Resurrection (18 page)

Present Day

Jean-Claude lay on his cot with the covers thrown off of him. It was late at night, but he was not tired. He was staring at the ceiling. It was decorated with repeating patterns of red and green, an Arabic design. It was a beautiful room in a beautiful suite. The countries courting the Mechanic had given him money to live like a prince while he made up his mind to whom he would give his precious technology.

There were long gauzy curtains on windows that stretched nearly from floor to ceiling. Through these came moonlight, bright, for the moon was nearing full. It threw the furniture of the room into sharp relief. Jean-Claude held a dark hand up in front of his face, examining its silhouette.
It is not my hand anymore
, he thought.
I have no control over how it is used
.

The Mechanic slept in a bedroom mere yards away, but the heavy door between the rooms was firmly locked. The Mechanic took no chance that his slaves would mutiny against him in the night. Jean-Claude could imagine him in there, resting peacefully on white sheets, a gun under one pillow, his evil electric knife still strapped to his ankle.

Nate had warned the Mechanic that their rooms might be monitored, so they moved to new rooms each night, and every stop in the past several days had been nicer than the last.

A few feet away, Nate lay in his own cot, the covers pulled up to his head, his body curled on its side.

Jean-Claude put his hands together on his chest in a gesture of prayer, but found that he could not pray. It seemed inappropriate coming from him, as though God would smirk down at him and wag a finger in his face to tell him his prayers were not welcome. Even as a prostitute he had not felt as degraded as he did now.

Tears came to his eyes.
Heavenly Father…!
he cried in his mind, but that was all that would come. There was nothing to say and there would be nothing to say until something inside of him broke.

He was still in the grip of his antidote, which the Mechanic had given him an hour before, still felt its ecstatic embrace, but this ecstasy no longer blotted out all thoughts as it once had. Through his high, his mind buzzed with hatred and half-formed plans. Both were useless. He drove a hand into the bed beneath him in frustration.

He noticed a motion by his side then. Nate was there. He had slipped quietly out of his cot and was now kneeling by the side of Jean-Claude’s bed. Crouched there, he looked like a troll out of a childhood nightmare. Nate reached out a hand and gently touched the dark skin of Jean-Claude’s thigh.

Jean-Claude batted his hand away. “What are you doing?” he asked, raising himself up on his elbows.

“We’ll never get out of this,” Nate whispered. “Never.” He had large dark circles around his eyes, visible in the moonlight, and Jean-Claude could see the drawn lines of his mouth. He looked ten years older after his weeks in captivity. Nate reached his hand out again and gently stroked Jean-Claude’s stomach. “We’ll never get away from him alive.”

Impatiently, Jean-Claude batted his hand away again. “There is no we,” he said with his heavy French accent. “There is you. There is me.”

Nate looked up at him with tortured eyes. Suddenly, he lifted his other hand from beneath the cot and brought up a hunting knife. Jean-Claude had no idea where he had found it. Its blade was bright in the moonlight. He caught Nate’s hand by the wrist, and Nate struggled against his grip.

“What are you doing?” Jean-Claude hissed.

“Kill me!” Nate said. He dropped the knife, and it fell onto the bed next to Jean-Claude. “Kill me. Please!”

Jean-Claude released his arm and pushed him away. “Go back to your bed.”

But Nate took up the knife and tried to put it in Jean-Claude’s hands. “Please, Jean-Claude. You helped him trap me. I don’t want to be here anymore. End it for me.”

“End it yourself!”

“I can’t…” He crumpled onto the floor, clutching his knees to his chest and sobbing into his arms. “I can’t…”

Jean-Claude studied Nate’s pathetic figure. He felt rage return at the sight of him, rage at what the Mechanic had done to this man. It was a good sensation; it made him feel strong, though he was powerless to direct this strength. “Do not give in yet,” Jean-Claude said, his voice now soft. “We will find a way out.”

Nate shook his head, but his sobs slowly died. Jean-Claude lay back down, and he heard Nate crawl back to his own cot.

“I’m sorry,” Nate whispered after a few moments.

“I too,” Jean-Claude replied. The rage was dying. He lay back down on the bed and fingered his cross.

Eddie, Julianne, and Gary were outside the lobby of the Mena House, loading their luggage and other supplies into the back of an ancient Toyota Land Cruiser that looked as sturdy as a battle tank. Eddie saw Pruit emerge from the hotel, and he walked over to her.

“Are you leaving?” she asked him.

“Yes, we’re heading back to the dig.”

