Seven Deadly Wonders

by Matthew Reilly

  The big question, however, was what Israel planned to do at the end of the mission. Could Archer and Israel be trusted then?

  At first, hardly anyone even spoke to Archer—which the ever-cool Israeli didn’t seem to mind at all.

  But no man is an island, and one day he joined West as he carried out some repairs on the station … and so began the process of becoming part of the team.

  And slowly, over the course of many months, by working and sweating and training with the others, he became accepted as one of them.

  One member of their little community, however, always regarded Archer with great suspicion.

  Saladin.

  As an Arab and a Muslim, he distrusted the Israeli intensely, but he also knew that Archer’s presence in Kenya was now a given.

  He would often say that while he had to accept Archer’s presence, he didn’t have to like it.

  As all this was happening, Lily’s development was proceeding apace.

  She was always inquisitive, always watching. Watching Saladin go off into the big barn and disappear inside his explosives workshop. He was so sweet and cuddly, she renamed him Pooh Bear.

  Watching the new man, Archer, go out to the western paddock and practice firing his ultralong Barrett sniper rifle at far-off targets—and hitting the target every single time. She watched him closely, even when he disassembled his rifle. He was so tall and thin, she started calling him Stretch. (She also noticed that Pooh Bear and Stretch hardly ever even spoke. She did not know why.)

  Watching Witch Doctor do chin-ups. From an early age, she had loved his wild dreadlocked hair. He became Fuzzy.

  Watching the two youngest troopers, Matador and Gunman, jog together, train together, and drink together. This earned them their new call signs: Noddy and Big Ears.

  And, of course, watching Zoe.

  Idolizing Zoe.

  Being the only twentysomething female Lily knew, it wasn’t unexpected that Zoe would become her feminine role model.

  And Zoe Kissane was a good role model. She could outlast the men in fitness tests, outwit most of them at dinner-table discussions, and she could often be found studying history books deep into the night.

  It was not uncommon to find Lily sitting in an armchair late at night beside Zoe, fast asleep with a book open, trying to imitate the pretty Irishwoman.

  Naturally, Lily called her Princess Zoe.

  But above all, the one person Lily enjoyed watching most was Jack West Jr.

  She would never forget the day in 2000 when Wizard had presented West with a shiny new silver arm.

  With Zoe assisting, Wizard spent the whole day attaching the high-tech arm to West’s left elbow, pausing every now and then to frown and say something like, “The arm’s CPU is experiencing interference from somewhere. Zahir, would you turn off the television set, please.” Eventually, he changed some frequencies on the arm’s central processing unit and it worked to his satisfaction.

  The four-year-old Lily had watched them keenly as they worked.

  She was aware that West had lost his arm on the day she was born, in the process of saving her life, so she really wanted his new arm to work.

  At the end of the day, the arm was on, and West flexed his new metal fingers. His new hand could actually grip things far more tightly and firmly than his natural right hand could.

  True to his word, Wizard had built West an arm that was better than the one he’d been born with.

  Other things about West intrigued Lily.

  For one thing, of all the team at the farm, he hung out with her the least.

  He didn’t play with her.

  He didn’t teach her any special subject.

  He would spend most days in his study, poring over old books—really old books with titles like Ancient Egyptian Building Methods, Imhotep and the Architects of Amun-Ra, and one really old scroll titled in Greek: A Collection of Wonders around the World.

  Lily loved his study.

  It had lots of cool stuff arrayed around its walls: sandstone tablets, a crocodile skull, the skeleton of some apelike creature Lily couldn’t recognize, and hidden in one corner, a glass jar filled with a very strange kind of rusty red sand. On a secret mission of her own late one night, she discovered that the jar’s lid was sealed tight, too tightly for her to open. It remained a mystery.

