Behind them were their litters and two dozen guards and servants who had accompanied them. Even so, this was a casual outing, a simple trip to check on the progress of the pyramid. There had a been a huge ceremony, weeks before, to commemorate pouring of the first block.
Beyond the scaffolding, the plateau slid downward to the Nile, filled with ships. On the other side was Memphis.
The Captain had built a pyramid for Snefru some fifteen miles to the south of this new pyramid. Though smaller in scale, it had the same proportions as the one now being constructed and had been the Captain’s “pilot” structure. The Egyptians had a predilection for large burial monuments, and the Captain had obliged Snefru’s wishes and gained building experience by creating that first pyramid. Though it served no useful purpose, the Captain was proud of it as a structure. Its limestone casing had a beautiful red cast, especially in the light of late afternoon.
The current pyramid, however, would stand out as an object of worship and pride for countless generations. He would encase it in white limestone. This would serve the dual purposes of making it perfectly geometrical and extraordinarily beautiful. He could already envision the limestone gleaming in the hot desert sun, visible for hundreds of miles.
It would truly be an impressive structure, a stone beacon capable of surviving almost any physical cataclysm and still carrying out its duty. The mechanisms of the transponder would be cast out of the Engineer’s metalrock substance and housed within the stone around the central chamber. It would need no powersource of its own. Vibrations hitting it would provide energy enough to stir it to action.
He had chosen this location for the pyramid because it was on a plateau within fifty miles of the sleepers’ cave. Those had been the requirements of the Engineer.
“Father, they are starting,” Khufu said.
At the center of the foundation, workers were pouring a new block. After ten minutes, the thin crystal mold was removed, leaving what looked like a quarried block of brown granite. The Captain nodded, pleased. Soon he would order full crews of several thousand to work on the project day and night until completion. He had given his promise to the Engineer that he would erect this relay station. Despite all that had changed in the Captain’s life, he intended to keep his promise out of respect for that man.
His determination with regard to the construction was more than that, however. In the part of his mind that held onto something of his former identity, that of Captain, decorated Herrod military pilot and leader of a scientific survey mission, he knew that this building was created for a simple communications purpose. In the rest of him, though, it had taken on a new significance. He was Osiris. He was the god incarnate. Whether or not he had been born as such was irrelevant. As he had once said to his wife, what was a god but someone who inspires those around him? By that definition, he had more than adequately proved his divinity, even to himself.
He was aging, but wasn’t that appropriate for a god who had taken human form? To those from Herrod, he possessed no supernatural powers. Here, however, his knowledge of the physical world and how to manipulate it gave him godlike abilities in the eyes of those around him. As the god, he thought of the pyramid differently. It would cement his role as the center of Egyptian religion.
“Your genius at work, my lord and father,” Khufu said, looking at the molded block.
The boy was excited, and why not? The Captain had told him that this would be Khufu’s monument, the symbol of the first pharaoh with divine blood running in his veins.
“Where will it land?” Khufu asked.
“What, my son?”
“The divine barque. The ship that will bear us away.” For this was the story that had grown up in the Captain’s mind and spilled over into his son. Instead of a Kinley rescue ship coming to retrieve the sleepers, he now described a heavenly ship of gods that would bear away all the divine and deserving. A fraction of the Captain’s being knew this was not true, but he no longer cared. What he invented came to pass.
“The divine barque will land in the vicinity of the pyramid that calls it,” he said.
Khufu’s handsome young face became pensive as he scanned the plateau, trying to pick out a likely landing site. “I fear I will not be let aboard,” he said thoughtfully, after several moments.
“Why do you say that?”
“I have thought this through, Father. I am only a half-breed. My mother, the Lady Hetepheres, though noble, is no god.”
“Let me tell you a secret, Khufu,” the Captain said, moving closer so only his son could hear him. “Hetepheres is your human mother who bore you from her womb. She deserves all the honor due to a queen and the mother of a god. But your true mother, your spiritual mother, is Isis, my wife. I have hinted it to you many times, but perhaps it is better that I state it outright. You are our son. You are the incarnation of Horus.”
“But my half brother—he is called Horus as well.”
“The Lion does not deserve that name,” the Captain said slowly. The problem of how to explain his older son—a problem that had grown more pressing in recent years—suddenly resolved itself. In legend, Osiris had a brother named Seth, a traitor who plotted against Osiris and murdered him in cold blood. Seth was the embodiment of betrayal and evil. What if the Lion was not truly his son? What if the Lion were his brother instead? That would destroy his credibility and clear the way for Khufu to assume the role of Horus. “The Lion is not my son, in truth,” the Captain said, after a few moments. He was committing himself to this course, and it felt right. “In another lifetime, I took him as a son, yes. He is, in reality, my younger brother. He is the one called Seth, the one who feels jealousy when he should feel love. In my love for him, I adopted him as my own. But he has failed in demonstrating his respect and loyalty, and he is no longer fit for that role.”
