The Third Gate Part 23

Tina moved forward and handed Stone the thin, straight blade. He nodded his thanks, then gently applied the scalpel to the strips of gold that lined the chest. Logan had a.s.sumed these strips to be mere inlaid decoration; instead, they appeared to be bands of precious metal holding the chest closed by ritual seals. Having cut through them, Stone peeled the bands away from the chest, then laid them carefully aside. A single band of gold remained, holding the elaborately bejeweled serekh in place on the chest's upper surface; another careful notch of the scalpel cut through this as well, and Stone gently placed both it and its attached serekh by the base of the plinth. Then he rose and nodded to the roustabouts. The two positioned themselves on each side of the chest. At Stone's direction, each grasped an edge of the lid and began to lift it. Although the lid could not have been more than two inches thick, the roustabouts could barely budge it from its position; Valentino and one of the security guards came forward to lend a hand. With great effort, the four raised the lid from the chest, moved it to an uncluttered area of the tomb, and--with a chorus of grunts--laid it on the floor. It hit the black surface with a dull thud that reverberated throughout chamber three.

Inside the large onyx chest was a black cloth shot through with threads the color of gold. Stone touched it gingerly but--as before--the moment his fingers made contact, the cloth disappeared into a mist of fine dust, its corporeal form preserved five millennia only through a caprice of nature.

Below lay a sheet of beaten gold, covered with primitive hieroglyphs.

"Tina?" Stone asked, angling one of the lights toward the sheet of gold. "What do you make of these?"

Romero came forward, examined the glyphs. "They seem to refer to those papyri, laid out on the table," she said after a moment. "I'd only begun to study them. It's almost as if they were ..."

"Were what?" Rush prompted.

"Invocations. But not of the usual type."

"What type?" Stone said, an edge of impatience in his voice.

She shrugged. "Almost like--instructions."

"Why is that unusual?" Stone asked. "The entire New Kingdom's Book of the Dead could be seen as an instruction manual."

Romero didn't answer.

Stone turned back to the chest. Nodding for Valentino's men to remove the sheet of beaten gold, he eagerly glanced beneath, angling the light in closer for a better look. Stepping forward, Logan could see another sheet of precious metal--this one edged with faience and precious gems, its surface dense with hieroglyphs--once again covering the entire upper surface of the chest. Stone gestured for the roustabouts to remove it as well.

"Over here, please," Romero said. She instructed Valentino's men to place both inserts on the floor near the table with the papyri.

With the second sheet of gold removed, a rough, uneven surface greeted their eyes. To Logan, looking down into the chest through the dim light, the chest appeared to be filled with a superfluity of small, thin, desiccated bones, all jumbled about and knotted together in a crazy quilt of disarray.

Stone grunted in surprise. He reached forward; thought better of it; donned another latex glove, and then dipped a hand into the material.

"What is all that?" Logan asked.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Stone replied after a minute. "It's hemp."

Rush leaned forward, plucked a piece from the jumble with a pair of forceps, examined it with his flashlight. "You're right."

Nodding to Valentino's men, Stone began removing handfuls of the ancient plant stalks from the chest--first gingerly, then in larger and larger amounts, until it littered the floor of chamber three. As the material was disturbed, thin clouds of organic dust rose, and an odd scent--like that of a five-thousand-year-old harvest--rose to Logan's nostrils.

Embedded within the bundles of hemp were two bags, each slightly larger than a basketball, formed from strands of gold so tightly and expertly woven that they were as pliable as silk. Gently--gently--Stone freed them from the surrounding hemp and placed them on the floor before the plinth.

Once again, without speaking, the group closed in. Logan looked at the two roundish objects gleaming in the beams of a half-dozen flashlights. In his mind's eye, he saw within them the twin crowns of Egypt: the white, conical crown of upper Egypt, spotless and gleaming; the red crown of lower Egypt, high peaked and aggressive. What were they made of? Painted gold? Some unknown or unexpected alloy? What magic did they wield? He felt almost beside himself with eagerness to see what was inside those soft folds of woven gold. Two bundles. There was no longer any question: these were the double crowns of the first pharaoh of Egypt. What else would Narmer have guarded so jealously, so carefully, and at such great cost--not only to himself but to his legacy?

