The Mechanic let out a low whistle. The royal train was an awe-inspiring sight.
Slowly, the procession came up to the dais, close enough that the litters were a mere fifty feet away. The bearers finished their chant and were silent. The crowds stood well back. The line of patients remained where it was, but no one approached the dais. With some signal from within the litter, the servants drew back the linen hangings and revealed the form of King Snefru within. He was a modest-looking man, with a folded kerchief over his natural hair. Rising up from his forehead was a jeweled cobra, clearly a sign of his rank. On his chin was the false beard, which the Captain had heard was worn by all Egyptian kings during important or ceremonial events.
A moment later, the linen on the second litter was removed. Within was a woman in her late twenties, apparently the queen. She was slender and beautiful, with long black hair, natural hair, that hung about her shoulders and over her breasts. Her large eyes were outlined with kohl, which made them enormous and dark. She wore a band of colored stones around her forehead, which set off the honey brown of her skin.
As a body, the people in the square went down on hands and knees and touched their heads to the ground. The king made a small gesture indicating that he accepted their prostration. Then his eyes turned to the Captain. The Captain met his gaze, then bowed, bending at the waist and lowering his head. His wife and the Mechanic followed suit. Their bows were respectful, but not prostrating.
One of the three official figures standing in front of the litters stepped forward and addressed the crowd with a well-trained voice.
“His majesty acknowledges your presence. You may stand.”
Carefully, the crowds got back to their feet, and the three on the dais unbent. The official turned to his king, and the king signaled again. The man turned to the dais and approached. When he was within easy speaking distance, he addressed the Captain.
“His glorious majesty wishes you to continue your work here. He will watch.”
“We are most honored by his presence,” the Captain said, bowing again. The official did not bother to repeat this. Perhaps the Captain’s sentiment was too obvious to be committed to words.
“Let’s continue,” the Archaeologist said.
The Captain gestured calmly to his workers, and they continued their ministrations with good success. The third patient to be brought up, however, was someone the Captain recognized. It was a young man with dirty hair and a childish face who had been out to see them at the camp.
“We’ve seen this one before,” he said to his wife, shielding the translator. “Twice.” He remembered him well. The boy had been out to the camp to seek help for a swollen foot that had threatened to become gangrenous. The Doctor herself had tended to the boy and told him to bathe the foot three times a day in the herbs she had given him. On the boy’s next visit, the Captain had seen him and had reiterated the order. Now the boy was back, and it was clear he had not been taking care of the foot. The swelling was worse, and there were several black veins running along the inside of his arch. The flesh had begun to smell putrid.
With their limited supplies, there was little they could do for gangrene. And with the king’s eye upon him, the Captain was irritated. He could not cure this boy.
“You’ve see us before,” the Captain said to the boy as he examined the foot.
“Yes,” the boy responded. He was leaning heavily on a cane. He wore a loose, light robe, in the fashion of old men, that had been cut short so it would not touch his foot.
“You haven’t followed our orders.” The Captain’s voice was a little bit sharp. He did not want this boy’s carelessness to be attributed to the survey team’s lack of skill. Down below, he saw the conversation being relayed to the king.
The boy looked sheepish and shrugged his shoulders.
“You fix it,” he said.
The boy’s attitude annoyed the Captain further. As he looked closely, he could see that gangrene had, indeed, settled in the foot, and amputation would be needed. The boy was crippling himself for life with such carelessness, wasting the limited time of the crew, and most importantly, at this very moment, making the Captain look bad.
“You could die from that foot very soon,” he said, his voice rising slightly. “We will have to cut it off to save you.”
Grimly, the Archaeologist nodded her agreement.
The diagnosis shocked the boy, and he shook his head, whispering, “No…”
“What do you expect when you don’t keep it clean?” the Captain continued. “It would have been simple to fix it a month ago.”
“You can fix it,” the boy muttered. The Captain was omnipotent, was he not?
“We are not here to perform magic on your body! We offer help, but only if you will follow our orders and tend to the wound.”
“You can fix it,” the boy muttered again, somewhat petulantly, as though the Captain were refusing to heal the foot on principle.
“I can’t fix it now!” the Captain said, provoked to raising his voice. He saw the king listening; he saw the crowd staring up at him. “Do you understand? We will amputate the foot, or you will die. It’s too late!”
“You fix it!” the boy said desperately.
“It’s too late!” the Captain said, almost yelling. “Too late!” And then, as his voice rose in anger, it happened.
There was a deep, loud rumbling beneath his feet. As he watched, the far end of the plaza heaved upward impossibly, the earth itself rising. The paving bricks surged up, carrying people with them in a great, rolling wave. All around the square, the market stalls began to crumble, falling on top of people who were stumbling to hold their balance. The earth roared. The Captain watched as one of the gates into the square collapsed in upon itself and fell to the ground, crushing dozens of people beneath it.
The jars of medicinals rattled on their crate and jumped off of it, shattering on the bricks below, spattering onto the soldiers and the official who stood by the dais. The king was gripping his litter. The bearers were tottering, but somehow, through force of numbers, holding on. The queen’s litter fell, and she landed roughly on the ground.
