04 - The Morpheus Factor

by Ashley McConnell - (ebook by Undead)

  Then the passage opened out into a room, a cavern almost, and the light from nowhere brightened until he could see the paintings on the walls, fresh and vibrant: images from the Book of the Dead in which the occupant of this tomb met the gods, had his heart weighed against the white feather of truth, answered questions about how he had lived his life while the gods looked on, Thoth recording, Osiris presiding, Anubis the black jackal standing by. The images on the walls were represented by statues lining the sides of the room, along with representations of the Pharaoh buried here, wearing the double crown of Egypt and the false beard of authority, carrying the scepter and flail crossed over his chest. Daniel looked for the hieroglyphs that would tell him the name of the dead king, but he couldn’t find them. Unusual. Unthinkable, in fact. Recording the name of the deceased was one of the ways to ensure its immortality. The name and titles should be everywhere.

  The silence was more stifling than the millennia-old atmosphere. He scraped his feet along the floor for the sake of the noise. It echoed in the large room, and he stopped doing it, self-conscious about the effort.

  The large room was only the anteroom, of course. The actual burial chamber—which should have been blocked and was not—was much smaller. Here too the walls were painted, but the images were hard to see, obscured behind even more neatly stacked paraphernalia of the afterlife that a royal personage would require: tables, figures of servants, horses, vases, food—it was still fresh! The millet still smelled of the field; the olives were still damp. He picked up a lamp and heard the slosh of oil, set it down again on a table carved ready for a game. It was amazing. He might have stepped back into the days when the tomb was first opened for its occupant.

  Still, no matter how rich or fresh the furnishings, only one thing mattered here.

  And there it was, overwhelming, in the center of the room: the sarcophagus, easily four feet high, solid gold, inlaid with enamels and precious stones, shaped and painted in the image of the dead, kohl-lined eyes staring serenely at the clouds painted on the ceiling. A line encircling the stone showed where the lid fitted tightly to the base.

  He set his hands on the edge of the sarcophagus and hesitated. The thing must weigh more than a ton, but who knew what might be inside?

  Was this the one he had hastened to meet?

  The massive lid moved easily, if loudly, under his hands, scraping and shifting and settling onto the floor, rolling a canopic jar made in the figure of a mummified man with the head of a jackal under a nearby table, out of the way. Tuamutef, son of Horus, he thought absently. Tuamutef and his brothers were the guardians of the parts of the body of the dead; this particular jar would contain the stomach of the deceased. The goddess Neith was Tuamutef’s protector. She wasn’t going to be happy about having her protégé knocked around like that.

  The owner of the stomach probably wouldn’t be too happy about it either, come to think of it. He wondered where the other jars were, the ones that held the mummy’s lungs, liver, and intestines. Probably lying around somewhere, but at the moment he had a more compelling interest to follow.

  Inside, a wooden coffin, this one painted and lined with hieroglyphs, with carved channels filled with molten gold to outline them. He didn’t bother to translate them, but lifted away that lid too, too eager now to see what lay beneath. All around him, the walls were crowded with the figures of the Egyptian gods, the tale of the Book of the Dead, of Coming Forth By Day, the script and ritual by which the ancient Egyptians passed through the portal of death into the afterlife.

  The coffin contained, of course, a mummy wrapped in linen, its shape vaguely suggestive of the arms crossed across its chest, the details of its appearance completely obliterated by the layers upon layers of protective wrappings. Unlike all the rest of the mummies he had found through the years, this one looked as if it had been laid to rest only yesterday, the strips of linen faintly discolored from the natron used to dry out the body but still flexible, not stiff with age. As he reached out to touch the featureless head, he felt something tugging at his ankle. He looked down.

  It was a jackal—a wooden jackal, alive somehow. A black jackal wearing a broad collar of gold and faience, studded with red and blue gems. Its black eyes sparkled at him. Its ears were huge. So were its jaws.

  Anubis. Anubis, with tail wagging, snuffling at his shoe, his gorgeous faience collar still a part of his body. Anubis, god and guardian of the underworld—inspecting him.

