Adaiz smiled. Another natural smile. This time the expression showed a blend of exhaustion and satisfaction. “Good,” he said. “That is what I hoped for.”
CHAPTER 50
Pruit, Eddie, Adaiz-Ari, the Doctor, and the Engineer passed through the underground corridor leading to the sleepers’ cave. They had arrived there together, after a day-long drive through the desert. At the end of the passage, Pruit entered the combination, and they moved through the two sets of doors and into the cave itself. Yellow lights came on around the walls to illuminate the space.
Adaiz stepped in front of Pruit and surveyed the room, his eyes coming to rest on the coffin-shaped stasis tanks. He pointed to one of the tanks. “This tank belonged to the Engineer.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” Pruit said.
Adaiz walked up to the tank and examined it. Behind him, the Engineer began to shift his weight excitedly. Adaiz smiled at him. “The Engineer was warned by the…the man with blond hair—” Adaiz began.
“The Lion?” the Doctor asked.
“Yes, the Lion. The Lion warned him that the data crystals would be tempting.” He knelt down beside the stasis tank and began to study the large, dark pedestal on which it rested. “There was another man, a man who was somehow a god?” The words sounded funny as he said them, but he knew they were correct.
“The Captain,” the Doctor said.
“Yes, the Captain. The Engineer thought he might be tempted to break into the cave, so he kept the entrance codes secret. Only the courier ship sent to Herrod had them.” Adaiz ran his hands along the pedestal beneath the tank. Pruit came up beside him and knelt down nearby. “The Lion warned him about the Mechanic as well. So he made sure the Mechanic would remain safely asleep.” He paused and turned to the Doctor. “How was the Mechanic able to wake?”
“He changed the programming. It must have been right before we went into stasis. Somehow he changed the number of the tank that was supposed to wake.”
“Ah, that’s too bad.” He said it sincerely. He had seen the Engineer’s mind and knew the man would be distressed that he had failed to prevent this small, but profound treason. His hands were now feeling along the edges of the pedestal. “At any rate, the Engineer knew the crystals had to be protected. If rescue never came, they would need them to start a new life. And if rescue did come, he thought the Kinley might have lost some of their technology during the war, and the crystals could fill in the gaps. Either way, he wanted to make sure they would remain in the cave.”
Adaiz ran his hands along the seam where the metalrock pedestal met the metalrock floor. Then he paused. He pressed on the side of the pedestal and moved his hands slightly in a jiggling motion.
As Pruit watched, the side of the pedestal seemed to retract a tiny fraction of an inch; then part of the smooth surface sprang up. Pruit caught her breath. The opened flap was about three feet wide and a foot high. Behind it, she could see several rows of small boxes.
“So he made copies of every crystal,” Adaiz said. “Secretly. Even his wife did not know.” He pulled out one of the boxes from behind the flap and handed it to Pruit.
She took the box and touched a seam that ran along its side. The top smoothly flipped up. Inside was a row of data crystals, neatly packed.
“Great Life!” Pruit cried. “They were right under our noses.”
She and Adaiz quickly pulled the rest of the boxes from the hiding place. There were twenty in all. Written on the underside of each lid was the name of the scientific discipline contained in the crystals of that box. Pruit opened them all until she found what she was looking for. Under the lid of one, the words read, “All Ship Systems.” She smiled.
CHAPTER 51
2564 BC
Year 43 of Kinley Earth Survey
…may a place be made for me in the solar bark on the day when the god ferries across, and may I be received into the presence of Osiris in the Land of Vindication…
—Egyptian Book of the Dead
King Khufu lay in his bed, his body doubled up upon itself, the covers tangled around his legs. He was hot and cold at the same time, the two discomforts vying for his attention. His skin was clammy, and his muscles had been lost, over the past months, to fever weakness.
