by Paul Sussman
‘Whatever happens in there, stay beside me and do what I do,’ Flin whispered to Freya as the twins shoved them from behind. ‘And don’t touch anything.’
He clasped her hand and, ducking, they pushed their way through the two curtains. A sharp icy light enveloped them as the hum of the generators gave way to the blip and squeak of electronic equipment.
Freya had seen many unusual sights in her life – a fair proportion of them over the last few days – but nothing to match the scene that now greeted her.
They were in a large, square room, very basic, with a compacted dirt floor and bare stone-block walls and ceiling, the polar opposite of the ornately decorated halls through which they had just passed, more reminiscent of a cave than something man-made. Four halogen lamps bathed the space in a cold, piercing light; a dozen men and women dressed identically in white lab coats and surgical-style scrub caps pored over an array of monitors and computer screens, the latter bleeping and pulsing, displaying graphs and number sequences and rotating 3-D graphics of strange geometrical shapes.
All of this Freya absorbed in a matter of seconds before her attention zeroed in on the most unlikely element of the whole scenario, and the one that was obviously the focus of everything else that was going on: what looked like a quarantine chamber sitting right in the centre of the space. A heavy, tank-like cube of amber-tinted glass, it had a bulbous ventilation tube feeding into one side of it while on the other a two-door airlock provided access. Enclosed within was a large wooden sled on which rested an indeterminately shaped object wrapped in thick strips of linen. Two men in full-body radiation suits were probing at it with instruments resembling cattle prods – these presumably feeding information back to the monitors outside the chamber – while a third man, also in a radiation suit, was kneeling on the floor with his back to them, examining the sled.
The whole thing was so surreal, so wholly wrong and spooky and out of place, more akin to a film set than real life, that Freya’s immediate, disjointed thought was that she must be dreaming it all. Had indeed been dreaming right from the very start and was in fact still asleep back in her apartment in San Francisco, snug and safe and secure and with a sister who was very much alive. For a euphoric instant the thought took hold. Then she felt Flin’s hand tightening around hers. It was happening, she realized, she was in a temple in a lost oasis, and while she might have been struggling to buy into the whole Benben script, everyone else in the room was taking it extremely seriously.
‘Bullshit,’ she repeated underneath her breath. ‘Hocus-pocus bullshit.’
For the first time there was doubt in her voice, as though rather than making a confident assertion of fact, she was now trying to reassure herself.
‘So what exactly have we got here, Dr Meadows?’
The question came from Molly Kiernan.
The man who had led them through the temple and appeared to be in overall charge – of the scientific operations at least – raised his head from the monitor over which he had bent. Coming across, he motioned them all forward so that they were standing close to the chamber’s thick glass wall.
‘Preliminary scans are showing a solid core,’ he intoned, his voice nasal and monotonous, ‘with elevated levels of iridium, osmium and ruthenium, which would tie in with it being of meteoric origin. That’s about all we can establish at this stage. For anything more we’re going to need full physical contact.’
‘Then I suggest we make full physical contact,’ said Kiernan. ‘Mr Usman, as the Egyptologist here – the other Egyptologist –’
She threw a sideways look at Flin.
‘… maybe you’d like to do the honours.’
The figure kneeling beside the sled raised a hand in acknowledgement and stood up, moving around the cloth-swathed object so that he was standing directly opposite them. Now that she could see his face through the radiation hood, Freya recognized him as Girgis’s companion from the night back in Manshiet Nasser: plump cheeks, pudding-bowl haircut, thick plastic spectacles.
‘Molly, I’m begging you,’ Flin pleaded. ‘You have no idea what you’re playing with here.’
‘Oh and you do?’ said Kiernan with a dismissive snort. ‘Suddenly you’re the great physicist?’
‘I know what the ancient Egyptians thought of the Benben. And I know they hid it out here for a very good reason.’
‘Just as we’ve found it for a very good reason. Now if you don’t mind, Professor Brodie …’
There was scorn in her voice as she said the name.
‘… we’ve got the future of the world sitting in front of us and I for one would like to take a look at it. Dr Meadows?’