Stone appeared seized with a similar urgency. He picked up one of the golden bags, loosened its end, and--with a brief look around at the others--reached in and gently pulled out its contents.

What emerged was not a crown but something very different: a bowl-shaped implement, made apparently of white marble, trailing long gold filaments from its edge.

There was a murmur of surprise and dismay from the onlookers.

Stone frowned. He stared at the thing for a moment, uncomprehending, and then placed it aside atop its golden bag and--more quickly this time--thrust his hand into the second.

What he pulled out of this bag was even stranger: a construction of red enamel, topped by an iron rod that itself was surrounded by a curled sheet of copper. Logan, stunned, leaned forward, peering closely. The iron rod leading away from the enamel construction was sealed with a stopper of what appeared to be bitumen. They looked precisely like the images in the wall painting in chamber one.

These were not crowns. These could be called nothing else but--devices.

Stone stared blankly at the red-colored thing in his right hand. Then he picked up the white marble object in his left. As the group watched in silence, he looked from one, to the other, and then back again.

"What the h.e.l.l?" he croaked.

49.

In the rearmost of the three examination rooms of the Station's small medical suite, Jennifer Rush moved restlessly on the bed where she'd been placed for observation. The room was dimly lit, and the lone nurse who had been monitoring her had sneaked out of the suite--Jennifer's vitals had fallen into normal REM sleep, and the nurse was unwilling to miss a hairdressing reservation. All was still except for the low, infrequent blinking and bleating of the surrounding medical instruments.

Jennifer stirred again. She took in a deep, shuddering breath. For a moment, she fell still. And then--for the first time in more than thirty hours--her eyes fluttered open. She looked at the ceiling, her gaze vague, unfocused. Then--after another minute--she struggled to sit up.

"Ethan?" she called out, her voice hoa.r.s.e.

In the low light, with the surrounding forest of tiny lights and digital readouts, the room seemed strange, almost exotic: a mosaic of red and yellow and green, as if the G.o.ds had laid a skein of jewels across a night sky, transforming normally white stars into brilliant colors. Jennifer blinked, then blinked again, uncomprehending. And then her gaze fell on something familiar: the ancient silver amulet, left hanging by Ethan Rush on its chain from a nearby monitor.

Jennifer's brow furrowed.

The amulet showed a crude depiction of one of the most famous scenes of Egyptian mythology: Isis, having a.s.sembled the fragments of the dead and butchered Osiris, reanimating his body through a magical spell and transforming him into the G.o.d of the underworld.

The amulet gleamed fitfully in the lambent light of the instrumentation. As she stared, Jennifer's body grew increasing rigid. Her breathing slowly became more shallow and ragged. Suddenly--with a faint expelling sigh, like air escaping from a bellows--her jaw sagged, her pupils rolled up into her head, and she collapsed back onto the bed.

Ten, or perhaps fifteen, minutes pa.s.sed in which the examination room remained silent. And then Jennifer Rush sat up again. She took a shallow, exploratory breath, followed by a deeper one. She closed her eyes, opened them again. Then she licked her lips gently, almost experimentally.

And then--with a single, mechanical motion--she swung her legs over the side of the bed and let her feet slip to the cold, tiled floor.

She took a step forward, hesitated, stepped forward again. The pulse-oximeter clamp brushed against the nearest bank of instruments and fell away from her little finger. She reached up, felt the network of leads attached to her neck and forehead, and pulled them away like so many cobwebs. Then she looked around. Her eyes were cloudy but nevertheless focused.

The door lay ahead. She made for it, then stopped, her progress once again arrested. This time the culprit was the intravenous line, running from the saline bag to the catheter. Jennifer tried walking forward again, watched the saline rack tip forward; glanced along the IV line to her wrist; then grasped the catheter and pulled it roughly from her vein.

This time, when she moved toward the exit, there were no further difficulties.

Leaving the medical suite and stepping into the central hallway of Red, she glanced first left, then right. The corridor was empty: most off-duty personnel were either in their quarters or in the public rooms, eagerly awaiting word from chamber three.

