The Memory Agent

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  “So this is a copy of the Rosetta Stone?”

  “No way,” Selberg replied. “This is most definitely not just a copy of the original Rosetta Stone.”

  “He’s right,” Charlotte said. “The Rosetta Stone was much larger. This appears to have been taken from a tablet. The original Rosetta Stone was simply a tax decree written in the languages used in Egypt at the time. Historians always believed that there must be other stones. None were ever found.”

  “Can you read what this says?” I asked.

  She looked down at the parchment. “I can figure it out, but it will take time. I’ll work on it tonight.”

  Carefully, she folded the parchment back together.

  The stone wall above the soldier was layered with a coating of dust, but beneath the coating I could see black markings. Slowly, I swiped my hand across the wall. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years of sediment cascaded to the floor. Concealed beneath the layers, more writing. I continued to work until I had cleared a small section.

  I expected to see the hieroglyphs common to ancient Egypt, but instead three words appeared written in black paint.

  Three English words.

  Clayton let out a low whistle. “My God.”

  I felt my skin grow cold.

  On the wall, in a chamber sealed since the time of Napoleon, were English words.

  SUBWAY JUST AHEAD

  Nothing was worse in the academic community than the embarrassment of being taken in by a hoax. It cast such a long shadow on one’s career that one could sometimes never find the sun again.

  But despite this, part of me wanted desperately to believe that what we had seen in the tomb was real. The world had become too solid. Too rational. Science had removed the mystery behind life and left a population deadened to the possibility of something greater. Something that existed beyond the dominion of the rational.

  Darkness began to descend as we returned to the tents. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt constructed their tombs on the West Bank of the Nile. Here they faced the entrance to the east, toward the rising sun, a symbol of their rebirth in the afterlife.

  The belief in an afterlife shaped everything they did.

  Almost like me now.

  My wife was dead.

  I watched as they put her body into a box and put the box into the ground. Sometimes the most enduring memories are the ones we wish we could most forget. In the days after her funeral, I would find parts of her life scattered everywhere about our apartment. A closet full of her clothes. Shelves filled with books she had read. In the bathroom, a brush with strands of her hair. All these little pieces had the feel of her, and they all worked together to bring back a full memory of her in life. Her smell. The curl of her hair. The things in life I had never appreciated, but now were all I had left.

  She had worked in the history department at Columbia University. The day she died, she had left for work early. I had still been sleeping and her last words to me barely cut through my dreams. There was a whiff of her perfume, the tickle of her hair against my cheek, and the feel of her lips on my forehead as she kissed me goodbye.

  “Have a good day.”

  That was it. That was the last thing she ever said to me.

  That was the last memory I had of my wife alive. Me, half asleep, and her voice in the darkness of the bedroom telling me to have a good day. Five hours later she was dead. And I would have given anything to have that moment back again.

  So now I needed to believe she was someplace else. Someplace wonderful and eternal. Not just in a box beneath ten feet of earth slowly melting away to nothingness.

  Perhaps this tomb was just a hoax. And perhaps there was no mystery left on Earth. That the world we lived in was solid through and through. And there was nothing beyond. But if it wasn’t a hoax, if what we had found was real, then maybe the world could be bent, like light through a prism and transformed into an unimaginable brilliance.

  And maybe my wife was somewhere out there, waiting for me to join her.

  We decided to spend the night in the tents. The city of Luxor was only a few miles away, but the hotel was on the eastern side of the Nile. The ferry discontinued service at night, and since the valley was on the western side, we were left somewhat stranded.

  Across the valley I could see the campfires of the dig workers. They had their own smaller tents, donated by the university, which they lived in during the dig. I watched as the men turned something on a spit over the fire, the occasional shower of sparks rising into the air.

  “Beautiful night,” Charlotte said behind me. She joined me at the edge of the tent and looked across the valley.

  I nodded in the darkness.

