Now he put the cloth aside and, very gently, held the skull in his bare hands. Two eyes had once stared out from this cranium: What wonders had they seen? Had they viewed Narmer, overseeing in person the construction of his tomb? Had they perhaps witnessed the decisive battle in which Narmer had united all Egypt? At the very least, they had watched the line of other priests as they headed south into a foreign and hostile land, there to entomb their king’s mortal remains as his ka went on to join the gods in the next world. Had this fellow guessed it was a journey from which he would never return?
Turning the skull over slowly in his hands, Logan emptied his mind, leaving it open to perception or suggestion. “What’s it trying to tell me, Karen?” he asked his dead wife as he handled the skull. But there was nothing-the skull left him with no impressions save fragility and great antiquity. At last, with a sigh, he wrapped it back in its cloth and returned it to the evidence case.
If Tina Romero was right, they would soon find a vast cache of bones-the remains of the tomb builders-and, shortly after that, the tomb itself. And Porter Stone would have yet another coup to add to his record. And if the tomb contained the crown of unified Egypt, it would undoubtedly be the largest coup of Stone’s career.
Logan sat back, still idly eyeing the box. Stone was an unusual man-most unusual. He was a person of almost limitless discipline, with passionate convictions-and yet he hired those who disagreed with him, perhaps even doubted his chances of success. He possessed an impeccable scientific background, and was a rationalist and empiricist almost to a fault-yet he was not afraid to surround himself with people whose specialties most conventional scientists would scoff at. Logan himself was the perfect example of this. He shook his head wonderingly. The fact was, Porter Stone would do anything, no matter how unorthodox or seemingly tangential, to guarantee success. After all, there was no other reason that he would include someone like Jennifer Rush on this dig, a woman who read Zener cards like a monkey juggled coconuts and who was able to…
All at once, Logan sat upright in his chair. “Of course,” he murmured. “Of course.” Then, slowly, he rose- tucked the evidence case under one arm-and walked thoughtfully out of the office.
27
The medical suite was quiet as Logan entered. The overhead lights were dimmed, and a single nurse sat at the front desk. From somewhere far back in the maze of rooms, the low bleating of instrumentation could be heard.
Ethan Rush came striding around a corner, speaking to an accompanying nurse. He stopped when he saw Logan. “Jeremy. Are you here to speak with Perlmutter? He’s in rather a lot of pain, we’ve had to keep him sedated-” Rush stopped, peered more closely at Logan.
“It’s not about Perlmutter,” Logan said.
Rush turned to the nurse. “I’ll speak with you later.” Then he gestured toward Logan. “Come into my office.”
Rush’s office was a sterile-looking cubicle behind the nurse’s station. He gestured Logan to a chair, poured himself a cup of coffee, took a seat himself. He looked bone tired.
“What’s on your mind, Jeremy?” he asked.
“I know why your wife is here,” Logan replied.
When Rush did not reply, he went on. “She’s trying to contact the ancient dead, isn’t she? She’s trying to channel Narmer.”
Still, Rush said nothing.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Logan continued. “You told me yourself that many people who return from near-death experiences develop newfound psychic abilities. Some of them claim to speak to the dead. You also told me that your wife’s particular gift was retrocognition. Retrocognition. That is, having knowledge of past events and people, beyond any normal understanding or inference.”
He got up and helped himself to coffee. “It’s a very rare form of parapsychology, but it has been documented. In 1901, two female British scholars, Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, were touring Versailles. They began to wander the grounds in search of the Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette’s chateau. In the process, they encountered strangely dressed figures, including footmen speaking in antique voices and a young woman sitting on a stool, sketching. Moberly and Jourdain experienced a strangely oppressive gloom that did not lift until they abandoned their search and walked away. Later, both women became convinced they had entered telepathically Marie Antoinette’s own memories and visions at that spot-and that the woman sketching had, in fact, been the queen herself. In the years that followed, Moberly and Jourdain conducted extensive research on their experience, which they finally published in 1911 in a book titled An Adventure. I highly recommend it, by the way.”
He sat down again, took a sip of coffee.
Finally, Rush stirred in his chair. “You know Porter Stone’s kitchen-sink approach to his projects: he would rather bring in ten specialists, each with a different discipline, at ten times the cost, than one generalist with almost the same skill set. For him, that almost is the difference between success and failure.” He paused, looked away. “Early on, the big worry was the tomb’s location. Stone was convinced the tomb was here. But the precise spot was unknown, and he had a deadline. Anybody who could help find the site, anybody, was considered.”
Rush shook his head. “Somehow, he found out about the Center, about my wife’s… gift. Don’t ask me how- this is Porter Stone we’re talking about. He approached us. At first I refused point-blank. The Sudd seemed such a desolate, hostile place. I’d have to go along, of course-after all, nobody else could manage her ‘crossings’-and I simply had too much work to consider it. He offered us more money. I still refused-as I think I told you, the Center has plenty of wealthy patrons who have experienced NDEs. Then he offered me the post of expedition doctor, and so much money that it would have been foolhardy to say no. Also”-here for a moment his voice dropped almost to a whisper-“I thought it might be beneficial for Jennifer.”
“Beneficial?” Logan repeated.
“To give her a chance to use her gift in a positive way. Because, Jeremy, I’m not convinced she considers it a gift at all.”
Logan thought back to his meeting with Jennifer Rush, to the private sorrow he’d sensed, to the still- unexplained storm of empathetic emotion he’d felt when he shook her hand. No gift, indeed, he told himself. Years before, he had known a deeply talented telepath. The man had fallen into increasing despondency, ultimately killing himself. Doctors had labeled him mentally deficient, had ascribed the voices in his head to schizophrenia. Logan knew differently. He himself knew the downside of possessing a gift you could not turn off. Now he felt like even more of an ass for the way he’d spoken to Jennifer Rush.
“So at first,” Rush said, breaking Logan’s train of thought, “Jen was brought here simply to get sensations- fleeting pictures or glimpses of past events that might help locate the tomb. But then Fenwick March and Tina Romero managed to pinpoint the site more precisely, and the original reason for her presence became less important. Besides, by that point…” Rush hesitated. “By that point, everything had changed.”
“You mean, she’d made contact with an actual entity from the past,” Logan said.
For a moment, Rush did not respond. Then he nodded, ever so slightly.
Logan felt a thrill course through him. Even he found it both incredibly exciting-and hard to believe. My God, could it really be true? “Does Stone know?” he asked.
Rush nodded again. “Of course.”
“What does he think?”
“It’s like I’ve told you-he’ll do anything, try anything, to get what he wants. And Jen has demonstrated her psychic powers in enough ways that I know he wants to believe.” Rush stared at him. “What about you? What do you think?”
Logan took a deep breath. “I think-no, I know, because I’ve sensed it myself-that certain very strong personalities, life forces if you will, can linger in a place long after the corporeal body has died. The stronger, the more violent, the personality and the will, the longer it will persist-needing only an unusually gifted mind to sense it.”
Rush slowly ran his fingers through his hair. He glanced at Logan, looked away, glanced back. This whole development has him agitated, Logan thought. This isn’t what he expected to happen-at all.
“Who else knows about this?” he asked.
