by Ryder Stacy
The two men rode inside to a large grottolike formation with stalagmites and stalactites hanging everywhere, like ice cream cones of calcium deposits. Elephants, fighters, and their wives and children were everywhere within the immense cavern, trying to set up their tents again in much more crowded circumstances. These were the ones so many were sacrificed to protect!
Rockson looked anxiously around for more of his men. Kral headed down the middle of a corridor that was kept cleared of man or beast to facilitate movement.
This was truly a nomadic army. They had pulled up stakes and were setting them back down again in the space of several hours. Homes, cooking tents, hospitals—all sprang right up, ready for function. If he had to fight alongside anybody, these seemed like the guys. Not that they or he had a chance against the Killov forces.
Rockson was relieved when he spotted Chen and Archer holding up Sheransky, one of his arms around each of them like a drunk unable to stand up on his own.
“Rock, it’s Rock,” Chen exclaimed, looking up with something approaching happiness on his usually stone face. “Thank the Lord you made it! We’d heard about an hour ago how the battle went—a single war elephant returned with its wounded rider. We heard that the entire diversionary force had been wiped out!”
Archer turned his head as he heard the voice and screamed out, “Rrrroooooccck!” with such force that a number of elephants honked back challengingly, creating quite a din—which lasted for several seconds, until their handlers told them to shut up in their own unique Egyptian/Elephant dialect.
“Yeah, we made it,” Rock said. “But all the other poor bastards with us got it. It was the worst thing I’ve seen in a long time, boys, and that’s no lie. Wiped out in a stone-massacre. We couldn’t do a goddamn thing.”
Rock was frustrated, angered by the loss of so many good men and mounts. He had been especially invited over to help get this show together—but as far as he could see, it was getting worse by the second. The colonel had gotten his hands on some potent weapons indeed. And Rockson wondered, though he dared not voice the question fully even to himself, whether the bastard had at last found the very thing that might give him the entire planet delivered on a squashed silver platter.
“Rockson—we must meet with General Tutankhamen and his top staff,” Rahallah shouted over to him from his elephant. “Must organize a new way to respond to the Skull’s army! Please, now! Your men are as safe as anybody else in this blasted cave here.”
“Got to go,” Rock said, looking down with a good feeling that at least his own men were alive, for now. It could have been worse. “You all need anything?”
“No, we’re fine, Rock. Go ahead, man,” Chen said. Archer just gazed adoringly up, a few wet tears trickling out of his eyes and onto his greasy beard, as he had been sure Rock was dead.
Rockson turned and rode, following Rahallah’s war beast. The pharaoh and his top men were already seated around on elephant footstools in a circle. Ten of them, all giving advice to Tutankhamen, who listened to each man and then told the next to have his say. Rock was glad to see there was input from the whole top staff. Democratic voicing of opinions could only open up the potential for fresh ideas.
Rock and Rahallah’s mounts lowered themselves next to the other elephants of the top military leadership. With feed bags strapped on, the elephants were ready to stand there all night just chewing.
Rock jumped down on the tusk, using the quick-exit method, and was glad to find that he’d at last gotten it right. His elephant looked at him through one of those huge cup-sized eyes, gazed him up and down, and then looked away. It snorted as if to say maybe, just maybe Rockson wasn’t a complete dumb-bunny after all. It still hadn’t made up its mind.
Rahallah saluted the pharaoh with a three-fingers-toward-the-side-of-the-chin gesture, and Tutankhamen returned it, welcoming them both warmly.
“Your excellency,” Rahallah said softly but firmly. “I must regretfully inform you that your son is dead.” The pharaoh’s whole face seemed to go slack for a second, and he aged about thirty years in that second. But then he pulled his grief back inside him, and his face hardened back to its typical regal demeanor filled with command.
Rock sat patiently as they all had their say. Basically, they wanted to fight, to go back and get revenge for those who were slain. They agreed that it was not for desert warriors to run like old women, not like war elephants to show their tails instead of their tusks. Then Rock and Rahallah were asked for their opinions, and the black man spoke first.
