Keystone (20 page)

Larue looked at the photos that
Martín had handed him. His hands were trembling. In his wildest dreams he had
not imagined this.

Whilst far
less economical and safe, even Larue had to admit that the manned mission had
its virtues. It took Beagle
half an
hour to extract a good geological sample from the soil. In comparison, one of
the astronauts could literally bend over and pick up a rock in seconds.

And from the
look of the photos, even the versatile rover wouldn’t have been able to climb
down three hundred metres of cliff.

He placed the
pictures carefully on his desk and looked at Martín Antunez and Jacqueline
Thomas, sitting in front of him. It was the first time he had seen them both
together, and he fancied he could feel the electricity between them.
What it must be
, he thought to himself,
to be in love again
.

“What shall we
do with the pictures,
Monsieur
?”
Martín said. “They were taken over four days ago, and still nothing has been
released by the Americans. The other agencies are still jumping up and down
about some of the rock samples that came through yesterday, so I doubt they
know either. We have a lead Beagle engineer in Bristol, England on the phone to
us every hour or so asking about this data and what it means. They’re going
crazy over there, and it’s only a matter of time before things start leaking
out.”

Larue opened
his drawer and pulled out his cigar box. Now was the right time for one, he
thought. Removing one of the
Diplomáticos
from within, he ran it under his nose slowly, before snipping the end off
and putting it between his lips. As an afterthought, he offered the box to
Martín and Jacqueline.

Martín shook
his head. He was amazed that Larue would dare light a cigar inside a place of
work, but for some reason he couldn’t help feeling that his real indignation
came from the fact that he had not offered first before taking one himself.

Jacqueline simply
ignored the gesture entirely.

“I think,” he
said slowly, “that it is time for us to release
Beagle 4
’s newest findings to the press.” With this, he took a box
of matches from his drawer and lit his cigar. The thick plume of smoke snaked
up to the alarm in the ceiling, which remained silent.

“The press,
Monsieur
?” Jacqueline couldn’t stop
herself from bursting out.

He raised an
eyebrow, prompting her to explain herself. Since his conversation with Martín
the previous week, and the shocking revelations that had followed, he had found
himself full of energy and confidence. The old Larue was back, he thought to
himself, and the ridicule that had fallen on him with the ESA’s exclusion from
the
Clarke
would soon be but a
distant memory.

Jacqueline was
not accustomed to addressing people of Larue’s status. She took a breath and
did her best. “
Monsieur
Larue, if you
don’t mind me saying, the Agency does not normally address the press with this
sort of information. This is not a Public Relations exercise. We should release
these photos through the appropriate scientific channels.”

Larue smiled.
“And we shall. But sometimes, you need to point the press in the right
direction, so that they find our properly released material. And if they happen
to ask for copies of the photos before anyone else has the opportunity, then so
be it. The photos will be released across the scientific network before they
appear in
Le Monde
, Jacqueline, trust
me. Just not by much.”

Martín
wondered how much Larue would take for the exclusive. If
Le Monde
was able to publish high resolution photographs in its
daily edition, it would only have exclusivity for a few hours, half a day at
most. But in the world of Journalism, and with the headline that Martín could
already see in his mind’s eye, sometimes a few hours was all that was needed to
sell a few extra million copies.

Larue saw the
look on the Spaniard’s face and removed the cigar from his mouth. “Martin, the
American author Richard Evans once wrote that ‘
it is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen’
. I think that
you will agree that the skies have rarely been darker than most recently. Stars
that I had previously never noticed have become visible. You have to pick them
out while the skies are still dark, lest the opportunity pass you by.”

Jacqueline
looked sideways at her partner, but he said nothing to counter his boss.

Instead, he
passed Larue the book he had been holding. “I also have this,
Monsieur
. It’s my own personal copy. I
think that you will find it quite interesting.”

Larue took the
book and after a quick glance at the cover, opened it. Inside was a dedication.
‘
Martín – Good Luck – Dr Turner.”
He
closed the book and examined the cover again.

“What is
this?” he asked.

Martín leant
forward and started to explain.

With a kiss goodbye and a cheery
smile, Dr Gail Turner left the house, leaving George sitting at the dining room
table with his newspaper.

If there was
one thing that
had
changed over the
years, it was her punctuality.

He cleared
breakfast away and placed the dirty things in the dishwasher. He selected the
Quick Wash
option and pushed the door
closed.

Picking up his
mug of tea he wandered into the living room.
 
The video wall came to life as he picked up the remote control,
automatically tuned in to his favourite comedy series. Sitting down on the
sofa, he put his legs up on the coffee table and placed his mug on his belly.