  He jerked his foot away, and the wooden jackal sat back and looked up at him. The powerful jaws opened, and a wooden tongue lolled out from between glossy ivory teeth as Anubis panted happily at him, his black eyes twinkling, his short wooden tail clacking against the stone floor. One paw reached up, past his waist, to his shoulder, rested there as if claiming him. He was eye to eye with the god.

  There was no place to go. The wooden figure was three times the size of a mortal jackal, its jaws appropriately massive. He was backed against the edge of the golden sarcophagus. He looked around wildly for some way to escape.

  The mummy sat up, turned its head toward him, blindly studying him. Eyes opened in the wrappings, stared at him.

  On its linen-wrapped shoulders gleamed the brass stars of a general.

  Behold, the Osiris Hammond shall come forth by day to perform everything he desires upon the earth among the living, ran the hieroglyphic script along the rim of the coffin.

  Enough of this! came the frustrated cry of the Kayeechi council to Etra’ain. Shape within the shape! If you cannot find what we seek, we will find it for you!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Water moved against Jack O’Neill’s skin like cool silk, moved in and out of his lungs like a caress. He breathed deeply of it, sighed, and swam onward toward the reef. He’d dived often among the great reefs of the world, and wished that he could dispense with the encumbrance of aqualung and flippers. Now, it seemed, he’d succeeded. He was breathing the water as easily as any of the fish he swam with.

  The reef was a mass of twists and towers, blues and greens and reds and golds. Eels hid in coral caves, dashed out to seize their prey. Thousands of fish with rainbow-hued, shimmering fins surrounded him, nibbling curiously, then swerved away, as disciplined as a military drill team, heading for a more palatable source of food. He could almost hear them rejecting his flavor as too much of the world above the surface.

  O’Neill paused, treading water, and looked down at a continent of sea life, spreading as far as his eyes could see. Transparent jellyfish, thousands of venomous tentacles dangling, glided slowly by beneath him. Sharks cruised, looking for blood. An entire cycle of life—predators, prey, scavengers, parasites, and symbiotes—was spread out before him, moving in a perfect, silent ecosystem. None of them looked up; none of them took note of the water-breathing human intruder who had invaded their universe. He had gone diving in Australia, at the Great Barrier Reef, in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. It was one of his favorite things to do on leave, one of the most relaxing things he could think of. Nowhere, though, had he felt as much a part of the life of the sea as he did here.

  And there beside him swam an octopus with an odd pattern of auburn fur on its head and along its tentacles, reaching out to him with one graceful arm, the tip encircling his wrist, tugging at him for attention. He turned to look at it and noted without surprise that the eyes that blinked back were Vair’s. Somehow it seemed natural and appropriate that his acquaintance from P4V-837 should accompany him here.

  More than company, he soon realized, Vair was acting as a guide. He showed O’Neill over the reef, introducing him to the manta rays buried in the sand, which when disturbed flapped their way free like underwater birds. He pointed out the delicate flowerlike growths of fan coral. The two of them chased schools of vivid red and gold fingerlings and were chased in turn when the school changed its direction and pursued them instead. They played tag with sharks, and O’Neill rubbed his fingertips along the sandpaper skin and stared directly into the expressionl
ess black eyes and down the gullets encircled by rows of teeth. When the shark turned toward him he kicked away, and the animal forgot him immediately, seeking more apt prey.

  He was laughing at his own daring when the octopus directed his attention to a distant part of the coral reef. When it was satisfied that he was looking in the right direction, it gathered its multiple limbs together and shot away, leading him. He followed, curious, willing to see what new surprises the reef held.

  Mostly, the coral below him still swarmed with life, but as he followed Vair, he noticed longer and longer stretches where the color had leached out of the living rock, where the coral had died, leaving only ghost-white skeletons behind. He paused to study one such area, and the Vair-octopus paused with him, floating patiently, maintaining its place in the cool current with tiny movements of its tentacles.

