Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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them. It was a professional land surveyor's model on folding legs, and

under it every detail of the photographs was revealed. "Taita has headed

each of the sides of the stele with the name of one of the seasons of

the year – spring, summer, autumn and winter.

What do you think he was getting at?"

"Page numbers?"

"Exactly my own thought," she agreed. "The Egyptians considered spring

as the beginning of all new life. He is telling us in which order to

read the panels. This one is spring." She selected one of the

photographs.

"It starts with four standard quotations from the Book of the Dead." She

quoted the first few lines of the opening section: "'I am the first

breeze blowing softly over the dark ocean of eternity. I am the first

sunrise. The first glimmer of light. A white feather blowing in the dawn

wind. I am Ra. I am the beginning of all things. I will live for ever. I

shall never perish."' Still holding the glass poised, she looked up at

him. "As far as I can see, they do not differ "Substantially from the

original. My instinct is to set these aside for the time being. We can

always come back to them later."

"Let's go with your instinct," he suggested. "Read the next section."

She held the glass to the Polaroid. "I am not going to look at you while

I read this. Taita. can be as earthy as Rabelais when he is in the mood.

Anyway, here goes. "The daughter of the goddess pines for her dam. She

roars like a lioness as she hurries to meet her. She leaps from the

mountain, and her fangs are white. She is the harlot of all the world.

Her vagina pisseth out great torrents. Her vagina has swallowed an army

of men. Her sex eateth up the masons and the workers of stone. Her

vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king."'

"Whoa there!" Nicholas chuckled. "Pretty fruity stuff, don't you think?"

He leaned forward to study her face, for it was still turned away from

him. "Och, lassie, you have roses in your bonny cheeks. Not a blush,

surely not?"

"Your Scots accent is not in the least convincing," she told him coldly,

still not looking at him. "When you have finished being clever at my

expense, what do you think of what I have just read?"

"Apart from the obvious, I have't any idea."

"I want to show you something." She stood up and packed the photographs

and the rolls of art paper back into the haversack. "You'll need to get

your boots on. I am taking you on a little walk."

An hour later they stood in the centre of the suspension bridge, swaying

gently high above the swift waters of the Dandera river.

"Hapi is the goddess of the Nile. Is this river not then her daughter,

pining to meet her, leaping from the mountain top, roaring like a

lioness, her fangs white with spume?" she asked him.

They stared in silence at the archway of pink stone through which the

river poured, and suddenly Nicholas grinned lasciviously. "I think that

I know what you are going to say next. That's what I first thought of

when I looked at that cleft. You said it was like a gargoyle's mouth,

but I had another image."

"All I can say is that you must have some extraordinary lady friends,'

she said, and then covered her mouth. "Ooops!

I didn't mean to say that. I am being as disgusting as either you or

Taita."

"The workmen swallowed up in there!" His voice became more excite& "The

masons and the workers in stone!'

"Pharaoh Mamose was a god. The river has swallowed up a god with her -

with her stone archway." She was equally excited. "I must admit that I

would not have made the association if you hadn't explored the interior

of the cavern, and found those niches in the wall." She shook his arm.

"Nicky, we have to get in there again. We have to get a clearer look at

that has-relief you found on the cavern wall."

"It will take some preparation," he said dubiously. "I will have to

splice the ropes and make some sort of pulley system, and I will have to

drill Aly and the other men to avoid a repetition of my last little

fiasco. We won't be ready to make the attempt until tomorrow morning at

the very earliest."

"You get on with it. I will have plenty to keep me occupied with the

translation of the stele." Then she stopped and looked up at the sky.

"Listen!" she whispered.

He cocked his head and above the sound of the river, heard the whining

flutter of rotors in the air.

"Dammit!" he snapped. "I thought we had lost the Pegasus presence. Come

on!" He grabbed her arm and hustled her off the bridge. When they

reached the land he jumped down on to the beach, and she followed him.

