CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Narmer.
Actually Narmer.
The man whom Marty knew as the unifying first king of Egypt lay on an austere palanquin. He was propped up on two leather bolsters and covered with a thin sheet. He trembled as if the weight of Marty’s gaze weakened him. Marty was used to imagining Narmer with the tall curving hedjet-crown of the Narmer Palette, but here his head was bare. The king had big ears, big lips, wide nostrils, and goggle eyes. His skin was the dark, cracked leather caused by a life on the road.
Narmer didn’t look old. But he looked broken.
Narmer’s was the face he had been dreaming for weeks.
A stench of rot filled the room. Marty gagged.
The tent, like the palanquin, was simple and sturdy. Its only other furnishings were two tables, which bore knives, bones, inscribed stones, and feathers. Magical objects? Medical paraphernalia?
Between the tables and the king stood two old men. One wore a long robe and the other a panther skin and a leather skullcap. They stared at Marty as if he were a threat.
Two mace-wielding soldiers stood inside the entrance.
“I kind of want him to stand up and swing a mace,” François murmured. “You know, smash Lower Egypt. Unite the kingdom.”
“Take a selfie?” Lowanna snorted.
François nodded vigorously. “Yes. I took a selfie with William Shatner at a bar in Vancouver. Of course I would take a selfie with King Narmer. If only I had a phone.”
Slowly, the king opened his eyes, and then he smiled in one corner of his mouth. “You behold a marvel.” His voice was a gravelly croak. “The last king of the Black Land, the beaten former defender of civilized man. The great flaming hope of yesterday, and the cold ashes of this morning. Look and remember, that you may tell your children.”
“See?” François muttered. “He’s up for selfies.”
“Your Majesty.” Marty made the arm gesture of reverence familiar to him from ten thousand hieroglyph panels, raising both arms, and he bowed low. Gunther joined him, and then the others followed.
As if provoked by the respect, Narmer fell into a spasm of coughing.
“You are not from here,” Narmer said.
Marty looked down at his own checked oxford shirt, stitched in several spots and obviously out of place. His slacks were even more egregiously wrong—the king’s soldiers all wore kilts, as had the Sethians. Marty smiled. “I’m from far away. We all are.”
“Perhaps you are also not . . . from now.” Narmer arched an eyebrow in Marty’s direction.
Marty froze. He was very conscious of the men with maces at the tent of the door, and all the men with spears outside, and the two priests who stood to the side of the king, rubbing their hands and frowning. What did the king know? And was he trying to elicit an admission from Marty?
But he was, after all, the man from Marty’s vision. And the vision had led him to Narmer, and in the time it indicated. This could not be coincidence.
Still, best to show his cards carefully. Just because Marty was being led to Narmer, did not mean that Narmer expected Marty. Or that he would be friendly.
“The world is eternal,” Marty said. “It endures and it repeats.” He hoped that was vague enough, and perhaps profound-sounding enough, to satisfy the king.
“No,” Narmer said. “Some things endure, and some things repeat. But some things go backward in time, against the sailing of the sun-bark, and appear in the world thousands of years before their own creation. Some things do, and so do some men.”
“He knows,” François said.
“I know many things,” Narmer said. “But I do not know you. Though I have seen your faces, and have been waiting for you.”
He coughed again, violently. One of the men in robes raised some gauze to the king’s lips and he coughed blood into it. The priest discreetly dropped the bloodied fabric into a pot.
“We’re scholars,” Marty said.
Surjan snorted.
“Scholars, and friends of scholars,” Marty continued.
“And a host,” Narmer said. “A war band such as a small nation might be proud to field.”
“Yes,” Marty agreed. “We were born approximately five thousand years in your future. Not all of the host. But those of us who stand here.”
Narmer scanned the group. He shook, and his lungs rasped as his chest rose and fell. “Is any of you a child of the Black Land?”
Marty rested his hand gently on Kareem’s shoulder and brought the young man forward. “This is Kareem. He was born in the Black Land, near the marshes at the mouth of the Nile.”
Narmer took Kareem’s hand and squeezed it. “At last.”
“Your Majesty,” Kareem said.
“And the rest of you are from the Nine Bows.” Narmer sighed. “It is humiliating that I must fail humanity. It is more humiliating that those who come to supply the deficit must always be of the Nine Bows.”
“Nine bows?” Surjan murmured.
“He means foreigners,” Gunther said. “Non-Egyptians.”
