The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  “Eight days?”

  Lipper nodded, uneasy from the sudden darkening of Menzies’s face.

  “Four plus eight is twelve—two days before the gala opening. Can you finish the debugging in five?”

  Something in Menzies’s tone led Lipper to think it was more an order than a question. He swallowed: the schedule already verged on the insane. “We’ll certainly try.”

  “Good. Now, let’s talk for a minute about the opening. Dr. Kelly suggested we duplicate the original opening in 1872, and I wholeheartedly concurred. We are planning a cocktail reception, a bit of opera, and then the guests will be escorted into the tomb for the sound-and-light show. Dinner will follow.”

  “How many are we talking about?” Lipper asked.

  “Six hundred.”

  “Obviously we’re not going to fit six hundred people into the tomb at one time,” Lipper said. “I’ve been estimating two hundred at a go for the sound-and-light show, which lasts about twenty minutes, but we could up that to, say, three hundred for the opening.”

  “Fine,” said Menzies. “We’ll divide them into two groups. The first in, of course, will be the A-list: the mayor, governor, senators and congressmen, the museum’s top brass, the biggest patrons, movie stars. With two showings, we’ll get guests through the exhibit within an hour. Finish off the entire crowd.” He looked from Lipper to DeMeo. “You two are crucial. There can’t be any mistakes. Everything’s riding on you finishing that sound-and-light show on time. Four days plus five: that’s nine days.”

  “I’ve got no problem,” said DeMeo, all smiles and self-confidence: gofer and cable-puller extraordinaire.

  Those disquieting blue eyes now turned back to Lipper. “And you, Mr. Lipper?”

  “It’ll happen.”

  “Delighted to hear it. I trust you’ll keep me up-to-date with progress reports?”

  They nodded.

  Menzies glanced at his watch. “Nora, if you’ll excuse me, I have to catch a train. I’ll check in with you later.”

  Menzies and the curators were gone, leaving Lipper alone with DeMeo once again. He glanced at his watch. “We’d better get going, DeMeo, because I’d like to get to sleep tonight before four A.M. for a change.”

  “What about Darkmord?” DeMeo asked. “You promised to have the band of warriors ready for the attack by midnight.”

  Lipper groaned. Shit. They would just have to launch the attack on Castle Gloaming without him.

  17

  When Margo Green awoke, a bright afternoon sun was slanting in through the windows of the Feversham Clinic. Outside, puffy cumulus clouds drifted across a lazy blue sky. The distant call of waterbirds came from the direction of the Hudson River.

  She yawned, stretched, then sat up in bed. Glancing at the clock, she noticed it was quarter to four. The nurse should be in soon with her afternoon cup of peppermint tea.

  The hospital table beside her bed was crowded: back issues of Natural History, a Tolstoy novel, a portable music player, a laptop, and a copy of the New York Times. She reached for the newspaper, flipped through the C section. Maybe she could finish the crossword before Phyllis brought her tea.

  Now that her condition was no longer critical, recovery at the clinic had settled into a kind of routine. She found that she looked forward to the afternoon chats with Phyllis. She hardly had any visitors—no visitors at all, actually, save her mother and Captain Laura Hayward—and the thing she missed most, other than her career, was companionship.

  Picking up a pencil, she applied herself to the crossword. But it was one of those late-in-the-week puzzles, full of coy clues and obscure references, and mental exercise still tired her. After a few minutes, she put it aside. She found her thoughts straying back to Hayward’s recent visit and the unpleasant memories it had reawakened.

  It disturbed her that her memory of the attack remained shadowy. There were bits and pieces, disconnected, as if from a nightmare—but nothing coherent. She’d been inside the Sacred Images exhibition, checking the arrangement of some Native American masks. While there, she’d become aware of a presence: somebody else in the exhibition, lurking in the shadows. Following her. Stalking her. Cornering her. She dimly remembered making a stand, fighting with a box cutter. Had she wounded her pursuer? The actual attack itself was the most fragmentary: little more than a searing pain in her back. And that had been all—until she woke up in this room.

  She folded up the newspaper, put it back on the table. The most disturbing thing was that, even though she knew her attacker had spoken to her, she couldn’t remember anything he had said. His words were gone, fallen into the darkness. Curiously, she did remember, seared into her mind, the man’s strange eyes and his hideous, dry chuckle.

  She turned restlessly in her bed, wondering where Phyllis was, still thinking of Hayward’s visit. The captain had asked a lot of questions about Agent Pendergast and his brother, a man with the peculiar name of Diogenes. It all seemed strange: Margo hadn’t seen Pendergast in years, and she had never even known the FBI agent had a brother.

  Now at last the door to her room opened and Phyllis walked in. But she wasn’t carrying a tray of tea things, and her friendly face bore an official expression.

  “Margo, you have a visitor,” she said.

