what she does.” He hesitated a moment, as if about to say something. “Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see the work in process.”
“Sure,” Logan replied. “Especially if it’ll give me some idea what I’m doing out here.”
The two made their way past more offices, labs, and equipment sheds. Logan quickly became disoriented in the mazelike interiors. They passed lab-coated scientists, a machinist in coveralls, and-surprisingly-a burly, bearded man sporting boots and a cowboy hat.
“Roustabout,” Rush said, as if that explained everything.
They crossed through another pontoon-supported walkway, encased in Mylar and mosquito netting, floating just inches above the surface of the swamp, and the doctor pushed past another makeshift wall of vertical plastic panels. Logan followed suit-then stopped abruptly. Beyond lay a vast room. Along one yellow wall was a rank of lockers, perhaps two dozen, painted battleship gray. Along the opposite wall was a bank of instrumentation: rack- mounted servers, oscilloscopes, what appeared to be highly sophisticated depth finders and sonar devices, and a dozen still-more-exotic pieces of equipment. Leads, power cables, and data conduits snaked underfoot, all converging at the center of the huge space, where a large circular hole had been cut in the floor. This well-like hole was surrounded by a railing and more instrumentation.
“This is Yellow,” Rush said, waving a hand, a note of pride in his voice. “The face of the dig.”
He led the way toward the center of the room. Logan followed, picking his way carefully over the sea of cabling. Several people were arrayed around the central hole: some monitoring instruments, others in dive suits sitting on benches and conversing in low tones. A woman in a nurse’s uniform sat at a small medical station, typing on a laptop.
Logan approached the hole and peered in gingerly. It was at least eight feet in diameter. He could see the brownish-green surface of the Sudd not eighteen inches beneath his feet. Its miasmic vapor rose like a fetid breath to his nostrils. Two ladders descended into its murky depths, along with several thick cables.
Rush nodded toward the hole. “Our interface with the swamp. We call it the Maw.”
“The Maw?”
Rush smiled grimly. “Rather appropriate, don’t you think?”
Logan had to agree that it was.
On the far side of the Maw was a huge flat-panel monitor, connected to a bank of CPUs. On it was displayed something that looked to Logan like a cross between a chessboard and some kind of alien lottery ticket: a grid of squares, ten by ten, in a variety of colors. Some of the squares contained odd symbols; others, small logos and lines of text. Others were empty.
Beside this monitor was an industrial rolling ladder, the kind used for stocking warehouse shelves. Standing atop it, hands folded over a barrel-like chest, stood a man, cigar in mouth despite the NO SMOKING signs posted everywhere. He was bald, his dome shining brilliantly under the large surgical-bay lights, and he’d clearly spent so many years in the sun that his skin was the color of chewing tobacco. Although he was no more than five feet tall, he radiated confidence and authority.
Dr. Rush made his way around the Maw and stopped at the base of the ladder. “Frank?” he said to the man atop it. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
The man on the safety ladder looked down at them. Then he peered carefully around the room, scrutinizing everything, as if to assure himself everything was under control. Then at last he descended the ladder, puffing on the cigar.
“Jeremy, this is Frank Valentino,” Rush said. “Dive and dig site honcho.”
Valentino took out the cigar, looked meditatively at the soggy end, then put it back in his mouth and held out a meaty paw.
“Frank, this is Jeremy Logan,” Rush continued. “He arrived with me last night.”
Valentino’s look grew slightly more interested. “Yeah, I heard of you,” he said. His voice was remarkably deep and free of accent. “The spook doctor.”
For a moment, Logan stood utterly still. Then, quite abruptly, he spread his palms outward and leaned toward Valentino. “Boo!” he said.
Valentino shrank back. “Madonna,” he murmured, crossing himself. Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Rush suppress a smile.
In the background, behind the low chatter of the engineers and divers, Logan could hear the squawk of an occasional electrified voice coming over a radio on the far side of the large monitor. It sounded again: “Romeo Foxtrot Two, on descent.”
“Romeo Foxtrot, roger,” said a man seated at the radio console. “Your signal is five by five.”
Rush gestured at the Maw. “Until the actual tomb is located, this is where all the exploratory and cartographical work is based.”
“But the Sudd is so vast,” Logan said. “How did you know where to establish the site?”
“Tina Romero can explain. Suffice it to say that the location was initially established as a square, several miles to a side. Scholarship and, ah-other considerations-narrowed that down to one mile.”
“One square mile,” Logan repeated, shaking his head in admiration.
Rush directed Logan’s attention to the huge flat panel. “What you see there is a reproduction of the ground along the bottom of the Sudd: the square mile beneath us, broken into a ten-by-ten grid. Using a GPS satellite to ensure pinpoint accuracy, we’re exploring each square in turn. Divers go down to scour the site, explore any hits.”
“Romeo Foxtrot, Echo Bravo,” said the radioman. “Give me an update.”
After a moment, the radio squawked again. “Romeo Foxtrot. At minus thirty feet and descending.”
“Bubble status?”
“Eighty-two percent.”
“Watch that bubble, Romeo Foxtrot.”
“Roger.”
“What you’re hearing are communications from the current dive team,” Rush explained. “They dive in pairs for safety’s sake. And they use special equipment to maintain their orientation. You can’t imagine what it’s like to descend into the Sudd-completely black, the mud and quicksand around you like a suffocating blanket, no way of telling up from down…” He paused.
“You talked about scouring the site,” Logan said. “About exploring hits.”
“Yes,” Rush said, glancing back at him. “You see, this was once the site of a prehistoric volcano. Even in Narmer’s day, the volcano was long gone. But traces of it remained behind in the form of subterranean lava pipes. Our belief is that the pharaoh selected a suitable lava tube for his tomb and had his workers expand and fortify it as necessary. Once it was sealed, the encroaching muck and water of the Sudd would do the rest. Anyway, when we first move to a new section of the Grid, the thing that must be done initially is to blast away the accretion of silty deposits from the swamp bed.”
“That’s Big Bertha’s job,” Valentino said with a smile. He jerked one thumb over his shoulder, where-in the shadowy depths of the hangarlike space-Logan could make out a hulking machine that looked half Zamboni, half snowmobile.
“Narmer thought his tomb would remain hidden away for all time,” Rush said. “But he could never have imagined the technology we’re bringing to bear-remote-sensing radar, scuba gear, global positioning devices.”
“This is Romeo Foxtrot,” the harsh metallic voice intruded. “The bubble mechanism’s acting a bit flaky. Status stands at forty-three percent.”
The radioman looked over at Valentino, who nodded. “Depth?” he said into the radio.
“Thirty-five feet.”
“Keep a close watch,” said the radioman. “Abort if it drops below twenty-five percent.”
“Roger that.”
“Big Bertha does the scouring,” Rush resumed. “Then, the grid square is examined for hits-holes or tunnels in the swamp bed. If there aren’t any, the square is marked as explored and we move to the next square on the Grid. If tunnels are found, they’re flagged as Search for the next team of divers.”
“Might find a sinkhole,” said Valentino. “Might find nothing. But we got to check each one. Sometimes the tunnels, they branch out. Then we have to map it-map it all.”
Rush nodded at the monitor again. “And the results are recorded on that-and on the main cartographic
