Ethan Gage Collection # 1 (30 page)

“The gabled roof might deflect some of the pyramid's weight to the chamber walls,” Jomard said.

Napoleon, impatient at the dirty indignities we were enduring, curtly ordered us back out to the junction where the shaft continued to ascend. He wanted to see the King's Chamber above.

Now the cramped, dwarflike passageway changed to one for giants. The ascending passage broadened and rose, forming an inclined gallery that climaxed in a corbelled roof almost thirty feet above our heads. Again there were no steps; it was like climbing a slide. Fortunately, guides had fixed a rope. Once more, the stonework was as perfect as it was plain. This section's height seemed as inexplicable as the dwarf-sized passage before.

Had humans really built this?

An Arab guide held his torch high and pointed at the ceiling. I could see dark clots up there, marring the perfect symmetries, but I didn't know what they were.

“Bats,” Jomard whispered.

Wings twitched and rustled in the shadows.

“Let's hurry up,” Napoleon commanded. “I'm hot and half suffocated.” The torch smoke stung.

The gallery was forty-seven meters long, Jomard announced after unreeling a tape, and again had no obvious purpose. Then the climb ended and we had to stoop to advance horizontally again. Finally we entered the pyramid's biggest room, built a third of the way up the structure's mass.

This King's Chamber was a featureless rectangle built of colossal red granite blocks. Again, the simplicity was odd. The roof was flat and the floor and walls barren. There was no sacred book or bird-headed god. The only object was a lidless black granite sarcophagus set at the far end, as empty as the room itself. At about seven feet long, three and a half feet wide, and three feet high, it was too big to have fit through the tight entry we'd just crawled through, and
must have been put in place as the pyramid was built. But Napoleon for the first time seemed intrigued, inspecting the rock casket closely.

“How could they have hollowed this out?” he asked.

“The room's dimensions are also interesting, General,” Jomard said. “I measure thirty-four feet long, seventeen wide. The chamber floor represents a double square.”

“Imagine that,” I said, more mocking than I meant.

“He means its length is twice its width,” Monge explained. “Pythagoras and the Greeks were interested in the harmony of such perfect rectangles.”

“The chamber's height is half the length of the room's diagonal,” Jomard added, “or nineteen feet. Gage, help me here and I'll show you something else. Hold this end of my tape in that corner.”

I did so. Jomard extended his tape diagonally to the opposite wall, exactly halfway along its length. Then, as I held the tape in my corner, he walked his end across the room until what had been a diagonal now lay alongside the wall I occupied. “Voilà!” he cried, his voice echoing in the rock room.

Once more I did not display the anticipated excitement.

“Don't you recognize it? It's what we talked about at the pyramid's summit! The golden number, or golden mean!”

Now I saw it. If you divided this rectangular room into two squares, measured the diagonal of one of those squares, and laid that line on the long side of the chamber, the ratio between that length and what was left was the supposedly magical 1.618.

“You're saying this room incorporates Fibonacci numbers in the same way the pyramid itself does,” I said, trying to sound casual.

Monge's eyebrows raised. “Fibonacci numbers? Gage, you're more of a mathematician than I would have guessed.”

“Oh, I've just been picking it up here and there.”

“So what's the practical use of these dimensions?” Napoleon asked.

“It represents nature,” I ventured.

“And it encodes the Egyptian kingdom's basic units of measurement,” Jomard said. “In its length and proportions, I think it lays out a
system of cubits, just as we might design the metric system into the proportions of a museum.”

“Interesting,” the general said. “Still, to build so much—it's a puzzle. Or a lens, perhaps, like a lens to focus light.”

“That's what I feel,” Jomard said. “Any thought you think, any prayer you make, seems amplified by the dimensions of this pyramid. Listen to this.” He began a low hum, then a thrumming chant. The sound echoed weirdly, seeming to vibrate through our bodies. It was like striking a note of music that lingered in the air.

Our general shook his head. “Except that this focuses—what? Electricity?” He turned to me.

