The Third Gate

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.

“This is Tango Alpha,” came the disembodied voice from forty feet below. “No joy.”

“Tango Alpha, understood,” came Porter Stone’s voice from somewhere else on the Station. “Use the juice.”

The radio crackled again. “Tango Alpha, roger that.”

Logan turned to Romero, who was standing beside him, also glued to the screens. “Juice?” he asked.

“Nitroglycerin.”

“Nitro?” Logan frowned. “Is that wise?”

“Don’t leave home without it!” Romero cackled. “You’d be surprised how often Stone’s had to employ nitro in his various digs. But not to worry-one of our divers is an ex-SEAL, an artist with the stuff. It’ll be a surgical strike.”

Logan continued listening to the radio chatter. As one of the divers at the tomb site released a marker buoy, Stone-apparently monitoring the action with Frank Valentino at the Staging Area-dispatched the diver with the nitro. Logan and Romero watched the screens as the man gingerly arranged the high explosive around the boulder-sealed entrance-four marble-sized pouches of black rubber, joined by lengths of det cord-then retreated to the rest of the divers, who were hanging well back.

“Charges in place,” radioed the diver.

“Very well,” came Porter Stone’s voice. “Detonate.”

There was a moment in which the entire Station seemed to hold its collective breath. Then came a low whump that made everything around Logan shudder slightly.

“Redfern here,” came another voice over the radio. “I’m in the Crow’s Nest. Marker buoy sighted.”

“Can you get an exact fix?” Stone asked.

“Affirmative. One moment.” There was a pause. “One hundred and twenty yards almost due east. Eight seven degrees relative.”

Romero turned to Logan. “It’s going to take some time for that shitstorm of mud down there to clear again,” she said, indicating the monitors. “Come on. I think there’s something you’re going to want to see.”

“What is it?” Logan asked.

“Another of Porter Stone’s miracles.”

She led the way out of White, through Red, and then, via the serpentine corridors of Maroon, to a hatch whose window overlooked the unbroken vista of the Sudd. Opening the hatch revealed a stairway that rose on stiltlike legs to a narrow wooden catwalk that circumscribed the entire outer extremity of Maroon’s domelike tarp. Logan followed her up the stairway, and then-from that vantage point-paused to look around, first at the hellish tangle of the Sudd, then at the miniature city that housed their expedition. Rising above Red was a tall, narrow tube, topped by a small railed perch and a forest of antennae. A man stood on the perch, binoculars in one hand and a radio in the other. This, Logan realized, must be the Crow’s Nest.

He turned back to Romero. “It’s quite the view. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

She handed him a tube of bug dope. “Wait and see.”

But even as she spoke, Logan heard the rumble of engines. Slowly, from the direction of Green, appeared both the large airboats, each eighty-foot vessel now equipped-bizarrely-with what looked like a combination of snowplow and cow-catcher. These had been fixed to the bows, each bristling with an arsenal of chain saws and long, hooked spikes that stretched forward like bowsprits. The two vessels were followed by a veritable armada of Jet Skis and small boats. As Logan watched, the large craft maneuvered into position directly in front of them. Men and women ran across their sterns, shouting instructions, as cables were attached to heavy cleats on Maroon, Red, and Blue.

Logan glanced over at one of the smaller boats. It was busily pulling in yet another cable from the depths of the Sudd, reeling it over a capstan. Sticks, plant tendrils, and thick muck clung to the cable like roots.

Logan nodded at the boat. “What’s it doing?”

Romero smiled. “Raising anchor.”

There was a flurry of shouted orders. All of a sudden the engines of the two big airboats roared in tandem, and they started slowly forward. For a moment, Logan was aware of an unusual sensation he couldn’t immediately identify. Then he understood. They-the entire Station, with all its barges, pontoons, catwalks, methane scrubbers, and generators-were moving.

“My God,” he murmured.

Now he realized the purpose of the strange devices on the bows of the airboats. They were plows in a very real sense: plows to push aside the near-impenetrable tangle of the Sudd. He could hear the spit and snarl of chain saws. The smaller boats began darting around and between the big airboats, removing stubborn bits of flotsam or helping cut away thick masses of rotting vegetation with hooks, prods, and gas-powered saws.