“I say your men are great fighters, among the bravest I have ever seen,” Rahallah said dramatically. He had not been Premier Vassily’s right hand and man-servant for decades without learning how to be the consummate politician, a suave diplomat in his own way. He had dealt with generals, leaders of countries, emperors of whole continents. Had served Vassily well and learned statesmanship. He told the assembly that to counterattack without an effective new plan would be tantamount to suicide. That the weapons which he and Rock had seen in action up close were just too unstoppable with the present configuration of forces. He spoke for only a couple of minutes, but seemed to impress Tutankhamen, who looked at him, nodding his head yes almost imperceptibly. Rahallah even used an Egyptian proverb, saying that it was a foolish man who threw himself and all that he loved off the cliff, instead of finding a way down it.
Then it was Rock’s turn. He didn’t have to talk. There were other ways of explaining. He found a small piece of soft-stone, put it on the hard-packed cave ground, and then found a piece of broken stalagmite as big as a football. He held it up over the small stone. Then he let the stalagmite drop from about three feet. There was a quick murmuring among the assembled leaders. Rock reached down and lifted the large stone up again. Its target was smashed, broken into little pieces ready for the sandbox outside.
“You and Rahallah speak with wisdom,” Tutankhamen said after there was total silence for about ten seconds. “Of course you are both right. We cannot throw ourselves beneath the rocks. But then what is our—our new course, Rockson?”
“We need a trick, a way in the backdoor, something to neutralize the damn weapons!” he exclaimed. One of the men who had been seated around the circle spoke up. Rock could see he had a sharp angular face. He looked to be eighty, perhaps ninety years old, with shrunken-in cheeks and a nose that a hawk could have loved.
“He’s the power man—Sesostris—the medicine man,” Rahallah whispered to Rockson as the man began to speak in a slow creaking voice, as if the door of a crypt were being opened.
“I learned secrets as a child,” Sesostris trembled out. “Secrets passed down from my father, who was one of the gravekeepers of the Cheops pyramids. There is a second level below the level where the Qu’ul sticks were found by the Cult of Amun years ago. A level containing the counter-force to the antimatter devices—the Ra sticks are the negatives of the Qu’ul that Colonel Killov is using.” The man paused as if catching his breath.
“And it is said that there is a way into the pyramid that few know of. The Ra sticks exist, I know they do. The pharaohs were given the Qu’ul, it is said, by the Cat God, to build the pyramids. This must be true, for those immense slabs of rock would not have been lifted by mortal men. They were raised, floated over the land. All of the ancient structures were built that way! But the gods made the Ra sticks so that if mankind got out of hand with the Qu’ul, there would be something that could destroy them. These are things that I have not revealed since I heard them as a child.” The shaky old man sat down heavily.
“I say, let’s check out the damned things,” Rockson blurted out, “before we have any more battles! We’ll get a small force together and go to the pyramids. Are they far?”
“The Cheops pyramids, no. Not more than a day by elephant,” Rahallah said. “I think your idea is the correct one, Rockson.” Pharaoh Tutankhamen nodded in agreement.
“We can only take three men,” Sesostris spoke up again. “No more can
be taken inside the tomb entrance or there will be the God’s wrath! Yea, the legends that speak of the Ra sticks mention only three.”
Rahallah looked at Rock, and they both knew two who were going: them.
Sesostris smiled, his lips looking as if they would crack, and said, “You will need me along. Only I know the secret way inside!”
Twenty
For an old man, the Egyptian witch man, Sesostris, rode his war bull like a rodeo vet out for the winning trophy. He had insisted that no one other than himself had the slightest chance of finding the passage in, or of knowing how to deal with the Ra crystals. His elephant seemed as old as he was, all wrinkled with flaps of skin hanging down everywhere. The damned thing made Rockson’s own prime male bull seem like a positive teenager, and he knew Kral was at least fifty from the size of the tusks. Rahallah had told him, though, that old Sesostris and his mount could hold their own.
