Firebird

by Michael Asher

  ‘Look Sammy, we’ve got six days to the millennium and whatever happens we’ve got to stop them sending that message. Like you said, if they try to use the Sound-Eye there’ll be some kind of blow—back effect that’ll probably wreck the whole biosphere. We should have realized Van Helsing already knew it. Someone defaced the stela on the door of the Fifth House — that was the message it contained. And that’s not all. Van Helsing mentioned the word “colonize”. Remember what Sanusi said in his rambling? That the ghouls came from another world and coveted the earth? “Be prepared!” he said. Our ghoul boy’s a scout and he’s planning to bring an invasion force in. These aliens are predators, we know that now. Do you fancy living on a planet that’s a kind of private hunting reserve, with guys like Van Helsing as the game wardens? Not me!’

  I sat up. ‘What the hell can we do? We’re stuck out in the desert!’

  ‘How long will it take us to get to civilization?’

  ‘The nearest place we can find a telephone or a car is probably St Samuel’s Monastery — on the edge of the Fayoum Oasis, but we only have six days. On these camels it’s going to take us at least seven.’

  52

  It took us only five days to sight St Samuel’s, but by the time we got there the camels were almost dead and so were we. The main body of Hawazim from al-Bahrayn had met us at the cairn marking the old water dump outside the sand sea, and but for them we wouldn’t have survived. They brought with them confirmation that Ross’s wife and son had disappeared on a trip to Kharja a couple of days ago. Mamoon and ‘Abd al-Hadi returned south with the main caravan leaving only myself, Daisy, Mansur, Ahmad and ‘Ali to approach the monastery. We dismounted as we came out of the desert on to the graded road, and the first thing we spied was a batch of earthenware water pots, set up as an offering to thirsty travellers. We unpacked our gourds gratefully but all we found in each pot was a few inches of damp sediment. We led the limping camels through the almond and olive groves, right up to the cloister arch. There was a desolate air to the place that hadn’t been apparent on my last visit here. The orchards had turned grey and brittle for lack of water, the pumps were silent, the feeder channels dry, and the buildings seemed to be deserted. While Mansur and Ahmad took the camels off to find them drink and grazing, Daisy and I pushed open the gate and entered the cloister. Where there had last been monks wandering about lost in thought, there were now silent flagstones, and where there had been a garden bursting with blooms, there were now dead, woody stems and runnels of sand. ‘It’s like the place has been evacuated,’ Daisy said.

  ‘After sticking it out for nearly 2000 years?’ I said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  A couple of Egyptian vultures perched in the upper branches of a eucalyptus tree eyed us with interest as we crossed the quadrangle. The heavy teak doors were closed but unlocked, and we went in, calling ‘Peace be upon you!’ as we searched the corridor and the lower offices for life. There was no one. A thick layer of dust covered floors and furniture, and bone dry papers fluttered about. We were climbing the stairs towards the Patriarch’s office, when Daisy suddenly stopped in her tracks. ‘You hear that?’ she asked.

  I listened. From somewhere above us there came a faint but distinct sobbing sound. ‘The Patriarch’s office!’ I said. We rushed up to the door and heaved it open. Father Grigori was lying on a rug in the corner of his spartan cell, curled up in a foetus position, his face grey and bloodless, his eyes bulging out of his head, his body wracked with tremors. He stared at us blankly as we walked in, a dribble of saliva drooling from his mouth. Daisy found a pitcher of water and a steel mug in the corner of the room. I picked the tiny monk up and sat him upright on a chair, and Daisy fed him the water like a child. The Patriarch choked and coughed, then gulped down more. ‘Where are they all, Father Grigori?’ I asked. ‘Where’s everybody gone?’

  ‘Pumps stopped,’ he croaked, holding on to my arm tightly. ‘No...water for the gardens...had to close down...He gulped water again, this time clasping the cup with his shaky hand. ‘Must have a...cigarette,’ he stuttered. I opened the drawer of his desk and brought out a packet of Cleopatras and a lighter. I put one in his mouth and lit it for him.

  ‘It’s bad for your health!’ I told him.

  Half a smirk lit up the side of his face, and he breathed the smoke in deeply, letting it trickle back through his nostrils. ‘Ah,’ he whispered, ‘that’s good.’ He took another swig of water.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked again.

