The Third Gate jl-1

by Lincoln Child

  In one corner of the platform, several large evidence lockers had been carefully stacked. Beside them were various archaeological tools and equipment for examining, stabilizing, and even field curation of ancient artifacts.

  Three of the walls of the platform resembled the rest of the Umbilicus: hexagonally braced and thickly veined with cabling. The fourth wall, however, held a heavy circular door of an opaque material, as round as a bank vault’s and seemingly as impregnable.

  With all seven of them standing on the platform, there was precious little room to spare. For a moment, nobody spoke, looking instead at the others through their respirators. There was a tension in the air no one seemed eager to break. Finally, Stone pressed the Transmit button of his radio.

  “Stone here,” he said. “We’re proceeding.”

  “Roger that,” came the voice from the control station above.

  Then-with Tina Romero videotaping-Stone moved toward the heavy door. “I’m opening the Lock,” he said. He carefully unscrewed four large bolts in the circular panel, one at each point of the compass. Then, taking hold of a thick handle at its center, he pulled the door free of its enclosing hatch.

  It swung open on silent hinges. Just beyond, Logan could see the face of dressed granite that sealed the entrance to Narmer’s tomb. The boulders and mud that had helped keep it from the elements had been completely removed, leaving nothing but the courses of granite and the surrounding igneous matrix that formed the mouth of the volcanic cavity. The polished granite wall gleamed in the reflected light of the Umbilicus. Aside from the two seals, the rock contained no markings whatsoever. What had seemed so far away in the video feeds of the divers, so remote and unearthly, now stood directly before him, mere feet away.

  Logan was aware that his heart was beating faster now, almost painfully so. The air lock itself had been fixed to the irregular surface of igneous rock by thick rubber gaskets, made airtight by some kind of compound and held in place by the same kind of metal rods that anchored the outer platform to the bottom of the Sudd.

  Now Stone and Fenwick March came forward, each carrying magnifying glasses and powerful flashlights. As the others watched, the two examined every inch of the granite surface, probing and pressing gently with gloved hands. The process took almost fifteen minutes. Satisfied at last, they stepped back out onto the platform.

  “Tina?” Stone said over the radio. “Would you examine the seals, please?”

  Tina took the magnifying glass and flashlight from March and stepped forward. Peering closely, she examined first the upper necropolis seal, then-getting down on her knees-the royal seal at the base of the granite courses. Each was fixed in place by two bronze pikes, one at either end, with thin bronze wires wound between them in curls that reminded Logan of a hangman’s noose. On the right-hand end of each seal was a fist-sized piece of reddish pottery, encasing both the wire and the spike. Into this had been set the actual hieroglyphic impressions.

  “Well?” Stone asked.

  “They’re completely intact,” she said. Logan could hear a faint tremor in her voice. “But this serekh-there’s something unusual about it. It’s of a form unknown to me.”

  “But it’s definitely Narmer’s seal?”

  “The hieroglyphs are that of the catfish and the chisel-the rebus for Narmer’s name.”

  “Very good. Get ready, please.”

  Romero rose to her feet. As she ran the video camera, both March and Stone again stepped up beside her. Stone held a small evidence box, its bottom lined with cotton; March held a scalpel and forceps. While the rest waited in anxious silence, March very cautiously brought the scalpel up against the necropolis seal. With a slow, methodical motion, he brought the scalpel down across the seal, cutting it in two. Then, with equally cautious movements, he used the scalpel and the forceps to tease the seal away from the granite and place the pieces into Stone’s box.

  Logan realized he was holding his breath. Quite consciously he expelled it, took in fresh air. Despite the high tension of the moment, he could not help but be impressed by the care Stone and his team were taking not only to record the entire event but to carefully conserve the elements of the tomb. Stone was no treasure hunter: he was a careful archaeologist, bent on preserving the past rather than destroying it.

  Now the three had moved to the larger, royal seal. March placed his scalpel at the top of the seal. Then he paused. A minute went by, then two.

