himself for Phoebe’s injury. Promptly at eighteen, he’d left the Morpheus team and gone his own way.
Bright kid, scholarship to anywhere he wanted, Waxman recalled. Cruised through Columbia. Teaching now-a professorship in Ancient History. At least he kept that interest alive. And he was here, wasn’t he?
Of course, that was partly a result of Waxman’s doing. He had pulled some strings with Columbia’s Board, then maneuvered Caleb into a slot on a research dive in Alexandria during the same time the Morpheus Initiative would begin phase two of their Pharos Project. Once he’d arrived, Helen had been more than persuasive and convinced Caleb to at least take advantage of Waxman’s offer to use his boat and resources to conduct his own research. Together again. And if Waxman got his way, it would just be the start. He needed Caleb, but he wasn’t about to let on just how much.
Waxman finished his drink and headed down into the lower level, where Victor and Elliot were just closing the door, sealing the tank and setting the dials on the recompression chamber. They stepped away, breathing heavily, and dripping all over his hardwood floors. Scowling, Waxman handed Victor his empty glass. “Fill that.” He approached the chamber and peered inside at Caleb’s twisted body on the cot. The kid’s eyelids were flickering.
Still dreaming? Still seeing visions? “We need to know what he saw. How long is he going to be in there?”
“Six hours at least today,” said Elliot. “And probably a few hours each for the next couple days until-”
Waxman waved away the details. “He can hear me?”
“Yep, just hit the intercom switch.”
He moved in closer, then turned back. “Oh and Victor, when you return with my drink, bring Caleb a pad of paper and a box of pencils.”
Waxman pulled up a chair and yelled over his shoulder, “And find me that statue’s head!”
4
Caleb awoke with a wheezing, breathless gasp and immediately sat up but reeled suddenly as his head spun in flaring pain. He was in what looked like the inside of a space capsule: all white and padded, one narrow cot to sleep on, and a tiny porthole window. A pad of paper, thick, with about a hundred sheets, lay on the floor next to his uncomfortable sleeping accommodations along with a dozen sharpened pencils, all bundled together with a rubber band.
The he heard it: knock, click, knock, click. He looked up and nearly blacked out again. He put his head back down and groaned. The air was thin, pure, almost cold.
“That’s right,” came a voice he recognized only too well from the small intercom speaker on the wall. “Concentrated oxygen to go with the pressure treatment.”
Caleb grunted. “Hi, George.” His voice sounded nasally, cartoonish, a by-product of the oxygen inhalation.
“Hello Caleb. Sorry about your predicament. Lucky I was here, and lucky I brought my own recompression chamber. Saved you a trip to the local hospital, where you’d be more likely to die from something other than what got you there in the first place.”
“Yeah, I’m so lucky.”
“Why’d you rise so fast, Caleb? Did you see something?”
Caleb rubbed his temples. A flash of light, the burning Egyptian sky suddenly turning dark as he stepped into the shadow of the Pharos. He blinked. “Where’s my mother?”
“In talks with the Egyptian Council of Authorities, trying to secure access to the catacombs along the old Canopic Way. Assuring dive permits-”
“A little late for that.”
“We used yours,” Waxman said. Caleb now noticed the face leering in at him from the porthole window. Hair the color of rock salt, wavy and slicked back over a high, triangular forehead; narrow cheekbones and a hard, pointed jaw set below pencil-thin lips. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and from the tip hung a long spindle of ash about to fall. Tendrils of smoke coiled around his face, obscuring his eyes and fogging the window. “Remind me,” Waxman continued, “to thank Columbia for their assistance in our little quest.”
“ Your quest,” Caleb corrected, trying to sit up as the pressure chamber did its work. “I opted out of the Morpheus Initiative four years ago. Remember?”
“I seem to recall something about that,” Waxman said with a grin. “And again, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Tell it to Phoebe.”
“I did. I do… every time I see her.”
Caleb narrowed his eyes. “When do you-?”
“Didn’t your mother tell you? We’ve been using your home on Sodus Bay as our new headquarters.”
“She must’ve left that out,” Caleb said with some bitterness. “But then again, we don’t talk much.” And Caleb didn’t want to ask, So where do you sleep?
“Pity. You’d be proud of your sister. Even from her wheelchair, she’s become quite an asset. Her access to the University of Rochester archives and labs has proven invaluable, and the way she manages the sessions, catalogs the drawings, comes up with the targets and tests the group members… she’s really something.”
“Good for her.” Caleb wanted it to come out sarcastically, but he also meant it. He had known about her success at her first year in the university, but had limited his correspondence with her. The past was too much, the guilt too intense. He wouldn’t even pick up the phone when she called-at first, several times a week, then after his lack of response, once a month. Her messages piled up in the voicemail cache until he would be forced to delete them to free up space.
Waxman tapped on the door. “And something about being there, in your childhood home, with its tiny lighthouse overlooking the bay, I don’t know…”-he grinned and stepped back so only the streaky window remained visible-“it helps focus the visions, directs the team toward the proper mind frame for its mission.”
“And what exactly is the mission this time, George?” Caleb always called him George to his face. Maybe he was being unfair, but the man had inserted himself into their lives, into his family, like a splinter under a fingernail, and so soon after Dad had been lost. At the time, even at such a young age, Caleb had known the story of Odysseus. Enamored by his father’s bedtime tales of Greek tragedies and classical literature, Caleb imagined Waxman as one of Penelope’s suitors to his father’s Odysseus; and he kept alive a fantasy that his father would one day return with vengeance in his heart and rout anyone foolish enough to have tried to take his place.
Waxman’s face returned to the window, and his voice crackled over the knocking sounds. “Our project-our objective, this time-is the search for the perfect testable scenario; an archaeological enigma that, if solved, could once and for all, scientifically prove the validity of remote viewing.” He paused, taking another drag on the cigarette. Caleb could almost smell the menthol through the door. Waxman’s favorite brand, it was the smell he always associated with George’s presence, and with his father’s absence.
Waxman continued. “The Pharos Lighthouse! If we can locate it through psychic means, just think what that will prove. Imagine it: a documented success case, a melding of archaeology and parapsychology. It would open up so many avenues of research, generating interest and-”
“Grants… Money…”
“Yes, of course. But I’m not in it for wealth, Caleb.”
“No? Then what was the Bimini dive all about back in 2003? I seem to recall that Mom and your other psychic crackpots happened to pinpoint the exact location of three sunken ships and quite a bit of salvage.”
“That was different.”
“And what about Belize, George? Why did we go there, if not for the promise of the treasure Elliot drew in one of his trances? Why did we enter Tomb Fifteen?”
George remained silent for a long while. “Caleb, believe me, this is different.”
“Is it?” Caleb stood up, wobbly, biting his lip against the pain surging through his muscles due to the nitrogen narcosis, microscopic bubbles warring in his veins. He staggered and leaned against the wall. “Let me see if I can explain how it’s different. You’re here not to locate one of the lost Seven Wonders of the World or to prove the
