The Six Sacred Stones

by Matthew Reilly

  “Strength. Their ability to fight on behalf of the tribe.”

  “Sometimes, yes,” Jack said. “But not always.”

  Astro shrugged. “What else is there then?”

  Wizard said, “More often it was the familythat held some kind of sacred talisman that was regarded as the head family of the tribe. It might be a mace, or a crown, or a holy stone.

  The ability to fight was often collateral to the ability to maintain possession of a sacred object.”

  Jack said, “Macbeth slays Duncan and takes his mace, thus Macbeth, as holder of the mace, becomes king.”

  Wizard said, “And the Three Great Houses of Europe have always held something that has made themgreater than other noble households…”

  “Pillars,” Astro said, getting it.

  “Exactly,” Wizard said, “and the knowledge that goes with them: hereditary knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, about the use and purpose of those Pillars.”

  Jack added, “And the fact that our Princess Iolanthe is the current Keeper of the Royal Personal Records means that she is a key holder of that knowledge.”

  Astro said, “So if there are only three European Houses, does that mean they only have three Pillars?”

  “I believe so,” Wizard said. “But—”

  “—but that doesn’t mean we don’t know where the other three are,” Iolanthe said from the doorway at the rear of the main cabin.

  Everyone spun.

  Iolanthe was the picture of calm and not, it seemed, the least bit offended that they had been talking about her behind her back.

  Now dressed in a cream jacket, Oakley boots, and slim cargo pants, she strolled back into the cabin and slid onto a spare couch.

  “If I may contribute to the discussion,” she said. “Throughout history commoners have activelysought someone to look up to. Someone of higher birth, of noble blood, of superior sensibility. Royalty. Those who would willingly undertake an obligation to keep safe both the people and certain important objects. And because royalty are known to subscribe to a higher standard of honor, they are trusted to do so.

  “The common folk, on the other hand—knowing in their hearts that they themselves are too fickle, too greedy, to stay true to any such notion of honor—seek a family of renown who will. Thus the strong rule and the weak get ruled over, by their own choice. It is the natural order of things. It has been so since humans began to walk upright.”

  Lily gazed at Iolanthe closely.

  The strong rule, and the weak get ruled over.She had heard those words before: uttered by a deranged Vatican priest named Francisco del Piero, the man who had raised her twin brother, Alexander, to be a despotic and cruel ruler.

  Wizard had heard those same words, and he too gazed at Iolanthe with watchful eyes.

  Astro said, “If people love royalty so much, why is democracy so embraced then? Look at America.”

  Iolanthe snuffed a laugh. “Look at America? Why, Captain, for the last two hundred years, your country has been steadily and unequivocally marching toward monarchy.

  “The problem is, your rulers have no talisman, no treasure, to hold on behalf of the people. So you get bold usurpers seeking to create a kingdom: Kennedy’s father, Joseph, wanted to establish a line of Kennedy presidents: John then Robert then Edward. In recent years, the Bush family—aided by its friends in the House of Saud—has succeeded in creating a lineage, and indeed plans to install a third Bush on the throne. But it has no talisman, and thus no kingdom. Although perhaps when this adventure is over, it will, and thus it will take a seat at the table with the Great Houses of Europe.”

  Jack said, “So right now in this race we have: us, the good guys, aided by the New Money wannabes from Saudi Arabia and America; you, the royal dynasties of Europe; and China, aided by whoknowswho. So where do, say, the United Arab Emirates fit into this world view?”

  “Newer Money, that’s all,” Iolanthe said. “A puny desert tribe that only recently found itself sitting on massive oil reserves.” She shrugged apologetically at Pooh Bear and Scimitar. “No offense.”

  Pooh Bear growled, “Ma’am, in the words of my young friend, Lily, get bent.”

  Scimitar just bowed. “We take no offense at all, madam.”

  Jack said, “So what about other countries? Like Australia, for instance.”

  “Still a colony of Britain,” Iolanthe said dismissively.