Jennifer hesitated in the doorway for a moment, perhaps getting her bearings, perhaps simply regaining her equilibrium. Then she turned left and proceeded down the hall. At the first intersection, she turned right. Her eyes remained cloudy, and her gait was halting--like somebody who had been off her feet for a long, long time--but as she walked her gait improved, her breathing became more and more regular.

She stopped at a door marked HAZARDOUS MATERIALS STORAGE. EXPLOSIVE AND HIGHLY VOLATILE--ACCESS RESTRICTED. She turned the k.n.o.b, found it locked. But the ident.i.ty card around her neck--so crisp, so light, such a shiny shade of blue--slid easily through the reader beside the door; the lock sprang open; and she slipped into the room and out of sight.

50.

Chamber three had fallen into a shocked, confused silence. As Logan watched, Porter Stone slowly sank to his knees before the large onyx chest--whether from weariness or disappointment, or some other emotion, he couldn't be sure. Wordlessly, Stone let the two objects slip to the floor.

Logan peered around the chamber, its black surfaces gleaming dimly in the reflected glow of the flashlights. He glanced at the bundles of ancient hemp, scattered around the floor in a corona of disarray. He glanced at the low bed at the rear of the chamber, almost too faint to make out, with its once-beautiful coverlet and pillow. He glanced at the gold-framed table, covered with carefully arranged papyri. He glanced at the small golden boxes, once sealed but now spilling their contents: curlings of copper, a spike of meteoric iron, filaments of gold. Finally, his eye came to rest on the two devices--he could think of no other word for them--that sat beside Stone: the white, bowl-like implement and the concave apparatus covered in red enamel. They rested upon the bags of woven gold that had held them: five-thousand-year-old enigmas, practically daring the onlookers to pa.r.s.e their secrets.

It all seemed impossibly strange.

From the beginning, everything about Narmer's tomb had been unusual. It had been similar to those of the kings who had followed him centuries later--and yet, in many ways, so very unlike. His mummy had been found in the second, not the third, chamber: reason dictated the final chamber would contain something even more critical, even more important, for the afterlife. And yet, as Logan glanced around at the scrolls and bits of metal, he could not begin to imagine what it was.

He stared down again at the two devices. One red, and one white--just like the old crowns of upper and lower Egypt.

"Crowns," he murmured.

His was the first voice to break the silence. A half-dozen heads swiveled toward him. Stone's was not among them.

"Yes?" Stone murmured, his back to Logan.

"Those two devices. We know that, whatever they are, they're meant to be worn on the head. After all, that's the depiction in the painting, back in chamber one."

Stone didn't answer. He merely shook his head.

"There's nothing else they can be but crowns," Logan went on. "They're red and white--the proper colors. They even vaguely resemble the elements of the double crown, based on the depictions we've all seen."

"These aren't crowns," Stone said. His voice was low, distant. "These are the tinkerings of a mad king, indulged by his priests: toys, nothing more. No wonder his descendants broke with his ways."

"They're bizarre, I admit," Logan said. "They're not crowns in any decorative or stylized sense. But they must have value--and great value, at that. Otherwise, why place them in the most holy chamber of the tomb? Why seal them in enclosures of such magnificence? Why set such a terrible curse upon them?"

"Because Narmer went insane," Stone said bitterly. "I should have guessed it. Why else would he have himself buried out here, in this G.o.dforsaken place, many miles from his own kingdom? Why break with a tradition that would endure for a thousand years?"

"Narmer was the tradition," Dr. Rush said quietly. "It was those who followed that broke with him--not the other way around."

During this exchange, Tina Romero had returned to the gold-framed table and was again glancing from one papyrus to another with rapt concentration. All at once she straightened, turned back to the group. "I think I understand," she said.

All eyes swiveled toward her.

"I've said before that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs were interested in near-death experience," she went on. "What they called the 'second region of night.' But if I understand these texts, they were more than just interested. It seems they--or at least Narmer--practiced them as well."

"What are you saying?" Stone asked. "How can you practice a near-death experience?"