The man in the lab coat gestured to one of his colleagues. The four halogen lamps suddenly dimmed and then went out, leaving just the ghostly glow of the monitors and the beam of a single, small pin-spot angled at the mysterious, cloth-swathed object on the sled. One of the scientists picked up a video camera and started filming.
‘If you please, Mr Usman,’ said Kiernan, folding her arms.
Usman nodded. Stepping right up to the sled, he reached out, allowing his hands to hover over the object for a moment before his fingers started to tweak at the cloth wrappings. They were tightly bound, and his protective gloves made it difficult for him to get a grip on the material. There was something vaguely comical about the way he fumbled and clawed at it, puffing and muttering to himself, struggling to get it loose. Several minutes passed and both Kiernan and Girgis were starting to look distinctly impatient before he finally managed to prise one end of the cloth free, after which it started to unravel more easily, the material unwinding in a succession of long linen strips like the bandaging around a mummy. He started to work faster, using both hands, circling them round and round, pulling the fabric away, loose folds of material spilling down onto the sled and floor like shedding skin, the man with the camera moving around the chamber, capturing the scene from different angles. Wads of protective linen packing started to emerge, bound in among the wrappings, bulking the object out so that what had initially appeared quite sizeable gradually diminished as more and more of its covering was removed. Smaller and smaller it became, less and less impressive, shrinking before their eyes as layer after layer of its binding was removed until the last of the linen strips fell away and the object within was revealed: an ugly lump of greyish-black stone, squat and dumpy and less than a metre in height, its top blunt and rounded, more like a traffic bollard than a traditional obelisk. After all the buildup it was, to Freya’s thinking, a distinct anticlimax. Judging by their nonplussed expressions, it was an opinion shared by both Girgis and Kiernan.
‘Looks like a dog turd,’ muttered one of Girgis’s companions.
There was a pause as they all stared, Kiernan frowning, her head shaking slightly as if to say ‘Is that it?’ Then the halogen lamps burst full on again and there was a flurry of activity. More men in radiation suits joined those who were already inside the glass chamber, crowding around the stone, attaching electrodes to it, wires, a barnacle-like excrescence of adhesive pads. The blipping and bleeping sounds suddenly grew faster and louder, the monitors and computer screens more animated as a rush of new information was fed back to them. A printer started chattering madly, spewing out a rush of digit-covered paper; voices babbled, calling back and forth, conversing in a jargon that Freya couldn’t begin to decipher or understand. From inside the chamber microphones relayed a high-pitched whizzing sound as what looked like a miniature dentist’s drill was applied to the base of the stone, scoring its surface, releasing a gritty residue that was collected in sterile sample bags and passed out through the airlock for further analysis.
‘God help us,’ groaned Flin, looking on in horror, his hand clasped so tightly around Freya’s it was starting to hurt her. ‘They don’t know what they’re bloody doing.’
If he was expecting something to happen – as he clearly was, everything about him bearing the look of a man who has been made to stand beside a t
icking time bomb – it singularly failed to do so. The white-coats continued their scraping and chipping and listening and monitoring, Usman all the while gently caressing the top of the stone as though to comfort and reassure it, his voice intermittently audible as he chanted softly: Iner-wer iner-en Ra iner-n sedjet iner sweser-en kheru-en sekhmet. Iner-wer iner-en Ra iner-n sedjet iner sweser-en kheru-en sekhmet.
Through all of which the stone just sat there, as in any other circumstances one would unquestioningly expect a stone to do. Mute, motionless, it neither exploded nor screamed nor emitted any toxic rays or whatever it was that Flin feared it would do. A drab, uninspiring spit of murky grey-black rock – no more, no less. After twenty minutes Girgis’s thickset companion excused himself and went outside for a cigarette. Ten minutes later Girgis’s other colleague and the twins went out to join him, then Girgis himself, with Flin and Freya. And finally Molly Kiernan. She paced up and down beside the pond, talking to herself, her brow furrowed, her hands occasionally clasping and her eyes flicking up to the sky as though she was praying. Twice Flin and Freya tried to edge out of the courtyard, twice – inevitably – they were spotted, the twins trotting over and waving them back.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Kiernan, her voice harsh, devoid of its earlier jocularity. ‘You hear me? Don’t even fucking think about it.’
