The Eye of Ra

by Michael Asher

  ‘Nevertheless it’s there. You have to develop a way of gaining access. It would be recoverable under hypnosis.’

  ‘Am I supposed to believe all this?’

  ‘Look around you. Your civilisation came from the Nommos. Tribes such as the Dogon and a few others — descendants of the ancient Ra priesthood — managed to preserve bits of the tradition. You discovered the secret when you found the Siriun Stela, but your rational mind didn’t want to accept it. Part of you still doesn’t. That’s understandable. It’s disturbing to realise suddenly that the universe is not the predictable place you’d like to believe. It’s like becoming an adult again — except for a whole species, a whole system.’

  ‘What was the point of the “lesson”?’

  ‘The point is simple. Human beings are no longer alone in an empty universe. You belong to something much bigger than yourselves. You are on the brink of a vast transformation — the human race is about to grow up.’

  ‘Or destroy itself’

  ‘There is that possibility.’

  ‘How was Akhnaton overthrown?’

  ‘You know it already: humans did it with a little help from us. They created an organisation they called The Eye of Ra, which not only overthrew Akhnaton but dedicated itself to ensuring that nothing like him would ever threaten the earth again.’

  ‘Was it the Eye of Ra who killed Julian, Doc, Nikolai and the others?’

  She smiled inscrutably. ‘Unfortunately there’s no time for answers. Not if you wish to live. The ship has performed its task and it will cease to exist in ten minutes’ time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The ship was programmed to self-destruct as soon as the “lesson” was delivered to a competent member of your species. The lesson has been delivered. It will self-destruct in precisely ten minutes’ time. We programmed it to give just enough time for you to escape. I advise you to leave now.’ She touched a panel which slid back to reveal two five-litre demijohns of water, made out of a transparent ceramic material that looked neither like plastic nor glass, and a container of fruit. ‘Take these,’ she said, ‘our final gift.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘There’s only one other thing I have to tell you. Your mother, Maryam, was not lost in the ghibli, as you believe. She had the psi-gene too. We brought her here, but, like Wingate she wasn’t powerful enough to use the Recorder. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to make it back home either. I’m sorry. It was never our intention that she should come to harm. You’ll find her remains in the cave where you left your friend. Now you must go.’

  ‘Maryam’ disappeared abruptly, and almost at once I felt the ship tremble. A booming began almost like the boom of Raul’s drum, but deeper and even more threatening — a dreadful sawing drone like the bass note of a great organ pipe. I picked up the water and fruit and dashed for the lift. By the time I made it back to Akhna-ton’s chamber, the whole place was crumbling. A terrifying thunder filled the ship and as I ran, the walls began to split into shreds and collapse. I ran for the exit, scrambled up the stairs two at a time and staggered breathlessly into the desert. I picked myself up and began to run. I hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when the air was rocked by a violent explosion. That was the last thing I remember before I blacked out.

  PART III

  NEAR KOMOMBO, UPPER EGYPT

  1995

  47

  The man in the coffin was myself.

  Consciousness came in flashes, spurts of light alternated with long spans of darkness, and each time my eyes opened I seemed to be in a different place, but always in some kind of dark box, sometimes at the centre of a spaghetti of wires and junctions, of banks of screens and blipping instruments, of tubes feeding some substance into my veins and of conductors draining me. There were voices, soft, whispering, suggestive, voices, cajoling, threatening, probing into the very core of my psyche like needles. I heard myself blubbering like a lunatic, but had no idea what it was I was rambling about. Sometimes there were figures — once or twice a man with a beard, wiry hair like a brush, and gold half-moon spectacles, who seemed to be wearing the habit of a monk. Once, it seemed that I was in an arched and vaulted chapel, alive with flickering shapes, with a horde of hooded shadows hunched around me in semi-darkness — figures with yellow slits for eyes and orange gashes for mouths, whose voices sussurated subliminally.

  ‘You see he was an illuminatus. And you wanted to eliminate him.’

  ‘OK, you were right, Master. But did we get everything?’

  ‘As much as we’ll ever get. It’s all in his memory cells. We can’t access memory like a hard disk. It’s remarkable he could carry so much data.’

