The Third Gate

by Lincoln Child

  “Hey!” the technician said. “You can’t do that—you’re opening the emergency relief valve!”

  Dropping his clipboard, he hurried over. Jennifer Rush did not protest when he gently propelled her to one side.

  “You don’t want to be doing that,” he said, grasping the valve and preparing to close it again. “Open this, and we’d start venting concentrated methane throughout the crawl space beneath this wing. It would only be a matter of minutes until—”

  An explosive impact against the base of his neck—a sudden wave of pain—and then a concussive burst of light that filled his field of vision before giving way to oblivion.

  Jennifer Rush watched as the technician crumpled to the metal floor of the substation. Then she dropped the wrench she’d picked up, bent over the relief valve, and once again began to slowly open it wide, turning, turning, turning.…

  52

  Logan watched as Porter Stone handed the radio back to the guard. The conversation had been brief; Stone himself had said fewer than a half-dozen words. As he’d listened to the voice on the radio, his face had initially gone deathly pale. But now—as he looked at each of the expedition members in turn—his face went dark, almost purple. His pupils retreated to mere glittering pinpoints. His gaze fastened at last on Tina Romero.

  Suddenly, he stepped forward. “Bitch!” he snapped, throwing one hand back in preparation for striking her. Immediately, Dr. Rush and Valentino rushed forward, restraining him.

  “Idiot!” he cried, struggling to free himself. Romero took an instinctual step back.

  Logan looked on in shock. It was as if all the setbacks and vicissitudes of this expedition—capped just now by the discovery that Narmer’s crown was, in fact, completely unexpected and bizarre—had caused the normally dispassionate Stone to snap, to lash out in frustration and anger.

  “Incompetent!” Stone shouted at the Egyptologist. “Thanks to you, all my effort, all my money—wasted! And now, there’s no time.… No time!”

  Logan came forward. “Dr. Stone, calm down,” he said. “Just what exactly has happened?”

  With an effort, Stone mastered himself. He freed himself from Rush and Valentino, who nevertheless stayed close.

  “I’ll tell you what’s happened,” he said, his breathing loud and ragged. “That was Amanda Richards on the horn. She was repairing the damage to Narmer’s mummy—when she learned it wasn’t Narmer, after all.”

  There was a moment of shocked silence.

  “What do you mean—not Narmer?” Dr. Rush asked.

  “That mummy was a woman. All this time, we’ve been working the wrong damned tomb.” He looked back at Romero. “No wonder nothing’s as it should be. You’ve led us to the wrong spot—a subsidiary tomb, for his queen, or—or a concubine! My God!” His hands balled into fists, and he seemed about to lash out once again. Rush and Valentino moved in still closer.

  “Just a minute,” Logan said. “There can’t be any mistake. The seals, the inscriptions, the treasure—even the curse—everything indicates the resting place of a pharaoh. This has to be Narmer’s tomb.”

  For a moment, nobody spoke. Stone struggled to get his breathing under control. “If this is Narmer’s tomb,” he said, “then where the hell’s his mummy?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Logan. “Just hold on a minute. Don’t be so hasty—let’s think this through.” He turned to Tina Romero. “Haven’t you said, all along, that there have been things in this tomb that didn’t add up—that didn’t make sense?”

  She nodded. “Little things, mostly. I ascribed them to the fact this was the tomb of the first pharaoh; it was only natural that we’d find the unexpected. The later tradition hadn’t yet been fully established.”

  “Excuses,” Stone said. “Mere excuses, nothing more. You’re just trying to explain away your stupidity.”

  Ignoring this, Romero turned toward Logan. “It first started when you mentioned that skull to me. The one you examined, the skull of one of Narmer’s priests, ritually killed to protect the secrecy and sanctity of Narmer’s tomb. Do you remember telling me that one of the eye sockets—the left—had scratches?”

  Logan nodded.

