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CHAPTER
NINETEEN

“We don’t have much water left.” Gunther shook his waterskin, evoking only scant sounds of sloshing liquid.

Marty nodded. He didn’t need the reminder. He’d given the last of his own water to Munatas.

He himself was sucking on a small pebble. It was one of Lowanna’s trick-your-own-saliva-glands techniques, and it worked to keep his mouth feeling less parched. He also tried to breathe in, but especially out, only through his nose, because Lowanna said that if you breathed out, your nose hairs acted as a natural filter and helped retain water. She also said it resulted in a more noble shape to the head, but that wasn’t really Marty’s concern. He talked little, and kept his mouth shut. He tried imagining he was some ancient Shaolin monk who not only could breathe in and out through his skin, he could wick moisture from the air. Psychologically, maybe it helped. At least, it distracted him.

But none of those things stopped the fatigue and the lightheadedness that came with slowly running out of water. His skin felt like heated paper, and he thought he was starting to lose the ability to sweat. That couldn’t be a good sign.

Twenty-three days left.

But twenty-three days until what?

As they moved into the summer and hiked east, the ground had slowly parched. It was still prairie, not the rolling dunes that it would later become when the Sahara swallowed it, but the grass became dry and brittle and yellow. It had been days since they’d last crossed running water, and the melons and fruit they’d gathered there were eaten.

Marty walked at the head of the main body. Lowanna and Badis brought up the rear, and Surjan and Kareem scouted ahead. Gunther unstoppered his waterskin, apparently seduced by the faint sloshing of the liquid, and then thought better of it and replaced the cap. Surjan came striding back.

“Water,” he said. He turned and pointed at the northern horizon, where Marty saw a slightly darker yellow-brown smudge against a field of slightly lighter yellowish brown.

“We don’t know that’s water,” Marty said. “It could just be a different color of stone.”

“Or weed,” Gunther said.

“I can smell the water,” Surjan grunted. “It’s so strong. Can’t you?”

Marty shook his head. “But I know your nose is better than mine. How far away is it?”

Surjan looked and considered. “Two miles. It’s a detour, but it’s a detour we have to make.”

Marty looked back at the group. His natural inclination was to have a discussion, but two of the younger spearmen were bright red, and Gunther’s lips were cracked and bleeding. They needed water, and they needed it now.

He nodded to Surjan.

Surjan and Kareem turned from the path and led them north. The prairie looked flat here, but that turned out to be an illusion caused by the sameness of the yellow grass in all directions. Marty soon found that he was walking quicker to catch up to his two scouts, who otherwise threatened to disappear into a maze that started as depressions between gentle swells, then sank into wide ditches, and finally dug itself into proper canyons. But Surjan and Kareem had many days of practice leading the company now—between the young man’s eyesight and Surjan’s sense of smell, not to mention the Sikh’s fierce combat prowess, Marty liked having them go first—and they left a trail of small rock cairns that was easy to follow.

One of the Ahuskay men tugged at Marty’s elbow. It was Udad. He was young, with blazing eyes and a long nose that bent slightly. “I have been to this place, Seer.”

Marty was startled. He’d been told the Ahuskay were pastoralists who mostly didn’t travel long distances.

“Is there water?” he asked.

“There is a cave,” Udad said. “In this cave, the sick are healed. I was brought here as a child, all this great distance from the village, because I was lame. I was brought into the cave and made to sleep there overnight. The power of the cave straightened my legs and I walked again.”

“And water?” Marty pressed. Healing caves sounded nice, but if the host walked two miles off the trail and found no water, some of them might not make it back.

“I believe so.”

When Marty finally did catch up to his scouts, half an hour later, they were standing beside a pool.

The pool was aquamarine in color and crystal clear; Marty saw the soft sands of the bottom. Water gushed from the ground a few steps from the pool and fed into it. The pool lay at the base of a dark orange cliff, the brow of which had provided the smear of color visible two miles away. All around the water lay a thick, tangled green grove, and Marty saw dates and figs as well as rustling branches that indicated animals.

Surjan and Kareem stood beside the spring and stared at the cliff.

