Keystone (51 page)

Jake stood on the deck of the
large trawler that Omar Abdel-Rahman had, seemingly out of nowhere, decided to
let them use. He looked out over the docks where men busied themselves ferrying
various crates and odds and ends from the large warehouses on the dockside to
the bowels of the ship.

Before long,
the last bundle had been stowed away, and Omar Abdel-Rahman joined Gail,
George, Zahra and Ben on the dockside. The man with the hook-nose reported
briefly to Omar, but the stiff sea breeze made it impossible for Jake to hear
what they were saying.

Jake looked on
as hook-nose boarded the ship and disappeared below deck, then looked to his
mother in interest. Most of the travellers were now already on board, and had
been preparing their living quarters. It did not occur to Jake, until he saw
six more men boarding, that none of his own people knew how to pilot such a
craft, nor knew how to navigate the high seas.

It dawned on
him that they would not be making their trip on their own, and that the vessel
was a loan, and not a gift.

“You look confused?”
a voice said behind him.

Jake turned
with a start and saw hook-nose standing on deck, with a length of coiled rope
in one hand and a nonchalant smile drawn across his face.

“It seems,” he
continued as he extended his hand, “that we are to be ship-mates for the
foreseeable future. My name is Mehmet.”

Jake shook the
hand despite himself. This was the detestable man that a day earlier had
threatened his mother and had held them all in dire conditions with little to
eat or drink. The man who had looked down on them all from the walkway inside
the warehouse and held his mother at gunpoint was now shaking his hand.

“Why –” Jake
began, withdrawing his arm sharply.

“This is our
ship,” Mehmet interrupted. “And you require passage to Italy. And yet none of
your people know how the ship works. So you need a crew. The ship is valuable,
but the fuel we will use is even more so. We are also keen to communicate and
trade with Europe, and so you will be our passengers.”

Jake looked
back at his mother and father, who were now talking quietly to each other on
the docks.

“Your mother
and Omar Abdel-Rahman are responsible for this. If it were up to me, then my
hospitality would not have been so far-reaching. And yet,” he nodded towards
the dockside, “they appear to have quite a lot in common, at least
academically.”

Something
about the way in which his parents were talking, their body language, the way
in which they were looking at the ship, and at him, suddenly made Jake feel
uneasy.

He started
towards the gangway, leaving Mehmet behind him.

“I don’t know
how to do this, George,” Gail gasped, fighting back her emotions. “It was
difficult knowing I would have to say goodbye, but now –”

“We can go
with them?” George suggested, a glimmer of hope in his voice.

She hesitated,
but not long enough for George’s hope to remain intact. “No,” she swallowed and
evened the creases in her shirt with her palms. “I have to do this.” There was finality
in her voice, and it still weighed down on them both as Jake reached them, the
one word on his mind escaping on a breath.

“Mum,” he
pleaded.

She said
nothing, but opened her arms wide and accepted his embrace.

“Mum!” he
sobbed as he buried his face deep into her shoulder and collapsed against her.
“I’m staying with you,” he said suddenly, holding her at arms’ length. His face
was a mess of tears and hurt.

“No, Jake,”
she said softly. “You’re not. You have to go and live your life. This may be
your only chance.”

“Then come
with us! There must be enough room on the boat, and if there isn’t then we’ll
make room!”

Gail looked at
him, this man who had suddenly become a frightened little boy again. She had
spent her life caring for him, making sure he was safe, making sure he didn’t
stray too far, and yet here she was pushing him away. She broke down, unable to
fight back the flood of emotions she’d been building up for days now.

As she sobbed
into Jake’s chest, George put his hands on both their shoulders, comforting
them.

“Jake, you
must go with the group to Europe,” he tried desperately to fight back his own
tears. “They’ll need your language skills, and your strength. Your mother has
to return to Amarna. There’s something very important that she has to do.” He
didn’t mention the fact that neither he nor Gail had any idea what that
important thing was.

They held each
other tightly in a circle. George let his statements sink in for a few moments
before continuing, his voice more steady now.

“Once we have
returned from Amarna, we will be safe here in Abu Qir. Omar has assured us of
that. And then we can meet again, here or in Europe.” George didn’t expect his
son or his wife to believe that, but nonetheless it seemed to calm some of
their nerves down and they were able, somehow, to enjoy their last few hours
together, speaking more than in the past few weeks combined.

There was
something quite hypnotic about the boat as it left with the tide, diesel fumes
and engine noise bringing back memories of a long-gone era of technological
advancement that Gail would probably never see again.

The sun broke
through the clouds on the horizon just long enough for the boat to be picked
out by its rays, like a tiny insect in the undulating sands of the desert.

