The Pharos Objective

by David Sakmyster

  Caleb lowered his eyes. “Your . . . father? Nolan Gregory? Yes I was with him. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” the Keeper said. “It was his time.” He reached out his hand. “You are my brother-in-law. My name is Robert Gregory.”

  Caleb numbly shook his hand, still eyeing the figure in the car.

  “In my family’s case,” Robert continued, “my father couldn’t decide between his two children, so he shared the secret with both of us.”

  Caleb continued staring at the silhouette.

  “She wants to see you,” Robert said. “But we needed to talk first, before your reaction might have spoiled things.”

  “She?” A lump formed in Caleb’s throat. He couldn’t breathe.

  The jeep’s door opened.

  Phoebe gasped.

  And Caleb’s breath fled in a rush as Lydia strode toward him.

  She stopped and took her brother’s place as he stepped away. Her hands were folded before her waist. Her green eyes were radiant, her golden hair whipping about in the winds. Caleb smelled jasmine, strong, intoxicating.

  “Caleb. I knew you would do it.” He reached out his hand and she took it, squeezing it tight. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Caleb said. “I think I’ve always known, somehow. As much as I admired your sacrifice, I secretly hoped you had tricked me. In the darkness you dove into the pit, then scrambled out the vent shaft.”

  “Where I had stashed an air tank and regulator the night before. You were stubborn, Caleb. You were trapped in a place that held you back.”

  “But we could have worked at it. Why the rush, why not give me more time?”

  She glanced back at Phoebe, then her eyes met Caleb’s again. “There was another reason. Someone else was going to come into your life, someone who would have sidetracked your true mission.”

  “Who?”

  Phoebe gasped, fingers to her lips. “My dream . . . where Lydia was suffocating you. I heard—”

  “A baby?” he asked.

  And Lydia, with her eyes welling with tears, nodded. “You have a son.”

  Phoebe and Caleb sat in the back seat with Lydia as they drove to the new library. They had brought a change of clothes, thinking of everything. Phoebe wore a yellow and black sundress, and Caleb had put on khaki shorts, sandals and a white button-down polo.

  As they navigated the crowded market streets, Phoebe and Caleb looked through the photo album Lydia had brought of the first years of young Alexander’s life. Caleb saw his son grow from a puny little cub to a brown-haired hellion covered with grape jelly and Saltine crackers. He seemed to love the beach and water and listening to Lydia read to him in his crib.

  “He loves books,” Lydia said. “Like his father.”

  “Then he’ll love where we’re going,” Phoebe said. “How long has the library been open?”

  “Officially, for ten years,” Robert said. “Unofficially, in the subterranean levels, much longer. But it is still being stocked. All the works are backed up, digitized and stored in fireproof servers.”

  “What about earthquakes?” Caleb asked.

  “Reinforced concrete girders across the structure. And deep in the earth we built the lower levels inside an immense vault on a series of rafters and posts to resist quakes and shore erosion. The angle of the windows overlooking the top six floors limit the amount of sunlight entering the library, further aiding in the preservation of the books. And, as I said, everything’s duplicated and stored on servers at several locations across Egypt.”

  “And what about—?”

  “We have it covered,” Lydia said. “Armed guards, heavy security. Many benefactors, funding . . .”

  “I’m sure they were equally confident about the previous library.”

  “So pessimistic,” Lydia said, then glanced at Phoebe. “Was he like this as a child?”

  “Worse.”

  Caleb groaned. “I’m just trying to gauge how sturdy this place will be, if, as I assume, you’re going to use it to store what they’re bringing up from the Pharos.”

  “We are,” she said. “That has been our purpose all along. Keepers have been on the board here at the new library, securing funding through UNESCO and ensuring that the construction exceeds specifications. We knew, very soon, someone would find the way in. We had stepped up our efforts to find the Renegade. And your father, with his thesis, made it easy for us.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Robert, “the CIA got to him first. A bad streak of luck, that. A little unfair, with Waxman’s psychic help. They took your father away, and we were forced to wait. We had hoped, years ago, that maybe your mother had been given the Key, but instead we had to be patient.”