He was thirty-eight years old, a conqueror and a bringer of peace, a man whose physical strength had always been a source of great personal pride. His body had been as fit as any soldier in his armies until the past year. Then, after a military trip to the Sinai, he had been stricken with a stomach ailment. His doctors had tried every cure known to them, but none had been effective beyond briefly lessening the pain.
In recent months, the ailment had spread, consuming his entire digestive tract and even destroying his lungs. He could breathe only with effort and knew that he was near the end of life. It would be only a matter of days before death took him.
“Sire, we are ready.”
Khufu was startled by the voice. He had thought he was alone in the room. He moved his head with effort and saw his Chief Retainer standing at the foot of the bed, dressed in a long, formal robe. Two of the king’s valets stood nearby, also dressed formally. They were holding up a robe for Khufu.
Khufu nodded. “Yes,” he said, coughing as he did so and feeling a hot stab of pain in his chest. “It is time. Let me go.”
The servants wrapped him in the robe, then secured the false beard of kingship around his chin. The Chief Retainer placed a crown upon his head, the high double crown that represented his rule of all of Egypt. It felt too heavy.
Then they carried him to a litter and bore him silently through the palace. Men and women bowed as he passed, saying nothing. Khufu had already made his good-byes. The coronation of his son had been planned for months, and he had made him co-regent when his illness first took hold. Khufu’s wife and the other women of his harem had begun to mourn him already.
Outside, Khufu was met by an honor guard of soldiers and moved to his long-distance litter. He slipped in and out of consciousness as the litter carried him through his gardens, through Memphis, then into the open land beyond.
By afternoon, he had arrived at the pyramid, the monument his father had built for him, the beacon that would guide the celestial barque to its landing spot. The curtains of the litter were opened, and Khufu squinted in the sharp sunlight. The pyramid stood before him, alone on its great plateau, a white edifice crowned with a golden pyrmidion. It was the most beautiful creation he had ever seen, breathtaking every time he laid eyes upon it. Its beauty was marred only by a brown swath running up one side, where a vertical course of casing stones had been removed to allow access to the inside.
The pyramid had been finished for more than twenty-five years. It was a symbol of the reign of Khufu, just as his father had promised. After the murder of Osiris, Khufu had ordered the construction to go on as planned. He had made only one change: He placed a stone sarcophagus in the central room. That was to be his own resting place.
The priests of Osiris and the priestesses of Isis were lined in two long columns, leading the way from the king’s litter up to a scaffolding in front of the pyramid. They chanted incantations as Khufu passed, singing the code words he would need to be accepted onto the divine barque. Khufu mumbled these to himself as he walked.
His family was not present, for he had wished them to look forward only, to the glorious future of Khufu’s line, and not to dwell on the unpleasantness of this day. He did not wish the elaborate rituals of a typical royal burial, for he was not dying, only going to sleep. Those present were merely well-wishers, seeing him off to a long voyage.
The scaffolding reached from the base of the pyramid to a point in its middle. There, where the casing stones had been removed, was an entranceway leading to the great chamber inside. Khufu was carried up the scaffolding, then helped across a long wooden ramp into the pyramid.
When he had crossed inside, the atmosphere changed immediately. The warmth of the sun disappeared as
though extinguished. The inner corridors were lit only by small oil lamps, which released soot into the already stale air. It did not matter. He would be breathing the air for only a few minutes.
He was helped up the long passages and into the central chamber. The sarcophagus sat at one end of this great hall, simple and unadorned. It was filled with the fluid that would keep him alive. The dark liquid within had been concocted from notes written by the Engineer. This was a man about whom his father often spoke. The secret of the Sleepers, the gods who went into long rest as they awaited the arrival of the ship to bear them home, had not remained secret for long. The location itself was well guarded—Osiris had never hinted of it, even to his son—but what had been done in the cave became the subject of legend. They had gone into the sleep of death to await resurrection. And Khufu had found the recipe for the fluid that would make this possible.
