The Third Gate jl-1

by Lincoln Child

  He slipped the housing back over the equipment, then turned away, glancing once again over the landscape as he waited for the gun to cool down. The airboat had vanished, and the Sudd spread away in all directions, black and endless. It looked as if yet another rain shower was going to start any minute. The lights of the Station, scattered below him across the six separate wings, twinkled brightly. From his vantage point, he could see the long strands of light marking the marina curtain; the faint glow from the windows of Oasis; the endless little rows of dancing white that marked the exterior catwalks and the pontoon walkways that joined the wings to each other. It was a cheerful sight-and yet Perlmutter did not feel cheered. The little city of lights merely punctuated the countless miles of dark wilderness that surrounded them, merely helped underscore the fact that they were hundreds of near-impassable miles from help or even a trace of civilization. On the inside-in the dormitory housing, at work in the communications room, or relaxing in the library or lounge-it was almost possible to forget just how alone they were. But up here…

  Despite the warmth of the night, Perlmutter shivered. If the dig succeeded… Talk of the curse of Narmer had been growing in recent days. At first-as the project got under way, and word of what they were after slowly filtered out among the crew-the curse had been a joke, something brought up over beers to get a laugh. But as time went on, the talk had grown more serious. Even Perlmutter, who was the most committed atheist you’d ever want to see, had started to get the heebie-jeebies-especially after what had happened to Rogers.

  He looked around again. The blackness seemed to be pressing in on him from all sides, squeezing him almost, pushing against his chest, making it hard to breathe…

  That did it. He grabbed the still-warm soldering gun and other materials, threw them into his satchel, and closed it up. Kneeling in the Crow’s Nest, he unzipped a half circle of the protective tarp, exposing an opening to the inside of Red. Below was a vertical tube, lit infrequently by LEDs, into which the housing of the mast descended, like a pipe cleaner into a pipe. Slipping the satchel over one shoulder, he grabbed the rungs, descended past the tarp, paused to zip it closed again, then continued down. He climbed carefully-it was thirty feet to the bottom, and he sure as hell didn’t want to fall.

  Reaching the base of the mast, he fetched a deep breath, wiped his sweaty hands on his shirt. He’d go check out the low-frequency radio, make sure its gremlins had been exorcised. Then he’d look for Fontaine, no doubt grabbing himself an early dinner.

  But as he prepared to leave the mast enclosure, Perlmutter paused. There were two hatches leading out of the enclosure. One led to the hallway containing the science labs and the communications room. The other led to Red’s power substation. Fifteen minutes earlier, when he’d stepped into the mast enclosure, the substation hatch had been closed.

  Now it was open.

  He took a step forward, frowning. Normally the substation was a lights-out facility, operating without need of human intervention. The only time anybody would have to go in would be to make repairs. But if there was something wrong with the electrical system, he’d have been the first to know. He took another step forward.

  “Hello?” he said into the darkness. “Anybody in there?”

  Was he going crazy, or had he just seen a dim light deep within the substation extinguish itself?

  He licked his lips, stepped through the hatch into the substation. What the hell-there was a puddle of water here. What was going on? Had some kind of a leak to the outside formed?

  He took another step forward, simultaneously fumbling for the light switch. “Hello? Hell-”

  And then his world exploded in a concussion of pain and furious, inviolable white.

  25

  At nine thirty the following morning, the internal phone in Logan’s office rang.

  He picked it up on the third ring. “Jeremy Logan here.”

  “Jeremy? It’s Porter Stone. Am I interrupting anything?”

  Logan sat up. “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  “Then come to the Operations Center, if you would. There’s something here I think you ought to see.”

  Logan saved the file he’d been working on-a write-up of his conversation with Hirshveldt the evening before-then stood up and stepped out of his office.

