The Sphinx

CHAPTER 27

Duncan could see that the corridor opened up about fifty feet ahead. She walked quickly, hearing the sound of Mualama and Kaji behind her. The room she entered must have been in the exact middle of the Sphinx. The ceiling was twenty feet overhead, the walls spreading out with twenty feet of space between, and the far wall was thirty feet away.

Exactly in the center of the room, four poles held up four horizontal rods ten feet from the floor. At the top of each pole was a replica of the end of the scepter, a head looking down on them, all oriented toward the entrance, ruby eyes glittering. A thick white cloth hung from the rods, concealing whatever was inside.

Duncan looked about. To the left, against the wall, were several racks of what appeared to be various garments.

Duncan started to walk forward when she noted that the four heads on the top of the poles were slowly turning, tracking her. She stopped. “Someone tell me what’s going on?”

“Ahh… ” Mualama was watching the heads. “There is a legend that the Ark must always be hidden behind a veil… much like those cloths. It must be hidden because anyone who lays eyes on the Ark of the Covenant and is not one of the chosen priests will be consumed with fire. While the Ark was in Israel, it is said that Nadab and Abihu, two of the four sons of Aaron the High Priest, entered the area behind the veil and were killed by the burning fire.

“Even when the proper procedures were followed, it is said that the Ark would sometimes send off sparks and kill those who carried it or were around it.”

“And you were going to tell me this when?” Duncan asked as she backed up a step.

“There are so many legends.” Mualama shrugged. “It is hard to know what is important and what isn’t.”

“The one about getting consumed by fire is kind of important.” Duncan was watching the four heads. They were in their original positions, oriented on the entrance, which was where she was standing with Kaji and Mualama. “You knew about this, didn’t you?” she asked the old Egyptian. “You would have let me walk into… ” She stopped, at a loss for words and knowing exactly what it was she had almost stepped into. “Any suggestions?” she asked.

Mualama pointed to the left. “They must be the accoutrements for those who tended to the Ark.”

Duncan went to the racks, Mualama following. Kaji remained in the entrance, still just staring at the veil, his head cocked as if he were listening to something behind him.

“How long do we have?” Duncan called out to him.

“Ten minutes, maybe more, maybe less,” Kaji said.

“Can we close the Sphinx from the inside?” she asked.

“The door will close only when the scepter is removed,” Kaji said.

Duncan turned to Mualama. “Do you know anything about these clothes? Will wearing them allow someone to get inside?”

Mualama nodded. “When the Ark was in the temple in Jerusalem, the high priest wore a white linen robe, much like this.” He lifted it off the rack and tried to put it on. It was much too small for his large frame. He held it out to Duncan. “You must wear it to get to the Ark.”

Duncan reluctantly took the garment and slipped it over her head.

“On top he wore the meeir, which is this.” Mualama handed her a sleeveless shirt, blue in color with gold fringe. “On top of that went the ephod.” He held out a coat of many colors.

When Duncan took it from him, she almost dropped it. “Why is it so heavy?”

“Metal threads connect the various colors,” Mualama explained. He picked up two stones from a shelf on top of the rack. “These fasten it on the shoulders.” He helped her with it, still speaking. “The names written on these stones are those of the twelve sons of Jacob. As you can see, six names on each. According to legend, they give the wearer the power of prophecy.”

“I just want to see what’s behind curtain number one,” Duncan said. Her words were flippant, but she felt a change wash over her body as the stones were fastened at her shoulders. A tingling on her skin, as if a slight electric current were passing through. She realized she was going back through time, donning the garments of ancient priests.

“And the last piece.” Mualama held up a breastplate. A dozen jewels were attached to the wool with golden thread. Duncan had no idea what each stone was, but she had no doubt they were very precious. Mualama looped the neckpiece of the breastplate over her shoulders and it came to rest on her chest, fitting into a depression on the ephod perfectly. It was heavy, and she felt it pull her forward slightly before she adjusted her balance.

Duncan was startled when Kaji suddenly spoke. She had not seen or heard him walk over. “This is the essen,” Kaji said, pointing at the breastplate. “It is a symbol of righteousness and prophecy. The bearer must be true of heart and mind, or it will not protect you.”

Kaji reached out and Duncan almost pulled back, but she remained still as he adjusted the essen. He tapped two deep pockets, one on each side. “These are empty now. They held the urim and the thummin.”

“‘Held,’” Duncan repeated. “Where are they now? And what were they?”

“The way by which the prophesier spoke to God,” Kaji said. “I don’t know where they are now.”

“Great,” Duncan said. “Any other important parts missing?”

“This.” Kaji lifted a crown consisting of three bands, stacked one on top of another. “Each band represents two things. The three worlds of existence… heaven, hell, and the earth. And the three divisions of man… spiritual, intellectual, and physical.”

“What does that have to do with the Airlia?” Duncan bowed her head and allowed Kaji to place the crown on her. She would have felt ridiculous except for the fact that she was inside the Black Sphinx and she knew The Mission was coming.

“It was the way ancient man tried to deal with things they could not understand,” Kaji said. “You are ready to view the Ark. If you are pure, you will survive. If not…” He didn’t seem too concerned either way.

