a Tough Nut to Crack

A TOUGH NUT TO CRACK

By Rod Martin

MARTIAN PUBLISHING

Copyright 2012 by Martian Publishing Company

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

No portion of this volume may

be reproduced in any format

without the express written

permission of the copyright holder.

This is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to persons or

organizations, living or extinct,

is entirely coincidental.

CHAPTER ONE

I stood there with cocktail glass in hand – staring at my reflection in the mirrored wall of the ballroom – looking like Rocky Graziano's kid brother and feeling like I was in the wrong arena. I shook my head in disapproval and wondered, What's a tough looking nut like you doing here with all these beautiful people? The guy in the mirror didn't answer me so I turned around, leaned on him and contemplated how I'd come to be in this ridiculous position.

Some people like to jog, others like to tackle a handball court, a few I know like pumping iron with weights and a few more, no, more like a lot more, are satisfied to get their exercise lifting cocktail glasses or having sex – or both.

When I'm working in New York I limit myself to the latter mode of staying in shape. That's almost like saying I don't get any exercise. I'm not exactly celibate mind you but not far from it either, as it turns out. I like girls and physical activity too, but I just don't have much time to allocate to either, so when I find the time, I try and combine the two.

I'm one of those rare breeds who doesn't need physical exercise to stay in tip-top shape. Some people say us odd types are like cats and get our exercise while we're asleep. That might be so for some but, after people see me run, they're more inclined to say that I take after a Heloderma Suspectum, otherwise known as a Gila Monster. The way I move my five foot seven stocky frame is more lizard-like than cat.

I can hibernate behind a desk for a year of eighteen hour days, catch a plane to Tucson and run from the airport to Sil Nakya – fifty miles west on the Papago Indian Reservation – in 115° weather, just to get back in tune with the desert and get keyed up for the next week's outing.

Most of my desk-free time is spent sleeping or searching for new outing sites. And, on the rare occasions that I've had an exercise partner, they took one look a my Manhattan apartment and decided not to apply for a return engagement. Yeah, the females I've met weren't much interested in cracking nuts, and they considered me a nut. I guess I must be a nut, because only a nut would give up four-fifths of their living space to house prehistory artifacts, rocks and photographs.

I used to be just a plain nut, a nature lover, photographer, and artifact collector. Three walls of the living room are still covered with arrow heads and flint tools mostly from the Southwest. All the other space besides room for a couch and one chair is filled with pottery and baskets. The larger part of my collection has already been donated to various museums. I'd had to do that to make room for my site selection equipment and NASA documents. Now I'm a high-tech nut.

The ceiling of my bedroom is covered, not in mirrors, but in a 15x20 foot photograph of El Solitario, a rock formation in the Big Bend area of Texas – one of the seven geologic wonders of the world. I can lie in bed looking at my ceiling for a few minutes and get the feeling of floating twenty miles above the Earth. The only exercise partner I've had in there, since installing the new ceiling, came down with a good case of space sickness and called off our exercise session.

You may think that having photos of rock formations on the ceiling is a little extreme, even for a nut, but there's more: I designed my whole career to allow me plenty of free time for my main interest in life: the outdoors.

Anyway, after college, I started a tax accounting firm and acquired two sets of clients: One with fiscal year ending July 1. I work full time January/February and again during July/August. Perfect off months for a nature freak like me. It was a great life. My time in New York was just work, work, work and party, party, party. I enjoyed my twin sojourns in the city but I'll admit they were all the sweeter for knowing that after two months I'd get a four month vacation.

I wasn't nearly so celibate before last year, before finding the caves near El Solitario. Jim, a Papago Indian friend who works for NASA, sent me a photo of Southwest Texas made by an experimental satellite.

Jim's note said:

"Dear Francis,"

Yeah, he knows my name. No one that I've met since high school does. I began using Friar Franks in college and people never seem to question the authenticity of that appellation. Even at sixteen when I first arrived at Harvard no one teased me about it or even bothered to ask if Friar was my real name. There's something about my rugged ugly look that causes people not to want to ask about the origin of a name like Friar. Not even Janice Burton, my business partner, knows my real name.

