Firebird (33 page)

47

The tunnel was oval in shape, made of the same bluish metal as the door, vaulted over our heads with curving walls covered in hieroglyphs and cartouches. The floor was a granite walkway notched to prevent slipping, thick enough to absorb the sound of our footsteps. The air was stale, and I couldn’t make out where the dim green glow came from. There seemed to be strips of luminous tape somewhere up in the curve of the ceiling, but when I shone my torch beam up there, they were gone. I advanced slowly down the corridor, tying my headcloth around my waist and peering at some of the tens of thousands of hieroglyph figures all painted in what seemed to be their original colours.

‘This is fantastic,’ I said, ‘I’ve never seen hieroglyphs in relief on metal before. It’s something entirely new!’ I stopped to examine a particularly interesting portrait of Sekhmet — a grim faced, terrifying figure with a lion’s head, carrying the sacred sun disc and breathing fire. ‘Whoever built this place was preoccupied with the idea of devastation,’ I commented. I pointed to a stela portraying starving people with the ribs showing through their skin, and read the tiny hieroglyphs underneath. ‘The people of the valley are starving,’ I read aloud, ‘and terror stalks the land.’

Suddenly there was an audible clunk as the outer door snapped shut without warning, extinguishing the daylight. We rushed back to it and knocked, and there were answering thumps from the other side, though the door remained solidly in place. A second later the green glow strips went out.

‘Great!’ Daisy said. ‘We’re trapped! And the door looks airtight — we’re going to asphyxiate too!’ I caught the whirr and rumble of machinery from somewhere beneath the floor, and a moment later I sensed a faint stream of cool air. Then the glow strips came on again, bathing the tunnel in eerie green light. ‘There’s some kind of air circulation system at work,’ Daisy said. ‘Ibram’s team must have constructed it.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘it would have cost millions. No, this is the original technology.’

‘The ancient Egyptians didn’t have stuff like this,’ Daisy said. ‘How can you be so certain?’

I said nothing, and we walked to the end of the tunnel and found it sealed by a second blue metal door. I examined it in the light of my torch and saw what appeared to be the marks of an axe or some other sharp, heavy instrument, which had cut into the surface of the metal but done no serious damage. ‘I guess this is where Ibram or his predecessors got impatient!’ I chuckled, traversing the door with my torch beam. ‘Let’s see.’ The centre of the door was marked with the
Aker
-
lion
cartouche just as the other had been, but this time the cartouche itself lay in the middle of ten separate ellipses, each one containing a circle or dot of a different size. One of the circles — the sixth in sequence from the centre — had a ring placed horizontally around it.

‘That’s Saturn!’ Daisy said. ‘It’s easy enough.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but there are ten planets in this solar system, and ours has only nine. I’d guess we have to pick the odd one out.’

The two of us examined the planets carefully, identifying them by relative size as Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and the rest. ‘What about this one?’ Daisy asked, pointing to a very small icon that seemed to be followed by a fiery tail.

‘By God, yes!’ I said, ‘that’s Halley’s Comet. It must be. It’s a frequent visitor to our solar system but it’s not a planet!’ I pressed the comet icon and the door split in half with a thump and snapped open. ‘It’s easy stuff to us,’ I commented, ‘but a hundred years ago it would have flummoxed everyone, because it wasn’t known then there were nine planets in the system. This club only admits beings with a certain degree of knowledge.’

We were standing before a small, cylindrical ante-chamber with walls that were bare except for a large stela embedded in one of them. The stela was covered in hieroglyphs, but in the centre there was a picture of a star-filled sky with a disc shaped object suspended — an object which seemed to be trailing flames and smoke. Below the disc, apparently falling from it, was a cone enclosing a phoenix with a human eye — the Firebird — and below that was a landscape with bushes and trees. Animals such as lions and elephants, and shaven headed human figures that looked like ancient Egyptian priests were running about excitedly. We moved into the chamber cautiously and examined the stela.

‘The cone must be the Benben Stone,’ Daisy said, pointing at it, ‘but what’s the disc shaped thing?’

I peered at it then gestured a knuckle at the stars that formed the background of the disc. ‘That’s Orion,’ I said, ‘and see this big star beneath it? That’s Sirius. The disc looks almost like...it’s meant to be a space vehicle...’

‘You mean a
spaceship
?
’
she asked, and I noticed there was a tremor in her voice.