  Margo barely had time to react to this announcement before a familiar figure appeared in the doorway: the chairman of her department at the museum, Dr. Hugo Menzies. He was dressed as usual in rumpled elegance, his thick white hair combed back from his forehead, his lively blue eyes darting briefly around the room before settling on her.

  “Margo!” he cried, coming forward, patrician features breaking into a smile. “How wonderful to see you.”

  “Same here, Dr. Menzies,” she replied. Her surprise at having a visitor was quickly replaced by embarrassment: she wasn’t exactly dressed to receive her boss.

  But Menzies, as if sensing her discomfort, was quick to put her at ease. He thanked Phyllis, waited until the nurse had left the room, then took a seat beside the bed.

  “What a beautiful room!” he exclaimed. “And with an exquisite view of the Hudson River Valley. The quality of the light here is second only to Venice, I think; perhaps that’s why it has drawn so many painters.”

  “They’ve been very good to me here.”

  “As well they should. You know, my dear, I’ve been terribly worried about you. The entire Anthropology Department has. We can’t wait for your return.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Your location has been almost a state secret. Until yesterday, I never even knew this place existed. As it was, I had to charm my way past half the staff.” He smiled.

  Margo smiled back. If anyone could charm his way in, Menzies could. She’d been lucky to get him as her supervisor: many museum curators lorded it over their minions, behaving like conceited philosopher-kings. Menzies was the exception: affable, receptive to the ideas of others, supportive of his staff. It was true—she couldn’t wait to get out of here and back to work. Museology, the periodical she edited, was rudderless in her absence. If only she didn’t grow tired so easily . . .

  She realized her mind was drifting. She roused herself, glanced at Menzies. He was looking back at her, concern on his face.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m still a little out of it.”

  “Of course you are,” he said. “Perhaps that’s why this is still necessary?” And he nodded at the saline drip hanging beside the bed.

  “The doctor said that’s just a precautionary measure. I’m getting plenty of fluids now.”

  “Good, very good. The loss of blood must have been a severe shock. So much blood, Margo. There’s a reason they call it the living liquid, don’t you agree?”

  A strange current, almost like a physical shock, passed through Margo. The weakness, the feeling of torpor, receded. She suddenly felt wide awake. “What did you say?”

  “I said, have they given you any indication of when you can leave?”


  Margo relaxed. “The doctors are very pleased with my progress. Another two weeks or so.”

  “And then bed rest at home, I assume?”

  “Yes. Dr. Winokur—that’s my primary physician here—said I would need another month’s recuperation before returning to work.”

  “He would know best.”

  Menzies’s voice was low and soothing, and Margo felt torpidity returning. Almost without realizing it, she yawned.

  “Oh!” she said, embarrassed anew. “I’m sorry.”

  “Think nothing of it. I don’t want to overstay my welcome, I’ll leave shortly. Are you tired, Margo?”

  She smiled faintly. “A little bit.”

  “Sleeping all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I was worried you might have been having nightmares.” Menzies glanced over his shoulder, toward the open door and the corridor beyond.

  “No, not really.”

  “That’s my girl! What spunk!”

  There: that strange electric tingle again. Menzies’s voice had changed—something about it was both foreign and disquietingly familiar. “Dr. Menzies,” she began, sitting up once more.

  “Now, now, you just sit back and rest.” And with a gentle but firm pressure on her shoulder, he guided her back down onto the pillow. “I’m so glad to hear you’re sleeping well. Not everybody could put such a traumatic event behind them.”

  “It’s not exactly behind me,” she said. “I just don’t seem to remember what happened very well, that’s all.”

  Menzies laid a comforting hand on hers. “That’s just as well,” he said, slipping his other hand inside his jacket.

  Margo felt an inexplicable sense of alarm. She was tired—that’s all it was. Much as she liked Menzies, much as she appreciated this break in the monotony, she needed to rest.

  “After all, nobody would want such memories. The noises in the empty exhibition hall. Being followed. The invisible footfalls, the falling of boards. The sudden darkness.”

  Margo felt an unfocused panic well up within her. She stared at Menzies, unable to wrap her mind around what he was saying. The anthropologist kept on talking in his low, soothing voice.

  “Laughter in the blackness. And then, the plunge of the knife . . . No, Margo. Nobody would want those memories.”

  And then Menzies himself laughed. But it wasn’t his voice. No: it was another voice, another voice entirely: a hideous, dry chuckle.

  A sudden dreadful shock burned through the gathering lethargy. No. Oh, no. It couldn’t be . . .

  Menzies sat in the chair, looking at her intently, as if gauging the effect of his words.

  Then he winked.

  Margo tried to pull away, opened her mouth to scream. But even as she did so, the feeling of lassitude intensified, flooding her limbs, leaving her unable to speak or move. She had a desperate realization that the lethargy wasn’t normal, that something was happening to her . . .

  Menzies let his hand fall away from hers, and as he did so, she saw—with a thrill of horror—that his other hand had been concealed beneath. It held a tiny syringe, which was injecting a colorless liquid into the IV tube at her wrist. Even as she watched, he withdrew the syringe, palmed it, then replaced it in his suit jacket.

