The bald man dropped to his knees, his hand at his neck where something had just “bitten” him. Victor Kowalski felt strange; a numb sensation, bitterly cold, almost ecstatic, cascaded through his veins. Suddenly, he couldn’t move, and felt inertia pulling him sideways. People were screaming, rushing past him, pushing, trampling. He fell. Rapped his head on the flagstones, but felt no pain, just cold. So cold. Someone stomped on his arm, and still he felt nothing but a frigid arctic gale sweeping through his body, chilling his very core. His vision was stuck, looking straight up at a familiar face, someone wearing a baseball cap and gray sweatsuit, someone lording over him with a smile of retribution.
The exquisite rush sped to his heart, encasing it in ice, and the world drowned in bitter darkness.
“What do we do now?” Phoebe asked. Emergency units roared to the water’s edge as the police herded the spectators away.
“We wait,” Caleb said, backing away. “I think a few days, maybe more. The Egyptian authorities and the Council of Antiquities will place another ban on investigating the harbor. They’ll declare that there’s nothing down there but dangerous old tunnels. And the story will rest.”
He exhaled slowly. “You can go back to Mom, if you like.”
“No,” Phoebe said. “I want to see this through. I can’t help her there, anyway.”
“Okay, then we’ll wait for this circus to die down. We’ll wait for Qaitbey to be alone again, sneak inside, and do this our way.”
6
In the end, they couldn’t wait for the causeway to empty, and the area around Qaitbey’s fort was always either too crowded or guarded late at night. So they did the next best thing, taking a lesson from Waxman, and bribed the guard to allow them inside. Caleb made up a story about this site’s importance to them. He said that he and Phoebe had been married here years ago, and they wished to recapture that feeling by spending a night inside. Maybe the guard took pity on them because of Phoebe’s condition, but for two hundred dollars he agreed that it was quite romantic. He left them alone, locked up inside, and promised to let them out in the morning. Of course, Caleb knew they wouldn’t be coming out the same way.
Beside a glowing battery-powered lantern, Phoebe waited on the stairs and looked wistfully after her brother.
“Wish you were here?” Caleb asked after the water subsided and he coughed up mouthfuls of brine.
“No thanks!” she yelled back. “Comfy right here. You go on and get all dirty.”
“It’s going to be gold, not dirt!”
“Whatever, just hurry up. These statues are creeping me out.” She stared at the spot under Thoth, where Nina had fallen years ago.
“Trying,” Caleb said, removing the chains. He quickly splashed to the next symbol, then hooked himself to the ceiling, climbed and hung suspended, waiting for the ground to fall away. After it reset he took off the harness, dropped and stepped onto the next block. Immediately it sank, leaving him in a tunnel where the earth closed in and sticky mud clung to his skin. When the block rose again, the earth had hardened and he felt as if he wore a powerful suit of armor, a joining of all the elements into one, able to ward off any physical assault.
He stepped forward onto Mercury. He opened a zip-lock bag from his pocket, sprinkled the powdered sulfur onto the lines, lit it, and waited. A noxious gas rose from cracks in the boulder, mixed with the smoke from the sulfur, and swirled around his body. The earthly coating he had taken on began to bubble and crack. Tiny sprouts of green emerged from his arms, his chest, his face. Then these fell off, dropping with huge chunks of mud.
Fermentation over, he took the next step to Distillation, to Silver and the Moon. He withdrew the 200-watt water-resistant flashlight and switched it on. After a deep breath, he shone the light forward onto the heads of the snakes on the great door. Apparently made of quartz, their eyes glowed with an eerie orange hue. They sparkled and glittered. Caleb felt lightheaded, disconnected. It must have been the gas from the previous stone; maybe it contained some kind of hallucinogenic powder. Whatever it was, Caleb saw the snakes uncoil and lift off the wall, hover in the air, rear back and open their great jaws before slithering forward and wrapping around his legs, circling up his body.