Khufu considered these words and studied himself. “I am honored by what you say, Father. But I do not know if I feel the holiness of a god. Perhaps I am also not worthy of being your son.”
The Captain laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled gently. “That you question your fitness is a sign of worthiness. You will grow to be the man I know you are. Have no doubts, Son.”
“Thank you, Father.”
From the scaffolding, they watched for several hours as more blocks were placed and the pyramid was slowly, slowly taking shape before them.
CHAPTER 42
Present Day
In a small room in a business hotel in the heart of Cairo’s commercial district, the Engineer lay on the bed, his eyes closed. His wife sat at a small table at one corner of the room, watching the unmoving dot that represented the Mechanic on the monitor they had brought from the cave. The Doctor did no more than glance at the monitor every few minutes, for the Mechanic had remained at his current location—another Cairo hotel—for some time. From small motions on the monitor, they could see him moving about his suite of rooms, but he had not ventured out of the hotel in three days. Thankfully, the signal from the Mechanic’s tracer was clear from his present location.
Pruit and Eddie were waiting for the Mechanic to move, waiting for him to give some indication that he had struck a deal and would be handing over the manuals. But there had been no motion since the day Pruit had been captured.
The room was a gaudy mix of polished white marble and gold- and silver-colored fabrics. From the windows, there was a view of the Nile River, a broad brown waterway bracketed by roads and crossed by dozens of wide bridges. Out on the water, modern feluccas plied up and down the river, their triangular sails adorned with advertisements for sodas and laundry detergents. On either side of the river were ugly high-rises whose busy geometrical forms stood out next to minarets and old churches.
Cairo was one of the most highly populated metropolitan areas on Earth, and on this warm day, the polluted air of the city seemed to hang over the packed cars on the roads.
The Doctor was studying an Earth atlas, her eyes wandering through pictures of natives
from every part of the world. It was an odd thing to see the planet she had lived on for several years, in its cultural childhood, suddenly grown up and at the verge of advancing into the universe. It was hard to feel that she was in the same place, yet the location of their old survey camp was less than fifty miles from this hotel.
The television was on with the sound low, for the Engineer often liked to watch it. Unheard by the occupants of the room at the moment, a newswoman reported cases of miraculous recovery from the Ebola virus. Infected villages were coming back to life throughout Central Africa.
On the bed, the Engineer was not asleep. He was holding himself still in an effort to get his thoughts to do the same. His wife and those two others were chasing after the Mechanic. They were chasing him to get something. He should be able to help them. There was something he knew, or once had known, that would make all of this so much easier.
He brought his hands to his forehead and pressed gently. His thoughts faded in and out without pattern. There was the Mechanic…There was the Lion…Ah, the Lion, a great and loyal friend…And the Lion’s father and mother…There was something bad about them, a feeling of sadness and confusion. There was a ship and a shaking and a cave, and it was all disconnected, and he was not even in the center of it; he was standing off somewhere looking at these thoughts as they blew by in a gale.
He lost himself again. It took several moments to remember the room and his wife.
There was a knock on the door, and his wife got up to let Eddie in. Yes, Eddie, he remembered that young man’s name. Eddie leaned over the table and examined the little rectangular screen his wife had been looking at. They began talking, though the words meant nothing to the Engineer.
“Any motion yet?” Eddie asked.
“No, not yet.”
“How’s your husband?”
“Much the same,” she said, her voice toneless.
Eddie squeezed her shoulder. “Here, I brought you some lunch.” He set down the bag he’d been carrying. “Fresh fish from across the street.”
“Thanks, Eddie.”
He nodded and withdrew from the room.
When he had gone, the Engineer forced his body up onto unsteady feet. The Doctor turned and smiled at him. He came up beside his wife and dropped heavily to his knees. He grasped the monitoring device with both hands and shook it, willing himself to remember the significance of what he knew.
“We’re monitoring the Mechanic,” the Doctor said patiently.
The Engineer stared at the monitor, then back to his wife. He saw something in his own mind, something that almost made sense. He reached for it, but it was already gone. With a cry of anguish, he buried his head in his wife’s lap.
The Doctor leaned over, hugging him.
“It’s all right,” she said softly. “It’s all right.”
But it was far from all right.
In the next room, Eddie walked in to find Pruit lying on the bed, a blanket draped over her. Her eyes were closed. She had been ensconced in her fullsuit day and night for three days, emerging only a single hour in every twenty-four to stretch and test her body and force herself to eat.
Eddie sat down on the bed next to her, and her eyes came open.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. The bruises on her face and neck were gone. She looked tired but almost normal.
“Better,” she said weakly. She nodded to her shoulder and he moved the blanket to look at the knife wound. It was still an ugly purple. He ran a finger lightly over it, and she winced. “Still sore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I feel almost well. The Mechanic?”
“Nothing yet. He hasn’t moved. Do you want water? Something to eat?”
“I should, but I don’t feel like it right now.”