As she resumed her pacing, the two of them, for want of anything better to do, sat down in the shade of the giant eucalyptus tree. According to Flin’s watch it was now 10.57 a.m., although, as they had noticed when they first entered the oasis, the position of the sun in the sky suggested it was much later – mid to late afternoon.
‘It’s like time moves differently here,’ he said.
They were the only words they exchanged. The sun blazed down, the minutes ticked by, the generators rumbled, and nothing happened.
In the end almost an hour passed before they were called back into the room. Kiernan and Girgis looked thunderous.
‘So?’ snapped Kiernan, not even bothering with a preamble.
‘Well there’s no question it’s a meteorite, or part of a meteorite,’ began Meadows in his dreary, nasal voice as he ushered them over to the front of the glass confinement zone. ‘As well as iridium, osmium etc. we’re picking up significant traces of olivine and pyroxene which are clearly suggestive of primitive chondritic—’
‘Just cut the crap and tell me what it can do.’
The scientist shuffled nervously.
‘There are more tests we need to carry out,’ he mumbled. ‘A lot more tests, which we’ll begin the moment we get it back to a proper laboratory with more powerful spectroscopic …’
Kiernan threw him a look and he fell silent.
‘It’s a primitive chondrite,’ he said after an uncomfortable pause. ‘A meteorite.’
‘Yes, but what can it do? You get what I’m saying? What can it do?’
Kiernan was clearly trying to control herself.
‘What can the meteorite do? What’s inside it? What’s all this stuff telling you?’ She waved a hand at the gadgetry ranged around the chamber. Meadows fiddled with the edge of the clipboard he was holding, but didn’t reply.
‘That’s it?’ Kiernan’s voice was starting to rise. ‘Are you telling me that’s it? Is that what you’re telling me?’
The scientist gave a nervous shrug.
‘It’s a primitive chondrite,’ he repeated helplessly. ‘A meteorite. A piece of space rock.’
She opened her mouth, shut it again, stood there, one hand touching the cross at her throat, the other balled into a fist. Silent. Everyone was silent. Even the electronic blipping seemed to have slowed and quietened as though sharing in the general sense of shocked deflation. There was a long pause, then, inside the glass chamber, the men began pulling off their radiation hoods and tearing away the tangle of electrodes and wires which covered the stone. Flin started to chuckle.
‘Oh that’s priceless,’ he chortled. ‘Twenty-three years and God knows how many deaths and all for a worthless chunk of rock. That is just absolutely bloody priceless.’
All his anxiety appeared to have evaporated, the dynamic of the scene the complete reverse of what it had been back at the plane. Now, it seemed to Freya, it was Flin who was savouring the moment and Kiernan and Girgis who were struggling to come to terms with the situation.
‘But the texts,’ Kiernan mumbled. ‘They said … The experts, everyone said …’
She wheeled round, waving a hand at Flin.
‘You said! You told me. That it was real, the Egyptians used it … you told me! You promised me!’
He held up his hands.
‘Mea culpa, Molly. I was a crap spy, and it seems I’m a crap Egyptologist as well.’
‘But you said, you told me, they all told me … it had powers, it destroyed Egypt’s enemies … The mace of the gods, the most terrible weapon ever known to man!’
She was starting to rage, her eyes dilated, flecks of spittle again gathering in the corners of her mouth.
‘Be careful, that’s what you said! Don’t fuck around with it, there are things we don’t understand, unknown elements! Powers, you told me it had powers!’
‘I guess I got it wrong,’ Flin said, pausing a beat before adding: ‘Come on, Molly, you’ve got to admit it’s funny.’
