The Third Gate (11 page)

Day 6: A cook reported two sides of beef missing from the meat locker—almost two hundred pounds. A careful search yielded nothing.

Day 9: Cory Landau was found wandering the marsh outside the perimeter after nightfall. When questioned, he said he’d seen a strange form in the distance, beckoning to him.

“Huh,” Cory had said to him not half an hour before. “Maybe that explains it.”

Day 10: Every electrical object, computer, and other equipment in Green shut down spontaneously at 3:15 p.m. Attempts to restart them were unsuccessful. At 3:34 p.m., they resumed functioning normally. No explanation was found.

Day 11: Tina Romero reported that the outfit of an Egyptian high priestess was missing from a closet in her office.

Day 12: Several eyewitnesses in Oasis, the drinks lounge, reported seeing strangely colored lights flickering near the horizon, accompanied by an ominous chanting, barely audible.

Day 13: A worker in the communications room reported strange noises and a machine that suddenly sprang to life when it should have been dormant.

Day 14: A machinist reported seeing a strange woman in Egyptian garb at a distance, walking across the Sudd at nightfall.

Day 15: An as-yet-undiagnosed equipment problem forced a diver to panic and surface, causing him severe injury.

Logan looked up from the screen. He already knew about the last one, of course. He’d witnessed it himself.

His thoughts drifted to King Narmer’s curse.
Any man who dares enter my tomb will meet an end certain and swift.… His blood and his limbs will turn to ash and his tongue cleave to his throat.… I, Narmer the Everliving, will torment him and his, by day and by night, waking and sleeping, until madness and death become his eternal temple
. There was something the recitation of incidents had in common. Except for the diver and the Jet Ski rider, nobody had been hurt. That did not jibe with the details of the curse.

Of course, Logan thought to himself, nobody had yet found—or entered—Narmer’s tomb.…

For perhaps the dozenth time, he wondered what Narmer’s tomb might contain. Why had the pharaoh expended such effort, made
such lavish sacrifices of gold and men’s lives, bestowed such a curse, to make sure his remains were never violated, his most important possessions undisturbed? What was Porter Stone keeping from him? What would a god take with him to the next world?

There was a quiet sound behind him. Logan turned from the laptop screen to see Ethan Rush standing in the doorway.

“Mind if I come in?” the doctor asked with a smile.

Logan took his duffel bag from the guest chair and placed it on the floor. “Help yourself.”

Rush stepped in, glanced around. “Rather spartan accommodations.”

“I guess the interior decorators were uncertain just how to stock the lair of an enigmalogist.”

“Funny thing about that.” Rush took the empty seat, glanced toward the bookshelf. “Interesting selection of books: Aleister Crowley, Jessie Weston, Stowcroft’s
Organic Chemistry, The Book of Shadows
.”

“I have eclectic interests.”

Rush peered at a particularly old and moth-eaten book, bound in leather. “What’s this?” He reached out, glanced at the title. “
The Necro—
”

“Don’t touch that one,” Logan said in a quiet voice.

Rush pulled back his hand. “Sorry.” He turned his attention to the two framed quotations. “ ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,’ ” he read from one of them. “ ‘It is the source of all true art and science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead. Einstein.’ ” He glanced at Logan. “Message?”

“Only that it sums up my vocation rather well. You could say I’ve got one foot in the world of science—Einstein’s world—and the other in the world of the spirit.”

Rush nodded. Then he turned to the other frame.
“ ‘Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.’ ”

“It’s Virgil. From the
Aeneid
.”

“I don’t read Latin.”

When Logan didn’t offer to translate, Rush turned to the objects on the desk. “What exactly are those?”

“You use scalpels, forceps, and blood-oxygen meters, Ethan: I use tri-field EM detectors, camcorders, infrared thermometers, and—yes—holy water. Which reminds me: Do you think you can scare up a key for this desk drawer?”

“I’ll talk to Supplies.” Rush shook his head. “Funny. I guess I never thought of you as using instruments at all.”

“That’s not all I use. But then, we all have our professional secrets.”

This was met with a brief pause.

“I suppose,” Rush said, “you’re referring to what you saw in my examination room a few minutes ago.”

“Not necessarily. Although I am curious.”

