She’s definitely nervous about something. Before I can ask what, Kostis shows up with two spades. The purpose of the roped off sections becomes clear when the men start digging trenches in the desert. And I’m one of the men today.
This is what they refer to as hard labour. My arms stiffen with cramp after ten spadefuls, and I’m perspiring heavily after fifteen. Does Kostis really expect me to match his quota? Technically I’m an adult, but physically I’m a fourteen year old.
A low pitched hum comes from the east. Kostis places a hand on his forehead to block out the sun. I do the same. A black bird with an enormous wingspan swoops down, flying perfectly straight. Why is its beak circular? As it gets closer, the wings separate into pole-linked pairs. And what I thought were talons are rubber undercarriage wheels.
“Plane,” says Kostis.
“Germans?” I wonder aloud. Luckily I say it in English, not Greek.
The biplane circles our camp twice - low enough to make out the pilot’s leather cap - and flies back the way it came. Now the Nazis – who else could they be? - know our location.
“Nothing we can do,” says Kostis. “Back to work.”
The trenches we excavate are three feet deep. Removing that amount of sand is no straightforward task, and we only manage forty yards before lunchtime. I’m ravenous enough to wolf down five slices of ham and two bread rolls during the twenty minute break. Then it’s back to amateur archaeology.
Two hours into our afternoon stint there’s an excited shout from the south. Looking up, I see the labourers have congregated near the rocky outcrop.
“Men found something,” says Kostis, though I’d already guessed that.
Kostis sticks his spade in the sand and sprints across the dunes. I follow, feeling revitalised after the discovery. The trenches on the other side of the encampment are longer and flatter-sided, clearly the work of experienced diggers. The Egyptians stand along the central connecting ditch, staring down at an unearthed, slightly-curved sheet of black metal.
“The tomb,” I say, my voice shaking with excitement.
Lydia dusts the metal surface with her sleeve. Sand flies off, as if disturbed by an invisible force. The sheet is clean, but has no shine to it. The absolute darkness is like an overcast sky at night. I’m reminded of the time I saw the vessel in Father’s study.
“It doesn’t look like a tomb,” says Morgan, stepping through the crowd. “More like a ship’s hull. But what’s a ship doing out in the desert? And what metal is that?”
He doesn’t get any answers. Lydia speaks to the Egyptians in Arabic, pushing out her hands perpendicular to the buried sheet. I sense unease among the labourers. Some murmur in discontent. Lydia repeats her mimed instruction. One man digs small scoops, exposing a few more square inches of metal. We’ll be here all night at this rate.
“Out of the way!” I shout, relieving a man of his spade. “Kostis, get over here. Look at me, men! Do I seem tired? Now stop gaping and dig!”
The Egyptians probably didn’t understand a word I said, but being shamed by a teenage girl gets them working again. We dig away, gradually uncovering the black metal. By sundown we’ve exposed enough for me to deduce the tomb’s basic shape. It resembles two teacup saucers glued at the rims, only these discs are nowhere near as brittle. Digging it out of the sand has only done damage to our pickaxe blades.
Kostis yells two words in Arabic. Everybody stops what they’re doing, and the men closest to him back away. Lydia shines an oil lantern on the tomb, and I see what they’re all looking at.
There’s a dark hole in the metal wall, its edges uneven and twisted. When Lydia doused the vessel in hydrochloric acid, it didn’t leave so much as a dent. What could have done this?
“I’ve heard stories about these tombs,” says Morgan, keeping his distance. “Deadly creatures, booby traps.”
Lydia’s quick to dismiss his qualms. “I’ve waited a long time for this, Captain. I have no intention of someone else taking the lead.”
“If us ladies have to take the risk…” I step forward to volunteer myself for second place. “…could we have a light?”
Morgan doesn’t hesitate to pass on his primitive torch: a stick wrapped in flaming, paraffin-soaked cloth. Fire is the oldest lighting technique known to man, but it’ll work as a weapon if needed. I follow Lydia through the hole, crouching so I don’t cut my head on the jagged metal.
