Resurrection (25 page)

Slowly coming back to consciousness on the floor of Jean-Claude’s apartment, Adaiz tried to move. Pain made this impossible on the first try. The upper part of his left arm was burning, as was his left side, below his ribs. He could feel damage to his muscles.

He shut his eyes and rolled himself over on his back. The motion was agony, but he could also see the limits of his pain. Most of his body still worked, and he had not lost an excessive amount of blood. His recovery, Omani willing, would not be too lengthy.

He brought himself slowly to his feet, fighting lightheadedness. There was a pool of smeared blood on the floor, but his shoulder wound had clotted. He studied it, then glanced around and found his shirt, which Jean-Claude had stripped from him. He picked it up, held it between his good hand and his teeth, and carefully tore it into strips. He wrapped his shoulder. With difficulty, he secured the bandages in a knot. Then he wrapped the long cut running under his ribs.

With his wounds bandaged, he forced himself to walk around the room. He nearly fainted several times, but he maintained consciousness by hanging his head low and holding onto furniture. As he approached the street-side window of the apartment, he heard a car pull up below.

Slowly, he leaned his head closer. Down in the street, a taxi had stopped and out of it stood the gray-colored man Pruit had been following.

Adaiz moved as quickly as he could, pushing himself away from the window and moving along the counter to the old black phone that sat in the corner. He picked up the receiver and was relieved to hear a dial tone. He had taken time to practice with phones and understood how they worked. He quickly dialed the number he had memorized.

There were two rings and then a hesitant voice at the other end. “Hello?” It was Enon-Amet, using one of the few English words he knew and pitching his voice low and quiet to emulate a human whisper.

“Brother, it is Adaiz.”

“What’s happened? Are you all right?”

“Yes and no,” Adaiz said. “But I must hurry. The man Pruit was following is here, and I have a plan.”

“Where are you?”

“That can wait. Tell me, are the tracers on Pruit still working?”

“It appears she has discovered one of them, but the other remains intact.”

“Excellent.”

“Adaiz, are you safe?”

“I think so, Older Brother. And I believe I have two bargaining chips that will win us success in both aspects of this mission. I will be back at the hotel soon.”

He hung up the phone. There were footsteps on the stairs.

Nate sat with the Mechanic in the back of a taxi, heading through narrow streets toward Jean-Claude’s old apartment. He was experiencing the a tightening of his skin, which heralded the onset of shivers. Soon his digestive tract would begin to cramp and the pain would come. He would start to moan, and this would annoy the Mechanic, perhaps even delaying his antidote. Silently, he counted the seconds.

Outside the car, the seamier side of Cairo flashed by, hashish parlors and none-too-discreet brothels. There was an underground disco on this block, and young men teemed in front of it. Once upon a time, Nate would have been drawn to such a place. It seemed another life.

Next to him, the Mechanic said nothing, but Nate could tell he was pleased. Their meeting with the Chinese had gone very well. After several minutes of discussion, it had become apparent that the Chinese had already studied the sample formulas at length. They had, apparently, stolen them from one of the other countries negotiating with the Mechanic. They had already concluded that the technology was real, and they had used this afternoon’s meeting to make the Mechanic an offer. It had been very generous for an opening bid.

Nate anticipated a few counter demands from the Mechanic, to which the Chinese would doubtless agree; then the deal would be sealed. Then…what? What would happen to him? He squinted his eyes as he felt the first cramp coming on.

Perhaps his fate would not be so bad. He had, after all, organized everything for the Mechanic: bank accounts away from prying eyes, a nondescript safe deposit box where the manuals were housed. He had even been the one to suggest that only the Mechanic himself should know the location of that box. The key for the Mechanic’s future safety lay in holding no secrets. He would hand over the technology, all of it, and then focus would shift from him to the technology itself. This was facilitated because the Mechanic himself was not proficient in the technology, a fact Nate had carefully made known to each interested party. Once he handed over the goods, he would, however, still be needed to translate the Haight manuals, and this would protect him.

In helping the Mechanic establish his plan of action, Nate had asked him what he hoped to achieve from his negotiations. The Mechanic’s answer was simple: “To live like a god among men.” When asked to elaborate, he could not, other than to say he wanted the means at his disposal to have anything he wished.

In his dogged way, Nate had simply incorporated this desire into the equation. To live like that, the Mechanic would need a considerable amount of money, as well as protection. Thus, the country that offered these in the greatest amounts would win the negotiation.

The Chinese, with offers of immediate Swiss citizenship—something Nate had not known was possible, but which he was convinced was a valid offer—as well as certain specified sums and other accoutrements, would likely be the Mechanic’s country of choice.

The remainder of their afternoon and evening, however, had been consumed by three additional offers from new countries, countries who had materialized out of the woodwork. The Mechanic had listened patiently, but Nate was fairly sure he had already made his decision.