  She wore a white dress, and in each hand she had a glass bottle of beer. She held one of them out. “Beer?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I took the beer from her. Her skin was warm, the bottle, ice cold.

  “Wasn’t sure if you were a drinker,” she said.

  “You brought two bottles just in case.”

  She pulled two more bottles from the pocket of her dress and placed them down at her feet. “Actually I brought four.”

  I laughed and took a long pull from the bottle. Alcohol always seemed to affect me more than it did most people. A smoldering ember was hidden in me, somewhere. Some deep seed of discontent perhaps. I supposed we all have them. Our own hatreds, which we keep locked up. But for me, alcohol was the master key.

  Charlotte took a sip. “So, did you actually stay sober for those Prohibition years?”

  I smiled. “I had a place.”

  “I’m impressed. Second door in the alley, knock twice and ask for Jimmy?”

  “Something like that. You?”

  “I didn’t stay sober. Ever feel sad and you’re not sure why? Anyway, most nights . . .” She raised her beer and shook it. The amber liquid sloshed in the glass. “Eventually they’ll give it a name.”

  “They have already. Alcoholism.”

  “Alcoholism?” she said, as she took another deep pull. “I like that.”

  In the distance I heard the low rumble of a jeep approaching. The sun had dipped below the horizon and already the desert was dark. I scanned the slow rise of the road leading back toward Luxor, but I saw no headlamps approaching. Whoever it was did not wish to be seen.

  Automobiles were relatively rare among native Egyptians, so this was most probably a westerner. European. Or American. The noise of the jeep cut off and the valley returned to a silence punctuated by the gentle murmur of conversation from the worker camp.

  I turned back toward the tent. Selberg lay on his cot, pillow propped up beneath his head, reading F. Scott Fitzgerald. Clayton and his rifle were both gone.

  “What do you know about Clayton?” Charlotte asked.

  “I’ve known him a long time,” I said. “Served with him in the war.”

  Across the valley, the muzzle of a weapon flashed in the darkness. An instant later, the boom of a shotgun. Selberg sat up quickly in his cot, eyes wide. “What the hell was that?”

  Footfalls sounded in the darkness ahead of us. Clayton emerged from the night.

  “What happened out there?” I asked.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  I listened for the sound of the jeep starting up, pulling away back into the distance, but I heard nothing.

  Eventually I turned down the lamp, lay in my cot, and fell asleep.

  Morning came quickly. The sun rose with an urgency in the desert and the cool night air faded into memory. Nasir slept with his eyes open, a strange habit of his. And sometimes he would not awake, even to my heaviest touch. This morning I found him, eyes open, glazed, his face looking out across the valley. I left him to his sleep.

  The entrance to the tomb was exactly as we’d left it the previous day. Nasir had posted two guards, lanky men in red caps with antiquated rifles who gazed at me with open smiles as we walked by.

  By contrast, the workers were a sullen lot. They stared at me emotionl
essly as I passed, bare feet buried deep in sand, backs sweating from laboring with shovels for hours in the sun.

  Clayton approached me quietly. “We should keep the soldiers outside.”

  I followed his line of sight out across the valley. Heat rose in waves from the ridge. “Why?”

  “Last night we had visitors. They knew how to find the camp. Information is getting out somehow. This area is crawling with the Brotherhood of Anubis.”

  “Sounds menacing. Who are they?”

  “A bunch of zealots dedicated to keeping ancient Egyptian tombs a secret,” Clayton said. “They’ve been operating in the valley for years.”

  “Do we need to worry?”

  “Don’t know yet. Just be aware they’re out there and watching us. I think—”

  Clayton’s words were interrupted by a shout from below. Selberg appeared at the chamber opening, breathless and covered in dust.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “We’ve cleared away the rubble. We’re ready to open the seal.”

  In the chamber below, I inspected what the workers had uncovered.

  The door itself was stamped with a series of hieroglyphs that ran in two lines just above the seal. Charlotte approached the markings and began to translate them. “Whoever walks through these doors, I will twist their neck like a bird.”

