The Hidden Oasis (62 page)

As she resumed her pacing, the two of them, for want of anything better to do, sat down in the shade of the giant eucalyptus tree. According to Flin’s watch it was now 10.57 a.m., although, as they had noticed when they first entered the oasis, the position of the sun in the sky suggested it was much later – mid to late afternoon.

‘It’s like time moves differently here,’ he said.

They were the only words they exchanged. The sun blazed down, the minutes ticked by, the generators rumbled, and nothing happened.

In the end almost an hour passed before they were called back into the room. Kiernan and Girgis looked thunderous.

‘So?’ snapped Kiernan, not even bothering with a preamble.

‘Well there’s no question it’s a meteorite, or part of a meteorite,’ began Meadows in his dreary, nasal voice as he ushered them over to the front of the glass confinement zone. ‘As well as iridium, osmium etc. we’re picking up significant traces of olivine and pyroxene which are clearly suggestive of primitive chondritic—’

‘Just cut the crap and tell me what it can do.’

The scientist shuffled nervously.

‘There are more tests we need to carry out,’ he mumbled. ‘A
lot
more tests, which we’ll begin the moment we get it back to a proper laboratory with more powerful spectroscopic …’

Kiernan threw him a look and he fell silent.

‘It’s a primitive chondrite,’ he said after an uncomfortable pause. ‘A meteorite.’

‘Yes, but what can it do? You get what I’m saying? What can it do?’

Kiernan was clearly trying to control herself.

‘What can the meteorite do? What’s inside it? What’s all this stuff telling you?’ She waved a hand at the gadgetry ranged around the chamber. Meadows fiddled with the edge of the clipboard he was holding, but didn’t reply.

‘That’s it?’ Kiernan’s voice was starting to rise. ‘Are you telling me that’s it? Is that what you’re telling me?’

The scientist gave a nervous shrug.

‘It’s a primitive chondrite,’ he repeated helplessly. ‘A meteorite. A piece of space rock.’

She opened her mouth, shut it again, stood there, one
hand touching the cross at her throat, the other balled into a fist. Silent. Everyone was silent. Even the electronic blipping seemed to have slowed and quietened as though sharing in the general sense of shocked deflation. There was a long pause, then, inside the glass chamber, the men began pulling off their radiation hoods and tearing away the tangle of electrodes and wires which covered the stone. Flin started to chuckle.

‘Oh that’s priceless,’ he chortled. ‘Twenty-three years and God knows how many deaths and all for a worthless chunk of rock. That is just absolutely bloody priceless.’

All his anxiety appeared to have evaporated, the dynamic of the scene the complete reverse of what it had been back at the plane. Now, it seemed to Freya, it was Flin who was savouring the moment and Kiernan and Girgis who were struggling to come to terms with the situation.

‘But the texts,’ Kiernan mumbled. ‘They said … The experts, everyone said …’

She wheeled round, waving a hand at Flin.

‘
You
said! You told me. That it was real, the Egyptians used it … you told me! You promised me!’

He held up his hands.

‘
Mea culpa,
Molly. I was a crap spy, and it seems I’m a crap Egyptologist as well.’

‘But you said, you told me, they all told me … it had powers, it destroyed Egypt’s enemies … The mace of the gods, the most terrible weapon ever known to man!’

She was starting to rage, her eyes dilated, flecks of spittle again gathering in the corners of her mouth.

‘Be careful, that’s what you said! Don’t fuck around with
it, there are things we don’t understand, unknown elements! Powers, you told me it had powers!’

‘I guess I got it wrong,’ Flin said, pausing a beat before adding: ‘Come on, Molly, you’ve got to admit it’s funny.’

It was the phrase she herself had used earlier and she clearly wasn’t amused at having it thrown back in her face. She glared at him – a more vicious, caustic look Freya had never seen. Then, jabbing a finger as if to say ‘I’ll deal with you in a moment,’ she rounded on Meadows, haranguing him, demanding to see his findings, have them explained to her, telling him he must have made a mistake and would have to run the tests again.

‘They told me!’ she kept shouting. ‘Everyone told me – it’s got powers, that’s what they said, it’s got powers!’

Girgis and his companions joined in, jabbering in a mixture of Arabic and English, yelling at the scientists, and at Usman – now standing alone in the isolation chamber, a forlorn figure in his thick plastic spectacles – and at Kiernan too, insisting that, powers or no powers, they still expected full payment of the money that was owing to them. The heavy-set man with the moustache lit up a cigarette and now Meadows – who had stood meekly taking the abuse – lost his temper as well, demanding the cigarette be extinguished immediately lest it interfere with the electronic equipment. Two of his colleagues came forward to back him up and all at once everybody was shouting and jostling, the twins wading in for no particular reason other than that was the sort of thing they did. The whole building echoed to the dissonant strains of furious argument.