The two of them crept under the hanging eaves of the bridge.

They sat quietly on the white sandy beach and listened to the Jet Ranger

helicopter approaching swiftly, and then circling back over the hills

beyond the pink cliffs. This time the pilot had not spotted them, for he

turned away and began to patrol up and down the line of the chasm.

Suddenly the engine-beat changed dramatically as the pitch altered and

the pilot pulled up the collective.

"Sounds as if he is going in for a landing up there in the hills,,

Nicholas said as he crawled out from under the bridge. "I would feel a

lot easier without them snooping around."

"I don't think we have too much to worry about," Royan disagreed. "Even

if they are connected with Duraid's killers, we are still way out ahead

of them. Obviously they have not tumbled to the importance of the

monastery, and the stele."

"I hope you are right. Let's get back to camp. We must not let them see

us in the vicinity of the chasm again. It will be too much of a

coincidence for them to find us hanging around here every time they come

this way."

while Royan went to her hut and pored over her photographs and etchings,

Nicholas worked with the trackers and skinners. He spliced the

unravelled end of the nylon rope to the second Thank, to make a single

length five hundred feet long. Then he cannibalized the canvas fly of

the cooking hut, cutting it up and whipping the raw edges to make a

sling seat. He fashioned the ends of the rope into a harness which he

spliced into the four corners of the canvas seat.

He had no block and tackle, so he put together a crude gantry of poles

which could be extended out over the cliff edge to keep the rope clear

of the rock. The rope would run through the groove that he drilled in

the end of the central beam with a red-hot iron. He lubricated it with

cooking lard.

It was the middle of the afternoon by the time he had completed his

preparations. Then, leaving Royan in camp, he led his men, burdened with

the coils of rope and the pole sections of the gantry, back up the

pathway to the spot where he had abseiled down into the ravine to

retrieve the carcass of the dik-dik. From there they worked their way

downstream, following the rim of the cliff. It was heavy going for Thorn

scrub grew right up to the edge, and in many places they were forced to

use their-machetes to hack their way through.

The sound of the waterfall guided him. As they moved down river it grew

louder, until the rock seemed to quiver under his feet with the roar of

falling waters. Finally, by leaning out over the edge and peering

downwards, Nicholas could make out the flash of spray in the depths

below.

This is the spot." He grunted with satisfaction, and explained to Aly in

Arabic what he wanted done.

In order to determine the exact position in which to set up the gantry,

Nicholas climbed into the canvas sling seat and had them lower him

twenty feet down the cliff face, just as far as the beginning of the

overhang. Up to that point he was able to keep the nylon rope from

abrading on the rock, but he was also able to see around the bulge of

the face.

Hanging backwards over the falls and the rocky bowl of the river one

hundred and fifty feet below him, he was able at last to see the double

row of niches in the rock face.

However, the has-relief engraving was still hidden from view by the

tumblehome of the cliff. He gave Aly the signal and they hauled him up.

"We must set up the gantry a little further down," he told him, and

directed them as they hacked away the dense shrubbery that choked the

rim. Then suddenly he exclaimed, "I'll be damned!" He went down on one

knee to examine the rim rock that the thorns had concealed.

"There are more excavations here."

Exposed to the elements, unlike those works further down that had been

protected by the overhang, these were badly eroded. There were just

vague traces remaining in the rim rock, but he was certain that these

indentations were the upper anchor points for the ancient scaffoldin

9They set up their own gantry on the same levelled area, and extended

the long pole out over the drop. Then they rigged and secured it with a

crude cantilever system of ropes and lighter poles.

When they were finished, Nicholas crawled out to the end to test the

structure and to run the end of the rope through the slot he had

prepared for it. The whole structure seemed solid and firm.

Nevertheless, it was with relief that he crawled back to solid ground.

He stood up and looked over the tops of the thorn scrub to where the

lowering sun was fuming red and angry on the horizon.

