The Third Gate Part 4

They crawled forward into an ever-thicker tangle of logs and bracken. The noises from the riverbanks--if indeed there were still any banks to be found in this mora.s.s--had all but ceased. It was as if they were now surrounded by an infinite riot of flora, dead and dying, all wedged into one colossal tangle. They waited in the bow, barely speaking, as the boat followed the line of flas.h.i.+ng beacons. Now and then the path seemed to Logan to lead to a dead end; but each time, after making a blind turn, the fetid tangle of vegetation widened once again. Frequently, the boat had to use its own superstructure to push aside the oozing warp and weft.

At one point they reached a spot through which there was no clear pa.s.sage. Up in the pilothouse, Plowright, the captain, goosed the turbine; the vessel lifted bodily into the air and forced its way over the matted surface--twenty-five, fifty feet forward--with a horrible clanging and sc.r.a.ping along the underside. It became clearer than ever to Logan why the boat's motive power, the huge fan, had been mounted atop the deck: any normal propeller would have been snagged in a minute. The two mates leaned forward over the bow, plying their pneumatic prods. The cloying heat, the stench of rotting vegetation, grew overpowering.

"It's been a long day," Rush said suddenly, out of the fading light. "Tomorrow, you'll meet some of the key members. And you'll get what I think you've been waiting for the most."

"What's that?"

"The last piece of the puzzle. The one that answers your other question: why you, of all people, are here."

Here? Logan glanced ahead. And then, quite suddenly, he understood.

The boat had made a sharp turn through a vast screen of knotted limbs and papyrus, and now a most unusual sight greeted Logan's eyes. Ahead, floating on at least a half-dozen vast pontoon platforms, lay what appeared to be a small city. Lights twinkled from beneath countless mosquito nets. Canvas tarps the size of football fields were erected over the structures, s.h.i.+elding them from the sky. There was a faint hum of generators, barely louder than the whine of insects that hovered and dove in clouds around their boat. It was an outrageous sight, here in this most remote and dreadful of spots: an oasis of civilization that might just as well have been set down on one of Jupiter's moons.

They had arrived.

8.

The airboat slowed to a crawl, gave a blast of its horn. Almost at once, a rectangle of lights came on beneath one of the huge tarps. Logan watched, fascinated despite his weariness, as a bank of mosquito netting was drawn back from beneath the tarp like a curtain from a theater stage. Slowly, they glided beneath the tarp and into a covered marina. To their left was another huge airboat identical to the one they were on; to their right, moored to short, floating piers, were numerous smaller craft and Jet Skis.

Plowright maneuvered the vessel into its slip, and somebody in shorts and a flowered s.h.i.+rt trotted down the pier to tie them up. With a whisper, the external netting was drawn back into place. Logan glanced at it: beyond the glow and sparkle of the marina lights, the Sudd was a wall of blackness.

Dr. Rush led the way down the gangplank and onto the pier. "This way," he said, ushering Logan onto a walkway made of stamped metal, then through a doorway and down a long, tunnel-like floating pier and onto what seemed to be an immense, bargelike structure covered by another vast sheet of what appeared to be opaque Mylar, almost in the fas.h.i.+on of a circus tent.

"Seven p.m., local time," Rush added. Even at this hour the air was sticky and oppressive. From the darkness beyond the netting, Logan could hear, amid the patter of raindrops, a strange fugal drone of insects, frogs, and other less-identifiable creatures.

He looked around. "Does this thing have a name?"

Rush laughed. "Nothing official. Most people just call it the Station--after Heart of Darkness, I suppose. The six primary floating structures, the 'wings,' that make up the base are color coded, and they're referred to by their colors. The one we're entering now is Green. It's where the back-office work of the expedition is done: interfacing with suppliers, transportation coordination, vessel and equipment maintenance, that sort of thing. It's also the, ah, public face of the expedition--such as it is."

They were now walking down a narrow pa.s.sageway, rather grimy and scuffed, studded with open doors. It was cooler inside this enclosed structure, and Logan noticed that the walls were, in fact, painted green. He peered curiously into the rooms on either side. They were full of computers, video cameras on tripods, whiteboards covered with diagrams and legends. Messy-looking laboratories--apparently, ecological and biological setups--had complete suites of scientific equipment and paraphernalia for collecting samples. The rooms all had one thing in common: they were dark, devoid of any activity.

"What's all this?" Logan said, nodding toward one of the open doors.

"The public face I mentioned."