“Where did you get that car?”

“I rented it from an outfit in Cairo. We could use an extra one at camp.”

She studied the car for a moment, then said, “I think I’ll get one too.”

“A Land Cruiser?” he asked. “What for?”

“To drive.”

He studied her skeptically for a moment. “To drive where?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

His tone became serious then, and he was happy to have a valid reason for proposing what he wanted to propose. “Pruit, you seem a bit naïve for someone who speaks fluent Arabic. Aren’t you familiar with the Muslim culture?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that driving around in the cities by yourself is all right, but heading out into the country—or into the desert—as a woman by herself is just silly.”

“Who said anything about the desert?”

“What else is there to visit in Egypt?”

“You don’t think I can take care of myself?”

“Actually, you probably can. But there’s no reason to court trouble or to flaunt your liberated femininity to Arab men. They find it annoying, and they’re not always a pleasant bunch when annoyed. Now, where are you planning to go?”

She hesitated for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind. “I want to visit a dig my parents participated in when they were in college. It was their one big academic adventure, and I think they’d like to see pictures of me there.” Eddie thought he must have been mistaken the other day when he found her accent unusual. She sounded like she had grown up in California, as he had.

“Where was this dig?” he asked.

She took out her map and pointed out the location. “Somewhere around here.”

Eddie studied the map. He had never heard of a dig out that far. It was not impossible, but it was unlikely.

“How about this: You ride with us, until I drop these two at camp.” He glanced over his shoulder and caught the archaeologists in a fairly intimate moment as they sat together inside the truck. “I could use the company, anyway,” he said wryly. “And then I’ll take you there. Fair enough?”

“Isn’t it a bit out of your way?”

“They’re dying to get me away from the dig. There will hardly be room for me with the new arrivals.” This was not exactly true, but Pruit wouldn’t know.

“All right. Suit yourself,” she said.

He smiled and headed to the truck. Pruit went inside to gather up her backpack.

Adaiz watched Pruit and her male companion as they spoke to each other outside the hotel. The hotel stood in the shadows of the ancient pyramids, which Pruit had seemed fascinated by the day before. There were two others in their party, another man and women, who were now sitting in the back of the car together. The man’s arm was around the woman’s shoulders, and as Adaiz watched, he leaned forward and let his lips touch hers. Adaiz turned away, disliking the sensation that kiss provoked in him.

Pruit was speaking to the tall young man who had accompanied her into the pyramid. The way they spoke to each other was different than the way they spoke to others. Pruit seemed happier, somehow, when she was addressing him. There was a subtle change in the way she stood and the set of her face.

Adaiz was irritated at a feeling of jealously. He found himself wondering if she was drawn to that man, if she wanted to be near him the way those two in the car were near each other. She was the first human woman he had ever seen, the first who had ever spoken to him, and he felt a proprietary urge toward her.

Adaiz was concealed in an old green Jeep, army surplus from decades before, with a battered soft top and plastic side windows, which were yellow with age and therefore concealed him well. He wore dark sunglasses and a baseball hat to further cover his face, should Pruit happen to look his way. But she had never shown any signs of concern that she might be followed. How could she suspect, after all, that the Lucien had tracked her across light-years, aware from the beginning of her desperate mission?

At length, Pruit joined the other three in their car and drove off. Adaiz followed them for a long way through city streets and onto a busy highway, but when they turned from the main road an hour later, entering a deserted village, he could not follow them without being noticed.

He pulled the car to the side of the road and watched the monitor that tracked the two tracers in Pruit’s back. They were heading out to open desert. It would be impossible to follow her there. It did not matter, however. Her ship was disabled and thousands of miles away. If she found what she sought in the desert, he would be able to intercept her before she got the information off-planet.

Slowly, Adaiz started up the Jeep and turned around, heading back into the city. He would follow her again when she returned to the anonymous crowds of Cairo or Giza.

He left the Jeep at the hotel where he and Enon-Amet had been staying since Pruit’s arrival in Egypt. Enon seldom left the room. Both of them were terrified of what might happen if he were to be exposed in public. In this Arab country, however, Adaiz felt Enon was fairly safe walking the streets as long as Adaiz was with him and Enon kept his hood drawn and his pace short, like a human. Still, they would not risk him outdoors unless it was absolutely necessary.

Instead of returning upstairs to his brother, Adaiz let his feet carry him away from the hotel. This was a market day, and the streets were thronged with locals. The traffic in this city was always heavy, but today it was almost at a standstill on the main streets. A dirty brown miasma hung over the cars, pumped into the air by their inefficient engines.