“How’s the water?” Marty asked.

“Sweet,” Surjan said. “The water coming out of the ground is filtered by the Earth and doesn’t need to be boiled.”

Marty urged Udad to drink first. Then he lay on his belly to slake his own thirst. “What are you looking at?” he asked Kareem.

The young man pointed. A cracked shelf of rock angled from the corner of the pool up the face of the cliff. Fifty feet over his head, and directly above the pool, Marty saw that the cliff jutted out slightly, creating an overhang. Beneath the overhang, sinking into the cliff face, was a crack in the rock.

Then Marty whistled in surprise.

The crack was not a simple slash in the stone. It had the definite shape of an ankh.

“You see it,” Kareem said. “What does it mean?”

“Well,” Marty said, “it could be a trick of nature or it could be significant.” He stared at the stone structure’s unmistakable resemblance to an ankh and felt a chill race up and down his spine. Such a shape being a coincidence of nature was hard to imagine.

Kareem looked up at him expectantly.

“Does it have a meaning?” Marty shrugged. “It’s a good question, but it’s not one I’d ask yet. We have to collect more data, and we don’t want to judge anything before we’ve done so. It’s how, as a scientist, we can maintain objectivity. We must always be open to the possibility that there is no meaning or there may be profound meaning.”

Surjan laughed. “What he means is, maybe it’s just a hole in a stone wall. In your heart, you really expect to reach Egypt and find the archaeological site still waiting for us, don’t you, Marty?”

Marty gave Surjan a wink. “I’m not prepared to make any kind of preternatural assumptions about anything without hard evidence. I’m weird like that.”

“With respect, Seer,” Udad said, “I was taken into that cave as a boy.”

“I’m going to go get some evidence, God willing.” Kareem started toward the crease in the rock.

Marty followed.

Kareem easily hoisted himself up onto the rock shelf. He offered Marty a hand, but Marty waved it away and sprang up unaided.

He heard thrashing in the woods behind him, and it was François. “Hand?” the Frenchman asked, reaching up. Marty hoisted him up to the ledge.

From this vantage point, he saw Lowanna and Badis finally reach the oasis. She said a few words to the men, and then they all lay on their bellies to drink and to fill waterskins. Udad alone stood, watching Marty.

“You’re not thirsty?” Marty asked François.

François snorted.

The shelf was wide as a bike path, but it rose at a steep angle. Kareem and François went up on all fours, but Marty found that he could balance on the balls of his feet and walk straight up with ease, if not quite in comfort.

After rising several stories’ worth, the ledge widened and flattened. It lay under the rock overhang, and the stone of the shelf was heaped with bat guano. From here, Marty could see that the opening did indeed lead into a cave, and it went back far enough that it eventually disappeared in shadow. From this perspective, also, the cave opening did not seem to be shaped like an ankh.

“You see?” Marty said to Kareem. “Maybe it’s a coincidence that the opening looked like an ankh from below. From here it just looks like an irregular hole.”

“Oh my, yes,” François said. “At last!”

“Well, don’t get too excited about it,” Marty said.

“No, look!” François rubbed his hands. “Bat guano!”

“Okay, then.”

Kareem was staring into the cave. Marty stepped near the edge of the shelf and looked down—his people were harvesting dates and relaxing in the shade, already appearing greatly refreshed. Udad still stood apart, gazing up at him.

“I’m going to go in,” Kareem said.

“Wait,” Marty suggested.

Kareem grinned at him. “We need data.” He loped into the cave.

Marty followed. The floor was soft sand and the passage sank straight back, dropping slightly. Then it jogged left, and then right, and suddenly he smelled a strong, bitter reek. It was familiar—was it the same stink he had smelled at the Sethian outpost, inside the quarters of the Hathiru?

He clearly detected whiffs of petroleum.

And surely, that yeasty, oily-smelling substance in the Ametsu compound was the same stuff they had ignited and thrown, the sticky liquid that had burned like napalm.

Kareem disappeared into darkness.

“Kareem?” Marty called. “Kareem?”


