Now she knew that both were secret adversaries in the struggle that had begun on that first stormy night in Berkeley—the night they resolved to spin up the Arch for the very first time and breach the womb of time. She turned her head, slowly, deliberately, and looked upon the shape that had been unearthed.
Robert gaped at her, waiting to see the same look of astonishment sweep across her features. Instead he saw the tightening of her jaw, and the tension in her eyes, set tighter now, and reflecting some unalterable inner conclusion as she took in the scene. There was wonder there, to be sure, but it was ruthlessly suppressed. In its place he saw the glimmer of anger kindled like a growing fire, and he knew at last, in the wake of his own confusion and surprise, a moment of great doubt and fear.
20
It had taken them the better part of three hours, and nearly fifty men with levers and ropes, but they had it up on the wooden truss now, freed from the long embrace of the dry earthen embankment where it had slept for so many centuries.
Robert watched them work for a time, his excitement and curiosity keeping him at the edge of the dig site. He could not help himself, and took hold of a rope when the laborers had hitched it about the great carved shape of black basalt. It was Maeve’s insistent tugging at his arm that eventually brought him back to his senses.
“Robert!” she hissed in his ear, hoping no one else would hear. “The time… we’ve got to get back!”
The retraction scheme wasn’t scheduled to kick in until tomorrow. What was she worried about? Still, the urgency in her voice finally penetrated the excitement that had possessed him earlier.
As she pulled him away, he took one last look at it. There it was, the famous stone that had proved a key to an entire culture and history buried in a thousand tombs, hidden away in the barren deserts of Egypt. There it was, a marvelously polished slab of black basalt, looking a bit like finely grained granite, and carved with hundreds of Egyptian glyphs. He had come here to determine its condition, to see if the damage he had discovered in the London Museum was something he might have caused with his own headstrong curiosity. His every hope was to find the stone fully intact, not broken as he had seen it in the dark, dusty cellars of the museum where it was no more than another forgotten curiosity. Now, when he looked upon it one last time, the full implications of what he was seeing finally began to register in his mind.
Fully intact… The stone was not broken. It bore no sign of damage of any kind, save the inevitable wear of the ages, with intermittent chinks and abrasions marring the smooth, polished surface. It was not broken… no damage at all, but the amazing thing was that this was not the familiar shape of the Rosetta Stone that he had studied all his life! It was fully twice the size of the stone he knew. The stone he was familiar with could have only been the lower portion of this great monolith. If lifted up on its end, this stone would tower over his head. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. This was something altogether different.
At the very top, the image of a vulture’s wings were extended across the whole of the stone. At the heart of the bird was an image of Ra as the sun, and two cobras dangled down from either side, turning at the bottom and rearing up in a classic pose of regal threat. These carvings arched over a gathering of lords in two columns, facing each other, and marching in from opposite sides of the stone. There were seven lords facing each direction, all wearing regal head gear and bearing scepters of authority and power. The professor recognized the elongated ovals of cartouche symbols above their heads, naming each member of the assemblage as they gathered.
Directly below this were long rows of hieroglyphics as they appeared on the upper portion of the old stone, but they extended down the whole face of this artifact, even to the base! Where was the Greek Text? Where was the Demotic rendition of the messages carved by the glyphs?
As Maeve pulled on his arm with increasing urgency, he fixed his last gaze on the writing, realizing he could still read it. His mind immediately translated what he saw: “Through the ages now he comes to a mystery: one death gives birth, a great wind upon the face of the sea, in a place forever hidden where the lions roar: ‘mine is yesterday, and I know tomorrow.”
Maeve prevailed at last and managed to pull him away. LeGrand turned as the two travelers started away, but his attention was soon drawn to the stone again, and the growing effort to recover it from the rubble. Khalid saw them leaving as well, Nordhausen pulled along by Maeve as they fled through a low arch in the walls, seeking a way back to the inn where they had spent the night.
“I can’t believe it!” Nordhausen breathed as they went. “It’s not the stone—but yet it was the stone. It has to be. Yet it was something entirely new! There was no Greek writing on it, and not a single word of Demotic script that I could see. The whole thing was—”
“Later, Robert. We have to get out of sight! I’m feeling very strange.” She paused briefly, struggling with her skirts and looking about her to see if anyone had noticed them. They had reached the edge of a grove of palms interspersed with a few banana trees cultivated in the fields before a small adobe farmstead. There was no one around, the commotion of the discovery acting like a magnet and pulling in all the locals to the frenzied activity at the dig site.
“How is this supposed to work?” asked Maeve. She pulled hard on Robert’s arm when he did not answer her, shaking him from his reverie.
“What?”
“How does it work, Robert? Do we have to get back to the breaching point? Do we have to go all that way? When will it happen? How much time do you think we have left?”
Robert realized she was talking about the retraction. “How much time? The retraction is scheduled for tomorrow morning!”
“Perhaps so… but I’m feeling… quite odd just now. I think my integrity is slipping.”
“Really? Well its probably just the sun, and all this excitement, and the dust. But, to answer your other question, I don’t think we need be anywhere close to the breaching point. Paul and I wandered very far during that first mission, and I took the train from London to—well, never mind that. The point is: it could happen anywhere… at any moment, I suppose.” Now he was looking around, realizing that it would be best to find some secluded spot where they could wait out the remaining hours.
“Over there,” he pointed to a cart path that led along the fringes of the thick palm grove. “That way looks promising.”
As they started toward it they heard a voice calling after them and turned about. Khalid was rushing over the parched ground, his lavender fringed robes flowing behind him.
“That’s done it,” Robert exclaimed. “Come on, we’ve got to give him the slip!” But Khalid was fast upon them, hastening up and calling for them to wait.
“It’s no use,” said Maeve. “He’s seen us, and he can follow us easily from this point if we make a run for it. Besides, the heat is appalling, and these skirts are a nuisance.”
“Friends, wait!” Khalid came up, breathless, but smiling with relief. “Oh, what a day!” He beamed at them. “Did you see it? Did you see it?” His hands trembled as he spoke, and he seemed to gaze at the sky as he praised Allah aloud, tears watering the corners of his eyes.
Robert did not know what to make of him, or his reaction, but Khalid was quick to explain. “It is wondrous, a miracle beyond my wildest hopes! We thought to find it broken—that is the middle way, the path of struggle and many hard years of strife and woe. Yes, I know you had hopes here as well. You came for the discovery, of course, for the stone. Forgive my deception earlier, but we all walk behind a veil, do we not? Believe me now when I tell you that there is sorrow in my heart at what you have witnessed. Forgive me—forgive us all, but there was no other way. We worked it, day and night, and the best we could achieve was a hundred years of enmity. But something has changed! Yes! A great transformation has occurred. It is all made new again, even as it was on the day our sword was first drawn in anger. Imagine my surprise! I was sent to keep watch, and now I must go to bring this news to my people. Oh, day of days! Allah be praised. We worked it, and now we may walk this world redeemed, with shining eyes and heads held high.”