  “China?”

  “A nation of corrupt officials and a billion ignorant rural peasants. Fat, slow, and bloated.

  By the time it advances to the level of the West, we will have reached Mars.”

  “Africa?”

  “The slavelands of the world. Useless now, as it has already been thoroughly plundered.

  Nowadays African nations are like whores, willing to sell themselves and their armies to anyone with hard currency.”

  “Japan?”

  “An interesting case, for the Japanese standsui generis in our world, in a category of their own. Even the most humble commoner there has a deep sense of honor. But their pride is their weakness. Japan is the most racist nation on Earth: the Japanese sincerely believe themselves to be superior to all other races. This got them into trouble in World War II.”

  “But Japan has a royal family,” Zoe said. “The oldest continuous royal line in the world.”

  “This is true,” Iolanthe said. “It is old and noble and not nearly as weak as it pretends to be. Japan’s capitulation at the end of the Second World War almost saw the first modern destruction of a legitimate royal family. But the royal house survived. The Americans humiliated Hirohito but they did not disempower him. Because they were unable to find his talisman.”

  Jack frowned at that. This was something new to him. He leaned forward.

  “And that talisman was…?”

  “…something that I am not inclined to tell you about just yet, my dashing Huntsman.”

  Iolanthe gave Jack a michievous sexy grin. “You may have to employ other methods to prise that little secret from me—maybe you couldromance it out of me. Alternately, you could just ask your American colleague here.” A nod at Astro.

  Jack raised an eyebrow at Astro. “Well?”

  “Search me,” Astro said.

  Iolanthe said, “In any case, while they might protest otherwise and say that they have moved on, the Japanese have not forgotten the profound slur of World War II. And such a prideful people hold a very long grudge. You turn your back on Japan at your peril.”

  For a moment, no one said anything.

  “The world is a complex place,” Iolanthe said softly, almost to herself. “Wars are won and lost. Empires rise and fall. But through all of recorded history, power hasalways been in a state of flux, ever transferred from one empire to the next: from Egypt to Greece and then to Rome; or more recently, from France under Napoleon to the British Empire to the current American dominance. But now—with the igniting of the Machine—it will be different. The transfer of power will cease. For now is the one and only time in history where total and absolute power will come to rest, forever, in the hands of one nation.”

  A COUPLEof hours later, the main cabin of the plane was dark and silent.

  The only person still at work in it was Jack, poring over a map of Africa by the light of a desk lamp, with Horus perched on his chair back. All the others had gone aft to get some sleep before the big day ahead—except for Lily; she lay fast asleep on the couch beside Jack.

  Horus squawked.

  Jack looked up to see Iolanthe standing in the doorway to the main cabin, dressed in a loose tracksuit, her hair tousled from sleep.

  “Command is lonely,” she said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “I was told you inspire loyalty in those who follow you.” Iolanthe sat down.

  “All I do is let my people think for themselves. Seems to work.”

  Iolanthe watched him for a moment, eyeing him closely in the darkness, as if assessing this
strange being named Jack West Jr.

  “Few people can think for themselves,” she said.

  “Allpeople can think for themselves,” Jack said quickly.

  “No. Not true. Not all of them can,” she said softly, looking away.

  Jack said, “You mentioned before that you might know the whereabouts of theother Pillars…”

  Iolanthe was roused from her reverie and she smiled at him, raising an eyebrow. “I might.”

  “It’s just that we have this Saudi Pillar, marked with a single dash, and your one, marked with four dashes, indicating that they’re the First and Fourth Pillars. We’ll be needing the second one soon, within the week.”

  “If we survive today.”

  “Let’s be optimistic and assume we will,” West said. “Where is it?”

  Iolanthe stood, touching her upper lip with her tongue. “According to my sources, the second Pillar is to be found in the jungles of central Africa, zealously and jealously guarded by the same tribe that has held it for over three thousand years, the Neetha.”