  He had to stop and ask directions twice before he found his way. The people on the Station seemed jumpy this morning-and it was hardly surprising. The previous evening, a communications worker named Perlmutter had been badly, almost fatally, electrocuted. Logan had pieced together the story from various mutterings he’d overheard during breakfast: how the worker had stepped into a puddle of water in which a live electrical wire had been lying. “It was Fontaine, his boss, who found him,” Logan had heard someone say. “Horrible. Like he was covered in soot, almost, blackened from the electrical burns.”

  Logan had been irresistibly reminded of the curse of Narmer. His limbs will turn to ash. Rather than mentioning this to anyone, he mentally shelved it for later consideration.

  Unlike the previous tragedy at the generator, there had been no follow-up meeting to analyze this accident, to try to determine cause. Logan assumed that one had not yet been scheduled-or, perhaps, it had been confined to the very highest levels of management. He did know that Perlmutter was in serious condition and was being closely monitored by Ethan Rush.

  The Operations Center, located deep within White, turned out to be the large, monitor-stuffed space he’d visited before. Once again, Cory Landau-the cherub with the Zapata mustache-was manning the futuristic central cockpit. On a nearby screen, Logan noticed the wireframe CAD image representing the extent of the dig mapping. Its extent had advanced dramatically since the first time he’d seen it.

  Ranged around Landau were Porter Stone, Tina Romero, and Dr. March, all of whom were staring at one of the larger monitors that displayed what looked to Logan like a kind of greenish soup, punctuated by lines of static.

  As he entered, Stone looked over. “Ah, Jeremy. Come take a look at this.”

  Logan joined them at the central cockpit. “What is it?”

  “Skeletons,” said Stone. He said the word with almost hushed reverence.

  Logan peered at the screen with increased interest. “Where is this, exactly?”

  “Grid square H five,” murmured Stone. “Forty-five feet below the surface.”

  Logan glanced at Tina Romero, who was staring at the screen and playing idly with her yellow fountain pen. “And how far is this from the first skeleton?”

  “Approximately sixty feet. In exactly the direction I suggested the divers concentrate on.” She glanced over at March with a smug I told you so smile.

  “Here’s another,” came a squawky voice over a microphone. Logan realized it was one of the divers, speaking from the muddy depths of the Sudd. On the monitor, the figure of a diver in a black wet suit suddenly emerged out of the green soup. He was holding a bone in one hand.

  Stone leaned toward a microphone. “How many is that so far?”

  “Nine,” the distant voice replied.

  Now Stone turned toward Romero. “Ethan told me what you said during his examination of the initial skeleton. That you knew the death was a suicide and that you knew where the next cache of bones would be found. Care to enlighten us?”

  If Romero had felt like remaining coy, this request from the boss dispelled it. “Sure,” she said, pushing back a stray hair from her forehead with a finger. “First, we found one body. Now we’ve found several-I’d guess twelve in all. Next, we will find a huge cache of bones. It’s because of the way Narmer would have been buried and the way his tomb was concealed. Recall this was before the days of pyramids-the earliest pharaohs were buried in shaft tombs and mastabas. We have to assume that Narmer’s tomb, whatever it looks like, is unique in prefiguring later tombs to come. But unlike many kings who followed him, Narmer didn’t want even the location of his tomb to be remembered. At the site of its construction, there would
have been hundreds of workers doing the building, as well as members of Narmer’s bodyguard. Once the work was done, all those workers-every last one-would have been killed. Their bodies would be left at the periphery of the tomb. Later, when Narmer himself was placed in the tomb, the priests and lesser guards who attended the ceremony would have been killed at a ritual distance from the tomb by Narmer’s personal bodyguard. The bodyguard himself would then have moved out another respectful distance-and killed himself. All this to maintain the sanctity of Narmer’s earthly remains. An army of the dead was to stand guard around the tomb for all eternity. Only one person, the god-king’s personal scribe, walked out of the desert with these secrets in his hand. And once he had committed them to the ostracon, he would have instructed his personal guards to kill him, as well.”

