The Third Gate

26

Logan sat at the computer in his small office, typing slowly and deliberately. It was late at night, and Maroon was quiet as the grave. He had finally gotten the chance to enter his remaining notes on his conversation with Hirshveldt and the various observations he’d made during their brief trip out into the Sudd. Now he closed that document and opened another, detailing the unexplained and ominous occurrences on the Station, and added entries on the generator fire and the electrocution of the communications specialist, Mark Perlmutter. Despite a painstaking inquiry, no good explanation had been found for the presence of a live wire or the pool of water in the substation. Perlmutter, slipping in and out of consciousness, had said something about seeing a light, but there was no way to tell if this was just delirious babbling. The rumors flitting around the Station-of sabotage or of the curse of Narmer making itself felt-had spiked significantly. With the discovery of the cache of skeletons, and the near certainty that the tomb itself lay close by, there seemed to be a strange mix of emotions among the personnel: a charged sense of anticipation, mingled with creeping dread.

Logan himself had examined Red’s power substation and spoken to those few who might have had any reason to enter the room that day. None of them knew anything or had seen anything out of the ordinary. Moreover, all had seemed straightforward and honest-Logan had sensed nothing but sadness and confusion from the group.

He closed the file and glanced at the small blue evidence case beside his computer. Picking it up, he removed the top and carefully took out a cloth-wrapped bundle from within. Pulling away the folds of cloth, he exposed an ancient skull the color of tobacco.

Cradling it in the cloth, he turned it this way and that, peering at it closely. March had clearly not wanted to lend it to him, but-aware of the favor Stone had conferred upon Logan-hadn’t dared refuse. Nevertheless, the archaeologist had been careful to give Logan the least interesting, most damaged of the skulls, with strict orders to return it-in identical shape-before the end of the evening.

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.