Logan shook his head. "Unique or not, why study something as G.o.dforsaken as this place?"

Rush chuckled. "That's exactly what the local government thinks--and what we want them to think. Why doc.u.ment a swamp that's been universally reviled ever since it was first discovered? But of course they were happy to take some money in exchange for the necessary permits. That's probably the only benefit of being situated here--n.o.body's likely to drop in for a surprise visit. We had an official flown in when the site first went active. We didn't make it easy to get here, and we were sure to turn off the air-conditioning while he was on location. We don't expect any future interruptions--but of course, if necessary, these decoy labs and offices could be up and running within five minutes."

They made their way along Green's central pa.s.sageway, now pa.s.sing offices that were, it appeared, real: Logan made out someone typing at a terminal, another speaking into a field radio. They turned down another pa.s.sage, which led to a dark, circular opening covered by wide, ceiling-to-floor strips of semiopaque plastic. Logan was reminded of the mouth of a baggage carousel. Rush pushed his way past the plastic strips, and Logan followed. Suddenly, he was outdoors again, in a narrow tube of mosquito netting, supported by pontoons. It was pitch-black, and--if anything--the insect noise had increased, completely overwhelming the drone of the generators. Listening, Logan didn't think he could bear to spend a night outdoors with such an infernal racket.

As they traversed the long walkway, it rocked back and forth, and Logan could hear sucking, sopping noises emanating from beneath their feet. Clearly, they were moving from one of the primary floating barges to another.

"All these structures are anch.o.r.ed to the bed of the Sudd," Rush said. "Very precisely anch.o.r.ed, too--there can be no s.h.i.+fting, not even by so much as half a meter. Our work is dependent on GPS positioning. But you'll see that for yourself soon enough."

"Remarkable."

"The most remarkable part isn't even visible. As you might imagine, a swamp like the Sudd throws off a lot of methane. There are collection devices underneath each of the wings. The methane is concentrated and processed into clean-burning fuel in special chambers. Then it's piped out to the two external generators. It's also used as fuel for everything from the boats to the Bunsen burners. We're almost completely energy independent."

"That's amazing. Why doesn't everyone do it?"

"Well, rotting vegetation doesn't cover the rest of the earth--thank G.o.d."

"Of course." Logan laughed. "Isn't it a little dangerous?"

"Having natural gas pipes running through your house is probably dangerous, too. It's a closed system, monitored twenty-four seven, the whole thing set up with a safety mechanism that's fully automatic. And flying in thousands of gallons of oil and gas on a regular basis might raise eyebrows. Besides, Stone not only likes to fly below the radar but prefers to leave no trace behind, do as little damage to the environment as possible. This helps accomplish that."

They pa.s.sed through another barrier into a second vast enclosure, this one painted a pale azure, the dome high overhead arching over cubicles with seven-foot walls. "This is Blue," Rush said. "Crew quarters."

Activity here was more p.r.o.nounced. They pa.s.sed a recreation room with pinball machines and shuffleboard layouts; then a mini-library with comfortable chairs, magazines, and racks of paperbacks; next, a lounge where several groups of four were sitting around card tables, immersed in games. Logan could hear laugher, snippets of conversation in French, German, and English.

"Believe it or not, bridge has become a tradition on Porter Stone's digs," Rush said. "It's encouraged during off-hours. Stone believes that it gets people's minds off the day's stress, helps prevent brooding over the isolation and the separation from loved ones, while at the same time keeping the mind sharp."

"How many people are on the site?"

"I don't recall the exact number. Somewhere around a hundred and fifty."

They paused outside what appeared to be half commissary, half mess. "Want a bite to eat before I show you to your quarters?" Rush asked.

Logan shook his head. "I'm fine."

"Let me get you something anyway, just in case." Rush disappeared inside. Logan waited in the corridor, observing the activity within. There were at least a dozen people in the mess, eating dinner. The atmosphere was remarkably heterogeneous: scientists in lab coats were practically b.u.mping elbows with rough-looking roustabouts begrimed by mud or motor oil.

Rush reappeared in the doorway with a paper bag. "Here's a BLT, an apple, and a can of iced tea," he said. "Just in case you get peckish."

He led the way around a bend and into a dormitory area. The chatter was louder here: conversations, laughter, the blare of music from digital players, movies playing on laptops or flat-screen monitors.

Rush stopped before a closed door marked 032. "This is yours," he said, opening the door and ushering Logan inside. Beyond lay a room, spartan but neat, furnished with a desk, bed, two chairs, a closet, and a set of drawers flush with the wall.