Adaiz breathed in the exhaust, tasting the chemical components and wondering at the deleterious effect it must have on the human natives. He was walking down a street of small stores and clothing shops. Nearby, a group of young girls stood in front of a window, looking in at the dresses displayed on mannequins. Next door, several heavyset older women in black robes and white shawls picked through produce on an open stand, complaining loudly to the proprietor about imagined and real blemishes on the fruit. Men in business suits walked in groups, speaking in animated tones to one another.

Adaiz took it all in as he had each day since coming to human civilization. Information about this human society—a different society from the Plaguers—would be of use to the Lucien, and it was his duty to take in as much as he could. In truth, he did not much like these walks he forced himself to take. The sight of so much humanity crowded in upon itself, in societies grown out of human experience and human nature, brought on a barrage of emotions he could not easily categorize or control.

Nearby, a young couple held hands, the woman’s belly swollen with pregnancy. A group of small boys were kicking rocks along the sidewalk and singing a wailing Arab song. Adaiz was overcome for a moment, and he stopped, leaning his body against a lamppost as people moved by him.

His mind was loud, almost screaming. But with what? He took a series of deep breaths and forced himself to calm. He studied the emotion that was sweeping over him, analyzed it. It was not surprise, or anger, or happiness, or disgust, or any of the feelings he had thought at first glance it might be. Instead, he realized it was longing.

But longing for what? He was not human, though his body might think otherwise. He was Lucien, every inch of him. He knew where his heart lay, and that was eight light-years from this alien world, at home on lovely, sacred Galea.

The Toyota bounced along at a slow, but steady pace, carrying them across a series of shallow, rolling dunes as they traveled north and west in the thousand-mile stretch of desert that separated Egypt from Libya. They had dropped the other archaeologists off at camp the day before and, early that morning, had set out to Pruit’s destination. The other members of the camp had not even questioned Eddie’s desire to go off with her. He had struck a deal to be as flighty as he wished without comment from them, and they had every intention of honoring their end of it.

Eddie was in the driver’s seat. Pruit had been happy enough to let him drive while she navigated. They had let some of the air out of the truck’s tires to give it a better grip on the sand, and they were making a good five miles an hour average as they worked toward the invisible point in the distance that Pruit had marked on their map.

Pruit sat in the front passenger’s seat, looking out the open side window. They both wore T-shirts and shorts. All around them sand stretched away to the horizon. Behind them, she could just make out the Red Pyramid of Dashur, tiny at this distance, almost lost in the haze above the desert. It was the only remaining sign of civilization.

The sand was ugly, almost as though it had been mixed with dirt. Here and there dunes of loose shale stood over buried ancient structures, for perhaps only a tenth of the secrets of Egypt had yet been uncovered.

This landscape fit Pruit’s idea of “outside” better than any she had yet seen. This was a killing land. Without their truck and the jugs of water they had stacked in it, neither of them would survive here for long. Her urge to pull on a face mask was great, but she forced herself into an attitude of relaxation.

She wondered what she would tell Eddie when they arrived at their destination. There would, of course, be no abandoned dig site waiting for them. There might be no sign at all of what she sought.

Why had she allowed him to come with her? There were various answers to that question, but most of all, it was because she liked him. Eddie was a new breed of creature to her, a man who had never been anything but happy or bored in his life. He had an air about him that spoke of long afternoons lounging in the sun, despite his intelligence and the fitness of his body. This seemed frivolous in a way, but it was also pleasant to be around. She was not worried about handling Eddie. There was nothing threatening about him.

“Look at the map,” Eddie said. “See that ridge to the left? Check our course.”

She studied the map and pencilled in their current path.

“We’re doing fine. This is the right direction.”

He took a long drink of water from the plastic bottle next to his seat. “You didn’t tell me—what was this dig, exactly?”

She didn’t turn her head from the view. “Some tomb. What else?”

“What dynasty, do you know?”

“I can’t even remember. Five thousand years ago, something like that.”

“Fourth Dynasty, then, probably. My favorite. What did they find? I didn’t know there were any mortuary structures out this far. We’re going a long way past the usual border of ancient civilization.”

“They didn’t find much.” She sat back into her seat and looked over at him. “Just a few artifacts, nothing major.” After a several days talking to Eddie, the American idiom had become quite natural for her. “I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know much about it.” She would have to come up with something more convincing than that before they arrived.