All three war bulls had been outfitted forward and rear in armor. The first armor layer was coverings of dried elephant hide, overlapped in opposite directions, so their opposing grains would double their strength. Over that, handmade steel mesh hung down across their chests and exposed back flanks. Often their enemies would try to stab into the great war elephants with long thin spears like icepicks eight feet long, to pierce their hearts and lungs. But now that the beasts had been wearing the armor for years, they had become more or less immune from anything other than mortars or bombs—and, of course, falling mountains.
As usual, Rock just sat back and let the big bull elephant do his thing. The animal seemed to like tearing ass, to be huffing and puffing and stamping through the sands like the Pony Express. He was in his element out here in the midst of the desolation. Like Rockson. And suddenly Rock realized with a mad kind of enlightenment that he and the war bull were probably more alike than he could imagine. Too alike.
There was a mist-streaked sky on that night of adventure, with stars peeking through here and there from above, not giving a whole lot of light for travel. With the moon in hibernation the desert was dark, a long flat highway of smooth impenetrable blackness, as if one would just fall off into nothingness where they went. But Sesostris beelined in one direction, and they kept on behind him, following his mount’s pale blue guide-light.
They went over smooth fields of sand miles long, then rolling slopes like waves across a pond. At last, after about six hours of riding hard with only two quick oasis rest stops—for the elephants to water—they came to a very high dune. They climbed to its summit and, as they started down, Rockson could see—just barely—a series of tall obelisks set hundreds of feet apart, forming a monumental roadway to the Great Pyramid of Cheops. And that great pyramid stood perhaps a mile ahead of them, the most majestic silhouette against the stars Rock had ever seen. In the center of the giant columns, Cheops lowered a good 500 feet into the air.
They stood there, silently taking in its grandeur, lingering as the new day’s sun began lightening the sky to the east—a violet, rippling color. Rockson felt his breath quicken. The place was overwhelming, built on a scale as if the gods themselves were coming down to live and die there. Cheops looked so ancient, so eroded by time, yet so strong, still withstanding the elements which were ceaseless.
Sesostris mumbled aloud, as if he were remembering things. Rock hoped he was remembering entrances, passages he had forgotten since being a child so many years ago.
The Southern Egyptians had taken it all over nearly sixty years before, and he’d had to flee with his father to the Northern Army, where he had friends. It had been a long, long time, but now he was back.
At last the wizened witch man turned his war bull around and led them down the dune to what looked like a wall of dark sand nearby. Sesostris had them get their elephants to use their tusks and trunks to dig through the stuff for about ten minutes. Suddenly an opening appeared—and inside they could see a stone door, elaborately carved.
“Yes, still here,” Sesostris said. “My childhood memories do not deceive me.” He spoke with terrible solemnity. Rock expected an exultant smile. Not so. He just stared out at the world as if he knew too many nasty secrets about the great mysteries of life to smile anymore. “We go in through here. The tunnel leads the way beneath the dunes, and over to the pyramid. We’d never get through the guards around there.” He had his elephant reach out with its massive trunk, the laser beam retracted inside for the moment, and wrap it around an immense circular brass handle that looked as bright as the day it had been put on. The black sand of Cheops had kept the whole thing preserved in mint condition for four thousand years. The immense stone doors, each one a single block the size of a truck, swung open on perfect stone-ball bearings situated beneath them.
Sesostris led his elephant in on foot, since the rock ceiling was too low to ride beneath. Even then the great beasts had to half kneel down as they made their way through the carved stone entrance into the square tunnel ahead. Rock jumped down, and Rahallah followed suit. Each walked a yard in front of their war beasts, which followed on their tethers, looking around nervously. War elephants didn’t like being cooped up on every side. Their sheer size made them wary of getting stuck in anything smaller than a valley.
The air smelled dank, filled with death. Why not? Whatever was in here had been rotting and mildewed for aeons. The place was cold too, bizarrely cold considering that it had stood in the sun for so damned long. You could have preserved meats inside there. They had to move very slowly through the narrowing tunnel, the war bulls getting increasingly nervous.
Suddenly, they were through into a larger chamber a good hundred feet on a side, a perfect square with high ceilings and small obelisks standing ten feet apart all along the walls. The floor here was stone as well, big squares cut into ten-by-ten-foot pieces and then set alongside one another with perfect fit. A virtually flawless juncture of joints. Whoever had built all this sure knew what they were doing, and used tools unknown to modern man.