If I'd grandly said yes, he probably would have given me a reward. Instead, I looked vacant as an idiot.

“The granite coffer is also interesting,” Jomard said, to fill the awkward silence. “Its interior volume is exactly half its exterior volume. While it seems sized for a man or a casket, I suspect its precise dimensions are no accident.”

“Boxes within boxes,” Monge said. “First this chamber, then the outside of the sarcophagus, then the inside…for what? We have a host of theories, but no one answer I feel is conclusive.”

I looked up. It felt like millions of tons were pressing down toward us, threatening at any moment to obliterate our existence. For a moment I had the illusion the ceiling was descending! But no, I blinked, and the chamber was as before.

“Leave me,” Bonaparte suddenly commanded.

“What?”

“Jomard is right. I feel power here. Don't you feel it?”

“It feels oppressive and yet alive,” I offered. “Like a grave, and yet you feel light, insubstantial.”

“I want to spend some time in here alone,” the general told us. “I want to see if I can feel the spirit of this dead pharaoh. Perhaps his body is gone but his soul remains. Perhaps Silano and his magic are real. Perhaps I can feel Gage's electricity. Leave me with an unlit torch in the dark. I'll come down when I'm ready.”

Monge looked concerned. “Perhaps if one of us remained as guard…”

“No.” He climbed over the lip of the black sarcophagus and lay down, staring at the ceiling. We looked down at him and he smiled slightly. “It's more comfortable than you might think. The stone is neither too cold nor hot. Nor am I too tall, are you surprised?” He smiled at his little joke. “Not that I plan to remain here forever.”

Jomard looked troubled. “There are accounts of panic…”

“Never question my courage.”

He bowed. “To the contrary, I salute you, my general.”

So we dutifully filed out, each torch in turn disappearing through the low entryway until our commander was left alone in the dark. We worked our way down the Grand Gallery, letting ourselves down by the rope. A bat took flight and flapped down toward us, but an Arab waved a torch and the blind creature veered away from the heat, settling again on the ceiling. By the time we got down to the smaller shaft that led down to the pyramid entrance, I was soaked with sweat.

“I'll wait for him here,” Jomard said. “The rest of you file outside.”

I needed no encouragement. The day seemed lit with a thousand suns when we finally emerged on the outside of the pyramid's sand-and-rubble slope, clouds of dust puffing off our now-filthy clothes. My throat was parched, my head aching. We found shade on the east side of the structure and sat to wait, sipping water. The party members who had remained outside had scattered over the ruins. Some were circuiting the other two pyramids. Some had erected little awnings and were having lunch. A few had climbed partway up the structure above us, and others competed to see how high up the pyramid's side they could hurl a rock.

I mopped my brow, acutely conscious that I seemed no closer to solving the medallion's mystery. “All this great pile for three little rooms?”

“It doesn't make sense, does it?” agreed Monge.

“I feel like there's something obvious we're not seeing.”

“I'm guessing we're to see numbers, as Jomard said. It may be a puzzle meant to occupy humankind for centuries.” The mathematician took out paper and began his own calculations.

B
onaparte was absent for a full hour. Finally there was a shout and we went back to meet him. Like us he emerged dirty and blinking, skidding down the rubble to the sand below. But when we ran up I saw he was also unusually pale, his eyes having the unfocused, haunted look of a man emerging from a vivid dream.

“What took you so long?” Monge asked.

“Was it long?”

“An hour, at least.”

“Really? Time disappeared.”

“And?”

“I crossed my arms in the sarcophagus, like those mummies we've seen.”

“
Mon dieu,
General.”

“I heard and saw…” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Or did I?” He swayed.

The mathematician grasped his arm to hold him up. “Heard and saw what?”

He blinked. “I had a picture of my life, or I think it was my life. I'm not even sure if it was the future or the past.” He looked around, whether to be evasive or to tease us, I know not.

“What kind of picture?”

