The Pharos Objective

by David Sakmyster

  “That again! What is this?” Waxman shines his light up and down. It’s a modest door, about half as large as the previous one, and otherwise non-descript. The room itself is bare, with no artwork on the walls. Nothing inscribed on the floor. No rings, no pits. Nothing but red granite blocks.

  Helen shifts her weight, looking over her shoulder. “I don’t know, but I think we may have it all wrong.”

  “Nonsense. Here’s a handle on the door. Probably just pull on it and—”

  “Don’t touch anything!” She shouts and grabs his hand.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Do you even have to ask?” She takes a step back, almost to the stairs. “Did you forget what we just went through up there? Any one of those traps could have killed us, and when we find another door you think it’s going to be as simple as pulling it open?”

  Waxman exhales roughly, exasperated. “Fine, then RV this one. Let’s do it now!”

  “No. Let’s leave, and think about this. Come back later, once we have all the information. We can analyze the scroll some more. We can probe our psychics, we—”

  “—can’t wait any longer! It has to be now.”

  “Why?”

  Standing at the door, he wraps his fingers around the handle. “Because.”

  “Why? Nothing’s as important as our lives. We can wait!”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “What are you talking about? What about the thrill of the hunt, the research, the quest into psychic talents? I thought that was what made this all worth it, whether or not we succeed in getting beyond that door.”

  “No.” Waxman glowers at her, then turns to the door, his hands in tight fists. “There’s more, much more. I have to make it stop!”

  “What are you talking about?” Helen takes one step up the stair, back the way they have come.

  “She never stops,” he whispers, brushing the handle free of dust. “Every minute, every day.”

  “Who are you talking about, George? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Yes, a long time ago.” He looks back, and his eyes are glowing fiercely in the lantern’s brilliance. “But it ends now.”

  He grunts and pulls back on the handle.

  “Wait!” Helen yells. “I think I see something—a hole above your hand. Maybe there’s a key.”

  But it is too late. The room shakes.

  Helen screams and turns. Waxman slips and falls. As he topples, a foot-wide block rips free from the side of the door right where his head was. It shoots out across the room and glances off Helen’s skull, spinning her around, and she crumples onto the stairs without a sound. Just as quickly, the deadly trap withdraws and returns to its sealed position.

  Waxman lunges for Helen. He lifts her and races up the stairs, gasping for air. This time, as he makes it back up through the octagon section, the great door slams shut in front of him. A grinding sound arises from the left, up high in the chamber. Then another echoes the first, from the other side.

  The walls rattle.

  Waxman shines his light up and directs it toward one, then the other portal. The great circular doors have been opened, moved by some major contraption of gears and levers.

  “Oh no.” For a moment he feels blood soaking his arms and his chest, flowing from Helen’s head. She shakes and mutters something. A name. “Philip . . .”

  The water bursts through the twin vents above, monstrous jets flooding the chamber. Waxman drops Helen and starts to run back toward the stairs when his feet are swept from the floor. He flies back into the wall, spins around before being yanked to one side, where another door rolls open at the floor level. In a rush of bubbles and churning water he blasts out the door into a circular, tube-like hallway. Rolling, spinning, gagging and choking. Another body bangs against him and gets tangled in his legs, then a powerful slam and they are punched through into a wall of water. He grabs hold of Helen out of reflex, holds his breath, and they rise together, propelled by the exiting currents.

  He opens his eyes and his mouth to utter a bubbly, agonized scream as the sudden pressure overwhelms his head. But he remembers his training and exhales slowly, kicking furiously all the time.

  Somehow, he surfaces alive, just as his lungs are about to burst. He emerges into the bright sun, surrounded by a sea of multicolored boats. Men and women scream and point and dive in to help.

  Caleb fought to free himself from the vision, but he failed . . .

  . . . and finds himself in a helicopter. This time, leaving the hospital landing pad.