"They'll bring your luggage 'round in a few minutes," Rush said. "And tomorrow we'll get you officially processed and start the orientation. But now you must be tired."

"Make that overwhelmed."

Rush smiled. "I have to check in with Medical. Want to meet for breakfast? Say, eight o'clock?"

"Sure."

"I'll see you then." Rush grasped his shoulder, then turned and left, closing the door behind him.

The soundproofing was better than expected: the noises in the hallway immediately sank to a murmur. Logan was setting his watch to local time when there came a knock on the door and his luggage was brought in by a young man with a thatch of carrot-colored hair. Logan thanked him, closed the door, then lay down on the bed. He wasn't fatigued, exactly, but he needed a while to sort out in his head all the surprises and revelations of the last thirty-six hours. It seemed almost unbelievable: here he was, in a vast complex of platforms, connected by walkways, shrouded by canvas and mosquito netting, and everything floating atop a dismal swamp, hundreds of miles from anywhere....

Five minutes later he was fast asleep, dreaming that he was standing atop a pyramid, alone and marooned, surrounded by an endless sea of heaving, steaming quicksand.

9.

The following morning pa.s.sed in a blur of activity. Logan met Rush for breakfast, as agreed. Afterward, Rush led him back to Green, where he was officially processed, issued an ID card, and given a twenty-minute orientation by a no-nonsense woman with a Home Counties accent. The entire process was efficient and clinical, with an almost military precision: clearly, this was a machine oiled and streamlined over many previous missions. At the end of the orientation, he was asked to hand over his cell phone, being informed he'd get it back at the conclusion of his stay. Once you're on board with the project, you might find it hard to get calls out with any degree of certainty, Rush had written in his introductory e-mail. Now Logan understood why: Stone and his fanatical obsession with secrecy. Although it seemed unlikely that anybody's cell phone would get a signal in such a remote wasteland.

"You'll be meeting with Tina after lunch," Rush told him as they stepped back out into the narrow corridor.

"Tina?"

"Dr. Christina Romero. She's the head Egyptologist. She'll fill in the rest of the blanks, get you up to speed. She can be a bit p.r.i.c.kly at times, and she has very strong opinions about looting grave goods, but she's the best at what she does." He hesitated a moment, as if about to say something. "Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see the work in process."

"Sure," Logan replied. "Especially if it'll give me some idea what I'm doing out here."

The two made their way past more offices, labs, and equipment sheds. Logan quickly became disoriented in the mazelike interiors. They pa.s.sed lab-coated scientists, a machinist in coveralls, and--surprisingly--a burly, bearded man sporting boots and a cowboy hat.

"Roustabout," Rush said, as if that explained everything.

They crossed through another pontoon-supported walkway, encased in Mylar and mosquito netting, floating just inches above the surface of the swamp, and the doctor pushed past another makes.h.i.+ft wall of vertical plastic panels. Logan followed suit--then stopped abruptly. Beyond lay a vast room. Along one yellow wall was a rank of lockers, perhaps two dozen, painted battles.h.i.+p gray. Along the opposite wall was a bank of instrumentation: rack-mounted servers, oscilloscopes, what appeared to be highly sophisticated depth finders and sonar devices, and a dozen still-more-exotic pieces of equipment. Leads, power cables, and data conduits snaked underfoot, all converging at the center of the huge s.p.a.ce, where a large circular hole had been cut in the floor. This well-like hole was surrounded by a railing and more instrumentation.

"This is Yellow," Rush said, waving a hand, a note of pride in his voice. "The face of the dig."

He led the way toward the center of the room. Logan followed, picking his way carefully over the sea of cabling. Several people were arrayed around the central hole: some monitoring instruments, others in dive suits sitting on benches and conversing in low tones. A woman in a nurse's uniform sat at a small medical station, typing on a laptop.

Logan approached the hole and peered in gingerly. It was at least eight feet in diameter. He could see the brownish-green surface of the Sudd not eighteen inches beneath his feet. Its miasmic vapor rose like a fetid breath to his nostrils. Two ladders descended into its murky depths, along with several thick cables.

Rush nodded toward the hole. "Our interface with the swamp. We call it the Maw."

"The Maw?"

Rush smiled grimly. "Rather appropriate, don't you think?"

Logan had to agree that it was.

