by Talbot, Luke
Patterson wasn’t sure what Mallus was alluding to, but his threatening tone was making him nervous. “I see,” he lied.
Mallus leant forward and pointed to the scientist’s folder, which he had placed on the desk in front of him. “Tell, me; since we last saw each other, has anything enlightening sprung to mind?” he asked.
“I’ve made some progress, but nothing noteworthy. I was very surprised when -”
“You turned the news on this morning?” Mallus finished the sentence for him.
“I didn’t expect them to find it so soon. And I certainly didn’t expect to see it on TV.”
Mallus looked at him closely then shook his head. “The leaks to the press have caused us to accelerate our project somewhat, but there is still too much that we do not understand regarding Aniquilus, too much that you have not been able to tell us, despite your best attempts. This is why, if all goes well, Dr Gail Turner will be joining you tomorrow to start helping.”
Patterson looked at him in disbelief. That he was assigned some help from one of the other research teams was one thing, but Dr Gail Turner…
“She can read the text, from what the reports say, largely without the aid of a translating device like you, Doctor. And you know everything about Mars and a great deal about Aniquilus. Of all the people in the list you provided me with, I believe the two of you will make the best pairing.”
There was a shout from the virtual world outside the window, barely audible through the ‘glass’, and Patterson looked up to see the same fight over the football happening all over again. Following his gaze, Mallus shook his head and snapped a command at the screen, which promptly changed to a sprawling cityscape; Mallus’ office had gone from a beach to the topmost floor of a virtual skyscraper.
After a short pause to take the view in, Mallus looked at him intently. “Something has to be done to stop it, Doctor. The book is the key, I’m certain of that. I’m also certain that we don’t have much time left.”
Chapter 38
Gail’s phone had not stopped ringing all morning. She had cancelled her remaining lectures and seminars for the day and returned to her office with David Hunt to look at the Mars findings in more detail. Despite speaking to dozens of people, her mobile still had over thirty missed calls, and her desk phone had more voicemails than she dared count.
She held her head in her hands and exhaled loudly.
“Gail, I know this may be hard, but you may have to accept that Amarna and Mars are linked,” David said apologetically.
Looking up at him, she scowled before burying her face again. “Easy for you to say,” she mumbled. “You’re used to people trying to discredit you! This is Egyptology; I’ll be hung out to dry!”
Professor David Hunt knew exactly what she meant. Over the years, dozens of weird and wonderful theories had been put forward regarding the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the pharaohs; all of those theories had been ridiculed by Egyptologists. Often, they would simply not bother trying to disprove the theory, but would dismiss it out of hand. Gail was worried about keeping her career intact and away from disrepute.
“Look at the bigger picture, Gail: they’ve found evidence of intelligent life on Mars!” he said. “And those creatures used the same symbol as your Amarna people. You couldn’t have gone to Mars to plant evidence any more than you could have carved the Stickman into all those shelves in Amarna, so they can’t possible claim that you made any of this up, can they?”
“That’s not the point!” she whined. “The Egyptian authorities are renowned for refusing to authorise archaeological excavations if they believe an unfavourable alternative theory is being developed. They famously stalled excavation of irregularities in Khufu’s pyramid because Japanese and French researchers couldn’t satisfy their demands that it would significantly advance science. The second I openly admit to a link between Mars and Amarna, I can kiss my access to the Amarna Library goodbye, and there are still over three thousand books that we haven’t even opened yet!”
“Not this time: this is science, Gail! You can see as well as I can that those symbols are identical. There is only one possible reason for that isn’t there?”
Gail sat holding her head for several minutes as David waited patiently for an answer. She looked up. “There is another possible explanation.”
He looked her in the eyes and his face fell. “Gail, don’t do this!” he pleaded with her.
“But you have to admit it’s possible, don’t you? That the Mars photos are faked is a hell of a lot more likely than the alternative, don’t you think? Why do you so readily believe that they are genuine?”
“The truth is that regardless of where those images came from, regardless of how authentic they may be you simply don’t want to accept that there may be some inherent link between the two sites,” he told her, firmly. “You’re grappling for a conspiracy theory that disproves the relationship between the two, instead of objectively looking at all the evidence and judging it on its own merits.” His eyes met hers and softened. “The reason I can still work here, despite all my years trying to prove my unpopular theories, is because I have never forgotten that archaeology is a science, and that scientific method is the foundation of everything that we do.
“I know that there is a twenty-three thousand year old village on the edge of the Caspian Sea because of scientific evidence, not because that’s what I wanted to be true. Had it been only four thousand years-old, it would still have been an important find. As it is, it helped fuel my career for the past fifteen years. Look for the evidence to support a link between Amarna and Mars, and you may be surprised. There may be something in the texts that you have already seen that may now make more sense.”