And then it
was gone, the sea descended into darkness.

She looked on
long after it was out of sight and the sun had set, following it in her mind’s
eye. Willing, and wishing, it well.

George covered
her shoulders with a blanket and rubbed them gingerly. She continued to look
into the darkness in silence, the cold wind playing with her hair and cooling
the warm tears as they ran down her cheeks.

She closed her
eyes and wept “I love you, my baby.” A gust of wind took the words from her
lips and carried them out to sea towards the lonely vessel.

The journey south was far
quicker, due in no small part to the role of four of their donkeys, which they
had been allowed to keep, and a two-wheeled cart. The last two donkeys had been
given to Omar Abdel-Rahman, in part exchange for the safe passage of their people
to Europe. The academic in him wanted to go with Gail, to see the wonders that
she had described. But with his second-in-command on a ship to Italy, he
couldn’t afford to leave their stronghold without a leader.

Omar had
reasoned, accurately, that after their journey they would return to Abu Qir,
for news of their son and friends, possible passage to Italy themselves, and
lack of anywhere else safe to go.

He had been
more than surprised, shocked in fact, to learn of the Xynutians. And while at
first he had been sceptical, he had to concede that there was no real reason
for Gail to lie to him.

What had been
most difficult for him to accept was the fact that his god had created the
Xynutians. He had then wiped the slate clean and created modern humans.

It was a hard
concept to grasp.

“The Great
Flood,” Gail had explained, “is a legend that is present in nearly all cultures
in one form or another. God was unhappy with his creation, and so decided to
start again.”

“Of course, as
is the case with the Qur’an with the story of Nuh.”

“Noah,” Gail
agreed. Indeed the story of Noah, present in the book of Genesis in the Bible,
was also told twice in the Qur’an, with striking similarities to the Old
Testament text. “In China, India, Australia, Finland, Greece, the list goes on:
dozens of accounts of epic floods that threatened civilisation.”

 
“You could argue that most civilisations are
built near rivers and the sea, and that floods are bound to happen at some
stage,” George had suggested.

“Or,” Omar had
said in wonder. “You could argue that all the legends have the same root: Man
emerged from a cataclysm so great that its memory survived thousands of years
until the emergence of written language in the Middle East six thousand years
ago.”

“And that,”
Gail added with a smile, “instead of this flood being a recent event it was a
much more ancient apocalypse that had been passed on in stories for hundreds of
thousands of years.”

After a short
pause, Omar arrived at the same conclusion Gail had, years earlier, when confronted
with the book of Xynutians by Professor Henry Patterson.

“I see a
flaw,” he started. “In the Qur’an, and also in the Bible, Nuh, or Noah, his
family and fellow believers were spared. And yet these Xynutians disappear
completely, no record of them in archaeology. Where are they? Why didn’t they
rebuild?”

“I thought the
same thing. It’s possible that they, like us, had become over-reliant on
technology, and those who were left descended into barbarity quickly,
forgetting everything.” She paused, and looked him in the eyes. “But since
then, I found out what really happened to the last of the Xynutians.

“For a start,
the Xynutians and modern man evolved separately. We know that the Xynutians,
before their demise, were already fighting with early hominids who to them must
have seemed like advanced chimpanzees to us. It’s possible that after
Aniquilus, there was interbreeding of early hominids and Xynutians.

“Not all
Xynutians perished here though, as we’ve seen with the findings on Mars. Some
left Earth behind and fled not just to the red planet, but also to the stars.
God only knows how many are left roaming the planets of nearby solar systems,
or whether the last of their kind died out hundreds of thousands of years ago,
exhausted. It’s a fascinating thought that there may be millions of them living
out there somewhere; maybe like us they themselves have no memory of where they
came from, save for legends and religion.

“Of those who
remained on Earth, most were wiped out. Despite their technology, which was far
more advanced than our own, whatever rained down on them wasn’t simply a flood
made of water. They were, effectively, annihilated.”

“You say
most,” Omar enquired. “What remained?”

“The Xynutians
left their people to die or fight for their survival on the surface, exposed to
the elements, they had no choice. But a select few could be guaranteed safety.
An army, their scientists, leaders, workers and farmers were saved. They built
an ark deep underground, with animals, seeds, technology; everything needed to
rebuild their civilisation from the ground up was stored, ready for a time when
they could rise again. This was something the ancient Egyptians discovered, and
tried to emulate in their own way.”

“Where is this
ark?”

“Underneath
Tell el-Amarna.”

Gail, George, Zahra and Ben
reached Amarna less than a week later, to the surprise of the old couple who
lived there. They were more than happy to share their house one more time, but
Gail insisted that they camp on the banks of the Nile.

