The Pharos Objective

by David Sakmyster

  Waxman clenched his teeth, nearly biting through the cigarette, and his tongue. “Go away, Mother.”

  Listen to me, boy!

  Across the street, the man with a folded newspaper over his head waited for another series of cars and buses to drive past.

  “Shut up.”

  Sorry, boy. I’m waiting for you.

  “Leave me alone.”

  Like you left me? In pieces? After you caused the accident? You, crying, always wailing in the back seat. Your no-good father took one look at you and ran off with some whore, left me with your shrieking and whining, every waking moment.

  “Mother, not now—”

  Yes, now. The intersection, the bus . . . I know you remember it, I know you do.

  “Please. I have work to do.”

  Oh yes, your precious work. You think it will ease your conscience?

  “No, mother. It’s too late for that. I was only four years old the day you died—

  The day you murdered me.

  “But I can still save others.”

  The rain hissed off the sidewalk and guzzled into the drains.

  He put his hands to his temples, then covered his ears and pressed as hard as he could. The image burned into the back of his eyelids: his mother’s head, severed as a jagged piece of that bus tore through the driver’s-side window, her eyes locked on his, lips still moving,

  Victor Kowalski ran across the street, dodging a silver Honda. His pants were soaked and his shirt sleeves drenched. He had a leather case strapped over his shoulder.

  The rain continued to pound out words on the canvass awning: You won’t be rid of me, Georgie. Even if you get past your precious lighthouse door. Even if you get the treasure.

  Waxman froze. His mother had never talked about that before. For years her voice had haunted him, but she had never taken her comments beyond direct, guilt-provoking insults.

  “What did you say?” He held out a hand to stop Victor from speaking.

  A sound like laughter dripped from the brownstone walls and fell from the overflowing gutters. I see your future Georgie. Oh yes. Soon, we’ll have something in common. What comes around goes around, boy. Oh yes.

  Again, the laughter.

  “Mother!” Waxman hissed, then all at once the rain stopped, and the whispered voice with it.

  “Sir?”

  Waxman cursed, fuming at the dripping rainwater, the puddles, the filling drains. Then he glared at Victor. “What?”

  “It’s her. Lydia.”

  Waxman looked over his associate’s shoulder, back to the bookstore, where Caleb Crowe sat with his publicist at the coffee counter. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Using a different last name, but still her.” Victor’s eyes held that cold metallic glint common to people like him. Killers. Loyalists. As long as Nina was still out of commission, Victor was the best Waxman had to work with.

  “Get me a report by eight p.m., and a transcript of what she said to him before you left.”

  “Sure,” Victor said, wiping his dripping forehead. “Sorry I couldn’t stay longer. It looked like she was getting suspicious, and I didn’t want to risk Caleb recognizing me.”

  Idiot. Who couldn’t blend in at a bookstore? “Fine,” Waxman said. “But begin surveillance; I want to know everything they say. Everywhere they go. Her, especially.”

  As Victor walked away, Waxman lingered a moment, wishing he could trust him more, wishing he had confidence in the man’s abilities the way he had trusted Nina. She was sorely missed, in many ways.

  He lingered on, until the rain came again and the whispers returned. They grew louder, more malicious, and Waxman felt a renewed chill down his spine that spread through his legs, numbing his feet and tingling his toes. He moved forward, stamping his feet. The whispers followed, and in every puddle he walked past he thought he saw his mother’s scowling face.

  “Wait,” Waxman called, jogging after Victor. “We’ll share a cab.”

  5

  Sa el-Hagar, Egypt—March

  Six months later, with Lydia now his research assistant as well as publicity agent, they began work on a sequel, a comparative study of libraries in the ancient world. The plan was to chronicle such storehouses of knowledge as King Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh and the Greek Pergamum, which Marc Antony had diminished to replenish Alexandria’s library for his queen. It was at the Temple of Isis in the ancient city of Sais that Herodotus and Plato had claimed the god Thoth had relocated the entirety of the world’s wisdom, all the ancient tablets and scrolls from before the flood. Some psychics, including Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky, had even claimed that the refugees from sunken Atlantis had brought their advanced knowledge with them to civilize Egypt, and that Thoth had been one of their representatives, later revered as a god.

  This new book touched on the legends that the Great Pyramid also had been built as an impregnable storehouse, a library to withstand time, natural disasters and the elements. Of course, Lydia would have liked first-hand evidence, and after learning of Caleb’s talents, she had pressured him into trying to gain psychic validation of these claims. He had given half-hearted efforts to please her, but nothing substantial had come of it, and they went on in their normal course of research.

  On the back cover of the new book they were going to put Lydia’s favorite quote from Plato’s Timaeus—a quote that signified their book’s theme on the true essence and function of libraries: Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times.

  It was their central thesis that these ancient libraries, filled with scrolls, clay tablets and other writings, had arisen out of the urgent necessity of preservation. With advanced knowledge of the heavens and the earth, knowledge even of man’s gross depravity, there must have been great trepidation—a sort of cosmic paranoia—about the loss of all that accumulated wisdom of humanity. Libraries, Caleb and Lydia postulated, had been originally built as magnificently constructed, earthquake- and flood-resistant structures, so that after any such upheavals, through cosmic or man-made actions, the history of human advances could be regained, and civilization could progress, rather than devolve.