  The tension in the Lock became almost palpable. This was it: once the royal seal was broken, the tomb would be in a state of desecration. Logan swallowed. Any man who dares enter my tomb will meet an end certain and swift. I, Narmer the Everliving, will torment him and his, by day and by night, waking and sleeping, until madness and death become his eternal temple.

  “Fenwick?” Stone’s mild voice sounded over the radio.

  The archaeologist started. Then he bent closer over the seal, and-with a slow, slicing movement-drew the scalpel down through it, cutting it in two.

  There was a general exhalation of breath from the assembled group that needed no radio to be heard. “Now we’ve done it,” Tina said very quietly.

  March took the two pieces of the seal and placed them into Stone’s box. Then Stone, March, and Romero all stepped away from the granite wall. Every move seemed so carefully choreographed it was almost like a ballet.

  Stone turned to Dr. Rush. “Go ahead, Doctor.”

  Reaching into his backpack, Rush removed a battery-powered drill and a thick bit about twelve inches long. Fixing the bit to the chuck, the doctor approached the granite face, chose a spot directly in the center, placed the bit against the stone, and fired up the drill.

  Stone urged the others to keep back as the drill whined. After about sixty seconds, Logan heard the pitch of the drill abruptly drop; Rush was through. There was a low, faint whistling sound as air escaped through the drill hole.

  The doctor pressed a plastic plug into the hole he’d made, then put the drill to one side. “The granite’s not particularly thick,” he said over the radio. “Perhaps four inches.” Reaching into his backpack again, he withdrew a strange-looking instrument: a long clear tube, fixed to a plastic housing containing an LED readout. A rubber bladder hung from one side of the housing. Removing the plug from the hole he’d made, Rush threaded the clear tube through the borehole, then pushed a button on the housing. There was a whirring sound as the bladder inflated. Rush pressed additional buttons, then examined the LED display.

  “Dust,” he said over the radio. “Particulate matter. High levels of CO 2. But no pathogenic bacteria.”

  Logan now understood the purpose of the device. It was the high-tech equivalent of Howard Carter holding a candle up to the air exhaling from King Tutankhamen’s tomb.

  “Any fungal concentrations?” Stone asked.

  “A full biological study will have to wait until I get back to the medical suite,” Rush replied, “but nothing stands out in a field analysis. There’s a marked absence of fungi, in fact. The tomb microclimate shows no anaerobic bacteria and acceptable levels of aerobic bacteria.”

  “In that case, we will proceed. Just to be sure, however, we’ll move decontamination showers into the Staging Area and use them when we exit the Umbilicus.”

  As Rush returned his equipment to the backpack, Stone approached the borehole. He had removed something from the boxes at the rear of the air lock: a SWAT-style fiber-optic camera, a light at its tip, its long flexible cable attached to goggles. Fitting the goggles over his bulky respirator, he aimed the tip of the camera at the hole, then threaded it through. For a long moment he stood silently, peering through the goggles into the interior. Then, quite abruptly, he stiffened and gasped.

  “God,” he said in a broken whisper. “My God.”

  He withdrew the camera from the borehole, slowly pulled the goggles from his head. Then he turned to face the others. Logan was shocked. Stone’s carefully studied nonchalance, his unflappable poise, seemed to have deserted
him. Even with his face half covered by a respirator, he looked like someone who had… Logan, heart still beating fast, found it difficult to describe the expression. Like someone, perhaps, who had just gazed upon the face of heaven. Or, perhaps, hell.

  Wordlessly, Stone motioned to the two roustabouts. They came forward, one equipped with a small power chisel, the other with a vacuum cleaner attached to a long hose. They numbered each granite slab with a wax pencil, then the first roustabout began clearing away the plaster between the slabs while the other used the vacuum cleaner to suck up the resulting dust. Logan assumed this precaution was taken in the event that the plaster had been laced with poison.

  Once the first slab was out, the work proceeded quickly. Before twenty minutes had passed, several of the granite slabs had been stacked to one side of the air lock and a hole large enough to admit a person had been made in the tomb entrance.