I gave her a hard look. ‘Why not? You said you’d seen bits of alien ships at Area 51.’ I peered at the picture again. ‘Look! The disc’s trailing fire, like it was damaged or something, and if you look at the front here, you’ll see that it’s...well, broken up. The Benben Stone is falling out of the broken part.’

Daisy stared at the picture again. ‘You mean the Stone is a part of the broken ship?’

‘That’s it,’ I said, ‘the Benben Stone was meant to be a meteorite — something inert. But what if it was more?’ I jabbed a finger at the cone shaped object. ‘What if it’s actually a fragment of alien technology, so advanced we can’t even comprehend it? Wouldn’t that have made it the most valuable artefact in the whole of ancient Egyptian culture — so precious that it formed the centrepiece of the Firebird Project?’

‘You mean as a religious icon?’ she asked. ‘Like the Black Stone in Mecca?’

‘Maybe, but what if it was more than that? What if it had a
use
— I mean a practical use other than just an object of veneration?’

‘What use?’ Daisy enquired.

I frowned and looked around the small chamber, then back at the stela. Inset at the bottom, beneath the picture of the Benben Stone, was what appeared to be a stylized map sprinkled with animal-headed gods, Nile boats, serpents and sphinxes. A line like a road twisted and turned through the ‘map’, and the territory it traversed was divided up into twelve distinct units, each one intricately illustrated and detailed. I peered at the second unit. Inside it there was a tiny reproduction of the falling Benben Stone in the larger stela above.

‘This is a location map of the whole complex,’ I said. ‘It seems to be based on the ancient Egyptian concept of the
Duat
, which was divided into twelve “Hours” or “Houses”. The outer tunnel we just walked down was the First House and this is the Second House.’ I moved my finger along the divisions on the map, and it came to rest on another tiny image of the Benben Stone, this time standing upright on what looked like a solid plinth. ‘Here,’ I said, counting off the divisions, ‘the Stone itself is in the Fifth House, so we have to work our way through two more. In the
Duat
, the god Ra had to utter magic spells to pass from one Hour or House to the next. The puzzles we’ve had to solve must be the equivalent of the spells.’

Suddenly, as if it had allowed us enough time, the entire wall slid upwards noiselessly. Daisy sucked in a breath. ‘Jesus Lord!’ she said. Will you get a load of this!’

48

Beyond the small chamber lay a gallery of thousands of pillars as vast as the trunks of giant trees. The pillars were made out of some reddish metal, I guessed, but might almost have been weathered sandstone. They were pitted and fluted, each of more or less uniform size, but sprouting excrescent nodes like odd metallic fungus growths. The floor of the chamber became a walkway that curved gracefully through the great columns without any kind of support or safety barrier, like a magic path through a great forest. We took tentative steps forward and I glanced upwards and saw that the pillars disappeared into the darkness above us. Below us they vanished into a shadowy abyss. Smoke or steam wafted in strands out of the chasm and I thought I could hear the hum of invisible machinery from far below. The place was lit with scores of glow strips that were constantly mobile, like the ones in the tunnel. I advanced a bit further and shone my torch on the nearest pillar. Close up the flutings looked like millions of tiny pipes fused together, and when I examined one of the fungal excrescences, I saw that it was made up of countless tiny parts like a series of micro circuits, laid one against the other without any conscious design.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ Daisy said, almost to herself, ‘the ancient Egyptians of 2000 BC didn’t build this — they could barely get it together to make a cooking pot!’

I shrugged, and suddenly Daisy screamed. For an instant her eyes went wide with terror, and I looked up just in time to see a swarm of giant birds sweeping towards us out of the ‘forest’, shrieking like marabou storks. In fact that’s what I imagined they were for a moment, until they swooped right over my head in a waft of wings, and I realized that they weren’t birds at all, but more like giant bats or flying mantarays. I drew my .380, but Daisy was already firing, her mouth twisted in fear and loathing. The shadows wheeled and swooped again, coming in so low that I thought I could feel the rush of air. Daisy pumped the trigger putting three or four rounds into one of the black things, but the creatures only banked, wheeled and dived again.

‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘Stop shooting!’

Daisy checked herself, tripped, and lost her balance. She stumbled over the edge of the walkway, dropping her SIG which went churning below her into the abyss. For a second I thought she would plummet after it, but then I saw she’d caught the edge of the walkway, and was dangling there gasping for breath. The dark shapes undulated back in amongst the columns and I rushed to help her, grasping her wrists and heaving her back.

‘Christ! Christ!’ Daisy repeated as first her torso emerged, then her legs. She sat on the floor catching sobbing breaths for a moment. ‘Shit!’ she wheezed. ‘What the fuck
were
those things?’

