They walked for a moment in silence.

"Porter Stone has always been known for his noninvasive touch," Logan said.

"I know. He's famous for it. But he's also super-paranoid about how tight our schedule's become. The Af'ayalah Dam is well ahead of schedule--this whole place could be underwater, flooded out, in weeks rather than months. March has been using that fact to goad Stone into speeding things up. He keeps pointing out how this is the greatest find of Stone's career, preying on his ego. And now that the artifacts are out of the tomb, up here ... well, it's going to be hard as h.e.l.l convincing those two to ever put any of them back." She shook her head in bitter resignation.

They had reached the hallways of Red. Logan followed the Egyptologist into her office and they took seats on either side of her artifact- and notebook-covered desk.

"I was curious," Logan said, "if you'd made any progress. On the aspects of the tomb that have you so puzzled, I mean."

"The whole d.a.m.n thing's a puzzle," she growled. Her mood was still dark but she seemed to be calming down.

"You said there were inscriptions that didn't make sense. Unusual serekhs. Items that don't jibe with the pharaohs and the traditions that followed later."

She nodded. "Riddles within riddles."

"I was wondering--do you think what we'll find in the third chamber might clear any of that up?"

"It's possible. Normally, the final chamber of a tomb is where the most valuable, important objects are. That's why we were surprised to find Narmer, and his precious grave goods, in chamber two." She shrugged. "Yet another mystery."

Logan paused. "What do you think we'll find? Beyond the third gate, I mean."

She thought for a moment. Then she looked at him. "I'm one of the top Egyptologists in the world. That's why Stone chose me. I've studied just about every royal tomb, sand burial, pyramid, cult temple, and mastaba ever discovered and doc.u.mented. n.o.body knows more about this stuff than I do. And you want to hear something, Mr. Ghost Hunter?" She leaned forward, piercing him with her gaze. "I don't have the faintest idea what we're going to find when we unseal that third gate."

43.

When Logan stepped into the testing chamber, Dr. Rush was leaning over the figure of his wife, who was lying on the examination table, dressed--as with the previous crossings--in a hospital gown. "Last time, honey," he was saying as he caressed her cheek.

She looked up at him, smiled briefly. Then she glanced over at Logan as he approached the bed. He nodded, took her hand, gave it a brief squeeze. He could not read the look on her face--apprehension? resignation?--and this time the touch of her hand told him nothing.

He stepped back as Rush consulted the instrumentation, prepared to administer the sedative. Five minutes pa.s.sed, then ten, as the doctor lit the incense; inserted first one needle, then another, into the IV's connecting hub; applied the amulet and the candle; and went through the modified hypnosis text. Finally, he picked up the digital recorder and approached the head of the bed.

"Who am I speaking to?" he asked.

The only reply was Jennifer's labored breathing.

"Who am I speaking to?" he asked again.

No response.

"That's odd," Rush said. "I've never had a problem with the induction process before." He examined the instruments again, gently raised one of his wife's eyelids, peered at the eye with his ophthalmoscope. "I'll up the propofol, deepen the sedation slightly. And I'll give the cortical stimulation an extra notch."

Logan waited, without speaking, as the doctor busied himself around the table, then went through the hypnosis text again. This time, Jennifer's breathing became shallower, more rapid.

"Relax your mind," Rush told his wife in a calm, almost cooing tone. "Let it go free. Let your consciousness slip from your body. Leave it an empty sh.e.l.l, unpossessed."

An empty sh.e.l.l. Without knowing exactly why, Logan suddenly grew alarmed. He took a step forward, instinctively, as if to stop the procedure, before managing to get himself under control.

Rush picked up the recorder again. "Who am I speaking to?"

No reply.

Rush bent closer. "Who am I speaking to?"

Jennifer's mouth moved. "Mouthpiece ... of Horus."

"And do you know who I am?"

"The defiler. The ... unbeliever."

"Tell me more about the ornament in the wall painting. The one the pharaoh, or high priest, was wearing."

"No ... priest. Only for ... child of Ra."

Child of Ra. The pharaoh. Logan frowned. But that epithet hadn't become common until at least the fourth or fifth dynasty, hundreds of years after Narmer's time. Could this be more evidence of what Tina Romero had speculated about--a historical anachronism, a kind of collective amnesia of ritual and religion in the wake of Narmer's death?

Rush held the digital recorder close to Jennifer's lips. "You called it 'that which brings life to the dead, and death to the living.' What did you mean?"

"The ... great secret ... Gift of Ra ... It must not be ... polluted ... by the touch of the infidel."

Jennifer's breathing was growing still more rapid and shallow.

"Keep this short," Logan told Rush in a low voice.

"What lies beyond the third gate?" Rush asked.

