For a moment, Jennifer Rush's eyes fell upon him, before glancing away again.

March frowned. "Zener cards?"

"Otherwise known as Rhine cards. Used in experiments on extrasensory perception." He pulled his duffel toward him, rummaged in it for a moment, then pulled out a set of oversize cards and showed them to the group. Each held one of five different designs against a white background: a circle, a square, a star, a cross, and three wavy lines.

"Oh. Those." March rolled his eyes.

Tina laughed. "So that's what the supernatural sleuth carries in his bag of tricks."

"Among other things." Logan glanced at Jennifer Rush, motioning with the cards, as if to say: Do you see where I'm going with this? Are you okay with it?

She shrugged. Taking the cards, Logan moved to a seat between March and Tina so the three of them could see the cards but Jennifer Rush could not.

"I'll hold up a total of ten cards, one at a time," Logan told the group. "Mrs. Rush will try to identify them."

He began by holding up a card with a star on it.

"Circle," Jennifer Rush said instantly, staring at its back.

Logan held up a second: a card with the wavy lines.

"Cross," Jennifer Rush said.

A smirk came over March's face.

Logan took a deep breath. Then he held up a card containing a circle.

"Star."

With increasing embarra.s.sment, Logan went through the cards. Each time, Jennifer Rush got it wrong. Logan thought back to what her husband had told him: about the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale, about her ranking being the highest of anyone ever tested. Something's very wrong here, he thought. His professional instincts began to sense charlatanism at work.

He put the ten cards facedown on the table. As he did so, he saw Jennifer Rush's gaze turn to March's smug expression. For a moment, she was silent. Then she spoke. "They were all wrong, weren't they?" she said.

"Yes," Logan replied.

"Once more, please. This time I'll get them all right."

Logan picked up the cards, began raising them again, one at a time, in the same order.

"Star," said Jennifer Rush. "Waves. Circle. Cross. Star. Square."

It was a flawless performance. Not once did she get a card wrong.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Tina Romero muttered.

Now Logan understood. Jennifer Rush had deliberately gotten the cards wrong on the first try. She had rubbed March's nose in his own skeptical words. It was a bravura performance. Logan looked at the woman with renewed respect.

"Empirical evidence, Dr. March?" he said, turning to the archaeologist. "Care to have the results reproduced?"

"No." March rose. "I'm not a fan of parlor tricks." Then, nodding curtly to each of them in turn, he left the lounge.

"What a piece of work that guy is," Tina said, shaking her head and looking at the door March had just exited through. "And did you hear what he said? 'What's buried beneath the Sudd--if anything?' Trust Stone to bring someone like him along as lead archaeologist."

"You mean March thinks this is all a wild-goose chase?" Logan fell silent. It had never occurred to him that Stone's fabled research might be flawed--that this entire vast undertaking might be built upon a false a.s.sumption.

"Why did Stone hire him, then?" he asked after a moment.

"Because March might be a p.r.i.c.k, he might be an intellectual sn.o.b, but he's the best at what he does. Stone's brilliant that way. Besides, he likes someone who questions his a.s.sumptions. Maybe that's why he likes you." Tina stood up. "Well, I have to get back to work. If I'm right, March is going to get some news soon that'll put his nose even more out of joint." She glanced at Jennifer Rush. "Thanks for the show." Then she turned to Logan. "You ought to show her your trick with the straw. The two of you may have more in common than you realize."

Logan watched her leave, then turned back to Jennifer Rush. "I've been looking forward to meeting you, Mrs. Rush," he said.

"Call me Jennifer," she replied. "My husband has told me about you."

"He's told me about you, as well. How you were the inspiration for the Center he founded. And about your remarkable abilities."

The woman nodded.

"I have to say, your performance with the Zener cards just now--it's unparalleled in my experience. I've overseen the test hundreds of times, but I've never seen greater than a seventy, seventy-five percent success rate."

"I doubt Dr. March has, either," she replied. She had a low, silky voice that was out of keeping with her small, slender frame.

"If Ethan has told you about me, you probably know that my business is with unusual phenomena, things not easily explained," he said. "So naturally I'm fascinated with the phenomenon of the NDE, of 'going over.' I've read the literature, of course, and I know all about the remarkable consistency in what people encounter: the feeling of peace, the dark tunnel, the being of light. You experienced all those, I a.s.sume?"

She nodded.

"But for me, of course, reading and actually experiencing are such different things ..." He paused. "As an investigator, it seems I'm always on the outside, looking in after the fact. That's why I almost envy you--personally undergoing such an extraordinary event, I mean."