Suddenly it dawned on Rock that he was seeing—without sunlight, without torches! How was it possible? He glanced around, and realized that it was the walls themselves; they were emitting a very faint greenish blue light that appeared almost like early twilight to the eye. It was phosphorescent, like the water beneath the surface of a swamp, which can glow with the microscopic life below. But this glow was buried in the rock. It seemed to emanate from deep within, as if something had grown in the very walls.
It gave enough light even after thousands of years so they could clearly make out the major details of the place. And he could feel that the longer he was down there, the more his eyes were adjusting, allowing the dim light in. Shecter would have given his right frontal lobe to see some of this stuff! Rock hesitated for a second, thinking to scrape a little off one of the walls. Then thought better of it.
“We leave the war bulls here,” Sesostris said.
Twenty-One
Rock and Rahallah followed the witch man down one of a dozen smaller tunnel systems which snaked out from every side of the vast stone chamber. Here the greenish light was a little dimmer, but because it was narrower they could see well enough. It was strange, seeing by the low and evened-out glow that came from the very rock walls. What secrets was the wizard priest leading them to? Rockson wondered if Sesostris really knew this place. Especially how to get back out.
The tunnel grew narrower and narrower, until it was shrunken down to perhaps four feet high and not more than thirty-six inches wide. Talk about feeling like you were walking in a sardine can! Rahallah had it the hardest, being in the six-ten range. He ended up almost crawling along, smashing his shoulders, head, and knees into outcroppings of stone ornamentation which were everywhere in the tunnel. They moved in deeper, heading at a steeply downward angle. The air just grew thicker and thicker now, more like dust than air, as if the very oxygen were petrified. Rock let out a few violent sneezes, and Sesostris looked around angrily, as if it wasn’t the greatest idea. Then, with no warning, they turned a cor
ner and were into another chamber, this one’s green light brighter than the others by far. Bright as a shopping mall by comparison. Rockson could see every part of the chamber.
And he could hardly believe his eyes: mummies, golden coffins, statues of lions, of serpents, and of giant scarab beetles forged out of gold and silver. Rock knew all the treasures of all the museums of the twentieth century hadn’t contained the glitter and wealth that lay before their mesmerized eyes. It was a veritable warehouse of the stuff.
“What—what—is all this?” Rockson asked hesitantly as they stood side by side just inside the tunnel, staring out over the nearly ten-acre underground site.
“It is the resting place of the really great pharaohs,” Sesostris answered, making a circular motion over his heart several times. His craggy face was even more sucked in, and Rockson knew he could feel the gods within this place, gods both good and evil. Rockson could too. The past was everywhere, the ghosts of the ancient dead darting along the walls, among the massive columns. The caskets were bigger and more bejeweled than any Chicago gangster’s hearse could ever be. They knew how to die back then!
“Your Colonel Killov has taken the Qu’ul power-sticks from the level that is above this one,” Sesostris said. He looked straight up. “Maybe two hundred feet above, far too thick a layer of stone for us to be found out wandering down here. This chamber is older than that which was thought to be the oldest by Egyptologists and historians. This was built at least a thousand years before the First Dynasty. Built when men were giants and hundred-foot serpents still roamed the earth. Egypt is the most ancient civilization, gentlemen.” He sighed reverentially, scanning back and forth what was the resting place of those who had lived back then. “The beginning of recorded history dates back to 4241 B.C., when our ancient ancestors created the first calendar. Tukyur, the Yellow Kingdom, had existed for a thousand years before that. And the Scarab Worshippers perhaps another thousand years before that. There is no culture more ancient than ours. None more connected to the secret mysteries of the beginning. These creatures,” he said, pointing around at the sculptures made out of gold and onyx, out of pure blue crystal rocks ten feet high, out of substances not known on the earth today, “these lions with wings, jackals with human heads, the great scarabs which kept men as slaves, were once real. These are not myths—they are facts. This is how it truly once was in the very dawn of man’s history. These statues depict real beings!”