Everything is black inside. Metallic, fashioned from the same material as the vessel and exterior wall. A ten-sided column spans the full height of the chamber, connecting the centre of the two ‘saucers’. Its faces are covered in raised square symbols, but the shapes are dormant. No glowing or movement. Dozens of them on each face. There must be well over a hundred altogether.
“Find anything?” Morgan shouts.
“Nothing of value,” I yell through the hole. That should end his interest.
My torch only illuminates a circle of a few feet, much less than it ought to. It’s like the metal is somehow absorbing the light.
I walk around the column. As far as I can tell there’s only this one room, and it’s mostly empty. Chairs seamlessly extend from the perimeter, with about ten feet of wall from one to the next. Not that I’d want to sit on them. There are no armrests or cushions, just hard platforms. The first three are empty, but on the fourth—
“Lydia!” I yell, my pulse racing. “I’ve found her!”
A black metal woman slumped in a chair. Mouth open as if screaming in pain. Arms drooped by her side, legs twisted at unnatural angles. She’s exactly as Father described.
“Stephen was right,” Lydia says. “It’s too realistic to be a statue.”
But certainly statuesque. She’s taller than any woman I’ve met, including my sister. Seven feet was a good estimate on my father’s part.
I lift the torch closer to her face. Perhaps ‘egg’ would be a better description. No nose, no ears. Only a smooth, hairless scalp. She has three eyes, like on the sketch I drew. Opaque, white crystalline lenses in ‘normal’ positions, and a third - slightly higher one - in the middle. They’re the only things in this chamber not made of metal. I gaze into the mouth, but see only darkness. The woman in front of me is an empty shell.
“Edith,” Lydia says solemnly. “Over here.”
Guided by her glimmering lantern, I cross the chamber. As I get closer, I see Lydia kneeling by the body of a man dressed in dark grey Arabian robes.
Lydia pulls back the scarf, revealing a bleached white, fleshless skull. I was expecting something unpleasant, but seeing a human skeleton up close makes me jump. A hard shelled insect – a scarab, I think - crawls between the man’s rotten teeth.
“Who… was he?” I ask squeamishly.
As if Lydia would know. What a stupid question.
“Khalim,” she says to my surprise, lifting an Ankh-shaped silver amulet from around his neck. “He was the head labourer on our last dig. The man Stephen said abandoned us.”
Lydia mentioned that name a long time ago. At the British Museum. It made my father all nervous. And now I know why. There are two circular holes in the man’s robe – where his heart would have been - with dried, deep red stains around them.
I pull my clothes tight, arms on my bosom as I shiver with dread. “You think… my father… did he…” I can’t get the question out.
But I have to know. I lay the torch on the chamber floor. Lydia grabs my right arm, so I use my left to pull away Khalim’s robes. Bones scatter in all directions. Two squashed bullets bounce around the ribcage. High-calibre slugs from a revolver.
“He killed him!” I cry, covering my mouth.
“Edith, we don’t know what happened. Maybe Khalim threatened your Father or… maybe he wanted to keep the find secret too. Maybe he…”
Lydia’s normally a good liar, but her reasoning is vague and unconvincing. She comes out with several possible explanations, but I don’t – won’t – listen to any of them.
“Stop!�
� I wail, falling to my knees. “Stop making excuses. He’s a murderer. Like you, like my sister. The Nazis. You’ve all killed people for… for this. Why? What’s so damn special about this place? There’s nothing here!”
I thump the floor, hurting my fist and feeling no better for venting my fury.
“I’m sorry,” says Lydia for the umpteenth time. “But you’re wrong. We’ve found the resting place of Athena.”
I wish I’d never heard that name. I get up, nearly tripping over Khalim’s ankle bone. “Athena!? You think this woman is a goddess? She’s a stupid, empty piece of metal. She can fall to pieces for all I care!”
It’s futile to attempt moving the metal woman, but I’m not bothered. I grab her shoulders and pull. Both her arms glow dark blue. Tiredness sets in as faint light spreads across the woman’s neck, her head, then down her body and legs. Thin, focused beams of light – coloured red, blue and green – project from the crystal lenses.
