Close Up the Sky (25 page)

A gust of hot wind
suddenly blew across them. The distant horizon looked dark, as though a heavy
mist hung in the air. Both men had lived in the desert all their lives and
instantly recognized the darkness for what it was. As a friend, the desert had
always protected Egypt from invasion. No army had ever been able to cross its
burning sands to successfully attack them. But it could also be a deadly enemy
to those who did not understand its changing whims. Now, a great sandstorm that
knew neither friend nor foe was approaching. They watched it grow taller and
begin spreading giant tendrils across the sky. It had been many years since a
storm of such apparent magnitude had raged across Thebes.

The gong that had
announced Balkem sounded again. This time a young female servant entered and
prostrated
herself
on the floor. She wore a long white
dress that clung tightly to her body. One wide strap crossed the left shoulder,
leaving her right breast bare. A silver diadem that bore the royal cartouche
encircled her long black hair, setting off the comely features of her face. Her
name was Tuahla, one of Queen Nefertari's handmaidens.

This time there
was no waiting. Ramses strode back into the room, followed by Balkem. "What
is it, Tuahla?" he asked.

The girl kept her
head slightly bowed as she raised herself to her knees. She cut her dark eyes
up at the king and spoke in a soft, melodious voice. "The queen bade me
tell you that a storm is coming, my lord."

Ramses glanced
over his shoulder at the approaching storm then looked back at the girl. "Yes,
we have seen it. Tell the queen there is nothing to fear. I will be there
momentarily."

Tuahla prostrated
herself again then got to her feet. Placing her palms together beneath her chin,
she backed out of the room.

When she was gone
Balkem said, "I should see to my troops, great one." It was his way
of asking permission to leave.

Ramses placed a
hand on Balkem's shoulder and looked him in the eye. "Take care, old
friend," he said. "Egypt can suffer many things, but she cannot do
without you."

Balkem's lips
compressed into a thin line, and he took a deep breath through his nose. Pharaoh's
compliment not only filled him with pride, it also renewed his determination to
protect his lord with his life. He knelt on one knee and bowed his head in
respect before leaving.

When he had gone
Ramses walked over to a small decorative chest sitting on a stand in one corner
of the room. He opened the lid and removed a coin-sized silver disk on a thin,
finely crafted chain. It was the only thing belonging to the strange one that
had not been returned to him. It did not appear to be particularly valuable. It
was not made of gold, or even silver. The royal treasury held many items of
beauty and worth beside which the disk would pale, but for some reason he had
felt compelled to keep it. A hieroglyphic of unsurpassed delicacy decorated its
center. The hieroglyphic was of a man wearing a long, flowing garment. In one
hand he carried a staff, while the other one balanced a small child on his
shoulder. A circular pattern of strange marks that reminded Ramses of the
wedge-shaped writing used by the Persians encircled the image. Though the
characters had been diligently studied, none of the Egyptian scribes or
scholars had been able to decipher them.

He closed the lid
and walked back to the terrace, taking the necklace with him. The mighty
sandstorm was spreading out for miles across the western horizon. Ramses could
already feel hot air flowing across his naked chest. The silken curtains
hanging on each side of the terrace portals twisted and fluttered in the
leading winds. He held the disk before him by the end of its chain and watched
it spin and sway in the rushing air.
Yes,
I think we will soon know the answer
s
to
many of our questions,
he thought. At length he returned to the security of
his quarters where he struck the gong. Slaves appeared as if by magic and began
closing the terrace doors against the approaching storm.

Ramses went again
to the chest and opened the lid. He scrutinized the disk for a long moment then
dropped it inside. He remained still for a while, deep in thought. At last he
closed the lid and made his way to the queen's chambers.

Inside the chest
the disk lay face up in the darkness. The Egyptian scholars had not been able
to decipher the language around the image for a very simple but unimagined
reason: It had no roots in the world they knew, and would not evolve to become
part of man's heritage for thousands of years. But when that day came, millions
would know the words by heart and would say them as a prayer of deliverance: 'St.
Christopher Protect Us.'

