worktable. Later, when the artifacts were all in place, the laptop would be artfully hidden behind a gilded and painted chest. But for now, it was out in the open, where they could access it.
DeMeo slapped the dust off his thighs with a grin, then held up his hand. “High five, bro. We did it.”
Lipper ignored the hand, unable to disguise his irritation. He had had just about enough of DeMeo. The museum’s two electricians had insisted on going home at midnight, and as a result he’d found himself on his hands and knees, acting as DeMeo’s damn assistant.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” he said in a sulky voice.
DeMeo’s hand dropped. “Yeah, but at least, the cabling’s been pulled, the software’s loaded, and we’re on schedule. You can’t ask for better than that, right, Jayce?”
Lipper reached over and turned on the computer, initiating the boot sequence. He hoped to hell the computer would see the network and the remote devices, but he knew it wouldn’t. It was never that easy-and besides, DeMeo was the one who set up the frigging network. Anything could happen.
The computer finished booting and, with a sinking heart, Lipper began sending pings over the network, checking to see how many of the two dozen remote devices were missing and would require time-consuming troubleshooting to locate. He’d be lucky if the computer saw half of the peripherals on first boot-up: it was the nature of the business.
But as he moused his way from one network address to another, a sense of disbelief stole over him. Everything seemed to be there.
He ran over his checklist. It was impossible, but true: the entire network was there, visible and operational. All the remote devices, the sound-and-light apparatus, were responding and seemed to be perfectly synchronized. It was as if someone had already worked out the kinks.
Lipper rechecked his list, but with the same result. Disbelief gave way to a kind of guarded jubilation: he could not recall a single job where such a complicated network was up and running on the first try. And it wasn’t just the network: the entire project had been like that, everything coming together like a charm. It had taken days of seemingly endless work, but in the real world it would have taken even longer. Probably a lot longer. He fetched a deep breath.
“How’s it look?” DeMeo asked, crowding up behind him to peer at the small screen. Lipper could smell his oniony breath.
“Looks good.” Lipper edged away.
“Sweet!” DeMeo gave a whoop that echoed through the tomb, just about blowing out Lipper’s eardrum. “I am the man! I’m a freaking network monster!” He danced around the room, doing an ungainly buck-and-wing, pumping his fist into the air. Then he glanced over at Lipper. “Let’s do a test run.”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you go out and get us a couple of pizzas?”
DeMeo looked at him in surprise. “What-now? You don’t want to do an alpha?”
Lipper certainly did want to do a test run. But not with DeMeo breathing down his neck, whooping in his ear, and acting like an ass. Lipper wanted to admire his handiwork quietly, in a focused way. He needed a break from DeMeo, and he needed one bad.
“We’ll do a run after the pizzas. On me.”
He watched as DeMeo considered this.
“All right,” DeMeo said. “What do you want?”
“The Neapolitan. With a large iced tea.”
“I’m going for the Hawaiian double pineapple with honey-glazed ham, extra garlic, and two Dr Peppers.”
It was typical of DeMeo to assume Lipper gave a shit what kind of pizza he wanted. Lipper pulled out two twenties, passed them over.
“Thanks, bro.”
He watched DeMeo’s form labor up the stone staircase and vanish in the gloom. The footsteps echoed slowly away.
Lipper breathed in the blessed silence. Maybe DeMeo would be run over by a bus on the way back.
With that pleasant thought in mind, he turned his attention back to the computer’s control panel. He moused over each peripheral device in turn, checking to see that it was alive and functional, surprised again that each one responded perfectly, on cue, as if somebody had already debugged the network for them. DeMeo, for all his wisecracks and shenanigans, had actually done his job-and done it perfectly.
Suddenly he paused, frowning. A software icon was jumping frantically in the dock. Somehow the main routines for the sound-and-light show had loaded automatically, when, in fact, he had specifically programmed them to load manually, at least during the alpha testing, so he could step through the code and check each module.
So there was a glitch, after all. He’d need to fix it, of course: but not right now. The software was loaded, the controllers were online and ready, the screens in place, the fog machine filled.
He might as well run it.
He drew in another breath, savoring the peace and quiet, his finger over the return key, ready to execute the program. Then he paused. A sound had drifted toward him from the deeper part of the tomb: the Hall of Truth, or maybe even the burial chamber itself. Couldn’t be DeMeo, since he’d be coming from the opposite direction. And the pizzas would take at least half an hour; if he were lucky, maybe even forty minutes.
Perhaps it was a guard or something.
The sound came again: a strange, dry, scurrying sound. No guard made a noise like that.
Mice, maybe?
He rose indecisively. It was probably nothing. Christ, he was letting himself get spooked by all this curse crap the guards had started to whisper about. It was probably just a mouse. After all, there’d been plenty of mice in the old Egyptian galleries, enough so the Maintenance Department had needed to place glue traps. Still, if some had gotten into the tomb itself-maybe through one of the cable holes DeMeo had opened up-all it would take was a pair of rodent teeth sunk into one cable to crash the whole system and cause a delay of hours, maybe even days, while they examined each cable. Inch by frigging inch.
Another scurry, like wind rustling dead leaves. Leaving the lights dimmed, he picked up DeMeo’s coat-ready to throw it over a mouse if he found one-then rose and made his way stealthily into the deepest recesses of the tomb.
Teddy DeMeo fumbled for his key card, swiping it through the newly installed lock to the Egyptian gallery while trying not to drop the pizzas at the same time. The damn pies were cold-the guards at the security entrance had taken their sweet time clearing him through, when the same idiots had checked him out just twenty-five minutes earlier. Security? More like moronity.
The door to the Egyptian gallery whispered shut and he strode down the length of the hall, turned into the annex-and was surprised to find the doors to the tomb shut before him.
A suspicion took root in his mind: had Lipper gone and done the first run without him? But he quickly dismissed it. Lipper, though a fussy artiste type and cranky as hell, was basically a cool guy.
He fumbled out his key card and swiped it, hearing the locks disengage. Still balancing the pizzas and drinks, he got an elbow into the door and shoved it open, then slipped through, the door clicking shut behind him.
The lights had dimmed to level 1-the level they would be at after a run-and once again, DeMeo felt a stab of suspicion.
“Hey, Jayce!” he called out. “Pizza delivery!”
His voice echoed and died away.
“Jayce!”
He descended the staircase, walked down the corridor, and went as far as the bridge over the well before pausing again.
“Jayce! Pizza time!”
He listened while the echoes died away. Lipper wouldn’t have done an initial test run without him: not after all the time they’d put in on the project together. He wasn’t that much of an asshole. He probably had his earphones on, checking the sound track or something. Or maybe he was listening to his iPod-sometimes he did that while working. DeMeo ventured across the bridge and entered their main work area in the Hall of the Chariots.
As he did so, he heard a distant footstep. At least he thought it was a footstep. But it had made an odd thumping sound. It came from deeper within the tomb, probably the burial chamber.
“That you, Jayce?” For the first time, DeMeo felt a creeping sense of alarm. He put the pizzas down on the