  “And that was just the first sign that something was amiss. The rest of the signs are right here, among us. The serekhs we found in the tomb’s royal seals—the glyphs are Narmer’s, but they aren’t quite right. They have unusual features, like the feminine ending of niswt-biti. Then there are those inscriptions in chamber one, with the ritual sequences reversed, the gender wrong. And the glyphs on this chest, here, with the head of the catfish, Narmer’s symbol, scratched out.”

  “You said it had been altered,” Logan added. “Defaced.”

  “What are you getting at?” Stone growled.

  “That mark in the eye socket of the priest’s skull,” Romero said. “I’d assumed it was just decay, damage over time. But the fact is, that was the ritual way a priest or priestess of a queen would be killed—a knife through the eye into the brain. That way, symbolically, the queen would not be viewed in death. At the tomb burial of a king, the priests were killed by a knife blow to the base of a skull, severing the spinal column.”

  “So this is the tomb of Narmer’s queen,” Stone said. “Niethotep. That’s my whole damn point! It’s the wrong tomb!”

  “No, no, you don’t understand,” Romero replied, a new urgency in her voice. “The evidence is conflicting. Everything about this tomb implies it was built for Narmer, following his royal instructions—except for those particular rituals that would be carried out after death. That’s where the evidence becomes self-contradictory. The royal seals with the feminine flourishes. The final, ritualistic inscriptions—recall how I said they looked rude? And the mummy itself—I only got the briefest of chances to study it, but I noticed that the cut over the mouth was imprecise, incomplete.”

  “As if the actual burial ritual was rushed,” Logan said.

  A faint rumble, almost below the level of audibility, echoed through the chamber. The guards and several of the roustabouts glanced uneasily around at the supporting structure. But the sound appeared to have come from the surface, down to them via the Umbilicus, and after a moment the debate resumed.

  “You’re not making sense,” Stone told her. “All this is hypothetical. Inconclusive.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Logan said. He spoke slowly, thinking through what Tina Romero was saying. “You need to look at all this from another angle. If the crown we found here in chamber three could be used to simulate, practice death—in effect, to render a pharaoh immortal, ensure his divinity … wouldn’t a queen desire that as much as a king? Especially a queen as powerful, as headstrong, as Niethotep was?”

  There was a silence.

  “You’re saying …” Stone began. “You’re saying that Niethotep, Narmer’s queen—took Narmer’s place in the tomb?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Romero said. “Nothing else explains the conflicting evidence I’ve laid out for you.”

  “And it may also help explain why future generations misinterpreted Narmer’s symbols and practices,” Logan added. “It wasn’t Narmer in the tomb, he wasn’t buried in the proper manner. The wife would have substituted herself—and seemingly hastily, even prematurely.”

  “Then what happened to Narmer?” Dr. Rush asked.

  “Who knows?” Romero replied. “Poison. A dagger to the throat, late at night in the conjugal bed. Perhaps killed with his concubines. You know the legends of Niethotep, of how strong-willed, bloodthirsty, and selfish she was. This would have been just her game. Can’t you picture it? She may have even waited him out, let him die a natural death. Then she would have accompanied his body here, with their twin sets of retinues, to be present at the rituals of his interment—and then, by a prearranged plan, her guards overpowered his … and now his skeleton is lying in the muck of the Sudd, entangled with all the others, and her mummy took his rightful place.”

  Stone stare
d at the Egyptologist. The anger, the ferocity, had slowly left his face. “But if you’re right about the—the crown,” he said, “then only one person could be allowed to use it. If you were Narmer, once you had passed over into the netherworld, you wouldn’t want another to take your place, to compromise your life force, your immortality. The crown would be linked to the soul of the person who wielded it.”

  “Which is exactly what Niethotep must have done,” said Romero. “She tricked Narmer, had him killed, used the crown in his place. And then, believing herself immortal, she had herself buried in his tomb, which was hastily converted—the seals, the inscriptions—into her own.”

  “Is that even possible?” Logan asked. “Isn’t a pharaoh’s tomb designed to be the resting place for a specific monarch, and only that monarch?”