‘They weren’t real,’ I said, ‘you shot bullet after bullet into them and they didn’t blink. They weren’t flesh and blood, just some kind of projection. It was just a cheap trick.’

‘That cheap trick nearly cost me my life.’

‘Think of it as a warning,’ I said.

We followed the walkway as it meandered between the huge columns, advancing cautiously now, in single file, like climbers wary of hidden crevasses. The path seemed to go on endlessly, and the sense of awe grew as I started to grasp the incredible immensity of the place. Finally the walkway curved towards a door set in what looked like a sheer cliff made of the same reddish metal as the pillars, and scored with an intricate pattern of tracery like needle marks on an infinitely fine tattoo. There were alcoves, bulging pillars, great baroque vaults and deep arches in the cliff, which made it look like the wall of a great cathedral. I shone my torch beam at the door, and we made out another
Aker
-
lion
cartouche, this time set in the midst of two descending columns of hieroglyphic human figures in the familiar ancient Egyptian cameo poses. Against each figure there was a series of dots.

‘Not planets this time,’ I commented, ‘looks like we’re out of the sphere of astronomy altogether.’

Daisy held two fingers up to the columns and began counting off the number of dots. Against the first figure in the first column there were seven dots and against the corresponding figure in the second column twenty— three. The second figure in the first column had nine dots, the one below it eleven, the fourth figure twelve, the remaining three fourteen, fifteen and nineteen.

‘It’s not a mathematical progression is it?’ I said doubtfully.

‘No,’ Daisy said. She pondered it for a moment. ‘These numbers,’ she said, ‘seven and twenty three...it’s too much of a coincidence.’

‘I can’t see any connection,’ I said.

‘Seven’s the atomic weight of the element lithium,’ she said, ‘and its counterpart in the second column is sodium with an atomic weight of twenty three.’

‘The periodic table!’ I said. ‘Sodium has a family resemblance to lithium — they’re both alkali metals — but it’s much heavier, which is why it was placed at the head of the second column.’

‘Yeah, and let me think. In the periodic sequence lithium’s followed by beryllium, isn’t it? That has an atomic weight of nine. Then there’s boron with eleven, then...’

‘Carbon,’ I said, ‘with twelve.’

‘Yeah. That’s followed by nitrogen, which has an atomic weight of fourteen, oxygen which scores sixteen and fluorine which has a weight of nineteen. That’s the first column. In the second we’ve got magnesium, aluminium, silicon and so on.’

‘But there’s a mistake,’ I said, ‘the atomic weight of oxygen is sixteen, but here it’s given as fifteen.’

‘You sure the others are right?’ she asked.

We both studied them again carefully. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they’re all correct.’

‘It’s a deliberate mistake to see if we’re on our toes,’ she said, ‘like the ten planets in the solar system. The relationship between the elements was discovered by Mendeleev in 1871, so no one could have got it right much more than a century and a quarter ago. The ancient Egyptians aren’t supposed to have known about the elements, but whoever built this place certainly did.’

***

I pressed the oxygen symbol on the door and it split in half and sprang open. Inside there was an antechamber like the one in the Second House, with another stela on the wall, and we moved forward to examine it. This one showed the cone shaped object from the previous stela — the Benben Stone — on the top of an obelisk, giving off some sort of radiance, represented by beams ending in tiny hands. Around the obelisk were groups of shaven haired figures, some of whom were actually being touched by the beams of light. In the background stood a lion-headed sphinx and above it the night sky with the constellation Leo. I gazed at it, fascinated.
‘This
is
the
sealed
thing
...
with
fire
about
it
,
’
I recited,
‘which
contains
the
efflux
of
Osiris
and
it
is
put
in
Rostau
.
It
has
been
hidden
since
it
fell
from
him
,
and
it
is
what
fell
from
him
on
to
the
desert
sand
.
’

‘What’s that?’ Daisy asked.

‘Spell 1080 of the Coffin Texts,’ I said.

‘The what?’

‘Coffin Texts — one of the major records we have of ancient Egyptian religious practice. That verse was always thought to refer to the Benben Stone. It suggests the Stone gave out some kind of divine fire or radiance — just like in this picture.’

‘But the “fire” is actually touching some of the figures,’ Daisy said, ‘as if the Stone’s power is influencing them in some way...’