  “Your jet is waiting at the airport, sir,” says a man in uniform. He has a crew cut, and is wearing a starched blue suit.

  Then Caleb flashed to different place, much later, and saw . . .

  . . . Waxman exiting a small black jet. He turns up the collar on his long coat and jogs across a runway toward a waiting black limousine. The night is cold, brisk. To the east, a faint glow announces the rising sun. Inside the limo, the driver rolls down the back window.

  “Good to have you back, sir.”

  Another flash.

  Waxman steps out of the limo and strides across the long walkway toward one of many white-walled concrete buildings in a vast complex. Over a low hill and beyond a line of trees, he can hear the rushing of icy water in a river. He passes through two glass doors and a metal detector, where an armed guard welcomes him by name.

  He walks across a gray-and-black marble floor, past an early morning janitor using a waxer to polish the smooth surface of a huge seal, and for an instant the vision pans out, allowing a whole view of the entire emblem—

  —the profile of an eagle’s head, perched atop a sun with multiple rays bearing out in all directions, with familiar words written around its circumference. Then the vision zooms back in on Waxman as he uses a thumbprint scanner to gain access to a long, white hallway. Inside, he pauses and looks over his shoulder, as if convinced he has just heard someone following. Shaking his head, he continues walking, and stops at an unmarked door halfway down. Again he uses the thumbprint, then swipes a card to gain access.

  Lights spring on, and a great war room is illuminated. Dozens of screens and monitors line three walls. The fourth wall is occupied by file cabinets. There is a map in the center of the long table, with a red dot over northern Egypt.

  Waxman slumps into a chair and lowers his head. “Shut up, mother,” he hisses. “I’ll still win. I’ll find it.”

  Then he begins to sob, of all things. He pounds the table. Again and again. And with each slam of his hand, Caleb’s vision crumbles, tiny pieces falling away like leaves from a great branch, swirling around before his eyes, until . . .

  It was gone. Caleb was sitting in front of Phoebe.

  They opened their eyes at the same time. “Caleb . . .” she whispered.

  How could he have not realized it before now? That letterhead in Waxman’s case, the images in those dreams of his father. Remote viewing. Together they had received the sights they’d needed, and found the answers they’d sought. Caleb had drawn so many pictures of this same emblem, never putting it all together.

  But it added up now. Waxman’s ability to hack Phoebe’s computer. His connections with local governments. The money to bribe officials. But what did it mean? Why has he been using us? Why?

  They continued to stare at each other until Phoebe said what they were both thinking. “We never asked the right questions.”

  Then they both whispered it at once, as if fearing that to voice it any louder would give it power.

  “CIA.”

  BOOK THREE

  —THE KEEPERS—

  For the malice of Ignorance surroundeth all the Earth, and corrupteth the Soul, shut up in the Body, not suffering it to arrive at the Havens of Salvation.

  —Book of Pymander

  1

  Sodus Bay—December 15

  In the four weeks following the revelation about Waxman, Caleb and Phoebe had very little time to think about what it all meant. Eve
ry minute was spent caring for their mother and arranging plans to get her safely back home. Working out the finances, transferring money, setting up home care.

  While still in Alexandria, they slept in shifts in Helen’s room at first, until Caleb finally convinced Phoebe to get a room at a nearby hotel. She was exhausted, weaker than he’d ever seen her. Every day she seemed on the verge of a total collapse.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” Caleb told her at last, after he recognized the look in her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “What do you mean?” They were at their usual table in the hospital café, subsisting on a diet of lamb gyros and falafel. Relatives of patients came in and out, some glassy-eyed after being up all night crying.

  “Believe me,” Caleb said. “I felt the same after . . . after that tomb took your legs.”

  “Let’s be clear about something,” Phoebe whispered through her teeth. “That tomb didn’t do anything but serve its function. Waxman was the one who did this to me. And he’s done it again, this time to Mom.”

  She was right. It was Waxman.