There really
wasn’t much else for him to do on his day off; the house pretty much took care
of itself, not that they made it very messy between the two of them anyway.
Gail wouldn’t be home until late that evening after work and it was Monday, so
he didn’t need to cook. Monday was always Fish and Chips day.

The
traditional British takeaway had almost disappeared at the start of the
century, mainly due to dwindling fish stocks in the surrounding seas. But a
European-wide restriction on fishing zones had been sufficient to allow the
populations of cod in particular to thrive once more. By 2020, whilst fish
consumption had fallen drastically, particularly in the Mediterranean states,
fish stocks had grown beyond the most optimistic of estimates.

By the time
fishing restrictions were relaxed in the mid 2030’s, however, fish had mostly
been replaced on Europe’s menus by organic substitutes. The market leader’s
product range had been comprised entirely of fish substitutes for over ten
years, and they had no plans to change it. This was partly because substitute
products were virtually indistinguishable from real fish in terms of taste and
texture. Of course, shape didn’t matter because most fish products sold were
processed anyway. Their landmark advertising campaign twenty years previously
had challenged celebrities to tell the difference between a real fish cake and
a fish-substitute one. Not only had they been unable to correctly identify the
real fish, but most had preferred the substitute. Once consumers knew this,
their products were an instant success. The substitute was nutritious, tasty,
and ethical.

Rocketing
profits sealed the fate of the fishing industry, the final nail in the coffin
for an already crippled sector. Processed fish never returned to the
supermarkets again.

But there were
some things that technology couldn’t replace, no matter how hard they tried,
the traditional Fish and Chips meal being one of them. With fish stocks higher
than ever, most expected the price of Cod to reach all-time lows. Unchallenged,
you could literally fish them out of the sea with a bucket. But economics never
worked as consumers would like, and the drop in competition allowed the few
fishing vessels remaining to inflate the asking price as much as they wanted.

Gail and
George always had real Fish and Chips on a Monday; it was one of the many
luxuries their lifestyle afforded them.

Gail entered
her office and turned her computer on.
 
She glanced at the clock: eight-thirty;
perfect
.
 
Removing her phone
from her pocket and placing it on the desk, she pulled the keyboard towards her
and opened her email program.

The first
email was from George from the previous night. A silly joke as usual, which
made her smile and shake her head.

This was
followed by half a dozen questions from her students, two of which she
answered, the remaining four she flagged to look at later.

Ellie had sent
her some pictures the previous day, which she had not had the opportunity to
look at yet. She opened the email and scrolled through a series of photos of
Ellie, her husband and their two children on holiday in China. The final photo,
of her with her grinning youngest son, had the caption ‘
Come on, don’t tell me you don’t want one just like this?!
’ She hit
the reply button and fired off a few short lines, saying how wonderful China
looked, how great they looked as a family, and how no, she didn’t want one
because she knew all too well what they were like the remaining ninety per cent
of the time.

She had time
for one more email. It was from David Hunt.

Ever since her
discovery in Amarna ten years earlier, the now
Professor
David Hunt had been the closest colleague of Gail’s at
the University. Despite her best assurances to the contrary, he felt that her
discovery gave credence to his
alternate
histories
theory, blowing wide open all of the dating that had previously
been thought to be true about ancient Egypt. In general, Gail disagreed; she
saw no reason why Amarna shouldn’t fit in the context of ancient Egypt without
disrupting known dates, a belief that was gladly shared by the Egyptologist
community.

David had
always been more radical than most, a position that had caused him problems
before. Gail was more than aware of the dangers involved, particularly in
Egyptology, if she were to try to oppose established facts as he regularly did:
in Cairo, it was the first thing that Professor al-Misri had warned her of as
the magnitude of their discovery had unfolded.

She scanned
through David’s email and grinned. He had something to show her that might
change her mind. David always said that, about everything. She switched her display
off and stood up, grabbed a pile of notes and books, and left her office.

A few minutes
after the door closed her mobile phone, still on the desk, began to ring.
Several moments later it stopped, and her office phone rang instead. Then it
stopped too.

Seconds later,
both
of her phones started ringing
together.

The main lecture theatre of the
Faculty of Arts had hardly changed in ten years. She looked around the empty
seats and thought of all the lectures and study groups she had stumbled into,
late. It had all been different on her return from Egypt.

Her thesis had
been a breeze, and her findings then fuelled several published articles and a
permanent position within the Department of Archaeology. For the University,
she had been one of those most rare accomplishments: a home-grown talent that
other Faculties would pay handsomely to attract.