  To research this encyclopedic work, Lydia and Caleb set out together across Europe and the Middle East, ending up in Egypt, doing book signings for his previous book along the way. It was fairly typical for a publicist to accompany an author for part of such tours, but with Lydia it was different. Everyone knew it was different. For the past few months, they had been living together, writing and researching all day, making love at night. They enjoyed elegant dinners on the publisher’s tab and took in the occasional show or concert. But mostly, they stayed in and worked.

  And fell in love.

  For Caleb, the past year had been a whirlwind of twin passions: Lydia and history. Both had become entwined about him like hungry snakes, alternately pulling and squeezing back in an exotic tug of war. Neither side lost, but neither won. He shared them and matured with them both.

  The book was a huge hit, translated into ten languages, and the rush of travel felt so invigorating, unlike those frustrating trips with his mother, during which he had sat brooding on the sidelines, angry at the disturbance in his life, as if he had known that other factions were waiting for his attention.

  Time hurtled by, and somehow, from the depths of his dislocation and melancholy, he now found himself fulfilled. He was standing upon the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple, hand in hand with the woman he loved. They had just wrapped up the research tour, appropriately closing with the most ancient site referenced in their new book: the crumbling town of Sa el-Hagar, the dynastic city of Sais.

  Located on a branch of the Nile that flowed throug
h the Delta, like at Alexandria, Sais was once a proud, bustling city that boasted its own share of philosophers, historians and priests, and a connection to an ancient source of secret wisdom handed down by the priests of Thoth and stored here in the temple.

  The winds blew reverently through the half-collapsed columns, and sand skittered about Caleb’s feet with the scarabs and lizards. The buzzing of gnats had grown past annoying. He and Lydia both wore white scarves and khaki pants, heavy boots and wide-brimmed hats. Lydia’s face was tanned evenly, and she seemed tirelessly radiant, even with those thick oval sunglasses that reminded Caleb a bit too much of his mother when he was young.

  “So what about now?” she urged, poking him in the ribs as the sun ducked behind the hills. A lonely motorboat made its way up the murky Nile, and a white-robed passenger waved to them.

  “Are you serious?” He looked around. “Can’t you wait? Our hotel is—”

  “No, silly.” Lydia took off her glasses and her deep green eyes sent a chill down his spine despite the heat. “I meant, what about trying your remote viewing here? Now that there’s no pressure. The book is written, our research done. You can relax and just, I don’t know, see what there is to see.”

  He tried to smile. “Doesn’t work that way. It’s something that just happens, whether I want it to or not. And actually, in my family’s experience, psychic abilities seem to manifest more intensely after traumatic experiences. Stress encourages the power. My mother only started seeing visions after her father died. And Phoebe’s powers seem to have gotten stronger after her injury.”

  Lydia pouted and kicked at the sand. She leaned against a pillar decorated with faded hieroglyphs.

  “Besides,” Caleb added, “I gave up actively pursuing those visions. That was a part of my childhood, a piece of my former life that only brought misery.”

  “Just try,” Lydia pleaded, tugging at his sleeve. “For me? We’re at the site of Isis’s temple. You may never get this opportunity again!”

  He looked into her eyes for a long time, then finally nodded. “Nothing’s going to happen, though.”

  “Not with that attitude.”

  He shrugged, stepped around Lydia and leaned on a pillar, touching its rounded limestone surface and tracing the glyphs. Focusing on the chiseled grooves, he started to translate, picking up a portion of a hymn to Isis, praising her for begetting the sun, and suddenly he smelled smoke . . .

  . . . and burning oil. Thick, oppressive. In the light of the braziers and torches, men with shaved heads and long blue robes are kneeling on a marble floor and inscribing letters onto long strips of papyri. A great arched roof spans overhead, brilliantly painted with a scene from the Book of the Dead in which Thoth judges the souls of the departed and greets a royal couple.

  “Manetho,” someone calls. And he finds himself looking up, shocked to hear the Egyptian language spoken as it was over two thousand years ago. “We are almost finished,” says Vutan, one of the Hermopolis priests coordinating the translations.

  “Good. Ptolemy Philadelphus will be pleased. These must go to Alexandria in all haste.”

  He takes a moment to look around. They are deep under the earth, several levels below the main temple. Thick pillars support the roof, and strong walls, ancient walls built thousands of years ago, seal in this chamber. Two narrow air shafts lead up to the surface and serve to recycle the air. The materials here below are safe from the erosion of time that affects papyrus scrolls. And there are other earlier texts stored here, some inscribed on clay, others hammered into copper sheets and rolled.

  And there ahead—two enormous, squat pillars. One of them plated with gold, the other with emerald. Deep, perfectly chiseled symbols carved over every inch.