"Extraordinary event," Jennifer repeated, her voice barely audible. "Yes--you could call it that."

Logan looked at her closely. In another person, such a reply would have seemed cold, distant. But he sensed something different in her. He sensed unhappiness, a private discomfort. He knew from personal experience that not all gifts were welcome--or even, at times, tolerable. Her amber eyes had a remarkable depth and a curious hard, agate quality. It was as if they had seen things no other human had seen--and, perhaps, that no human being should have.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know you well enough to speak of such things. Let me just say that I understand the skepticism and disbelief you must face from people like March. I've faced it, too. For the record, I believe--and I look forward to working with you."

Jennifer Rush had been watching him. As he spoke, something in the agate eyes softened slightly. "Thank you," she said, with a small, gentle smile.

Then--as if with one thought--they rose from their chairs. They stepped toward the door of the lounge; Logan opened it and Jennifer Rush stepped through.

In the hallway, Logan extended his hand for a farewell handshake. After the briefest of delays, she grasped it lightly. As she did so, Logan felt a sudden, searing flash of emotion, so powerful and overwhelming he was almost physically staggered. He withdrew his hand, struggling to conceal his shock. Jennifer Rush hesitated. He ventured a smile, and then--with a disjointed farewell--he turned and made his way down the corridor.

23.

"This was three nights ago," Logan said to the young man operating the airboat.

The man--his name was Hirshveldt--nodded. "It was dusk. I was on the catwalk outside Green, checking the methane-conversion feeder ducts. I dropped a wrench. When I bent down to pick it up, I looked out over the swamp. And I saw ... her."

They were perhaps a quarter mile out from the Station, heading northeast at a painful crawl over the skeletal vegetation of the Sudd. It was a bizarre, arduous trip through several elements--mud, water, bracken, air--as the airboat forced its way through an otherworldly tangle. One minute, they were wallowing in viscous black mud that seemed to suck the vessel downward; the next, they were taking small, jarring leaps over knots of clotted reeds, dead stumps, water hyacinth, and long, whiplike gra.s.s. It was dusk, and a smoky sun was setting into the marshland behind them.

Hirshveldt brought the airboat to a shuddering halt. He looked around, glanced back toward the Station. "It was more or less here."

Logan nodded, looking at him. He'd read up on Hirshveldt. Machinist Second, he'd been on three prior expeditions with Porter Stone. His expertise was in fixing and running complex mechanical systems of all kinds, with particular emphasis on diesel engines. His psych profile--Stone ran profiles on all prospective employees--showed a very low coefficient of divergent thinking and disinhibition.

In other words, Hirshveldt was probably the last person one would expect to start seeing things.

Now that they had stopped moving, legions of mosquitoes and other biting insects began hovering around them in increasing numbers. The smell of the Sudd--a raw, earthy, putrescent stench--was inescapable. Opening his duffel, Logan slipped out his digital camera, adjusted the settings manually, and took several shots of the vicinity. This was followed by a slow pan with a video camera. Returning these to his bag, he brought out a half-dozen test tubes, took samples of the mud and vegetation, then stoppered the tubes and put them aside. Finally, he pulled a small handheld device from the duffel. It sported a digital readout, an a.n.a.logue k.n.o.b, and two toggle switches. Stepping carefully into the bow of the airboat, Logan switched it on, then adjusted the k.n.o.b, sweeping the device slowly in an arc ahead of him.

"What's that?" Hirshveldt asked, his professional curiosity aroused.

"Air ion counter." Logan examined the display, adjusted the k.n.o.b again, did a second sweep. He'd done a basal reading back on the Station before getting into the airboat. The air here was more ionized, but not significantly enough to be alarming--approximately five hundred ions per cubic centimeter. He pulled a notebook from his pocket, made a notation, then replaced the ion counter in his bag.

He turned to Hirshveldt. "Can you describe what you saw, please? I'd appreciate as much detail as possible."

Hirshveldt paused, obviously combing his memory. "She was tall. Thin. Walking slowly, right about here, over the surface of the swamp."

Logan looked out over the labyrinthine tangle of vegetation. "While walking, did she stumble or slip?"

The machinist shook his head. "It wasn't normal walking."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it was slow, really slow--as if she was in a trance, maybe, or sleepwalking."

Logan wrote in his notebook. "Go on."

"There was this faint blue glow around her."

Glow--the glow of sunset, the glow of imagination, or the glow of an aura? "Describe it, please. Was it steady, like incandescent light, or did it waver like the aurora borealis?"