  ‘What happens to him now?’

  ‘That depends on how much he’s worked out. We can’t have him giving that message to the world — too dangerous for us. If he knows, we’ll have to get rid of him. Such a waste, though, after we waited so long to find one. Through him we could finally talk to them...No more disasters like Roswell.’

  ‘We can’t keep him like this for ever, and we can’t risk letting him go. Look what happened with Wingate. I say we get rid of him, Master.’

  ‘No. We’ve got to find out what he remembers before we do anything drastic. We might never get another one like him.’

  ‘What about her? Should we put her down?’

  ‘No. Not yet. There might be an interesting development with her.’

  ‘His eyelids are flickering. You don’t think he can hear us?’

  ‘No. Even if he could this would only be a dream.’

  ‘Hey, I think he’s coming round...’

  I opened my eyes wide to show them that I really was awake, but they were gone, and I was no longer in a chapel but a brightly lit hospital room. There was a gangly young police trooper in a black uniform and beret, with an AK-47 draped from his arm, standing by a glass-panelled door. The room was large and clean-scrubbed — phosphorescent walls, chrome, white enamel and padded plastic, a mad-scientist’s tangle of life-monitor screens, computer terminals, wires and tubes. One of the tubes was attached to my arm feeding my veins white fluid from a soft IV bottle suspended from a frame near by, and there were electrodes attached to my chest and head. There was a tubular-steel chair by the bed and a table bearing an anglepoise lamp, a tin ashtray brimfull of cigarette-butts and a pocket cassette-recorder. My gaze rested for a moment on the ashtray. It seemed the only anomaly in the state-of-the-art sterility of the place — a tiny oasis of atavism in a hi-tech desert. There was a smell of surgical spirit, disinfectant, and fibre from the wall-to-wall carpet, mostly dispelled by the cool breeze issuing almost silently from a grille high up the wall. On a bedside desk stood a plastic jug of water with a cover, a paper cup, and my John Lennon spectacles.

  I tried to shift my position and felt my body respond sluggishly, as if the synaptic messengers had grown fat and lazy. I was exhausted, I realised, completely drained, aching, as if I’d just run a marathon. My head felt swollen like a balloon and there was phlegm and grit in my throat. I coughed suddenly, and the policeman looked at me startled and disappeared hurriedly while I tried to pull myself up. ‘Elena!’ I cried, looking round desperately. But there was no one else in the room, only my vital statistics blipping on dark screens. Then I remembered — I’d left her out there in a cave, dying of thirst. Jesus Christ, I’d never gone back! I’d just left her there! My heart began to pound in my ears with the sound of a basket-ball being bounced on a sprung floor, and I tried to jerk myself out of the tight sheets, wrestling feebly until the IV needle slipped out of my arm and fluid spilled across the carpet. The blipping on the heart-monitor increased to a frantic level. Just then the swing door burst open and a strapping nurse in a polyester uniform came bustling in with the trooper. Her kindly, well-fed peasant face carried an aura of almost palpable competence. As she bent over me I smelt soap and surgical spirit. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she said, tut-tutting. ‘Why couldn’t you leave him alone?’ I realised suddenly that
she was addressing the policeman.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ the guard protested.

  The nurse ignored him, ‘You need plenty of rest,’ she said, tucking me in maternally, and hooking the needle back in my arm. I didn’t try to fight her; my tussle with the sheets had shown me it was a waste of time. She smiled at me. ‘You almost died, you know,’ she said, ‘you and your friend.’

  ‘Don’t talk to the prisoner,’ a voice rapped from behind, and I looked up to see a torpedo-shaped man blocking the light in the doorway. The nurse stared back at him, peasant’s solid chin jutting, like a lioness protecting her cub. ‘He’s a patient, not a prisoner,’ she said tersely. ‘This might be a police facility, Captain, but there are rules. And one of them is no smoking.’

  The figure advanced and stubbed out the cigarette emphatically in the tin ashtray.