  “And that’s how legends of curses start,” Selberg said.

  I took a small rock hammer from my belt and knocked on the seal twice. The clay cracked and fell apart to the ground. Beneath, a length of rope, still surprisingly intact, wrapped around the handles of the door. This I slowly unwound, then pulled on the handles.

  The door remained firmly closed. I pulled harder, and from somewhere beyond the doors, sounded the clunk of a heavy weight striking the ground. The door began to slowly open, the stone grating loudly on the floor.

  Warm, foul air burst forth. A rush of wind filled the small room and the candles Nasir had placed along the wall all flickered and faded, threatened with extinguishment.

  “Is that as ominous as it looks?” Charlotte narrowed her eyes as she watched the candles. The small flames still fought for life.

  “Bad air,” Selberg said. “The candles are an old miner’s trick. You have to remember what these tombs were used for. Burial chambers. They were filled with dead bodies. Clothing. Wood. And over time all this organic matter decomposed, making the air quite toxic to breathe.” Selberg rubbed his hand across his chin and I noticed he had a thin layer of stubble. This struck me as odd. He was such a neat and precise man. “And never shave.”

  “Of course.” I ran my hand over my own smooth skin, annoyed at my own stupidity.

  “Never shave?” Charlotte asked.

  “Shaving opens the skin, allows germs inside,” I said.

  “Interesting idea,” Charlotte replied. “Go back?”

  I turned to look back up the stairs toward the small rectangle of light above us.

  “Just give it a minute,” Selberg said firmly. “As long as the candles don’t go out, we’re okay.”

  “You’re not the one who shaved this morning,” I said.

  “Ah, men and their problems,” Charlotte said, smiling. “As someone who also didn’t shave my face today, I would still like to wait.”

  We waited in the antechamber. After a few minutes, the old air filtered out and the candle flames burned again with regularity. I approached the open doorway. The blackness yielded to my electric torch, and through the doorway I saw a second stone corridor, which led farther downward into the layers of limestone. The sides of the corridor were smooth, covered in gypsum plaster with reliefs depicting typical scenes from daily Egyptian life. Men fished with spears, standing precariously on the edge of long boats. In other scenes, figures harvested fruits or grains and carried them in wide baskets.

  The scene on the opposite wall was much more violent.

  “A battle between the Nubians and the Egyptians.” I indicated the wall with my electric torch. “Wars between the two had broken out during many of the Egyptian dynasties.”

  “Who won?” Charlotte asked.

  “Can’t you tell?” I nodded toward the wall. The Nubians were being slaughtered, their soldiers lying decapitated and bloody while Egyptian chariots rolled over their bodies. The Egyptian soldiers seemed oddly expressionless, only the smallest hint of a smile on their faces. The faces of the Nubians depicted pain. Tongues of the dead hung out, eyes cringed shut. I realized I was staring at the complete annihilation of a people by a more technologically advanced enemy.

  “Brutal,” Charlotte murmured.

  “It was brutal,” I said. “The Egyptians had the most superior military of the time. Chariots. Archers. Foot soldiers.”

  Selberg had continued down into the corridor. He was oddly quiet, and I turned to see him intently studying a portion of the decorations.

  “Find something?” I called out to him.

  He turned toward me, his face pale, his hand shaking. Charlotte and I walked down the stone corridor toward him.

  “God, man,” I said. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He shook his head, a muffled click arose from his throat, and then he turned his torch toward the wall and illuminated the relief decorations. We stood at the far end of the corridor, the final last few feet before the tomb abruptly turned ninety degrees to the right, the typical “bent axis” design of the early tombs. The decorations continued the length of the corridor, and in this final portion, the battle appeared to have ended.

  “Looks like the Egyptians carried the day.” Charlotte flashed her light across the decorations, revealing two Egyptian chariots. The chariots were again both driven by expressionless warriors. And behind the chariots, the men dragged something, a large net filled with the heads of Nubians.