Janice liked skiing in January/February and skin diving in July/August so she took the easy eight at the office and I took the hard four. That made our partnership work just fine. I also got the idea that she'd rather not be seen with me – even on a working basis. She wasn't exactly unfriendly but I still got that feeling. Janice is a real beauty and beautiful females had never found me interesting except as a temporary boredom fighter or a jock ornament.

It's been that way with me since junior high, after the first time I shaved. Somehow my face changed with that event and took on an old and overworked, or worked over, appearance. That look caused my classmates to nickname me Pro – as in ex- pro fighter. A kid notices when his mother doesn't want to kiss him anymore. A kid also notices when his peers suddenly look upon him as a stupid jock – all the more so when the change occurs suddenly – after one shave. I hated the feeling that went with that kind of attention; I lost all interest in sports and worked like hell to show everyone I had some smarts.

The feeling I like best is being alone in a old place, and, about the oldest thing around is the planet Earth. I love it, especially the arid parts and I spent every moment I could spare at the Indian School, on the nearby reservations or just walking through the desert around Phoenix.

Dad was a pigskin fan and pushed me into football. I was good at that but sure didn't like the feeling that went with gridiron success. I made Arizona all state fullback my junior year and went to Harvard Business School the next. Mom was elated to have a 'brain' in the family but dad was crushed that I didn't go through with the football gig – all the way through Arizona State. I knew that that had been his dream and that he wanted me to live it for him. I might have been willing to do that too, if it hadn't been for the reaction I got from the girls at my school: too many of them wanted an all state jock to tote around campus.

Phony people always turn me off. That's why I stayed in touch with Jim. He's a thoroughly non-phony 'space nut'. Somehow we became friends; me the 'earth nut' with my eyes to the ground and him with his eyes looking up.

Anyway, Jim sent me this photo of El Solitario, said:

"This is a very recent photo I got from a top secret project so keep mum about it's source. The photo is not secret, just the equipment and the process. The circular outcropping is about ten miles across and was previously thought to be a natural formation.

The enclosed map of the Texas Big Bend country has the area of the photograph marked. Study it under magnification and let me hear from you. I enclosed a negative made of the same area with the usual photographic process.

Best wishes, Jim Apema."

I took the photo and negative into my small darkroom, blew them up a bit, studied them, got excited about what I saw and had it enlarged with aerial equipment. The markings that showed up with that new satellite photography process didn't appear to be natural (they didn't appear at all in the negative). They were just two straight lines – tangents to the circular formation – pointing to a smaller circle with an X in it. Sure, that's not much, when you consider all the possible combinations of human and natural activity in the long history of Earth, but somehow, in my mind it seemed an engraved invitation to visit the site.

I was in the process of packing for a trip to visit some White Mountain Apache friends, but after thirty minutes with the 2X4 foot prints, I called Fort Apache, Arizona for a rain check and then my travel agent to book a flight to Odessa, Texas.

On the flight south I'd re-read the short Wikipedia article on El Solitario:

"El Solitario is a large geologic formation in Big Bend Ranch State Park in West Texas. Viewed from above, it suggests an impact crater. In fact, it is the eroded remains of a laccolith. The approximate center of the Solitario is located 56.8 km (35.3 mi) east southeast of Presidio, Texas, just west of the line dividing Brewster County, Texas and Presidio County, Texas. The formation covers a circular area of approximately 135 km2 (52 sq mi). The geology of the Solitario is complex.

"El Solitario is a structural dome developed in Paleozoic and Cretaceous rocks above an Eocene granite laccolith intrusion. The dome is associated with radial rhyolite to trachyte dikes and sills and erupted ash flow tuffs. The 16 km diameter dome contains a 6 by 2 km volcanic caldera filled with collapse breccia, tuff, and trachyte lava.

The Paleozoic rocks of the dome consist of a 2.6 km thick section of intensely folded Cambrian through Early Pennsylvanian sediments. The Paleozoic rocks were deformed and thrust into the area from the southeast during the Ouachita orogeny. Following the Permian uplift and erosion during most of the Mesozoic was followed by deposition of Cretaceous carbonate rocks which correlate with the Cretaceous of the Gulf Coast. The area was uplifted by the Laramide orogeny during latest Cretaceous. Following the Eocene intrusive and volcanic events of the Solitario, the area was partially covered by volcanic rocks from the adjacent Bofecillos volcanic center to the west of the area during the Oligocene and early Miocene. Erosion and downcutting following the Pleistocene deepening of the Rio Grande to the southwest and south have produced the current topographic expression of the area.