“I am from so far away,” Lowanna said, “that I am not of the Nine Bows.”
“Nubia?” Narmer asked. “Punt?”
“I’m from across the ocean,” Lowanna said. “Many months of dangerous journey from here. You have not heard of my home, Your Majesty, but even in my distant land, the name of the Black Land is well known. As is the name of King Narmer.”
“You flatter me,” Narmer murmured. “I am a failure. The Lower Black Land battles me, the Children of Seth eat my people. My domain is diminished to a grain of wheat, and now even that grain is to be eaten. Soon I and my kingdom shall be cast into the latrine.”
Was this, after all, an alternate universe? One in which Narmer never unified Egypt, but died a failure?
Or did this Narmer have a future ahead of him still?
“You entered the tunnel,” Narmer said.
Marty’s heart stopped.
“Yes,” François said. “What do you know about that tunnel?”
“You entered the tunnel,” Narmer said, “and then you found yourselves here. You found yourselves now. And you are looking for the tunnel again.”
They all stared.
“How did you know?” Surjan asked.
Narmer chuckled. “I have seen some of the others. They always look like you. They are always from the Nine Bows. Lands with strange names. Harsh and uncouth to the ear. And they always come looking for the tunnel. I think the tunnel makes them search for it. The tunnel seduces them. Which means that what becomes of them is my fault.”
Marty shivered. “Did you build the tunnel?”
“I must warn you that it’s futile,” Narmer said. “I have seen many champions such as yourselves over the years. I have seen them enter the tunnel. They die and turn to dust. All of them.”
François whistled.
Marty felt betrayed. By his dream. By himself, too—or whoever had put the hieroglyphs of his personal invention into the tunnel.
“I was a believer in my father’s visions as a young man,” Narmer said. “But I have seen too much death. I have caused too much death. It is time to let go of the visions, accept that my death, too, is inevitable, and that there will be no great kingdom.”
“Visions?” Marty asked. “Visions of the future of the Two Lands?”
“And more,” Narmer said. “Visions of each band of heroes before it came. Visions that the end had come, and that there would be no more heroes. And then, unexpectedly, visions of you. One final band. One last chance.”
“But there will be a great kingdom,” Gunther said. “Or, at least, there can be. We’ve all seen its ruins. We’ve seen the ruins of the kingdom that lasted three thousand years. And you will be the one who unites that kingdom.”
“If you don’t surrender,” Surjan added.
Narmer wheezed in and out and shook his head faintly.
“Who built the tunnel?” François asked. “Was it your father, then?”
“My father did not build the tunnel,” Narmer said. “But he inherited the tunnel and its lore from the men who knew the Builders.” He seemed to be sinking into the bolsters before Marty’s very eyes. “The Builders were not men such as you and I.”
“What do you mean?” Gunther frowned. “Were they more heroic than us?”
“You mean the Sethians,” Marty said. “The Children of Seth built the tunnel and summoned us here?” He felt betrayed again.
“No,” Narmer said. “The Builders were a greater people. They came down from heaven in mighty vessels. They were tall as giraffes and they had breath like storm winds.”
“Breath . . . like a crocodile?” Marty asked, thinking of the text on the tablet.
“If you prefer.” Narmer tipped his head slightly.
“How do you know this?” Gunther asked.
“I have seen their works,” Narmer said. “Their buildings, their canals, their plazas . . . their tunnels. My father told me of hearing their stormy breath. The Children of Seth were some of their servants and their creation, who rebelled and were left behind as a punishment. The Children of Bast and the Children of Hathor were also their servants, and there are others. If my father is to be believed, then there are many others, all over this world. But they are all fallen, degenerate races, much weaker and stupider than their masters. The Builders had mighty tools and powerful vessels such as mankind has never known, and the Builders came down from heaven to save mankind.”
“I can’t tell if I’m listening to some creation folktale,” Lowanna grumbled, “or watching Ancient Aliens on late-night cable TV.”
“Your father inherited the tunnel.” Marty tried to stay focused, against the thousand images and ideas swirling in his head.
“My father’s father was a foreman for the Builders. And when their work on the tunnel was complete, they consigned it into his hands. He was to operate the tunnel, to cause it to function, and he was to pass that burden on to his sons.”
“Its function is . . . what, exactly?” François said.
“It calls heroes,” Narmer said. “And then it kills them.”
