The skull had been relatively protected by the matrix of mud and silt that had surrounded it for some fifty centuries, and though it was pitted, cracked across its top, and missing its teeth, it was nevertheless in good condition, considering. It smelled strongly of the Sudd—the odor that permeated the Station and had begun to haunt Logan’s dreams. Taking a jeweler’s loupe from his satchel, he fixed it to his eye and made a careful survey of the entire surface of the skull. Despite the fact that the occipital bone was missing, there were no obvious indications of violence. It was badly scratched across the crown, as well as within the left eye socket, but these were no doubt the result of pebbles. He examined the ectocranial sutures in turn: coronal, sagittal, lambdoid. Judging from the size of the mastoid process and the rounded nature of the supraorbital margin, he felt confident the skull had belonged to a man rather than a woman—no big surprise there.
Now he put the cloth aside and, very gently, held the skull in his bare hands. Two eyes had once stared out from this cranium: What wonders had they seen? Had they viewed Narmer, overseeing in person the construction of his tomb? Had they perhaps witnessed the decisive battle in which Narmer had united all Egypt? At the very least, they had watched the line of other priests as they headed south into a foreign and hostile land, there to entomb their king’s mortal remains as his ka went on to join the gods in the next world. Had this fellow guessed it was a journey from which he would never return?
Turning the skull over slowly in his hands, Logan emptied his mind, leaving it open to perception or suggestion. “What’s it trying to tell me, Karen?” he asked his dead wife as he handled the skull. But there was nothing—the skull left him with no impressions save fragility and great antiquity. At last, with a sigh, he wrapped it back in its cloth and returned it to the evidence case.
If Tina Romero was right, they would soon find a vast cache of bones—the remains of the tomb builders—and, shortly after that, the tomb itself. And Porter Stone would have yet another coup to add to his record. And if the tomb contained the crown of unified Egypt, it would undoubtedly be the largest coup of Stone’s career.
Logan sat back, still idly eyeing the box. Stone was an unusual man—most unusual. He was a person of almost limitless discipline, with passionate convictions—and yet he hired those who disagreed with him, perhaps even doubted his chances of success. He possessed an impeccable scientific background, and was a rationalist and empiricist almost to a fault—yet he was not afraid to surround himself with people whose specialties most conventional scientists would scoff at. Logan himself was the perfect example of this. He shook his head wonderingly. The fact was, Porter Stone would do anything, no matter how unorthodox or seemingly tangential, to guarantee success. After all, there was no other reason that he would include someone like Jennifer Rush on this dig, a woman who read Zener cards like a monkey juggled coconuts and who was able to …
All at once, Logan sat upright in his chair. “Of course,” he murmured. “Of course.” Then, slowly, he rose—tucked the evidence case under one arm—and walked thoughtfully out of the office.
27
The medical suite was quiet as Logan entered. The overhead lights were dimmed, and a single nurse sat at the front desk. From somewhere far back in the maze of rooms, the low bleating of instrumentation could be heard.
Ethan Rush came striding around a corner, speaking to an accompanying nurse. He stopped when he saw Logan. “Jeremy. Are you here to speak with Perlmutter? He’s in rather a lot of pain, we’ve had to keep him sedated—” Rush stopped, peered more closely at Logan.
“It’s not about Perlmutter,” Logan said.
Rush turned to the nurse. “I’ll speak with you later.” Then he gestured toward Logan. “Come into my office.”
Rush’s office was a sterile-looking cubicle behind the nurse’s station. He gestured Logan to a chair, poured himself a cup of coffee, took a seat himself. He looked bone tired.
“What’s on your mind, Jeremy?” he asked.
“I know why your wife is here,” Logan replied.
When Rush did not reply, he went on. “She’s trying to contact the ancient dead, isn’t she? She’s trying to channel Narmer.”
Still, Rush said nothing.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Logan continued. “You told me yourself that many people who return from near-death experiences develop newfound psychic abilities. Some of them claim to speak to the dead. You also told me that your wife’s particular gift was retrocognition. Retrocognition. That is, having knowledge of past events and people, beyond any normal understanding or inference.”
He got up and helped himself to coffee. “It’s a very rare form of parapsychology, but it has been documented. In 1901, two female British scholars, Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, were touring Versailles. They began to wander the grounds in search of the Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette’s château. In the process, they encountered strangely dressed figures, including footmen speaking in antique voices and a young woman sitting on a stool, sketching. Moberly and Jourdain experienced a strangely oppressive gloom that did not lift until they abandoned their search and walked away. Later, both women became convinced they had entered telepathically Marie Antoinette’s own memories and visions at that spot—and that the woman sketching had, in fact, been the queen herself. In the years that followed, Moberly and Jourdain conducted extensive research on their experience, which they finally published in 1911 in a book titled An Adventure. I highly recommend it, by the way.”
He sat down again, took a sip of coffee.
