Island of the Sun (20 page)

“You'll need to ride two to a camel,” Nathifa said.

“Are they safe?” Eleanor's mom said, standing some distance from them.

“Oh, perfectly safe,” von Albrecht said. “Just don't insult them. Camels hold grudges.”

The guard used a spoken command to get the animals to fold their long legs and kneel, and then divided the riders up according to size. Eleanor ended up with Luke, and Finn ended up with von Albrecht. Betty rode with Eleanor's mom, and Nathifa took a camel to herself. Eleanor slipped her foot into the stirrup and climbed onto the saddle, while Luke did the same behind her.

“Just a warning: lean backward as they stand,” Nathifa said.

Eleanor did, and was glad for it, because the camel stood up one end at a time and nearly toppled her to the ground. Once up, she marveled at the height of her saddle, the ground below seeming very far away.

The guard then roped the animals all together in a single column, with Nathifa at the head, and they set off.

“They know the way,” Nathifa said. “Just settle back and enjoy the ride.”

“That god-awful smell makes it a bit difficult,” Luke said.

Eleanor had to agree with that, but she enjoyed the ride nevertheless. Some distance past the guard station, they entered a shallow canyon and lost the sun. The road carried them through the cold and shadowy recesses of washes and gullies, winding deeper and deeper into the hills. In the failing light, the geology around Eleanor had a pale, rocky, almost lunar quality, far enough from the waters of the Nile to remain barren and desolate. She felt grateful the camels knew the route, because she would have quickly become lost.

After they had ridden for a bit, they arrived at a tattered, haunted encampment. Large canvas tents stood in various states of disrepair, some with holes and torn pieces fluttering in the breeze, some fallen down around their broken metal skeletons. Without a command or warning, the camels knelt down, and once again Eleanor nearly hit the sand below her headfirst. After the riders had all dismounted and unstrapped their gear, the camels stood and returned the way they had come.

“They really do know the way, don't they?” Betty said.

“Even if they are out of practice,” von Albrecht said, glancing about. “Look at the state of things. When was the last time anyone was here?”

“It has been several months,” Nathifa said. “No funding.”

“What is this place?” Eleanor asked.

“A camp for archaeologists and other researchers,” Nathifa said. “We'll take one of these tents for the night, and then begin work tomorrow. Come.”

She led them to one of the better-looking tents and untied the flaps over the doorway. Inside, by flashlight, they found a dozen cots, a couple of folding tables and chairs, and a rug on the ground barely visible through a layer of sand that had apparently blown in. Everyone claimed a cot and lay down. Eleanor's emitted a bleating sound as the synthetic fabric stretched beneath her. Luke's actually buckled, crashing him to the ground, and he had to choose a new one. Von Albrecht pulled some thermal blankets out of the duffel bags and handed them around.

“Do you sense anything?” her mom asked.

“No,” Eleanor said. “We must not be close enough yet.”

She lay on her back, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and stared up at the ceiling of the tent. A hole to the right of just above her head held a swatch of stars.
Eleanor stared through the opening a few moments and then closed her eyes. Tomorrow, they would begin the hunt among the pharaohs' tombs for the Concentrator. Thought she couldn't feel it yet, she knew it was out there, somewhere close by.

E
LEANOR WOKE TO THE SOUND OF ZIPPERS AND OPENED
her eyes. Her mom, von Albrecht, and Nathifa were reaching into the packs and duffels and laying out the instruments and equipment on the tables. There was a laptop too, but when Finn reached for it, Nathifa waved at his hand.

“That's a G.E.T. laptop,” she said. “We shouldn't use it. I probably should not have brought it with us, but I wasn't thinking.”

“Is it connected to their network?” Finn asked.

Eleanor wondered why he would ask that.

“Not at the moment,” Nathifa said. “Let's keep it that way, okay?”

Eleanor rose from her cot and walked up to stand beside her mom, stretching her arms up above her head. “What's all this for?” she asked.

A moment passed before her mom looked up. “To get us a bit closer to the Concentrator, so you can pinpoint its location.”

Eleanor recognized one of the devices as a telluric scanner, a piece of equipment she'd seen up in the Arctic.

“How is it you can sense them?” von Albrecht asked.

Eleanor looked at her mom. “We don't know.”

“Is it safe for you?” Nathifa asked. “This . . . connection?”

Eleanor nodded. “Sure. I've done it—”

“We don't know if it's safe,” her mom said. “We don't know what it is or how it works. Truthfully, I'm very uncomfortable with it.”

“But we've talked about this before,” Eleanor said, more to her mom than to Nathifa. “We don't have any other options. Do we?”

Her mom said nothing.

“
Do
we?”

Still her mom didn't answer, and Eleanor realized the matter would probably never be settled. Her mom would never accept this about her, and Eleanor
discovered she was more okay with that than she would have thought.

Nathifa looked back and forth between them, then turned away. “Right, so . . . I think we're ready to begin scanning.”

Eleanor's mom brushed her hands together. “Good. Let's do it.”

