The Ghost Reapers

by Jackie Ferris

  “According to the Egyptians, Atun was responsible for the universe. He was a bubble of air in Nun, a vast sea of primordial water. Basically, Atun is an active Nun, although Nun’s inertia remains. Diversity sprang from a single source. Out of nothing came something.”

  “That is deep,” Jazz exclaimed.

  “Too deep.” Cara stifled another yawn.

  “Atun’s first act of creation was to split it into two; his son, Shu, a dry and empty space in the water, was the principle of life. His daughter, Tefnut, was the principle of order. This void within the water meant there was a bottom beneath it, which we know as earth, and they called Ged.

  The top above the void, which we call sky, they called Nut. It happened simultaneously in a single act of creation.

  Cara stood up. “Ged, Shu; we need another bottle. Don’t you dare say another word until I get back.”

  Hassid waited until they had refilled their glasses before speaking. “The level of abstract thought to concoct this story requires a sophisticated intellectual thought process not normally apparent in a newly emerging culture. How did they get to that point?” He looked up.

  “I assume you will tell us, darling.”

  “The idea that nothing comes out of nothing is complex.”

  “In my world of math, 0 plus 0 equals 0. Zero is the only thing that comes out of nothing.”

  “That may no longer be true: dark matter is invisible, yet it exists.” He threw his wife a challenging look. “You are a mathematician, Cara, you should know better than most that absolute zero is proving a challenging concept. It may not exist in anything but the abstract.”

  “What has this got to do with Jazz’s father?” Cara stifled another yawn.

  “He was right; we don’t really know what happened in the past.”

  “You mean he used conspiracy theories to cover up his own failings.”

  “We have very little knowledge of Egypt prior to 3,100 BC.”

  “Probably because Egyptian civilisation started then. Besides, Marcos was interested in Nefertiti, not the origins of Egypt.” Cara sounded bored.

  “The Palermo Stone pre-dates the Egyptian dynasties by thousands of years. There are other Egyptian versions of the creation story that claim that life emerged from an infinite lifeless sea.”

  “Sounds a bit like dark energy?” Jazz asked, licking her lips.

  “The belief in something powerful in darkness is ancient, yet it is less than twenty years since we became aware of the existence of dark matter and dark energy, thanks to the Hubble Telescope.”

  Cara waved her hand. “A silly creation story does not mean they knew about dark matter. Aren’t you guilty of making your hypothesis fit your theory?”

  “They could not mention it by name, because they had no idea what it meant. The lifeless sea, the idea of nothing coming out of nothing creating something, alludes to it.”

  “It could allude to anything,” Cara snapped back.

  “Star men? Is that how you think these people developed their beliefs?” Jazz spluttered.

  “It’s possible.”

  “Come on, Hass, you can’t be serious? They would throw you out of the Antiquities if your superiors knew about this.”

  “Precisely why I’ve not mentioned it. Your mathematical brain wants evidence for everything,” he added.

  Jazz coughed. “Mine needs air; why don’t we take a walk in the garden? You can’t do that in Newcastle in March.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Outside, the jasmine-scented air rushed to meet them. Above them, a carpet of silvery stars rippled through the sky. Jazz looked up. “It’s easier to believe in star-men here.”

  “Ancient African tribesmen believed visitors came from the sky. Some believed in a divine world which existed before the Flood, where these celestial beings lived.”

  “Noah and his ark?”

  “Not quite, Cara; there was a change in the earth’s climate around twelve thousand years ago. It heated up and then cooled the earth, probably because the planet shifted slightly on its axis after a supernova hit the earth or it could simply have been a shift in its axial tilt which happens around every forty-one thousand years. The resulting climatic changes produced a surge of water; Lake Victoria flooded into the Nile. The Ancients believed in a superhuman race before the Flood. The Babylonians spoke of a fish people called Annedoti, which means “repulsive”. The Philistines, living in what is now Israel, called fish-like people ‘Dagon’. We should not underestimate their detailed and compelling descriptions of what seems to have been extra-terrestrial visitors.”