  The heads were realistically drawn. The art had a degree of specificity that I had never seen before in Egyptian art. And I could see that not all the heads were men. Some were women. Others were small children, as if an entire village had been massacred.

  Charlotte covered her mouth.

  It was a ghastly scene. Another of history’s genocides. But this one long forgotten, the only evidence of its existence buried in the darkness of this tomb for thousands of years.

  I glanced at Selberg, expecting the scientist to be looking at the scene of bloodshed. He was still pale, but his interest was focused at the final portion of the wall.

  “What is it?”

  “Here, look at this.” Selberg jabbed a single finger out. “The soldiers in that battle. They were making an offering. Bringing the heads of their enemy as a gift.”

  “A gift to whom?” I asked.

  Selberg pointed to the painted relief. The last scene. One of the chariot drivers bowed before a single figure. A man with pale skin who wore tan pants and a western shirt. A white man.

  A man that looked like me.

  Rapid footfalls echoed down the corridor toward us. In the distance sounded a deep boom, followed by the rattle of machine-gun fire. Nasir emerged from the darkness, his face a sheen of sweat.

  “Sir, I beg you,” Nasir said. “Stay in the tomb! We are under attack!”

  Nasir turned and ran back toward the entrance. I followed closely behind him, moved up the stairs, and burst out into the open air. The light was blinding. I shut my eyes, as my brain registered the shock of the sun.

  To the east sounded another boom, followed by two unmistakable loud cracks.

  Gunfire.

  Cautiously, I opened my eyes.

  “Sir, get down please,” Nasir said. He squatted behind the low rock wall, which led to the entrance of the tomb. He waved at me with his hands to take cover. Without thinking, I ran to him and threw myself against the wall.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked.

  “The Brotherhood of Anubis has attacked,” he said. He nodded his head out across the wall. I looked up. In the distance I saw the peak of al-Qurn, silhouetted tan
against the vibrant blue sky. In the foreground were men on horseback. Dozens of them. They wore black robes with white cloth that covered their faces.

  The men rode directly toward our dig site, and as they rode, they fired shots at us from expertly wielded rifles. To the east, about forty yards away, a couple of our Egyptian guards hunkered down behind one of the trucks. Occasionally they rose and fired at the horsemen before they ducked down again to reload.

  Someone called my name. Selberg, his eyes wide, stared at me from inside the doorway of the tomb. “What’s happening?” He ducked as a bullet chipped a portion of sandstone from the side of the tomb. “Somebody is shooting.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said.

  “At us!”

  “Just stay in the tomb. We’ll handle this,” I said. “Has anyone seen Clayton?”

  The campsite was a hundred yards away at least, farther down the length of the valley. I tried to think about what firearms we had secured with us. I remembered a long oil-metal box. A few World War I bolt-action rifles. Maybe a pistol or two. Certainly nothing that could repel a force the size of the Brotherhood.

  From the direction of the tombs came the crunch of boot on sand. Clayton sprinted across the sand, a wicker basket in hand, and hurled himself against the rock wall next to me. He winked. “Just like old times in the war, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m happy to reminisce in other ways.”

  “Keep your head down,” he said. “I’ll straighten this out.”

  Clayton wiped sweat from his brow, then retrieved a Thompson submachine gun from the basket. He locked an ammunition magazine into the lower portion of the weapon and turned toward the approaching gunmen. I heard a metallic click as he chambered a round.

  And then he pulled the trigger.

  I had seen the effect machine-gun fire had on men and horses before. A truly awful sight. Never had I seen so many living creatures have their lives taken so quickly and in such a cruel and painful fashion.

  And this outcome was just as bloody as I remembered. Where just moments before, a half-dozen men on horseback had quickly approached, now nothing moved, the air silent except for the shrieks of dying horses and cries of wounded riders. And even though they had come to kill me, and would have gladly done so, I could not help but feel sorry at the manner of their demise.