He stayed perfectly still, recognizing that this was a test. It was an illusion, of that he was almost completely sure. An unbelievably realistic illusion. He felt their scales, heard their hissing. His breath shortened as they coiled around his ribcage, then continued winding around his neck, encircling his head, where they met at his crown. And still, he remained motionless, breathless, waiting.
Ten heartbeats passed. His head swam, the room spun and a strange, numinous aura ignited around his vision and bathed his mind in understanding. Here I am, the living caduceus, the embodiment of opposing energies: male and female, above and below, heaven and hell, black and white, good and evil . . . all of it. From these conflicting elements come oneness. Ultimate knowledge of everything from all perspectives.
The only thing left was to make this state of awareness permanent, to become like a stone, the Philosopher’s Stone.
Caleb stepped forward, the snakes greedily hanging on, but losing materiality as he accepted their presence no longer as a hindrance, but a strength. At the final block he dropped to both knees and spread out his arms. It had never occurred to Caleb that he needed to be in that position, and he surely hadn’t gotten any hint from the scroll or any vision. It was just something that seemed right.
He knelt and waited. The snakes hissed gently in his ears, and he imagined words in their breath, whispered greetings, welcoming praises to one who had made a long journey and had arrived home.
Gold dust began to fall from the ceiling, a light coat clinging to his glistening skin, sticking to the residue of fermentation and distillation. It coated his head, his upturned face, neck, shoulders, arms and hands. It fell like a blissful spring rain. He even smelled flowers and fresh mountain air. The scent of jasmine floated by, and he thought of Lydia, then he smelled the bay back home in Sodus, and the trace of old books permeating his little bedroom.
When it stopped, all too soon, Caleb opened his eyes. Standing, afraid to move too quickly and shake free any dust, he took the one remaining step to the door. The snakes had returned to their rightful posts, looking on with passive interest.
Caleb reached out with fingers of glittering gold and touched the staff, then flattened his palm. In the haze of the shadow-play it seemed he had reached into the limestone and actually grasped a three-dimensional staff.
He tightened his grip. And pushed. The door opened, grinding, both halves separating, welcoming him inside. “Your turn, sis,” he called to Phoebe as he turned and jogged back for her.
“Not on your life!”
Over her protests, he lifted her up and carried her.
“You’re filthy,” she said, putting her arms around his neck. “And now it’s all over me.”
“Deal with it,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not letting you miss out on this.”
He took her over the inscribed blocks, through the open doors into the next high-walled chamber, and made for the flight of stairs leading down. Phoebe took one hand away from his neck and used it to wield the flashlight.
They descended slowly, carefully. He stopped once to set her down and catch his breath.
“Wimp,” she giggled, then screeched as he swept her up and threw her over his shoulder. He trotted the rest of the way down and placed her gently on the floor, where she propped herself up on her side. She scooted away from a groove on the red-stained floor.
Caleb held up a finger to his lips and she nodded, trying to stifle her giggles and calm her breathing. Lowering his head, Caleb closed his eyes and directed his thoughts to this room, to its shape, its smell, its feel. And he asked to be shown a date long ago. To be shown Sostratus opening the door.
After two minutes passed, he started to worry.
Nothing happened. No images, no flashes of light, no trembling o
f the veil.
Another minute and he seriously thought of just trying it, saying “Isis” and seeing what happened. But then Phoebe gasped.
Caleb jumped and spun the flashlight to her. Then aimed it away. Her eyes had rolled back, and she was trembling, lying on her side. He had seen her do this only a few times before, in the grip of powerful visions. She had accessed the talent now, not Caleb.
“I see them,” she whispered. “Don’t speak. Don’t say the name.”
“Why?” he asked, dry-mouthed and chilled.
“Sostratus . . . he’s brought someone else.”
“Who? Demetrius?”
She shook her head, eyes still closed. “No. A woman.”
“What?”
“A woman in a blue robe. Head covered with a hood. Hands at her side. She’s facing the door, and Sostratus is waiting, head bowed.”