The cramps were worse as the taxi edged up onto the sidewalk and came to a stop. Without so much as a glance at Nate, the Mechanic left the car and headed into the tenement building. Nate paid the driver, then followed him inside. They had spent a week living in this apartment, and both knew the tiny, winding stairway by heart.

“Shall we see what the whore dragged home?” the Mechanic called back, moving quickly up the stairs.

The smell of urine and trash hit them as they reached the landing, but Nate was now too uncomfortable to hold his breath.

The Mechanic drew his handgun as he approached Jean-Claude’s door. He saw that it was ajar and paused. No sounds issued from inside. He prodded the wood, and the door swung inward.

Sitting in the room’s single chair, bandaged at shoulder and side, was a young man. He held a knife casually in one hand. Neither the Mechanic nor Nate had caught a glimpse of Adaiz when he followed Pruit earlier that day, so he was a stranger to them.

“Who are you?” the Mechanic asked. The Mechanic’s words were translated by his jawline device into English.

The young man smiled in a strange, mechanical fashion. “I have an offer for you,” he said. “One that no country will match.”

“What happened to the black whore?”

“He has been freed by the other prisoner. And that girl is part of my offer.”

The Mechanic moved into the room and leaned himself against the low shelves along one wall, his gun trained on the newcomer. “I’m listening,” he said.

Nate forced himself to take a seat on the floor. He took one of the cushions that lay scattered about and shoved it into his abdomen. His body had begun to double up. It would only be minutes before he began to moan aloud. He would suppress those moans as long as humanly possible. His pain must wait until the offer had been heard.

2590 BC
Year 17 of Kinley Earth Survey

The monarchs of the [Fourth] dynasty were gods: they alone after death were privileged to journey across the heavens with their retainers in the divine barque.

 

—
Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History

 

The foundation blocks had been laid over the preceding weeks, and now the builders were beginning on the second course of stones. The foundation itself covered thirteen acres of sandy desert, sunk below surface level to rest on bedrock. There was a large outcropping of natural rock near the center of the foundation, which rose fifty feet above the desert floor. This would serve as an additional anchor to the structure.

The courses on top of the foundation would rise up and inward, four sides forming a pyramid, sloping at an angle of fifty-one degrees, to meet in a point nearly five hundred feet above the desert.

The size of the individual blocks was limited by the maximum volume of mold in which a rock culture consistently could be grown. Despite the Captain’s attempts at preserving Kinly knowledge, much of the Engineer’s building prowess had already been lost. This was inevitable in a primitive culture that turned technology into superstitious ritual, diluting it in the process. Now, if they used too large a mold, the resulting rock appeared uneven and artificial. The volume was also modified by the shape of rock needed for particular locations in the structure and the type of rock culture used. For the granite, which was to encase the primary interior room of this building, the builders would produce slabs of over fifty tons. Elsewhere, they would weigh as much as two hundred tons.

The Captain stood atop a wooden scaffolding that had been erected to view the progress of the pyramid. He had aged, in recent years, to a sliver head of hair and a distinguished, masculine face. He wore a robe of thick white linen, trimmed in gold, and plaited leather sandals of the finest make. His hair was oiled and braided behind his neck. He had become his own vision of divinity in human form.

With him stood Khufu, the twelve-year-old king of all Egypt and the Captain’s blood son. Khufu had his mother’s brown skin, but his hair was light—not blond, but nearly so—and his eyes had been muted from dark brown to gray. His head already cleared the Captain’s shoulder, and he was muscular for his age. He wore the tight, short royal skirt, with his feet and chest left bare. On his chest hung a magnificent pectoral of a falcon, and there were gold-and-silver armbands on his upper arms. The
nemes
, the royal kerchief, was over his head, with a jeweled cobra arching up from his brow. His young chin was adorned with the false beard for this public outing.

Snefru, Khufu’s legal father, had died the year before of an intestinal ailment. Khufu had been the unquestioned heir to the throne. His divine parenthood had been officially acknowledged, and his mother, Hetepheres, was queen of the highest rank. With Khufu’s youth, the Captain felt the reins of the empire settling into his own hands.

Behind them were their litters and two dozen guards and servants who had accompanied them. Even so, this was a casual outing, a simple trip to check on the progress of the pyramid. There had a been a huge ceremony, weeks before, to commemorate pouring of the first block.

Beyond the scaffolding, the plateau slid downward to the Nile, filled with ships. On the other side was Memphis.

The Captain had built a pyramid for Snefru some fifteen miles to the south of this new pyramid. Though smaller in scale, it had the same proportions as the one now being constructed and had been the Captain’s “pilot” structure. The Egyptians had a predilection for large burial monuments, and the Captain had obliged Snefru’s wishes and gained building experience by creating that first pyramid. Though it served no useful purpose, the Captain was proud of it as a structure. Its limestone casing had a beautiful red cast, especially in the light of late afternoon.