Eddie looked at her. He was smiling slightly. Slowly, he said, “You’re wondering what you’re going to tell me when we get there, aren’t you?”

Her eyes met his, but she kept her face casual. “What do you mean?”

“Pruit, you aren’t a bad liar,” he said. “It’s just not possible to appear completely normal when you’re new somewhere and you’re spending a lot of time with someone who’s not new.”

She felt a jolt in her stomach. “What do you mean?” she asked again.

“There are too many little things. I wouldn’t have noticed if I’d seen you for an hour, but it’s been three days. The way you spoke when we first met. The way you tasted my omelet yesterday morning—like you had no idea what you were in for. But, mostly, it was the pyramid. And the crystal.”

“The crystal,” Pruit said quietly. “What do you know about that?”

Eddie stuck a hand in one of his pockets, pulled something out, and handed it to her. It was a crystal, orange with green bands, much like her own. It was undoubtedly of ancient Kinley origin, and her heart sped up. She would have to get it into her crystal reader as soon as possible.

“I know I found this one and six just like it buried in a temple that’s been under the ground for five thousand years,” Eddie said. “I know we don’t have the ability to make a crystal like this now. I know it’s not natural.”

“You found this at your dig?” she asked, and now she felt a pang of panic. Had she overlooked something? Was Eddie’s dig site in some way relevant to her mission?

“Tell me who you are, Pruit.”

“You tell me,” she said.

“At first, I thought you were an archaeologist, someone who had been to Egypt before. But it was obvious after a few minutes that that couldn’t be the case. Then I thought you had stolen your crystal from another dig site, or someone had stolen it and given it to you. Then you and I went into the pyramid and it shook, and you didn’t seem the least bit surprised.”

“Why should I have been surprised? The guard told us it had been shaking for several weeks.”

“So now,” he continued, ignoring her, “I’ve started to think that you’re not from here at all.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Earth isn’t your home.”

She smiled somewhat condescendingly at his earnest look. “That’s a fairly drastic conclusion from pretty flimsy evidence.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, his voice now betraying excitement. “It sounds crazy, and truthfully, it never would have occurred to me. But yesterday afternoon I went into your room.”

She stared at him, and her smile evaporated. Her supplies and tools were essential to her mission, and there was no excuse for leaving them unguarded. “You went into my room?” she asked quietly.

“I was looking for the crystal. But I found your backpack, and inside it was that that red suit of yours. It took twenty minutes for me to figure out how to unroll it, but eventually, I did. I put my hand in one of the sleeves, and I watched those arms grow out. Grow out! Into my skin! Are you going to tell me that was made somewhere on Earth?”

She held his gaze, then looked away, back out at the desert.

“Tell me who you are, Pruit.”

“I’m not sure you’d want me to tell you,” she said quietly. “It would change things for you.”

“Good!” Eddie looked away, saying nothing for several moments. Then, almost whispering, he said, “I’ve been coming to Egypt since I was a teenager and wandering and meeting strangers and hoping for…something. My whole life I’ve wanted to believe that you exist.”

“Me?”

“Someone like you.”

She looked at him skeptically.

“There are huge holes in the history of our race,” he said. “Maybe you can explain some of those dark areas.”

Pruit smiled at him, with some pity. It was up to her who she took into her confidence. If Eddie ever proved to be trouble, she could easily make sure he never had the chance to betray her. But he seemed to think her mission would solve some personal dilemma for him. “I am here to shed light on ancient mysteries. But not yours so much as my own.”

“So I’m right?”

“Yes. I am new to Earth.”

She did not elaborate, though she could see he had an avalanche of questions waiting.

“Just tell me this,” he said, “are you bringing changes to Earth?”

“Eddie, your world is no concern of mine. I only hope to find what I need and then leave this place behind.”

Slowly, he nodded. “I’m happy to be the one helping you,” he said seriously. “No,” he corrected himself. “I’m ecstatic to be the one helping you.”

“I appreciate your help.” She sighed, then activated the skinsuit control panel on her left forearm. Eddie watched intently, but did not comment. She marked their current precise coordinates on the map. “This is so much easier than trying to estimate with your compass.”

The sight of the skinsuit was a final piece of proof, and he began to laugh quietly. “Will you tell me what we’re going to find?”

“Something very old and, I hope, very valuable,” she said. “At least to me.” She said no more, partly because she enjoyed keeping Eddie in suspense, partly because she did not want to explain the entirety of her life and mission just yet. That would be a tiring conversation, and she needed to keep herself fresh as they closed in on their destination. “Now, let’s see what this crystal of yours holds.”