  “That’s just the problem,” Romero said. “We need much more time to examine the evidence. Maybe she thought the gamble—eternal life as a supreme deity—was worth the risk.”

  “But why the haste?” Stone asked. “With Narmer out of the way, she could have taken all the time she wanted.”

  Romero thought for a moment. “I can think of several reasons. Maybe Narmer’s main priests, with their private army, were still on the way to the tomb—and they wouldn’t have taken kindly to what they found. She had to retrofit the tomb as best she could, seal it up before they arrived. Another possibility is that she and her retinue were unfamiliar with the operation of the battery—the double crown. They may have been … overzealous.”

  “What was supposed to be a near-death experience turned into a deadly one,” Logan said.

  Romero nodded. “If that was the case—the queen dying unexpectedly—they would have had to rush to get her mummified and entombed. Even to the point of cutting corners in the death rituals. As we’ve seen in some of the carvings here—the carvings that deal with those specific rituals.”

  “And if the queen had herself entombed without sufficient preparation?” Rush asked. “Sufficient rites?”

  “Impossible to say. I mentioned the imperfect cut in the mummy’s mouth. That’s an important part of the Egyptian funerary magic: the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. It allows the ba to leave the dead body, reunite with the ka in the next life. It frees the mouth to accept food and drink so the soul can receive nourishment—in essence, survive—in the afterlife.”

  “Go on,” said Stone.

  “If such an important ritual as the Opening of the Mouth was rushed, it implies great urgency involved in the final stages of her entombment. Who knows what other critical steps for the journey of Niethotep’s soul into the next world might have been abbreviated—or even skipped?”

  “This Opening of the Mouth ceremony,” Logan said. “If the queen’s soul could not receive nourishment in the next world—what would happen?”

  Romero thought a minute. “From the ancient texts, I would guess that her vital spark—the soul that leaves the body after death—would be trapped here.”

  Rush shook his head. “If she really committed this atrocity—killed her husband or at the very least usurped his place in the next world—I’d think at least a part of her ka would want to remain here. To guard the crown, safeguard her immortality, make sure nobody did to her what she did to Narmer.”

  “The curse,” Romero murmured.

  Her soul would be trapped here.… To guard the crown; to make sure nobody did to her what she did to Narmer … All of a sudden, a terrible thought struck Logan.

  “Oh, my God,” he said aloud.

  Suddenly, there was another rumble from above, stronger than before. The papyrus sheets on the table trembled, as if from a gust of wind.

  “What the hell is that?” Stone asked.

  Valentino turned to two of the roustabouts. “Kowinsky. Dugan. Go out to the platform, see what’s going on.”

  As the two headed back through the tomb, Logan took Rush aside. “We’ve been forgetting something,” he said in a low voice, out of earshot of the others.

  The doctor looked at him. “What? What is it?”

  “Remember our earlier talk? Where we speculated that Jennifer was brain-dead for so long—that she went over for so protracted a period—that she might have, in essence, lost her soul? Your phrase, not mine.”

  The doctor frowned, nodded.

  “I told you that I believe it possible for the life force of one who has already passed on to take residence in a living being—if that being’s own life force, own soul, has been compromised. But that in all documented cases, the dead person’s spirit can only take possession of someone of the same sex.”

  “I remember,” Dr. Rush said. “That’s how we knew Narmer, or some shade of Narmer’s, could not be speaking through—could not be within—Jennifer.”

  “Exactly. But if it isn’t Narmer’s life force that’s here at this site … if, rather, it’s the life force of a woman …”

  “Queen Niethotep.” Slowly, Rush raised a hand to his mouth. “Oh, Jesus …”

  At that moment, the two roustabouts, Kowinsky and Dugan, came running back. Both had their radios out.

  “There’s an emergency topside,” Kowinksy said. “The emergency relief valves of the high-pressure methane system have been opened.”

  “What?” Stone said, his voice sharp with anxiety. “Why?”

  Kowinsky shook his head. Fear was written clearly across his face.

  “You said valves. How many? More than one?”

  “At least three. In Red, White, Maroon.”