  “I’ve researched the Neetha. Cannibals. Nasty.”

  “Captain,nasty does not even begin to describe the Neetha. Nor does cannibal.Carnivore would be better. Ordinary cannibals kill you before they eat you. The Neetha do not give you that dignity.

  “It’s believed that a thousand Rwandan refugees fleeing the genocide in 1998 got lost in the jungle and stumbled upon the grounds of the Neetha. Not a single one of them emerged. To enter the Neetha’s territory is to enter a spider’s web.”

  “Another question,” Jack said. “What do you know about the last Ramesean Stone, the Basin of Rameses II? Wizard doesn’t know where it is.”

  “Nobody knows where it is,” Iolanthe said simply. “The Basin long ago disappeared from history.”

  “Do you know what it does?”

  “No. Not a clue.” Iolanthe turned to go.

  “I don’t trust you, you know,” Jack said after her.

  “Nor should you,” she said, not turning around. “Nor should you.”

  She left the room. Jack continued with his reading.

  Neither he nor Iolanthe had noticed that Lily had awoken during their conversation.

  And heard every word.

  An hour later, the cabin lights throughout the plane came on, and a tone beeped over the intercom.

  “Rise and shine, people!”Sky Monster’s voice called cheerfully.“Jack, I’ve spotted a stretch of highway about forty klicks west of Abu Simbel. Nothing there but desert. Can’t land on the northern highway: there are several convoys of tourist coaches coming down it—they set out early each day from Aswan to get to Abu Simbel just after dawn. The western road should be long enough to act as a runway and far enough out to allow us to get in and out without anyone noticing.”

  “Thanks, Monster,” Jack said, standing. “Take us in.”

  ABU SIMBEL

  SOUTHERN EGYPT

  DECEMBER 10, 2007, 0400 HOURS

  IN THE PREDAWN light, the enormous statues of Rameses the Great loomed like giants frozen forever in stone.

  They towered above West’s team and their vehicles, dwarfing them.

  Whereas Zoe had used silent nonlethal force to subdue the guards at Stonehenge, here Jack had not been so subtle. The two Egyptian Department of Antiquities guards who had been on patrol at the popular tourist site had quickly surrendered when they found themselves staring down the barrels of four submachine guns. Now they lay bound and gagged in their guardhouse.

  Jack stood before the four statues of Rameses, while Wizard stood a hundred yards away in front of the smaller temple of Nefertari. The whole team was here except for Sky Monster and Stretch—they’d remained on theHalicarnassus and now circled high overhead, keeping watch over the landscape and waiting for the extraction call.

  “Range finders,” Jack commanded, and two laser range finders were brought out, one for each set of statues.

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Zoe asked, nodding at the second of the four statues of Rameses II. Sometime in the distant past, its head had fallen off.

  “No,” West said. “In ancient Egypt, they counted from right to left. The ‘third eye’ will be on that one.” He pointed at the statue second from the right.

  Helped by Pooh Bear, Astro abseiled down from the rocky overhang above the statue in question, clutching one of the range finders in his free hand.

  Over at the Nefertari temple, Scimitar did the same, aided by Vulture: there the “third eye” was also on the second statue from the right, a statue of Nefertari.

  As they roped into position, West turned and gazed out over Lake Nasser.

  The great lake stretched away to the horizon, dark and silent, possessed of that unnatural calm found only in manmade lakes. A low fog hovered over it.

  The opposite shore swung around in a long curve, and, rising up out of the lake in front of this shoreline, Jack could just make out a series of pyramidshaped islands.

  At the base of many of those islands and all along the old shoreline, Jack knew, were all manner of hieroglyphic carvings that UNESCO had not been able to save from the rising waters. Just like the Three Gorges Dam in China.

  Astro and Scimitar were in position.

  The great stone head in front of Astro was simply huge, even larger than he was.

  “Mount the range finders in the eye sockets,” West instructed. “Make sure they’re precisely aligned with the statues’ sight lines.”

