And textures! And the lives of
those behind the walls! I knew all that I needed to know about this place. It
was so apparent, so open to my senses! I felt a great joy welling up in me.
“My
God,” I said softly. I embraced him.
“I
know,” Mubarak said, just as softly.
(New)
