Inside, the men shake off their cloaks, remove their helmets and dry their faces. Their leader, Marcus Entonius, orders Titus to follow him into a nearby doorway while the others set about their tasks. Hastening to obey, Titus has time only for a glance around the torch-lit interior to notice the winding ramp, the weathered statues clinging to the precipitous walls, the central shaft and the cauldron ready with oil.
He follows Marcus, trotting close to his torch as he is led through a winding labyrinth of passageways, one door leading to another exactly the same. It seems they double back, then forward again, before they finally descend a small ramp and turn into a tunnel-like chamber that drops sharply to a spiral staircase.
The stairs descend endlessly. The steps feel worn, as if water has coursed through this shaft for centuries. After circling for what seems like hours, breathing in the acrid smoke from Marcus’s torch, Titus’s legs nearly buckle beneath him.
The well opens into a massive, brightly lit chamber. They approach two guardians, enormous Egyptian statues carved out of black onyx—an Ibis-faced god with a long staff and a writing palette to one side flanked by a female statue wearing a peculiar half-moon headdress and holding a large book to her chest.
Titus respectfully bows his head to these native deities and steps between them. Ahead looms an imposing red granite wall covered with strange carvings and images. Centered and most prominent rises a large staff with twin snakes wrapped around it and facing each other at the top. Standing before this symbol is Gaius Julius Caesar.
Titus kneels as Marcus bows his head. “My Lord.”
Caesar slowly raises his left hand. In his right he holds an unbound sheaf of papyrus. The flickering torchlight from two braziers mounted on opposite sides of the wall illuminate scrawled lines and symbols on the papyrus similar to the images on the walls.
Titus peers at the wall ahead, observing seven strange symbols enclosed in raised circles spaced around the great snake-entwined staff. He recognizes some of them as ancient Greek signs for the planets.
Caesar turns. His eyes are haunted, glazed and exhausted. Titus has heard whispers that since his taking of the Pharos, he has been rarely seen, spending all his time inside the lighthouse. Doing what, no one would say. Some of the men whisper that the ancient gods have trapped him inside their shrine and will not let him go until Rome has left their land. Others claim Caesar has found an ancient source of power and seeks to wrest it from the gods. Still others believe he has discovered Alexander’s lost treasure.
“Titus Batus,”—Caesar clenches the papyrus tightly in his hand—“your skills are needed. These papers were in the possession of this tower’s keeper, an old, pathetic man who, with his son, alone kept the fires burning and directed the great mirror above.”
“What, only two—?”
“The boy is dead.” Caesar says sharply. “He fled, and when we caught up with him, down here, he was trying to throw these”—he holds up the papers—“into the flames. We had to stop him.”
“What are they, sir?”
Caesar shakes his head. “Whatever these scribblings represent, that boy died for them. We brought his father here, and the old man actually broke free, lunged for the papers and tried to tear them up.”
Titus frowns, looking from those sheets to the wall again.
“Titus. Get the answers from the old man. He is secured in the living quarters upstairs. Use whatever means necessary.” Caesar turns his back and regards the wall once more. His shadow leaps from his body and dances obscenely across the wall, mimicking his stance and mocking his ignorance. Behind him, Titus imagines the two Egyptian statues expelling low, indifferent sighs.
“Yes, sir.” Titus stands and extends his arm in salute. “I—”
But then a trampling of feet pounds out from the stairwell and four men rush into the room. “My liege, Egyptian forces are approaching. Twenty ships.”
Caesar lowers his head as if a great weight pulls on his neck. He looks at the papers trapped in his fist and then considers the wall once more.
Marcus glances from the messenger to his leader. “My Lord, we do not have the strength to withstand such an assault.”
Caesar sighs. “Very well. We leave for the safety of the palace and wait for Mithradates and reinforcements. I will return once we have the situation in hand. Bring the old man with us.”
“Sir,” says another soldier on the stairs, “it is too late. He has chewed off his tongue and drowned in his own blood.”
