Seven Ancient Wonders

Then he dresses West's arm with his shirt. The red-hot lava has seared the wound, which helps.

Then it is over.

And the final image of West's dream is of Wizard and himself, sitting in that dark stone tunnel, spent and exhausted, with a little baby girl between them, in the belly of an African volcano.

And Wizard speaks:

'This . . . this is unprecedented. Totally unheard of in all recorded history. Two oracles. Twin oracles. And del Piero doesn't know . . .'

He turns to West. 'My young friend. My brave young friend. This complicates matters in a whole new way. And it might just give us a chance in the epic struggle to come. We must alert the member states and call a meeting, perhaps the most important meeting of the modern age.'

O'SHEA FARM

COUNTY KERRY, IRELAND

28 OCTOBER, 1996, 5:30 P.M.

To the untrained eye, it seemed like just another lonely old farmhouse on a hilltop overlooking the Atlantic. To the trained eye, however, it was something else entirely. The experienced professional would have noticed no less than twenty heavily-armed Irish commandos standing guard around the estate, scanning the horizon.

To be sure, this was an unusual setting for an international meeting, but this was not a meeting that the participants wanted widely known.

The state of the world at that time was grim. Iraq had been chased out of Kuwait, but now it played cat- and-mouse games with UN weapons inspectors. Europe was furious with the United States over steel tariffs. India and Pakistan, already engaged in a phony war, were both on the verge of entering the Nuclear Weapons Club.

But all these were big ticket issues, and the small group of nations gathered together today were not big ticket players in world affairs. They were small countries—mice, not lions—relative minnows of world affairs.

Not for long.

The mice were about to roar.

Seven of the eight delegations now sat in the main sitting room of the farmhouse, waiting. Each national delegation consisted of two

or three people—one senior diplomat, and one or two military

personnel.

The view out through the windows was breathtaking—a splendid vista of the wild waves of the Atlantic smashing against the coast—but no-one at this gathering cared much for the view.

The Arabs checked their watches impatiently, frowning. Their leader, a wily old sheik from the United Arab Emirates named Anzar al Abbas, said: 'There's been no word from Professor Epper for over six months. What makes you think he'll even come?'

The Canadians, typically, sat there calmly and patiently, their leader simply saying, 'He'll be here.'

Abbas scowled.

While he waited, he flipped through his briefing kit and started re-reading the mysterious book extract that had been provided for all the participants at the meeting.

It was headed 'The Golden Capstone' . . .

THE GOLDEN CAPSTONE

From:               When Men Built Mountains: The Pyramids

by Chris M. Cameron (Macmillan, London, 1989)

Perhaps the greatest mystery of the pyramids is the most obvious one: the Great Pyramid at Giza stands nine feet shorter than it

should.

For once upon a time at its peak sat the most revered object

in all of history.

The Golden Capstone.

Or, as the Egyptians called it, the Benben.

Shaped like a small pyramid, the Capstone stood nine feet tall and was made almost entirely of gold. It was inscribed with hieroglyphics and other more mysterious carvings in an unknown language, and on one side—the south side—it featured the Eye of

Horus.

Every morning it shone like a jewel as it received the first rays

of the rising sun—the first earthly object in Egypt to receive those sacred rays.

The Great Capstone was actually made up of seven pieces, its pyramidal form cut into horizontal strips, creating six pieces that were trapezoidal in shape and one, the topmost piece, that was itself pyramidal (small pyramids such as this were called pyramidions).

We say that the Capstone was made almost entirely of gold, because while its body was indeed crafted from solid gold, it featured a thin bore-hole that ran vertically down through its core, in the exact centre of the Capstone.

This hollow was about two inches wide and it cut downward through each of the seven pieces, punching holes in all of them. Embedded in each of those circular holes could be found a crystal, not unlike the lens of a magnifying glass. When placed in sequence those seven crystals served to concentrate the Sun's rays on those days when it passed directly overhead.

This is a crucial point.

Many scholars have noted that the construction of the Great Pyramid by the pharaoh Khufu curiously coincides with the solar event known as the Tartarus Rotation. This phenomenon involves the rotation of the Sun and the subsequent appearance of a powerful sunspot that comes into alignment with the Earth.

Accomplished Sunwatchers that they were, the Egyptians certainly knew of the Sun's rotation, sunspots, and indeed of the sunspot that we call 'Tartarus'. Aware of its intense heat, they called it 'Ra's Destroyer'. (They also knew of the smaller sunspot that precedes Tartarus by seven days, and so labelled it 'The Destroyer's Prophet'.)

The last Tartarus Rotation occurred in 2570 BC, just a few years after the Great Pyramid was completed. Interestingly, the next Rotation will occur in 2006, on March 20, the day of the vernal equinox, the time when the Sun is perfectly perpendicular to the Earth.

Those theorists who link the construction of the pyramid to

Tartarus also claim that the Capstone's unique 'crystal array' has the ability to capture and harness solar energy, while the more outrageous authors claim it possesses fabulous paranormal powers.

Having said this, however, it should be noted that the Golden Capstone only sat atop the Great Pyramid for a very short time.

The day after the Tartarus Rotation of 2570 BC, the Capstone was removed, and taken to a secret location where it rested for over 2,000 years.

It has since disappeared from history altogether, so that now all that remains of it is an ominous inscription found on the empty summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza itself:

Cower in fear, cry in despair,

You wretched mortals

For that which giveth great power

Also takes it away.

For lest the Benben be placed at sacred site

On sacred ground, at sacred height,

Within seven sunsets of the arrival of Ra's prophet,

At the high-point of the seventh day,

The fires of Ra's implacable Destroyer will devour us all.

A door slammed somewhere. Abbas looked up from his reading.

Footsteps.

Then the sitting room door opened, and through it stepped—

—Professor Max T. Epper and Captain Jack West Jr.