The Third Gate Part 17

"I'll take samples for thermoluminescence tests on our next descent," said March.

There was a moment of silence as the group continued taking it all in.

"There's no sarcophagus," Logan said, glancing around.

"This outer room would normally hold household items, perhaps some business details," Stone replied, "things the king would need in the next life. The sarcophagus would be deeper within the tomb, most likely in the final chamber beyond the third gate. That's what the pharaoh would be most concerned about preserving in an unspoiled state."

Tina knelt before a large chest of painted wood, edged in gold. With slow, delicate motions, she swept the dust from its top, then freed the lid and gently raised it. The glow of her flashlight revealed dozens and dozens of papyri within, rolled tight, in perfect, unspoiled condition. Beside them were stacked two tall rows of carved tablets.

"My G.o.d," she breathed. "Think of the history these contain."

Stone had moved toward the gilded, canopied bed. It was beautiful, s.h.i.+mmering with an almost unearthly glow in the beams of their flashlights. Its various intricately worked pieces were held together by huge bolts of what appeared to be solid gold. "Notice the canopy," he said, pointing. "That gilded piece of wood must weigh a thousand pounds. Yet everything's perfectly preserved. It could have been fas.h.i.+oned yesterday."

"This is odd," said March. He was peering at an image painted on one of the walls: a depiction of two strange-looking objects. One was box shaped, topped by a kind of rod that was surrounded by a copper-colored crest or banner. The other was a white, bowl-like artifact, with long wisps of gold trailing from its edges. They were surrounded by a blizzard of hieroglyphics.

"What do you make of it?" Stone asked.

Tina shook her head. "Unique. I've never seen anything like these before. Anything remotely like them. They look like tools. Implements of some sort. But I can't imagine what they might be used for."

"And the glyphs surrounding them?"

There was a pause as Romero striped her flashlight across them. "They seem to be warnings. Imprecations." A pause. "I'll have to examine them more closely in the lab." She stepped back, panned over the images with her camera.

"It might be unique," Logan said, "but it's not the only one in here." And he pointed at a nearby wall relief, the largest in the chamber. It depicted a seated male figure, shown in side view, left leg forward, as was common with all ancient Egyptian art. He was wearing fine clothes, clearly a personage of great importance. And yet--bizarrely--the same two objects had been placed on his head, the bowl-shaped one below, the box with the rod atop. He was surrounded by what appeared to be high priests.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," March murmured.

"What do you suppose they are?" Stone asked. "They can't be crowns."

"Perhaps it's a punishment of some kind," Logan said.

"Yes, but look at that." Tina pointed to an embossed detail below the relief. "It's a serekh--meaning the figure in the picture is royal."

"Is it the serekh of Narmer?" Stone asked.

"Yes. But it's been altered, defaced somehow."

Slowly, the group began to gravitate toward the rear wall. Their flashlight beams played over its surface: another face of polished granite, the slabs mortared in place. Again, the necropolis seal and the royal seal were both intact, untouched. Unlike the first doorway, however, this one was outlined in what appeared to be solid gold.

"The second gate," said March almost reverentially.

They stared at it for a moment before Stone broke the silence. "We'll return to the Station, a.n.a.lyze our findings. We'll have an engineering team come down to examine this chamber, ensure it's structurally sound. And then"--he paused, his voice trembling ever so slightly--"we'll proceed."

35.

The setting looked the same: the same dimly lit lab, with its single bed and array of medical instrumentation. There was the same mingled scent of sandalwood and myrrh; the same bleating of monitoring devices. The same large, carefully polished mirror reflected the tiny, winking lights. Jennifer Rush lay on the bed, breathing shallowly, once again under the influence of propofol.

The only difference, Logan thought, was that--this morning--they had violated the tomb of King Narmer.

He watched as Rush fixed the leads to her temples, administered the Versed, went through the hypnotic induction. He was aware of feeling a great tension, of a deep unwillingness in himself to reexperience the trauma of the first crossing. And yet this time, the malignant influence he'd felt before--while still present--seemed remote, even faint.

The door opened on silent hinges and Tina Romero entered. She nodded at Rush, smiled at Logan, and quietly stepped over to stand beside him.

Rush waited until his wife stirred slightly and her breathing grew labored. Then he snapped on the digital voice recorder. "Who am I speaking to?" he asked.

This time, the reply was immediate. "Mouthpiece of Horus."

"What is your name?"

"One ... who is not to be named."

Tina leaned in close to Logan, whispered in his ear. "Scholars speculate that Narmer--when he became the G.o.d-king--wouldn't allow his royal name to be spoken aloud upon pain of death."

Rush bent closer to the supine figure of his wife, spoke softly. "Who was that figure--that figure guarding the tomb?"

"Thou ... hast defiled me." The voice was not angry this time. Instead, it seemed sorrowful, almost dolorous. "Thou hast desecrated my sacred house."

"Who is the guardian?" Rush asked again.

"The eater ... of souls. He who dwells in the tenth region of night. Tasker of Ra."

"But who--"

"He will come for thou, the defilers. The unbelievers. Thy limbs shall ... be rent from thy body, and thy line broken. Geb will place his foot upon thy head ... and Horus will smite thee...."