The world had gained strange new colors for Kareem. He didn’t have names for them, but they seemed vaguely reddish. He had noticed this since the moment when the company had found itself on Jebel Mudawwar, but it really manifested itself in the darkness. At night, the strange colors somehow made it so that Kareem could see the ground at his feet, and objects in the dark that should have been invisible to him—plants were one shade, animals another. And the colors of some objects, especially, for instance, stone, and the earth, changed color over the course of a night.

Here again in the cave, he found the strange new colors meant that he could see the cave walls and floor even after Marty was forced to stop. He saw the bats as bright reddish clumps, firmly gripped to the ceiling of the cave. Kareem kept walking. He heard Marty calling after him, but he was too excited at the strangeness and newness of what he was doing to stop.

Perhaps the foreign archaeologists felt like this, when they stumbled upon the tombs and treasures of Egypt’s kings. And what mysterious treasures might Kareem find in this cave shaped like the ancient pharaonic cross? He envisioned gold coffins and heaps of jewels.

Or heaps of data for Dr. Cohen.

Thinking of Dr. Cohen, Kareem turned back. His heart leaped with delight at the fact that he could see his own footprints, painted in the strange colors behind him. But they were fading slowly, and he worried they might not last long enough for him to find his way back. From the corner of the room, he collected a heap of pebbles. He filled his pockets with them and also his hands.

“Don’t worry!” he called back. “I’m only looking!”

“Whatever you do, don’t light any torches or make any sparks. I smell oil in here.” Marty’s voice was distant, with an urgent tone. Luckily, Kareem could see just fine. He hadn’t thought of using his firestarter.

He left a slow, steady trail of pebbles. He found that, if he looked closely, he could see old footprints on the floor. They weren’t noticeable for their color, so they must not be recent, but he could see dimpled sand that showed which passages had been walked in and which had not.

The air grew thicker the farther he went. It smelled like his cousin Ahmed’s garage, which stank from the decades of oil stains on the floor, as well as from the sweat of the men tugging and hammering at the automobiles inside.

He followed the dimpled sand past large galleries, tall chimneys, thunderingly deep pits, and narrow cracks. The colors shifted the deeper he went, but he could always see.

And then, abruptly, the chamber ended. A smooth wall confronted him, with a mottled appearance. At the base of the wall rested a rectangular stone box, something like a crude sarcophagus. Elsewhere in the room lay blankets and other piles of bedding.

Kareem examined the wall. When he looked closely, he realized that the mottled shapes looked like hieroglyphs, only he couldn’t make out the details. He could see a kneeling man, and a feather, and a man with raised arms, and the ankh.

The ankh appeared many times.

But many of the hieroglyphs were too confused for him to puzzle out, and he couldn’t read them in any case. Maybe with more normal light, using his ordinary powers of vision, he’d be able to see the images. Maybe Dr. Cohen would be able to read them.

But the treasure wasn’t in painted walls. Tomb treasures were to be found in coffins. Kareem examined the rectangular shape.

He tugged gently at the top, and it didn’t budge. It was difficult to see with the strange-colors vision, but either the top was cemented onto the other stones or it was really just a single stone. He tugged at the front and sides to be sure, and they also didn’t budge.

But when he pressed on the stone at the back of the box, it moved.

The flat rock slid sideways, opening to reveal a space within the box. Kareem pressed himself against the wall, trying to peer inside, but he couldn’t see anything. He had heard many stories of curses and traps on ancient tombs, but his uncle Abdullah had assured him that that was all nonsense. Finally, he took a deep breath and reached inside.

And found a smaller box.

This one was made of wood, three times as long as it was wide, and nearly flat.

He took it.

No curses.

Curses were all nonsense.

But there was also no reason to linger in the cave. Kareem hurried toward the surface. His trail of pebbles glowed red before him and his return journey was much faster than his descent.

When he emerged into ordinary light, François and Dr. Cohen were where he had left them, except that François was now scraping bat dung together and bundling it into a leather bag. Had he sacrificed a waterskin for the purpose? It seemed like foolishness.

But Surjan and Lowanna and Gunther had joined them. When Kareem rejoined them all on the shelf, he smiled his best movie star smile and showed the box.