  The coral wall was shattered, with huge gaping holes, as if something had exploded within it or physically ripped it apart. Pieces still floated and settled to the white sand of the ocean floor. The ubiquitous schools of fish kept away, and the predators that fed on them avoided the ruins as well. He kicked his way down to touch the damaged reef, only to find that even in death the coral was razor sharp, and his fingers came away bleeding.

  Sharks could smell blood in the water from miles away. He looked around quickly, his hair waving in the water much like the jellyfish tentacles, but even the sharks avoided these ruins.

  Vair-octopus sank down beside him and reached out again, touching his bleeding hand with the tip of a tentacle. There were no suckers on the alien’s aquatic form, he noticed, and as he thought the thought, the grayish circular pads appeared in neat twin rows from tip to body.

  Vair led him onward, past more sections of the reef living and dead. As he swam, O’Neill began to realize that he could hear something.

  At first it was only the pressure of deep water against his eardrums, thrumming. Then he heard a distinct snap as a shark flashed by to sink its teeth into the side of a manatee, followed by a thin, gurgling scream as the mammal was dragged into the depths. A dozen more sharks circled and dove, and the screaming stopped as thin red tendrils rose upward through the water. He could taste the blood in his mouth, in his lungs, and he swam faster to get away from the tainted liquid. The sharks lashed by, ignoring him.

  And then he could hear a dull, crumbling roar somewhere ahead of them. Vair was leading him toward the source of the sound, angling upward to give him a broader perspective.

  From the height, he could see the end of the massive reef, stopping clifflike while the sea floor spread out endlessly beyond it.

  Gathered at one blue-and-gold tower, swarming over its surface, were hundreds of octopi, their multiple limbs wrapped around the coral, their beaks chopping and tearing holes in the living rock. As the pieces of reef were torn away, they lost their color and drifted to the seafloor, lifeless and white. The roar was coming from the crumbling of the coral towers.

  He looked over at Vair in dismay. Vair blinked and waved his attention back to the destruction.

  Yes, octopi, but different. Not Kayeechi. As if “octopi” stood for “live things,” but not the Kayeechi, even if Vair took their form.

  No. That couldn’t be right either, because somehow he knew that the stone of the coral itself was alive, just as the sea life—the fish and anemones and men o’war that inhabited the reef were alive.

  The coral fought back, its inhabitants massing over one or another of the attackers, and sometimes one of the not-Kayeechi octopi would go tumbling down to the sea floor too, where giant rays would rise up and snatch them out of the helpless descent and tear them to pieces. As he watched he could see the defending rays going from one multiarmed target to the next, methodically.

  As they did so, the octopi would fall back, regroup, and choose another, weaker point to rip through the coral walls.

  They were intelligent, he realized. Both sides were intelligent, and he was watching a pitched battle of deadly enemies.

  Vair touched his arm again, bringing his attention to the submachine gun he hadn’t been carrying until now. He brought it up slowly against the resistance of the water, then allowed the bore to drift downward to aim at empty sand. In this place, the weapon was useless. He didn’t know how to tell Vair that, or even which side he was supposed to fire upon.

  Vair pushed at the weapon, urging him to use it, waving with other tentacles at the battle. He shook his head. Vair pushed again, then shot off to the battle, diving into the middle of it, entangling himself with one of the rival octopi.

  O’Neill couldn’t tell them apart. The water roiled, and he could barely see the multiple limbs thrashing at one another, much less be able to tell what belonged to whom.

  Does he not see? What would it take for him to use the weapon?

  Perhaps it requires a direct threat to his own welfare.

  Very well. We can provide that.

  He was still trying to focus on Vair versus not Vair when something stabbed him in the right calf. He doubled over to see a moray eel easily as long as he was tall lock its jaws in the muscle below and behind the knee, shaking its head back and forth to tear a chunk of flesh free. There was no pain yet, only the thrashing of the hungry eel and the spreading cloud of blood. Vair, beside him again, apparently undamaged from his own battle, kept pushing at the gun, urging him to use it.