Could it be, Caleb wondered, that the inflection had to be the right tone, had to be in the feminine voice? Yin and Yang. Male and female. Was this one last test? A final nod to the powers of the feminine, of intellect, feeling, compassion? The ultimate lesson? That true wisdom and power only comes from balance? Man and woman together before the great vault. Was this why Metreisse didn’t open the door that first time?
Phoebe blinked and sat up. She smiled. “Did you bring me here for this purpose?” Caleb shook his head. “Then it’s fate.” She motioned him aside and crawled closer to the door. Closing her eyes, she took a breath and spoke the name, just as she had heard it. And the door opened, not with a grinding, grating sound, or any kind of fanfare. It merely whisked open as if someone had been waiting patiently, ages, for them to come.
Inside, they saw only darkness at first. Caleb started to aim his flashlight beam, but then a flickering light caught his eye.
“Put it out,” Phoebe said, and he wondered if she still saw the past.
He switched off the beam, and watched as the room beyond started to glow. Four tiny lights about ten feet off the ground sprang to life. Small flames set in multi-prismed glass bulbs hung on the walls. He peered closer and could see narrow tubes attached to each, filling with oil from unseen reservoirs. They must have been triggered by the opening of the door, he thought. He started forward, then stopped and turned to retrieve his sister.
“Go on,” she said, tears in her eyes, her lips quivering. “I can see from here . . . so beautiful.”
And it was. A rounded ceiling, painted with vibrant colors, a mural of the heavens, the zodiac, the planets, lines of orbit crisscrossing with comets and nebulae and the overarching Milky Way. A golden border separated the heavenly loft from the four levels of alcoves, each stocked with scrolls and edged with gold and silver trim. A single desk, made of smooth black obsidian, occupied the center of a scarlet marble floor, and a lone chair, simple and plain, rested beside it.
Without any awareness of motion, Caleb walked forward and down the three steps into the chamber. The scent of jasmine and oil mixed with the ancient aroma of papyrus, preserved in this perfectly dry, moisture-free vault, evoked sweet memories of Lydia. Everything was in the same condition as when it had been brought here, over two thousand years ago.
He turned, making a complete visual sweep of the chamber and thousands of scrolls blurred in his sight, each of them nestled carefully, sleeping safely in their alcoves.
Sometime during the next minute or so, he remembered to breathe. He heard Phoebe laughing and sniffling. “We did it.”
Caleb couldn’t stop smiling. He went to alcove after alcove and peered into the deep recesses to see even more scrolls packed away beyond those in front. He gently touched one, then pulled his hand away, afraid to damage it.
It’s all here. All . . .
And then he saw it. On the desk. Sparkling. Emerald on black. The Tablet of Thoth, right there on the smooth surface, beckoning. It was thin, but proportional; flat yet somehow multidimensional. The writing went deep, and when he looked at the tablet from different angles, other layers became visible, with more writing, and even more beyond that. His mind swam, as if just seeing the cascading emerald layers was already affecting his consciousness.
There was something beside the tablet, something that shouldn’t be there.
A tape recorder. And a piece of white paper torn from a notebook with Hilton Hotel letterhead.
How can this be?
As he approached and saw the familiar handwriting, he knew. Caleb pulled up the chair, sat heavily, and took the paper in his trembling hands. He glanced at the clunky old tape recorder. He knew the batteries would be dead, but it didn’t matter. He had already guessed what was on the tape: just one word, a woman speaking the name of Isis.
Choking back a sob, Caleb held the paper up to the light, saw the date, and realized it had been during the last trip his father had taken alone to work on his research just a year before his enlistment in the Gulf War.
Barely able to control the trembling in his fingers, Caleb read the words in his father’s handwriting:
This is yours now, son. All I ask is for your pledge to guard this secret with your life.
7
The other divers’ gear was still on the stairs, providing a convenient means of escape from the subterranean chambers. Caleb told Phoebe to practice breathing slowly through one of the mouthpieces while he fitted her with a suit, mask and vest.
