Lincoln Child - The Third Gate

Jennifer stirred again. She took in a deep, shuddering breath. For a moment, she fell still. And then-for the first time in more than thirty hours-her eyes fluttered open. She looked at the ceiling, her gaze vague, unfocused. Then-after another minute-she struggled to sit up.

“Ethan?” she called out, her voice hoarse.

In the low light, with the surrounding forest of tiny lights and digital readouts, the room seemed strange, almost exotic: a mosaic of red and yellow and green, as if the gods had laid a skein of jewels across a night sky, transforming normally white stars into brilliant colors. Jennifer blinked, then blinked again, uncomprehending. And then her gaze fell on something familiar: the ancient silver amulet, left hanging by Ethan Rush on its chain from a nearby monitor.

Jennifer’s brow furrowed.

The amulet showed a crude depiction of one of the most famous scenes of Egyptian mythology: Isis, having assembled the fragments of the dead and butchered Osiris, reanimating his body through a magical spell and transforming him into the god of the underworld.

The amulet gleamed fitfully in the lambent light of the instrumentation. As she stared, Jennifer’s body grew increasing rigid. Her breathing slowly became more shallow and ragged. Suddenly-with a faint expelling sigh, like air escaping from a bellows-her jaw sagged, her pupils rolled up into her head, and she collapsed back onto the bed.

Ten, or perhaps fifteen, minutes passed in which the examination room remained silent. And then Jennifer Rush sat up again. She took a shallow, exploratory breath, followed by a deeper one. She closed her eyes, opened them again. Then she licked her lips gently, almost experimentally.

And then-with a single, mechanical motion-she swung her legs over the side of the bed and let her feet slip to the cold, tiled floor.

She took a step forward, hesitated, stepped forward again. The pulse-oximeter clamp brushed against the nearest bank of instruments and fell away from her little finger. She reached up, felt the network of leads attached to her neck and forehead, and pulled them away like so many cobwebs. Then she looked around. Her eyes were cloudy but nevertheless focused.

The door lay ahead. She made for it, then stopped, her progress once again arrested. This time the culprit was the intravenous line, running from the saline bag to the catheter. Jennifer tried walking forward again, watched the saline rack tip forward; glanced along the IV line to her wrist; then grasped the catheter and pulled it roughly from her vein.

This time, when she moved toward the exit, there were no further difficulties.

Leaving the medical suite and stepping into the central hallway of Red, she glanced first left, then right. The corridor was empty: most off-duty personnel were either in their quarters or in the public rooms, eagerly awaiting word from chamber three.

Jennifer hesitated in the doorway for a moment, perhaps getting her bearings, perhaps simply regaining her equilibrium. Then she turned left and proceeded down the hall. At the first intersection, she turned right. Her eyes remained cloudy, and her gait was halting-like somebody who had been off her feet for a long, long time-but as she walked her gait improved, her breathing became more and more regular.

She stopped at a door marked HAZARDOUS MATERIALS STORAGE. EXPLOSIVE AND HIGHLY VOLATILE-ACCESS RESTRICTED. She turned the knob, found it locked. But the identity card around her neck-so crisp, so light, such a shiny shade of blue-slid easily through the reader beside the door; the lock sprang open; and she slipped into the room and out of sight.

Chamber three had fallen into a shocked, confused silence. As Logan watched, Porter Stone slowly sank to his knees before the large onyx chest-whether from weariness or disappointment, or some other emotion, he couldn’t be sure. Wordlessly, Stone let the two objects slip to the floor.

Logan peered around the chamber, its black surfaces gleaming dimly in the reflected glow of the flashlights. He glanced at the bundles of ancient hemp, scattered around the floor in a corona of disarray. He glanced at the low bed at the rear of the chamber, almost too faint to make out, with its once-beautiful coverlet and pillow. He glanced at the gold-framed table, covered with carefully arranged papyri. He glanced at the small golden boxes, once sealed but now spilling their contents: curlings of copper, a spike of meteoric iron, filaments of gold. Finally, his eye came to rest on the two devices-he could think of no other word for them-that sat beside Stone: the white, bowl-like implement and the concave apparatus covered in red enamel. They rested upon the bags of woven gold that had held them: five-thousand-year-old enigmas, practically daring the onlookers to parse their secrets.

It all seemed impossibly strange.

From the beginning, everything about Narmer’s tomb had been unusual. It had been similar to those of the kings who had followed him centuries later-and yet, in many ways, so very unlike. His mummy had been found in the second, not the third, chamber: reason dictated the final chamber would contain something even more critical, even more important, for the afterlife. And yet, as Logan glanced around at the scrolls and bits of metal, he could not begin to imagine what it was.

He stared down again at the two devices. One red, and one white-just like the old crowns of upper and lower Egypt.

“Crowns,” he murmured.

His was the first voice to break the silence. A half-dozen heads swiveled toward him. Stone’s was not among them.

“Yes?” Stone murmured, his back to Logan.

“Those two devices. We know that, whatever they are, they’re meant to be worn on the head. After all, that’s the depiction in the painting, back in chamber one.”

Stone didn’t answer. He merely shook his head.

“There’s nothing else they can be but crowns,” Logan went on. “They’re red and white-the proper colors. They even vaguely resemble the elements of the double crown, based on the depictions we’ve all seen.”

“These aren’t crowns,” Stone said. His voice was low, distant. “These are the tinkerings of a mad king, indulged by his priests: toys, nothing more. No wonder his descendants broke with his ways.”

“They’re bizarre, I admit,” Logan said. “They’re not crowns in any decorative or stylized sense. But they must have value-and great value, at that. Otherwise, why place them in the most holy chamber of the tomb? Why seal them in enclosures of such magnificence? Why set such a terrible curse upon them?”

“Because Narmer went insane,” Stone said bitterly. “I should have guessed it. Why else would he have himself buried out here, in this godforsaken place, many miles from his own kingdom? Why break with a tradition that would endure for a thousand years?”

“Narmer was the tradition,” Dr. Rush said quietly. “It was those who followed that broke with him-not the other way around.”

During this exchange, Tina Romero had returned to the gold-framed table and was again glancing from one papyrus to another with rapt concentration. All at once she straightened, turned back to the group. “I think I understand,” she said.

All eyes swiveled toward her.

“I’ve said before that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs were interested in near-death experience,” she went on. “What they called the ‘second region of night.’ But if I understand these texts, they were more than just interested. It seems they-or at least Narmer-practiced them as well.”

“What are you saying?” Stone asked. “How can you practice a near-death experience?”

“I’m simply telling you what the scrolls tell me,” she replied, lifting a papyrus as if to hammer home her point. “Again and again, ib is mentioned here. Ib — the ancient Egyptian word for heart. The Egyptians believed it was the heart, not the brain, that was the seat of knowledge, emotion, thought. The heart was the key to the soul, critical to surviving into the afterlife. But ib, as written in these texts, isn’t being discussed in religious terms. It’s described in more like…” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “More like clinical terms.” She put down the scroll. “I said before these read more like instructions than incantations.”