She, von Albrecht, and Nathifa each picked up a scanner and walked out of the tent, where Finn, Luke, and Betty were waiting. The valley reached away from them toward a high, pyramid-shaped mountain peak, the morning sunlight striking its eastern face. The canyon walls rose up on either side of them, gradually sloping in some places, leaping vertically in others.

They proceeded as a group along the valley floor, down a wide path with branching side trails that stretched toward shadowy doorways set right into the rock.

“Each of those is a tomb,” Nathifa said. “I think it's perhaps best to begin scanning here. It's likely the ancient Egyptians would have discovered the Concentrator while digging out one of these.”

“How many are there?” Finn asked.

“Sixty-three that we know of. There are likely still more waiting to be discovered, but considering everything that's happening now, I don't know that we'll
ever find them. Just think—if the Freeze continues, there will be dozens of tombs, a record of an entire civilization, floating though space on a dead, frozen rock.”

“Not if we can help it,” said Eleanor.

They passed many of the tombs, but the telluric scanners they carried gave no indication of where the Concentrator might be.

“How big are the tombs?” Finn asked.

“Some have but one chamber,” Nathifa said. “Others have many. The one known as KV5 has one hundred twenty rooms. It was built for the sons of Ramses the Second.”

“Incredible,” Eleanor's mom said.

“Yeah, but what about the Great Pyramid?” Luke asked. “For a tomb, it's even—”

“The pyramids are not
tombs
,” von Albrecht said. “They never were. They were used to gather and store the earth's telluric currents concentrated here.”

Luke held up his hands. “My mistake, doc.”

“Speaking of currents,” Betty said, “are you getting any Concentrator vibes, Eleanor?”

She shook her head, reminding herself that it had taken time, and some dangerous underwater exploration, to find the Concentrator in Peru. Locating each one had proven a unique challenge; it was clear that
whoever put them here didn't want them to be easily discovered. Eleanor hadn't necessarily expected it to be easy here in Egypt either. But at least she was fairly certain no diving equipment would be needed.

They passed tomb after tomb, dozens of their rectangular entrances, and Eleanor felt nothing. The telluric scanners still hadn't picked up any traces of current, either. When they reached the foot of the pyramid-mountain at the end of the valley, it appeared they had run out of tombs.

“What now?” Finn asked.

“There is one more tomb,” Nathifa said. “Some say it is the oldest tomb in the valley. It is very odd.”

“Sounds like we should've started with that one,” Luke said.

Nathifa narrowed her eyes at him. “It is also the farthest from the camp, and we would have passed the others anyway. It is called KV39. It's up there.” She pointed up the mountain, into the nook at the head of a wide ravine.

“What makes it odd?” Finn asked.

“You'll see.”

So they climbed. The path they took was rocky and narrow, winding up and up. When Eleanor looked back down behind them, she could see the valley below, with its network of tombs, and it made sense
to her that, like the Inca, the pharaohs would have been drawn to this place. The Concentrators radiated a power strong enough to resurrect Amarok and his tribe, after all. And it sounded like the Egyptians had an even deeper connection with its power.

That was when Eleanor felt it. A gentle jolt through the soles of her shoes. The hum. They were getting close, and Luke was right. They should have started with the old, odd KV39.

When they reached it, the recessed opening appeared far less grand than the entrances below it, almost more of a cave. The tomb was isolated up here as well, far from the others that huddled so tightly together on the valley floor.

To reach the entrance, they had to shimmy down a rocky slope into a gully. The tomb's narrow opening reminded Eleanor of the cave she'd entered under the waters of Lake Titicaca, except that something about this place felt more sinister. But the hum had only grown stronger as they had neared it. Eleanor opened her mouth to tell everyone, then shut it, unwilling to speak.

But this is what you're here to do
, she told herself. Yet she couldn't bring herself to say anything, not yet.

“Not very inviting, is it?” Luke said.

“Top marks for understatement, Fournier,” Betty said.

“I just don't want to get cursed,” Luke said.

“Is there a mummy in there?” Finn asked.

Nathifa chuckled. “No, it's empty. Archaeologists have long assumed it was looted thousands of years ago, and they don't even know who was buried here. They once believed it was Amenhotep the First, but many now doubt that.”

“Whoever it was,” Eleanor's mom said, looking back down the ravine, “they liked their privacy.”

“I am getting some mild telluric signatures,” von Albrecht said, frowning down at his device. “Eleanor, do you sense anything?”

Eleanor opened her mouth again to speak, but nothing came out. Once more, something in her simply refused to say yes, as though a fail-safe had been tripped, and now she knew what it was.

The tomb before them led to the Concentrator—Eleanor had no doubts about that. What she doubted were the people around her, specifically Nathifa and von Albrecht. She had been tricked into leading Amaru to the Concentrator in Peru, and that had resulted in his death and the capture of Dr. Powers and Julian. She wasn't about to make that same
mistake again. She needed time to think.

“Nuh—” She coughed. “No, nothing.”

“We should investigate it, nevertheless,” von Albrecht said.