  He had nothing to lose but a moray mouthful of gastrocnemius. Raising the submachine gun, he pulled the trigger.

  As a live-fire demonstration, it was a complete failure. As a deterrent to the eel, it was also a complete failure. Four or five bullets flashed through the water in slow motion, and then the weapon jammed. He reversed it and pounded at the massive jaws. The eel let go and backed away, the better to rush him and attack again.

  He pulled great gulps of water into his lungs, seeking more oxygen, more fuel for his effort. The injured leg was hampering his attempts to remain oriented toward the eel, which somehow seemed much larger now. It opened its jaws impossibly wide, unhinging them so that they made a nearly perfect oval of incredibly sharp teeth, and shot toward him as if the pressure of the water was insignificant.

  Vair floated politely in the water nearby, observing.

  The moray started to close its jaws just a little too early. He had twisted back but was unable to avoid the rush; his flailing attempts to get clear had only landed his arm into the animal’s mouth. The fangs left long, oozing scratches along his biceps when he yanked himself away.

  The action caught the eel by surprise, and he shoved the submachine gun into its mouth crosswise. For a fleeting instant he imagined pointing the weapon down its throat and blowing the eel’s minuscule brains out, but the gun was too waterlogged to fire.

  The jaws clamped shut, or as nearly shut as they could get, considering the amount of steel they were struggling to cut through. He used the butt as a pivot point and swung himself in slow motion above and behind the eel, or as much above and behind a slender, three-dimensionally writhing and very angry fish as he could get, locking both hands around the eel’s head to hold the gun in place. The eel’s teeth were easily six inches long, and he tried to get the barrel behind them, where the joint of the jaw should be but wasn’t, judging by how wide that mouth was gaping. At least with the gun in its mouth the eel couldn’t take another bite out of him.

  He was trying to ride the thing like a scaly bucking bronco, and it was a supremely useless effort. He could feel the barrel sliding along its teeth and had to pull frantically to keep his hand from sliding right along with it. The screeching, scraping sound hurt his ears. The rest of the eel’s body thrashed against his—a long, flat panel of solid muscle, impossible to keep hold of, impossible to hang on to. He was beginning to tire. His leg was numb and useless. The eel jerked again, bringing his face down next to its, and for an instant he was looking it directly in the eye.

  The fish couldn’t blink. He’d be damned if he would either.

  An instant
later he was getting an excellent view of its fang-fringed gullet as it attempted to open its jaws and spit the gun out, flipping him in the process over its head. He jammed the barrel back as far as he could, but the animal had twisted away from him again and his action was pushing the creature away instead of pulling the choke deeper into place. All it would take would be for the eel to continue backing away, and he would have to let go. With one leg essentially useless, he couldn’t possibly keep up with it.

  No sooner thought than done, and the eel was out of reach and shaking the useless gun away. It took two tries, because the fangs got caught in the trigger guard. The last he saw of the weapon was a glint of silver as it went spinning into a cemetery of coral, breaking down yet more of the brittle dead reef. The infuriated eel gathered itself for a final charge.

  Ever helpful, Vair waved tentacles frantically, directing his attention away from the charging eel to yet another threat.

  A flotilla of sharks had risen in the water in the near distance—an odd mixture of hammerheads and blues and great whites and nurse sharks, species that didn’t belong together and certainly wouldn’t engage in feeding frenzy together. It didn’t seem to matter; they were all being drawn by the irresistible smell of blood in the water. His blood.

  And the eel was almost on top of him.

  He needed to get out of there, but he was a water breather now too. Where would he be safe? Not on the surface. Certainly not here, out of his element. He needed—

  A weapon. The thoughts were warm with eager satisfaction.

  Then the man they observed shaped and released his response to the sharks, and a cloud of dark green, smelly ink discolored the water around him. The eel took the first impact and thrashed frantically, shaking its grip on the human loose, flinging itself away, knocking the human into Kayeechi and then convulsing wildly until finally it went limp and sank to the floor of the sea, its black eyes as expressionless in death as in life.