Jennifer's face grew contorted. "Swift death. Thy limbs shall be ... scattered to the corners of the earth. Thou ... all of thee ... will find madness and death to be thy share...."

The curse of Narmer, Logan thought.

Suddenly, to his inexpressible horror, he saw Jennifer--still under the influence of the drug--slowly sit up on the table. But her movements seemed strange, wrong somehow--it was as if she was being pulled into a sitting position by some invisible force.

Abruptly, her eyes opened, but they were staring, sightless. "Madness and death!" she cried in a terrible voice. And then her eyes closed and she crumpled back onto the bed. As she did so, the instrumentation started to bleat.

"What is it?" Logan asked sharply. But Rush did not answer, instead busying himself with the medical equipment. He moved to Jennifer's side, gave her a quick examination. After several minutes, he straightened up again.

"She seems to have suffered a brief seizure of some kind," he said. "I can't tell without further tests. But she's resting comfortably now. I'll keep the propofol going another few minutes, then bring her around."

Logan frowned. This procedure had gone far beyond his comfort factor. "That's the last one--right?"

"Right. After this, I'd never ask her to do another--not even if Stone demanded it."

"I'm glad to hear it. Because having seen this, I have to tell you, Ethan, that in my opinion, such treatment of her--given my earlier recommendation--is indefensible. Especially considering her past."

Rush glanced at him. "What past is that?"

"The past I just uncovered in those CTS doc.u.ments you gave me. Her psychological history."

Rush continued to look at him, his face hardening. When he did not reply, Logan continued. "I'm talking about her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder."

"You're talking about a twenty-year-old diagnosis," Rush said, his tone turning defensive. "And a misdiagnosis, at that. Jen didn't suffer from schizoaffective disorder--it was just a bout of teenage acting out."

Logan didn't reply.

"At the very most, it was a mood disorder. Mild, and temporary, and it went away with the onset of adulthood."

"Even so--given that, how could you put her through this? How could you allow her to be so traumatized?"

Rush frowned, opened his mouth to retort. Then he paused, took a deep breath. "It was important to Stone. It was important to me. I thought this was a chance to further our CTS research, to apply our findings in the field. And as I told you before, I thought it would be a good thing for Jen as well. I didn't expect she would find it so difficult. Had I known--well, let's just say it will never happen again."

There was a brief silence. Then the two stepped away from the table, but both kept their eyes on Jennifer's still form.

"I've been thinking about what you said," Rush murmured in a quiet voice. "That Jen was brain-dead for so long--that her NDE was so protracted--that, in essence, she might have lost her ... her soul."

"That's not what I said," Logan replied.

"It's what you implied. That she was a kind of empty vessel. And that if King Narmer's spirit was still intact, in this place, that it could ... well ... take temporary possession of her."

"Since we last talked, I've done more research into that myself. In theory, what you say is possible. However, that's not the case here."

"I'm relieved to hear it. But how can you be sure?"

Logan's gaze was still on Jennifer. "Two reasons. I do believe it's possible for the life force of one whose physical form is dead to take residence in a living body whose soul had been--compromised. However, such intimate physical possession is rare. I've studied the literature, and there are only half a dozen cases, all poorly doc.u.mented. However, there is something they all agree on. The spirit of that dead person cannot take possession of the body of someone of the opposite s.e.x."

"So it isn't King Narmer," Rush said, with evident relief.

"Not if what I'm postulating is really the case here."

Rush nodded slowly. "You mentioned two reasons."

"I've mentioned the other before. Recall that the primary purpose of burying a pharaoh in his tomb is to facilitate his journey to the next world. With no actual mummy, the ka--the spiritual essence--would have no place to go and would remain restless, basically haunting the tomb forever. But with a physical body--such as Narmer has in the tomb--his ka could make the journey through the underworld with his ba, which is the part of the soul more mobile and able to travel. Everything we've seen in the tomb has served to prepare Narmer, to make the journey successful."

"And since we found Narmer's mummy intact, that means his ka would no longer be here," Rush said.

"So it would seem."

"But if it isn't King Narmer"--Rush hesitated--"then who have we been communicating with?"

Logan didn't answer.

44.

At two in the morning, the Station slept restlessly under a bloated yellow moon. A few technicians were at work in Operations, preparing for the morning's mission to break the final seals and pa.s.s the third gate; guards were stationed at the Maw, at the base of the Umbilicus, and at the communications center. Otherwise, all was quiet.

A lone figure strode down the deserted corridors of Red. Dressed in a white lab coat, it looked much like the many others who inhabited the science labs during the day. Only its movements were different. It was wary, almost stealthy; it hesitated at each intersection, satisfying itself it was entirely alone before proceeding.

The figure drew up to the main door of the archaeology lab. It was locked, but the figure had long before procured a skeleton key and opened the door with silent fingers. It glanced down the hallway again, paused a moment to listen, then slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind.

