excited, his movements a little more animated. True, this discovery was no jewel-encrusted crown-but in some ways it was even more remarkable.
“And that would explain why the ‘crowns’ were kept here,” Romero said. “In the most sacred and secret place in the tomb, the holy of holies. It explains why such a dreadful curse was placed on the third gate. Narmer must have feared that, if anyone else were to get his hands on the crown-if anyone else were to experiment with making the journey to the next world-he might gain his power, perhaps even supplant him… both in this world and the next.”
Logan stared at the double crown in Stone’s hands. What was it Jennifer had said, during her final crossings? That which brings life to the dead… and death to the living.
How could she possibly have known about that?
He cleared his throat. Something had just occurred to him-something he almost did not want to mention.
Stone glanced toward him, his hands still grasping the double crown. “Jeremy?”
Logan shrugged. “I can’t help but wonder. If this device was an invention of Narmer’s, for the pharaoh to use as a trial run for what he’d experience after the death of the physical body, a way of preparing himself for the next world…” He stopped. All eyes were on him.
“Given the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians,” he went on. “About the nature of the soul, I mean… might they not have believed that such a device could release the soul, the life force, from the body-and in so doing, achieve instant immortality?”
The silence that followed this was interrupted by a harsh squawk. One of the security guards plucked a radio from his belt; spoke into it for a moment; listened to the reply, awash in static. Then he held the radio out toward Stone.
“Dr. Stone?” he said. “A message from the surface. They say it’s important.”
51
Cory Landau sat in the Operations Center, feet up on one of the consoles, swigging from a twenty-four-ounce plastic bottle of Jolt Wild Grape. He’d recently finished reading The House on the Borderland and was now well and truly freaked out. His shift wouldn’t end for another four hours; he’d brought nothing else to read; and the still, tomblike atmosphere of Operations was getting on his nerves. As a distraction, he’d begun running through video feeds from various locations around the Station, but things were depressingly quiet. There was a lot of activity at the Staging Area, but it consisted mostly of people monitoring various consoles or standing around the Maw. As for the tomb itself, the cameras had been turned off in chamber two-apparently at Porter Stone’s request-so there was nothing to see down there, either. A few minutes earlier, there had been some excitement around the archaeology labs in Red, but that seemed to have settled down as well. Basically, the entire Station felt as if it was in a holding pattern, awaiting word from the party that had recently entered chamber three of the tomb.
He took another deep swig, sighed, twirled his Zapata mustache, and cycled through a fresh set of video feeds as if channel-surfing a television. He did not notice Jennifer Rush silently enter the Operations Center. He did not notice as she slowly approached a bank of consoles, then hesitated several moments, seemingly studying them. He did not notice when she lifted a red plastic protective shield on one of the consoles, then snapped the toggle switch beneath it from the on to the off position. He grew aware of her presence only when she turned from the console and, walking away, stumbled into a rack of diagnostic equipment, knocking some loose cabling to the floor.
“Whoa!” Landau said as he wheeled around, Jolt sloshing over his hand. Then he smiled as he recognized Jennifer, the doctor’s wife. She was, he’d already discovered, a real babe, but standoffish, with a reserve that had always completely intimidated him. Oddly enough, she was dressed in a hospital gown, but Landau didn’t mind-it was, he noticed, quite revealing.
“Hi, there,” he said. “Your husband’s down with the expedition team, isn’t he? You here to watch the return of the conquering heroes? I’ve got the best seats in the house.” And he gestured at an empty chair not far from his, overlooking the central bank of monitors.
Jennifer Rush didn’t answer. Instead, she walked toward him, then past him, and then out the far door. She was cradling something in one of her hands.
At first, Landau assumed she was preoccupied, or just plain rude-he’d rarely seen her talk to anybody-rarely seen her, period. Then he’d noticed her opaque, cloudy eyes; her strange, shambling, almost robotic gait, as if the act of walking itself was a novelty.
As her form disappeared down the corridor, he nodded knowingly to himself. “Plastered,” he murmured. Not that he blamed her-being stuck out here at the ass end of nowhere was enough to start anybody drinking.
Jennifer Rush continued on slowly, a little unsteadily, past a series of conference rooms, until she stood before the barrier that gave onto the pontoon-supported access tube leading to Maroon. She turned and opened the final door before the barrier, a heavy hatch with a label that read POWER SUBSTATION-WHITE.
The interior was cramped, a forest of thick tubing and small, blinking lights. Along the far wall were rows of dials and gauges, and a technician stood before them, peering curiously at a few, while making notations on a clipboard. At the sound of the hatch opening, he turned. The light was dim, but the technician recognized the woman standing in the hatchway.
“Oh. Hello, Mrs. Rush,” he said. “Can I help you with something?”
Instead of answering, Jennifer Rush took a step inside. The faint lighting made her features indistinct.
“I’ll be with you in a jiffy,” the technician said. “Just let me finish inspecting these controls. It’s my duty shift in Methane Processing, and a few seconds ago I started to get some weird error messages.” He turned back to the gauges. “Almost as if the safety protocols had been disengaged. But that’s impossible, you’d have to deliberately-”
Hearing another sound behind him, he turned back once again. Immediately, the smile on his face vanished, his expression turning to surprise and concern. Jennifer Rush had placed the items she was carrying on the floor, knelt over a bank of heavy valves, and was-once again, movements slow and awkward, but deliberate-turning one of them.
“Hey!” the technician said. “You can’t do that-you’re opening the emergency relief valve!”
Dropping his clipboard, he hurried over. Jennifer Rush did not protest when he gently propelled her to one side.
“You don’t want to be doing that,” he said, grasping the valve and preparing to close it again. “Open this, and we’d start venting concentrated methane throughout the crawl space beneath this wing. It would only be a matter of minutes until-”
An explosive impact against the base of his neck-a sudden wave of pain-and then a concussive burst of light that filled his field of vision before giving way to oblivion.
Jennifer Rush watched as the technician crumpled to the metal floor of the substation. Then she dropped the wrench she’d picked up, bent over the relief valve, and once again began to slowly open it wide, turning, turning, turning…
52
Logan watched as Porter Stone handed the radio back to the guard. The conversation had been brief; Stone himself had said fewer than a half-dozen words. As he’d listened to the voice on the radio, his face had initially gone deathly pale. But now-as he looked at each of the expedition members in turn-his face went dark, almost purple. His pupils retreated to mere glittering pinpoints. His gaze fastened at last on Tina Romero.
Suddenly, he stepped forward. “Bitch!” he snapped, throwing one hand back in preparation for striking her. Immediately, Dr. Rush and Valentino rushed forward, restraining him.