“I wish I could tell you. But I’m afraid that research is of a rather, ah, sensitive nature.”

“So is mine.” He thought of what Romero had said:
Maybe with you poking around, people will calm down
. “I’m on-site now. If I’m to be of any use at all here, you can’t be keeping things from me.”

This was followed by another, longer silence.

“Oh,
hell
!” Rush suddenly burst out. “You’re right, of course. It’s just that Stone is so into compartmentalization, he lives and breathes secrecy …” He paused. “Listen. I’ve told you of our work at the Center.”

“In general terms. You’re doing research on people who have undergone near-death experiences. And you implied you’d made some very interesting findings.”

Rush nodded. “And our primary interest lies in one of those findings: that the experience of ‘going over’ has, in many cases, a direct effect on a person’s … well … psychic abilities.”

“Indeed? Manifested how?”

Rush broke into a broad smile. “Thank you, Jeremy. Nine times out of ten, the moment I mention the word ‘psychic’ I get the hairy eyeball.”

Logan nodded. “Go on.”

“The manifestations are quite broad. The bulk of our research at CTS is devoted to codifying it. That’s what separates us from other organizations or universities studying NDEs. There’s no pseudoscience or new age mumbo jumbo about this, Jeremy—we’re using extremely sophisticated statistical algorithms to quantify it. In fact, we have developed a way to very precisely rank a person’s psychic ability. We call it the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale, after the two researchers at the Center who developed it. In some ways it’s not unlike an intelligence test, but extremely subtle and complex. The scale takes into account an entire battery of tests for psychic sensitivity—divination, telekinesis, cold reading, ESP, astrological prediction, telepathy—half a dozen others. Naturally, the scale compensates for such things as standard deviation, probability, and simple luck.”

Rush stood up and began pacing the small room. “Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say I’ve got five bills in my pocket—a one, a five, a ten, a twenty, and a fifty. I pull one out at random and ask you to guess what it is. Assuming a null hypothesis—that is, no psychic ability at all—the base success ratio would be one in five, or twenty percent. On the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale, that equates to twenty. This would be the ranking of your man on the street. On the same scale, a person with some psychic ability ranks, oh, around forty. A person with pronounced psychic power ranks sixty. A person with psychic power developed to a remarkable degree might rank eighty—he or she would guess correctly four times out of five.”

He stopped pacing and turned to Logan. “But here’s what we’ve discovered. Of the people we’ve tested who’ve ‘gone over’ and returned successfully, the
average
ranking is close to sixty-five.”

“That’s impossible—” Logan began, then stopped himself.

Rush shook his head. “I know. It’s hard to believe, even for you. Why would having an NDE affect one’s psychic ability? But it’s fact, Jeremy—we’ve got hard data, and the data doesn’t lie. Oh, of course, it doesn’t always happen. And the particular psychic gifts vary from person to person. Not everyone’s going to be able to guess, for example, what kind of bill I’m going to pull from my pocket. Some are
better at extrasensory perception. Others at clairvoyance. But that doesn’t change the fact that the numbers we’ve accumulated, based on the testing of over two hundred subjects to date, show the
average
K-W score of a person having undergone a near-death experience is unusually high.”

He sat down again. “And there’s something else we’ve discovered. By and large, the longer the period of time the person ‘went over,’ the
higher
their ranking on the scale.” He paused. “My wife Jennifer’s heart stopped, her brain activities ceased, for fourteen minutes before I revived her. That’s the longest period of time of anyone we’ve tested at the Center. And her ranking on the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale is also the highest of anyone we’ve tested: one hundred and thirty-five.”

“One hundred and thirty-five?” Logan said. “But that can’t be possible. According to the criteria you mentioned, a score of one hundred would mean a correct guess one hundred percent of the time. How can anyone beat a perfect score?”

“I can’t explain that, Jeremy,” Rush said. “Because we’re not exactly sure ourselves. This is a new science. I can only tell you that we’ve checked and rechecked our findings. Basically, it goes beyond naming the bill you pull from your pocket—it means naming the bill
even before you put your hand in your pocket
.” He shook his head, as if despite everything he still found it a little hard to believe himself. “And she’s demonstrated it time and time again. Her particular gift is retrocognition.”