Without turning on the lights, it slipped through the rooms full of lab tables, artifact lockers, and preservation and curatorial equipment, until it reached the storage facility at the rear of the laboratory. The figure opened the heavy door and stepped into the chill interior. Only now did it switch on a small flashlight. The beam licked over the surfaces of the small room, coming to rest at last on a wall containing a half-dozen large drawers, like the corpse lockers of a morgue.

More quickly now, the figure came forward, slid the fingers of one hand down the drawers, then seized the handle of one and--as quietly as possible--drew it out. The smell of the room, dust and mold and chemicals and the faint rot of the swamp outside--became freighted with another smell: the smell of death.

Inside the locker lay the mummy of King Narmer.

The figure drew the locker out to its full length. It shone the flashlight beam over the pharaoh's corpse. It was remarkably well preserved for its five-thousand-year entombment. Remarkable, too, how the mummy had been wrapped, or--indeed--that it had been wrapped at all: such a mummy would not be seen again until perhaps the New Kingdom, a millennium and a half later. Amazing, how much had been forgotten--and relearned, much later--more than a thousand years after Narmer's death. Was this in part because of the pains the pharaoh had taken to delude all by creating a false tomb; by having his corpse buried at such a distance from his own lands?

At the moment, however, the figure was not interested in theoretical questions. It was interested in the mummy's bandages--and what they contained.

The mummy's body cloth had been removed and the linen wrappings were now exposed, glistening faintly with ancient unguent. The figure reached into the pockets of the lab coat and removed several evidence bags and a heavy scalpel. Working quickly, it cut away the bands that fixed the papyrus scroll--with its spells for a safe pa.s.sage through the underworld--from the mummy's hands and placed the papyrus aside. It then cut the black scarab lying on the mummy's chest--placed over the heart and inscribed with its own magical spells--away from its golden necklace and placed both necklace and scarab into one of the evidence bags. Next, the figure began removing the individual strips of linen wrapped around the mummy's fingers. As it did so, artifacts began coming to light: golden rings, gems, and beads, all winking dully in the gleam of the flashlight.

The figure laughed delightedly under its breath at these finds and quickly slipped them into the evidence bag.

Now it moved toward the mummy's head and--working even more quickly--freed the outermost bandage from its resin bonds and began unwrapping it. More items appeared: a falcon collar fashioned out of gold, another of faience. These, like everything else secreted within the mummy's bandages, were meant as magical protections to help speed the king from this world to the next. Tearing them roughly away from the bandages, the figure placed them in the evidence bag. After all these years, they were still thickly smeared with unguent--a different type of unguent, it seemed, than that which protected the mummy's outer wraps. No doubt some primitive preservative, lacking the refined preparation of later dynasties.

The figure continued unwrapping the head bandages. More objects appeared: a resin scarab, a beautiful diadem inlaid with gems. Both went into the bag.

The first evidence bag was full now, and the figure sealed it and placed it back into the pocket of the lab coat. Time was critical, and the intruder dared not dally much longer. Already it had harvested a dozen items from within the mummy's wrappings--a dozen more and it would leave.

It moved back down to the mummy's chest. A painting of Osiris had still been faintly visible on the body cloth--given such a wildly anachronistic find, was it possible the pharaoh's crook and flail might also lie buried beneath the layers of linen? If so, it would be a princely discovery indeed.

The intruder picked up the scalpel--fingers now sticky with unguent, its movements feeling a little heavy and slow--and, no longer showing the least reverence for the long-departed king, sliced deeply into the wrappings that covered the chest. The smell of death grew stronger. Immediately, twinklings of gold peeped out through the cut layers of bandages. The figure identified a dagger, a golden chain, several protective amulets of the most ornate design. And--what was that, barely visible beneath the lowest layers of bandages? Was it possible, remotely possible, it was a large, golden ba-bird, its wings studded with countless gemstones ...?

Working feverishly now, the figure dug into the bandages, feeling around, plucking out the amulets one after another and depositing them in the second bag. These, too, were thickly smeared with a primitive unguent, the color of earth--disgusting, but there would be plenty of time to clean up later.

The figure wiped its hands together, wiped the stickiness off onto its lab coat. Then, picking up the scalpel again, it bent over the mummy, preparing to slice away the final bandages.

But wait ... something was wrong. What was this strange sensation of p.r.i.c.kly heat that seemed to rise from within? What was this horrible smell--of sulfur, or something worse, that grew and grew until it filled the entire room?

The figure stepped back in alarm. But even as it did so, the feeling of heat turned to one of flame, of roiling smoke. The figure opened its mouth to gasp--but the gasp turned into an escalating shriek, rising in pitch and volume, as the pain quickly spread, wrapping the tomb robber in a vise of intolerable pain.

45.