  “And prod you along,” Lydia said.

  “So it was all just for this?” Caleb asked her ruefully. He looked at his lap, reflecting, before he spoke again. “Any love in there?”

  She stared back with a wounded look. “I hope you know better.”

  “I don’t,” he said, but then he looked at the album again, at his little son nestled in her arms. “But maybe I’ll come to learn that, in time. If you’re willing.”

  She reached back her left hand, where he saw her wedding ring, still glittering. “I am.”

  In the library, they walked down a massive ramp as Caleb wheeled Phoebe along. He marveled at the architecture, the perfect columns, the lustrous balconies on each of the six floors; the great windowed dome, the tracks of lights crisscrossing overhead; the rich mahogany shelves, tables and chairs.

  He felt a burning need to linger here for days, weeks, months. As he turned around in a great circle, his heart thundered and he couldn’t help but feel like Demetrius Phalereus stepping into his library for the first time, looking over the thousands of works from every subject on the planet.

  Lydia gently took his arm and pulled him along, toward a waiting elevator. She used a special key to gain access to a floor below the other four sub-sea levels. After nearly a minute of silent descent, they stepped into a long tunnel made of all white marble. Caleb felt like they were deep in a secret military installation. At the end of the corridor, a set of gold-plated double doors opened at their approach. Inside, the room was set up much as the chamber under the Pharos, except larger, and with twenty desks and polished wood chairs. Empty alcoves everywhere, flat screen monitors, computers, scanners, and a bank of servers. A similar vaulted ceiling arched overhead with beautiful cosmic murals.

  “Here it is,” Lydia announced. “We will keep the recovered texts here and invite certain scholars to have access to a portion at a time. A scroll here and there. And carefully, and only after great analysis, we will dole out the information as appropriate.”

  “Dole it out to whom?” Phoebe asked, leaning forward in her chair and looking around the room.

  Lydia sighed. “To those who seek it. I expect we’ll differ on this, but you must realize that such knowledge, with the power it brings, cannot just be made available to everyone, at once.”

  “Why not?” Phoebe asked, cutting Caleb off. She pointed to the servers. “You have everything you need. Scan all the texts, post them on the Internet, and let the world have at them!”

  Lydia laughed, and Robert, who had gone down the stairs to sit at a table beside an empty alcove, snickered. “You can’t be serious. No, we will decide when to release certain information. We’ll catalog the sources based on their inflammatory potential, and release the knowledge in small doses gradually, but surely releasing it all.”

  “Over how long?” Caleb wondered.

  Lydia shrugged. “We’ll see how the early releases are received. Decades certainly, maybe centuries.”

  Caleb shook his head. “So we’ll just have to trust your judgment?”

  “Our judgment. Caleb, you’re one of us now. Again.”

  He nodded, looking around. It was so tempting to have access to this, to everything coming along. The ancient treasure reunited with its library.

 
; A cell phone rang, and everyone looked at Robert. “Hold on,” he said, digging out his phone. Caleb was amazed it worked down here, but apparently they had set up additional receivers and transmitters for wireless connectivity to the outside.

  “Yes?” he said, “we are. What do you mean? Look again.” He frowned, gave Caleb a curious stare, and then glanced at Lydia. He hung up, stood and moved in close to her. “It’s not there,” he whispered.

  Lydia’s shoulders sagged. She turned to Caleb. “The tablet isn’t there.”

  He stared back at her impassively. “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t the legends claim it was moved before Alexandria fell to the Muslims? Moved back to Giza? I’m thinking it’s under the Sphinx now.”

  “But your vision of Manetho . . .”

  “Maybe I wasn’t asking the right questions,” he said. “I wanted to be shown how the wisdom left the Temple of Isis, not where it ultimately wound up.”

  Lydia continued staring at him, then looked to Phoebe, considering whether they were lying. Finally, she said, “We’ll keep looking. It has to be there.”