No one seemed to want to be the first to enter KV39. It was Nathifa who finally pulled out a flashlight and led the way, but her steps were slow and tentative. Von Albrecht followed her, and then Luke. Eleanor went next, with her mom behind her, and then Finn and Betty pushed forward into the darkness.

Just inside the entrance, they found a steep, crumbling stairway that descended through a chamber. The walls and ceiling were rough-hewn and unadorned, not at all how Eleanor imagined an Egyptian pharaoh's tomb would appear. There were also several disconcerting cracks that suggested to Eleanor that the whole place could collapse at any time.

They descended the staircase, their breathing and movement filling the chamber, and when they spoke, it was in whispers for fear of disturbing . . . something.

At the bottom of the steps, they passed through a narrow portal, and on the other side of that entered another downward-sloping chamber. But this one had no stairway, only a decrepit wooden ladder Eleanor would not have trusted for two rungs.

“Be careful,” Nathifa said. “One at a time.”

She went first. The ladder creaked and quivered but somehow held. Each of them followed after her in turn, and at the bottom they stood in a room whose walls were the color of chalk and much smoother than those they'd passed. Ahead of them, another stairway dropped away into the darkness. To the left, there were two passages, one that led straight forward, and another that doubled back in the direction of the entrance.

“Which way do we go?” Eleanor's mom asked.

Eleanor knew. The hum came from the stairway in front of them. But she said nothing, and von Albrecht checked his telluric scanner.

“That way,” he said, and pointed in the same direction Eleanor had silently identified.

This stairway was much narrower and steeper, with deeper steps, and Eleanor used her hands to climb down backward. They were now deep underground, and Eleanor found her heart rate rising. Whether that was from claustrophobia, though, or her nerves about misleading her friends, she couldn't tell.

The chamber at the bottom was perhaps twenty feet long and twelve feet wide, with a ceiling several feet above Luke's head. But it was a dead end.

Eleanor was confused. The hum was definitely louder down here.

“You sure you're reading that thing right, doc?” Luke asked.

Von Albrecht checked the telluric scanner again and then said, “Dr. Perry, will you please confirm?”

“Of course.” Eleanor's mom took her own scanner, made some adjustments to its dials, studied it, and then compared it with von Albrecht's. “Yes, this is where the signal leads.”

“What about you, kid?” Luke said. “You still coming up empty?”

Eleanor could only bring herself to nod. She would find a time and place to tell him the truth when they got back to the camp.

“You mean we came here for nothing?” Finn said. “My dad might be back in Cairo right now!”

“No, not for nothing,” Eleanor's mom said. “It's here. We're just missing something.”

“Perhaps we should explore the rest of the tomb,” Nathifa said. “To be certain.”

They all agreed with that and climbed back up the staircase. For safety's sake it was decided that only von Albrecht and Nathifa would go, while the rest of them waited in the central chamber above. Eleanor didn't mind. She already knew the Concentrator would not be found elsewhere, and as a pharaoh's tomb, KV39 had disappointed her. There were no paintings of
the Egyptian gods, no hieroglyphics, no artifacts, no golden sarcophagi. When von Albrecht and Nathifa returned from their expedition, they reported that both passages, though much longer, had also ended in dead-end chambers.

“I don't understand,” von Albrecht said. “The nexus is here. It must be.”

“Unless you got your map wrong again,” Luke said.

Von Albrecht smoothed his hair back. “I did
not
get it wrong.”

“Perhaps we should return to the camp,” Eleanor's mom said. “Run another check on the data. Maybe we're missing something.”

Everyone agreed, so they climbed out of the tomb and then made their way down the pyramid-mountain. Eleanor glanced back at the opening, still unsure if she had made the right call in withholding what she knew. She needed to talk to someone about it. The one person she knew she could trust.

B
ack in the tent, Eleanor's mom, von Albrecht, and Nathifa pored over his calculations and conclusions, double-checking and triple-checking at every step. While they were occupied with that, Eleanor pulled Luke outside and told him that she had actually sensed the Concentrator back at the tomb.

“Why didn't you say anything?” he asked.

“I just . . .” She was still figuring that out for herself. “Everyone is trying to save something, right? Amaru wanted to save his family. Nathifa wants to save her Egyptian history. Von Albrecht wants to save his reputation.” She moved on to even harder thoughts. “Even Finn just wants to save his dad now. I don't know . . . how to trust them.”

“Ah.” He closed his eyes. “What about your mom?”

Eleanor shook her head. “She has made it very clear she doesn't even want me doing this. She wants me to stop.”

“Well.” Luke looked down at the ground and moved some dirt around with his boot. “I think she'd want to know.”

“I am not telling her. That's final.”

Luke looked at her for a long moment. “She'll be furious with us both. But I'll let this be your call.”

“I can do it without her, or the others. But I'd love your help.”

“Best option is tonight, when they've gone to sleep.” He bent his head to make eye contact with her. “How're you holding up? With Amaru and everything. You okay?”

Eleanor almost pulled out her prefabricated, flat response—
I'm fine
—but decided against it. “It's hard,”
she said. “I still see him when I close my eyes. It feels like everything changed in Peru. Amaru died, and we left Julian and Dr. Powers behind.”