She reached for her backpack and drew out an odd contraption that looked something like a microscope, with a large, irregularly shaped body. It was made out of a crystalline substance with a metallic luster. At the top of it was a double eyepiece.

“What is that?” he asked. “I couldn’t figure it out yesterday.”

She cast him an annoyed glance. “It’s a crystal reader,” she said. “The ancients of my world used crystals for data storage. They hold an incredible amount of information. I want to see if yours is relevant to me.”

She took Eddie’s small crystal and inserted it into the side of the reader. The machine made a soft whirring sound, and the crystal disappeared within it. Pruit peered through the eyepiece. The reader scanned for the first line of data and displayed it, the words spelled out before her in Haight. She scanned through pages and pages and, at last, lifted her head.

“What does it say?” Eddie asked her.

“It’s a medical handbook describing how to use local plants to make medicines for various ills. Very interesting, but not relevant to me, unfortunately.” She handed it back to Eddie.

It was nearly evening when a long, low ridge of rocks came into sight in the distance ahead of them, standing out clearly against the sun in the west. By then, they had been driving for nearly ten hours, and both were exhausted. Pruit continued to watch the coordinates as they read out on her arm. It became evident that the rocks were their target.

They drove up to the base of the ridge, then got out of the car, shouldering two large backpacks Eddie had prepared for them, which contained water and food and camping necessities.

“It’s not far,” Pruit said as they reached the rocks and began to pick their way up toward the top of the ridge. “Maybe two hundred feet in a straight line.”

They slowly made their way over dusty, shale-covered rock to the crest of the low ridge and found themselves looking down at several other tiers of ridges stretching away for half a mile. The sun was low in the sky, shining in their eyes and casting long shadows between the rocks. They worked their way through the trough between the first ridge and the next, then to the top of the second rise. Pruit’s eyes were on her suit readout. They were now only thirty feet away. She scanned the rocks, but could see nothing.

“Thirty feet that way,” she told Eddie, pointing. “Can you see anything?”

“No.”

All that was visible were rocks and sand. They continued down and, in a few minutes, arrived in the trough between the second and third ridges. Pruit held her left arm in front of her, watching the coordinates as she moved. Her skinsuit locating device was accurate to about ten feet. In a few moments, her suit informed her that she had arrived.

“Apparently, I’m here.”

Eddie came up next to her, and they scanned the sand.

“There!” he said, pointing to a small depression near the foot of the ridge.

They moved closer and could see that rocks had recently been moved or thrown from the depression—there were several dozen large stones that had been pushed outward from a common center. A few of them were perched precariously on top of each other, in positions that would certainly change over time.

He was here
, Pruit thought.
It was not a computer. It was a person. I woke him, and he left the cave, just days ago
.

“Something happened here recently?” Eddie asked, studying the stones.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “Let’s dig.” They let their packs drop to the ground, and they began to scoop away sand from the bottom of the depression. The sun was dipping below the horizon now, and the sand around them was in darkness. In moments, their hands touched something hard. They pulled more sand away and saw a dark surface, hard like rock, but too smooth to be natural. Pruit cleared away more sand until she had uncovered a circular hatchway. Its position in the trough between two ridges protected it from wind and weather, and its isolation in the desert kept it far from prying eyes. If the covering rocks had still been in place, it would have been almost impossible to find.

Eddie stared at the hatch, trying to contain himself. “I assume this is it,” he said.

Pruit was too intent at her task to catch the thrilled humor in his voice. Her fingers felt along the edges of the circle, and a small flap of the stone-like material flipped up, revealing a hand pad and a dial of Haight letters. She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pants pocket and read the instructions she had copied out of her mission Master Book. She knew them by heart, but read them carefully anyway. Then she placed her hand in the pad and quickly rotated it in a specific sequence to point at various letters. When she reached the final one, the hatch activated.

A screening force field sprang up, ejecting her hand from the pad and sending her sprawling back onto the sand. The grains of sand that had remained on top of the hatch sprang away. Then the hatch began to move. Silently, it rose up, pulling with it the telescoping vertical tunnel beneath. It rose a foot, clearing the surface level of the sand, then stopped.

“In case the trough had filled with sand,” Eddie said quietly, marveling at the engineering. “The hatch could always rise above it.”

Pruit nodded, but she was searching for far greater feats of engineering. She watched as the hatch silently slid open. As it did, dim yellow lights came on in a room beneath it.