  “My dear Margo,” he said, sitting back, his voice so very different now. “Did you really think you’d seen the last of me?”

  Panic, and a desperate desire to survive, surged within her—yet she felt utterly powerless against the drug that was spreading through her veins, silencing her voice and paralyzing her limbs. Menzies swept to his feet, placed a finger against his lips, and whispered, “Time to sleep, Margo . . .”

  The hated darkness surged in, blotting out sight and thought. Panic, shock, and disbelief fell aside as the mere act of drawing breath became a struggle. As she lay paralyzed, Margo saw Menzies turn and hasten from the room, heard his faint yelling for a nurse. But then his voice, too, was subsumed into the hollow roar that filled her head, and darkness gathered in her eyes until the roar dwindled into blackness and eternal night, and she knew no more.

  18

  Four days after their meeting with Menzies, the sound-and-light show was finally installed and ready for debugging, and that night they were pulling the final cables, hooking everything up. Jay Lipper crouched by the dusty hole near the floor of the Hall of the Chariots, listening to various sounds emerging from the hole: grunts, heavy breathing, muttered curses. It was the third night in a row they’d worked on the install into the wee hours of the morning, and he was dog-tired. He couldn’t take much more of this. The exhibition had basically taken over his life. All his guildmates in Land of Darkmord had given up on him and continued with the online game. By now, they’d leveled up once, maybe twice, and he was hopelessly behind.

  “Got it?” came DeMeo’s muffled voice from the hole. Lipper looked down to see the end of a fiber-optic cable poking out of the blackness.

  Lipper seized the end. “Got it.”

  He pulled it through, then waited for DeMeo to come around from the other side. Soon DeMeo’s blocky figure, backlit and faint in the dim light of the tomb, came huffing down the passageway, cables coiled about his massive shoulders. Lipper handed him the cable end and DeMeo plugged it into the back of a PowerBook sitting on a nearby worktable. Later, when the artifacts were all in place, the laptop would be artfully hidden behind a gilded and painted chest. But for now, it was out in the open, where they could access it.

  DeMeo slapped the dust off his thighs with a grin, then held up his hand. “High five, bro. We did it.”

  Lipper ignored the hand, unable to disguise his irritation. He had had just about enough of DeMeo. The museum’s two electricians had insisted on going home at midnight, and as a result he’d found himself on his hands and knees, acting as DeMeo’s damn assistant.

  “We’ve got a long way to go,” he said in a sulky voice.

  DeMeo’s hand dropped. “Yeah, but at least, the cabling’s been pulled, the software’s loaded, and we’re on schedule. You can’t ask for better than that, right, Jayce?”

  Lipper reached over and turned on the computer, initiating the boot sequence. He hoped to hell the computer would see the network and the remote devices, but he knew it wouldn’t. It was never that easy—and besides, DeMeo was the one who set up the frigging network. Anything could happen.

  The computer finished booting and, with a sinking heart, Lipper began sending pings over the network, checking to see how many of the two dozen remote devices were missing and would require time-consuming troubleshooting to locate. He’d be lucky if the computer saw half of the peripherals on first boot-up: it was the nature of the business.

  But as he moused his way from one network address to another, a sense of disbelief stole over him. Everything seemed to be there.

  He ran over his checklist. It was impossible, but true: the entire network was there, visible and operational. All the remote devices, the sound-and-light apparatus, were responding and seemed to be perfectly synchronized. It was as if someone had already worked out the kinks.

  Lipper rechecked his list, but with the same result. Disbelief gave way to a kind of guarded jubilation: he could not recall a single job where such a complicated network was up and running on the first try. And it wasn’t just the network: the entire project had been like that, everything coming together like a charm. It had taken days of seemingly endless work, but in the real world it would have taken even longer. Probably a lot longer. He fetched a deep breath.

  “How’s it look?” DeMeo asked, crowding up behind him to peer at the small screen. Lipper could smell his oniony breath.

  “Looks good.” Lipper edged away.

  “Sweet!” DeMeo gave a whoop that echoed through the tomb, just about blowing out Lipper’s eardrum. “I am the man! I’m a freaking network monster!” He danced around the room, doing an ungainly buck-and-wing, pumping his fist into the air. Then he glanced over at Lipper. “Let’s do a test run.
”

  “I have a better idea. Why don’t you go out and get us a couple of pizzas?”

  DeMeo looked at him in surprise. “What—now? You don’t want to do an alpha?”

  Lipper certainly did want to do a test run. But not with DeMeo breathing down his neck, whooping in his ear, and acting like an ass. Lipper wanted to admire his handiwork quietly, in a focused way. He needed a break from DeMeo, and he needed one bad.

  “We’ll do a run after the pizzas. On me.”

  He watched as DeMeo considered this.

  “All right,” DeMeo said. “What do you want?”

  “The Neapolitan. With a large iced tea.”