Her crowning
achievement to date had been the publication of her book, aided by her friend
Professor al-Misri, which had cemented her place on the international lecture
circuit.

A new batch of
first-year students, now into their third month at university, was about to
pile through the double doors to her left, followed some time later by the ones
that were enjoying student life a little too much, she imagined. For most, it would
hopefully be the first of six optional lectures on Egyptology, spread across
the first year of their degrees. An all too significant proportion, however,
were likely to drop out of university after the Christmas holidays.

Her job, as
she saw it, was to pull them in now, get their attention, spark their
enthusiasm, and make sure that they stayed. And her hope for the long-term was
that the series of lectures, which she had been running now for the past two
years, would ultimately lead to a full-time Egyptology unit.

Gail pushed
her memory card into the reader, inset into the side of the touch screen on the
lecturer’s podium. Quickly navigating the system’s menus, she brought up her
media set, entitled ‘Egyptology - Lecture 1’. The first still slide filled the
small preview screen. Turning round, she looked at the projection on the wall
behind her.

She used to be
embarrassed by such displays of her work, especially in front of an audience of
hundreds. But over time her confidence had grown, and she now looked up at the
wall with immense pride. On a white background was a picture of her book,
placed on top of an old, yellowed map of Egypt. A small mound of sand covered
one corner of the map. It was one of her book publisher’s marketing shots, but
she always used it because she felt it gave the lecture a certain gloss.

 
The cover of the book showed the title ‘Buried
Past – The hidden stories of Amarna’. The space underneath was filled with an
engraving on a stone lit by an oil lamp; another dramatic effect Gail felt added
a sense of adventure to the lecture.

It would be too
obvious, she felt, to start the term with a picture of the Great Pyramids, or
Karnak, or the Sphinx. But that wasn’t the impact she was going for. Her aim
was to show that even in the twenty-first century there were still incredible
discoveries to make, and there were still huge unknowns. It didn’t matter how
much research went into Egypt, or for that matter any civilisation, there were
always
unanswered questions, and
questions not yet asked

Asking, and answering, those questions was
what archaeology was all about.

She focused on
the engraving, following its strange lines, remembering what it had felt like
to run her hands over the stones for the first time.

Her
presentation ready to go, she let her mind wander and remembered that first
venture into the Amarna Library.

Professor al-Misri
had promised her that she would be one of the first to go into the Library,
following the engineers who had to check the integrity of the structure. But
first they had to find a way in. After two days studying the stone wall between
the ante-chamber and the Library, it had been decided that the only way to
access the room was by cutting through the stone itself.
 
To Gail, this had seemed quite destructive,
but modern technology and the ingenuity of the engineers had managed to
surprise her.

After
identifying a section of wall in the corner of the room with no book shelves
connected to it on the other side, the engineers had outlined a circle a foot
and a half in diameter, about three feet from the floor. Two slots were cut
into the centre of the circle, into which the arms of a counterweighted jack
were inserted. The counterweight platform was loaded with lead plates and the
jack was raised as far as possible. They had then used a large pneumatic drill
to sink a series of holes into the wall around the circle’s circumference. The
goal was to create an entrance to the Library whilst generating as little dust
and debris as possible. For this reason, the drill bit stopped a fraction of an
inch short of the other side of the wall. It was precision work, and very time
consuming.

After three
days of drilling, and an enormous amount of dust inside the ante-chamber, the
engineers had cut around the entire circle. The jack was then taking most of
the weight of the cylinder of stone within, while a thin layer of stone still
separated the two rooms.

Gail had
wondered what tool the engineers would use to cut the final sliver of stone,
without generating dust, and had asked Ben his opinion.

“When you cut,
using a drill, or a saw, you always get dust,” he had explained. “But when you
break, or snap as you say, you get much less. Like cutting a piece of wood.”

Which is
exactly what the engineers had done; once all of the dust caused by the drill
had been cleared away, they had literally pulled the stone outwards and into
the ante-chamber using pneumatic pumps, like taking the cork from a bottle of
wine. The thin circle of stone connecting it to the surrounding wall had broken
easily, leaving a more or less perfectly circular tunnel between the two rooms.

The engineers
had then entered the Library, with their black suitcase of equipment, and had
spent ten minutes assessing the structure. They had then set up a series of
electric flood lights, connected to a generator on the surface.

After they had
finished, the Professor had addressed Gail.