Caesar swears. He pushes past Titus, muttering a curse on the local gods, and stomps up the stairs. Titus follows the others, the last to leave the silent chamber. Turning one last time, he meets the unnerving stares of those two snakes carved deeply into the granite wall. In the flickering light, they appear to slither around the staff, turn their heads and warn against his return. Then Titus risks a glance at the female statue, who seems to be smirking, confident in the secret clutched tightly to her heart.
Caesar’s forces leave Pharos Island, fleeing from the lighthouse on the few ships remaining after the Egyptians caught them unprepared. Several Roman galleons are already floundering, however, as too many men cram onto their decks. The Emperor’s vessel, too, sinks and men are crushed by planks and become entangled in arms and legs, ropes and moorings.
Titus swims feverishly, finds a floating piece of wood, and kicks his way toward a distant boat. Up ahead, in a flash of lightning, he sees the purple cloak of his leader. Caesar struggles, trying to swim using only one hand. In the other, he holds aloft the papyrus sheets.
A flash.
And then, leaving the brilliant afternoon sun, Titus enters the central palace. Caesar stands on the balcony above the great square as the Fourteenth Legion waits in the hot sun for him to pronounce the words they all expect—that they would be moving out.
Alexandria is in Caesar’s hands again. Pothinus and Achillas, instigators of the rebellion, have been executed, and Ptolemy XIII died trying to escape. Lovely Cleopatra rests comfortably on the throne, her gambit of capturing Caesar’s heart a success.
Caesar leans on the railing and stares across the harbor. He gazes over the waves to the lighthouse, with its mirror reflecting the sun’s rays back at him. Titus has the sense that two great warriors are regarding each other in a contest of wills, deciding whether to continue the struggle or to bow out in mutual respect for the other’s prowess.
Caesar looks away. He stiffens at a touch from the alluring Cleopatra, her olive skin shining in the sunlight. “You must go,” Titus hears her say. “Your enemies stretch your forces thin. Seek them out, one by one, and consolidate your empire once more.”
Caesar nods and gazes one last time at the lighthouse, acknowledging it as an opponent he cannot overcome and determining to press ahead more vigorously in matters he can. “Here,” he says to Marcus Entonius, standing at his side, “take these papers to my father-in-law. They shall be safe in his personal library until I can return my attention to their mysteries.”
“My love,” Cleopatra says, “why not leave them here at the museum? Our scholars can study the symbols and put their great minds to the task of unlocking their secrets.”
“No. The harbor fire makes it clear that they are not safe here. These scrolls must be preserved.”
“But all the original books are safe. Only the copies were lost.”
“It is decided.” He raises his arms to his men and they shout up at him, reaffirming their loyalty and their readiness to leave.
Cleopatra lowers her head, but when she steals a glance at the Pharos, Titus swears he sees her smile.
10
Caleb awoke from the dream at the same time the fever broke. It was mid-afternoon on a nameless day. He struggled out of bed, weak to exhaustion, and in the sunlight filtering through the curtains he found a bowl of raisins, nuts and bananas on the table.
Still in Alexandria. How long had he been out? What was happening back in New York? He needed to check back soon. He
could only imagine if he were stuck here past the start of the semester. How would his students fare with Lombardo or—God help them—Henrik Jenson as his substitute? He had to get out of here as soon as he was cleared to fly, if not sooner. Pain he could handle. He wasn’t quite sure about his tolerance for his mother or her crazy friends.
With a full stomach and confidence that the food would not be coming back up, he made it to the shower. After dressing in sweat pants, sandals and an old T-shirt, he left the room and took the stairs down to the lobby. His head still felt weak, lost in a fog, but he kept moving, taking a short break against a wall as he made his way to the conference room. He forced a smile to a rotund, dark-skinned maid who gave him a wide berth and then he opened the door.
Around a long table littered with papers, pencils, tape recorders and half-full ashtrays sat the ten members of the Morpheus Initiative. A video camera on a tripod was set up in the corner to record everything that transpired. Helen sat at the far end of the table, peering at four pages spread in front of her, and George Waxman stood behind her, busily taping sketches to the wall in groups that seemed to be related by their subject matter. He wore a white polo shirt with a turned-up collar and starched blue jeans and cowboy boots, like he had just stepped into a country bar, the kind with peanuts on the floor and a mechanical bull in the corner. He turned at the sound of the door.