"What was that image in the tomb painting?" Rush asked, careful to keep his voice neutral. "The, ah, ornament on the man's head?"

A brief silence. "That which brings life to the dead ... and death to the living."

Rush lowered his voice still further. "What can you tell me about the second gate?"

"Despair ... thine end comes quickly, on ... taloned feet." And with this Jennifer Rush let out a long, low sigh, turned her face to the wall, and went utterly still.

Rush turned off the recorder, slipped it into his pocket, then gave his wife a careful examination. Frowning, he turned to study the monitoring equipment at her feet.

"What is it?" Logan asked.

"I'm not sure," Rush said, peering at the indicators of her vitals. "Give me a minute."

" 'Geb will place his foot upon thy head,' " Tina repeated. "Sounds like a paraphrase of the Pyramid Texts. Utterance three fifty-four or three fifty-six, I believe. Now, how would she know about those?"

"The Pyramid Texts?" Logan asked.

"The oldest religious doc.u.ments in the world. They were Old Kingdom spells and invocations that could only be spoken by royalty."

"Narmer," Logan muttered.

"If so, if they date back as far as Narmer's time, then the Texts are even older than scholars believe--by at least seven hundred years."

"What were the Texts about?"

"Reanimating the pharaoh's body after his death, protecting his corpse from despoliation, seeing the pharaoh safely into the next world--all the things that concerned the ancient Egyptian kings."

Logan realized they were whispering. "What was that she said about the ornament depicted on the wall?"

"That it brought life to the dead and death to the living," Tina replied.

"What do you suppose that means?"

"Perhaps gibberish. On the other hand, the Egyptian pharaohs were in fact fascinated by near-death experience, what they called the 'second region of night.' "

"The second region of night," Logan murmured. "Jennifer mentioned a region of night, too."

Rush had looked up from his instrumentation and was glancing their way. "Tina," he said, "I wonder if you would mind excusing Jeremy and me for a minute."

Tina shrugged and began to walk toward the door. With her hand on the k.n.o.b, she turned back.

"I hope this is the last time you put her through this," she said. Then she left, closing the door quietly behind her.

In the silence that followed, Logan turned to Rush. "What is it?"

"It's taking her longer to snap back this time," he said. "I'm not sure why."

"How long does it normally take?"

"Usually it's almost immediate. But that last crossing, the one you witnessed--it took her almost ten minutes to rouse completely. That's uncommon."

"Is there something you can give her?"

"I'd rather not try. We've never had to administer anything at the Center. Propofol is such a short-acting hypnotic, she should have been fully conscious for some time already."

There was a moment of silence. Then Rush started, as if remembering something, and plucked a disk from the pocket of his lab coat.

"As you requested," he said. "The patient records, clinical trials, and test results from our work at the Center. Please treat them as absolutely confidential."

"I will. Thanks."

Rush glanced back toward his wife. As if with one thought, the two men moved to the head of the bed.

"I think I'll have a session with her myself," Logan said. "Tomorrow, if that's okay with you."

"The sooner the better," Rush replied.

36.

The communications room was deep within Red, down the hall from the power substation where Perlmutter had received his near-fatal shock just days before. It was a relatively small s.p.a.ce, crowded with arcane electronic equipment whose purpose Logan couldn't even begin to guess at.

Jerry Fontaine, the communications chief, was a heavyset man in faded khakis and a pink short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt. The white cotton handkerchief in his right hand was never permitted to rest: either it was nervously being squeezed in Fontaine's bearlike paw, or it was being wiped across his forehead, onto which beads of sweat kept reappearing.

"How's Perlmutter?" Logan asked as he opened a notebook and took a seat in the room's only unoccupied chair.

"The doctor says he can come back to work tomorrow," Fontaine replied. "Thank G.o.d."

Logan pulled a folder from his duffel and opened it. "Tell me about these phenomena you've observed."

More dabbing of the handkerchief. "It's happened twice now. Always late at night. I hear equipment coming to life, beeping and blinking, when everything should be turned off. The comm room is a daytime operation only, see."

"Why is that?" Logan asked.

"Because there's just me and Perlmutter manning it. And we operate it almost like a telegraph office--Stone's orders. Any requests for Internet searches, for calls back to the main office, have to go through us. No night operation except in emergencies."

Stone and his habitual secrecy, Logan thought. "Which machines are, ah, waking up, exactly?"

"One of the sat phones."

"One of the sat phones? You mean, there's more than one?"

Fontaine nodded. "We've got two. An NNR GlobalEye, for the geosynchronous satellite, and then the LEO."

"LEO?".

"Low earth orbit satellite. Terrastar. Good for the high-bandwidth stuff."

Logan scribbled in his notebook. "Which one was it you heard?"

"The one linked to the LEO."

Logan gazed around at the incomprehensible, k.n.o.b-encrusted facades of equipment. "Can you show it to me?"

Fontaine pointed to a rack-mounted device at his side. It was of brushed gray metal, with an embedded keypad and an attached headset. Logan reached into his duffel, pulled out the air-ion counter, held it before the sat phone, then examined the readout.

"What are you doing?" Fontaine said.

"Checking something." The reading was normal; Logan put the counter away.

He glanced back at Fontaine. "Give me the details, please."