  Astro did so—likewise, Scimitar at his statue—using clamps to secure his range finder to the eye socket of his statue.

  Once they were done, West got them to adjust the devices slightly, two degrees to southward—to account for the slight repositioning of Abu Simbel by UNESCO.

  “OK, turn them on.”

  The range finders were switched on—

  —and suddenly two deadstraight red laser lines lanced out from the third eye sockets, shooting out over the lake, slicing through the fog, disappearing into the near distance—

  —only to converge at a point about one and a quarter miles away, at one of the small pyramidal rock islands jutting up out of the waters of Lake Nasser not far from the opposite shore.

  “Oh my goodness,” Wizard breathed. “We found it.”

  Two Zodiac speedboats were immediately inflated and launched into the water.

  Vulture and Scimitar were left on the shore as a rear guard while Jack and the others shoomed off in the two speedboats.

  Within ten minutes, the two Zodiacs arrived at the pyramidal island, shrouded by fog.

  The semisubmerged snouts of dozens of Nile crocodiles could be seen nearby, forming a wide circle around the two boats, their eyes glinting in the team’s flashlights, staring at the intruders.

  As it drew near, Zoe peered up at the rocky island. At the waterline, its flanks were sheer, almost vertical, while farther up they tapered to a more gentle slope.

  “The surface looks almost handcarved,” she said. “Like someonechiseled the rock island into the shape of a pyramid.”

  Wizard said, “Archaeologists have long pondered the shape of these islands, back when they were just hills, before the lake rose. But, no, tests have proved that they were not carved in any way. This is just their natural shape.”

  “Weird,” Lily said.

  “Hey! I’ve got a sonar reading…” Astro called from his Zodiac, on which was all manner of depthsounding and groundpenetrating radar devices.

  “No, wait,” he sighed. “It’s nothing. Living signature. Something down on the bottom.

  Probably just a croc—hold on, this is better, GPR has found a void in the base of the island directly beneath us. Sonic resonance confirms it. Looks like a horizontal tunnel of some kind, delving into the island.”

  “Bring the boats together,” Jack ordered, “and anchor us to the base of the island. Then bring out the airchute and the docking door. Astro, Pooh Bear—get your tanks on.

  You’ve got the job o
f sealing the entrance.”

  Twenty minutes later, a strange contraption sat in between the two anchored Zodiacs: a hollow inflatable rubber tube that dived down into the water like an opentopped vertical pipe.

  Astro and Pooh Bear—in full scuba gear and bearing harpoon guns for the crocs—

  splashed backward into the inky water, flashlights on.

  Ninety feet underneath the boats, they arrived at the lake bed, at the point where it met the base of the rock pyramid.

  They panned their flashlights over the surface of the island pyramid, to revealhundreds of images cut into the rocky surface. They were mainly standard Egyptian carvings: hieroglyphics and images of pharaohs shaking hands with gods.

  “Jack,” Astro said into his facemask mike, “we’ve got carvings. Lots of them.”

  Pooh Bear waved a portable GPR—groundpenetrating radar—device over the image

  riddled wall. Kind of like an Xray, it could detect hollows and voids behind the surface of the wall. “Here! Got a void behind this carving!”

  Astro shone his flashlight onto the suspect section of wall, and found himself illuminating a carving he’d seen before:

  The symbol for the Machine. “We should’ve known,” he said. “Found it.”

  ASTRO AND POOH BEAR then quickly set about affixing a peculiar tentlike device over the point where the lake floor met the wall of the pyramid island, covering the carving of the Machine.

  Shaped like a cube, the tentlike device was a portable variableaperture United States Navy submarine docking door—a gift to West from the Sea Ranger.

  Normally used to join submersibles to submarines, it was a rubberwalled docking unit that operated like an air lock: once you affixed it in place, sealing the edges, you filled it with air—inflating it like a balloon and expelling any water from it—thus providing a dry

  “docking environment” between two submerged points.