Slowly, inch by inch, the Station crept forward, making due east. Glancing over his shoulder, Logan saw the surface of the Sudd come together again in their wake, like a puddle following the tracing of a child’s finger, leaving no hint of their passage.

“We’re moving to the tomb,” he said.

Romero nodded.

“But why? Now that we know where it is, why not just dive to it from our present position?”

“Because that’s not the way Stone works. That would be inefficient, slow-and, if you think about it, impractical. Remember, the entrance to that tomb is forty feet below the surface, encased in thick muck. How would you enter? How would you preserve the artifacts within from the foulness of the Sudd?”

Logan looked at her. “I don’t know,” he said over the howl of the airboats and the whine of the buzz saws.

“You fit an air lock to the tomb entrance. Then you deploy the Umbilicus.”

“Umbilicus?”

“A pressurized tube, six feet in diameter, with light and power, footholds and handholds. One end mates with the air lock. The other to the Maw. Any stray mud is forced from its interior, and the pressure is equalized. Et voila — a nice, dry passage to and from Narmer’s tomb.”

Logan had to shake his head at the audacity of such a design. Another of Porter Stone’s miracles, Tina had called it-and she wasn’t far wrong.

“It’ll be an hour before we’re anchored over the tomb,” she said. “That mud must have settled from the explosion by now. Shall we see what it is that’s down there?”

B ack in the Operations Center, Cory Landau obligingly scrolled through the video feeds from the divers’ transmissions until Tina Romero told him to stop.

“That one,” she said. “Who’s that?”

Landau peered at the screen. “Delta Bravo,” he said.

“Can you get me on radio to him?”

“Sure can.” Landau reached over, dialed a knob, then handed her a radio.

“Delta Bravo,” she said, speaking into it. “Delta Bravo, this is Dr. Romero. Do you read?”

“Five by five,” came the response.

“Can you approach the entrance, pan across?”

“Roger.”

They watched the video feed silently. The boulders had been either blasted or pulled away now, and Logan could just see beyond them into the cleft in the rock. In the divers’ powerful lights, it appeared to be tightly sealed by courses of stone, creating a solid vertical face, as if workers had created a wall within the natural cavity of the rock.

“Closer, please,” Romero almost whispered.

The video tightened in.

“My God,” she said. “That looks like granite. Until now, scholars thought that Netcherikhe was the first Egyptian king to have graduated from mud-brick walls.”

“Narmer must have wanted it to last for all eternity,” Logan replied.

Romero raised her radio again. “Delta Bravo, pan up, please.”

The image rose slowly up the stone face.

“There!” she cried. “Stop. Pan in.”

The muddy, grainy video feed tightened on something affixed to the granite and one side of the igneous rock: a lozenge-shaped disk imprinted with hieroglyphics.

“What is that?” Logan asked.

“It’s a necropolis seal,” Romero replied. “Amazing. Completely unheard-of on a tomb this old. And look-it’s unbroken. No desecration, no spoiling.”

She wiped her palms on her shirt, then took fresh hold of the radio. Logan noticed her hands were trembling slightly. “Delta Bravo. One more thing, please.”

“Shoot.”

“Pan down. Down toward the base of that wall.”

“Roger. There’s still some rock and debris we need to clear away.”

They waited as the image slowly traveled down the face of dressed stone. Clouds of silt and muck occasionally blocked their view, and Romero asked the diver to backtrack. Then, quite suddenly, she told him to stop again.

“Right there!” she said. “Hold it!”

“I’m at the base of the wall,” the diver replied.

“I know.”

Logan found himself staring at another unbroken seal, this one larger than the first. There were two hieroglyphs carved into it.

“What is that?” he asked quietly.

Romero nodded. “It’s a serekh. The earliest depiction of a royal name used in Egyptian iconography. Cartouches didn’t become common until the time of Sneferu, father of Khufu.”

“And the name in the serekh? Can you read the name?”

Romero licked her lips. “They’re the symbols for the catfish and the chisel. The phonetic representation of Narmer’s name.”