Behind the dais hung the upper story of a nobleman’s house. The Captain turned to see several large clumps of brick work themselves free of the structure and come flying down toward his wife. He grabbed the sleeve of her shirt and pulled her aside as they passed inches from her head. The blocks hit the dais with a crash that was drowned in the general thunder of the ground. The Mechanic had fallen to his knees.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the wave stopped. There were several moments of minor tremor, but these calmed quickly, leaving the earth still. The Captain and his wife stood holding each other on what was left of the dais. The marketplace was a shambles. Stalls had collapsed on their owners; wares had fallen and scattered. People were crawling from the rubble, searching for children, or staring numbly at the destruction. Many had been trampled beneath frantic feet.
The crowd in the square was now milling about, helping the injured or crying out for the dead. All around the perimeter buildings had crumbled, setting off avalanches of bricks and wood. From where he stood, the Captain could see scores of bodies beneath rubble.
It was a miracle he and his wife had been unscathed. Down below, servants and soldiers were scrambling to help the queen off of the ground. She stood shakily, but was not seriously injured.
“Look,” the Archaeologist said.
He followed her eyes and saw that the masonry that had so narrowly missed her had found another target. The boy with the gangrenous foot lay crushed beneath a pile of bricks, only one arm and one leg visible. His cane had been knocked free and lay a few feet off.
“Sweet Mother,” the Captain cursed. And then he saw that the natives were looking at him. They had stopped their movements and stood with eyes fixed in his direction.
An older man in the long yellow robe of a priest said loudly, “Attend, the god is angry!”
All
eyes were on the Captain now. Even the king and the queen were staring at him.
The priest slowly sank to his knees, placing his hands on the ground in a sign of worship. The Captain watched as, one by one, the others in the square did the same. Only the king and queen and their attendants did not bow, though some of the servants looked as though they felt they should.
The Captain’s eyes were drawn to the queen. She was standing near her broken litter, looking up at him. Slowly, the corners of her mouth twitched up into a smile.
CHAPTER 9
2606 BC
Year 1 of Kinley Earth Survey
Twenty miles away, long past the last mud huts in the outlying towns and beyond the border of fertile land, in the desert that lay between the Nile and the Red Sea, was the survey team camp. The camp was a small town of its own. Its buildings were varicolored fabric tents with crystalline ribs holding them up, a cheerful arrangement against the stark desert. Each member of the team had a small tent as living quarters, and each scientific discipline, such as geology, mineralogy, medicine, zoology, etc., had a work tent.
The living tents, arranged in concentric rings, were quite pleasant inside. The walls provided excellent insulation from heat and cold, while allowing in fresh air and plenty of light during the daytime. At night, built-in lamps filled the tents with a mellow glow. Each was equipped with a refrigerator and a sanitary latrine. They were almost luxurious, considering their setting.
A few hundred feet from the edge of the camp were the tents and crude mud huts of the workers, which had been thrown up haphazardly by their occupants. These were men and women who had come to see the magic ones and had stayed to work. The huts were built of mud bricks, like all dwellings in Egypt, and a typical hut contained a small court of paved stones, with a few rooms behind it, including a small bedroom and a tiny kitchen. A canopy was usually thrown up over the court to provide shade. Others had tents of coarse linen, which they had brought with them from the towns and cities. These too had awnings propped up in front of them. In the early evening, when all work had been done and dinner was over, the workers would sit under their canopies and chat, drinking beer or tea and enjoying the evening breezes.
On the other side of the camp was the shuttle, a sleek vehicle with a pearlescent hide that stood upright on its back thrusters, ready to leap into the sky. It was a simple fusion drive craft, which had been nestled into the hull of the mother ship during the journey to Earth. Upon arrival, it had been used to ferry the team from the Champion’s landing site to the campsite. They would ultimately use it to travel all over the world, when their research in Egypt was done. But it was a precious vehicle, with few replacement parts, and they did not use it unless absolutely necessary. It was an object of some awe to the locals, some of whom had been caught making offerings to it late at night.
On this afternoon, the Lion, son of the Captain and the Archaeologist, sat at a large wooden folding table in front of the shuttle, eating cold soup, flatbread, and local beans and making notes in his log. He had lately been studying a herd of antelope that were migrating south.
His name had not always been the Lion. Originally, he had been the Zoologist, for this was his profession. The Lion was a name given to him by the natives. He was over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and incredibly strong arms, built from years of studying and handling animals. His blond hair fell to his shoulders and framed a wide, handsome face, darkened by the sun, but free of wrinkles, for he was still in his twenties. The dark-haired natives had seen an obvious resemblance to a lion, and the name stuck. Soon the crew, and even his parents, had begun to call him Lion as well.
Near the table was the Engineer, who had set up an outdoor testing station for one of his current projects. On the table near the Lion were several dozen data crystals, ranged neatly according to some system the Lion could not decipher. Next to them was a large crystal reader, the Engineer’s special reader, which was, he often bragged, at least three times as fast at finding information as any of the other readers in camp.
