Island of the Sun (19 page)

“How'd they come to be looking in the wrong place?” Luke asked.

Von Albrecht smoothed his hair. “It was my mistake. My calculations did not account for the ingenuity of the ancient Egyptians. It seems they not only found the Concentrator, they harnessed and manipulated its energy. They turned the Nile into a conduit, sending power up and down the length of their empire. The pyramids were their power plants, a secret they guarded jealously from their enemies, so we lost all record of it. The Egyptians, in a sense, rewired the telluric currents across this whole region, and that's why I thought the Concentrator would be on the Giza Plateau. But that's only where they sent the energy. The source is upriver, in the Valley of the Kings. We don't know exactly where, but it's there.”

“And the G.E.T. doesn't know?” Betty said.

“We have kept that information from them,” Nathifa said.

“Then we can do this.” Eleanor felt more hopeful than she had since they had landed here. “We can stop it.”

“You are certain you can shut it down?” von Albrecht asked.

“Yes. I've done it twice now.”

“Then we should go soon,” Nathifa said. “I heard the G.E.T. saying Watkins is on his way here.”

“He is?” Finn said. He turned to the rest of them.
“If he has my dad and Julian with him, maybe we can rescue them!”

“Slow down, there, kid,” Luke said. “We're not staging some jailbreak—”

“What? But—”

“We haven't forgotten about them,” Eleanor's mom said. “Believe me. But we have to wait until the time is right. I know it's hard—”

“Do you?” Finn said. “You keep saying that, but I don't think you do.”

“They're right about one thing, Finn,” Betty said. “It isn't the right time. We don't know for sure if Watkins even has your dad with him. And even if we do rescue them, it's only going to serve to let them know we're here. Either way, we need to make a plan.”

Finn brought his hands inward and folded his arms.

Eleanor's mom turned back to Nathifa. “So how do we get to the Valley of the Kings?”

“By boat,” she said. “That will be the fastest way. We should leave tonight.”

T
HE SLUGGISH
N
ILE
R
IVER LOITERED ALONG ITS REEDY
banks, only three hundred feet or so across, the moon's reflection in it quivering and shy, the black water flecked with the city's lights. As Eleanor and the others had made the journey toward it through the city, Nathifa had told them how, before the Freeze, the river had been wide and deep enough for cruise ships to ply tourists up and down its length. Now, glaciers to the south in the high African mountains held on tightly to the water that once flowed freely.

After parking the van, Nathifa and von Albrecht led their party to a small dock where a rented boat waited for them. The craft was a pontoon style very
similar to Amaru's, which reminded Eleanor of his smiling face at the helm, but also of the blood pouring from his chest. The suddenness of that memory seized her breath and caused her to gasp silently. As she took a seat on this boat that was not Amaru's, but seemed somehow haunted by him, she wondered how—or if—she would ever escape his ghost. She could not even say if she truly wanted to.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Luke asked. He carried a few duffel bags full of equipment they'd brought from the warehouse.

“It will take us twenty hours to reach Luxor,” Nathifa said. “From there, the Valley of the Kings is only a few miles away.”

“Twenty hours?” Betty said. “I suppose we'd better get comfortable.”

“What about the G.E.T.?” Eleanor's mom asked. “Will they be looking for you?”

Nathifa scoffed. “They will be glad I'm not there looking over their shoulders. I did leave a message that I am ill. Trust me, no one will give me a second thought.”

Finn sat down next to Eleanor and mumbled, “I wish we could at least wait to see if Watkins has my dad and Julian with him before we go.”

“I know,” Eleanor said. “We'll find out when we get back.”

His eyes were red when he looked at her. “I know
you
mean that.” But then he looked at Eleanor's mom and Luke and Betty. “But I don't know if they do. What if they want to just leave them behind again?”

Eleanor wished she could promise him they wouldn't do that, but she also didn't want to break that promise later, so she stayed silent.

Von Albrecht and Nathifa stowed the duffel bags and packs in a compartment at the bow, and then Nathifa pulled the boat away from the pier. The rotors gurgled in the water behind them, and once they were out in the middle of the river, Nathifa pushed the throttle and they picked up speed.

It was a bit strange traveling this way at night, like being on an aquatic treadmill; the boat had a spotlight aimed ahead of them, but Eleanor couldn't tell if the motion of the brown water through its light was the current moving past them, the forward movement of the boat, or both. The city along the banks gave the only clear sign that they were actually plowing south up the river.

Von Albrecht kept watch from the prow for any obstacles in the water, and Eleanor's mom joined him. They started talking about the Concentrator and its energy signatures, and the conversation quickly reached a level of technicality that drove Eleanor
away. She turned to Finn, but he had withdrawn to the back of the boat, watching the water, while Luke had already lain down on one of the bench seats with folded arms and fallen asleep. So Eleanor went to sit near Nathifa.