It was the phrase she herself had used earlier and she clearly wasn’t amused at having it thrown back in her face. She glared at him – a more vicious, caustic look Freya had never seen. Then, jabbing a finger as if to say ‘I’ll deal with you in a moment,’ she rounded on Meadows, haranguing him, demanding to see his findings, have them explained to her, telling him he must have made a mistake and would have to run the tests again.
‘They told me!’ she kept shouting. ‘Everyone told me – it’s got powers, that’s what they said, it’s got powers!’
Girgis and his companions joined in, jabbering in a mixture of Arabic and English, yelling at the scientists, and at Usman – now standing alone in the isolation chamber, a forlorn figure in his thick plastic spectacles – and at Kiernan too, insisting that, powers or no powers, they still expected full payment of the money that was owing to them. The heavy-set man with the moustache lit up a cigarette and now Meadows – who had stood meekly taking the abuse – lost his temper as well, demanding the cigarette be extinguished immediately lest it interfere with the electronic equipment. Two of his colleagues came forward to back him up and all at once everybody was shouting and jostling, the twins wading in for no particular reason other than that was the sort of thing they did. The whole building echoed to the dissonant strains of furious argument.
‘Time to go,’ whispered Flin, taking Freya’s arm and pulling her across the room. They reached the doorway, paused to confirm they weren’t being observed and started to step through. As they did one of the white-coats – a curly-haired young man who was positioned not far from the door and was, despite the general confusion, still bent over his monitor – suddenly held up a hand and said: ‘Hey, look at this!’
It wasn’t the actual words that caused Freya and Flin to stop and turn back into the room, but the urgency with which they were uttered.
‘Look at this!’ the man repeated, flapping his hand to attract attention. On the screen in front of him Freya could see a series of vertical bars rising and falling like the valves of a trumpet. Still the argument raged: the man’s voice was lost in the general swell of shout and counter-shout, and he had to call a third time before the hubbub slowly began to subside and he had everyone’s undivided attention.
‘Something’s happening,’ he said. ‘Look.’
Everyone shuffled forward, crowding around the screen. Even Flin and Freya moved closer, their escape momentarily put on hold as they waited to see what was going on.
‘What is this?’ asked Girgis, the signals on the monitor in front of him becoming increasingly animated. ‘What does this mean?’
Meadows was craning over his collea
gue’s shoulder, brow furrowed as he watched the bars leap up and down, shooting right to the very top of the screen before dropping back again and flat-lining.
‘Electromagnetic activity,’ he murmured. ‘A lot of electromagnetic activity.’
‘From where? From the stone?’
The voice was Kiernan’s.
‘It’s not possible,’ said Meadows. ‘We’ve been monitoring it for two hours and there’s not been any … It’s just not …’
He swung round and crossed the room to the glass chamber, the others following in his wake. Flin and Freya hung back near the door, no one taking any notice of them, all eyes now focused on the Benben. Usman was still standing inside the chamber, one hand laid protectively on top of the stone as though on the head of a child; a collar of wires and electrodes was snagged around its base where they had been stripped away by the men in radiation suits. It looked no different from how it had done when it was first unwrapped: a squat, parabola-shaped lump of grainy, greyish-black rock.
‘Harker?’ called Meadows.
‘It’s off the scale, sir,’ reported the curly-haired man. ‘I’ve never seen anything …’
‘I’m getting an increase in alpha, beta and gamma radiation,’ announced another scientist. ‘Quite a significant increase.’
Meadows hurried over and was bending down to examine this new finding when a woman on the opposite side of the room also called out – something about non-sequential ionization – forcing him to break away to go over to look at her screen. Other voices now joined in. Excited, insistent, yelling that they too were getting unexpected readings, bandying words and phrases that meant absolutely nothing to Freya. Meadows scurried from one screen to the next, shaking his head, repeating ‘It’s not possible, it’s just not possible,’ over and over. The printer, which had been silent for the last few minutes, started chattering again, even more manically than before, an ever-lengthening tongue of paper jerking out of its mouth. The electronic sounds returned with a vengeance, filling the room with a symphony of blips and bleeps and crackles. The monitor and computer screens swirled with a dazzling kaleidoscope of activity.