  Stone nodded. “Hence the decreasing number of bodies found moving outward from the site of the tomb.” He looked from Romero to the screen. “And the direction you instructed our divers to look-was it due north?”

  “It was.”

  “And that’s because the entrances to the king’s chambers in the pyramids and other burial sites historically faced north?” Logan interjected.

  Stone smiled. “Very good, Jeremy. My deduction as well.” He glanced back at Romero. “And the large cache of skeletons, the builders-it will be due north of this point, as well?”

  “I believe so,” she replied. “Approximately sixty feet.”

  “And the tomb entrance… another sixty feet north of that?”

  Romero did not answer. She did not need to. Stone turned toward the door. “I’ve got to see Valentino. We need to put triple dive crews on this right away.”

  The radio crackled. “And here’s another skeleton. Completely buried in mud. Sir, what are we to do with them?”

  March spoke up for the first time. “You know what to do. Get the evidence lockers and bring them back to the Station.”

  The smile quickly left Romero’s face, replaced with a frown. “Wait a minute. We needed to bring up that first skeleton so we could analyze it, be sure of our direction. But these priests and retainers-we should leave them in peace.”

  Logan looked at her, noting the sudden urgency in her voice. He remembered what he’d heard about her ambivalence regarding grave goods.

  “That’s rubbish,” March retorted. “If these really are the priests of the first Egyptian pharaoh, their remains are historically invaluable.”

  “We’re here to learn the tomb’s secrets,” Romero snapped, “not to plunder the-”

  “One moment,” Stone interrupted. He was clearly eager to give new orders to Valentino and had no patience for an ideological argument. “We shall bring up six skeletons. One will go to Ethan Rush for his examination-although at the moment he is rather busy with another matter. Fenwick, you may analyze the other five. The surrounding matrix should be gridded and sieved for jewelry or the remains of clothing-although I doubt you’ll find much. Once you have completed your examination, five of the six must be returned. We shall retain only one skeleton. Acceptable?”

  After a moment, Romero nodded. March grudgingly followed suit.

  “Very good. Landau, you’ll convey the instructions?”

  “Yes, Dr. Stone,” Landau said.

  “Thank you.” And-after a glance at each of them in turn-Stone ducked out of the Operations Center.

  F our hours later, when Logan peered in, the archaeology labs in Red were a scene of controlled chaos. A half-dozen gowned figures were standing over sinks and metal examination tables, gingerly probing and examining delicate brown bones with latex-gloved hands. A half-dozen others were tapping at keyboards, tagging artifacts with plastic labels, and taking evidence bins down from shelves and putting others back up in their place. Voices spoke over one another, competing with the sound of running water and the whine of microsaws. Fenwick March walked among them, the lord of the manor, now pausing to pluck an artifact from the hands of a worker, now peering into a microscope or speaking into the digital recorder he carried in one hand. The room smelled powerfully of the rotting vegetal muck of the Sudd-and something else even less pleasant.

  “Don’t wash it!” March barked at one of the gowned figures, who jumped at the sound. “You rinse it, rinse it, dribble by dribble!” He turned to another. “Dry that section, quickly, we have to stabilize it before there’s any more flaking. Hurry, man, hurry!”

  Another worker looked up from a scattered pile of hips and long bones. “Dr. March, these were brought up from the dive interface in no order at all, there’s no way we can attempt a formal articulation-”

  “We’ll scan them later!” March said, rounding on her. “The important thing is to get them cleaned, tagged, and in the database. Now, not yesterday. We’ll worry about the articulation later.”

  Maybe, Logan thought as he stepped forward, March believes that-if he gets them all nicely cleaned and classified-Stone will let him keep them, after all. It was at moments like this that a person’s true interests came to the fore. March was an archaeologist, not an Egyptologist-to him, the bones came first and foremost.

  March turned and noticed him for the first time. He frowned, as if disapproving of this violation of his domain. “Yes?” he said. “What do you want?”