A very impressive bit of rationalization, I realized, but the only objection I could muster up at the time was the fact that the markings were so obviously man made. Not man made in the sense of the markings on the Plains of Nazca in South America: The El Solitario markings were visible only from outer space and only in star light.

Two days later, after getting permission for a photo study from the rancher at his home in Alpine, Texas, I had a chopper set me down near the point where the tangent markings converged. That part had been easy, then the real work began. The land was unbelievably rugged, a jumble of canyons, dikes, faults with igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary formations. Some of the box canyons near the site even had boxes in them.

The rancher had required that I sign an accident and injury release. Longhorn cattle was listed along with snake, lion and bear under possible sources of injury. Now, Longhorns were replaced, as breeding stock, nearly a hundred years ago, and my eyebrow went up as I read that so the rancher explained. It seemed that his great-grandfather had ran Longhorns in the 1880's and some of them had gotten into a box canyon and couldn't get out. That's rugged country.

At the site, it was even more obvious – than it had been in the negative – that the markings where not due to some visible rearrangement of the rocks or soil in the area. And since none of the recent geological upheavals had disturbed them, they sure hadn't been painted on. So, I figured that anyone who had that kind of planet painting tech would also be able to put the X in the right spot and began searching at the center of the small plot covering the cross mark – about a ten acres.

Two weeks of pains-taking search revealed only a single hint of human intervention in the area. A hint so miniscule that I'd missed it the first time around – a narrow band on the side of a canyon where the sparse covering of tobosa grass was slightly healthier looking than it's neighbors. That can mean just a better water supply; but it can also mean organic debris from a human camp site. Digging around the root systems, I found a small horizontal crevice with a coating of smoke.

Over the next three weeks, the top side of that crevice became the roof of a cave after I removed a foot of animal waste and ten feet of human debris. Those countless generations of Native Americans had never bothered to clean out their pad. They lived there until the ceiling was only eighteen inches above the floor; then they moved out and turned it over to the animals.

In defense of women, native and otherwise, the cave did appear to be a bachelor pad: a place away from home where hunters could take shelter. At least that's the way it seemed, until I uncovered the last fragments of debris, and found that the rock floor was much too smooth to have been natural and was covered with designs painted with a very durable lac-like substance. Also, the bottom layer of litter contained many small carvings which I recognized as jujus: religious artifacts.

The cave had originally been a shrine!?

Following the realization of that possibility, I worked straight for three days and nights to finish clearing the chamber. My efforts were rewarded by the breath taking sight of a man made structure – the first sign of sanity in the whole dig. At the very back of the roughly V shaped room was a masonry wall: a four foot circle of white stones inset into the dark stone of the cave. The clincher that it wasn't a natural metamorphic deposit was the inlay of obsidian-like material forming the pi sign within the circle.

Exhaustion overwhelmed my excitement and I slept the clock around there on the floor by that ancient and mysterious edifice. Then I spent a whole day painstakingly scraping and brushing the light crust of cementation from it to reveal barely visible cracks between the building blocks. The structure was cyclopean and I figured that it would come apart only in the reverse sequence of its construction. My guess was right and, after I found the keystone by lightly probing, the jigsaw-puzzle wall was easy to dismantle.

I played a game with myself and refused to look into the darkness beyond the wall until the last block was out, numbered and laid carefully aside. Then, I turned on my lantern and saw a perfectly round tunnel extending back into the mountain. My heart raced wildly as I crawled along that dust free glassy surface toward an unknown destination. After about a hundred-fifty feet the tunnel opened into a semi- cylindrical room. The floor and arched roof were like black mirrors reflecting my dimly lit image back and forth between them. My first impression was that I'd just stepped into an odd shaped vacuum bottle.

Next, I realized that the side walls were covered in brightly colored panels of paintings and glyphs which looked similar to many of the Indian paintings I've seen but with much greater detail and the color seemed to be beneath a protective covering of clear glass.

I started to the left of the entry and read each panel:

"We returned from the galaxy and found that the lizard people were dead. We went to the planets of the fish, bird and cat peoples. They were dead too. We four peoples who had been on many worlds under many suns were no more. Only in spirit."