  ‘May I have my glasses?’ I asked the nurse. My voice sounded hoarse and limp — a voice from far away. She smiled again and put them on for me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. The world snapped into tight focus. The figure resolved into Hammoudi, wearing his close-fitting suit, white shirt and tie, his great bulb of a forehead wrinkled with lines of brooding, and his sand-bagged eyes burning with silent menace.

  ‘Stand outside,’ he told the trooper.

  ‘Now only five minutes, Captain,’ the nurse said, wagging a plump finger. ‘Don’t overtax him. He’s still very weak.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Hammoudi said, half smiling. As soon as she was gone he swore obscenely after her and lit a fresh Cleopatra furtively, like a disobedient boy. The smoke made me cough.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘Omar James Ross, back in the land of the living.’

  ‘I shot you,’ I panted.

  Hammoudi guffawed. ‘Actually you did,’ he said, ‘zapped me right in the belly-button. Nine milly wasn’t it — punch like a steam-hammer!’

  ‘You should be dead.’

  ‘Probably would be if it weren’t for my trusty body armour. I was wearing the full steel-plate rig — weighs a ton but saves you from the knacker. Your bullet knocked me down but I got up pretty sharpish. I could have zapped you off your camel any time.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you?’

  He ignored the question.

  ‘Someone tipped you off,’ I said. ‘Who? Not any of the Hawazim.’

  ‘You love asking questions, don’t you, Ross?’

  ‘Where is she?’ I said.

  ‘There you go again.’

  ‘Where’s Elena?’

  ‘Safe.’

  You and your friend almost died. Almost. Safe. I closed my eyes. Was it the truth? I prayed it was.

  ‘If you’ve harmed one...’

  ‘You are not in a position to make threats, Ross. You’re lucky to be alive. You and the girl were spotted by a police helicopter five days ago wandering in the dunes near the Libyan border. When the crew picked you up you were delirious, and suffering from extreme thirst. They had medical gear and put you on the IV straight away, but it was touch and go. Another couple of hours in the khala and you’d both have croaked. We saved your lives.’

  ‘Why can’t I see her?’ I said.

  ‘Because I say so. You’re in a special government facility, and you do what I tell you, OK. You want to play mister tough-guy, you’ll never see her again. You keep your nose clean, toe the line, and you might just get to meet. Are you with me?’

  ‘You should have shot me.’

  ‘Plenty of time for that. There’s the little matter of Sergeant Mustafa to account for, as well as the other corporal and two troopers at Kwayt, not to mention the attempted murder of your favourite police captain.’

  ‘I haven’t killed anyone.’

  ‘Maybe not, but your dirty Hawazim have, and you’re collectively guilty.’

  ‘What about an innocent baker’s boy? What about David Barrington, a mixed-up kid who had nothing to do with it? And a harmless old share-cropper? Who’s going to account for them?’

  ‘We can trade atrocities all day, Ross, it won’t change anything.’ He jabbed the cigarette out and sat down, shifting the tubular chair closer to the bed. For a moment I had a close glimpse of his face — a tired face, unhappy, worn out.

  ‘I’ve been sitting here most of the time since you came in,’ he said. ‘By God, you’ve been spouting some gobbledygook — drumsand, dunes, Jinns, Guardians, Akhnaton, aliens, the Lost Oasis of Zerzura. I got most of it on tape. Maybe you’d like to hear it some time?’

  How much had I let slip, I wondered? Had I revealed where the Hawazim were hiding?

  ‘Where did you think you were going?’

  ‘To Zerzura,’ I said.

  Hammoudi smirked, but he didn’t seem surprised. ‘That old chestnut!’ he said. ‘There’s no such place as Zerzura, Ross. It’s just a Bedouin fantasy. Palm-trees and cool water in the midst of desolation. It’s just a dream.’

  ‘No it’s not. I found it.’

  ‘Yeah, and did you find a pool of water and date-palms with delicious fruit?’

  ‘It was all there.’

  ‘And the treasure?’

  ‘Zerzura was Akhnaton’s tomb. I found him and Nefertiti and a hoard of treasure — stuff that makes Tut’s tomb look like a one-room stall in Khan al-Khalili.’