The woman stared ahead, the wind buffeting her head scarf where it draped loose about her neck, and Eleanor couldn't tell if her expression was grim or simply resolute. Neither was Eleanor sure if she should fully trust Nathifa or von Albrecht. It seemed this conspiracy had the power to make good people do bad things, and somehow make bad things seem good. It turned people against each other who might otherwise be allies.

“Why are you helping us?” Eleanor asked her, trying to speak loudly enough to be heard over the motor but quietly enough the others couldn't hear.

Nathifa paused a moment, looked at Eleanor, and said, “The first reason is simply that I hate the G.E.T. digging around in our historical heritage, and I want them gone. I don't know why the UN has given them such power.”

“Do you know about the Preservation Protocol?” Eleanor asked.

“I've heard of it. Just rumors.”

“It's real,” Eleanor said.

Nathifa blinked and turned her gaze to the flowing water. “That is . . . unsettling.”

“You said first reason,” Eleanor said. “Is there a second?”

“The second is that I agree with Dr. von Albrecht. He knew those
things
should not be used. Now we know they must be stopped. So I do this for my family. My parents and my sisters. My . . . friends.”

Amaru did what he did for his family, too, though that motivation led him to make a very different choice. The more Eleanor thought about this whole conflict, the more complicated it seemed, and the less willing she became to judge anyone for how they responded to it.

“What about you?” Nathifa asked. “How old are you?”

“Twelve,” Eleanor said.

“Twelve,” Nathifa said. “And why is a twelve-year-old doing this?”

It was a harder question to answer than it seemed. Jenna and Claire, Eleanor's friends back home, certainly wouldn't have come this far. They wouldn't have stowed away on Luke's plane in the first place. The truth was that Eleanor had made her choices without stopping to think too hard about them. She had simply acted in the moment, doing what she thought
was right. The G.E.T. had to be stopped not because they were evil, but because Eleanor knew their chosen course of action to be wrong: the Preservation Protocol, choosing who would survive and who would freeze, keeping secrets from the world for its own good. Everyone deserved to make their own choices, not to have those choices made for them.

“I want to save everybody,” Eleanor finally said.

Nathifa nodded.

“You mentioned your parents and sisters,” Eleanor said. “I guess you're not married?”

“No,” Nathifa said, her demeanor becoming sad and distant. “In my country, it is forbidden to marry the person I want to marry. So I will remain unmarried until it is allowed. My parents find this very distressing.”

“Who do you want to marry?” Eleanor asked.

Nathifa shook her head. “I should not say.”

Though curious, Eleanor let the question go.

They traveled upriver for several hours, through a darkened countryside of farms and fields, in the pockets of which glowed periodic cities. Occasionally, towering shadows hulked along the banks. Nathifa said they were old abandoned ships, cargo vessels and cruise liners that could no longer navigate the shrunken river and had been left to rust.

As the night deepened, Eleanor grew tired and lay down on one of the bench seats. Luke woke up just as her eyes were about to close, and he took a turn keeping a lookout, while von Albrecht took the ship's wheel from Nathifa. Eleanor then slept, and when she next woke, Nathifa was back at the helm, while von Albrecht dozed nearby, and the sky had just barely crossed the border between night and day.

A few hours later, they stopped for fuel in a small town, but they did not leave the boat and were soon back on their way. As they traveled up the river, Finn grew even more sullen, and every so often he would turn around and stand at the back of the boat, staring down at the wake they'd left behind them. Eleanor's mom and Betty tried to console him, and even Luke made an attempt, but Finn rebuffed and ignored them. But then von Albrecht approached him. Eleanor sat close enough to hear what he said.

“My father was an architect.” Von Albrecht smoothed his hair back. “He was very famous. He left his mark. Even though he died when I was but a little older than you are, I never felt that he was gone. Everywhere I looked, I saw his life's work, his buildings, and I heard an echo of his voice in my head. I still do. His monuments ask me what I have done. What mark have I left?”

Finn turned away from the water and looked at von Albrecht. “How do you answer them?”

“I have always looked away from them in shame,” von Albrecht said. “I have left no mark. I have been mocked my whole career. No one has given me any respect, until quite recently. You know this, I am sure.”

Finn nodded.

“But this,” von Albrecht said. “What I am doing right now, here on this boat? This is important. More than anything I have done. After this, I will no longer look away in shame.”

Finn's posture had slackened, just a bit, as though someone had loosened his strings.