"I'm simply telling you what the scrolls tell me," she replied, lifting a papyrus as if to hammer home her point. "Again and again, ib is mentioned here. Ib--the ancient Egyptian word for heart. The Egyptians believed it was the heart, not the brain, that was the seat of knowledge, emotion, thought. The heart was the key to the soul, critical to surviving into the afterlife. But ib, as written in these texts, isn't being discussed in religious terms. It's described in more like ..." She hesitated, searching for the right word. "More like clinical terms." She put down the scroll. "I said before these read more like instructions than incantations."

"Instructions?" Stone said, his voice dripping with skepticism. "Instructions for what?"

This was met by a brief silence.

"It sounds like a paradox." Logan turned to Romero. "You say the ancient Egyptians believed the heart was critical for surviving in the next world."

Romero nodded. "Once in the netherworld, the pharaoh's heart would have been inspected, tested by Anubis, in a ceremony known as the Weighing of the Heart. At least, that was the belief of later Egyptians."

"But death occurs when the heart stops. How could a stopped heart be of any use to Narmer in the next--" Logan paused abruptly. "Wait. What was it you said earlier? You said that this entire tomb seemed to be almost a rehearsal for Narmer's death, for his pa.s.sage to the next world. A dry run, so to speak. Right?"

Romero nodded.

Logan looked from her, to the contents of the tomb, and then back to her again. All of a sudden--with a flash like a thunderstroke--he understood.

"Oh, my G.o.d," he whispered. "The Baghdad Battery."

For a moment, n.o.body moved. Then--as slowly as he had dropped to his knees--Stone stood up again, turned, and faced Logan.

"Just before the Second World War," Logan continued, "some artifacts were found in a village just outside Baghdad. The artifacts were very old, and their purpose was unclear. A terracotta pot; a copper sheet in the shape of a cylinder, topped by an iron rod. A few others. They were ignored until the director of Iraq's National Museum stumbled onto them in the museum's collections. He published a paper theorizing that these artifacts--when properly filled with citric acid, or vinegar, or some other liquid capable of generating electrolytic voltage--originally functioned as a primitive galvanic cell. A battery."

Everyone remained silent, all eyes on Logan.

"I've heard of all this," Stone said. "That battery was small, weak, perhaps used for the ceremonial electroplating of objects."

"True," Logan said. "It was weak. But it didn't have to be."

"Jesus." Romero pointed to the objects sitting at Stone's feet. "Are you implying--"

Carefully, Logan picked up the red-enameled object, topped by the iron rod and the curled piece of copper. Next, he picked up the bowl-shaped marble object, the long filaments of gold trailing. Very gingerly, he placed the red device atop the white one. They fit together perfectly.

"The double crown," Romero said.

"Exactly," Logan said. "But a 'crown' with a very special--even divine--purpose. Note the elements it is composed of. Copper. Iron. Gold. Add lemon juice or vinegar, and you'd have a battery--but potentially much stronger than the one found buried in Mesopotamia."

"That urn in the corner," Romero said. "It smelled like vinegar."

"And those gold filaments," Dr. Rush added. "You're guessing they could serve as ... electrodes?"

"Yes," Logan said. "Properly placed on the chest, they could be used to stop the heart."

"Stop the heart," Stone repeated. "A dress rehearsal for death."

"Perhaps more than one rehearsal," Logan said. "Look at the extra materials stored in those golden boxes."

Stone held out his hands. Logan carefully pa.s.sed over the crown apparatus.

"A dress rehearsal for death," Stone repeated. He gave the crown a brief, almost loving caress.

"It might be even more than that," Romero said. "Remember the tremendous importance the ancient Egyptians placed on the heart. By stopping the heart--and then restarting it--it might not only be a preparation for King Narmer, but a validation of his divinity as well."

"Of course," said Stone. "A way to establish, prove, his divinity--and the divinity of his line."

Logan looked at the expedition director. Over the last few minutes, Stone's voice had grown a little more excited, his movements a little more animated. True, this discovery was no jewel-encrusted crown--but in some ways it was even more remarkable.

"And that would explain why the 'crowns' were kept here," Romero said. "In the most sacred and secret place in the tomb, the holy of holies. It explains why such a dreadful curse was placed on the third gate. Narmer must have feared that, if anyone else were to get his hands on the crown--if anyone else were to experiment with making the journey to the next world--he might gain his power, perhaps even supplant him ... both in this world and the next."