Finally, Rush stirred in his chair. “You know Porter Stone’s kitchen-sink approach to his projects: he would rather bring in ten specialists, each with a different discipline, at ten times the cost, than one generalist with almost the same skill set. For him, that almost is the difference between success and failure.” He paused, looked away. “Early on, the big worry was the tomb’s location. Stone was convinced the tomb was here. But the precise spot was unknown, and he had a deadline. Anybody who could help find the site, anybody, was considered.”
Rush shook his head. “Somehow, he found out about the Center, about my wife’s … gift. Don’t ask me how—this is Porter Stone we’re talking about. He approached us. At first I refused point-blank. The Sudd seemed such a desolate, hostile place. I’d have to go along, of course—after all, nobody else could manage her ‘crossings’—and I simply had too much work to consider it. He offered us more money. I still refused—as I think I told you, the Center has plenty of wealthy patrons who have experienced NDEs. Then he offered me the post of expedition doctor, and so much money that it would have been foolhardy to say no. Also”—here for a moment his voice dropped almost to a whisper—“I thought it might be beneficial for Jennifer.”
“Beneficial?” Logan repeated.
“To give her a chance to use her gift in a positive way. Because, Jeremy, I’m not convinced she considers it a gift at all.”
Logan thought back to his meeting with Jennifer Rush, to the private sorrow he’d sensed, to the still-unexplained storm of empathetic emotion he’d felt when he shook her hand. No gift, indeed, he told himself. Years before, he had known a deeply talented telepath. The man had fallen into increasing despondency, ultimately killing himself. Doctors had labeled him mentally deficient, had ascribed the voices in his head to schizophrenia. Logan knew differently. He himself knew the downside of possessing a gift you could not turn off. Now he felt like even more of an ass for the way he’d spoken to Jennifer Rush.
“So at first,” Rush said, breaking Logan’s train of thought, “Jen was brought here simply to get sensations—fleeting pictures or glimpses of past events that might help locate the tomb. But then Fenwick March and Tina Romero managed to pinpoint the site more precisely, and the original reason for her presence became less important. Besides, by that point …” Rush hesitated. “By that point, everything had changed.”
“You mean, she’d made contact with an
actual entity from the past,” Logan said.
For a moment, Rush did not respond. Then he nodded, ever so slightly.
Logan felt a thrill course through him. Even he found it both incredibly exciting—and hard to believe. My God, could it really be true? “Does Stone know?” he asked.
Rush nodded again. “Of course.”
“What does he think?”
“It’s like I’ve told you—he’ll do anything, try anything, to get what he wants. And Jen has demonstrated her psychic powers in enough ways that I know he wants to believe.” Rush stared at him. “What about you? What do you think?”
Logan took a deep breath. “I think—no, I know, because I’ve sensed it myself—that certain very strong personalities, life forces if you will, can linger in a place long after the corporeal body has died. The stronger, the more violent, the personality and the will, the longer it will persist—needing only an unusually gifted mind to sense it.”
Rush slowly ran his fingers through his hair. He glanced at Logan, looked away, glanced back. This whole development has him agitated, Logan thought. This isn’t what he expected to happen—at all.
“Who else knows about this?” he asked.
“March and Romero, for sure. One or two others, maybe … then again, maybe not. You know Stone. And this isn’t exactly charted territory.”
“And what does your wife think?”
“She doesn’t like it. It’s foreign and strange and, I think, frightening.”
“Then why go on with it? If she was brought here to help find the tomb, and the tomb might be located any minute—why stay?”
“Porter Stone’s express request,” Rush replied, his voice still lower. “Two reasons, I think. First, we haven’t yet found the tomb—and with his belt-and-suspenders mentality, he’s not going to release a potential asset until he’s certain it’s been located.”
He fell silent.
“That’s one reason,” Logan pressed.
It seemed a long time before Rush finally answered. “Her mission here was altered when we received … certain data.”
“Data?” Logan asked. Rush did not reply—he did not need to.
“You mean the curse,” Logan said. Now he, too, was almost whispering. “What, exactly, has Narmer—or whoever it is—been saying through Jennifer?”
Rush shook his head. “Don’t ask me, please. I’d rather not talk about that.”
Logan thought for a moment. The feeling of excitement, of otherworldliness, hadn’t left him. So the curse is bothering Stone, too. That was the only explanation he could think of for altering Jennifer Rush’s assignment. Stone doesn’t know what he’s going to find when he reaches the tomb. He wants to be as prepared as possible to meet any eventuality—and he’ll accept any help he can get his hands on … even from beyond the grave.
“Would you talk with her, please?” Rush suddenly asked.
For a moment, Logan did not understand. “I’m sorry?”
“Would you speak to Jen about all this—about these, um, crossings she’s been doing, her feelings?”
“Why me?” Logan asked. “I’ve only met her once—and then only briefly.”
“I know. She told me about it.” Rush hesitated. “It sounds funny, but I think she would trust you, might even open up to you. Maybe it’s your unusual line of work; maybe it’s just something in your manner—you made a good impression.” Again he hesitated. “You want to know something, Jeremy? Jen never, ever talks about her NDE. Everyone else won’t shut up about going over, about what they’ve experienced. She never has—not even for data collection sessions at the Center. Oh, we talk about the sensitivity it’s given her, we measure and try to codify her special gifts—but she never speaks of the experience itself. I was wondering if … well, if perhaps there was a way you could get her to share it with you.”