  There was also a medium-sized whiteboard attached to the far wall, on which West had scribbled all sorts of notes and pictures. Things like:

  HOWARD CARTER (1874–1939):

  Found Tutankhamen’s tomb; also discovered Queen Hatshepsut’s unused tomb (KV20) in Valley of the Kings in 1903. Empty tomb, never used. Unfinished carving on tomb’s east wall is only known picture of Capstone atop Great Pyramid receiving vertical shaft of sunlight:

  After this West had noted: “Queen Hatshepsut: only female pharaoh, prolific obelisk builder.”

  One note on the board, however, caught Lily’s eye.

  It was at the very bottom corner of the whiteboard, under all the others, almost deliberately out of the way. It read simply: “4 MISSING DAYS OF MY LIFE—CORONADO?”

  Once, late at night, she had seen West staring at those words, tapping his pencil against his teeth, lost in thought.

  Whenever West worked in his study, his falcon always sat loyally on his shoulder—alerting him with a squawk when anyone approached.

  Lily was intrigued by Horus.

  She was an absolutely stunning bird, proud in her bearing and laserlike in her intensity. She didn’t play with Lily—despite Lily’s continued efforts to coax her.

  Bouncing balls, fake mice, nothing Lily used could draw the falcon out into play. No, whatever silly thing Lily did to get her attention, Horus would just stare back at her with total disdain.

  Horus, it seemed, cared for only one person.

  Jack West.

  This was a fact Lily would confirm through experimentation. One day, when once again Horus would not be drawn from West’s shoulder, Lily threw her rubber mouse at West.

  The falcon moved with striking speed.

  She intercepted the tossed mouse easily—in midair halfway between Lily and West—her talons clutching the toy rodent in twin viselike grips.

  Dead mouse.

  Lesson learned.

  But research was not the only thing West did.

  It didn’t escape Lily’s notice that while she was busy studying in her classroom, Huntsman would often disappear into the old abandoned mine in the hills beyond the western paddock, not far from the airplane hangar. Strangely, he would wear an odd uniform: a fireman’s helmet and his canvas jacket. And Horus always went with him.

  Lily was strictly forbidden from going into those caves.

  Apparently, Wizard had built a series of traps in the mine tunnels—traps based on those in the ancient books that he and West studied—and Huntsman would go in there to test himself against the traps.

  Lily found Jack West Jr. to be a bit of a mystery.

  And she wondered at times, as children do, if he even liked her at all.

  But one thing Lily didn’t know was just how closely she herself was being observed.

  Her progress with languages was being carefully monitored.

  “She continues to excel,” Wizard reported, just after she turned nine. “Her transliteration skills are like nothing I have ever seen. And she doesn’t even know how good she is. She plays with languages the way Serena Williams plays with spin on a tennis ball—she can do things with it, twist it this way and that, in ways you or I can’t even begin to imagine.”

  Big Ears reported, “She’s physically fit, good endurance. If it ever becomes necessary, she can run six miles without breaking a sweat.”

  “And she knows every inch of my study,” West said. “She sneaks in there once a week.”

  Zoe said, “I know it isn’t mission-related, but she’s actually becoming quite good at something else: ballet. Watches it on cable. Now I know lots of little girls dream of becomin
g prima ballerinas, but Lily is actually very good at it, especially considering she’s self-taught. She can hold a toe pose unaided for close to twenty seconds—which is exceptional. The kid just loves ballet, can’t get enough of it. It’s a girl thing. Think you can get some ballet DVDs the next time you go to Nairobi, Wizard?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Ballet, you say …” West said.

  It then came as a surprise to Lily when she arrived at breakfast one day—again ignoring the sheet on the fridge—and found West waiting for her in the kitchen, alone, dressed and ready to go somewhere.

  “Hey, kiddo. Want to go out for a surprise?”

  “Sure.”

  The surprise was a private plane trip to Cape Town and a visit to a performance of The Nutcracker by the South African Royal Ballet.

  Lily sat through the entire performance with her mouth agape, her eyes wide with wonder, entranced.

  West just looked at her the whole time—and maybe once, just once, he even smiled.

  Years went by.

  In 2001, she saw the first Lord of the Rings movie. That Christmas, Sky Monster, proud of the New Zealand–born team behind the film, gave her the three books by Tolkien and read them with her.