  “Like what?” Unlike Cara, Jazz found Hassid’s ideas increasingly seductive.

  “According to the Dogon tribe, a being called Nommo arrived in a star ship thousands of years ago.”

  “Nommo, are you sure you don’t mean Nemo? Wasn’t he a famous fish with yellow stripes? We saw the movie a few years ago.” Cara stifled another yawn.

  “Very funny, darling.” Hass’s smile was strained. “Tribal tradition claims that his spaceship sank so deep into the ground that it penetrated the water table creating a lake. As the Dogon people gathered by the water, an amphibian-like creature emerged from the lake’s silky depths. They called it Nommo.”

  Cara rolled her eyes.

  “The Dogon people worshipped Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Look, you can see it over there.” He pointed to the left of the fattening moon. “They believed it had two companion stars, the Digitaria star and the female star Sorghum. According to the Dogon, the orbit takes fifty years.

  “The first photograph of Digitaria was taken in 1970, although its existence was suspected more than a hundred years earlier, in 1844.”

  “The Dogons knew about it thousands of years before that?” Jazz was buzzing.

  He pulled a face. “It’s debatable. French anthropologists wanted to combat the Victorian view that African tribes’ people were stupid. Anthropologists spent a substantial amount of time with them; they could have told them about Sirius.”

  Jazz moaned. Her disappointment prompted him to continue.

  “It does not explain the third star, which was unknown when the French spent time with them. A few years ago gravitational studies revealed the probability of another red dwarf orbiting Sirius. They named it Sirius C. The research may come to nothing, but it is gaining credence in the astronomical world.

  “If there are three stars, it makes the Dogon theory a lot more interesting. Their knowledge had to come from somewhere other than the anthropologists.”

  “It could have been introduced by an alien culture.” Jazz’s enthusiasm had returned.

  “If Sirius is a three-star system, it becomes a compelling argument.”

  “It could also be a lucky guess; random probability is a mathematical theorem.” Cara threw him a quizzical look. “Do you really think these fish-like aliens came from Sirius?”

  He shrugged, “Probably not, and they may not even have been fish-like; the people who witnessed it would have described the visitation in human terms.”

  “Then Dad could be right? History as we know it is a big cover-up?” Jazz was excited.

  He shook his head. “Not a cover-up; as time passed, people tried to make sense of what they could not understand. They made up what was beyond their comprehension.

  “Twenty-five thousand years ago, we were a primitive race. Five thousand years ago there was a massive spurt in our intelligence. Around 3,111 BC, the first Egyptian king came to power; a few centuries later, they were building pyramids whose construction is still difficult to explain today.

  “Science indicates that such a dramatic change in behaviour could only occur through the introduction of something else.”

  “Are you really suggesting this was an alien intervention?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “It is surprising what historians choose to accept and what they reject, Cara. The Palermo Stone lists rulers who predate Menes, supposedly the first king of Egyp
t, yet it is ignored. It is possible that a superior race inhabited the earth ten thousand or more years ago. The Ethiopians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, etc., refer to it in their stories. We need to re-examine the evidence. I would have thought you would have approved of that, Cara-even Plato talks about the Atlanteans?” He snapped back at her.

  “Don’t get me wrong, darling, I do.”

  Jazz shifted on her feet, finding their interchange uncomfortable. “My father believed that the Ghost Stealers were responsible for keeping that information suppressed. If he was right, the cover-up goes well beyond Nefertiti, to when the aliens landed.”

  Hassid waved his hand. “Slow down, Jazz, your father believed the Ghost Stealers only existed after Nefertiti. He also did not believe in an alien landing. By the time Nefertiti came to power, the idea of gods was firmly rooted in the human psyche. Nefertiti threatened the status quo. Your father believed that the Ghost Stealers were created then.