“I’m not sure,” Logan said. “I can try.”
“I wish you would. I just don’t want to push it any further myself.” Rush plucked at his collar. “I put up a brave front, but the fact is, I worry about her. I can’t pretend that things haven’t been a bit strained between us since her accident, but I’ve tried to give her a lot of space. All I can tell you … All I can tell you is that we once had about as close a relationship as two people could have.” He stopped. “We still love each other very much, of course, but she’s had, um, a hard time interacting with the world in the way she used to. And since arriving on site—well, she wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night, trembling, bathed in sweat. When I ask her about it, she just brushes it off as a bad dream. And now, with these crossings Stone is insisting on …” He looked away.
“I’d be happy to do anything I can to help,” Logan said.
For a minute, Rush didn’t look back. Then, with a deep sigh, he met Logan’s gaze, pressed his hand briefly, and gave a mute smile of thanks.
28
When Logan entered the cafeteria for his usual breakfast of poached egg and half an English muffin, he found Tina Romero sitting by herself in a far corner, hunched intently over an iPad.
“May I join you?” he asked.
She gave a grunt that might have been either yes or no. Logan sat down, then peered at her iPad. Romero was doing a New York Times crossword puzzle.
“What’s a four-letter word meaning ‘small box for holding scissors’?” she asked, eyes on the screen.
“ ‘Etui.’ ”
She entered the word, then looked up. “And just how the hell did you know that?”
“The Times crossword is one of my guilty pleasures. They use that one all the time.”
“I’ll remember that.” She put down the iPad. “So. I heard you were doing your Hamlet imitation yesterday.”
“What? Oh, you mean the skull.”
Romero nodded. “I overheard March complaining about it to one of his minions. Get any bad vibes from the thing?”
“I didn’t get any vibes at all.” Logan cut into his egg. “But I was surprised at how good a shape the skull was in. Only some scoring across the top and in one of the eye sockets.”
“Eye sockets?” Romero repeated.
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
Logan thought a moment. “The left. Why?”
Romero shrugged.
Logan thought back to Dr. Rush’s request the night before. “What did you think of Jennifer Rush’s performance back in the staff lounge?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Can those cards be faked?”
“Only if you’ve got a partner handling them.”
“In that case, it was remarkable.”
Logan nodded. “She seems to be a rather remarkable woman.”
Romero took a sip of coffee. “I feel sorry for her.”
Logan frowned. “Why?”
“Because it just isn’t right—dragging her out here after all she’s been through.”
“You think she didn’t want to come?”
Romero shrugged again. “I think she’s too kind to deny him anything.”
Him? Logan thought. Did she mean Porter Stone—or her husband?
Romero took another sip of coffee. “This kind of job can bring out the worst in anyone. I’ve seen people come to digs with the crappiest of motives.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t know. Maybe Ethan Rush is doing the greatest work in the world. But it sure seems to me that Jennifer is a guinea pig.”
Logan stared at her. Was she actually implying Rush was exploiting his wife—using the terrible experience of hers for his own gain? The truth was, he knew very little about the Center for Transmortality Studies. And yet, Rush seemed to care deeply for his wife. I put up a brave front, he’d said just the night before, but the fact is, I worry about her. Was he worried for her—or for her importance to his Center?
There was the beep of a two-way radio. Romero reached into her bag, pulled her radio out, pressed the transmit button. “Romero here.” She listened for a minute, her eyes widening. “Hot damn! I’ll
be right there.”
She dumped the radio back into her bag and stood up, nearly knocking over her chair in the process. “That was Stone,” she said as she scooped up her iPad and bag. “They’ve found the mother lode!”
“The cache of skeletons?” Logan asked.
“Yup. And you know what that means? We’re practically sitting on top of the tomb entrance. Stone’s put all the diving teams online. I’ll bet you a round of drinks in Oasis that we find the tomb itself within ninety minutes.” And with that she left the cafeteria, Logan practically running after her to keep up.
29
Tina Romero was off by seven minutes. It was just over an hour and a half later that dive team five reported finding what appeared to be a natural fissure at the bed of the Sudd—forty-three feet below surface level—that had been completely filled in with large boulders. Leaving a single archaeological dive team at the site of the skeletons, to be overseen by Fenwick March, Stone ordered all the other teams to five’s location. From the Operations nerve center, Logan watched the drama unfold on huge flat-panel monitors, their video feeds choreographed by Cory Landau, a phlegmatic figure even amid such palpable excitement.
The images from the videocams attached to the divers’ headgear were grainy and distorted, but just staring at them made Logan’s pulse race. Narrow flashlight beams, lancing through the black mud and silt of the Sudd, traced the opening in the igneous rock: some eight feet tall and four feet wide, shaped like a cat’s pupil, packed solid with large rocks. Teams of divers had tried to dislodge the boulders but without luck: their weight, the gluelike muck of the Sudd, and the passage of years had fused them into a nearly solid mass.