At the moment, the Engineer was assembling a box of some sort, using crystal sheets for the sides and soldering them together with a hand tool. He took frequent breaks to run back to the table and study something else in the reader. The Lion finished his lunch while watching the Engineer’s frenetic motions with some amusement.
“What are you doing after lunch?” the Engineer asked as he jotted something down while his eyes were pressed to the eyepieces of the crystal reader.
“I have a feeling I’m going to be helping you,” the Lion said.
“How very right you are.” The Engineer laughed. “Hand me that blue crystal, will you?”
The Lion stood up, pushing his dishes safely to the center of the table, and examined the crystals. “Engineer, there are at least twenty blue ones here.”
The Engineer made a sound of mock exasperation and removed his eyes from the reader, then grabbed the correct crystal, without even appearing to look at his choices. “Really, Lion, if you’re going to help me, you’ll have to be quicker than that.”
The Lion laughed. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Ah, that’s it. Right there.” He scribbled a formula down, then moved back to the box he was making. The Lion moved over with him. Near the box was a small cauldron with some kind of liquid within it. Around the cauldron were several sacks of mineral powders of different colors and a large piece of rock.
“What exactly are you doing?” the Lion asked.
The Engineer smiled. “I’m being very clever.” He was mixing several of the mineral powders into the liquid, measuring each.
As he worked, a woman approached them from the workers’ huts. She was covered in blood, and her short, curly hair was disheveled.
“Your wife, Engineer,” the Lion said softly.
The Engineer looked up immediately and caught sight of his wife, the Doctor.
“Stir this for me, would you, Lion?” he said, handing him a spatula and making a stirring gesture. “Keep adding the red stuff slowly until the measuring cup is empty.”
The Lion complied, and the Engineer met his wife as she approached. She was pulling skintight surgical gloves off of her hands, and she looked exhausted.
“Two deliveries,” she said, wadding up the gloves and tucking them into the blue smock she wore, which was purple with blood. She pulled the smock off as well. She was petite, with olive skin, dark-brown hair, and green eyes. Though her face was not especially beautiful, something about the whole of her was intelligent and attractive.
“How are the babies?”
She ran a hand through her hair and smiled. “They’re fine. One was breach, but I got him out all right. Had to open the mother, but she’s fine as well. They named the baby ‘N-Genir,’ after you.”
He hugged her. “Well done, darling girl. Would you like to watch your brilliant husband at his latest work?”
“Sure.” She let him guide her into a sitting position at the table, and sank down gratefully.
“Hello, Doctor,” the Lion said.
“Hello, Lion, king of beasts.” It was her pet name for him, because he was, in truth, gentle and thoughtful and not at all ferocious, unless he had good cause. She watched as her husband added more powders and the Lion continued to stir. “Whatever are you doing, darling?”
“I’m making stone.”
“What?” both the Lion and the Doctor asked at once.
“We grow crystal sheets at home to build our buildings, don’t we?” He added a final dash of something grainy and green. “Well, rocks are nothing but crystals, different kinds mixed together. Even metals are actually crystals, on the molecular level. But rocks are much more interesting to look at—marble, diorite, granite. Of course, you can’t build a hundred-story building with rock; it’s not flexible enough. You need special flexi-blends for that. But you could build something smaller.
“So I’m going to grow rock. These are the ingredients—hornblende, feldspar, quar
tz, mica.” He gestured to the sacks of mineral powder. “They go into an emulsion, and I’m copying this.” He held up the rock that sat near the cauldron. It was a rough chunk of granite. “When I add the catalyst, each mineral crystal will begin to grow, and when they fill up the mold, I’ll have rock. Help me with this, will you, Lion?”
Together, they lifted the cauldron and carefully poured it into the crystalline box.
“Now for the catalyst.” He took a small vial from his pocket and poured it into the mold, then stirred it briskly for a few strokes. Then he placed a top onto the box and bound the whole thing with a strip of flexible plastic, which he secured with a lynchpin. The Lion and Doctor watched raptly.
“What are you going to build?” his wife asked, never doubting that he would succeed. There had been too much precedent for any doubt.
“Whatever we want. Better labs, better houses. Isn’t it too bad that the natives only use stone for their graves? Maybe give them something nicer. Grow them houses, really.”
They waited, the Engineer studying a timepiece that dangled from his belt. The Lion and the Doctor both realized that they were holding their breath in anticipation. Soon the plastic around the mold began to strain. When the Engineer judged the time was right, he picked up a mallet from the table and placed a chisel on the lynchpin. He lifted the mallet and swung it down. As it struck the chisel and the chisel struck the pin, the desert groaned. The groan deepened, became a rumble, and then the ground shook. It was as though some great motion were taking place deep within the earth.
The Lion watched as the table leapt up from the desert floor. Behind it, the shuttle itself was moving, vibrating on its support struts. The table jumped and twisted and landed on its side.
The Engineer watched as the mold, freed of its lynchpin, fell apart. The substance within had expanded, forcing the sides to separate from each other. A hard block fell out onto the desert floor. Even at this moment, he noticed that the resulting cube looked more like cement than natural rock and would have to be reworked. Then the cement block bounced toward him, and he jumped to one side, pulling his wife safely away.