As they sat
around the campfire that night, George laughed.

“Omar was
itching to come with us; that would have been interesting!”

“I don’t care
how much he’s helped us,” Zahra sneered. “I would not have held back from
saying what I think about him and his men.”

Ben grinned
and drew her head to the warmth of his chest. “Always fire in your heart, isn’t
there, my dear?”

“He is an
extremist, and extremists want to control things,” Zahra said bitterly. “We
will see how accommodating our host is when your archaeological stories start
to wear thin.”

They watched
the fire crackling lazily at the remnants of a thick log that Ben had dragged
up from the banks of the Nile; sparks rose on the hot air into the darkness,
like crazed fireflies disappearing into the night.

“I understand
why Omar was so interested,” Ben said pensively. “I know we’ve discussed this,
and I know you’ve told us that
this is
something you have to do
, but now that we’re here, Gail,” he hesitated,
trying to find the right words, before settling with the simplest he could
think of. “What now?”

She looked
across the fire at him and Zahra. Through thick and thin they had followed her;
from saving her life before the war, to helping her, George and their new-born
child make it through the early years. Now they had sacrificed the option of
going with their people to Europe just to be with her.

Gail rose,
rounded the campfire and crouched before them.

“Thank you
Ben, Zahra, for always being there, and for always believing in me. You have
been my dearest friends.”

She embraced
and hugged them both for what seemed an age, before getting to her feet and
going to her tent. She said over her shoulder, “I have to sleep now, as do you
George, but in the morning, I hope, you will have all the answers you could
possibly want.”

And with that
she was gone, leaving them with the embers of a dying fire.

Gail woke before dawn and dressed
as quietly as possible so as not to wake the others. When she was ready, she
woke George, and they tiptoed out of camp and down to the Nile, just as the
first light of day started to paint the morning sky.

During their
nightly pillow-talk, they had agreed that they would go to the Library alone
that morning. Gail still wasn’t sure what it was she was going to find, and
with that uncertainty had decided Ben and Zahra should be kept out of the way
at first, just in case.

“It looks like
the clouds may clear a bit today,” George commented as they found the group of
small rowing boats the old couple had told them about under some overgrown,
thorny bushes. They dragged one down the concrete slip to the water’s edge.

It was, as
usual from George, pointless optimism, designed as much to spark up a topic of
conversation as to lighten the mood.

Gail jumped
from the boat knee-high into the water on the east bank and George followed
gingerly.

“I feel bad
leaving without saying goodbye,” Gail said as they hiked along the road to the
hills.

George had
only a minor grasp on what was going on at the best of times, but saw in his
wife a trembling sense of excitement and restlessness. Deep inside he sensed
that something monumental was about to happen. Good or bad, he didn’t know what
to expect.

And so they
walked on in silence, save for the sound of their footsteps on the ground, as the
once tarmacked road gave way to what had always been a rough dirt track that
led to the Amarna Library.

The entrance
to the Library had changed little in two decades. The burnt out remains of the
4x4s had been taken away, one of the few things to have been achieved by the
local government before greater worries came about. However, despite the
attempted clean up, the main entrance was still a pile of rubble, with a
hastily excavated path cleared down to the Library beneath.

Gail fished a
flashlight out of her pocket and tested the bulb. It came on first time, as
bright as it had been in Walker’s hands eighteen years before. She had rarely
used it, to the extent that George was surprised she even had it on her, fully
charged and ready.

“I always
thought it might come in handy, one day,” she explained.

They worked
their way through the rubble and down the stairs, and quickly found themselves
back in the Amarna Library. Memories came flooding back to them both, but while
George sounded excited as they retraced their steps to the huge halls beyond,
Gail’s humour gradually faded, until when they were standing in front of the
Xynutian airlock, her face was sombre and voice passive.

“I need to go
in alone, George.”

George
hesitated, not least because that would mean leaving him in the dark.

“There’s light
in there, remember? You can keep the torch.”

Before he
could answer, she had passed it to him, and was entering the airlock, which had
suddenly opened of its own accord. He leant in and hugged her, reluctant to let
go. “I love you,” he said as he eventually loosened his embrace, and looked her
directly in the eyes.

The stone-like
door of the airlock slid shut, separating them with the faintest waft of stale
air.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic
. He couldn’t remember where the phrase came
from, but it described the door perfectly. Thinking about how the door could
possibly work; not only its mechanism, but also its longevity, to function so well
after countless millennia, and its behaviour, to seem to open and close when
it
wanted.
Magic before the Chaos – now in its wake even more so
, he pondered.

He sat down
next to the naked statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and waited for his wife
to return.