Marty felt he was standing up to his waist in ashes. “Is that what the Builders told your grandfather?”
Narmer’s breathing was slower. His skin, brown and cracked, still managed to appear translucent, revealing thick webs of blue veins beneath. “The Builders said they had come to this planet to prepare its people. They said that a great trial was coming this way. They said that humanity as a whole could never be ready for that battle, but if the Builders had their way, they would prepare champions to fight for humanity. They told my grandfather that the Black Land stood upon something they called the ‘Way.’ That heroes who were tested here and went forward would be tested at other ‘Stations’ along the Way, in order to become greater and nobler, until they were brought to stand in the appropriate place and time in order to fight for all mankind.”
“And we’re the last.” François whistled. “The last, after the last. The postscript, the afterthought.”
“Are there other tunnels, then?” Surjan grimaced.
Narmer shrugged.
“How do you operate the tunnel?” Marty asked.
“There are procedures,” Narmer said. “It is a machine, though a very complex one. It does not matter now. I have come to the end of my days. I have no child to learn the methods of operation from me, and we have lost the Black Land. Perhaps the Children of Seth will work the tunnels. Perhaps they will create their own champions, mighty in all their evil, and those champions will stand against the greater evil when the time comes.”
“What is wrong with the king?” Gunther asked the nearer of the two priests, the one in the robe.
The man shrugged. He was tall, with a blocky head. “He fails, and his failure is beyond our arts to cure.”
The priest wearing the panther skin worried his fingers. He was short and rotund with jowls that moved as he spoke. “We fled the Black Land looking for a famous healing spring. It seems that we fled too late. Even now, we are wasting time, when every second might mean life or death for the king!”
“Why would the Builders devise such an engine?” Marty asked. “You say it calls men and then it kills them?”
“I said that it calls heroes,” Narmer murmured. “And they reach the tunnel at the end of a long journey, and enter into it to solve its mysteries, and the tunnel kills them. They turn to ash. I have seen it with my own eyes, many times. My father believed the tale he passed on to me. But as far as I have ever seen, it is a lie. Perhaps it was always a lie.”
“What if the Builders are mankind’s enemy?” François asked. “What if the function of the tunnel is to call for mankind’s great potential defenders and murder them so they can’t do any good?”
“I don’t know.” Marty bit his lower lip. “What we’re saying is that it doesn’t make that much sense that some advanced people built a machine to attract and, uh, train heroes for some kind of final battle, but that makes a bunch much more sense than aliens building a machine to summon potential heroes and murder them. That’s a bit far-fetched.”
“I can’t believe I’m even hearing you say the word ‘far-fetched,’” François said, “after everything you’ve already witnessed and done. Do I need to remind you of all the crazy things you have already personally experienced, or shall I just draw a picture of a ballpoint pen?”
“Pen?” Gunther muttered.
Marty closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
“It seems indirect,” Surjan said. “If these Builders could identify you as a threat before you were born, François, why not just kill you in the cradle?”
Marty’s heart was flat. Did it matter what the motivations of the Builders were, if the end result was that Marty and his companions got reduced to ash, regardless? The difference between a lie and a broken machine was, practically speaking, nothing.
“If the story the Builders told is true,” Lowanna said. “Does that mean that we’re humanity’s last hope?”
Marty rubbed his eyes. He was tired and he didn’t want the responsibility. “Because there will be no more champions?”
“Because there will be no more champions,” Lowanna said. “Some kind of monster enemy is coming for the entire species, and friendly aliens set up a training gauntlet for heroes, but we’re the last to get through before the engine falls out of use.”
“In fact, we made it through after the engine had fallen out of use,” François said. “If you think about it.”
“This is a very strange story,” Surjan said.
“I failed,” Narmer said. “I lost my war with the Lower Black Land. I had no children to whom to pass the lore of the tunnel, and I never summoned heroes who could survive the journey.”
“Except us,” François said. “So far.”
“Don’t go,” Narmer said. “Don’t choose the tunnel. It is death.”
Marty bit his lip. Did he really have a choice? Hadn’t the tunnel chosen him? And if he wasn’t going to enter the tunnel, what on earth would he do instead?
Simply choose to live here and now, in the fourth millennium B.C.E.?
Under Sethian rule?
“My only consolation at my early death,” Narmer said slowly, “is that I will not be there to see you reduced by the tunnel to ash.”
He coughed again, so violently that his priests had to catch him from falling off the palanquin.