Lincoln Child - The Third Gate

It was refreshing to chat with someone who hadn’t heard of him before, who didn’t pester him with a hundred questions. Logan gave a smile of thanks. “Nice talking to you.”

“Sure. Mind tossing me that book on your way out?”

Logan walked over to the book that had fallen from the tech’s lap. Picking it up, he saw it was William Hope Hodgson’s exceptionally weird novel The House on the Borderland.

He handed it to Landau. “Sure this is the kind of book you want to be reading out here?”

“What do you mean?” Laudau took the book and cradled it protectively.

“The Sudd’s bizarre enough. Reading stuff like that besides may rot your mind.”

“Huh. Maybe that explains it.” And Landau turned around and resumed his typing.

F rom White, Logan crossed another floating tube into Maroon, which housed-according to a small sign at the far end of the access vent-the historical archives and exotic sciences. Although Logan had no idea what “exotic sciences” were, he began to get an idea as soon as he peeked into some of the additional modular labs that had been installed in this wing. One darkened lab was stocked with ancient books and manuscripts about alchemy and transmutation; the walls of another were plastered with maps of Egypt and Sudan, as well as photographs of pyramids and other structures, each image overspread with a tangle of lines and circles, intersecting at odd geometric angles. Clearly, Stone would explore any avenue of knowledge, no matter how abstruse, to help make his finds. Logan wondered if he should feel insulted that his own office was located here.

As he made his way down the corridor, he stopped before a room whose door was ajar. Although Maroon seemed to hold very few people at present, this particular room was occupied. It was dimly lit. Logan could make out a hospital bed, from which dozens of leads snaked down to various monitoring devices at its foot. It reminded him of the setups in the vacant rooms he’d seen back at the Center for Transmortality Studies.

The bed in this room, however, was not empty. Logan could see that a woman was lying on it: perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Something about her-some quality he could not quite analyze-made him stop, rooted in his tracks. Her hair was a very unusual color, a rich, dark cinnamon. Her eyes were closed. Probes were set at her temples, and others were fixed to her wrists and ankles. On the wall beside her was a very large mirror, brilliantly polished. The faint lights of the medical devices were reflected in it in myriad points of tiny color.

Logan stood there, mesmerized by this unusual sight: the woman, almost ethereal looking in the faint light of the vast arsenal of instrumentation. She lay absolutely motionless; there was not even any indication of breathing. She almost seemed to have passed from life into death. He had the distinct feeling he’d met her sometime in the past. This feeling was not in itself unusual; with his unusually sharp perception, Logan found deja vu to be a frequent companion. This time, however, the sensation was unusually strong.

There was motion by the monitors at the foot of the bed. Logan glanced toward it and was surprised to see Dr. Rush. He adjusted a dial, peered at a gauge. And then-as if with some sixth sense-he turned toward the doorway and saw Logan.

Logan began to raise his arm in greeting. But he could tell from the look on Rush’s face, from the man’s body language, that this was not the time to linger and that his presence was not welcome. So instead Logan turned away and continued down the hallway, in search of his own office.

Logan found his office in a far corner of the Exotic Sciences wing. It was modular, like the others, and contained a desk, two chairs, a laptop computer, and a single empty bookcase. He noted-with faint amusement-that there was no other equipment.

Placing his large duffel bag on the guest chair and opening it, he put a dozen or so books in the bookcase. Then he removed several pieces of equipment and placed them on the desk. Next, he removed two quotations in small frames and hung them on the wall with pushpins. Then he closed the duffel and turned to the laptop.

He logged in with the password and ID he’d been given during that morning’s processing. The site’s network was relatively easy to navigate, and he immediately saw there were three e-mails awaiting him. The first was a generic welcome, explaining the layout of the Station and the whereabouts of important locations (Medical, cafeteria). The second e-mail was from the HR woman who had processed him, laying out a few ground rules (no straying from the site, no unauthorized sat-phone communications). And the third e-mail was from a person who identified himself as Stephen Weir, assistant to Porter Stone. It was essentially an aggregation of all the strange, unanticipated, or unfortunate events that had occurred since the site went live two weeks before-in other words, the reason he was here.

Logan read over the list twice. Many of the items could be immediately discounted-lights flickering, systemic effects like nausea or dizziness-but several others remained. Firing up the laptop’s word processor, he began to make a list.

Day 2: On a routine reconnaissance, the engine of one of the Jet Skis abruptly went wild and refused to cut off. The occupant was forced to leap off to save himself, breaking a leg in the process. When the boat was finally recovered, the engine would not work at all. The following day, however, it operated normally.

Day 4: Three people, using the library late in the evening, reported hearing a strange, dry voice whispering to them in an unknown language.

Day 6: A cook reported two sides of beef missing from the meat locker-almost two hundred pounds. A careful search yielded nothing.

Day 9: Cory Landau was found wandering the marsh outside the perimeter after nightfall. When questioned, he said he’d seen a strange form in the distance, beckoning to him.

“Huh,” Cory had said to him not half an hour before. “Maybe that explains it.”

Day 10: Every electrical object, computer, and other equipment in Green shut down spontaneously at 3:15 p.m. Attempts to restart them were unsuccessful. At 3:34 p.m., they resumed functioning normally. No explanation was found.

Day 11: Tina Romero reported that the outfit of an Egyptian high priestess was missing from a closet in her office.

Day 12: Several eyewitnesses in Oasis, the drinks lounge, reported seeing strangely colored lights flickering near the horizon, accompanied by an ominous chanting, barely audible.

Day 13: A worker in the communications room reported strange noises and a machine that suddenly sprang to life when it should have been dormant.

Day 14: A machinist reported seeing a strange woman in Egyptian garb at a distance, walking across the Sudd at nightfall.

Day 15: An as-yet-undiagnosed equipment problem forced a diver to panic and surface, causing him severe injury.

Logan looked up from the screen. He already knew about the last one, of course. He’d witnessed it himself.

His thoughts drifted to King Narmer’s curse. Any man who dares enter my tomb will meet an end certain and swift… His blood and his limbs will turn to ash and his tongue cleave to his throat… I, Narmer the Everliving, will torment him and his, by day and by night, waking and sleeping, until madness and death become his eternal temple. There was something the recitation of incidents had in common. Except for the diver and the Jet Ski rider, nobody had been hurt. That did not jibe with the details of the curse.

Of course, Logan thought to himself, nobody had yet found-or entered-Narmer’s tomb…

For perhaps the dozenth time, he wondered what Narmer’s tomb might contain. Why had the pharaoh expended such effort, made such lavish sacrifices of gold and men’s lives, bestowed such a curse, to make sure his remains were never violated, his most important possessions undisturbed? What was Porter Stone keeping from him? What would a god take with him to the next world?