by Edward Marin
THE ORION PROJECT
* * *
A NOVEL
EDWARD MARIN
Copyright © 2011 by Edward Marin
All rights reserved
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 1
Archeologist Dan Stoval couldn’t identify the muffled sound that disturbed the silence as he made his way through the Chicago Museum’s imposing corridors. What could be causing a disturbance this late in the afternoon, when almost everyone had gone home for the day? What most surprised him was that it came from the ancient Egypt wing, which was always quiet by the time he went to get Linda Sims so they could walk to their car together. She usually waited for him on a brown leather couch in the reception area, reading a book or a magazine. When he saw she wasn’t there, he knew something must have happened.
He heard the same sound again.
“Linda, where are you?” he said in his booming voice, often mistaken as confrontational by people unfamiliar with his style.
Not hearing a response, he walked into her pleasant corner office. Empty. He rushed back into the hallway and into the adjoining restoration room, where he found her on her knees in front of a large sarcophagus. She looked up at him with a mixture of fear and determination.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “Can you give me a hand?”
“What are you trying to do?” he said, looking down at the sarcophagus.
“I’m not sure yet. I heard a noise. Can you help me lift the lid?”
Dan moved his tall, heavy body next to her tiny figure and put both hands on one corner of the coffin. He braced himself and pulled upward, but only managed to move the heavy stone lid about an inch off its base before letting it drop back.
“You have the keys to the supply room?” he said. “I’m going to get the lift truck.”
“They’ve got to be here somewhere.” She stood and started searching in the cabinets.
Strict procedures were followed whenever a valuable museum piece was moved. In this case, if anything was done improperly, irreversible damage could be caused to the mummy inside the sarcophagus. It usually took two experienced workers and their equipment to remove the lid completely. But it was after hours, and no one would be available until the morning.
“I was on my way to wait for you when I heard something coming from this room,” Linda said as she continued to look for the keys. “When I realized the noise was coming from the Tonemcadu sarcophagus, I didn’t know what to think. Maybe a mouse got inside. Can you imagine what a disaster that would be? We’re talking about a government official who lived over thirty-three hundred years ago. Not to mention one of the tallest mummies ever found.”
Just as she located the key, they heard the sound again, only louder and more persistent.
“That’s no mouse,” Dan said.
There followed a faint murmur from the box that could only be produced by elaborate vocal cords. Dan grabbed Linda’s hand and pulled her out of the office.
They hadn’t gone a hundred feet before he stopped, embarrassed by his reaction. He was a scientist, after all. People had always assumed that he was brave because of his imposing size, and he’d always done everything possible to encourage that impression. Now, when he and Linda were having problems, the last thing he wanted was for her to find out that the strength she said she found so attractive in him was a façade.
“There has to be a logical explanation to this,” he said. “I’m going back in.”
Before she could respond, he’d already turned around. She followed him without a word.
Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw back in the restoration room. A man, partially covered in wrappings, stood next to the half-open sarcophagus of Tonemcadu. At his feet was a pile of more wrappings.
CHAPTER 2
Linda screamed and ran from the room into the hallway. Dan followed her out.
“Close the door, close the door!” she yelled.
Dan hadn’t needed her instructions to not only close it, but to pull out his keys and lock it.
“Just give me a minute,” he said as firmly as he could.
“I think we should call security,” she said.
“And tell them what? Let’s try to figure this thing out first.” He glanced at the door, as if to make sure it was still closed. “This has to be some kind of sick practical joke.”
“He looks just like him,” Linda said.
“Your mummy? Come on, that’s impossible. The logical explanation is that somebody stole it, wrapped himself up, climbed into the sarcophagus, then climbed out.”
Dan positioned himself by the edge of the door and called out, “Hey, buddy, who are you? Who put you up to this? Where’s the mummy?”
No response came from the restoration room. Linda pulled at his arm.
“I told you, he looks just like him. I’ve seen his face often enough during the restorations. Same handsome features, same height.”
“Come on, Linda. This isn’t the movies, you can’t--”
“The wrappings looked real,” she said. “And how could anyone get the mummy out of here? How would they find a perfect look alike? And why?”
“All good questions, but there’s no evidence that mummies can come back to life.”
“Who knows what the ancient Egyptians could do? You know how little we really know about them. They built the pyramids by placing perfectly aligned multi-ton blocks on top of each other. We don’t know how they did it; we don’t have the technology to do it today.”
Dan was silent for a long moment.
“Whoever he is,” he said finally, “I think we should take another look at him.” He pulled out his keys and opened the door.
The man standing in front of them was about six feet tall and in his thirties. In a way, with his golden brown complexion, serene face, and shaved head, he resembled one of the portrayals on the museum’s ancient Egypt murals.