  Logan glanced at that hole, at the blackness that lay beyond. As if by unspoken consent, nobody had yet shone a light into the tomb, waiting instead until they could enter it.

  Now Stone glanced around at the assembled company. He had recovered his voice and at least some of his self-possession. He located Tina Romero, then extended his gloved hand toward the dark opening in the granite wall.

  “Tina?” he said over the radio. “Ladies first.”

  34

  Romero nodded. She gripped her flashlight, then took a step forward, swinging her light up into the black void of the tomb entrance.

  Immediately, she staggered backward. “Holy shit!” she said. A collective gasp sounded from the rest of the group.

  Inside the tomb, mere inches from the opening, stood a terrifying limestone statue: a creature, nearly seven feet tall, with the head of a serpent, the body of a lion, and the arms of a man. It was crouched, its muscles tensed as if ready to spring through the opening toward them. It had been painted in amazingly lifelike colors, still vibrant after five thousand years in the dark. Its eyes had been inlaid with carnelians, which glittered menacingly in the gleam of their torches.

  “Whew,” Romero said, recovering. “Some guardian.”

  She moved forward again, letting the light play over the disturbing statue. At its feet lay a human skeleton. The tattered remains of what had once been rich vestments still clung to the bones.

  “Necropolis guard,” Romero muttered over the radio.

  She very carefully made her way around the statue and moved deeper into the chamber. Each footfall raised tiny clouds of dust. After a pause, Stone followed; then March; and then Rush, holding his monitoring equipment forward. The roustabouts remained on the platform. Last to enter was Logan. He stepped past the granite seal, slid around the guardian figure and the skeleton at its base, and entered the tomb proper.

  The chamber was not large, perhaps fifteen feet deep by ten feet wide, narrowing slightly as it went back. Their flashlight beams cast long, eerie trails in the rising dust. The walls were completely lined in turquoise-colored tile that Logan realized must be faience. Their surfaces were busy with primitive hieroglyphs and painted images. The air felt remarkably cool and dry.

  The tomb was filled with neatly organized grave goods: intricately carved and painted chairs; a massive, canopied bed of gilded wood; numerous ushabti; beautiful wheel-turned pottery; an open, gold-lined box full of amulets, beads, and jewelry. Tina Romero moved slowly around the room, capturing everything on the video camera. March followed in her wake, examining objects with the gentle touch of a gloved finger. Rush was monitoring his handheld sensor. Stone hung back, taking in everything. When people spoke, it was in hushed, almost reverential voices. It was as if, only now, the realization was taking hold: We’ve entered King Narmer’s tomb.

  Logan stood back with Stone, watching the proceedings. Despite his insistence on accompanying the group, he had nevertheless been dreading this moment, fearing that the malignance, the malevolence, he had sensed before would be even stronger here. But there was nothing. No, that wasn’t quite right: there did seem to be some presence-but it was almost as if the tomb itself was watching them, waiting, biding its time for…

  For what? Logan wasn’t sure.

  March placed his hand on the turquoise-colored wall in an almost caressing gesture. “This lava tube would have been formed of extrusive igneous rock, very rough and sharp. Now the surface is as smooth as glass. Think of the man-hours involved in polishing it with the rude tools of the day.”

  Tina had stopped before a long row of tall jars of reddish clay, perfectly formed, their rims dark. “These black-topped jars were common around the time of unification,” she said. “They’ll be useful for dating.”

  “I’ll take samples for thermoluminescence tests on our next descent,” said March.

  There was a moment of silence as the group continued taking it all in.

  “There’s no sarcophagus,” Logan said, glancing around.

  “This outer room would normally hold household items, perhaps some business details,” Stone replied, “things the king would need in the next life. The sarcophagus would be deeper within the tomb, most likely in the final chamber beyond the third gate. That’s what the pharaoh would be most concerned about preserving in an unspoiled state.”