The current pyramid, however, would stand out as an object of worship and pride for countless generations. He would encase it in white limestone. This would serve the dual purposes of making it perfectly geometrical and extraordinarily beautiful. He could already envision the limestone gleaming in the hot desert sun, visible for hundreds of miles.

It would truly be an impressive structure, a stone beacon capable of surviving almost any physical cataclysm and still carrying out its duty. The mechanisms of the transponder would be cast out of the Engineer’s metalrock substance and housed within the stone around the central chamber. It would need no powersource of its own. Vibrations hitting it would provide energy enough to stir it to action.

He had chosen this location for the pyramid because it was on a plateau within fifty miles of the sleepers’ cave. Those had been the requirements of the Engineer.

“Father, they are starting,” Khufu said.

At the center of the foundation, workers were pouring a new block. After ten minutes, the thin crystal mold was removed, leaving what looked like a quarried block of brown granite. The Captain nodded, pleased. Soon he would order full crews of several thousand to work on the project day and night until completion. He had given his promise to the Engineer that he would erect this relay station. Despite all that had changed in the Captain’s life, he intended to keep his promise out of respect for that man.

His determination with regard to the construction was more than that, however. In the part of his mind that held onto something of his former identity, that of Captain, decorated Herrod military pilot and leader of a scientific survey mission, he knew that this building was created for a simple communications purpose. In the rest of him, though, it had taken on a new significance. He was Osiris. He was the god incarnate. Whether or not he had been born as such was irrelevant. As he had once said to his wife, what was a god but someone who inspires those around him? By that definition, he had more than adequately proved his divinity, even to himself.

He was aging, but wasn’t that appropriate for a god who had taken human form? To those from Herrod, he possessed no supernatural powers. Here, however, his knowledge of the physical world and how to manipulate it gave him godlike abilities in the eyes of those around him. As the god, he thought of the pyramid differently. It would cement his role as the center of Egyptian religion.

“Your genius at work, my lord and father,” Khufu said, looking at the molded block.

The boy was excited, and why not? The Captain had told him that this would be Khufu’s monument, the symbol of the first pharaoh with divine blood running in his veins.

“Where will it land?” Khufu asked.

“What, my son?”

“The divine barque. The ship that will bear us away.” For this was the story that had grown up in the Captain’s mind and spilled over into his son. Instead of a Kinley rescue ship coming to retrieve the sleepers, he now described a heavenly ship of gods that would bear away all the divine and deserving. A fraction of the Captain’s being knew this was not true, but he no longer cared. What he invented came to pass.

“The divine barque will land in the vicinity of the pyramid that calls it,” he said.

Khufu’s handsome young face became pensive as he scanned the plateau, trying to pick out a likely landing site. “I fear I will not be let aboard,” he said thoughtfully, after several moments.

“Why do you say that?”

“I have thought this through, Father. I am only a half-breed. My mother, the Lady Hetepheres, though noble, is no god.”

“Let me tell you a secret, Khufu,” the Captain said, moving closer so only his son could hear him. “Hetepheres is your human mother who bore you from her womb. She deserves all the honor due to a queen and the mother of a god. But your true mother, your spiritual mother, is Isis, my wife. I have hinted it to you many times, but perhaps it is better that I state it outright. You are our son. You are the incarnation of Horus.”

“But my half brother—he is called Horus as well.”

“The Lion does not deserve that name,” the Captain said slowly. The problem of how to explain his older son—a problem that had grown more pressing in recent years—suddenly resolved itself. In legend, Osiris had a brother named Seth, a traitor who plotted against Osiris and murdered him in cold blood. Seth was the embodiment of betrayal and evil. What if the Lion was not truly his son? What if the Lion were his brother instead? That would destroy his credibility and clear the way for Khufu to assume the role of Horus. “The Lion is not my son, in truth,” the Captain said, after a few moments. He was committing himself to this course, and it felt right. “In another lifetime, I took him as a son, yes. He is, in reality, my younger brother. He is the one called Seth, the one who feels jealousy when he should feel love. In my love for him, I adopted him as my own. But he has failed in demonstrating his respect and loyalty, and he is no longer fit for that role.”

Khufu considered these words and studied himself. “I am honored by what you say, Father. But I do not know if I feel the holiness of a god. Perhaps I am also not worthy of being your son.”

The Captain laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled gently. “That you question your fitness is a sign of worthiness. You will grow to be the man I know you are. Have no doubts, Son.”

“Thank you, Father.”

From the scaffolding, they watched for several hours as more blocks were placed and the pyramid was slowly, slowly taking shape before them.