Hirshveldt slapped away a mosquito. "It wavered. But that was slow, too." A pause. "She was young."

"How do you know?"

"She moved like a young person moves. Not like an old woman."

"Skin color?"

"The glow made it hard to tell. It was pretty dark out, anyway."

Logan made more notations. "Can you describe what she was wearing?"

A pause. "A dress. High-waisted, almost translucent. A long ribbon was tied around her waist and trailed down past her knees. Over it was a--a triangular kind of thing that hung down around her shoulders. Same material, I think."

Egyptian shawl cape, Logan thought as he made notes. The garb of n.o.bility, or perhaps of a priestess. Like the one Tina Romero claimed had gone missing from her office. He'd asked her about it; she told him she planned to wear it to the celebratory closing party Stone always held at the end of a successful expedition. "Would you recognize her if you saw her again?" he asked.

Hirshveldt shook his head. "It was too dark. Anyway, the thing on her head made it hard to see her face. Even when she looked at me."

Logan stopped in midnotation. "She looked at you?"

The machinist nodded.

"At you? Or just in the direction of the Station?"

"As I stared, she stopped walking. Then--just as slowly--she turned her head. I could see the glow of her eyes in the dark."

"You said she had a thing on her head. What did it look like?"

"It looked like ... the body of a bird. A feathered bird with a long beak. It covered her head like a hat. The wings came down on both sides, over her ears."

A Horus falcon, mantling. Priestess, without a doubt. Logan made a final note, then slipped the notebook into the duffel bag. "When she looked at you, did you get any kind of feeling or sensation?"

Hirshveldt frowned. "Sensation?"

"You know. Like, a welcome? An acknowledgment?"

"Funny you should mention that. When I first saw her out there in the swamp, she seemed ... well, sad, almost. But then she turned to look at me and I felt something else."

"Yes?" Logan urged.

"I felt anger. Real anger." Another pause. "I don't know why I felt that. But a funny feeling came over me then. My mouth went all dry, like I couldn't swallow. I looked away a minute, wiped the sweat from my eyes. When I looked back--she was gone."

Logan thought back to the curse of Narmer. His tongue will cleave to his throat. Looking around in the gathering dark, he felt his skin p.r.i.c.kle. It was back again: that evil he'd felt so strongly when the generator caught fire. It was almost like a physical presence, whispering to him malevolently over the drone of insects.

He turned back to Hirshveldt. "I think it's time for us to get back to the Station. Thanks for your time."

"You bet." The machinist seemed just as eager to leave the swamp. He fired up the airboat and they made their way painfully back toward the welcoming lights.

24.

From the vantage point of Mark Perlmutter--in the "Crow's Nest" atop Red--the two figures in the airboat looked ridiculous, b.u.mping and thumping their way back toward the Station across the G.o.dforsaken swamp. What the h.e.l.l were they doing out there, anyway--testing a malaria vaccine, maybe?

As if in response to this conjecture, a buzzing sounded in his ear and he quickly shooed the insect away. Better get busy or I'll be one big mosquito bite myself. Anyway, it wasn't Perlmutter's business what those two were up to--this was only his second Porter Stone a.s.signment, but already he'd learned that so many crazy things went on, it just didn't make sense to ask questions.

Turning away from the gathering dusk, he focused his attention on the mast--the periscope-like metal structure that enclosed the various microwave antennas and pieces of broadcasting/receiving apparatus the Station depended on for its link to the outside world. The low-frequency radio transmitter had been acting a bit wonky, and--as communications a.s.sistant--it was Perlmutter's job to climb up the d.a.m.n mast, all the way to the Crow's Nest above the canvas that enclosed Red, and see what was what. Who else was going to do it? Not Fontaine, communications chief and his boss--at two hundred and seventy pounds, the guy probably wouldn't make it past five rungs.

It was getting dark fast, and he switched on a flashlight to examine the transmitter. He'd already checked out the wiring, circuit board, and transceiver down below in the communications room, and had found nothing; he was betting the problem lay with the transmitter itself. Sure enough--a two-minute inspection uncovered a frayed wire whose end had come loose from the main a.s.sembly.

This would be a snap. Perlmutter paused a moment to apply some more bug dope to his neck and arms, then he reached into his utility satchel for the cordless soldering gun, heat sink, solder, and flux. Balancing the flashlight on the mast, he cut off the damaged end with wire cutters, then--once the gun was hot--applied the flux and, carefully, the solder.