“Caleb. Good of you to show up, finally.” He pointed to an open chair. “Take a seat. I didn’t realize you university types had such weak constitutions.”
Caleb’s mother offered a tired smile. “Feeling better, hon?” She wore a multicolored local shawl and big red plastic sunglasses pushed up on her head. She was radiant, her face tanned and her eyes shining. She had the poise and grace of a deity. In fact, in silhouette she looked like an Egyptian goddesses painted on the crumbling walls around this city, like Isis maybe, or Caleb’s local favorite, Seshat, the wife of Thoth and the goddess of writing and libraries.
This blasphemous comparison made Caleb even angrier with her for intruding into his imagination, weaving herself into the tapestry of the ancient religion he had found so fascinating and liberating. Caleb opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly felt overwhelmed with nausea. Weak and his head spinning, he staggered toward the table. He smelled menthol. Smoke clogged his lungs and stung his eyes, a blinding light . . .
. . . and he is descending the narrow spiral staircase again, rounding the final bend as the statues of the god and goddess come into view, leaning toward him with wide, staring eyes.
Hands held him upright. Someone guided him to the chair and he slumped forward, turning his head and taking sharp breaths.
“Okay,” said Waxman, oblivious to Caleb’s condition, and stretched and walked back to the wall. “Let’s see where we are. Caleb, you can just listen for now and play catch-up later. The rest of the team has just come back from the morning session with their impressions of the assignment, which we’ve now taped to the wall. They were each asked to concentrate on a single object and draw whatever came to them.” He set his burning cigarette down in an ashtray as he adjusted his shirt and regarded the drawings again. Helen frowned and moved the ashtray away from Caleb.
Waxman continued. “You were all directed to focus on a symbol, one familiar to most of you. It is a staff with snakes wrapped around it—”
Caleb sat up straight.
“—the caduceus, symbol of medical practice everywhere.” Waxman adjusted his collar. “I’m sure everyone had preconceived notions of its meaning, but that’ll simply be another factor to account when we analyze your visions.” He looked down his glasses at everyone before taking stock of the pictures on the wall.
“Okay, what do we have?” continued Waxman. “Xavier, you drew what look like spheres or balls circling around a snake. Consistent, but unusual. Not sure what that means, yet.”
Caleb’s breath came out in shallow, choking puffs. Flashes of his dream returned with pounding clarity . . .
. . . showing him the subterranean chamber, Caesar’s shadow thrust impotently upon the wall, the snake heads eyeing him with indifference.
With the back of his ballpoint pen, Waxman tapped the next sheet. “Two of you, Tom and Nina, drew something like a door with bars across it, and above this Nina sketched a flame and wrote something . . . that I can’t quite read.”
At the other end of the table, with her lustrous hair tied back behind her head in a yellow scarf, Nina Osseni cleared her throat. Caleb took deep breaths, trying to ground himself in just one world. Sensing the pull again from the other side, he forced all his attention onto this woman. She seemed cat-like, calm and calculating. Her eyes scanned everyone sitting around the table, like she trusted no one and was ready for an attack to come from any angle. “I wrote ‘Light,’” she said, “just because I had the impression that the flame was different somehow. Like it wasn’t meant for warmth, but for illumination only?”
“I see, Nina. Thank you.” Waxman chewed on his pen and took another step to the right. Caleb watched his mother, saw how her gaze followed Waxman, like he was some kind of god, or hero at least, in her eyes.
“Then,” Waxman continued, “we have five mostly unrelated drawings: Mary drew waves with some kind of wreckage or bodies floating in the water; Elliot sketched a tower tipping over on its side; Amelia drew a temple-like building with lots of pillars and put a gate around it; Victor drew a pyramid in the desert, near an oasis; and Dennis . . . I don’t know what this is.”
