The Third Gate

by Lincoln Child

  “This is Tango Alpha,” came the disembodied voice from forty feet below. “No joy.”

  “Tango Alpha, understood,” came Porter Stone’s voice from somewhere else on the Station. “Use the juice.”

  The radio crackled again. “Tango Alpha, roger that.”

  Logan turned to Romero, who was standing beside him, also glued to the screens. “Juice?” he asked.

  “Nitroglycerin.”

  “Nitro?” Logan frowned. “Is that wise?”

  “Don’t leave home without it!” Romero cackled. “You’d be surprised how often Stone’s had to employ nitro in his various digs. But not to worry—one of our divers is an ex-SEAL, an artist with the stuff. It’ll be a surgical strike.”

  Logan continued listening to the radio chatter. As one of the divers at the tomb site released a marker buoy, Stone—apparently monitoring the action with Frank Valentino at the Staging Area—dispatched the diver with the nitro. Logan and Romero watched the screens as the man gingerly arranged the high explosive around the boulder-sealed entrance—four marble-sized pouches of black rubber, joined by lengths of det cord—then retreated to the rest of the divers, who were hanging well back.

  “Charges in place,” radioed the diver.

  “Very well,” came Porter Stone’s voice. “Detonate.”

  There was a moment in which the entire Station seemed to hold its collective breath. Then came a low whump that made everything around Logan shudder slightly.

  “Redfern here,” came another voice over the radio. “I’m in the Crow’s Nest. Marker buoy sighted.”

  “Can you get an exact fix?” Stone asked.

  “Affirmative. One moment.” There was a pause. “One hundred and twenty yards almost due east. Eight seven degrees relative.”

  Romero turned to Logan. “It’s going to take some time for that shitstorm of mud down there to clear again,” she said, indicating the monitors. “Come on. I think there’s something you’re going to want to see.”

  “What is it?” Logan asked.

  “Another of Porter Stone’s miracles.”

  She led the way out of White, through Red, and then, via the serpentine corridors of Maroon, to a hatch whose window overlooked the unbroken vista of the Sudd. Opening the hatch revealed a stairway that rose on stiltlike legs to a narrow wooden catwalk that circumscribed the entire outer extremity of Maroon’s domelike tarp. Logan followed her up the stairway, and then—from that vantage point—paused to look around, first at the hellish tangle of the Sudd, then at the miniature city that housed their expedition. Rising above Red was a tall, narrow tube, topped by a small railed perch and a forest of antennae. A man stood on the perch, binoculars in one hand and a radio in the other. This, Logan realized, must be the Crow’s Nest.

  He turned back to Romero. “It’s quite the view. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  She handed him a tube of bug dope. “Wait and see.”

  But even as she spoke, Logan heard the rumble of engines. Slowly, from the direction of Green, appeared both the large airboats, each eighty-foot vessel now equipped—bizarrely—with what looked like a combination of snowplow and cow-catcher. These had been fixed to the bows, each bristling with an arsenal of chain saws and long, hooked spikes that stretched forward like bowsprits. The two vessels were followed by a veritable armada of Jet Skis and small boats. As Logan watched, the large craft maneuvered into position directly in front of them. Men and women ran across their sterns, shouting instructions, as cables were attached to heavy cleats on Maroon, Red, and Blue.

  Logan glanced over at one of the smaller boats. It was busily pulling in yet another cable from the depths of the Sudd, reeling it over a capstan. Sticks, plant tendrils, and thick muck clung to the cable like roots.

  Logan nodded at the boat. “What’s it doing?”

  Romero smiled. “Raising anchor.”

  There was a flurry of shouted orders. All of a sudden the engines of the two big airboats roared in tandem, and they started slowly forward. For a moment, Logan was aware of an unusual sensation he couldn’t immediately identify. Then he understood. They—the entire Station, with all its barges, pontoons, catwalks, methane scrubbers, and generators—were moving.

  “My God,” he murmured.