His priests had not had all the ingredients to hand, but they had replaced what was not available with potions of the highest quality, potions that had been handed down from the time of his father’s arrival. To ensure their potency, all ingredients had been repeatedly blessed, by priests who served his father Osiris and priestesses who served his mother Isis. Their power was beyond question.
Even so, Khufu felt a surge of fear as he looked at the sarcophagus. What would he feel? Would there be dreams, or would there only be silence? Propped nearby was the lid for the box, made of fine wood. He had not wanted stone, of course, for stone could not be lifted by the occupant. The wood was cured to last for generations, and it was light enough for him to push aside.
More priests and priestesses were standing along the walls of the hall. As Khufu took his first step toward the sarcophagus, they began to chant in unison, “He enters the realms. He ascends to the sky. He is given new life.” Their voices were eerie in this space, echoing into each other, reverberating through the walls. It was almost frightening.
On his own, Khufu walked the length of the hall. He reached the stone box and set his hands upon it, letting it support his weight. Within, the dark liquid was beckoning. It was time. His body was ready to give out. He would lie down in this sarcophagus and be preserved, resting peacefully, until the gods came to take him away. They would heal him, and he would live a second life with them.
“I am ready, Priest.”
They disrobed him, then took hold of his wasted body and gently lowered him into the fluid. It was cold and unpleasant. Khufu sank into it up to his neck, then slowly tilted his head back and let it sink below the surface. He felt the fluid covering him, felt it over his face, felt them pushing him to the bottom of the sarcophagus. He could feel the stone on his back now, cold. He must breathe in the liquid, that much he knew. He must take it into his lungs, just as the sleepers had. It would feel like drowning, but it would not be death, only sleep.
He did not want to take the breath. What if he was wrong? What if this fluid was only a foolish concoction? It was too late. They were holding him. He had ordered them to keep him under the liquid, even if he struggled. This was a leap of faith.
He inhaled. The fluid poured into his lungs, and it burned. He was drowning; he was dying. He struggled, but they held him pinned. He tried to gasp but only took in more of it. His muscles were gone. He had no strength. They held him, and there was no air. His lungs cried out, his body cried out, he felt a final convulsion of pain. Then he was dead.
When the king lay still, the priests in the chamber uttered the long, final incantation. Then the sarcophagus top was secured and the retinue moved out of the pyramid. Workers were already preparing to plug the entry with poured stone, for none belonged inside but Khufu himself.
Within weeks, new casing stones were grown in place, and the pyramid gleamed white and perfect in the hot desert sun. Within it, the body of Khufu was slowly dissolved by the fluid, a mixture that had been half right. Without the machinery of the stasis tanks and the tubes feeding his body, however, there had been no chance for him. Within a month, the body was eaten away, leaving nothing. The wood top, too, would eventually disintegrate.
None of this was known, however, and Khufu’s entry into the pyramid and into the sarcophagus spawned an elaborate royal cult of the dead. For thousands of years, succeeding generations sought to emulate him, developing intricate embalming techniques to keep bodies intact for the life to come.
The technology of building the pyramid remained in use, unadulterated, for several generations, and was then lost forever, diluted by priests who turned science into religion, forgotten by mystics who wanted only something to worship.
CHAPTER 52
Present Day
The Lucien shuttle was just as Pruit would have imagined it. Its walls were a bright silver of polished metal, resembling the Lucien skin. The control panels were set into these walls in neat banks of monitors and lights. The craft was a squat cylinder, with three chairs grouped like petals in the center, facing out toward the walls. She, Adaiz, and the Engineer had trekked through Central Africa, up into the cloud forest at the edge of the grasslands, and had found the shuttle that Adaiz and Enon had hidden weeks before.
Adaiz-Ari sat in the single chair that had been designed to carry a human. He controlled the craft from this seat. Pruit and the Engineer, strapped into the other two chairs, were merely passengers, and they were experiencing the discomfort of seats that did not well accommodate a human backside. The shuttle generated moderate gravity, enough to keep all three of them firmly in place.