  Manetho has spent two decades studying these, the most ancient histories. He has used them to chronicle the kings of Egypt from the dawn of time until now. He has written treatises on magic, on philosophy and science; he has learned the ways of the heavenly bodies and the motion of the earth. But still, there are passages on these two pillars, lines of inscrutable text he cannot translate. And the priests will not reveal those secrets. Not yet, they say. Even though his name, Manetho, means ‘beloved of Thoth,’ they feel he is unworthy to know this most sacred wisdom.

  There are dozens of translators at work, each copying partial sections only, undertaking the difficult tasks of translating the symbols into Greek, striving to keep even the phonetic elements the same. Later, these fragments will be integrated by a master craftsman and magician on ten tablets to be named The Books of Thoth. The wisdom from these pillars, Manetho knows, was translated from the one great artifact he has never been allowed to see—a tablet of pure emerald, what the priests claim is a miraculous, multi-layered book containing the most sacred wisdom.

  Manetho has promised to collect both this tablet and the translation, and transport them to the Ptolemy’s new library. Even then, he will be accompanied by priests to prevent even a glimpse of the ancient words on the Emerald Tablet.

  “Thank you,” he says again and clasps his hands together. “I will be outside, taking my supper. Call for me when you are finished.” He makes his way up the winding stairs, thinking upon all he has learned, questioning this legacy of learning.

  For some time, he has sensed that plans were underway to move this knowledge, for the library’s safety has become compromised. The common people know of its existence, and while protected from the elements, the library can not be safeguarded from ignorant and malicious men who seek power.

  Once outside, standing under the host of heaven with the great temple at his back, he looks up at the stunning constellations, at Osiris standing proud above the mighty Milky Way, at Sirius blazing at his feet. Manetho turns, and in the starlight he reads the inscription on the temple entrance: Isis am I, I am all that was, that is, and that shall be and no one of mortals has ever lifted my veil. And below this: Only the Golden Ones may enter and see the truth of the world. And then, a familiar but powerful symbol:

  He thinks about the priests below, furiously translating and preparing the most ancient of books for the new library, hammering all that has been recorded into tablets. And Manetho suppresses a chill, knowing that despite all his learning, all his understanding, he is still considered impure, unworthy to pass beyond the veil and see the truth—

  Caleb snapped back into the present, trembling in Lydia’s arms. After he had related his vision, she exclaimed, “But that would have been amazing to include, assuming you accurately saw through Manetho’s eyes.”

  “Right, but that’s just it. I can never be sure of the accuracy of what I see.” He was still shell-shocked, slow in getting to his feet. “And even if it is true, how could we have footnoted it, Psychic vision, Caleb Crowe?”

  “You’re right.” Her smile broadened, then she frowned. “So, the ‘Golden Ones . . .’” She eyed the columns, picturing how the roof and the inscription would have appeared. “What do you think that means?”

  Caleb sat and leaned against a pillar. He pictured the symbol again, remembered seeing it with a similar warning under the Pharos. He recalled what he had told Waxman four years earlier: “In the alchemist tradition, handed down from the surviving Hermetic writings, gold is the purest form of matter. So if you were to pass beyond the veil of Isis here, or beyond the doorway with a similar warning under the Pharos, I assume that you would have to first be somehow tested—purified and deemed worthy.”

  Lydia laughed. “Oh, then we’re definitely not getting in, not after what we did last night.”

  “Seriously, there are many early religions that expressed the world around us as a veil, a thin covering over the real world, which only initiates of the hidden mysteries could part.”

  “What initiates?”

  Caleb shrugged. “Egyptian mystery schools trained students in certain ways that elevated their spiritual essences, made them question the nature of the world and learn truths about reality.”

  “Didn’t I
read somewhere that Jesus might have spent time in Egypt?”

  “That’s a theory,” Caleb said. “The Gospels are silent about the period of his life after the ‘kid in the temple’ incident and until he returns to Jerusalem and starts his ministry. Some occult sources claim he learned the backdrop of his teachings in the temples of Isis and Osiris, from the high priests of Delphi, that he had access to occult wisdom, and that he—”

  “—passed beyond the veil,” Lydia finished.

  Caleb slowly got to his feet. “Many of the Gospel verses are word-for-word translations of much earlier Egyptian sources. The first line of John is nearly verbatim from one of the Pyramid Texts, a hymn to Amun-Ra found in a two-thousand BC tomb. The Sermon on the Mount reads almost like a carbon copy of a speech Horus gave to his followers. And images inscribed on a temple wall in Luxor show Horus’s birth, surrounded by three solar deities who followed the star Sirius, with a previous panel depicting Thoth announcing the news to the virgin Isis.”

  Lydia held up her hands and he stopped, unsure whether he should continue. She said, “Hey, don’t worry. I won’t hit you with charges of heresy. I haven’t been to Church in ten years.”

  Caleb had never known that about her. In fact, he didn’t know much about her life before they’d met. They had been so caught up in researching ancient history that they’d had no time for investigating the more recent past. Every so often she would question his relationships with his mother or with Phoebe, and she would ask about the Morpheus Initiative. Every once in a while Caleb would get a letter from Phoebe inquiring about the book or just updating him on their fruitless attempts to break the Pharos Code, and Lydia would ask how their search was progressing. Thankfully, she had never asked about his father. And sadly, Caleb rarely thought about him.