He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I’ll get you water.” He brought her a glass and helped her sit up to drink. When she had taken several small sips, she shook her head, and he put the glass aside. She rested an arm on his leg, and he held her other hand. Their motions with each other had become much more intimate after the hospital.
Eddie felt the warmth of her hand lying along his thigh. He gently lifted it and kissed her palm.
“I miss you while you’re in that suit.”
She studied his face and touched his cheek with her palm. In the half-sleep of her suit, she had dreamed about him. “I know,” she whispered. She said it softly, and both of them knew that things between them were different.
“You know?” he asked quietly, looking down at her.
“Yes.”
Pruit gently pulled him toward her. “Eddie…”
Their lips met, and it was clear to both of them that they needed this contact, that the last weeks had been building to this in a way neither of them had quite predicted. They began to kiss each other, very gently at first, then more deeply.
Pruit did not know when she had begun thinking of Eddie romantically. Was it that night in the cave when he had comforted her? Was it later, when he had saved her from the doctors at the hospital? She did not know the exact moment, but she knew that it was right. There was something peaceful about Eddie, and she felt pleasure in his presence. His life had been so different from hers. He had never borne the weight of his planet, of his race. There was an innate happiness in him that she could not understand, but which nonetheless made her happy to be near. And he was dedicated to her. That much she knew.
They broke away from each other and smiled for a moment at the pleasant realization that human kisses spanned cultures and worlds and were the same for both of them.
Eddie moved the blanket aside, and his lips were on her body. She was pulling his shirt off, and the heat of their bodies against each other was blissful.
“Do you want this as much as I do?” he whispered in her ear.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He moved carefully, and she could feel the length of his warm body on top of her. Then he was making love to her, gently and passionately, and Pruit had tears in her eyes at the intense pleasure of their union. It was somehow sad and strange and perfect and right.
Later, they showered and made love again, and then they lay in bed together, her head on his chest and his arms around her.
Eddie was in the grip of an epiphany that had started when he pulled Pruit from that filthy hospital and had only now reached its full magnitude. Something in him had altered its basic structure, and he no longer felt himself a disinterested observer of life. When he was with Pruit, he had a sense of the infinite and felt that he himself was part of it.
“Do you remember your past lives?” he asked her quietly.
She could hear his voice vibrating through his chest, a pleasant, intimate sound. She lifted her head up and looked at him. Her reddish hair was tousled, and her face looked tired. Eddie thought she was beautiful. “Why?”
“I just…want to know.”
“I remember some things,” she said. “Not everything.”
“Like what?”
“It’s like early childhood. There are long stretches of nothing and then a few very bright and clear images.”
“Tell me.”
She thought back, scanning through ancient memories. There were so many, and they had always been there, even when she was a child, a record of herself through countless incarnations. It was taken for granted, when she grew up, that everyone would have such memories. But on Earth such self-knowledge was not accepted by many religions. She could see Eddie reaching for understanding.
Her face changed as she found the memory she would share, became distant. “I remember the caves, before we built the dome,” she said slowly. “I could feel the radiation getting to me. We could all feel it. We were dying. For months and months we were dying. My jaw ached, and my stomach was cramped, and my bones were turning to dust. We were eating anything we could chew…
“Later, maybe hundreds of years later, I remember the struggle to keep babies alive. There wa
s a long stretch when we really were in danger of becoming extinct. The lab breeding wasn’t working very well. The mortality rate was so high…I remember holding a baby as it died. For several minutes after birth he was fine, and then his organs simply didn’t work.” Her eyes became wet as Eddie watched her. “He just died, and I held him and I cried, thinking why does it have to be so hard?
“I remember a scouting mission. We had a ship that could travel in space, but it was so slow. It could barely crawl out of the atmosphere. The Lucien had quarantined us, and we were sent to run the blockade…I was a man then, too short, but very handsome…” She smiled; then the smile faded. “They shot us, three shots that nicked the hull, then a direct hit. Their ships were so much better…I remember the fire billowing through the tiny room. I was dying, and I thought, ‘You haven’t won, you won’t win…’” As she said this, her face took on the austere, determined look Eddie had seen many times before. “You won’t win,” she whispered again.
She shook her head and looked at Eddie, her eyes slowly coming back to the present. “There are more, but those stand out.”
He put his hands gently on her face. “Pruit, I love you.” He had not intended the words, but they formed regardless.
She looked down at him, his handsome face turned toward her, his body lying against hers. It was good to hear that he loved her, but she could not return the sentiment. She cared for him very much, but “I love you” was something she had only said to Niks. She let her head rest on his chest and kissed him there. “Why?”
“Because you’re the girl who never gives up.”
“There’s no choice.”
“Will you take me with you when you confront the Mechanic?”
“Yes.” She said it without hesitating. He had come after her when Jean-Claude took her. He had hunted the city, then saved her from the hospital. He deserved her trust, and if he was willing to be her partner in this mission, she would gladly take him with her.