L
eahy found himself enveloped
in a maelstrom of hot, sandy air. He threw one hand across his eyes and grabbed
out wildly with the other as he felt the ground dissolve beneath his feet. The
wind lifted him and blew him backward, head-over-heels down a steep slope. Pebbles
and loose shale tore at his face, while sand filled his mouth as he fought to
flip over onto his stomach. He dug his fingers into the loose earth in an
attempt to check his momentum, but he continued to slide. Without warning the
slope ended and he plunged headfirst over a sheer edge. Eight feet down he
struck solid ground. His shoulder hit first, then his head; lightning exploded
in his brain. The impact left him semi-conscious but still functioning. Fighting
off giddiness, he struggled to his knees. He stretched his arms outward in both
directions and felt the rocky walls of a narrow crevasse.

The wind was not
as powerful in the crevasse as on the surface, but the swirling grit was still
blinding. Waves of sand cascading down the slope began to pile up around him. Through
the fog in his head something told him that if he remained where he was he
would be buried alive. He tried to stand but dizziness forced him back to his
knees. In desperation he began to crawl along the narrow floor, inching his
way, trying to stay on top of the shifting sand.

Pain brought on a
bout of nausea, and he vomited sticky bile. Grit clung to the drool around his
lips and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. His head pounded and he
thought he might lose consciousness, but he continued to crawl. Twenty feet
further his hand slipped into a horizontal fissure in the left wall. He
explored the opening and found that it was large enough to crawl inside. He
felt his way through the entrance and pulled himself a few feet inside. The
space began to widen as he worked his way in. The wind continued to scream through
the narrow confines of the crevasse, but inside his rocky sanctuary it was
relatively calm. There was enough room for him to roll over and remove his
pack. He pulled the top flap loose from its Velcro fasteners and fumbled inside
for his flashlight. Thumbing it on, he saw that he was in a small cave-like
hole that angled slightly away from the wind. The ceiling at one end was high
enough to allow him to sit up, so he maneuvered to that end and leaned against
the wall.

After he was
settled, he removed a water bottle from the pack and poured some of the cool
liquid over his face. It felt good to rinse the sand from his mouth and eyes. He
screwed the top back on and turned the flashlight toward the cave's mouth. Sand
sliding down from above had piled up to the bottom level of the cave and was
starting to pour into the opening. He pulled the pack over and pushed it into
the hole. It stopped most of the sand and relieved the wind noise to some
degree. The exertion caused his head to throb, and the nausea returned. There
was nothing he could do about getting out of the crevasse until the storm
abated, so he stretched out as far as possible and laid his head in the crook
of his arm. The closeness of the little cave gave him a sense of security, but
the throbbing in his head was growing worse. He massaged it gently as he
contemplated his situation.

The Chronocom had
apparently deposited them in the middle of a three-thousand-year-old sandstorm.
Except for seeing them in the movies it was his first experience with such a
storm, and in his opinion they were everything they were portrayed to be. His
face and hands felt raw, almost as if they had been sandpapered. He thought of
Taylor, and a sudden pang of anxiety surged through him. She and the others
were still on the surface, exposed to gale force winds. His fear for her safety
almost drove him from the security of the cave to search for her, but better
judgment prevailed.
She's a veteran time agent with many trips into the
Egyptian desert
, he reassured himself.
Williams and Summerhour are with
her. Williams is a desert expert, and
Summerhour, whatever else he might be, is also a professional
. He
reasoned that their combined knowledge and resourcefulness was more than a
match for something no more formidable than a big wind. By now they would have
found cover and would be riding it out. Besides, the storm had probably
been
blowing for some time before they arrived, so its end was most likely closer
than
its
beginning. To attempt to find them now would
be the height of foolishness.

The pragmatic way
of thinking bolstered his confidence and he allowed himself to relax a little. The
L-suit kept his body warm and comfortable, and the moaning voice of the wind
rose and fell as it rushed through the crevasse. Safe inside his shelter, he
found the sound oddly soothing. He still felt giddy, and the exertion of the
last few moments had left him exhausted. He fought to stay awake, but within a
few minutes he slipped into unconsciousness.