"Enough for one day," he decided. "The rest can wait for-tomorrow."

The next morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at

the campfire while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at

their own fire near by, talking quietly and coughing over the first

cigarettes of the day. The project seemed to have caught their

imagination. They had no inkling of the reason for this second descent

into the chasm, but the enthusiasm of the two ferengi was infectious.

As soon as it was light enough to see the path, Nicholas led them back

up into the hills. The men chatted cheerfully amongst themselves in

Amharic as they hurried through the thorn scrub, and they came out on

the rim rock just as the sun broke out over the eastern escarpment of

the valley. Nicholas had drilled the men the previous day, and he and

Royan had sat half the night going over the plans, so each of them knew

their part and they lost little time in setting themselves up for the

descent.

Nicholas had stripped to shorts and tennis shoes, but this time he had

brought along an old Barbarians rugby jersey for warmth. While he pulled

this over his head he pointed out to Royan the platform that had been

dug out from the solid rock.

She examined it carefully. "It's very hard to be sure, but I think you

are right. This probably is man-made."

"When you get further down you will have no doubts.

There is very little weathering of the face under the overhang, and the

niches are almost perfectly preserved until they reach the high-water

mark, that is," he told her, as he took his seat in the sling and swung

out over the cliff.

Dangling from the end of the gantry he gave Aly the sign, and the men

lowered him down into the gorge. The rope ran smoothly through the

lubricated slot.

He saw at once that he had judged it correctly, and that he was

descending in line with the double row of -niches. He came level with

the enigmatic circle on the cliff face, but it was fifty feet from him,

and a growth of gaudy Coloured lichens had streaked and discotoured the

rock, partially obscuring the details, so that he still could not be

certain that. it was not a natural flaw. He passed it and went on down

as Aly and his team paid out the rope from above.

When he reached the surface of the water he slipped out of the sling and

dropped in. The water was very cold.

He trod water, gasping, until his body became acclimatized.

Then he gave Aly three tugs on the signal rope. While the canvas seat

was hauled up he swam to the side of the pool and held on to one of the

carved stone niches for support.

He had forgotten how gloomy and cold and lonely it was here in the

bottom of the chasm.

After a long delay he craned his head backwards and watched Royan come

into sight around the bulge of the overhang, dangling in the sling seat

and revolving slowly at the end of the nylon rope. She looked down and

waved at him cheerfully.

"Full marks to that girl," he grinned. "Not much puts the wind up her."

He wanted to shout encouragement, but he knew it was futile because the

thunder of the falls smothered all other sound. So he contented himself

with returning her wave.

Halfway down he saw her tugging frantically on the signal rope. Aly had

been warned to expect this, and her i4 descent was hatted immediately..

Then she leaned back in the sling, hanging on with only her left hand,

as she groped for Nicholas's binoculars which hung from their strap on

to her chest. She was twisted at an awkward angle as she held the

glasses to her eyes and tried to manipulate the focus wheel with one

hand. He saw that she was obviously having difficulty picking up the

round mark on the wall and keeping it in the field of the lens, for the

sling was swinging from side to side and at the same time revolving

slowly.

She struggled at the end of the rope for what seemed to Nicholas a very

long time, but probably was no more than a few minutes. Then abruptly

she dropped the binoculars on to her chest, threw back her head and let

out a scream that, despite the roar of falling water, carried clearly to

Nicholas a hundred feet beneath her. She was kicking her legs joyfully

and waving her free hand at him, wild with excitement, as Aly began

paying out the rope once more. Still screaming incoherently, she was

looking down at him with a face that seemed to light up the cathedral

gloom of the gorge.

"I can't hear you," he yelled back, but the falls defeated both their

efforts to communicate.

Royan was wriggling about in her seat, shouting and gesticulating

wildly, and now she let go the harness with her other hand and leaned

further out to keep him in sight as the sling revolved. She was still

twenty feet above the water when she almost lost her balance entirely,

and very nearly toppled backwards out of the sling.