  Now he realized the purpose of the strange devices on the bows of the airboats. They were plows in a very real sense: plows to push aside the near-impenetrable tangle of the Sudd. He could hear the spit and snarl of chain saws. The smaller boats began darting around and between the big airboats, removing stubborn bits of flotsam or helping cut away thick masses of rotting vegetation with hooks, prods, and gas-powered saws.

  Slowly, inch by inch, the Station crept forward, making due east. Glancing over his shoulder, Logan saw the surface of the Sudd come together again in their wake, like a puddle following the tracing of a child’s finger, leaving no hint of their passage.

  “We’re moving to the tomb,” he said.

  Romero nodded.

  “But why? Now that we know where it is, why not just dive to it from our present position?”

  “Because that’s not the way Stone works. That would be inefficient, slow—and, if you think about it, impractical. Remember, the entrance to that tomb is forty feet below the surface, encased in thick muck. How would you enter? How would you preserve the artifacts within from the foulness of the Sudd?”

  Logan looked at her. “I don’t know,” he said over the howl of the airboats and the whine of the buzz saws.

  “You fit an air lock to the tomb entrance. Then you deploy the Umbilicus.”

  “Umbilicus?”

  “A pressurized tube, six feet in diameter, with light and power, footholds and handholds. One end mates with the air lock. The other to the Maw. Any stray mud is forced from its interior, and the pressure is equalized. Et voilà—a nice, dry passage to and from Narmer’s tomb.”

  Logan had to shake his head at the audacity of such a design. Another of Porter Stone’s miracles, Tina had called it—and she wasn’t far wrong.

  “It’ll be an hour before we’re anchored over the tomb,” she said. “That mud must have settled from the explosion by now. Shall we see what it is that’s down there?”

  Back in the Operations Center, Cory Landau obligingly scrolled through the video feeds from the divers’ transmissions until Tina Romero told him to stop.

  “That one,” she said. “Who’s that?”

  Landau peered at the screen. “Delta Bravo,” he said.

  “Can you get me on radio to him?”

  “Sure can.” Landau reached over, dialed a knob, then handed her a radio.

  “Delta Bravo,” she said, speaking into it. “Delta Bravo, this is Dr. Romero. Do you read?”

  “Five by five,” came the response.

  “Can you approach the entrance, pan across?”

  “Roger.”

  They watched the video feed silently. The boulders had been either blasted or pulled away now, and Logan could just see beyond them into the cleft in the rock. In the divers’ powerful lights, it appeared to be tightly sealed by courses of stone, creating a solid vertical face, as if workers had created a wall within the natural cavity of the rock.

  “Closer, please,” Romero almost whispered.

  The video tightened in.

  “My God,” she said. “That looks like granite. Until now, scholars thought that Netcherikhe was the first Egyptian king to have graduated from mud-brick walls.”

  “Narmer must have wanted it to last for all eternity,” Logan replied.

  Romero raised her radio again. “Delta Bravo, pan up, please.”

  The image rose slowly up the stone face.

  “There!” she cried. “Stop. Pan in.”

  The muddy, grainy video feed tightened on something affixed to the granite and one side of the igneous rock: a lozenge-shaped disk imprinted with hieroglyphics.

  “What is that?” Logan asked.

  “It’s a necropolis seal,” Romer
o replied. “Amazing. Completely unheard-of on a tomb this old. And look—it’s unbroken. No desecration, no spoiling.”

  She wiped her palms on her shirt, then took fresh hold of the radio. Logan noticed her hands were trembling slightly. “Delta Bravo. One more thing, please.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Pan down. Down toward the base of that wall.”

  “Roger. There’s still some rock and debris we need to clear away.”

  They waited as the image slowly traveled down the face of dressed stone. Clouds of silt and muck occasionally blocked their view, and Romero asked the diver to backtrack. Then, quite suddenly, she told him to stop again.

  “Right there!” she said. “Hold it!”

  “I’m at the base of the wall,” the diver replied.

  “I know.”

  Logan found himself staring at another unbroken seal, this one larger than the first. There were two hieroglyphs carved into it.

  “What is that?” he asked quietly.

  Romero nodded. “It’s a serekh. The earliest depiction of a royal name used in Egyptian iconography. Cartouches didn’t become common until the time of Sneferu, father of Khufu.”

