Alex Archer - Eternal Journey

“Say no more. Say no more,” he shot back.

Jennifer continued, “Her symbols include the sistra. It’s sort of a rattle, and we’ve found two of them here. Hathor was especially prominent in Ta-Netjer.”

“The Land of God,” Wes translated.

“Which is modern-day Dendra in northern Egypt.” Jennifer pointed to another image of Hathor on a stone. “Her priests were male and female, dancers, musicians. Some were midwives, and it was said Hathor’s oracles could interpret people’s dreams.”

Wes passed Annja the pottery piece he’d been studying. “Careful with it,” he instructed. Then he shook his head and frowned, realizing he need make no such admonition to her.

“Primal mother, you called her?” Annja mused.

Wes opened his mouth to answer, but Jennifer clicked her teeth, as much as telling him this question was hers to field. “The Egyptians believed that the world began when the great floods retreated, and at that time Hathor slipped from the reeds and stood on the first patch of dry ground. The first day of the ancient year was considered her birthday, and they celebrated it with a lavish festival. Before dawn, they’d tote her statue onto the roof of her temple at Dendra.”

Annja nodded. “So that the rays of Horus, her husband, could shine on the statue, thus representing the marriage of the sun and the sky.”

Jennifer beamed at Annja’s knowledge. “But it wasn’t all light,” she said.

“No.” Annja scowled. “If I remember my studies, she had a few dark roles, too. Some say she was also the goddess Sekhmet, and in that guise she exacted a blood toll on mankind.” She returned the pottery piece to Wes. “A temple at Kom el-Hism in the Middle Kingdom was dedicated to Sekhmet-Hathor.” Maybe there was the monster angle. Sekhmet down under, Annja mused.

“Indeed!” Jennifer said. “In one of Tutankhamen’s shrines, they discovered a carving that tells how Hathor became Sekhmet at her father’s, Ra’s, urging. She nearly wiped out humanity, but she finally went back to being Hathor and stopped the massacre. A smart one, you are, Miss Creed. Too bad you can’t stay longer.”

Annja politely ignored the invitation. “Wasn’t Hathor said to accept the dead at the gates of the west?”

“Now, that role wasn’t dark!” Wes snorted. “The goddess greeted them at the gates with bread and beer. Hope it was a pint of Tooheys.”

Annja couldn’t help but laugh with him. “I will be back,” she told him. “Without a cameraman.”

After a few moments she drifted away to another section of the dig, leaving Wes and his wife to discuss the pottery shards and the mother goddess. “And maybe I’ll try a Tooheys myself tonight,” Annja called back to them.

Three members of the five-man film crew were leaving on a red-eye flight. But she and Oliver were scheduled to fly out the next day around noon. So tonight she’d settle back with her laptop in her hotel room in Sydney—after a good meal, of course, and that Tooheys—and search her favorite archaeology Web sites for more tidbits about Hathor. Maybe she’d search the fringe sites, too.

She made a mental note to also look into the Brisbane dig. The theories she’d already read about the Australian sites suggested that thousands of years ago Egyptians had sailed here looking for gold, and that the aboriginals who lived here at the time were said to have heard the beating hearts of all the ships, likely the drums that kept the oarsmen in time.

Could Wes Michaels come up with enough evidence to silence the skeptics and prove that the Egyptians really did reach Australian soil before Captain Cook?

Lost in thought, Annja nearly tripped over one of the archaeologists.

“No room for bludgers here, eh, cobber?” A lanky archaeologist raised his eyebrows when Annja caught herself from falling. His face was as smooth and flat as a shovel, and it glistened with sweat in the late-afternoon sun. It wasn’t a warm day, it being early fall in Australia, but his shirt was heavy and long-sleeved, and the sweat stains were dark under his arms.

“No bludgers,” Annja admitted. It was Australian slang for a layabout, someone who let others do the work for him.

“Your cameraman caught Josie napping yesterday, Miss Creed, and that’s been sitting in my craw. I complained to Dr. Michaels about it, but I bet he didn’t say anything to you. Did he?”

Annja shook her head.

“It’ll make us all look like lazy louts. Not one of us is a bludger. Josie’s just got a touch of the flu is all. Still under it, she is.” He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing the dirt.

Annja offered the archaeologist a weak smile. “Oliver’s just wrapping,” she said. “We’re heading back to Sydney within the hour.”

“He didn’t need to film Josie taking a little snooze,” the man persisted. He gestured to the largest tree at the dig site, a fifty-yard tall stringybark that was mostly dead. Josie, the oldest archaeologist, was sitting against the trunk. “Josie there is gonna make us all look—”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Annja poked out her lower lip and let out a long breath that fluttered her hair. “It’s a one-hour show, and we’re interested in the hieroglyphics, nothing else.” Annja wouldn’t go so far as to promise that the snoozing archaeologist wouldn’t appear in the segment. She’d long ago learned not to make any promises regarding Chasing History’s Monsters.

“One hour’s all?” the man asked.

She nodded. She’d thought she’d explained that to everyone.

“Dr. Michaels’ll be mad as a cut snake, Miss Creed. I’ll wager he figures that as many days as you’ve been out here you were putting together some sort of series like those Alaskan crab fishermen have. Make him a local celebrity. Get him all kinds of publicity on the National Geographic Channel or…”

Annja feigned interest in something on the rise and headed in that direction. “One hour is all,” she called out. There was a tinge of irritation in her voice—both at the archaeologist’s complaints and the shortness of the segment. This site was worthy of much more than a one-hour piece—many of the places she visited were worthy of more. But television had its limits, she realized. She just didn’t have to like them.

She spied Oliver at the top of the ridge, taking a few shots of the student dig in the distance. Probably going to compare its small size to the professional dig here…if there was room, she thought. “Yep. Only one bloody hour,” she mumbled.

Annja got up early, packed her suitcase and jogged down six flights in the hotel tower to knock on Oliver’s door. The cameraman had a room on the smoking floor, and the nicotine that permeated the walls set her nose to wrinkling and settled uncomfortably in her mouth.

“C’mon, Ollie. Answer the door. It stinks out here. Get up. C’mon,” she shouted.

She’d slept poorly, snatching only minutes here and there, her dreams filled with fire and with the notion of the mother goddess’s other self nearly wiping out humankind. How would one of Hathor’s oracles interpret such nightmares?

“I need coffee, Oliver. C’mon. Let’s get some food.” She intended to coax the notoriously late-sleeping cameraman to join her for breakfast, but he wouldn’t stir. The rest of the crew gone on the red-eye. She knocked once more and then resigned herself to breakfasting alone.

“Good thing Oliver’s sleeping in,” she whispered several minutes later as she perused the menu in the restaurant off the lobby. The cup of coffee in front of her had so far done nothing to rejuvenate her. “I don’t have to hold back ordering.” She was famished and decided it was better that her cameraman didn’t see her gorge herself.