Free Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthew Reilly Page A

over at the small hole. ‘See that hole. There’s a stone dial inside it, hidden behind that curtain of lava. A cease mechanism that switches off the lavafall.’
    ‘But, Jack, anyone who reaches in there will lose their—’
    Wizard sees that West isn’t listening. The younger man is just staring intently at the wall-hole.
    West bites his lip, thinking the unthinkable.
    He swallows, then turns to Wizard: ‘Can you build me a new arm, Max?’
    Wizard freezes.
    He knows it’s the only way out of this place.
    ‘Jack. If you get us out of here, I promise you I’ll build you a better arm than the one you were born with.’
    ‘Then you carry her and let’s go.’ West hands the baby to Wizard.
    And so they run, West in the lead, Wizard and the baby behind him, across the inch-deep pool of slowly spreading lava, crouching beneath the descending ceiling, the thick soles of their boots melting slightly with every stride.
    Then they arrive at the lava-veiled doorway, and with no time to waste, West goes straight to the small hole next to the doorframe, takes a deep breath and—
    —thrusts his left arm into the hole, up to the elbow,
through
the waterfall of lava!
    ‘
Ahhhh!
’
    The pain is like nothing he has ever known. It is excruciating.
    He can see the lava
eating
through his own arm like a blowtorch burning through metal. Soon it will eat all the way through, but for a short time he still has feeling in his fingers and that’s what he needs, because suddenly he touches something.
    A stone dial inside the wall-hole.
    He grips the dial, and a moment before his entire lower arm is severed from his body, Jack West Jr turns it and abruptly all the lavafalls flowing into the chamber stop.
    The ceiling freezes in mid-descent.
    The lavafall barring the doorway dries up.
    And West staggers away from the wall-hole . . .
    . . . to reveal that his left arm has indeed been severed at the elbow. It ends at a foul stump of melted bone, flesh and skin.
    West sways unsteadily.
    But Wizard catches him and the two of them—plus the child— stumble out through the doorway where they fall to the floor of a stone tunnel.
    West collapses, gripping his half-arm, going into shock.
    Wizard puts the baby down and hurriedly removes West’s melting shoes—before also removing his own a bare second before their soles melt all the way through.
    Then he dresses West’s arm with his shirt. The red-hot lava has seared the wound, which helps.
    Then it is over.
    And the final image of West’s dream is of Wizard and himself, sitting in that dark stone tunnel, spent and exhausted, with a little baby girl between them, in the belly of an African volcano.
    And Wizard speaks:
    ‘This . . . this is unprecedented. Totally unheard of in all recorded history. Two oracles.
Twin
oracles. And del Piero doesn’t know . . .’
    He turns to West. ‘My young friend. My
brave
young friend. This complicates matters in a whole new way. And it might just give us a chance in the epic struggle to come. We must alert the member states and call a meeting, perhaps the most important meeting of the modern age.’

COUNTY KERRY, IRELAND
28 OCTOBER, 1996
7 MONTHS LATER

     
     
O’SHEA FARM
COUNTY KERRY, IRELAND
28 OCTOBER, 1996, 5:30 P.M.
    To the untrained eye, it seemed like just another lonely old farmhouse on a hilltop overlooking the Atlantic. To the trained eye, however, it was something else entirely. The experienced professional would have noticed no less than twenty heavily-armed Irish commandos standing guard around the estate, scanning the horizon.
    To be sure, this was an unusual setting for an international meeting, but this was not a meeting that the participants wanted widely known.
    The state of the world at that time was grim. Iraq had been chased out of Kuwait, but now it played cat-and-mouse games with UN weapons inspectors. Europe was furious with the United States over steel tariffs. India and Pakistan, already engaged in a phony war,