  He took another mouthful of smoke and stared at us with wild eyes, his nicotine stained fingers almost crushing the cigarette. ‘Dead,’ he said, ‘or else his creatures, may God have mercy on them...’

  ‘Whose creatures?’ Daisy asked.

  Grigori’s eyes widened, almost starting from his head, and suddenly he dropped the cup, which crashed to the floor, slopping water over the stone flags. For a moment he seemed to be groping for something, then I realized that he was pointing behind us, his eyes brimmed with horror. I whipped my Beretta out of my pocket and Daisy wheeled round and brought up the big old 9mm Browning Mansur had given her. Framed in the doorway, dressed in a black T-shirt, a tweed jacket and black slacks, stood Professor Milisch Andropov, his slitted Mongolian eyes and his high cheekbones giving the impression that he was beaming at us.

  Daisy lowered the weapon, and let out a sigh. ‘Don’t creep up like that!’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you coming.’ Andropov smiled at her and said nothing. For an instant I let the Beretta drop and looked from Andropov to Grigori. The cigarette had fallen from the Patriarch’s grasp and his hand was still shaking as he hooked a crabbed finger towards Andropov. ‘Him!’ he gasped, ‘Him! Him!’ and, just as I finally understood what he meant, Andropov drew a .380 calibre snub nose from his pocket and shot Grigori twice in the head.

  53

  The patriarch pitched sideways over his chair with blood spurting from his head and before I could move Andropov had Daisy in an arm lock with his pistol against her temple. He was a big man and I couldn’t believe that he’d outmanoeuvred Daisy — the fastest operator I’d ever seen. But he had and there was nothing I could do. I let my Beretta fall and it clanked on the stone flags next to Grigori, who lay silent in a spreading pool of blood, his eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Andropov relaxed and kicked Daisy’s Browning away. There was a movement from outside as a monk appeared at the door, panting. It was Brother Paul — the guy who’d met us on our first visit — though now he looked dirty and dishevelled in his pill-box hat and black soutane. His eyes filled with shock as he took in the scene and he took two shaky steps into the room and knelt down to examine Grigori.

  ‘He’s dead,’ he told Andropov, his face white with fear.

  ‘As a doornail, my dear brother,’ Andropov said. ‘Now, pick up the weapons of these intruders, will you.’

  Paul gagged, then lifted himself reluctantly and groped for our fallen weapons.

  Andropov backed off. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘look what the desert threw up. I never expected to see either of you again. Obviously Van Helsing has been shirking. No matter. You can’t do anything. It’s all in place now. We have the Stone, and we have the illuminatus — your good friend, Mr Omar James Ross, failed Egyptologist extraordinary. Thanks to both of you, I might add. You’ve done Majesty a great service.’

  ‘You’re MJ—12,’ Daisy said.

  Andropov ignored her, moving to the Patriarch’s desk and bringing out a couple of pairs of handcuffs. ‘I always thought these might come in handy,’ he said. ‘Cuff them, Brother Paul.’

  Paul laid down our handguns on the desk and fumbled with the cuffs while Andropov covered us. When we were cuffed, he eased the cocking hammer of his .38 forward and put it away. ‘You’ve caught me in the nick of time,’ he said, grinning, ‘I was just about to leave to see the grand finale of all our plans. I think it would be fitting if you would join me as my guests. We already have Ross’s wife and child in custody, of course, but your
presence might lend him a little...er...extra enthusiasm. And it’s only right that you witness what you, above all people, have done so much to bring about — the historic reactivation of the Firebird Project.’

  ‘You’re sick, Andropov,’ I said. ‘It’ll destroy the environment and bring down the whole of modern civilization.’

  Andropov’s eyes had taken on a dreamy look. ‘Imagine being allied to a race like the Nommos,’ he said, ‘a race that could construct technology like the Benben Stone, ten thousand years ago.’

  ‘And what about the rest of humanity?’

  Andropov shrugged again. ‘They are expendable,’ he said, ‘just grist to the mill.’