  “Our key to what really happened in prehistory lies in circumstantial evidence, and perhaps in science. Astrophysicists believe that, mathematically at least, there is a high probability that numerous life-forms exist in other universes. The existence of aliens is a matter of mathematical probability, if not fact.

  I’m right, aren’t I, Cara?” His look dared her to disagree.

  She nodded. “The probability of alien life forces is far greater than not. The important questions are: can these alien life forms be intelligent? If they are, how probable is it that they visited planet earth? There are numerous different universes out there. Why come here?”

  As they returned to the house, Hassid’s theories buzzed in Jazz’s head.

  What neither Hassid nor Cara had brought up was that the company Francisco worked for was called Nommo. It was an obvious link, so why had neither of them mentioned it?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Later that night the moonlight drifted through the window, spearing shards of silvery light around the bedroom. Jazz had left the curtains open; moonlit nights were a rarity in Newcastle but that was not the reason she could not sleep. Her head was erupting with information. Hassid had raised so many issues. It was starting to look as if the Ancient Egyptians had been involved in a big cover-up.

  She got up and opened her laptop, and typed in Palermo Stone. The black basalt rock, dating back to around 2,500 BC., listed Egyptian kings going back thousands of years earlier to the god Horus, the falcon-headed god known as “lord of the sky”.

  Jazz tried to collate the new information with what she had learned. Current thinking listed Menes as the first Pharaoh of Egypt. His reign was in around 3,100 BC, yet the Palermo Stone claimed that other kings predated him by millennia. It also suggested the kingdom might have been united long before Menes had amalgamated it again.

  She scanned the internet, searching for clues. Most Egyptologists took the list of kings from the History of Egypt. The tome was compiled by Manetho, a Graeco-Egyptian priest writing in 300 BC - almost three thousand years later. His source material, now destroyed, was written in Greek. Current knowledge of its contents came from Josephus, a first century Roman-Jewish scholar writing three hundred years later, who probably didn’t have access to the original text. Other reliable Egyptian sources included Herodotus, a Greek who visited the pyramids in Egypt but failed to mention the Sphinx. There were no eye-witness accounts of any of the events they claimed to record. It was easy to see how a cover-up might have happened.

  She studied the photograph of the Palmero Stone, with its studiously carved hieroglyphics. The fragment found was believed to be part of a much bigger rock, over two metres long. Once, it had meant a lot to a nation of people. The original completed version could hold more information about an earlier period.

  Unanswered questions buzzed in her head. Why had historians ignored this information? Why did they accept that the birth of Ancient Egypt had taken place in 3,100 BC? Did acceptance make it true? Was it possible that the Egyptian kingdom had been united much earlier, as recorded by the Palermo stone? If it had, why were they covering it up? Jazz stared at the moon, hoping for answers. Just like Pinocchio’s nose, it seemed to grow bigger with each new lie that passed for an explanation.

  Chapter Twenty

  Thursday, late morning, 28th March, New York

  New York’s cold spell was intensifying. The weather forecasters were predicting an outside possibility of snow. Alistair did not care about the cold; he would shortly be sweltering in the Cairo humidity, until then he had to concentrate on the task in hand.

  He glanced around the room. A rather good copy of the Mona Lisa smiled back at him from the wall opposite. It was an iconic reminder that Leonardo, like Michelangelo, was blessed with a sense of irony. Both great Masters knew that math held the key to everything. Leonardo had understood the golden ratio, and had written about its presence in nature.

  Larry’s polite cough switched his attention to the two women and four men staring expectantly at him. Their fine business suits, along with discreet platinum and titanium jewellery accessories, were a prerequisite.

  Alistair smiled at their unlined faces, touched by the surgeon’s knife, not age. Their membership of the Reformers had gifted them wealth, not brains. “Excuse me for a moment; there is something I must check on before we begin.” He savoured the idea of keeping them waiting.

  Raising his monocle to his eye, he flicked the screen on his iPad. He pressed the name Santos.