They exited through the vent and ascended through the water gracefully, sharing one tank between them. Phoebe clung to Caleb’s neck and he held her with one arm while passing the regulator back and forth. He let more air into the vest at a grudgingly slow pace, careful to ascend very slowly.
They stared at each other through their masks. They looked down now and then at the distant entrance port, at the breakwater stones and the hundreds of limestone blocks, the fallen reminders of the once-great Pharos. Here and there they saw a marble statue, limbs broken off, eyes dreaming as colorful fish darted about.
They rose together through the water into the rays of sunlight. The light seemed to gather and then scatter the bubbles before their ascent. Two feet from the surface, Caleb slowed and waited, not wanting this glorious feeling to end. But then a wave came along and nudged them upward and they were through, their vests fully inflated, and bobbed at the surface. He had purposely swum around to the other side of the fort to the beach for an easier exit. He kicked and swam and let the tide pull them in. About fifty feet from the shore, he became concerned.
“Who are they?” Phoebe asked in his ear.
Six white jeeps had pulled up onto the beach. They were arranged in a semicircle. The rest of the beach was nearly empty, and those few people that remained were being told to move away by men in gray suits.
“CIA?” Phoebe whispered. “How—?”
“Not CIA,” Caleb answered, seeing more men and women emerge from the jeeps, a few of them with binoculars to their eyes.
“Then who?”
Caleb spit out a mouthful of water. He found his footing. A few more steps in the rocky sand and he could stand, wobbling, holding Phoebe in his tired arms.
Seventeen men and women stood patiently. Some with dark glasses, others shielding their eyes.
“I think,” Caleb said, “this is going to be a reunion.”
“After nearly five hundred years, we are joined again.” The man who spoke was in his late thirties, strong and imposing, with broad shoulders, blond hair, blue eyes and thick, tanned skin.
Caleb held Phoebe in two feet of water, feeling the surf caress his calves. He scanned the crowd of faces. “Keepers,” Caleb said, and bowed his head in greeting.
Someone made a motion and another man stepped through, wheeling an empty wheelchair. “We thought you might need this,” he said, “after we realized you weren’t coming out the way you went in.”
Caleb put Phoebe down and got her positioned in the chair. “Thanks, I was getting a little tired there.”
“Congratulations,” said the first man as the others crowded aroun
d. “Are we to assume, due to your apparent health, that you have succeeded?”
Caleb stared at him. “Maybe we gave up.”
The man shook his head. “After the first door is bypassed, I don’t believe giving up is an option. The trap would have sprung, as it did with your mother.”
“Then there’s no point denying it.”
“Good. Again, congratulations. You have succeeded where we have failed for more than fifteen centuries. But now we are together again. The Keepers are reunited.”
“What are you planning to do?” Phoebe asked, looking at all the excited faces. She eyed Caleb carefully, to see if he showed any sign of flight.
The Keeper smiled. “We would like to show you something. Assuming of course, that you wish to join us.”
“We’ll see,” Phoebe said, crossing her arms.
“The seal is still open?” the man asked. “From the instructions we were given, if you succeeded, there is no reset program. You have to manually close the doors to reset the traps.”
“We didn’t close the doors,” Caleb said. “Wouldn’t want to go through all those trials again when we go back for the books.”
“So you didn’t take any?”
Caleb shook his head, feeling the dryness in his throat and trying to calm his pounding heart, hoping they would believe him. “Didn’t think to bring any waterproof containers on this trip, plus there are so many scrolls down there.”
“Good. We will bring them up.” He nodded to a woman next to him, who turned and left, taking a dozen of the group. They stepped into four jeeps and drove off toward the causeway, where a large black truck was waiting.
Two jeeps remained, and Caleb only now noticed someone sitting in the passenger seat of the closest one. A shadowy figure, watching them.
The Keeper who had first spoken noticed Caleb’s attention. He stepped forward, into his line of sight. “I understand you were with my father when he died.”
The Pharos Objective Page 27