The far end of the chamber had three panels without picture graphs, just symbols: a pentagon with circle at each point, then a truncated four sided pyramid as seen from above (a square within a square having their corners connected by diagonal lines) and, next, another pentagon but with a circle at only one point. I couldn't read anything in those but the panels along the right side from back to front read:

"We removed the crystal of beginning from the dead worlds into space. We brought the crystals here. The earth bubbled up to accept them. The people are in the crystal. The crystal is in the bubble."

My excursion around that 10x20 foot chamber had somehow taken hours and left me completely exhausted and terribly confused. The phenomena called goose flesh, which I'd never experienced before except with the singing of the National Anthem at the beginning of football games, had mounted increasingly more powerful attacks on me with each new section of the mural.

(Looking back I can see that most of my tiredness and confusion was due to fighting my own reaction to the stirring of genetic and racial memories. Nothing deep mind you, I was just scratching the surface of what lay buried much too deeply to be contacted casually.)

I crawled back into my sleeping bag to rest and to dream away my confusion. It worked as usual. I awoke feeling empathy for the people who'd made the mural and a strong determination to solve the mystery of the crystal. For some reason, I didn't have a single doubt that the crystal existed; I knew that it did. I also seem to know that a great mystery would be uncovered with its discovery.

I spent the remainder of that vacation period studying and photographing the chamber and El Solitario which was about four miles to the East. Near the edges of that geologic wonder, the formation seemed much like any other tilted dike, but inside, under what had once been the bubble, the landscape was a nightmare. I felt like a Lilliputian who'd fallen into a basket of Gulliver's pebble collection. The shards of the old structure were strewn about like wheeless railway flat cars after a train wreck.

I got back to the office in New York on December 31 to find partner Janice chomping at the bit to catch a plane to Aspen, Colorado. I was already a day late and hadn't even bothered to drop by my apartment for shower, shave and clean clothes. I looked and smelled like a desert rat, giving her a good reason to be more distant than usual and to cut our standard hour hand over the reins meeting to fifteen minutes.

That was last year and I'd spent my vacation time since then looking into the Aztec shrines and into the mythological reptile gods. This year Janet had talked me into coming back to work two weeks early so she could make Christmas in New Hampshire and New Years in Switzerland. That left me the duty of entertaining clients and attending holiday parties.

That's how I'd gotten here at the Garrett's Christmas party, standing in the corner of the ballroom feeling like a klutz and wondering how the hell a partying expert like me had come to this sad end. Garrett's, a business management firm and our number one client, served a lot of celebrities in the entertainment field and their parties were usually tops.

I suppose my out of place feeling could be due to the cultural shock of being transposed so suddenly from the primitive jungle of southern Mexico to the social jungle of NYC – from khaki to tuxedo – but there I stood, cocktail glass in hand, reviewing my life like some bozo who'd just taken the big leap off the Empire State building.

Before I'd sorted through my collection of justifications and rationalizations for my seeming inept social behavior, I felt the attack, felt the scanning of casual attention flick back my direction then stick and begin to gain interest. Suddenly, I remembered that I'd once been an expert at detecting and cultivating such energies, call it cocktail party ESP. I looked in the direction of the flow and found her walking across the ballroom toward me.

She was beautiful, too beautiful, and somehow I wanted to turn and see who she was looking at behind me, but I had my back to the wall. Anyway, I knew it was me she was coming to meet. She was smiling – letting her interest show. It was on her face and when she got closer it was in her eyes. My god! What eyes!

I felt a wave of confusion, then, saw a vision... a female from a dream I'd had after first seeing the El Solitario cave glyphs. I remembered thinking at the time that the dream girl was much too human and much too beautiful to be of the reptile race. Now, here she was again superimposed over the dark haired beauty approaching me... holding out her hand... saying ... .

I couldn't hear what she was saying and had to shake off the feeling of having been transported back through space and time... back into the dream in that black vacuum bottle room filled with wondrous legends.

~~~~

CHAPTER TWO

While I was standing with my mouth agape, trying to get my eyes to focus on the present, she took my hand from where it was hanging at my side, shook it, said, "Hi, Friar, I'm Frances Tarkenton. My boss, Sylvia Garrett,