“I…it was very strange. I won't speak of this, I think. I won't…” Then his eyes fell on me. “Where's the medallion?” he abruptly demanded.

He took me by surprise. “It's lost, remember?”

“No. You're mistaken.” His gray eyes were intent.

“It went down with
L'Orient,
General.”

“No.” He said it with such conviction that we looked at each other uneasily.

“Would you have some water?” Monge asked worriedly.

Napoleon shook his head as if to clear it. “I will not go in there again.”

“But, General, what did you see?” the mathematician pressed.

“We will not speak of this again.”

All of us were uncomfortable. I realized how much the expedition relied on Bonaparte's precision and energy, now that I'd seen him
dazed. He was imperfect as a man and a leader, but so commanding, so dominant in purpose and intellect, that all of us had unconsciously surrendered to him. He was the expedition's spark and its compass. Without him, none of this would be happening.

The pyramid seemed to be looking down on us mockingly, the perfect peak.

“I must rest,” Napoleon said. “Wine, not water.” He snapped his finger and an aide ran to fetch a flask. Then he turned to me. “What are you doing here?”

Had he lost all his senses? “What?” I was confused by his confusion.

“You came with a medallion and a promise to make sense of this. You've claimed to have lost the one and haven't fulfilled the other. What is it I felt in there? Is it electricity?”

“Possibly, General, but I have no instrument to tell. I'm as baffled as anyone.”

“And I am baffled by you, a suspected murderer and an American, who comes on our expedition and seems to be of no use and yet is everywhere! I'm beginning to not trust you, Gage, and it is not comfortable being a man I don't trust.”

“General Bonaparte, I have been working to earn your trust, on the battlefield and here! It does no good to make wild guesses. Give me time to work on these theories. Jomard's ideas are intriguing, but I've had no time to evaluate them.”

“Then you will sit here in the sand until you do.” He took the flask and drank.

“What? No! I have studies in Cairo!”

“You're not to return to Cairo until you can come back and tell me something useful about this pyramid. Not old stories, but what it is for and how it can be harnessed. There's power here, and I want to know how to tap it.”

“I want nothing less! But how am I to do that?”

“You are a savant, supposedly. Discover it. Use the medallion you pretend to have lost.” Then he stalked away.

Our little group watched him in stupefaction.

“What the devil happened to him in there?” Jomard said.

“I think he hallucinated in the dark,” Monge said. “Lord knows I wouldn't stay in there alone. Our Corsican has guts.”

“Why did he focus on me?” His antagonism had shaken me.

“Because you were at Abukir,” the mathematician said. “I think the defeat is gnawing on him more than he will admit. Our strategic future is not good.”

“And I'm to camp out here staring at this structure until it is?”

“He'll forget about you in a day or two.”

“Not that his curiosity isn't warranted,” Jomard said. “I need to read the ancient sources again. The more I learn of this structure, the more fascinating it seems.”

“And pointless,” I grumbled.

“Is it, Gage?” asked Monge. “There's far too much precision for pointlessness, I think. Not only too much labor, but too much thought. In doing more calculations just now, another correlation occurred to me. This pyramid is indeed a mathematical plaything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I will need to check my guess against Jomard's figures, but if we extrapolate the pyramid's slope to its original peak, a bit higher than it is now, and compare its height to the length of two of its sides, I believe we arrive at one of the most fundamental numbers in all mathematics: pi.”

“Pi?”

“The ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference, Gage, is considered by many cultures to be sacred. It's about twenty-two parts to seven, or 3.1415…the number has never been completely computed. Still, every culture has tried to come as close as they can. The ancient Egyptians came up with 3.160. The pyramid's ratio of height to two of its sides appears to come very close to that number.”

“The pyramid stands for pi?”

“It was built, perhaps, to conform to the Egyptian value of that number.”

“But again, why?”

“Once more we butt up against ancient mysteries. But it's interest
ing, is it not, that your medallion included a diameter inside a circle? Too bad you lost it. Or did you?”