“I am absolutely sure that there is nothing in the texts I have looked at that suggests a link. There is no evidence I know of in the archaeology in Amarna, or even in the rest of Egypt – the rest of the world! – that can point to a link with extra-terrestrials.” She was angry now, her eyes filled with emotion. Her entire career had been based on the Amarna Library, but the photos from Mars had her looking at a bleak future. “I have two choices,” she said as calmly as possible. “Either I support the possibility of E.T., or I refute it completely.”
David looked at her and smiled. “You made your choice years ago, Gail, when you accepted your scroll from the Dean. You have to be a scientist.”
“There’s always a choice to be made. But first, I have to speak to Professor al-Misri.”
As if on cue, the desk phone started ringing.
Gail was tempted to let it ring: the sheer volume of calls that morning had left her weary of lecturers, friends, family and even students, all asking her the same questions. But then she recognised the Cairo telephone number on the display.
“Mamdouh, I was just about to call you, how strange!”
David pushed himself up from the armchair in which he had been lounged and gestured to Gail that he was popping into his own office for a while.
Gail nodded and continued speaking to the Professor. “Yes, I saw the news. How couldn’t I? I’m fairly certain it’s faked, or that –”
He had just reached the door when Gail stopped mid-sentence. Something about the lengthy pause in her telephone conversation made him prolong his stay in her office for a few moments.
“But, how do you know?” she said, the words stumbling out.
David backed away from the door and regained his seat, all the time studying her face for any signs of what the Egyptian could be saying to her on the other end of the line.
Suddenly, she was saying her goodbyes and hanging up. She sat in silence for over a minute, looking into space, before David could bear it no longer.
“Well?” he urged. “Doesn’t he think that the photos are faked?”
She looked at him, and shook her head slowly. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he has seen proof that suggests otherwise.”
“What kind of proof?”
/>
“He can’t tell me over the phone. I have to see him in Cairo tonight. He’s already booked my flight.”
There was something about her pale face and expression, telling him that there was more to it than that. “What’s wrong, Gail?” he asked softly.
She looked him in the eyes. “He says that there’s another book from the Amarna Library, one that I’ve never seen.”
David sighed. “There’s more than just one, Gail! There are more than three thousand books in the Library that you’ve not yet had the time to study, and you know more than anyone about that place.”
Now she was frantically clicking through folders of images on her computer screen, some that had been used in her book, many thousands more that had not. She finally reached the folder she was looking for.
A rendition of the Backscatter X-ray, from a few days before they had entered the Library for the first time, filled the screen. She zoomed in on the plinth, on which the Stickman book had been found.
She flicked through a pile of papers on her desk and brought out an A3 print of another photo, this one taken from inside the Library, behind the plinth. The Stickman book covered less than half of the plinth’s surface.
Comparing the two images, her jaw dropped.
“How did I not notice this before?” she wondered.
“Unbelievable,” he whispered.
“My entire career, all my studies, my lectures, my thesis, everything! It’s all been based on corrupted evidence!” she wailed.
He looked at her wide-eyed as she broke down in front of him. He was horrified and upset for his colleague. But deep-down inside, part of him thrust a clenched fist in the air and cried victory. All his life he had searched for proof of archaeological and historical cover-ups, and now it looked like he would finally get what he’d been looking for.
For on close inspection, the Backscatter X-ray showed the Stickman book, and right next to it, with barely a gap between, was a second identically-sized tome. The photo from inside the Library, however, showed only one, lonesome book.
Not only had there been a cover-up, but it had happened right in front of her eyes.
Chapter 39
Gail subconsciously adjusted her backrest and fastened her seatbelt. She raised her hand and asked the nearby steward for a glass of water. Pulling her tablet computer from her bag, she hit the ‘On’ switch and waited for the welcome screen before using a stylus to enter her access signature.
A sudden burst of computer graphics brought her to her desktop, where all of her useful applications were waiting to be used. It was the same workspace as at her desk, and on the video wall at home, with all the applications and data synchronising in real time with a farm of University servers, probably deep inside a hill somewhere Gail had never even been. The tablet was never truly ‘off’ unless its battery was drained, and was constantly performing quick-syncs whenever it had access to WiFi.
The benefits to her and fieldworkers everywhere were enormous. What she saw on her tablet was identical to what she saw on her desktop machine in her office. No matter where she was, she could see the same files, applications and settings, saving her valuable time. In the field, it meant that she could input data and start analysing it on site, and collaborating with colleagues hundreds of miles away, before continuing at her leisure either at home, in the office, or as she was doing at that very moment, on the plane to Cairo. And if ever she lost her tablet, logging on to any new device as herself would synchronise everything once more
She tapped the screen to access her emails and scrolled down the list until she came to a recent one from George.
There was no text, just a picture of a cartoon rabbit looking sheepish. She smiled and checked the time of the mail: half past three in the afternoon. He must have sent it from his phone, as there was no way he could be home yet after having dropped her off at the airport. She saved the picture to her personal files and closed the message.
George didn’t pretend to know much about Egyptology, but he wasn’t an idiot either. He had known enough to understand that the news from Mars could be both good and bad. Knowing that he would always be with her and supporting her touched her deeply.