“You will see your father again,” von Albrecht said. “When you do, he will ask you what you have done since he last saw you, because that is what fathers do. I wonder, what will you say?” Von Albrecht then clasped his hands behind his back and walked back up to the front of the boat.

Finn stood there, alone, staring at his feet for a minute or two. Then he cast one more glance down the river before showing the water his back, and came to sit next to Eleanor. “So let's get this done,” he said.

“We will,” she said.

“You know what's weird?”

“What?”

“I'm mad at Julian. I have been this whole time.”

“Why?”

“Because he's there with my dad and I'm not.”

“I don't think that's so weird.”

“Everyone says I'm just like my dad. But Julian is the one he's proud of.”

“He is proud of you,” Eleanor said. “I've seen it.”

“He
will
be,” Finn said.

Whereas the others, including Eleanor, had been trying to reassure Finn, Von Albrecht had simply challenged him. Eleanor had to admit that it had worked.

T
he day passed mile by mile, and the river flowed into monotony, the villages and farms all appearing similar to one another by the afternoon. Most towns had their own bridges, and as the boat crossed under them, sharp-winged birds dove from their nests in the girders and sliced the air around them, chirping and scolding. Stilted ibises patrolled the shore, stabbing the water with their long beaks, and Eleanor even glimpsed an enormous Nile crocodile sunning itself on the muddy shore, indifferent to the passage of their boat.

“There aren't many of them left,” Nathifa said. “It's getting too cold.”

“He looks like he's keeping plenty warm,” Luke said.

“No,” Nathifa said. “It's too cold for the eggs. They incubate in the sand, and almost none of them hatch now. But the mothers keep laying them and guarding the nests long after their young should have been born. It's very sad.”

“They guard their nests?” Betty said. “I've never thought of crocodiles as especially maternal.”

“Oh, yes,” Nathifa said. “A mother will watch the nest for three months and then protect her young for two years.”

Eleanor agreed with Nathifa. It was very sad. But this was happening all over the world, and there were hundreds and maybe even thousands of species that were already gone. Extinct. With thousands and thousands more in danger. In all the worry over human life, sometimes Eleanor forgot about the rest of the earth's inhabitants. They suffered too. And when they were gone, no one would remember.

A few hours later, the evening sun reached that point where it lustered the world; the water, the reeds along the bank, people's eyes and skin, all of it seemed to glow from within. They reached the city of Luxor, and from the river Eleanor glimpsed the columns and walls of its ancient temples rising up above a fringe of palm trees. Nathifa guided the boat to a dock on the opposite shore from the ruins, and they unloaded the
packs and duffel bags from the forward compartment.

“How will we get to the Valley of the Kings?” Eleanor's mom asked.

“Taxi,” Nathifa said. “Then camel.”

“Seriously?” Finn asked.

“It is a priceless archaeological site,” von Albrecht said. “The government closed it to tourism several years ago. Motor vehicles are restricted. It's three miles into the Theban hills, and I'd like to get there before dark. So, yes, camels.”

They were unable to find a van large enough to take them all and ended up in two cars. Eleanor searched for but saw no evidence of G.E.T. presence here, at which she felt relief, as the taxis drove them through town, then out of it into farming country and across a wide irrigation canal. They then turned onto a road that followed the waterway for a mile or so north before another turn onto a winding road. As they proceeded along it, toward a range of hills, they passed another temple on the left.

“That is the mortuary temple of Seti the First,” Nathifa said.

“What's a mortuary temple?” Finn asked.

“A memorial to commemorate the reign of a ruler,” she said.

“So it's not where they turned them into mummies?”
he asked. “Where they removed their brains and internal organs and everything?”

She smiled. “No, it's not.”

Not far beyond the temple, they arrived at a gated road with a small building adjacent to it. Several camels roamed a paddock nearby, grunting and grazing. The taxis stopped to let them out in front of the gate, and Nathifa approached the building as a guard wearing a kind of police uniform emerged to greet her. They spoke in Arabic, and she showed him her badge, gesturing toward the rest of them as they waited. The guard finally nodded and walked around toward the paddock as Nathifa returned.

“He'll saddle the camels for us,” she said. “We should make it before dark.”

“What did you tell him?” Eleanor's mom asked.

“You are archaeologists from the United States,” she said. “I'm here to show you the tombs. My badge said the rest.”

The sun was flirting with the horizon by the time the guard brought their animals around, and it was getting quite cold. Eleanor had never been near a camel before and hadn't realized how large they were, well over six feet tall at the shoulder. Everything about them seemed big: their yellow teeth, their wide hooves, their makeup-commercial eyelashes that had
to be three inches long. They also smelled terrible, like acrid urine, and manure, and some other animal odor she couldn't identify. The guard set about strapping their packs and duffels to the animals' saddles.