David Sakmyster - The Pharos Objective

“Looked like the head of a sphinx, or a goddess,” said the other diver, Victor Kowalski. Victor was a New Orleans native, bald and black as night, a veteran Navy Seal, and not without a bit of clairvoyant talent himself. Waxman had found him quite valuable over the years, in more ways than one. Everyone on his team had their talents.

Victor and Elliot had solid scuba expertise and physical strengths to complement their psychic abilities, while the other team members that comprised the Morpheus Initiative-Nina Osseni, Amelia Gaines, Xavier Montross, Tom Ellis, Dennis Benford and Mary Novaka-were all powerful remote viewers. But the members Waxman really had his eye on were the Crowes. Caleb and his mother, Helen, were here while Caleb’s younger sister, Phoebe, the final member of the Initiative, remained back at their home in Sodus, confined to a wheelchair after an unfortunate accident several years earlier. Even so, she managed to be somewhat useful. At times.

A whole family of psychics. Talented remote viewers. Just as he had expected when he first recruited them for the Initiative almost fifteen years ago. He had brought in Helen first, knowing that she would only come with her children. And if either child had any hereditary powers, Waxman would be able to discern that along the way. But after the tragic incident in Belize, everything changed. Helen was still more than willing, but Caleb… he blamed himself for Phoebe’s injury. Promptly at eighteen, he’d left the Morpheus team and gone his own way.

Bright kid, scholarship to anywhere he wanted, Waxman recalled. Cruised through Columbia. Teaching now-a professorship in Ancient History. At least he kept that interest alive. And he was here, wasn’t he?

Of course, that was partly a result of Waxman’s doing. He had pulled some strings with Columbia’s Board, then maneuvered Caleb into a slot on a research dive in Alexandria during the same time the Morpheus Initiative would begin phase two of their Pharos Project. Once he’d arrived, Helen had been more than persuasive and convinced Caleb to at least take advantage of Waxman’s offer to use his boat and resources to conduct his own research. Together again. And if Waxman got his way, it would just be the start. He needed Caleb, but he wasn’t about to let on just how much.

Waxman finished his drink and headed down into the lower level, where Victor and Elliot were just closing the door, sealing the tank and setting the dials on the recompression chamber. They stepped away, breathing heavily, and dripping all over his hardwood floors. Scowling, Waxman handed Victor his empty glass. “Fill that.” He approached the chamber and peered inside at Caleb’s twisted body on the cot. The kid’s eyelids were flickering.

Still dreaming? Still seeing visions? “We need to know what he saw. How long is he going to be in there?”

“Six hours at least today,” said Elliot. “And probably a few hours each for the next couple days until-”

Waxman waved away the details. “He can hear me?”

“Yep, just hit the intercom switch.”

He moved in closer, then turned back. “Oh and Victor, when you return with my drink, bring Caleb a pad of paper and a box of pencils.”

Waxman pulled up a chair and yelled over his shoulder, “And find me that statue’s head!”

Caleb awoke with a wheezing, breathless gasp and immediately sat up but reeled suddenly as his head spun in flaring pain. He was in what looked like the inside of a space capsule: all white and padded, one narrow cot to sleep on, and a tiny porthole window. A pad of paper, thick, with about a hundred sheets, lay on the floor next to his uncomfortable sleeping accommodations along with a dozen sharpened pencils, all bundled together with a rubber band.

The he heard it: knock, click, knock, click. He looked up and nearly blacked out again. He put his head back down and groaned. The air was thin, pure, almost cold.

“That’s right,” came a voice he recognized only too well from the small intercom speaker on the wall. “Concentrated oxygen to go with the pressure treatment.”

Caleb grunted. “Hi, George.” His voice sounded nasally, cartoonish, a by-product of the oxygen inhalation.

“Hello Caleb. Sorry about your predicament. Lucky I was here, and lucky I brought my own recompression chamber. Saved you a trip to the local hospital, where you’d be more likely to die from something other than what got you there in the first place.”

“Yeah, I’m so lucky.”

“Why’d you rise so fast, Caleb? Did you see something?”

Caleb rubbed his temples. A flash of light, the burning Egyptian sky suddenly turning dark as he stepped into the shadow of the Pharos. He blinked. “Where’s my mother?”

“In talks with the Egyptian Council of Authorities, trying to secure access to the catacombs along the old Canopic Way. Assuring dive permits-”

“A little late for that.”

“We used yours,” Waxman said. Caleb now noticed the face leering in at him from the porthole window. Hair the color of rock salt, wavy and slicked back over a high, triangular forehead; narrow cheekbones and a hard, pointed jaw set below pencil-thin lips. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and from the tip hung a long spindle of ash about to fall. Tendrils of smoke coiled around his face, obscuring his eyes and fogging the window. “Remind me,” Waxman continued, “to thank Columbia for their assistance in our little quest.”

“ Your quest,” Caleb corrected, trying to sit up as the pressure chamber did its work. “I opted out of the Morpheus Initiative four years ago. Remember?”

“I seem to recall something about that,” Waxman said with a grin. “And again, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Tell it to Phoebe.”

“I did. I do… every time I see her.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. “When do you-?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you? We’ve been using your home on Sodus Bay as our new headquarters.”

“She must’ve left that out,” Caleb said with some bitterness. “But then again, we don’t talk much.” And Caleb didn’t want to ask, So where do you sleep?

“Pity. You’d be proud of your sister. Even from her wheelchair, she’s become quite an asset. Her access to the University of Rochester archives and labs has proven invaluable, and the way she manages the sessions, catalogs the drawings, comes up with the targets and tests the group members… she’s really something.”

“Good for her.” Caleb wanted it to come out sarcastically, but he also meant it. He had known about her success at her first year in the university, but had limited his correspondence with her. The past was too much, the guilt too intense. He wouldn’t even pick up the phone when she called-at first, several times a week, then after his lack of response, once a month. Her messages piled up in the voicemail cache until he would be forced to delete them to free up space.

Waxman tapped on the door. “And something about being there, in your childhood home, with its tiny lighthouse overlooking the bay, I don’t know…”-he grinned and stepped back so only the streaky window remained visible-“it helps focus the visions, directs the team toward the proper mind frame for its mission.”

“And what exactly is the mission this time, George?” Caleb always called him George to his face. Maybe he was being unfair, but the man had inserted himself into their lives, into his family, like a splinter under a fingernail, and so soon after Dad had been lost. At the time, even at such a young age, Caleb had known the story of Odysseus. Enamored by his father’s bedtime tales of Greek tragedies and classical literature, Caleb imagined Waxman as one of Penelope’s suitors to his father’s Odysseus; and he kept alive a fantasy that his father would one day return with vengeance in his heart and rout anyone foolish enough to have tried to take his place.