  PART III

  GIZA PLATEAU, CAIRO, EGYPT,

  DECEMBER 31ST, 1999

  54

  The Jarre concert had already started when we arrived at Giza, the eerie electronic music reverberating out of synthesizers and hundreds of human throats, accompanied by an aurora of lights that lit up each of the three pyramids. A freezing wind raised its head over the hilltop as our convoy threaded its way through the crowds of half hysterical onlookers — New Age mystics, hippies, spiritualists, primal screamers, modern witches’ covens, ufologists, religious fanatics, ordinary tourists and even expectant locals. There were people from every corner of the world, members of every race, religious minority or weirdo sect — maybe fifty thousand of them dancing, smoking dope, shouting and carousing, thronging wild eyed around the windows of our car as we passed through the gates and headed up the short slope to the entrance of the Great Pyramid. A cordon of Blue Berets three men deep had been placed round the base of the pyramid to prevent anyone climbing up, and they closed round our vehicle as the doors opened. The crowds cheered inanely as Andropov emerged, and his men pushed us towards the entrance.

  We were dressed in long black Arab cloaks with hoods Andropov had taken from the monastery to disguise our handcuffs, and to anyone close enough to see anything it must have looked as though we were all part of the night’s theatricals.

  We were ushered up the steps we’d been obliged to descend ignominiously on our last visit, and when we got to the top I paused for a second, pretending to get my breath, and scanned the sea of faces. Below me was an ocean of humanity waving banners, yelling, jumping and caterwauling, pulsating with the unreasoning dark energy of the crowd. I gasped as I sensed all those individual spirits moulded into one vast reservoir of unconscious power, a power that could — if properly acknowledged and directed — have reached out to the most distant stars. I knew why they’d really come here, I thought. It was an attempt to find something more than the isolated, meaningless lives modern urban society condemned them to. It was a half understood urge to find identity, to belong. The Hawazim already had that sense of belonging — they had no material security like this crowd did but they knew who they were and were perfectly at ease in their relationship with the Divine. As the guards shoved us into the tunnel, I felt an intense compassion for my species. They had come to see in the new millennium on an impulse they did not properly understand, yet none of them knew what was really going on tonight.

  Van Helsing was waiting for us inside — a dark figure in a dark suit, his pock marked face half shadowed in the rows of electric lights. The tadpole features registered surprise when he saw us. ‘What are they doing here?’ he asked Andropov.

  Andropov’s big Mongolian face creased into an inscrutable grin. ‘The desert blew them in,’ he said. ‘You didn’t do the job, my fine friend.’

  For an instant Van Helsing’s eyes flickered with fear, and I realized with astonishment that it was Andropov who was in authority here. ‘I thought they deserved to take part in our little ceremony,’ he went on. ‘Is the illuminatus in place?’

  ‘It’s all ready,’ Van Helsing said. He glanced at his watch. ‘An hour till kick off.’ He led us half—crawling down the descending passage, and I noticed he was limping badly — no doubt from the gunshot wound ‘Ali had given him in the thigh. We came to the divide where the ascending passage started and doubled up again to climb it. It was hard going with our hands cuffed behind us, and a relief to come into the Grand Gallery with its great corbelled vaulting, stretching twenty six feet above the floor to a ceiling of granite slabs. Van Helsing halted and gasped for breath, and I guessed the wound in his leg was giving him trouble. He caught me looking at him, and scowled. ‘I owe you ragheads for this, Rashid,’ he said, ‘and for a Chinook helicopter and a bunch of foot soldiers.’

  I felt the same irrational impulse to hit out at him that I’d always felt in his presence. ‘You won’t miss them,’ I said, ‘you already sold out your entire species to a pack of extra-terrestrial hyenas.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Andropov snapped, coming in after us. I noticed that he’d left his guards behind, but there were already four armed men in the gallery, dressed in shiny steel blue protective suits with rubber gloves, over boots and helmets that covered their entire faces except for plastic strips over the eyes. These guys must have been specially chosen, I thought, because they were all unusually big men — six-and-a-half-footers, built like locomotives. Andropov led us to a pile of open cartons at one end of the passage which I saw contained protective clothing of the same type the guards wore. ‘Let’s get kitted up,’ he told Van Helsing.