  “And the name in the serekh? Can you read the name?”

  Romero licked her lips. “They’re the symbols for the catfish and the chisel. The phonetic representation of Narmer’s name.”

  30

  “How long will it last?” Logan asked Ethan Rush. It was evening, and they were traversing the near-deserted corridors of Maroon.

  “The productive period, you mean?” Rush replied. “Five minutes, if we’re lucky. The lead-in period is much longer.”

  He stopped beside a closed, unmarked door, then turned back to Logan. “There are a few ground rules. Keep your voice low. Speak slowly and calmly. Make no sudden movements. Don’t do anything to disturb or alter the ambient environment—no brightening or dimming lights, no moving chairs or equipment. Understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  Rush nodded his satisfaction. “At the Center, we’ve learned that crossings are most successful if triggered by the environment of an NDE.”

  “The environment? I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Simulating the actual experience. This is done via a medically induced coma—very light, of course. Along with psychomantetical techniques. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Logan nodded. He knew that psychomanteums were rooms or booths, frequently mirrored and very dark, constructed in such a way as to induce a trance or state of psychical openness in the occupant, thus helping enable a portal, or conduit, to the spirit world. Psychomanteums had been developed by the ancient Greeks, and several still operated in the present day in America and around the world, helping—many believed—people contact the spirits of those who had moved on. Logan had thought about the mirror he’d seen in the testing chamber that first day, with Jennifer and Ethan Rush. It had been one of the things that led to his deduction of why Jennifer Rush was at the Station.

  “Do you induce the Ganzfeld effect?” he asked.

  Rush looked at him curiously. “The meds make that unnecessary. Now, please observe everything closely. Keep your comments to a minimum until we speak afterward. The more you know, the better equipped you’ll be to—to help her.”

  Logan nodded.

  “One other thing. Don’t expect revelations. Don’t even expect what you hear to make sense. Sometimes we need to analyze a transcript for some time afterward before we understand—if we ever do.” With this, Rush opened the door and quietly stepped inside.

  Logan followed. He recognized the room. There was the hospital bed, with its banks of medical and other instrumentation. There was the large mirror on the wall beyond the bed, polished to a brilliant gleam. The lighting was just as dim as it had been the first time he’d seen the room.

  And, once again, Jennifer Rush lay on the bed, garbed in a hospital gown. EKG lines snaked away from her arms and chest; many more electroencephalograph leads were attached to her head. The red and gray stripes of the medical leads looked out of place against her cinnamon-colored hair. A peripheral IV line was fixed to the inside of one wrist. She glanced at Rush, glanced at Logan, smiled faintly. Her eyes had a vague look, as if she was sedated.

  To Logan’s surprise, Stone was standing at the head of the bed, one hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. He gave it a reassuring pat, then stepped away. He nodded at Logan, turned to Rush.

  “You’ll ask her?” he said in a low voice. “About the gate?”

  “Yes,” Rush replied.

  Stone looked at him a moment more, as if considering speaking further. Then he simply nodded his good-bye and quietly left the room.

  Rush indicated for Logan to take a seat near the head of the bed. For perhaps five minutes Rush busied himself connecting various pieces of equipment, calibrating monitors, checking displays. Logan sat quietly, taking in everything. The room smelled faintly of sandalwood incense and myrrh.

  At last, Rush approached the bed, hypodermic in hand. “Jen,” he said softly, “I’m going to administer the propofol now.”

  There was no response. Rush inserted the needle into the connecting hub of the IV cannula. Jennifer went as still as death. Glancing at the instrumentation over the head of the bed, Logan saw her blood pressure dip, her respiration and pulse slow almost by half.

  Rush carefully monitored her physical state from the devices at the foot of the bed. Neither man spoke a word. After several minutes, Jennifer stirred slightly; Rush immediately took two leads with cotton disks at their ends and affixed one to each of her temples.

  Logan glanced at him in mute inquiry.

  “Cortical stimulator,” Rush replied. “Encourages pineal activity.”

  Logan nodded. He knew studies had demonstrated the pineal gland’s neurochemical effects on previsualization and psychic activity.

