Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

Then, as he had been taught, he arranged a comfortable niche in which to spread himself, saw to it that certain hinged stones devised by Hotep fell swiftly and smoothly into place on swinging pivots to cut off all entrance and exit, placed over a secret spring that controlled the pivots a tiny disk of laminated, fluorescent substance, likewise furnished by the ancients from the Roof of the World. On this was trained the perforations from the pellet of radium.

The potent radiations from the sacred element, they told him, would disintegrate each lamination of the disk in exactly one thousand years. Therefore, Kleon peeled off the excess layers and left but ten to withstand the steady buffets of the radium. As the bombardment finally pierced the last fluorescent layer, the unobstructed rays would then impinge on the naked spring that actuated the mechanism of the pivoting stones. They would turn smoothly in their sockets; air would rush in from outer vents, whiff away the preservative gases, and he, Kleon, would then awake as though from a short, dreamless nap, ten thousand years into the future.

They had tried to explain to him the exact interaction of pure, elemental radium with the special mixture of sulphurous oxides, hydrochloric acid, sulphocyanides and hydrocarbons of which volcanic gases are compounded, but chemistry was not a science of which the Greeks had any knowledge. It was sufficient for Kleon that the products of the interaction had certain effects on body tissues and organs. They acted as an arrester of vital processes, a bath in which all life remained suspended indefinitely with blood uncongealed and flesh both fresh and firm.

At last the day arrived. Kleon felt his heart beat unduly fast. Suppose the gymnosophists had been but playing on his Greek credulity, suppose they were magicians whose feats were illusions; suppose, instead, he would die within this tomb and never emerge. He laughed, and the sound of his laughter was hollow in his ears. He did not fear death, yet-

They were within the pyramid, within the sacred chamber—only Hotep and he. Outside, guarding the entrance, was his crew, spears uplifted in reverence in accordance with his strict instructions. Beyond, covering the cleared space around the pyramid, flat on their faces in adoration, lay the Mayas. Quetzal, the blond white god, it had been announced to them, intended to sleep. He was weary of the wickedness of the world. But some day, refreshed, mighty, he would arise and bring to his children, the Mayas, eternal life, peace and unexampled prosperity.

“I think,” Kleon told Hotep with a grim smile, “that will be sufficient to protect me from harm.” He looked shrewdly at the Egyptian. “I think also,” he continued, “that you will find it profitable to perpetuate the legend.”

Hotep grinned slyly in his beard. “You have an all-penetrating eye, noble Kleon. I shall make myself high priest of Quetzal, and my children after me.”

“I didn’t doubt it,” Kleon commented dryly. Then his face became an expressionless mask. He tested the vents, the ensealing stone. “It is time, O Hotep. Do you retire and swing the stone into place behind you. Then, as you value your life and the honor of your approaching priesthood, seek no more entrance to my abode.”

The Egyptian struggled for utterance in his black beard, bowed suddenly, and retired. The huge, rough-hewn stone clicked softly into place. The chamber was sealed.

Kleon, as one already dead, went about his preparations. A smoky torch was all his illumination. The laminated disk swung into position over the spring. The lead pellet fitted snugly into its niche. A touch of the mechanism and infinitesimal holes in the lead trained on the disk. A curious stream of radiance leaped out into the chamber. The fluorescent material of the ten-laminated disk glowed with a fiery bombardment. Kleon felt a strange tingling of his skin, as though innumerable atoms were popping into oblivion. He had been warned against the deadly effects of the unobstructed radium.

Half aghast at what he was about to do, he completed his preparations. Very carefully he laid himself down on his prepared pallet, hewn out of the solid wall, stretched himself out. By his side he laid his sword, and a keen-edged javelin. He was a fighting man, a leader of a phalanx. Who knew what manner of men he might meet in that remote, unimaginable future. In a corner of the chamber were sealed potteries, filled with dried food and water against his hunger and thirst on awakening.

He grimaced. Would he indeed awaken? His sinewy fingers held on the tiny metal lever at his side. A downward pressure and the smooth-shaped stones that sealed the vents from the volcano would open. After that--

The torch flickered smokily. Soon it would go out. The air in the in-closure was being fast used up. Breathing was becoming laborious. The stream of fiery radiance across the gloom seemed timeless; the disk pricked out in pin points of flame. The dry tingling of his skin increased. He gritted his teeth, swung down on the lever.

Three great stones moved noiselessly on their sockets; three smooth holes appeared suddenly in the wall. There was a faint rumble, a sucking sound. Gas billowed in, thick, yellow.

It swarmed through the underground chamber with clammy, twining tentacles. It beat around his head with acrid, suffocating vapors. The torch flickered, plunged into darkness. His body twitched; his lungs labored for air. The gas sucked in, stung and smarted.

But already a faint luminescence glimmered through the yellow, clogging surge. It spread. Fireflies glittered and danced. There was a crackling sound, new pungent odors. Chemical transformations beyond his knowledge were taking place.

Kleon felt a sudden release from the burning sensations. He tried to breathe, couldn’t. He tried to move his limbs. They refused all action. The pounding of his heart slowed, died. A vast drowsiness assailed him. He was slipping. Time slipped with him.

This, then, was death. The chamber revolved slowly around him. His thoughts drifted through soft obstructions. Never again would he see his native vines, his gnarled olives—Athens—Alexander—comrades-

The chamber underneath the pyramid was very still. The vents to the volcano had closed automatically. The transformed gases laved the motionless body in their bath of inanition. The radium poured forth its ceaseless glow. The laminated disk glittered under the impact. All was silence. Time had ceased-

Sam Ward wiped the sweat from the palms of his hands along the rough khaki of his trousers, and stared. He was tired, perspiring, bitten by stinging insects, broiled by the hot Guatemalan sun, and more than a bit disappointed. He had been led to expect more.

“There eet ees,” the half-breed Indian pointed his grimy finger with half-triumphant, half-fearful gesture. “Juan nevaire lies. Now señor will pay heem the fifty dollars Mex he promise. Juan do not weesh to stay. There ees dangaire.”

Sam did not answer. He took in the scene with practiced eyes. It was a find, all right, but there were innumerable higher and more elaborate ruins within the Yucatan Peninsula. There would be nothing here of startling importance.

Sam had done many things in the few years since he had left college. China and the war lords, diggings in the Mesopotamia coupled with certain unheralded brushes with the Bedouins, an unregulated, unauthorized stay with the Harvard excavations at Chichen-Itza in Yucatan. Then, finally, this comparatively tame, but well-paid assignment to investigate the inner jungles of Guatemala for possibilities of banana plantations on behalf of a New York syndicate.

At San Felipe, off the Pacific Coast, he had met Juan. A dirtier, frowsier, more drink-sodden half-breed did not exist. But Sam found him almost his sole source of information.