Gail Wilson was speaking to him, but there was
something different about her. “How did I get here?” he asked her.

"The rabbit hole, how else would you
get here? Didn’t I warn you?"

He stared at her and saw her eyes change
from blue to bright green. He opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted before
he could say anything.

"You only have a short time."

“What’s important is that you get on with
it,” said a dark man who sat at a table. He wore a white lab coat and held a
chunk of green stone in his hands.

Gail was speaking again. “I warned you to be
careful, now you can never go back.”

A door opened and Taylor stepped through. She
was reaching for him, and suddenly he could not breathe. "Follow me!” she
said. “This way!”

Leahy’s eyes
snapped open and he found himself gasping for breath. He was lying face down in
the dirt. He lifted his head and spat sand from his mouth. Dim light
illuminated his surroundings. Through the grogginess he remembered that he was
in a cave. He sat up and looked around. The light was coming from a flashlight
on the ground beside him. He shook his head to clear it. The water bottle was
beside him where it had fallen from his hand. He picked it up, opened it, and
drank sparingly. He rested for another moment then poured a small amount of
water over his eyes to wash out the grit. After returning the bottle to the
pack he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, listening. Except
for his breathing there was no sound. The
sandstorm was over. He opened his eyes and picked up the flashlight. Judging
from the weakness of the beam, he reasoned that he must have been unconscious
for hours. The air inside the cave had gone stale, and breathing was difficult.

He got to his
knees and pulled the pack out of the cave's mouth. Sand poured in, blocking the
entrance. He forced down panic at the thought of being buried alive and began
scooping the sand toward him. There was no way to tell how much sand the storm
had deposited in the crevasse, but it was above the top of the cave entrance. He
worked steadily for about five minutes, lungs laboring in the thin air. A
minute later his hands broke through to the outside and fresh air rushed into
the cave. He rested for a moment, pulling great draughts of it into his burning
lungs. From there it was short work to dig the rest of the way out. When he was
outside he put on the pack and looked up. The vertical walls of the crevasse
limited his view of the sky to a narrow band, but a thick mat of stars was
visible overhead. It was afternoon when the Chronocom had jerked the familiar
ground of the twenty-first century from beneath his feet and tossed him into
the ancient sandstorm; now it was night. He had no way of knowing how much time
had passed since the time warp, but he estimated that it was now early evening.

The flashlight was
weak, but it lighted the ground enough to see a short distance. He played the
beam around and noticed that near the walls the sand was smooth and
undisturbed, but tracks of some kind were visible along the center. Someone or
some
thing
had moved through the
crevasse after the storm had ended. It could have been a member of his party
searching for him, but he doubted it. The impressions were too far apart for an
ordinary man's stride. Whoever or whatever it was, had passed by his little
cave without knowing he was there. The thought sent a chill up his back. He
cinched up the pack’s straps and started moving.

It was hard going
in the loose sand, but after a half-hour he began to notice the walls were
getting further apart. The floor was rising at an increasing angle and was
becoming rockier. The mysterious tracks were fainter here and soon disappeared
altogether. A few minutes later he emerged into the open desert. The darkness
was not as complete here as it had been in New Mexico during his training. He
found he could see fairly well, so he switched off the flashlight and laid it
on the ground. A thin crescent moon hung a few degrees above the horizon. The
long mountain he had seen while waiting for the Chronocom beam was now visible
only as a dark mass against the night sky; however, the hills he knew to be in
the south were not tall enough to be silhouetted. The air felt cool and
refreshing against his face. He shucked off the pack and unzipped the L-suit a
little way, letting the air circulate over his chest. He found that he was still
suffering from the effects of oxygen depletion, and was exhausted from his
passage through the crevasse. His breath was ragged and his heartbeat was
rapid. He sat down to rest until his system returned to normal.