‘
Communicating
with them,’ I said. ‘Look — there’s a Firebird squashed up inside the cone, just as there is in the first stela. It’s like a chick inside an egg — as if there’s a living creature in the Stone.’

‘An artificial intelligence?’ Daisy said, her voice filled with awe. ‘Some kind of computer capable of communicating with human beings.’ Her eyes shone as she looked at the picture. ‘Imagine it! A computer that fell from a starship more than ten thousand years ago! If you had access to its memories, just think what intellectual riches there’d be! If the computer could really
talk
to people it could tell them the whole history of the galaxy — all the wisdom of a civilization millennia more advanced than ours — almost inconceivably advanced physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine — think of the weapons applications alone! Worth a million times more than all the treasures of all the pharaohs who ever lived. Knowledge is power — it always has been. The mere
rumour
of the knowledge it contained might have been enough to invade a country for — even to sacrifice an army of 50,000 men.’

I was suddenly flushed with excitement as I realized this was no fantasy. It actually made sense. ‘That’s what M J —12 were after,’ I said, ‘the power of the Stone was worth all the killing and all the expense. To them it would have been worth it thousands of times over!’ I looked at the stela again carefully.

‘Evidently we’re in about 10,500 BC,’ Daisy said, ‘because the constellation Leo is in the ascendant, and that was the Age of Leo. We have a lion-headed sphinx, which may be the Great Sphinx at Giza with its original head.’

‘Zep-Tepi,’ I said, ‘that’s the time the Shemsu-Hor are supposed to have planned the Firebird Project...’

There was a hiss and the door snapped shut with unbelievable speed. Almost at once we heard a grumble of hidden mechanism and the chamber started to move downwards. ‘It’s an elevator!’ Daisy said. We held on to the walls and watched each other speculatively until the thing came to a halt and the door slid open to reveal yet another antechamber and another stela.

‘The Fourth Hour!’ I said. ‘Let’s have a look at this!’

The central tableau of this stela was clearly the Giza Plateau, with the three pyramids and the Great Sphinx whose head was now human. In the picture an ensemble of priests was gathered around the Great Pyramid, looking up at its apex, which seemed to be glowing with light rays that ended in tiny hands, like the ones on the previous stela. One of the rays extended into a starry sky in which the prominent constellations were once again Orion and Sirius. The pyramid itself was shown as giving off beams of light, but part of it had been hollowed out schematically to show a human being curled in an almost foetal position. Wires and cables seemed to run out of his head into the bowels of the pyramid, connecting with the glowing capstone, which held a squashed up image of a phoenix inside it.

I scratched my stubble grimly. ‘This is the culmination of the Firebird Project,’ I said. ‘The pyramids have been built, and the Benben is now the Great Pyramid’s capstone. We’ve got a wired man inside the pyramid, connected to the Benben Stone. The Stone has rays emanating from it, one of them almost touching the star Sirius. This has got to be 2500 BC.’

I studied the stela again and began to read the hieroglyphs beneath it. Daisy watched me silently for what might have been twenty minutes. ‘The text isn’t clear,’ I said finally, ‘but it seems to be referring to the Great Pyramid as “the Instrument of Ascension”:

‘Ascension of what?’ Daisy said.

‘In ancient Egyptian myth the pharaoh’s “spirit” was supposed to ascend to the stars to become Osiris — symbolized by Orion.’

‘Why is the capstone giving out light?’

I pondered the hieroglyphs again. ‘It says, “
when
the
Sound
—
Eye
is
placed
in
conjuction
with
the
Instrument
of
Ascension
,
then
the
great
design
of
the
Horus
-
Followers
is
complete
...”.
’

‘The Instrument of Ascension is the Great Pyramid,’ said Daisy, ‘but what’s the “Sound-Eye”?’

‘It’s got to be the Stone — the capstone of the pyramid. Look — in the picture both the capstone and the pyramid are giving out energy. Without the Stone the pyramid is inert, but the Stone, with its artificial intelligence, is like a smart cell that animates the mass of the pyramid, turning it into some sort of device.’

‘Device?’

‘It makes sense, don’t you see!’ I said. ‘Scholars have always been puzzled by the accuracy of the pyramid. It has the kind of precision you only find in machines. That’s because it
is
a machine, but a machine that doesn’t come on line until it’s fitted with the smart cell — the capstone. And look at this,’ I said, pointing to a lower row of hieroglyphs, ‘“
Only
the
Chosen
One
can
use
the
Instrument
to
...
reach
...
the
stars
...
when
the
celestial
bodies
are
in
alignment
...”.
’