“I found writing,” he told them. “Hieroglyphs. And this.”

“Writing?” François asked. “In there? How did you even see?”

“He has pretty good eyes,” Dr. Cohen said. “Even at night, remember? Maybe there was an airshaft or something.”

“No, it was dark. But I can see in the dark.” Kareem hesitated, trying to think how to explain it. “Even in total darkness. Cold things are different colors than warm things, I think.”

François looked at Lowanna and shook his head. “And I get a jackhammer voice,” he muttered.

“What’s in the box?” Dr. Cohen asked.

Kareem shrugged, and then opened it.

Inside lay a gold ankh, looking exactly like the ankhs that each member of the company who had come from Egypt had. It gleamed, even in the shadow of the overhang.

“Don’t touch it,” François said.

Dr. Cohen reached a hand forward. “Why not?”

François grabbed the two sides of the box and slammed it shut. “Think about it, Marty. You and I are old men, aren’t we? Well, I’m old, you’re . . . getting into middle age. But we work through the night, we walk all day, we go without water, and how are you holding up?”

“Pretty well,” Dr. Cohen admitted. “Surprisingly well.”

“You’re outwalking and outworking those young Ahuskay bucks, and they’re from this climate. Better than pretty well, I’d say. Something has put you into peak physical form.” François arched his eyebrows. “It’s put us all in top physical form.”

“Clean living,” Lowanna suggested.

“Hard exercise,” Gunther added.

“Nonsense.” François shook his head. “I think a good hypothesis is still that it’s the work of the ankhs. Because all of you have felt these effects, right? It might be the ankhs. You young, strong types are younger and stronger!”

“I’m surprised Kareem isn’t right back in diapers already,” Lowanna cracked.

Kareem felt himself blushing.

“Go ahead and laugh,” François said, “but it might be that the touch of the ankh is rejuvenating. At least to us, to humans. And, you know, to people who aren’t actually getting impaled on the ankhs.” He shot Surjan an amused look. “Also remember that our ankhs were gold when we first touched them and the color drained into us when we touched it. At least that’s what I experienced.” He turned to the others.

Marty nodded. “Me too.”

Surjan and Lowanna both nodded.

“Anyway,” François continued, “until we’ve worked out the significance of the ankh in all of this, let’s not waste that healing energy by touching the ankh.”

“You said you thought it was the glowing lights,” Dr. Cohen said.

“This is science,” François said. “Multiple possibilities. Could be this, could be that. Let’s not take any chances.”

Dr. Cohen looked lost in deep thought. “Udad said he was brought here to be healed.”

Lowanna tousled François’s hair. “I see what’s really going on. Your hair’s coming back. You’ve found a magical Rogaine, and you want to keep it all for yourself.”

Dr. Cohen frowned.

François ground his teeth. “We leave it in the box. Do we need to debate this, really?”

“He’s right,” Dr. Cohen said.

“What about the hieroglyphs?” Gunther asked. “Aren’t you curious to go in there and try to read them?”

“After the first turn or two the way passage goes completely dark,” Dr. Cohen said. “And this place reeks of oil, likely from some natural fissure. I’m afraid if I took a torch in, it might be a really short reading session. I say we camp here tonight, fill up on water, and then hit the road in the morning.”


François sat apart from the camp and studied the two scratches he’d gotten on his arm, both inflamed by a mild infection. He’d applied his “penicillin” mold treatment to one of the scratches and he’d left the other alone.

Marty looked over François’s shoulder. “What are you up to?”

The Frenchman frowned as he ran his finger across the inflamed scratch. “I was testing out my antibiotic.”

“You only treated one of the scratches?”

François nodded.

“That looks promising. The one closest to your wrist looks like it’s almost completely healed.”

François sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s the one I didn’t apply my treatment to.”

Marty winced and patted François on the shoulder. “There’s no such thing as a failed experiment, as long as you’ve learned something from the results.”

“Oh, I learned something.” François muttered. “This mold experiment isn’t going to help us much. If at all.”

“Fortunately, we’re good healers,” Marty said. “And we have Gunther.”


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