  Hammoudi clearly wasn’t impressed. He watched me sardonically while he lit another cigarette. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘then where is it?’

  ‘It was destroyed.’

  ‘Just like that, eh? Puff! God, what a shame! And you could have become a famous man, too. All gone up in a cloud of smoke just as you happen to find it!’

  I coughed. It must sound ludicrous, I realised. ‘It was there,’ I said, ‘I saw it and felt it. I ate the fruit — I even took some fruit and water away with me.’

  Hammoudi was shaking his head in silent wonder. ‘Listen, Ross. You’re in serious trouble. You’re going to be asked a lot of questions over the next few days by guys who make me look like Santa Claus. I advise you not to go on with this crazy story, or they’ll slam you up in a nuthouse and throw away the key. You ever been in one of those places, Ross?’

  ‘So you’re concerned for my future all of a sudden? If I’m certified insane I can’t be held guilty for anything, is that it, and you’ve got to have your pound of flesh?’

  ‘Ross, what were you really doing out there?’

  ‘I’ve told you what I was doing.’

  ‘You haven’t told me the whole story.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the whole story. I found the Lost Oasis of Zerzura, which also happened to be Akhnaton’s tomb — the last great mystery of Egyptology. Only it was destroyed.’

  ‘What about the rest of the insurgents? Where’d you dump them?’

  ‘They’re not insurgents, only tribesmen who’ve been persecuted by the government for centuries simply because they want to be free.’

  ‘They’re dangerous rebels who’ve killed government officers. Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. If you’re going to interrogate me, I have a right to be charged, and to consular representation.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, I’m not running a fucking kindergarten.’

  ‘So what’re you going to do? Fry me like Mustafa was going to fry Elena? I don’t think so. You could have shot me and you didn’t. I think it’s in your interest — or somebody’s interest — to keep me alive.’

  ‘There’s alive and alive, Ross. This is your last chance — what did you find out there?’

  ‘I told you. I found Zerzura.’

  Hammoudi shook his head again and sighed. ‘While you were under you kept repeating — “It’s remarkable what thirst will do” — kept saying it over and over. You’re not the first person I’ve met who’s come back from the edge of death by thirst. Five years ago a police convoy was crossing the desert from Siwa to Cairo and one of the trucks got separated and lost in the Qattara Depression. There were twenty trained men aboard. It was sum-mer. Took
the rescue-team three days to find the truck, and half of the men had already croaked. Four or five had tabbed off to look for water and fried to death on the way. The five or six survivors were barely conscious, but when they came round they all told fantastic tales. One had seen a whole army with chariots and soldiers in armour rising out of the desert. Another had found a fabulous city with running water and orchards and beautiful houris — cried like a baby when he woke up because he wanted to go back there. That’s why your story doesn’t surprise me. It’s par for the course. I can see you believe it, Ross, I just know it isn’t true.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because the Anasis girl told me everything.’

  I tried to sit up, but the sheets trapped me like a strait-jacket. ‘She’s here?’

  ‘I didn’t say she was here. I said she was safe, and I’ve talked to her. She told me the whole story. Camel going into quicksand, water running out — you slaughtering a camel to survive. But there was no Zerzura, Ross, no Akhnaton’s tomb. Anasis swore to me that you never left her side for a moment.’

  ‘But the cave. I left her in a cave — a huge cave near Zerzura.’

  ‘When the chopper crew spotted you, you were dragging her across the dunes. No sign of a cave.’

  I blinked and tried to concentrate. This was another lost episode of my life. I remembered the explosion and after that my mind was a complete blank. Then I thought of something.

  ‘The fruit,’ I said, ‘and the water I got from Zerzura — in ceramic demijohns. That’s what must have saved us. We must have had it with us when we were picked up.’

  ‘You had nothing on you but your vicious little Hawazim stinger, which is now in a safe place. No water, no sign of fruit, not even a pip. It was a delusion. While I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to come round I’ve taken the trouble to read a dozen reports collected from Bedouin who claim to have found Zerzura — funny thing is that almost every one of them mentions bringing away with them water and delicious fruit which had vanished by the time they got home.’