“Retrocognition,” Logan repeated. He thought a moment. Then he glanced at Rush. “And that was your wife? In the testing chamber?”

Rush nodded.

“But then what is she doing here? What use could Porter Stone have for heightened psychic abilities—even remarkably advanced psychic abilities?”

Rush coughed delicately into his hand. “Sorry. There are some things I really don’t think I should tell you—at least, for now.”

“I understand. This has been very interesting, thanks.”
More than interesting
, he thought.
Perhaps I’ll look into this on my own
.

All of a sudden, the ground beneath them trembled, as if a giant hand had seized the entire facility and given it a violent shake. In the distance came the boom of an explosion. For a moment, the two men looked at each other in surprise. Then a shrill claxon began to sound in the hallway outside the office.

“What’s that?” Logan cried, jumping to his feet.

“Emergency alarm.” Rush was also on his feet, reaching for the portable two-way radio clipped to his belt. Even as he did so, it began beeping shrilly.

“Dr. Rush,” he said, bringing it to his lips. He listened for a moment. “My God,” he said into it. “I’ll be right there.”

“Let’s go,” he said to Logan, clipping the radio back to his belt.

“What’s happened?”

“Generator two is on fire.” And Rush ran out of the office, Logan at his heels.

15

They ran at top speed out of Maroon, through the welter of corridors that made up Green, and then out into the large, echoing marina. The piers, which had seemed so sleepy and deserted the day before, were now crowded with people. There was a confused overlap of conversation, shouted orders. Logan could smell acrid smoke in the loam-heavy air.

He followed Rush as he raced down a gangway leading along the far wall and out through the wall of camouflaged netting. Suddenly they were outside, on a narrow walkway that angled into the swamp and disappeared around the corner of the vast pontoon structure supporting the marina. It was three o’clock, and the sun felt like a burning blanket across Logan’s neck and shoulders. Above the netted roofline of the marina, he could see clouds of thick black smoke rising into the blue of the sky.

They rounded the corner of the pontoon and there—some thirty yards ahead—Logan could see the generator. It was a large, hulking structure, suspended above the swamp on floating pilings. Angry flames shot from a grille on its near side and licked upward, coating the metal housing in heavy soot. Men on Jet Skis surrounded the platform, directing streams of water toward it from portable tanks on their backs. Even at this distance, Logan could feel the heat of the inferno come over him in waves.

There was a commotion behind them, and Logan turned to see Frank Valentino and two men in coveralls coming up fast. One of the men held a heavy-duty drainage pump; the other had coils of industrial hose draped over one shoulder.

The three ran past, toward the small knot of workers bunched together at the end of the walkway. “Hurry up with that pump!” Valentino ordered.

Kneeling, the first engineer placed the pump on the metal of the walkway and flung the intake hose down into the Sudd, while the second engineer affixed the other end to the pump’s spigot. Gingerly inching closer to the generator, the man aimed the hose at the flames, while the other pulled the pump’s starter. Its engine coughed into life and a thin stream of brown, viscous water looped toward the flames.

“Affanculo!”
Valentino shouted. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s this swamp,” one of the engineers said. “It’s too damn thick!”

“Shit,” Valentino muttered. “Go get a number three filter—
hurry!
”

The man dropped the hose and ran back down the walkway.

Now Valentino turned to a tall man of about sixty with thinning blond hair who seemed to be in charge. “What about the methane in-link?” Logan heard Valentino ask.

“I’ve checked with Methane Processing. The relief valves in each wing are closed, the safety protocols fully engaged.”

“Thank God for that,” Valentino said.

Rush had begun walking closer to the knot of people at the end of the walkway, and Logan instinctively followed. Suddenly, he stopped
dead in his tracks, as abruptly as if he’d encountered an invisible wall. Without warning, he’d become aware of a presence, hanging over the generator and its immediate surroundings: a foul, malignant, evil thing, ancient and implacable. In the heat of the swamp and flames from the generator, Logan shivered with a sudden chill. The foul stench of a charnel seemed to fill his nostrils. He sensed somehow that the thing—entity, spirit, force of nature, whatever it might be—knew of his presence, of all their presences, and felt a deep and abiding hate for all: a hate almost lustful in its strength and depth. He took an instinctive step backward, then another, before mastering himself.