where the shaft continued to ascend. He wanted to see the King’s Chamber above.
Now the cramped, dwarflike passageway changed to one for giants. The ascending passage broadened and rose, forming an inclined gallery that climaxed in a corbelled roof almost thirty feet above our heads. Again there were no steps; it was like climbing a slide. Fortunately, guides had fixed a rope. Once more, the stonework was as perfect as it was plain. This section’s height seemed as inexplicable as the dwarf-sized passage before.
Had humans really built this?
An Arab guide held his torch high and pointed at the ceiling. I could see dark clots up there, marring the perfect symmetries, but I didn’t know what they were.
‘Bats,’ Jomard whispered.
Wings twitched and rustled in the shadows.
‘Let’s hurry up,’ Napoleon commanded. ‘I’m hot and half suffocated.’ The torch smoke stung.
The gallery was forty-seven metres long, Jomard announced after unreeling a tape, and again had no obvious purpose. Then the climb ended and we had to stoop to advance horizontally again. Finally we entered the pyramid’s biggest room, built a third of the way up the structure’s mass.
This King’s Chamber was a featureless rectangle built of colossal red granite blocks. Again, the simplicity was odd. The roof was flat and the floor and walls barren. There was no sacred book or bird-headed god. The only object was a lidless black granite sarcophagus set at the far end, as empty as the room itself. At about seven feet long, three and a half feet wide, and three feet high, it was too big to have fit through the tight entry we’d just crawled through, and must have been put in place as the pyramid was built. But Napoleon for the first time seemed intrigued, inspecting the rock casket closely.
‘How could they have hollowed this out?’ he asked.
‘The room’s dimensions are also interesting, General,’ Jomard said. ‘I measure thirty-four feet long, seventeen wide. The chamber floor represents a double square.’
‘Imagine that,’ I said, more mocking than I meant.
‘He means its length is twice its width,’ Monge explained. ‘Pythagoras and the Greeks were interested in the harmony of such perfect rectangles.’
‘The chamber’s height is half the length of the room’s diagonal,’ Jomard added, ‘or nineteen feet. Gage, help me here and I’ll show you something else. Hold this end of my tape in that corner.’
I did so. Jomard extended his tape diagonally to the opposite wall, exactly halfway along its length. Then, as I held the tape in my corner, he walked his end across the room until what had been a diagonal now lay alongside the wall I occupied. ‘Voila!’ he cried, his voice echoing in the rock room.
Once more I did not display the anticipated excitement.
‘Don’t you recognise it? It’s what we talked about at the pyramid’s summit! The golden number, or golden mean!’
Now I saw it. If you divided this rectangular room into two squares, measured the diagonal of one of those squares, and laid that line on the long side of the chamber, the ratio between that length and what was left was the supposedly magical 1.618.
‘You’re saying this room incorporates Fibonacci numbers in the same way the pyramid itself does,’ I said, trying to sound casual.
Monge’s eyebrows raised. ‘Fibonacci numbers? Gage, you’re more of a mathematician than I would have guessed.’
‘Oh, I’ve just been picking it up here and there.’
‘So what’s the practical use of these dimensions?’ Napoleon asked.
‘It represents nature,’ I ventured.
‘And it encodes the Egyptian kingdom’s basic units of measurement,’ Jomard said. ‘In its length and proportions, I think it lays out a system of cubits, just as we might design the metric system into the proportions of a museum.’
‘Interesting,’ the general said. ‘Still, to build so much – it’s a puzzle. Or a lens, perhaps, like a lens to focus light.’
‘That’s what I feel,’ Jomard said. ‘Any thought you think, any prayer you make, seems amplified by the dimensions of this pyramid. Listen to this.’ He began a low hum, then a thrumming chant. The sound echoed weirdly, seeming to vibrate through our bodies. It was like striking a note of music that lingered in the air.
Our general shook his head. ‘Except that this focuses – what? Electricity?’ He turned to me.
If I’d grandly said yes, he probably would have given me a reward. Instead, I looked vacant as an idiot.
‘The granite coffer is also interesting,’ Jomard said, to fill the awkward silence. ‘Its interior volume is exactly half its exterior volume. While it seems sized for a man or a casket, I suspect its precise dimensions are no accident.’
‘Boxes within boxes,’ Monge said. ‘First this chamber, then the outside of the sarcophagus, then the inside… for what? We have a host of theories, but no one answer I feel is conclusive.’
I looked up. It felt like millions of tons were pressing down toward us, threatening at any moment to obliterate our existence. For a moment I had the illusion the ceiling was descending! But no, I blinked, and the chamber was as before.
‘Leave me,’ Bonaparte suddenly commanded.
‘What?’
‘Jomard is right. I feel power here. Don’t you feel it?’
‘It feels oppressive and yet alive,’ I offered. ‘Like a grave, and yet you feel light, insubstantial.’
‘I want to spend some time in here alone,’ the general told us. ‘I want to see if I can feel the spirit of this dead pharaoh. Perhaps his body is gone but his soul remains. Perhaps Silano and his magic are real. Perhaps I can feel Gage’s electricity. Leave me with an unlit torch in the dark. I’ll come down when I’m ready.’
Monge looked concerned. ‘Perhaps if one of us remained as guard…’
‘No.’ He climbed over the lip of the black sarcophagus and lay down, staring at the ceiling. We looked down at him and he smiled slightly. ‘It’s more comfortable than you might think. The stone is neither too cold nor hot. Nor am I too tall, are you surprised?’ He smiled at his little joke. ‘Not that I plan to remain here forever.’
Jomard looked troubled. ‘There are accounts of panic…’
‘Never question my courage.’
He bowed. ‘To the contrary, I salute you, my general.’
So we dutifully filed out, each torch in turn disappearing through the low entryway until our commander was left alone in the dark. We worked our way down the Grand Gallery, letting ourselves down by the rope. A bat took flight and flapped down toward us, but an Arab waved a torch and the blind creature veered away from the heat, settling again on the ceiling. By the time we got down to the smaller shaft that led down to the pyramid entrance, I was soaked with sweat.
‘I’ll wait for him here,’ Jomard said. ‘The rest of you file outside.’
I needed no encouragement. The day seemed lit with a thousand suns when we finally emerged on the outside of the pyramid’s sand-and-rubble slope, clouds of dust puffing off our now-filthy clothes. My throat was parched, my head aching. We found shade on the east side of the structure and sat to wait, sipping water. The party members who had remained outside had scattered over the ruins. Some were circuiting the other two pyramids. Some had erected little awnings and were having lunch. A few had climbed partway up the structure above us, and others competed to see how high up the pyramid’s side they could hurl a rock.
I mopped my brow, acutely conscious that I seemed no closer to solving the medallion’s mystery. ‘All this great pile for three little rooms?’
‘It doesn’t make sense, does it?’ agreed Monge.
‘I feel like there’s something obvious we’re not seeing.’
‘I’m guessing we’re to see numbers, as Jomard said. It may be a puzzle meant to occupy humankind for centuries.’ The mathematician took out paper and began his own calculations.
Bonaparte was absent for a full hour. Finally there was a shout and we went back to meet him. Like us he emerged dirty and blinking, skidding down the rubble to the sand below. But when we ran up I saw he was also unusually pale, his eyes having the unfocused, haunted look of a man emerging from a vivid dream.
‘What took you so long?’ Monge asked.