“What about the urim and thummin?’ Duncan shuffled a few steps toward the veil. “Will I be safe without them?”

“I do not know,” Kaji said.

“Great,” Duncan muttered.

The blue water of the Mediterranean was below the bouncer as Turcotte punched in the SATPhone code. As soon as it was answered, Turcotte began talking.

“I have the key.”

There was a short pause, then Lexina spoke. “Where are you?”

“Where do you want the key delivered?” Turcotte asked instead of answering.

“You do not have much time. I will follow through on my threat.”

“Then tell me where you want it delivered.”

“Forty-two degrees north latitude, one hundred and five degrees east longitude.”

“I want Che Lu and whoever is with her in exchange for the key,” Turcotte said as Captain Billam thumbed through an atlas, searching for the coordinates.

“You are in no position to make demands.”

“You are in no position to turn me down,” Turcotte snapped back.

“It is of no import. You can have the old lady. The clock is still ticking.”

The phone went dead, and Turcotte looked at where Billam’s forefinger was pointed. A spot in Mongolia, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, with no roads or towns within hundreds of miles. “Let’s go.”

Kelly Reynolds existed in a netherworld of physical stasis and extreme mental activity. She was barely aware of her body, pressed up against the guardian computer, surrounded by the golden field. The metal probe along with the nanomachines had been removed from her body through her insinuation of the commands in the steady stream she could monitor coming out of the guardian computer.

To penetrate into the guardian itself, to examine its database, was a different story. She’d had “visions” of the building of the moai on Easter Island, of the Giza Plateau at the height of its glory, and even the current situation with the nanovirus swarming over the crew of the Washington and the ship itself.

Her delicate probing, like trying to consciously manipulate a dream in a half-awake stage, had come across something quite intriguing: a large pathway for data in and out of the guardian, like an electronic superhighway among secondary roads, but empty of traffic. It originated in the core of the guardian, and Kelly found her psyche there, alone in the empty conduit. She “followed” it out of the guardian, her mind ranging along the pathway until she reached an abrupt end, where the data link had been severed.

How she knew these things she couldn’t consciously elaborate, but her subconscious was picking up enough for her to have realizations. It suddenly came to her where this data superhighway had gone and why it was no longer functional. The Easter Island guardian was a complicated machine, far more powerful and aware than any computer made by humans, but Kelly now knew it had once been only one piece of a whole system. She “saw” it as the guardian had once seen it… a network of guardian computers on Earth, the one at Cydonia at Mars, on board the mothership, others in places she couldn’t quite grasp all linked together. And on Earth there had been one guardian that every other guardian on the planet had been linked to. The place where the data highway had been linked to.

That guardian had been on Atlantis, and for a moment Kelly thought the reason the pathway had been severed was that the master guardian had been destroyed when that island had been blasted by the mothership.

But the data recorded indicated otherwise. The severing had come after Atlantis was destroyed and the Airlia split into their two factions.

That meant the master guardian had been removed from Atlantis prior to destruction. But the machine was no longer active; the core of it had been removed. She saw the removal of the core by two Airlia, the vision startlingly real to her, then the vision went black, as if a TV had been turned off, and she knew that was when the highway from the Easter Island guardian… indeed all the other guardians on Earth… had been severed from the master.

Kelly knew that Duncan and Turcotte had to know the master guardian existed, and they had to know the core also existed. She turned her attention once more to the string of data the guardian was moving outward into the world and slowly worked her own small, very discrete bits of data into it.

Without ceremony Elek had escorted Che Lu and Lo Fa into the metal dragon immediately after getting a call from Lexina. The interior was as elegant as the exterior. A series of half a dozen red chairs faced forward in the belly. One center seat was in front with a black globe centered in front of it, a wide screen beyond showing the view outside.

“What is this thing?” Che Lu asked as Elek took the forward seat.

“A weapon. Built from scrap during an ancient war.”

Elek placed his hands on the black sphere. Che Lu could see that they were lifting off the ground even though it felt as if they had not moved.

“Between Shi Huangdi and the Empress of the South?”

Elek shrugged. “That is your legend. There have been many battles over the millennia between the Guides and The Ones Who Wait, and the humans who have chosen sides. This is another one.” The dragon was now facing the rubble in the wide tube that led to the surface. Elek pressed on the top of the sphere, and a lance of red came out of the mouth, blasting rock aside, opening a path to blue sky beyond.

“But this one is different,” Che Lu said, which earned her a sharp glance from Elek as he edged the machine into the tunnel.

“This is the final one,” he said. “There will be no more truce, and only one side will prevail.”

Duncan forced himself to move toward the veils. The heads tracked her once more, the four sets of ruby eyes fixed on her movement.

Duncan almost jumped as a flash of light came out of the frontmost, right-side head. A red beam struck the ground in front of her, quickly ran up her body, stopped on the essen for two seconds, continued on to the crown, then disappeared. She froze, waiting for more, but there was nothing.

She reached the veil. Kneeling, she lifted the bottom of the veil and then stepped inside.