Planets appear around me, orbiting a brilliant yellow star that’s replaced the central column. I see the rings of Saturn, Jupiter with its myriad moons, the red planet Mars. And the beautiful, blue and green globe must be Earth.
It’s a recreation of the Solar System. I’ve watched German television – hailed as the media of the twentieth century - but it doesn’t compare to this. The image generated here is three-dimensional, sharply focused, and in colour. It’s real.
“The heavens,” gasps Lydia, mesmerised by their beauty. “This is why we were brought here. To receive the wisdom of Athena.”
Lydia’s talking nonsense. She has to be. But what if she’s not, and the metal woman really is a goddess?
Chapter Thirteen: Message from a Goddess
I let go of the metal woman and retreat against the tomb wall. The moving picture – I don’t know what else to call it – expands to fill the chamber. Pluto, the planet we only discovered six years ago, orbits into my face. It breaks into distorted brown slivers and vanishes. After a moment it reappears behind me, continuing its elliptical path. Then the lights - and blue glow - fade away, leaving us in near-total darkness. The torch by Khalim’s body still burns, but its dwindling flame won’t last much longer.
“Athena must have more to show us,” says Lydia. “She must have. If she draws power from the liquid in our blood, maybe we need to stay in contact.”
Lydia presses her palms against Athena’s kneecaps. She watches the empty space where the planets were, straining her eyes as if willing them back into existence. A dark blue aura envelops the metal woman, the lights switch back on, and the picture show starts anew.
After ten seconds, the Solar System disappears. In its place is a much larger Earth. On its own, surrounded by empty space. The globe rotates on its invisible axis. Thick, woolly clouds pass over land masses and deep blue oceans. Eastern Asia – with its Japanese islands, Siberian tundra, and wintry Himalayas – darkens as day becomes night. The surface flickers into transparency. I’ve read about the mantle and molten core underneath the Earth’s crust, so it’s disappointing to see a familiar, black metal column through the broken illusion. The world is hollow, just like the woman in the chair.
“Stephen thought the vessel… was a treasure,” stammers Lydia, clearly under stress. “But this is what Athena left behind. Knowledge. Her memories. She’s speaking to us, Edith.”
Incoherent preaching - what’s Lydia talking about? Colour drains from the Earth, leaving an ash-grey, monochrome sphere. Lydia’s hands slip down the woman’s legs, but she manages to cling on. Just.
“You’ll tire yourself out,” I warn her. “You need to let go!”
“Not until we’ve seen the rest… of the message.”
The picture changes again. A robed man with a long white beard – a philosopher or academic, most likely – hunches over a stone table, carefully writing Arabic text on fresh papyrus. Torches nestled in bronze sconces flicker out, extinguished by a fierce gust of wind. Moonlight from behind the ‘camera’ casts a shadow of a giant female figure. The wise man screams – a silent cry of terror, since there’s no audio – and flees through shelves of clay spindled scrolls.
“That must be the Great… Library of Alexandria,” Lydia groans. “Where Athena… recorded the directions to her tomb, so… those she blessed might one day find them.” More mystical gibberish, difficult to make sense of.
“Wasn’t the library destroyed in a fire?” I ask her. “I thought Athena was the goddess of wisdom. Recording her secrets on papyrus doesn’t seem wise to me.”
“The scroll survived. As she knew it would.”
So Athena predicted the future? Two thousand years ahead? Hard to believe, but with the technology I’ve seen, who knows?
The picture blends into another. A woman wearing a simple white toga kneels before… Is that a marble slab? No. The top-down angle indicates she’s being watched from above, so it’s probably the edge of a roof. The building is on a rocky outcrop, high above a walled city. Classical Greek architecture with columns and lintels, untarnished by age. Could this be Athens in ancient times?
“The day Athena answered my prayers,” Lydia whispers in awe.
Cupped black hands – hard as gauntlets but far more flexible - hold forth an open vessel. Light blue liquid glows inside the petals. The picture wobbles, the vibrations violent and unsteady.
The woman’s body comes into view. Smooth metal bathed in brilliant sunlight, yet dark as ebony. It’s like watching a living statue stumble about. She steps perilously close to the temple edge, stonework cracking under her foot. Is she weak? Tired?
