As he settled into position in the deck chair, he felt something prick his side. He reached down, felt in the pocket of the lab coat, and drew out a small handful of items. In his palm, carnelians and rubies glowed richly in the light of the setting sun. He had completely forgotten snatching them up in his desperate run for safety. Now, looking down at them, he couldn’t imagine why he had done so. Was it some desire-some need-to salvage something from the ruin of the ill-fated expedition? Or something deeper, more atavistic-something to do with the loss of Ethan and Jennifer Rush?
Tina looked over. Her eyes, which had been dull and faraway, brightened somewhat. She reached down, her fingers rifling gently through the artifacts, and picked up a small faience amulet. She held it up to the fading light. It was an eye-seen, as in all ancient Egyptian art, in full face rather than in profile-surrounded above and below by decorative sculpted curls.
“A wadjet,” she said over the cry of the waterbirds.
“Wadjet?”
“The story goes that one day, while Horus was asleep, Seth-his great enemy at the time-crept up and stole one of his eyes. When Horus awoke, he went to Isis, his mother, and asked her for another. This was the replacement she made: the wadjet, or healed, eye. It supposedly holds great magical power.” She stared at it. “This must have come from Niethotep’s mummy.”
“How do you know that?”
“Priests wrapped wadjet eyes into the bandages of mummies as a form of magical protection.” She turned it on its side, pointing at something.
Logan peered closer. There, engraved, were two images: a catfish and a chisel.
“Narmer,” he murmured.
“She appropriated even this,” Tina said. She sighed, shook her head, and passed it back.
“Keep it,” Logan said.
For a long time, they just sat there, in the slow, healing silence, as the vessel moved north.
“What do you think Stone’s going to do?” Logan asked at last. He hadn’t seen the expedition’s leader since the voyage north began.
Tina glanced at him. “About all this? He’ll come out smelling like a rose. He always does. He’ll have an interesting story to tell-assuming anyone believes it. But from what I can tell, it appears we managed to salvage a large number of the more important grave goods.”
“Salvage? I thought that word was anathema to you.”
She smiled mirthlessly. “Normally, it is. But here, we had no choice. The discovery was simply too important to leave to the flames-especially the large number of papyri we recovered. They hold priceless information-even if they do raise more questions than they answer.”
“You mean, why Narmer was so far ahead of his time.”
“Yes. Why did so many ceremonies, so much art, so many beliefs that we thought didn’t develop until many centuries after his time actually originate with him? And what happened to them? Why were they lost for so long?”
“I can guess the answer to that last question,” Logan said. And he pointed at the wadjet eye that was still clasped in her hand.
Tina nodded slowly, closing her fingers over the artifact. “At least I won’t have to worry about my job. I’ve got years of research ahead of me.”
Another, longer silence settled over them. The sun crept lower, then sank, behind the horizon.
“Why did she do it?” Tina asked at last, in a very low voice.
He turned toward her in the gathering dark.
“What happened to Jennifer Rush?” she asked.
For a moment, Logan said nothing. And then he began to answer-an answer that, he realized, he had been unconsciously rehearsing the entire time they’d been traveling downriver. The comfortable, the orthodox, answer. “Jennifer had certain-psychological issues,” he said. “Rush told no one about them. He felt that her unique gifts, the length of her own near-death experience, made her valuable enough to the expedition that it outweighed those issues.”
“Valuable to his precious Center, you mean,” Tina said bitterly. “Think of the publicity value it would have meant for him.”
“No,” Logan replied. “I don’t think he ever thought about it in those terms. He cared for her-cared for her deeply. But I think his attachment to his research blinded him somewhat. He didn’t see, or refused to see, the toll that the crossings were taking on Jennifer.”
“In that case, he was blind. I could see it. I did see it, that time I witnessed her going over. If Ethan knew she was emotionally unbalanced, he shouldn’t have forced her to undergo that. Not once, and certainly not again and again. Especially after her own personal trauma-clinically dead for fourteen minutes. It’s no wonder she ultimately came to believe herself possessed by a spirit from the dead.”
When Logan didn’t answer, Tina fetched a deep sigh. “That time we watched Ethan induce the hypnotic state, ask her all those questions… I couldn’t help but wonder: What did it feel like for her? I mean, when she came back out of it? Poor Jennifer.”
Still, Logan said nothing. He was remembering an earlier conversation he’d had-a very different conversation-with Ethan Rush. I’ve been thinking about what you said, the doctor had told him. That Jen was brain-dead for so long-that her NDE was so protracted-that, in essence, she might have lost her soul.
Fourteen minutes…
“Came back?” he said at last. “We don’t know what came back.” But his voice was so soft that Tina did not hear it over the thrum of the engine and the lapping of the waves.