‘Time to go,’ whispered Flin, taking Freya’s arm and pulling her across the room. They reached the doorway,
paused to confirm they weren’t being observed and started to step through. As they did one of the white-coats – a curly-haired young man who was positioned not far from the door and was, despite the general confusion, still bent over his monitor – suddenly held up a hand and said: ‘Hey, look at this!’

It wasn’t the actual words that caused Freya and Flin to stop and turn back into the room, but the urgency with which they were uttered.

‘Look at this!’ the man repeated, flapping his hand to attract attention. On the screen in front of him Freya could see a series of vertical bars rising and falling like the valves of a trumpet. Still the argument raged: the man’s voice was lost in the general swell of shout and counter-shout, and he had to call a third time before the hubbub slowly began to subside and he had everyone’s undivided attention.

‘Something’s happening,’ he said. ‘Look.’

Everyone shuffled forward, crowding around the screen. Even Flin and Freya moved closer, their escape momentarily put on hold as they waited to see what was going on.

‘What is this?’ asked Girgis, the signals on the monitor in front of him becoming increasingly animated. ‘What does this mean?’

Meadows was craning over his colleague’s shoulder, brow furrowed as he watched the bars leap up and down, shooting right to the very top of the screen before dropping back again and flat-lining.

‘Electromagnetic activity,’ he murmured. ‘A lot of electromagnetic activity.’

‘From where? From the stone?’

The voice was Kiernan’s.

‘It’s not possible,’ said Meadows. ‘We’ve been monitoring it for two hours and there’s not been any … It’s just not …’

He swung round and crossed the room to the glass chamber, the others following in his wake. Flin and Freya hung back near the door, no one taking any notice of them, all eyes now focused on the Benben. Usman was still standing inside the chamber, one hand laid protectively on top of the stone as though on the head of a child; a collar of wires and electrodes was snagged around its base where they had been stripped away by the men in radiation suits. It looked no different from how it had done when it was first unwrapped: a squat, parabola-shaped lump of grainy, greyish-black rock.

‘Harker?’ called Meadows.

‘It’s off the scale, sir,’ reported the curly-haired man. ‘I’ve never seen anything …’

‘I’m getting an increase in alpha, beta
and
gamma radiation,’ announced another scientist. ‘Quite a significant increase.’

Meadows hurried over and was bending down to examine this new finding when a woman on the opposite side of the room also called out – something about non-sequential ionization – forcing him to break away to go over to look at her screen. Other voices now joined in. Excited, insistent, yelling that they too were getting unexpected readings, bandying words and phrases that meant absolutely nothing to Freya. Meadows scurried from one screen to the next, shaking his head, repeating ‘It’s not possible, it’s just not possible,’ over and over. The printer, which had been silent for the last few minutes, started chattering again, even more
manically than before, an ever-lengthening tongue of paper jerking out of its mouth. The electronic sounds returned with a vengeance, filling the room with a symphony of blips and bleeps and crackles. The monitor and computer screens swirled with a dazzling kaleidoscope of activity.

‘What is happening?’ shouted Girgis.

Meadows ignored him. Striding over to the glass chamber, he ordered Usman out. The Egyptian didn’t move, just stood there staring down at the stone, transfixed, a confused, vacant sort of look on his face. Meadows repeated his command, twice, each time with increasing urgency. Then, with a helpless flap of the arms he motioned to one of his colleagues, who hit a button. The airlock hissed, closing and sealing, leaving Usman locked inside.

‘I’m sorry to have to do that, Ms Kiernan,’ Meadows began, ‘but I can’t risk—’

‘Fuck him,’ interrupted Girgis. ‘What about us? Are we in danger? Is it safe?’

Meadows stared at him, shocked by the Egyptian’s lack of concern, then slapped his palm against the front of the protective box.

‘This is three-inch-thick, multi-walled carbon-nanotube-reinforced leaded glass. Which is to say there’s nothing getting out of here that we don’t want to get out. So to answer your question, yes, we’re perfectly safe. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for your colleague.’

Usman had started to sway back and forth, one hand clasping the rock for support. He was mumbling to himself, eyes glazed as though he had fallen into a stupor, apparently only half aware of what was going on.

‘What the fuck’s wrong with him?’ asked the thickset man. ‘Is he drunk?’

No one answered. Usman continued to sway, his free hand coming up and pawing at the zip of his radiation suit, trying to get it undone.