  By the time the third film had come and gone in 2003, Lily and Sky Monster had reread the books to within an inch of their lives.

  And from those readings of The Lord of the Rings, Lily got her own call sign.

  Sky Monster bestowed it on her, naming her after her favorite character in the epic.

  Eowyn.

  The feisty shieldmaiden from Rohan who kills the Witch-King of Angmar, the Ringwraith whom no man can kill.

  Lily loved her call sign.

  And still, every day, she would enter the kitchen and get her juice—and see the sheet of paper with the strange writing on it stuck to the fridge door.

  Then one morning, a few days before her tenth birthday, she looked at the uppermost box on it and said, “Huh. I get it now. I know what that says.”

  Everyone in the kitchen at the time—Doris, Wizard, Zoe, and Pooh Bear—whirled around instantly.

  “What does it say, Lily?” Wizard said, gulping, trying not to show his excitement.

  “It’s a funny language, uses letters and pictures to create sounds. It says,

  “Colossus.

  Two entrances, one plain, one not,

  Carved by the fifth Great Architect,

  Out of Great Soter’s tenth mine.

  The easier route lies below the old mouth. Yet

  In the Nubian swamp to the south of Soter’s mine,

  Among Sobek’s minions,

  Find the four symbols of the Lower Kingdom.

  Therein lies the portal to the harder route.”

  The next day, the entire team left Victoria Station on board the Halicarnassus, bound for the Sudan.

  That same day the Sun rotated on its axis and the small sunspot that the Egyptians called Ra’s Prophet appeared on its surface.

  In seven days, on March 20, the Tartarus Rotation would occur.

  THE PHAROS

  As a Wonder of the World, the Lighthouse at Alexandria has always been, terribly unfairly, the perennial runner-up.

  It is second in height to the Great Pyramid of Giza—by a mere ninety-five feet.

  It stood, intact and functioning, for sixteen hundred years, until it was hit by a pair of devastating earthquakes in A.D. 1300. Only the Great Pyramid survived for longer.

  But ultimately it would defeat the Pyramid on one important count: it was useful.

  And because it survived for so long, we have many descriptions of it: Greek, Roman, Islamic.

  By today’s standards, it was a skyscraper.

  Built on three colossal levels, it stood 384 feet high, the equivalent of a forty-story building.

  The first level was square—broad, solid, and powerful. The foundation level.

  The second level was octagonal and hollow.

  The third and uppermost level was cylindrical and also hollow—to allow for the raising of fuel to the peak.

  At the summit of the tower stood its crowning glory. Sostratus’s masterpiece: the mirror.

  Ten feet high and shaped like a modern satellite dish, the mirror was mounted on a sturdy base and could rotate 360 degrees. Its concave bronze shape reflected the rays of the Sun to warn approaching ships of the dangerous shoals and submerged rocks just off Alexandria.

  By night, a huge bonfire was lit in front of the mirror, allowing the great lighthouse to send its beam twelve miles out into the darkened sea.

  Interestingly, like the Colossus of Rhodes a few years later, it was built at the request of Ptolemy I of Egypt—Alexander the Great’s close friend and general.

  AIRSPACE OVER AFRICA

  MARCH 15, 2006, 2:00 A.M.

  FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

  The Halicarnassus roared toward Kenya.

  The huge black 747 with its bristling array of missiles and gun turrets cut a mean figure in the sky. It looked like a gigantic bird of prey—death on wings.

  Inside it, West’s multinational team was still recovering from their disastrous mission in the Sudan.

  In the main cabin of the jumbo, West, Wizard, Lily, and Pooh Bear all sat in contemplative silence. The cabin was fitted with couches, some tables, and wall consoles for radio and communications gear.

  Wizard stood. “I’d better call the Spanish Army attaché. Tell them about Noddy.”

  He went to a nearby wall console, grabbed the secure sat phone there, started dialing.

  West just stared into space, replaying in his mind everything that had gone wrong in the Sudan.