From her position, Pruit could just make out the approach monitors. They were in the final stage of deceleration as they prepared to dock with Pruit’s own ship.
“Adaiz, the dock is on the far side,” she said. Adaiz moved his hands over the controls, to bring the ships together. He adjusted the docking mechanism, letting it expand and conform to the shape of the Kinley ship’s hull.
They docked without incident, the craft making a gentle vibration as it connected with its target. Pruit watched as Adaiz deployed a variable airlock, creating a bridge between the hatches of their two ships. She had given Adaiz the docking code, and her ship was ready to receive them.
“Secured,” Adaiz said as the airlock clicked into place. They unstrapped themselves. The Engineer moved his arms to follow suit, but he could not manage the locking mechanism.
Pruit freed him from his straps and assisted him onto his feet. Then she shouldered the small backpack that contained their precious crystals. She helped the Engineer up through the round hatch in the shuttle’s ceiling. Above them was the hatch into the floor of Pruit’s ship. She reached it and pulled it open. There, above her, was the familiar room that had been her home for nearly twenty years. She guided the Engineer up the airlock’s rungs, and soon they emerged together into the ship. Adaiz followed.
“Hello, Central,” she said.
“Welcome, Pruit,” the ship replied, returning to life instantly, as though she had left only a few minutes ago. It was Niks’s voice coming from the walls. Pruit had forgotten it would be, and she was startled by the immediacy of the sorrow at the sound of his voice.
“Central, put the life-systems computer on full alert. I have urgent business,” she said, forcing herself to maintain composure. She looked around, her eyes moving over the cribs, their lids retracted, their inner wombs dry now, waiting patiently to be used for the return trip. Along the walls and at the ends of the ship were the two control centers, the exercise area, the medical and food stations, and the sentient tank, all in order.
“Adaiz, help me get him to the crib.”
Together, they walked the Engineer to Niks’s crib and undressed him. Pruit ordered Central to fill the crib, and biofluid began to pour in, hydrating the wombwalls, which became orange webs of tissue. She quickly programmed the tank for medical examination, not stasis.
“I’m going to put you in the crib,” Pruit said to the Engineer in Haight. She took her cue from the Doctor and never spoke down to him. She gestured to the biofluid, a
nd the Engineer seemed to understand her intent.
She and Adaiz helped him down into the crib. Bioarms began to grow out of the walls, seeking out his body. The Engineer shied away from them, but Pruit squeezed his shoulder in reassurance. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think it will help you.”
As the tank filled, the Engineer slowly settled back into the crib. A breathearm found its way down his throat. He gagged a little, then calmed. In moments, he let his head float beneath the biofluid. Adaiz watched in fascination at this demonstration of Kinley technology. Kinley. There, he had said it in his mind. He had not instantly thought of them as “Plaguers.” It would take some time to get used to this change, but he was willing to try.
Pruit moved to one of the control centers, sank her hand into the putty pad, and accessed the life-systems computer. Adaiz watched the screens in front of her with the varicolored cells that formed and reformed in nanoseconds to create the images required.
“Central, please coordinate with life-systems and give me a workup on the man in Niks’s crib,” Pruit said.
She waited as the ship made a full examination of the Engineer. Then Central spoke.
“The prime problem is one of brain function, Pru.” She struggled not to be affected by the computer’s familiar tone. “He appears to have suffered extensive damage due to oxygen deprivation. This is a structural problem. Large blocks of cells have been destroyed and have not been able to regenerate.”
“Can we fix him?”
“I believe so. It would be a matter of matching his body’s cells and instructing his body where to place them. He has an unusual blood type, but still should be within ship capabilities.”
“Please put all available resources into fixing him.”
“Acknowledged. It will take some hours.” The life-systems computer, ordered by Central, began to work on the problem.