“Gail, don’t
think of the engineers; apart from the strength of the stone in the room, they
don’t know the first thing about what they have just seen.
You
are to be the first person to set foot in that room for over
three thousand years. Savour every moment of it.”

She had never
forgotten those words. Sliding through the tunnel, she found herself in the
room she had dreamt about for days, ever since she had first seen it on the
X-ray screen.

The Library
was exactly as she had imagined it, with one exception. It was bigger. The
Backscatter X-ray, although colour coded for range, simply couldn’t give a true
sense of scale and depth. On close examination of the Backscatter images, it
was obvious that the room was large, and she was certain that the seasoned
experts would not have been surprised, but she had been taken aback by the
length of the walls, the number of shelves, and the volume of material stacked
upon them.
 

The room was,
as the instruments had shown, one hundred and twenty feet long. What the
instruments had only barely shown, however, was that it was almost a hundred
feet wide and about fifteen feet tall. On the hundreds of shelves were piled
thousands of scrolls, and an assortment of bound parchments and clay tablets –
they later found there to be three thousand two hundred and twenty-seven of
them in total.

The shelves
against the walls were made of planks of wood, slotted into each other like
jigsaws. However the rows of free-standing shelves lined up along the centre of
the room were more like book cases, solidly built with thicker beams comprising
their uprights.

 
A thick layer of dust covered everything, and
as she had walked towards the end of the room, she had seen the footprints of
the engineers. They had obviously done their jobs very thoroughly, checking in
between every set of shelves, and along all of the walls. The sight of recent
footprints did put her off slightly, but she tried hard to focus on what the
Professor had told her, and soon she was concentrating on the ancient finds,
letting her fingers hover millimetres from the surface of the documents, not
daring to touch them lest they disappear in piles of fragments and dust.

Eventually,
she reached her goal. In front of her stood a stone plinth, like a small altar,
on which a book was propped, facing away from her. Her first impression on
seeing the X-ray had been that it was like a Bible in a church. That simile
felt even more accurate as she had stood before it. She felt like a member of a
congregation, waiting for the priest to walk up and start reading.

Now,
after many years giving lectures to
students, she likened it more to the podium at the front of a lecture theatre.

The stone
plinth was simple, unmarked, ending in an angled table surface that projected
out an inch or so from plinth. The book was held in place by a stone lip that
ran along the bottom edge.

She had walked
round the plinth to see the cover, which was when she first laid eyes on the
Stickman
, engraved into the wood.

The symbol was
made up of seven straight lines and one circle. Six of the straight lines were
connected in pairs to form three upside-down Vs, one on top of the other. A
vertical line connected the three Vs, starting at the apex of the bottom V and
ending at the apex of the third V.
 
A
circle sat on the apex of the topmost upside-down V.

Upon entering
the room for the first time, Ben had immediately associated the symbol with a
stickman, because quite simply it looked just like one, except that it had a
second pair of legs just above the first.

From that
moment on, it had been known popularly as the
Amarna Stickman
, previously unheard of and seemingly unique to the
Amarna Library. Academically, it remained nameless in the hope that one of the
texts in the Library would shed light on its ancient Egyptian pronunciation.

She had not
dared to open the book, for fear of it falling apart, and had therefore spent
several minutes examining it from every angle. It was about the size of a
modern coffee-table book. The covers were a quarter of an inch thick, and the
whole thing was bound together, incredibly neatly, with reed. It was in
immaculate condition, as if it had only just been placed there.

After a while,
she had left the plinth and had walked slowly back to the tunnel, but along the
opposite side of the room. It was then that she had noticed that all of the
shelf uprights were also engraved with the
Stickman
symbol from the book-cover. As she had walked past the final row of shelves,
she had seen for the first time in full the end wall of the Library, through
which the tunnel had been drilled. In the centre of the wall was the same
symbol again, but about six feet high. Next to it, but roughly half as tall,
was Nefertiti’s Cartouche. The two symbols were separated by a single vertical
line.

It was later
confirmed that aside from Nefertiti’s cartouche, the strange symbol was the
only marking inside the Library. To date, none of the other documents in the
Library had been found to contain the symbol.

It was only
present on the book from the plinth. And it had never before been seen outside
the Library.

She had spent
a total of four weeks at the site, longer than she had initially planned, and
had returned regularly ever since. In the ten years since the excavation, only
a small fraction of the texts from the Library had even been looked at.

Because of the
mystery surrounding the Amarna Stickman, she had decided to put it on the cover
of her book. Her publisher had readily agreed. For an academic book, it had
sold in surprising numbers, nothing short of a best-seller, and beyond her
wildest expectations.