On the far side of the Maw was a huge flat-panel monitor, connected to a bank of CPUs. On it was displayed something that looked to Logan like a cross between a chessboard and some kind of alien lottery ticket: a grid of squares, ten by ten, in a variety of colors. Some of the squares contained odd symbols; others, small logos and lines of text. Others were empty.

Beside this monitor was an industrial rolling ladder, the kind used for stocking warehouse shelves. Standing atop it, hands folded over a barrel-like chest, stood a man, cigar in mouth despite the NO SMOKING signs posted everywhere. He was bald, his dome s.h.i.+ning brilliantly under the large surgical-bay lights, and he'd clearly spent so many years in the sun that his skin was the color of chewing tobacco. Although he was no more than five feet tall, he radiated confidence and authority.

Dr. Rush made his way around the Maw and stopped at the base of the ladder. "Frank?" he said to the man atop it. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

The man on the safety ladder looked down at them. Then he peered carefully around the room, scrutinizing everything, as if to a.s.sure himself everything was under control. Then at last he descended the ladder, puffing on the cigar.

"Jeremy, this is Frank Valentino," Rush said. "Dive and dig site honcho."

Valentino took out the cigar, looked meditatively at the soggy end, then put it back in his mouth and held out a meaty paw.

"Frank, this is Jeremy Logan," Rush continued. "He arrived with me last night."

Valentino's look grew slightly more interested. "Yeah, I heard of you," he said. His voice was remarkably deep and free of accent. "The spook doctor."

For a moment, Logan stood utterly still. Then, quite abruptly, he spread his palms outward and leaned toward Valentino. "Boo!" he said.

Valentino shrank back. "Madonna," he murmured, crossing himself. Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Rush suppress a smile.

In the background, behind the low chatter of the engineers and divers, Logan could hear the squawk of an occasional electrified voice coming over a radio on the far side of the large monitor. It sounded again: "Romeo Foxtrot Two, on descent."

"Romeo Foxtrot, roger," said a man seated at the radio console. "Your signal is five by five."

Rush gestured at the Maw. "Until the actual tomb is located, this is where all the exploratory and cartographical work is based."

"But the Sudd is so vast," Logan said. "How did you know where to establish the site?"

"Tina Romero can explain. Suffice it to say that the location was initially established as a square, several miles to a side. Scholars.h.i.+p and, ah--other considerations--narrowed that down to one mile."

"One square mile," Logan repeated, shaking his head in admiration.

Rush directed Logan's attention to the huge flat panel. "What you see there is a reproduction of the ground along the bottom of the Sudd: the square mile beneath us, broken into a ten-by-ten grid. Using a GPS satellite to ensure pinpoint accuracy, we're exploring each square in turn. Divers go down to scour the site, explore any hits."

"Romeo Foxtrot, Echo Bravo," said the radioman. "Give me an update."

After a moment, the radio squawked again. "Romeo Foxtrot. At minus thirty feet and descending."

"Bubble status?"

"Eighty-two percent."

"Watch that bubble, Romeo Foxtrot."

"Roger."

"What you're hearing are communications from the current dive team," Rush explained. "They dive in pairs for safety's sake. And they use special equipment to maintain their orientation. You can't imagine what it's like to descend into the Sudd--completely black, the mud and quicksand around you like a suffocating blanket, no way of telling up from down ..." He paused.

"You talked about scouring the site," Logan said. "About exploring hits."

"Yes," Rush said, glancing back at him. "You see, this was once the site of a prehistoric volcano. Even in Narmer's day, the volcano was long gone. But traces of it remained behind in the form of subterranean lava pipes. Our belief is that the pharaoh selected a suitable lava tube for his tomb and had his workers expand and fortify it as necessary. Once it was sealed, the encroaching muck and water of the Sudd would do the rest. Anyway, when we first move to a new section of the Grid, the thing that must be done initially is to blast away the accretion of silty deposits from the swamp bed."

"That's Big Bertha's job," Valentino said with a smile. He jerked one thumb over his shoulder, where--in the shadowy depths of the hangarlike s.p.a.ce--Logan could make out a hulking machine that looked half Zamboni, half snowmobile.

"Narmer thought his tomb would remain hidden away for all time," Rush said. "But he could never have imagined the technology we're bringing to bear--remote-sensing radar, scuba gear, global positioning devices."

"This is Romeo Foxtrot," the harsh metallic voice intruded. "The bubble mechanism's acting a bit flaky. Status stands at forty-three percent."

The radioman looked over at Valentino, who nodded. "Depth?" he said into the radio.

"Thirty-five feet."