He seemed frail and tired. Looking intently at his face, Dan realized that his gaze wasn’t as serene as he’d thought. The eyes bespoke deeply felt emotions.
The more they studied his appearance, the more Dan became convinced that he was looking at Tonemcadu. The man’s overall presence reflected another place and time. If it was Tonemcadu, his awakening could forever revolutionize science, archeology, even history--and Dan and Linda’s career.
Linda, who looked nervous and excited, poured some water into a glass and handed it to the man. He accepted it with a slight smile.
Encouraged by his reaction, Dan decided to try to communicate further.
“Tonemcadu?” he said.
When the man didn’t react, Dan repeated the question, this time pointing at him, then at the sarcophagus. Again, there was no reaction. After several more attempts proved just as futile, Linda said, “I think he’s agreeing with you.”
&n
bsp; “But he--”
“Agreement doesn’t necessarily have to be expressed by an up and down head motion. In India, for example, it’s shown by shaking your head from side to side. So maybe in his culture when you agree, you do nothing.”
As they stood there in front of the man, Dan realized how hard it would be to establish any type of meaningful communication. He couldn’t even begin to think of a way to ask what he really wanted to know; why had he reawakened? What did he want? Were there others like him, and how had he been able to move the heavy stone sarcophagus lid alone? Was he--
The man took a step forward.
“Wu aro eeyau? Huret rop raelop?” he said in a deep baritone.
Dan felt a rush of adrenaline. “Did you recognize any of the words?”
Linda shook her head, picked up a pen, and wrote something on a sheet of paper laying on the desk. Then she opened a drawer and pulled out a dictionary of hieroglyphs.
After a few minutes she closed the dictionary and sighed.
“I can’t find any of the words he said--they all came out in one breath. I must not have transcribed them correctly.”
“Next time he says something, I’ll write it down,” Dan said, a little upset that she hadn’t included him in what she was doing.
With all the excitement, Dan hadn’t noticed that the sun had set, and it was now dark outside. He looked at his watch. It was 6:50p.m.--at 7:00 the museum general alarm was turned on, and they’d only be able to leave by having a security guard unlock the main door. He didn’t want the guards to see Tonemcadu until he and Linda figured out what to do. His mind was racing.
“We’ve got ten minutes to get out of here,” he said.
Linda checked the clock on the wall and looked at the mummy.“What about him?”
“The way I see it, we’ve got three options. We just leave him here and risk the security guards finding him. Or we try to contact someone from administration and we give up the credit for the discovery. Or we take him with us, in clear violation of who knows how many museum regulations.”
“I say we prepare our findings,” Linda said. “We decide how and under what circumstances we present them. So we violate museum policy--look, Dan.”
The mummy was calmly unwinding the rest of his wrappings.
“There’s no way we could leave him here,” Linda said. “He has no food, nowhere to sleep.”
She smiled at him, took a few steps toward the door, and motioned for him to follow.
Tonemcadu instead turned toward the sarcophagus. His face had lost the pleasant expression it had maintained since Linda offered him the water. Now he looked worried.
Dan put his hand on the mummy’s shoulder to guide him in the direction of the door. Tonemcadu stiffened, leaving no doubt that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Looks like he’s decided to stay,” Dan said.
Shit. It was looking as though their only option was to stay with him overnight and explain to the museum administration in the morning what had happened.
Just as Dan could see his dreams of future glory evaporating, Tonemcadu returned to the sarcophagus, reached inside, and withdrew a small sculpture made of a gold handle attached to an elliptical ivory top. He then pushed the lid back on its axis, with ease.
“So that’s how he did it,” Dan said, while he wondered how someone he outweighed by some fifty pounds could perform such a feat.
Tonemcadu walked toward the door, and moments later all three were able to exit the museum with a couple of minutes to spare.
CHAPTER 3
By Isis and Osiris, where on earth could he be? Why had his sarcophagus been moved from the Great Pyramid? And by whom? From all appearances, he was in another land, far from home. These two people certainly looked like foreigners, maybe from one of the northern nations beyond the sea. Their language sounded like one of the tongues spoken by a Germanic tribe. When he’d asked who they were in both Egyptian and in Nubian, they hadn’t understood. Could they be the ones who’d found his sarcophagus in the pyramid and taken it to their land?
He could tell from their conflicted auras that they wanted to help him and that they weren’t just doing it for altruistic reasons. What could they want?
In any event, he was fortunate to be getting their assistance. He’d never imagined that he would be this weak when he reawakened. When he first stood on his feet, it had taken a huge effort not to tip over. And walking from the building to the rolling metal box he was in right now had been a real challenge. It might take some time before he could recover enough strength to get started on his mission.