  Caleb shrugged. “There were a lot of alcoves, it could have been hidden. Or maybe there’s a secret wall or something.”

  She nodded. “We’ll find it, wherever it is. But for now, we have enough to work with.” She came over to Caleb, hesitated, then put her arms around his neck.

  “Can I see my son?” he asked.

  “My nephew!” Phoebe chimed in.

  “Of course,” Lydia said. “He’s waiting upstairs.”

  8

  Sodus Bay—Christmas Day

  With a deep sigh, Caleb leaned all the way back in the chair, put his feet up on the edge of his mother’s bed, and turned to his side. He had been speaking to her for close to five hours, telling her everything, completing the story of their quest. Filling her in on the triumphant discovery.

  Completely exhausted, he closed his eyes, just for a minute. Helen let out a sigh, and a soft murmur filled the darkened room. The lone candle had burned almost completely, the wick floating in a puddle of wax, and Caleb drifted toward sleep.

  Then, he heard something. A rustling of the sheets, a creak in the floor. Wearily, with great effort, he opened his eyes. Someone stood over her bed.

  The gaunt figure with the long, greasy hair and hunched shoulders. Green khakis. He bent over her. Words poured out from the darkness, whispers at once gentle and strange.

  Caleb tried to rise, to lunge for him and drag him away. He’d plagued Caleb all his life, appearing, then disappearing. For so many years Caleb thought he was a manifestation of his own fears, or some subconscious guilt.

  But to see him here, now . . . and to be unable to move!

  Then the man did something that melted away Caleb’s fears. He took Helen’s dangling hand in his, and he gently caressed her skin. More whispers. His face right next to hers, he looked into her eyes. And then Caleb understood. Most times he’d seen this man, his mother had been around. And more than once, he knew she had sensed him too. But what visage, what presence would—?

  “Dad . . .?”

  The figure froze, as if he had been assuming Caleb was asleep. His head turned, ever so slightly—

  —and the candle went out.

  Another sigh, and the room suddenly chilled as the darkness dissipated. Finally finding his strength, Caleb fell out of the chair, turned and reached for the wall switch. The room sprang into light, and Caleb spun around, hoping to confront his father’s apparition at last, to touch him, to apologize for giving up on him, for everything. But there was no one there.

  The pictures on the walls watched soberly, and all those faces seemed to turn away, to provide him with solitude, to allow this moment to be alone with his mother. Caleb stumbled toward the bed and took the outstretched hand and the fingers that were already uncoiling from their last grip. Her eyes were closed, her lips moist as if just kissed. Caleb knelt beside her and put his head on her chest, and listened a long, long time, while tears started to slide unimpeded down his face.

  9

  Sodus Bay—June

  Two years later

  “Hello, Mom.” Caleb sat beside her stone and arranged the gardenias in a pattern matching those by his father’s. He had petitioned the right people at the State Department, and with an agreement to forgive and forget, and a tidy sum for his loss, they released Philip’s body from its unmarked grave behind Fort Meade. George Waxman’s name had been stricken from all records related to Stargate and the CIA, and they disavowed all knowledge of his service.

  “Just stopping by,” Caleb told his parents as he squinted up through the eaves of a great willow in Forest Hills Cemetery. Here in the shade, and so close to the bay, it was a good ten degrees cooler than near the entrance road. He looked back and saw Phoebe chasing Alexander around.

  “I hope you can see this,” he said. “I still can’t believe it, but the new treatments worked. They repaired Phoebe’s neural connections and reconstructed the lower vertebrate, all according to the instructions from the Hippocrates Manuscript. We introduced that one quickly to the medical association, claiming that a boy playing in the caves outside of Cairo had discovered it sealed away in a jar.”

  Using the small shovel, Caleb piled more dirt around the flowers and sprinkled water from his bottle over the earth. Then he cleared the emotional block from his voice. “So much more will be coming out in the next year, you’d be amazed. I’m moving the others along as fast as I can, and it’s working. The potential for hydrogen energy and innovations in robotics will astound the world. Amazing that the early thinkers considered these things only for sport. Imagine if necessity had weighed on their imaginations.”