  Tina knelt before a large chest of painted wood, edged in gold. With slow, delicate motions, she swept the dust from its top, then freed the lid and gently raised it. The glow of her flashlight revealed dozens and dozens of papyri within, rolled tight, in perfect, unspoiled condition. Beside them were stacked two tall rows of carved tablets.

  “My God,” she breathed. “Think of the history these contain.”

  Stone had moved toward the gilded, canopied bed. It was beautiful, shimmering with an almost unearthly glow in the beams of their flashlights. Its various intricately worked pieces were held together by huge bolts of what appeared to be solid gold. “Notice the canopy,” he said, pointing. “That gilded piece of wood must weigh a thousand pounds. Yet everything’s perfectly preserved. It could have been fashioned yesterday.”

  “This is odd,” said March. He was peering at an image painted on one of the walls: a depiction of two strange-looking objects. One was box shaped, topped by a kind of rod that was surrounded by a copper-colored crest or banner. The other was a white, bowl-like artifact, with long wisps of gold trailing from its edges. They were surrounded by a blizzard of hieroglyphics.

  “What do you make of it?” Stone asked.

  Tina shook her head. “Unique. I’ve never seen anything like these before. Anything remotely like them. They look like tools. Implements of some sort. But I can’t imagine what they might be used for.”

  “And the glyphs surrounding them?”

  There was a pause as Romero striped her flashlight across them. “They seem to be warnings. Imprecations.” A pause. “I’ll have to examine them more closely in the lab.” She stepped back, panned over the images with her camera.

  “It might be unique,” Logan said, “but it’s not the only one in here.” And he pointed at a nearby wall relief, the largest in the chamber. It depicted a seated male figure, shown in side view, left leg forward, as was common with all ancient Egyptian art. He was wearing fine clothes, clearly a personage of great importance. And yet-bizarrely-the same two objects had been placed on his head, the bowl-shaped one below, the box with the rod atop. He was surrounded by what appeared to be high priests.

  “I’ll be damned,” March murmured.

  “What do you suppose they are?” Stone asked. “They can’t be crowns.”

  “Perhaps it’s a punishment of some kind,” Logan said.

  “Yes, but look at that.” Tina pointed to an embossed detail below the relief. “It’s a serekh-meaning the figure in the picture is royal.”

  “Is it the serekh of Narmer?” Stone asked.

  “Yes. But it’s been altered, defaced somehow.”

  Slowly, the group began to gravitate toward the rear wall. Their flashlight beams played over its surface:
another face of polished granite, the slabs mortared in place. Again, the necropolis seal and the royal seal were both intact, untouched. Unlike the first doorway, however, this one was outlined in what appeared to be solid gold.

  “The second gate,” said March almost reverentially.

  They stared at it for a moment before Stone broke the silence. “We’ll return to the Station, analyze our findings. We’ll have an engineering team come down to examine this chamber, ensure it’s structurally sound. And then”-he paused, his voice trembling ever so slightly-“we’ll proceed.”

  35

  The setting looked the same: the same dimly lit lab, with its single bed and array of medical instrumentation. There was the same mingled scent of sandalwood and myrrh; the same bleating of monitoring devices. The same large, carefully polished mirror reflected the tiny, winking lights. Jennifer Rush lay on the bed, breathing shallowly, once again under the influence of propofol.

  The only difference, Logan thought, was that-this morning-they had violated the tomb of King Narmer.

  He watched as Rush fixed the leads to her temples, administered the Versed, went through the hypnotic induction. He was aware of feeling a great tension, of a deep unwillingness in himself to reexperience the trauma of the first crossing. And yet this time, the malignant influence he’d felt before-while still present-seemed remote, even faint.

  The door opened on silent hinges and Tina Romero entered. She nodded at Rush, smiled at Logan, and quietly stepped over to stand beside him.

  Rush waited until his wife stirred slightly and her breathing grew labored. Then he snapped on the digital voice recorder. “Who am I speaking to?” he asked.