  “I want him to suffer,” she said, and stared down at her plate, her food untouched.

  “I think he does suffer,” Caleb said. “But I know what you mean. The question is, what do we do about him?”

  “CIA,” Phoebe said, her eyes darting around suspiciously, as if she were suddenly convinced they were being surveilled. For all they knew, they probably were. It was something Waxman would have done. She picked at her cucumber salad. “What did Dad have to do with them?”

  “I don’t know that he had anything to do with them.”

  “But the symbol—the eagle and the sun—you saw it all the time when you viewed Dad at that Iraqi prison.” She took a breath and continued. “And I saw the same thing, plus that other sign, the star surrounded by a fence.”

  Caleb had been thinking the same thoughts, but for days now. “I saw something in that room Waxman went into at CIA headquarters.”

  Phoebe stared at him. “What?”

  “A name,” he said. “Stargate.”

  “Like the movie?”

  “No, like the project.” He leaned in close. “After the Freedom of Information Act opened up a lot of government files, some early CIA projects were declassified.”

  “And one of them was called Stargate?”

  Caleb nodded. “In the early seventies the CIA began experimenting with parapsychology, after the Russians tried something similar. You know the military; they can’t let the other guy get the leg up, especially in the Cold War.” He took a sip of Coke. “I only know about it because of Lydia. She mentioned it once.” Caleb paused. “As if she knew . . .”

  “What?”

  He almost choked on the fizzing liquid. “I wonder if she did know.”

  “About Waxman?”

  “Think about it. Why does he want the treasure so much? Could he be a Keeper? A descendent of the one that split from the others? And was Lydia trying to warn me?”

  “Or were they both using you?” Phoebe sighed, and they sat in silence.

  “So what about this Stargate thing?” she took up again. “And why was I seeing visions of it? Crude visions, but then again, I was just a kid. Maybe that was all I could understand.”

  “Or maybe you were meant to understand it later, when you were older.” And for an instant he had it: someone wanted them both to know. Wanted them to know what the truth was, even though they would be suffering in confusion for years. Caleb was close to figuring it out, but still there were too many jumbled pieces of the puzzle rattling around in his mind.

  He thought aloud: “Stargate attempted to use psychics the same way we use satellite imagery now. Remote viewing. The CIA gave the subjects certain targets—a Russian nuclear plant, Castro’s palace, a downed US airplane—and then the psychics drew what they could see. They worked with maps and landmarks, and in some cases, the results seemed accurate.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Apparently, the hits were not specific or conclusive enough. Or the government just didn’t want to be seen as kooky. In any case, the funding was cut after the Cold War ended, and the program disbanded.”

  “Or it was just buried?” Phoebe asked.

  “Waxman had something to do with it, and he still does. He took the program offline, continued it secretly.”

  “He seems to still have the financial backing and the political connections.”

  “But why the Pharos?”

  Phoebe shook her head. “Again, it comes back to the Keepers. Could he be the Renegade?”

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I can’t believe he’s one of them. It doesn’t feel right. It seems more personal with him.”

  Phoebe adjusted the handles of her chair and polished a spot so her reflection squinted back at her. “Let’s be careful. We know what the Pharos does to obsessions, and we know Waxman. He’ll try again.”

  Caleb met his sister’s eyes.

  “He’ll be back for us.”

  That night they moved her. In a special care unit, Helen flew back to New York City, then to Rochester. An ambulance was waiting to take her to Sodus, where a hospital-appointed nurse named Elsa met them at the door. They got Helen situated in her bed, hooked up the fluids and monitoring equipment and set up a refrigerator to stock her IVs. They filled a drawer with sheets, washcloths and linen. Finally, Caleb took Phoebe to her room, where he helped her out of her chair and onto the bed. She collapsed, letting out a huge sigh.

  “At least Mom’s home.”

  Caleb didn’t want to complete the thought . . . so she could now die with dignity, surrounded by the familiar elements of her life.