  “Alistair, I assume we are not here to admire the view?” Jody Kale stretched her long neck. The extra centimetre allowed her to stare into the abyss of Fourth Avenue. Her eldest daughter was getting married in a few weeks. She had scheduled a meeting with her wedding planner after this meeting. Their salad lunch at Tiffany’s with a spritzer white wine was looking less likely as Alistair looked up from the screen and then studiously returned his monocle to his waistcoat pocket. His suit was a new one, just delivered from Savile Row in London. The herringbone tweed was a perfect copy of the one his father had worn.

  He turned the screen off, then shuffled the papers in front of him.

  Josh tried to catch his yellow-flecked eyes unsuccessfully. Alistair was playing his usual chess games, staring beyond them at the tinted glass window.

  “A situation requires your attention.”

  “Presumably that’s why we’re here,” Josh snapped back. “I must be in the Caribbean tomorrow morning. It’s my daughter’s birthday.”

  Alistair tapped his hands on the table. “The situation concerns Francisco Santos.”

  “Marcos’s son - doesn’t he work for us?” Annabel brushed her dyed blonde hair away from her forehead. She could feel the lines. Her last Botox treatment was a couple of weeks old. Soon she would need to go under the knife.

  “Until recently, he was a commendable employee. His father died nine days ago.”

  “Surely his death is a relief to everyone, even if no one was seriously concerned by the demented idiot.” Josh checked his watch.

  “Concerned, no, cautious, yes; he came very close to unveiling us.”

  “His jail sentence prevented anyone from taking him seriously.”

  “True, but contracting dementia in jail was…” Alistair paused before adding, “Just a little convenient.”

  “He caused some unpleasant moments which were dealt with years ago. My father arranged the fake papers to ensure his imprisonment. Hawwa were incapable, even though they tried to claim the credit for it.”

  “Your father was most helpful, Larry. Unfortunately, we live in an age of information access.” Alistair stared at the bust of Napoleon, who had gone in search of the then lost city of Atlantis: El Amarna, the city where Nefertiti had once lived. He imagined Napoleon’s disappointment when he had discovered that it was a waste land with neither riches nor ruins.”

  “That’s precisely why we need field operatives to control events. We can’t do it ourselves; besides, our families are too high-profile. We can’t afford to
get our hands dirty.” Josh ran his fingers through his sun-streaked hair.

  “Spoken like a true Reformer, Josh.” Alistair raised his eyebrows, hoping that no one had missed the irony of his statement.

  Annabel wondered if she should book an appointment with her surgeon as Alistair raised his hands.

  “Thankfully, the internet has also helped to side-line religion; none-the- less, it remains the fabric which knits our past together.”

  Jody pressed her manicured hand into the blonde ash conference table as Alistair sat back in his chair.

  “I called you here today because Francisco has contacted his step-sister, Jazz. I forwarded some of her tweets regarding the Turin Shroud - purely for their amusement value of course.”

  Gordon yawned. “His father recently passed on. Isn’t it natural he would inform her?”

  “I am not sure it is.” Alistair pursed his thin red lips. “Jazz’s mother disowned Marcos a long time ago. Jazz made no attempt to contact her father; equally, Francisco made no effort to contact her when his father was alive. Why do it now?”

  “It may come as a surprise, Alistair, but families do contact each other when someone dies. Francisco could be fulfilling his father’s dying wish.” Josh looked pointedly at his watch as he tapped its face.

  “Marcos supposedly had Alzheimer’s. If he wanted his son to contact Jazz he would have done so years ago.”

  Larry nodded, suddenly more interested. “I get it; if it was his dying wish, he could not have had Alzheimer’s.”

  Alistair smiled. “Francisco told Dale, our field representative, that he had contacted Jazz because he felt his father would want it.”

  “Is Francisco normally in the habit of confiding in Dale?” Larry gave up on the golf he had planned for today.

  “He mentions girlfriends, but only in a casual way.”

  “Breaking a pattern.” Abe drummed his fingers on the table. “When they are broken there is a problem, a software glitch or something worse.”