When he had learnt about the call from Mamdouh, he had been genuinely shocked. Gail and George had spent numerous holidays in Egypt over the past ten years, and had grown very close to the Professor. That he had never mentioned the missing book, even during one of his after-dinner ramblings, was surprising to say the least, as a great deal of their conversations had tended to centre on Amarna and the Library.
Gail had had time to think about things more now, and on reflection thought that she understood the situation better. In fact, as she deleted a selection of junk emails, she could even accept why the Professor would have hidden the book.
If it had shown any kind of link with Mars, then an unqualified archaeologist discovering it in the desert with no prior study of the area would seem too good to be true: the scientific community would never have believed that the book was genuine. Removing it ensured that the Library as a whole would be accepted without question.
But it did not all fit, she thought as she fired off a quick reply to a student, wondering if the lecture notes from that morning’s interrupted lecture would be available on her website. ‘Yes ’ was all she had written. Not everything made sense to her. For starters, removing one book on the spur of the moment couldn’t ensure that no similar evidence was present elsewhere in the Library. No one would have been able to check the thousands of books before she entered. And if you’re going to remove a book, then why not the one with the Amarna Stickman engraved on its cover? And why, when all the other books related to politics, economics and demographics, was her book so different, its content almost biblical in comparison? Surely, from what had been seen so far in the Library, her book was unique; but not enough to be removed?
Most confusing of all, though, was the fact that Mamdouh couldn’t have removed a book from the Library himself. Gail was the first to enter after the engineers, and the book had been sitting on the plinth undisturbed.
How had he made the swap?
She closed the email program and sipped her water. Her emotions had given way to curiosity, and concerns over the future of her career had been replaced by a number of questions she was eager to put to her friend in Cairo. Unfortunately, since their brief phone conversation, he’d not answered any of her calls or emails. Maybe he’s fending off questions left, right and centre, too, she thought.
She brought another application to the front of the desktop. A simple window, not unlike a word-processor, filled her screen. She dragged George’s sheepish rabbit picture over and dropped it in, then tapped a button on the application toolbar. A simple dialogue popped up asking her to enter her keyword.
She smiled to herself and typed bunny. A progress bar briefly worked its way along the bottom of the picture, and then a message emerged:
Good Luck Bunny, always with you. Love George xxx
The application she was using had been written by George as a Christmas present for her several years earlier. At first, she had believed it to be a simple viewer for all of her scanned pages of books from the Library. She had thanked him, but had secretly been a little disappointed that the fruit of his labours – three months of programming in the evenings after work – had produced a simple program she could have obtained for free from the Internet.
George had said nothing more of it.
The Christmas holidays had been over for nearly a month before Gail actually used the program he had made. She had uploaded her scanned images, and had been idly flipping through them when she noticed the strange icon along the toolbar. She had clicked it, only to be faced with an error: Please select glyph(s) for translation. Her heart had literally left her chest.
George had not simply made a viewer for her Egyptian texts, he had made a tool that helped her translate them. She grinned to herself as she remembered how she had thanked him that eve
ning for his Christmas present.
Closing the message and the picture, she dragged another file into the application and a series of tiny rectangles filled the screen, as if someone had ripped the pages from a book and laid them out in rows on a grey background. She tapped the first page and zoomed in to the wooden cover of the book from the Library plinth, the Stickman book as it had become known. The engraved Stickman looked so real she felt she could touch it. Memories of the dry atmosphere of the Library came flooding back to her, memories of the smell of old leather and wood.
The application let you select a hieroglyph or group of hieroglyphs, such as a cartouche, and add custom text, which would serve as the translation. The application would then run through all of the text and suggest the same translation for any matching symbols. It used a simple bitmap comparison algorithm with some additional routines for cleaning up background noise, so it couldn’t do anything too sophisticated. A common problem was that Egyptian hieroglyphs should be read in the direction in which the characters were facing. This meant that the bitmap analysis would correctly match two sets of glyphs reading from left to right, but would fail to recognise that a third set, reading from top to bottom, was also a match. It was a minor gripe, which George had promised to look into at some point in the future.
Once the analysis was complete, tooltips would appear all over the text. An overview pane would also give a summary of all the available translations in any given selection. By selecting multiple tooltips, it was possible to add further contextual translations too, giving a second or even third meaning to common groups when used in conjunction with each other. Over time, the more she used it the more complete the dictionary became, and while Gail’s own grasp of ancient Egyptian had improved to the extent of near-fluency over the past ten years, George’s application had evolved such a sophisticated dictionary that it became the envy of her peers. One of her outstanding actions in the Faculty was to wrestle the source code from her husband and hand it over to the Department of Computer Science, so that they could enhance its functionality and distribute it more widely. But before he would let her do that, he had to remove his ‘love-letter’ system, which was what allowed them to hide words in pictures, only to be revealed when a keyword was input.