  Logan put on his most ingratiating smile. “I wonder,” he said, nodding at a skull that was being carefully cleaned of mud in a nearby sink: “Could I borrow one of those?”

  26

  Logan sat at the computer in his small office, typing slowly and deliberately. It was late at night, and Maroon was quiet as the grave. He had finally gotten the chance to enter his remaining notes on his conversation with Hirshveldt and the various observations he’d made during their brief trip out into the Sudd. Now he closed that document and opened another, detailing the unexplained and ominous occurrences on the Station, and added entries on the generator fire and the electrocution of the communications specialist, Mark Perlmutter. Despite a painstaking inquiry, no good explanation had been found for the presence of a live wire or the pool of water in the substation. Perlmutter, slipping in and out of consciousness, had said something about seeing a light, but there was no way to tell if this was just delirious babbling. The rumors flitting around the Station-of sabotage or of the curse of Narmer making itself felt-had spiked significantly. With the discovery of the cache of skeletons, and the near certainty that the tomb itself lay close by, there seemed to be a strange mix of emotions among the personnel: a charged sense of anticipation, mingled with creeping dread.

  Logan himself had examined Red’s power substation and spoken to those few who might have had any reason to enter the room that day. None of them knew anything or had seen anything out of the ordinary. Moreover, all had seemed straightforward and honest-Logan had sensed nothing but sadness and confusion from the group.

  He closed the file and glanced at the small blue evidence case beside his computer. Picking it up, he removed the top and carefully took out a cloth-wrapped bundle from within. Pulling away the folds of cloth, he exposed an ancient skull the color of tobacco.

  Cradling it in the cloth, he turned it this way and that, peering at it closely. March had clearly not wanted to lend it to him, but-aware of the favor Stone had conferred upon Logan-hadn’t dared refuse. Nevertheless, the archaeologist had been careful to give Logan the least interesting, most damaged of the skulls, with strict orders to return it-in identical shape-before the end of the evening.

  The skull had been relatively protected by the matrix of mud and silt that had surrounded it for some fifty centuries, and though it was pitted, cracked across its top, and missing its teeth, it was nevertheless in good condition, considering. It smelled strongly of the Sudd-the odor that permeated the Station and had begun to haunt Logan’s dreams. Taking a jeweler’s loupe from his satchel, he fixed it to his eye and made a careful survey of the entire surface of the skull. Despite the fact that the occipital bone was missing, there were no obvious indications of viole
nce. It was badly scratched across the crown, as well as within the left eye socket, but these were no doubt the result of pebbles. He examined the ectocranial sutures in turn: coronal, sagittal, lambdoid. Judging from the size of the mastoid process and the rounded nature of the supraorbital margin, he felt confident the skull had belonged to a man rather than a woman-no big surprise there.

  Now he put the cloth aside and, very gently, held the skull in his bare hands. Two eyes had once stared out from this cranium: What wonders had they seen? Had they viewed Narmer, overseeing in person the construction of his tomb? Had they perhaps witnessed the decisive battle in which Narmer had united all Egypt? At the very least, they had watched the line of other priests as they headed south into a foreign and hostile land, there to entomb their king’s mortal remains as his ka went on to join the gods in the next world. Had this fellow guessed it was a journey from which he would never return?

  Turning the skull over slowly in his hands, Logan emptied his mind, leaving it open to perception or suggestion. “What’s it trying to tell me, Karen?” he asked his dead wife as he handled the skull. But there was nothing-the skull left him with no impressions save fragility and great antiquity. At last, with a sigh, he wrapped it back in its cloth and returned it to the evidence case.

  If Tina Romero was right, they would soon find a vast cache of bones-the remains of the tomb builders-and, shortly after that, the tomb itself. And Porter Stone would have yet another coup to add to his record. And if the tomb contained the crown of unified Egypt, it would undoubtedly be the largest coup of Stone’s career.