  He touched Helen’s stone, laying his palm flat against it. “Rest well, Mom. Phoebe’s doing great, and your grandson . . . well, I have him for the next four months, and that will have to be enough time for him to experience some down-to-earth cooking and good old American culture. He’s got a lot of games to play, TV to watch and books to read until I have to send him back to Lydia in Alexandria.”

  Caleb smiled. “Yes, I’ll keep an eye on him there, too. And, you’ll be happy to know, we might be heading that way again very soon. Me, Phoebe . . .” then, in a whisper, “. . . the Morpheus Initiative.”

  He stood, stretched and watched the scene behind him, where Alexander chased after a Frisbee. “I’m reforming the group. Recruiting psychics, screening them myself this time. Waxman had the right idea, just the wrong motives. It’ll be a good team, dedicated, professional. Going after the biggest stakes. Important relics, things that will benefit mankind.”

  Hands on her hips, gasping for breath, Phoebe laughed, saw Caleb and waved. Alexander shouted and Caleb thought he heard the words “Old Rusty.”

  “Dad,” Caleb scolded, “he got that from you. Loves that damn rust bucket. Every chance he gets he’s chucking stones at it, climbing through it, pretending to be Captain Nemo.”

  Dropping his voice a notch, Caleb leaned in toward his parents’ stones. Carefully, keeping the words from the jealous wind, he whispered, “Alexander will be ready sooner than I thought.” Caleb looked through the trees, across the narrowest part of the bay, to their little white lighthouse glittering in the sun. “It’s waiting for him, down in our basement, beyond the root cellar door. Locked away behind what, I must say, are some ingenious puzzles of my own. Alexander will figure them out in time. But before that, I’ll teach him what he needs to know.”

  Bowing his head, Caleb walked back to his sister and his son, back to the sunlight and the warmth. He paused at the rise and glanced back to the monuments.

  “I promise, Alexander will make an excellent Keeper.”

  EPILOGUE

  The patient’s door opens with a sound like the hiss of an uncoiling python. The man outside wears a long overcoat, and a matching black hat all but covers the tangles of crimson hair matted in sweat beneath the
fabric.

  He takes off his gloves, slips them into a pocket. Before his next step, he glances over his shoulder at a heavyset man on the hallway floor, his neck broken. Outside, the Virginia sun has gone down for the day, and the quiet winds sweep across the sycamores, rolling over the Potomac—

  —and three more bodies face-down in the water. Mercenaries, all of them, members of Waxman’s old crew, still guarding the last vestige of a program long-since officially cancelled, following orders from distant bureaucrats interested only in keeping certain secrets in the dark. It wasn’t a fair fight, but he has no interest in fairness.

  Still hearing the echoes of the guard’s snapping vertebrae, he enters the room. Despite what he’s just done, he doesn’t like death, not the look of it, not the smell, not the way it sounds. Just being in its vicinity brings too many unwanted memories.

  Too many visions that just won’t go away.

  He turns his attention to the interior of the darkened chamber. The light from outside spills around him, seeking out the patient lying on the cot. IVs feed nutrients into her blood stream to keep her alive. How much longer could they keep her here? he wonders. Drugged up so she can’t remember, so her powers can’t surface? Forever? The men safeguarding this site on a skeleton crew, half-heartedly, had little idea of what or who she was.

  A breath escapes her parched lips. Her head turns toward the light. Eyes flicker open.

  Does she recognize me?

  He thought she was an amnesiac, that her injuries beneath the Pharos stole her memories. But his visions—those he had started having back in Alexandria, before he deserted the Morpheus Initiative on the night of their ill-fated descent—showed him something else. Visions of the two of them together, glimpses even of this very moment, in this very room, doing what he is about to do.

  He kneels beside her, takes her hand in his.