  “That’s impossible,” Stone went on. “The safety protocols—”

  “They’ve been compromised somehow. That’s why it was discovered only now. Fires are breaking out in the crawl spaces beneath the wings, there’ve been explosions, flames are beginning to reach up into the Station itself. And if they’re unable to get to those valves in order to shut them off—”

  Stone jerked a thumb in the direction of the tomb exit. “Everyone out, get topside. Now!” He took the radio from Kowinksy, snapped it on. “This is Porter Stone. Who am I speaking to?”

  “Menendez, sir, in the Staging Area.” In the background, Logan could hear shouting, what sounded like the rushing of a blowtorch. “We’re sending a team down to you with emergency ropes now.”

  “We’ve got close to a dozen people down here,” Stone said. “You’re going to need to—”

  But he was interrupted by a frantic series of cries on the radio, voices overlapping each other, cutting in and out.

  “What’s that she’s got? Nitroglycerin?”

  “Get back! Get back!”

  “Don’t let her near the Maw, she’ll—”

  And then there was a brilliant light from the direction of the Umbilicus, like the flare of a hundred suns—an explosion that pierced Logan’s ears and knocked him to the floor of the tomb—and then all went dark and his world ended.

  53

  Logan didn’t know if he’d been out for an hour—didn’t know if he’d been out for a day. But as he opened his eyes and tried to rise to a sitting position, shaking his head to clear it, he realized it could only have been a few seconds. The tomb was full of raised voices and the sound of running feet. A handful of tiny emergency lights had come on, bathing the chamber in a sepulchral crimson glow. Rush was bending over him, massaging his wrists and trying to get him on his feet.

  “Come on, Jeremy,” he said. “We’ve got to go.”

  The tomb was beginning to fill with choking, acrid smoke. There was a strange smell in the air: a combination of burning rubber, ozone, and—ominously—methane.

  “What’s happening?” one of the roustabouts was shouting, in a ragged, hysterical tone. He had a gash on his temple that was bleeding freely. “What’s happening?”

  What’s happening? The words of Narmer’s curse came into Logan’s mind. Any man who dares enter my tomb will meet an end certain and swift. The hand that touches my immortal form will burn with unquenchable fire. Should any in their temerity pass th
e third gate, then the black god of the deepest pit will seize him, and his limbs will be scattered to the uttermost corners of the earth.

  “It’s Narmer’s queen,” he said. “Niethotep. She’s trying to preserve her immortality by burying her tomb—the tomb she stole from her husband—all over again. Killing all who would attempt to despoil it—who might attempt to wield the crown. It’s the queen—with a little help from Jennifer Rush.”

  Logan realized that, in fact, he had only thought these words, not spoken them aloud. Ethan Rush was still at his side, urging him to stand. With an effort, he rose to his feet; the world swayed around him, then slowly righted itself. Rush looked intently into his eyes, grunted, then began leading the way out of the tomb.

  They left the ebony nightmare of chamber three, passed through chamber two and into the larger space of chamber one. Here, the entire team was clustered around the Lock and the platform that lay beyond. There were no emergency lights here, and several people had their flashlights out, the yellow beams lancing through the thickening air. Numerous radios were chattering, filling the background with a steady, electronic din. Logan could make out the figure of Stone, standing on the air lock platform, starting to direct people up the sloping tunnel of the Umbilicus. One of the security guards urged Stone to make the climb himself, and after a moment Stone relented and went next in line. He was followed by two of the technicians. Then one of the grunts, the one named Kowinsky, forced himself to the head of the line and began climbing frantically, despite the angry shouts of Valentino, who was standing at the rear, urging everyone else on before him.

  And now, shuffling forward with the others, Logan found himself ducking through the heavy door of the Lock, past the dressed granite that made up the entrance to Narmer’s tomb, and onto the thick metal grating of the air lock platform. Tina Romero was directly in front of him; she looked back, gave him a wan smile, and started to ascend. And then it was his turn. He grabbed the first handhold, looked up in preparation to climb—and stopped dead.