“Sorry,” said a heavyset bald man, sweating and smoking across from Caleb. “I didn’t get a good impression of anything this time around. I had the sense of something choking or smothered under heavy layers of, I don’t know, something black and hot.” He rubbed his forehead and took a sip of Pepsi. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Dennis.” Waxman smiled. “It’s not an exact science. Good days and bad.”
Helen held up one last drawing. “Then there’s mine,” she said, “which, admittedly, is biased, since I know the ultimate target.”
“True, so while we can’t count yours as a valid blind experiment, it’s telling nonetheless.” Waxman gave her a light pat on the shoulder.
Caleb narrowed his eyes, then tried to focus on his mother’s picture. She had drawn a series of doors, one after another. Seven in total, with some kind of dog or jackal standing guard before each one. But what pulled his eye was something she had drawn in the upper corner, away from the doors.
He stood, reached over Helen’s shoulder and snatched the sheet from her. He held it up, staring at the smaller image of a crudely drawn mountain, its top blown off. Jagged lines rolled down its sides toward two separate sites that looked like domed houses, one on each side of the mountain.
Waxman was frowning. “What are you doing?”
Helen tried to grab it back from him. “Honey,” she said, “just sit and listen for now.”
“I know what this is,” Caleb said, and the room quieted down. He stumbled forward, took a piece of tape and stuck her picture on the wall, overlapping Tom and Victor’s drawings.
“Looks like a volcano erupting,” said Dennis, chewing into a Mars Bar.
“It is.” Caleb glanced back to the drawing and he pointed to the rightmost pillared structure threatened by the zigzagging lava flow. “Mom, what is this you’ve drawn over this house?”
Her face reddened as everyone looked at her. “A book,” she said at last.
Caleb smiled, took a step back and sat down. “In my fever, I had a dream.”
Waxman and Helen both sat quietly, inching forward. Caleb expected one or both to tell him to be quiet, to let them get on with their important analysis and the next phase of the experiment, but in their stunned silence, he continued. “I know what she’s drawn. I know what the caduceus represents and how it relates to the treasure.”
“Treasure?”
“In a minute, Dennis.” Helen snapped her chewing gum. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms
. “Okay, Caleb. Go ahead, enlighten us.”
Caleb pointed to Helen’s drawing. “Vesuvius. It erupted in seventy-nine AD, burying both Pompeii and Herculaneum.” He indicated the two houses she had drawn, believing she had intended them to represent two distinct cities. “It happened so fast that people died in their sleep or even walking on the street. All the buildings were encased in seventy feet of volcanic ash and mud, and buried until excavators rediscovered the city by accident in the eighteenth century.”
“Lava!” Dennis exclaimed. “I knew it. I—”
“We all know about Vesuvius.” Waxman coughed and lit up another cigarette. “How does this information help us?”
“My mother drew a book over one of the cities.”
“And . . . ?” Helen led, getting annoyed.
Caleb’s voice faltered a little. Am I on the right track? Everyone was looking at him, and he was sure, with the exception of Waxman, that none of the others believed he had any real psychic abilities, let alone that he shared their vaunted remote-viewing powers. He gathered his confidence. “She drew a book. That’s the key. The key to the doors, the gates, the caduceus—in short, everything the rest of you have drawn.”
“What do you mean?” Waxman leaned forward. Caleb could see the bright blue of his eyes, and he imagined that something black slithered and crept behind them, patiently waiting for a moment to strike. He had the sudden impression that Waxman knew exactly what Caleb was talking about, and was simply hiding it from these people, waiting to see what they could find out on their own.
Caleb took a deep breath. “There was a large personal library in Herculaneum. With few exceptions, such as at Athens or here in Alexandria, most libraries in those days were the possessions of wealthy individuals with a passion for collecting books. The library at Herculaneum belonged to a man named Lucius Calpurnius Piso.”
Someone coughed. Others looked around the table.
“Who was he?” Helen asked at last. She leaned forward in her chair, and her eager eyes met his.
The Pharos Objective Page 6