  Lily sat with Pooh Bear, gazing at the team’s original copy of the Callimachus Text.

  As for the others, Fuzzy and Big Ears were in the infirmary in the rear of the plane, being treated by Zoe; and Sky Monster was up in the cockpit, flying the plane, with Stretch keeping him company.

  In the main cabin, Lily scanned another entry of the Callimachus Text. The symbols on the page were ancient, alien.

  Then suddenly she squealed, “Hey!”

  West snapped up. Wizard also spun.

  “This entry here. I couldn’t understand it before, but for some reason, I can now. It’s more complex than the last one. Uses new symbols. But I can read it now.”

  “What’s it say?” West leaped to her side.

  Lily read it aloud:

  “The Pharos.

  Look for the base that was once

  the peak of the Great Tower

  In the deepest crypt of Iskendur’s Highest Temple,

  Soter’s illustrious House to the Muses,

  Among the works of Eratosthenes the measurer,

  Hipparchus the stargazer,

  And Archimedes and Heron the machine makers,

  There you will find it EUCLID’S INSTRUCTIONS

  Surrounded by Death.”

  Lily frowned. “The word ‘it’ has been crossed out and replaced with ‘Euclid’s Instructions.’ I don’t know what they are.”

  “I do,” Wizard said, reaching for a high-tech stainless-steel trunk behind him. It opened with a vacuum-sealed hiss. The trunk was fitted with many pigeonholes, each pigeonhole containing an ancient scroll. Wizard’s collection was huge; there were at least two hundred tightly rolled scrolls.

  “Now where is that index? Ah, here it is.” Wizard pulled a computer printout from a sleeve in the trunk’s lid. On it was a very long typewritten list. “Now, Euclid’s Instructions … Euclid’s Instructions. I’m sure I saw that title once before. Ah, good, there we are. Just a moment.” Wizard proceeded to rummage through his scrolls. As he did so, West typed out Lily’s translation of the Text.

  Stretch entered the main cabin, noticed the activity immediately. “What’s going on?”

  “We may have had a development,” West said. He read one line from the translation. “‘Soter’s illustrious House to the Muses.’ A House to the Muses
is a ‘museion’ or ‘museum.’ Soter was Ptolemy I. Soter’s House to the Muses is the Library at Alexandria, otherwise known as the Museion.”

  “So,” Pooh Bear said, “in the deepest crypt of the Alexandria Library, among those works mentioned, we’ll find ‘the base that was once the peak of the Lighthouse,’ whatever that is. I thought the Library was destroyed in antiquity.”

  “It was,” Zoe said, coming into the lounge. “By the Romans in 48 B.C. The Biblioteca Alexandrina was the center of all learning in the ancient world, possessed of over seven hundred thousand scrolls and the writings of some of the greatest thinkers in human history, and the Romans razed it to the ground.”

  She saw West’s translation. “God. Look at those names. It’s like a Who’s Who of history’s greatest minds. Eratosthenes: he calculated the circumference of the Earth. Hipparchus mapped the constellations. Archimedes figured out volume and was a prolific inventor. And Heron. Well. Heron invented geared cogwheels and a primitive steam engine two thousand years before James Watt was even born.”

  Pooh Bear asked, “And now?”

  Zoe sighed. “The Library is gone. Long since buried underneath modern-day Alexandria. They know where it stood—and the Egyptian government recently built a new Library not far from the old site—but the Romans did their work well. Just as they had done with Carthage a hundred years previously, the Library was removed from existence. Not a single brick, text, or crypt remains.”

  “So all its scrolls were destroyed, then?” “Many were, but a large portion of them were spirited away from the Library in the days before the Roman invasion. The scrolls were reputedly taken to a secret location, deep in the Atlas Mountains—and to date, have never been officially found.”

  When Zoe said this last sentence, she threw West and Wizard a sideways look.

  “Not everyone announces it to the world when they find something important,” West said.

  “What—?” Pooh Bear said, whirling to face the scrolls Wizard was rummaging through. “Are you telling me that those scrolls are—”