  ‘What, them too?’ Van Helsing asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Andropov said, ‘I don’t want their filthy blood and germs all over the place if they have to be made a lesson of. They’re here to give Ross a little extra fillip, but they’re expendable of course.’

  Van Helsing leered at me with pleasure, and ordered one of the guards to suit us up. The big man slung his submachine gun over his shoulder and picked suits out of the cartons. They were one piece things, impossible to get into with cuffed hands. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ the guard said, his voice grating, muffled by the helmet, ‘we’ll have to unlock the cuffs.’

  Andropov paused halfway into his own suit and looked irritated for a moment. Then he felt in his pocket and slapped the key into the guard’s hand. The big man unlocked Daisy’s cuffs first and she let out a sigh, mass aging her wrists. As the guard turned to me, I tensed myself for action. Andropov had forgotten my back up — the khanjar strapped to my left arm — and Brother Paul hadn’t been professional enough to detect it. I remembered what Ross used to say: ‘Wars have been won with less,’ and began to take deep breaths, relaxing my muscles, preparing all the reflexes I’d spent my life sharpening for the last, desperate action that might change everything.

  The cuffs sprang free and I paused. I was ready. My hand closed on the handle of my knife and I was about to whip it out with all the explosive power I could summon when a big, rubber gloved hand closed like a vice round my right wrist. I looked up into eyes that bored into me from behind the distorting perspex — familiar eyes, I thought. A second later the big hand lifted and made a circle with fingers and thumb. It was a sign from Yidshi, the ancient hunting language of my tribe, and it meant ‘Wait’. I watched the hand, fascinated, as its index and second fingers extended with the other two fingers and thumb tucked away. In Yidshi it meant ‘friend’. I looked into the eyes again, took in the broad-shouldered weightlifter’s frame, and knew it was Hammoudi. I recalled distinctly having taught him a few phrases of Yidshi in case it ever came in handy. It had. I didn’t know how he’d survived or how he’d got here, only that he was here and that we now had a chance.

  I dismissed all questions from my mind and concentrated on donning my suit, overboots and helmet as inconspicuously as possible. When we were all suited up except for our helmets, Van Helsing gestured to the guard to replace the handcuffs. Hammoudi put the cuffs on a couple of notches looser than they’d been originally, and I watched carefully as he closed Daisy’s, noting how he inserted the clasp through the first ratchet, so that they only appeared to be locked. He did the same with mine, and handed Andropov the key.

  ‘OK,’ Andropov said, ‘let’s get on with it.’


  The guards goaded us through the antechamber and into the King’s Chamber, and immediately I saw Ross. He was strapped and handcuffed into a tubular steel chair in the centre of an iron frame, from which a spaghetti of wires and tubes fanned out, disappearing into one of the shafts. He was wearing a protective suit but no helmet, and the wires terminated in dozens of electrodes attached to his head. Near the frame there was a table weighed down with computer terminals and electronics, with wires and cables running everywhere. The floor around was covered in strange artefacts I didn’t recognize — pillars with pylon-like caps, strange twisted sculptures in white alabaster connected by cables, twelve sided crystals set on plinths, glass globes with what looked like red and green worms crawling inside them, miniature pyramids covered with hieroglyphs, moulded steel boxes that could almost have been antique stereo speakers.

  ‘The Divine Spirit greet you, amnir,’ I said. Ross stared at me glassily and his lips moved, but no sound came out.

  ‘He can see and hear you,’ Andropov chortled, ‘but he can’t speak. Our drugs see to that.’ He turned to Ross. ‘Your friend Sammy Rashid is here to make sure you cooperate,’ he said loudly, as if talking to a deaf mute, ‘the girl too. If there’s any resistance on your part, they’ll die slowly before your eyes. If that doesn’t convince you we have your wife and child standing by. I believe in saving the best till last. And remember, Ross, I can monitor your brainwaves on my encephalograph terminals, so I’ll know if you’re not giving it your best shot.’

  The four guards shuffled in behind us and stood with their backs to the red granite walls. Van Helsing looked at his watch. ‘Ten minutes to go,’ he told Andropov. The Professor looked pleased. I gazed around at the chamber. At the back was the famous ‘sarcophagus’ with the fragment missing from one corner, the supposed resting place of the Pharaoh Khufu.