What an amazing place this was! The astrologers had told him the world he would awaken into would have very different customs and beliefs, but they’d failed to mention how different it would look. They’d said nothing about the rolling boxes on the roads. Based on the one he was in, they were surprisingly comfortable except for the cold air blowing from the openings in the front. Could they be powered by some kind of hydraulic system that caused the temperature inside to drop?
Was there any significance to the fact that the box was dark blue on the outside? It seemed those painted in other colors didn’t go as fast and stopped more often at junctions. Were these people aristocrats and as such allowed to go faster?
What purpose could the tall rectangular structures on the sides of the roads serve? Had they replaced the pyramids as holy places? Did modern people bury their dead in them? Or did they live in them?
He had so much to figure out. But first he needed to come up with a plan to get back to the Great Pyramid as soon as possible. As soon as it was dark enough to study the stars, he’d determine where he was and how much time he had left to complete his mission. Then he’d find out about modern transportation. Maybe if he could learn to operate one of these rolling boxes, he’d be able to get back to the pyramid without too much trouble.
As soon as he regained enough strength, he would leave. The pharaoh had chosen him for a reason, and he wasn’t going to let him down. Failure was not an option. The lives of millions of people were at stake.
CHAPTER 4
Dan and Linda liked their comfortable three-bedroom bungalow, near the border between Chicago and Evanston for different reasons. To Linda, it represented family life, commitment, stability. She loved its hardwood floors, its decorative wood-burning fireplace, its art-glass windows, but it was the recreation room in the basement where she envisioned one day a boy and a girl playing that had sold her on the house.
To Dan, on the other hand, it was a good investment with the added benefit that it was close to O’Hare airport, where he imagined someday going back and forth to assignments at excavation sites around the world. His plans for himself didn’t fit with marriage and a family, which Linda kept pushing for.
After offering Tonemcadu a cheese sandwich, they decided to put him in their guest room on the second floor, and Linda asked Dan to get out some of his old clothes from when he was thinner. He returned with an armful of out-of-style garments, which he set on a chair. He pantomimed for Tonemcadu to put on the clothes, showed him how to use the toilet and the light switch, and they left the room.
They closed the door behind them and walked down the stairs to the living room. Linda let herself drop onto the couch. In the relative calm of their home, the full realization of what they’d done was starting to set in.
“What if he isn’t Tonemcadu?” she said. “If he’s a crazy, he could try to harm us.”
“Does he seem like a crazy to you? That’s funny; to me he seems like a mummy. But don’t worry, if there’s any trouble I can take him.”
“Are you sure? He lifted the lid off the sarcophagus.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Dan said.
“I wonder how long we’ll be able to keep the neighbors from knowing he’s here.”
“If they see him,” Dan said, “we’ll say that he’s visiting from overseas and doesn’t speak English. I’m more concerned about the museum ad
ministration. If they find out we had anything to do with a missing mummy--”
“No reason they should connect us to that. What if someone comes to visit? Remember, Gita’s supposed to spend a week with us in ten days.”
“Cancel it.”
They talked for another hour or so until Dan dozed off, followed a few minutes later by Linda. They’d agreed she would use her weeks of accumulated vacation time to watch over Tonemcadu.
She woke up after only a couple of hours and couldn’t fall asleep again. There were just too many things on her mind. For the rest of the night, she went back and forth between worrying about what to do with her new guest and worrying about her fight with Dan, a couple of days earlier.
It had been their worst argument since they first met during their senior year in college. Although they’d agreed not to discuss the issue until they’d calmed down, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The subject of marriage had always set him off, which on the surface made no sense. After all, they’d been together for almost fifteen years and spent more time with each other than any married couple they knew. Their arrangement troubled as well as embarrassed her. Here she was at thirty-eight, still single and with only a few childbearing years left. She’d even considered getting pregnant anyway, but her sense of honor wouldn’t let her do that.
Her best guess as to why Dan wouldn’t agree to marry her and start a family was that his idea of himself made him uncomfortable with marrying a woman who had a PhD when he only had a master’s and who made more money than he did. Although he’d never admit it, he probably needed to have an outstanding professional accomplishment before he’d feel good enough about himself to marry her. She’d sensed his insecurities since their college years, when she often outperformed him, but they’d gotten worse with her recent promotion to head the ancient Egypt department while he was still stuck at a job with modest responsibilities and prospects for promotion.
Although she’d done everything possible to help him feel less threatened by her success, it hadn’t worked. She’d been left with no other option but to tell him that she’d leave him if he didn’t make up his mind about marrying her. All that did was prompt one of his sudden mood swings, his going in a few seconds from being the reasonable person he usually was to a maniac yelling at the top of his voice.