  “I don’t want to give up,” Phoebe said, as if reading Caleb’s mind.

  “I know.”

  “There’s a chance, you know.”

  “Of course,” he said. “The doctors even said it happens. These kinds of comas are not the most severe. She can still move, and might talk, even though what she says might not make sense.”

  “No, I mean there’s a chance we can cure her.”

  Caleb stared at her. He knew what she meant. “The books. The treasure.”

  “Didn’t you write about all the medical marvels that were catalogued in those days? The scientific advances that we’re only beginning to rediscover?”

  He nodded. “There were rumors of alternative medical practices and healing techniques that united body and mind to facilitate recovery.”

  Phoebe rolled to her side, closing her eyes. “Like I said, there’s a chance.” She sighed. “Sorry, big brother. I need to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

  “A long month,” he replied, taking a blanket and smoothing it over her body. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Be careful,” she whispered.

  “What?” Caleb asked, but she was asleep. He backed out of the room, turned off the light, and tiptoed past Helen’s room, where he peeked in on her. Elsa sat in a chair beside the bed, nodding off while holding a copy of Time Magazine.

  Back in the kitchen, Caleb sat alone at the empty table. His vision started to blur, and he felt a tingle of energy move up his spine, circling around and around like a snake, rising to the base of his skull.

  He gasped and let the feeling run its course, knowing what was coming. The kitchen lost focus. Water took the place of the floor . . .

  . . . and great heaving waves undulate where the cabinets used to be. The table has changed to a wooden railing. He hears the call of gulls following overhead, and when he looks, a great white sail bisected with a crimson stripe blocks out the churning clouds and darkening skies.

  “Father,” comes a voice at his side, and he glances down to see a boy, no more than ten, huddled in a blanket as if he just woke up and stumbled out from the quarters below. “When will we land again?”

  “Not soon. It is not yet safe.”

  “Will it ever be safe?” The boy’s face falls, but his eyes shimmer. A lone gull screec
hes overhead, and a raindrop falls on his cheek as the boat rolls from side to side.

  “We will take on supplies in a month. But then it is back to sea.”

  The child frowns. “We must keep moving?”

  “We must.”

  “Why?”

  “You will know. In time.”

  “Will it be soon?”

  “Perhaps.” He feels such pain in his heart when he looks at his son, and he’s only too aware of the wheezing in his lungs. He does not have much time. He curses the intervening years since he left Alexandria. He curses time and fate. But still, he accepts that this is the will of the One. It is true he waited too long to father an heir. But now it is done, and the boy is almost ready.

  His son looks out to sea again. He stares at the formless gray horizon where a distant rainstorm connects the sea to the sky, the above to the below. It draws on his imagination.

  It is a good sign.

  He is almost ready.

  Something jarred Caleb into the present, and the railing was replaced by the wooden edge of the kitchen table. The cold room took focus again. A hundred small, bright objects were swirling about the kitchen, dancing and fluttering, and at first Caleb thought someone had let in a horde of moths that were swarming about, searching for heat and light.

  Then he saw that they were snowflakes. And he saw the open door. Two men in black coats were standing on either side of the table. Through the open door Caleb saw a black limousine waiting in the driveway.

  “Mr. Crowe,” said one of the men, “Mr. Waxman is waiting for you to join him.”

  Caleb stood up, as if rising from a dream and stepping toward the next chapter in a book he’d written long ago. He knew all the characters, understood the plot and accepted his role.

  Caleb smiled. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

  The half-hour drive to the small airstrip outside of Oswego proceeded in silence. Seeing that Waxman, who sat across from him in the dark, was fit only to stare and to wait, Caleb closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. At the airport, they boarded a black helicopter, and mercifully the background noise was too great to allow for conversation. Caleb avoided eye contact with Waxman and used the time to meditate, to think on the past, to think about his father and what he might have been trying to tell him in all those childhood visions.