  Rush returned to the forest of monitoring devices at the foot of the bed. For another minute or two he watched as his wife slowly drifted back into semiconsciousness. Then he came forward again and inserted a second needle into the IV’s connecting hub.

  “More propofol?” Logan asked in a quiet voice.

  Rush shook his head. “Versed. For its amnesiac effect.”

  Amnesiac effect? Logan wondered. Why?

  Approaching the head of the bed, Rush slipped two items out of the pockets of his lab coat. One, Logan saw, was an ophthalmoscope. The other, to his surprise, was an ancient-looking amulet of untarnished silver, a small white candle set into its upper edge. Rush examined her pupils with the ophthalmoscope, then lit the candle and gently dangled the amulet from its chain, between Jennifer Rush’s face and the mirror.

  “I want you to stare at the amulet,” Dr. Rush said, his voice a low, soothing murmur. “See nothing else. Visualize nothing else. Think of nothing else.”

  He continued murmuring instructions. Logan recognized this: a standard hypnosis tool known as an eye-fixation induction text. But then, the text changed.

  “Now,” Rush said, “breathe slowly, deeply. Let your limbs go limp. Relax your neck. Relax your shoulders. Relax your arms: first the fingers, then the wrists, then the lower arms, and then the upper. Relax your feet. Relax your legs.”

  For a minute, maybe two, there was no sound in the room save for Jennifer Rush’s soft breathing.

  “And now, relax your mind. Let it go free. Let your consciousness slip from your body. Leave it an empty shell, unpossessed.”

  In the sandalwood-fragrant room, Logan watched. After another minute, Rush blew out the candle and put the amulet aside. Quietly, he walked back to the foot of the bed, examined the instrumentation. Then he returned to her side, waiting.

  Jennifer Rush’s breathing grew louder, almost stertorous. The room seemed to darken, as if strange, antique mists were gathering.

  All of a sudden, Logan became alarmed. He did not know why it was, not exactly—but for some reason his fight-or-flight instinct began to go off, five-alarm. It w
as all he could do not to leap to his feet and run from the room. He felt his heart hammering, struggled to get himself under control.

  From the bed, her breathing grew more labored.

  Rush turned on a digital voice recorder, which he placed on a nearby tray. Slowly, he bent over the bed. “Who am I speaking to?”

  Jennifer’s mouth worked, as if trying to form words. Logan saw her hands ball into fists, as if from the effort.

  “Who am I speaking to?” Rush asked again.

  A hissing sound emanated from Jennifer Rush. “Nut,” she said in a dry, distant voice. Or perhaps it was “Set”—Logan could not be sure. All he knew was that merely speaking this syllable clearly took enormous effort.

  “Who am I speaking to?” Rush asked a third time.

  Again, Jennifer’s mouth worked. “Mmm … mouthpiece … of Horus.”

  Rush adjusted the recorder, seemingly encouraged.

  But Logan did not feel encouraged. It wasn’t only the chill sense of evil that had come over the room, all too similar to what he’d experienced the day of the generator fire. It was also the evident strain, both physical and emotional, that Jennifer was undergoing.

  “Can you tell me about the seal?” Rush asked. “The first gate?”

  “The … first … gate,” she repeated.

  “Yes,” Rush replied. “What should we—”

  Suddenly, Jennifer’s eyes bulged, their whites a sickly green in the faint light of the instrumentation. The tendons of her neck stood out like cables. “Infidels!” she said. “Enemies of Ra!” Her head rose menacingly from the bed; a half dozen of the EEG leads popped loose and fell away. “Leave this place. Or else He Whose Face Is Turned Backwards will feed upon thy blood and take the milk from the mouths of thy children. The foundations of thy house will be broken, and thou will die an endless death in the Outer Darkness!”

  Logan rose quickly from his chair. Her voice was infinitely more awful for being a mere hissing whisper. Instinctively, he put a hand out to calm her. But the moment his skin touched hers, he was staggered by a flash almost like lightning: he felt the presence again, implacable, violently angry, its hatred radiating toward them from the blackness of the abyss. With a groan of dismay he sank back into the chair.