The metal woman lifts the vessel up to her mouth. Then she pauses and watches the glowing liquid as if pondering whether to drink it. Is there something she’s afraid of? Another stumble, and the ball slips from her hands. Fingers grasp at it, nudging a petal. The vessel turns upside down, dumping its contents on the grass below.
The togaed lady looks up. I know her. She has the same face, the same orange hair – albeit longer and straight - but the Lydia in the image comes across as younger and less confident.
She reaches for the overturned vessel. Even from distance, it’s clear her hands are shaking. The back of Lydia’s little finger catches the sharp edge of a petal. The tiniest of cuts, but it’s enough. A single sparkling drop of liquid – all that remains in the ball – trickles into the wound. Then the storm begins. I’ve seen this picture before: lightning bolts, cyclonic wind sucking up liquid, blue trails flowing into Lydia’s skin, her veins shining through.
“It was an accident,” I say as the storm intensifies. “Like with me. The metal woman never intended for you—”
“Athena gave me a gift!” screams Lydia. Her devotion to her patron is blind, illogical. Bordering on fanatical.
Lydia lets go of the woman’s legs. The picture flickers. Infrequently to start with, then more regularly. The crystal lenses go dark and the images vanish. Athena – if that’s even who she is – has no more wisdom to share.
“How do you know it was Athena?” I ask Lydia. “Did she tell you?”
“She dropped the vessel from the roof of her temple. Granted me the gift of wisdom, everlasting youth. Who else would she be?”
I try to digest what I’ve seen, but it only raises more questions. “What was she doing up on the temple roof? If she’s a goddess, why is she not here now? With the liquid in her blood she should heal, so why is the metal woman empty?”
Lydia’s still contemplating her response when I hear panicked shouts from outside, followed by three loud bangs. Gunfire. Not the continuous rattle of a machine gun, but more spread out. A powerful single-shot weapon, similar to the revolver my father used to— I’d forgotten about poor Khalim. But there’s no time to dwell on the past.
“Lydia! They’ve found us!”
“She knew they’d come,” Lydia says in a vacant, sermon-like tone. “That’s why we’re here. To protect her wisdom.”
“Always thought she was crazy.”
Mo
rris. With that unmistakable Northern English accent, I know it’s him before I even turn round. And it’s not surprising to see an army service revolver pointed in my direction.
“You’re working for them?” I exclaim. “The Nazis?”
“Difficult times. I work for whoever pays me the most.” Morris steps around Khalim’s body. “And Zennler put more on the table. Substantially more.”
“You sold your soul to the SS. Men who want to prove the superiority of the German race. Is that what you believe in?”
Morris straightens his weapon arm. He’s three feet away. At that range, one shot from his revolver will blow my head off. My healing powers won’t save me. As for Lydia… She’s recovering, but much too weak to fight.
“Believe?” snorts Morris. “This is about survival. And to survive in this world, you need hard coin. Not something a little girl would understand.”
I freeze time. Morris’ self-congratulatory sneer makes me determined to beat him. But I don’t see how I can. The simple fact is he’s got a weapon, and I don’t. Lots of hard, white bones lying around. The tibia near the column has a large, rounded end. It could do serious damage, even in my little hands. But I’d never reach it.
I speed through the light show in reverse. Pretty pictures won’t help me. Wait. The Earth. Could I hide within the illusion? The tibia’s in there, and I wouldn’t be visible from outside. I go forward in time to verify Morris’ position, using Khalim’s body as a reference point. The Englishman is two feet past where the globe’s outer surface would be. Within striking range if I could get close enough. All I need to do is make the image reappear.
Attacking Morris - even from cover - is bold, risky, and foolish. But there’s no alternative. I return to the present all psyched up, ready to carry out my plan.
“Maybe, but you wouldn’t shoot a little girl.”
I act frightened, retreating to the metal woman. My fingers touch the chamber wall. Where is she? There, to my left.
“I would for the right price,” says Morris flatly. “And the price is right. I’m being paid enough to retire in comfort.”
Edith Clayton and the Wisdom of Athena Page 15