‘
Ana harran
.’ His voice echoed through the intercom. It sounded woozy and disorientated. ‘
Ana eyean.
’

‘He says he’s hot,’ Flin murmured, translating for Freya. ‘He doesn’t feel well.’

‘What’s happening to him?’ she asked, horrified and fascinated at the same time.

Flin shook his head, unable to answer. Usman lurched, regained his balance, got a hold of the zip and started to strip off the suit, fumbling it down over his body and off, revealing blue trousers and a white shirt beneath.

‘
Ana harran
,’ he slurred. ‘
Ana eyean
.’

He tugged the shirt off as well, and the trousers, leaving him standing there in just his underpants, socks and shoes. It would have been comical were it not for the fact that he was clearly now in serious distress, his chest heaving as if he was struggling for breath, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

‘
Ha-ee-yeebetowgar
,’ he moaned, pawing at his thighs and belly. ‘
Ha-ee-yee betowgar
.’

‘It’s really hurting,’ translated Flin.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Freya. ‘I can’t watch this.’

But she continued to do so, as did everyone else in the room, morbidly hypnotized by the scene that was playing itself out within the glass quarantine chamber. The printer chattered ever more furiously, the blipping and bleeping grew more clamorous as whatever forces were gathering did
so at an accelerating pace. Despite Meadows’s assurance that everything was safe, Girgis and the other Egyptians moved back from the chamber. Unlike Kiernan, who had gone right up to it, pressing one hand against the glass while with the other she fondled the cross at her neck, eyes glinting with excitement.

‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Come on, baby, show us what you can do. Stone of Fire, Voice of Sekhmet. Come on, come on.’

Usman was now stumbling around, moaning in pain, rubbing his eyes, tugging at his ears.

‘
Ana haragar
,’ he groaned. ‘
Ana larzim arooh let-tawarlet
.’

‘Christ,’ murmured Flin underneath his breath. ‘He says he’s going to be sick, needs to …’

Usman doubled up and dropped to his knees, right in front of Kiernan. A trickle of watery vomit spilled from his mouth, his white underpants turned a pale shade of brown.

‘He’s shat himself!’ laughed the thickset man. ‘Look at that! The dirty idiot’s shat himself!’

‘Iner-wer iner-en Ra iner-n sedjet iner sweser-en kheru-en sekhmet
… ’ intoned Usman groggily, heaving himself to his feet again and just standing there, his face and belly pressed up against the inside of the glass, his hands hanging limp at his sides. Thirty seconds passed, the electronic feedback dampening slightly as though whatever process was causing it was starting to dwindle and calm. Then, suddenly, shockingly, two things happened in swift succession. A deep, sonorous pulse rang out. Seeming to come from within the stone itself, it reverberated like a magnified heartbeat, causing the entire building to tremble even though the sound itself was not particularly loud. At almost exactly the same
instant there was a blinding burst of light – also from within the stone – like a flashbulb going off although far brighter and more intense. It lasted only a fraction of a second and the amber tinting of the glass protected them from the worst of the glare. Even so, they were all momentarily blinded. Arms came up and covered eyes, the printer and monitors fell silent, the computer screens and lamps cut out, plunging the room into darkness. There were shouts, movement, Girgis’s voice demanding to know what was going on. Then, as abruptly as they had shut off, the electrics came back on line. The monitors and computers rebooted, the halogen lamps flickered back into life. There was a pause as everyone blinked and adjusted, then screams and the sound of retching.

‘Oh my God,’ choked Freya, clasping a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh God help him.’

In front of them Usman was standing in exactly the same position as he had been before the flash of light, still pressed up against the inside of the glass, still in his underpants, socks and shoes. The one difference was that his skin had gone. His body – limbs and face and torso – was now a glistening, slippery patchwork of tendons, muscles, bones and fatty tissue. Horrifyingly, he still appeared to be alive, for a bubbling growl welled up from his throat, his lidless eyes swivelling back and forth behind his spectacles as he tried to work out what was going on. He mumbled something and tried to take a step back, but the front of his body from the waist up – belly, chest, right cheek – seemed to have fused to the glass. He tried again, his eyeballs rolling furiously, his ribs heaving up and down as he fought to draw breath. Then, lifting his raw arms – how he found the
strength Freya couldn’t begin to guess – he placed his hands flat against the front of the chamber, gritted his lip-less teeth and pushed, forcing himself away from the glass. There was a moist tearing sound and he tottered backwards, thick shreds of flesh remaining glued to the chamber wall. For a brief, sickening moment they glimpsed his jawbone, colon and what might have been part of his liver. Then there was another throbbing pulse, another burst of light and everything went black again.