"Careful there," he yelled up at her. "Those glasses are Zeiss. Two

thousand quid at the Zurich duty-free!'

IC

This time his vo'  must have carried, for she stuck her tongue out at

him in a schoolgirlish gesture. But her movements became more

circumspect. When her feet were almost touching the water she signalled

on the rope to stop her descent and hung there, fifty feet across the

pool from him.

"What did you find?" he shouted across.

"You were right, you wonderful man!'

"Is it man-made? Is it an inscription? Could you read it?, "Yes, yes and

yes to all three of your questions! She grinned triumphantly as she

teased him.

"Don't be infuriating. Tell me."

"Taita's ego got the better of him once again. He couldn't resist

signing his work." She laughed. "He has left us his autograph – the hawk

with a broken wing!'

"Marvellous! Plain bloody marvelous!the exalted.

"Proof that Taita was here, Nicky. To carve that cartouche, he must have

been standing on a scaffolding.

Our first guess was right. That niche you are holding on to is part of

his ladder to the bottom of the gorge."

"Yes, but why, Royan?" he yelled back at her. "Why was Taita down here?

There is no evidence of any excavation or building work."

They both looked around the gloomy cavern. Apart from the tiny rows of

niches, the walls were unbroken, smooth and inscrutable until they

plunged into the dark water.

Under the falls?" she shouted across. "Is there a cutback in the rock?

Can you get across there?"

He pushed off from the cliff, and swam towards the thundering chute of

water. Halfway across, the current caught him and he had to swim with

all his strength to make any headway against it. Thrashing the water

with flailing arms and kicking out strongly, he managed to reach a spur

of polished, algae-stick rock at the nearest end of the falls.

The water crashed over his head, but he edged his way along under the

rock step into the heart of the cascade.

Halfway across, the water overwhelmed him. It tore him off his

precarious perch, hurled him back into the basin below and swirled him

end over end. He surfaced in the middle of the pool, and once again had

to Swim with all his strength to break free of the grip of the current

and to reach the slack water below the wall again. He clung to his

handhold in the stone niche, and panted like a bellows.

"Nothing?" she called.

He shook his head, unable to answer until he had finally regained his

breath. Finally he managed: "Nothing.

It's a solid rock wall behind the falls." He gasped another breath, and

then invited sarcastically, "Next bright idea, madam?"

She was silent and he was glad of the respite. Then she called again,

"Nicky, how far do those niches go down?"

"You can see," he told her, "right to the one I am holding on to."

"What about below the surface?"

"Don't be silly, woman." He was getting cold and irritable. "How the

hell could there be cuttings below the surface?"

"Try!" she yelled almost as iff itably. He shook his head pityingly, and

drew a deep breath. Still clinging to his handhold, he extended his

limbs and body to their full stretch. Then his head went under the dark

surface as he groped down as far as he could reach with his toes.

Suddenly he shot back, snorting for air with a startled look on his

face. "By Jove!" he shouted. "You are right!

There is another niche down there!'

"I hate to say I told you so." Even at that range he could see the smug

expression on her face.

"What are you? Some kind of witch?" Then he broke off and rolled his

eyes heavenward in despair. "I know what you are going to ask me to do

next."

"How far do the niches go down?" she called in honeyed tones. "Will you

dive down for me, dear Nicky?"

"That's it," he said. "I knew it. I am going to speak to my shop

steward. This is slave labour. From now onwards I am on strike."

"Please, Nicky!'

He hung in the water'pumping air in and out of his lungs,

hyperventilating, flushing his . bloodstream with oxygen to increase his

underwater endurance to its limits.

In the end he expelled the contents of his lungs completely, squeezing

out the last breath until his chest ached with the effort, and then he

sucked in again, filling his lungs to their capacity with fresh air.

Finally, with his chest fully expanded, he duck-dived, standing on his

head with his legs high out of the water and letting their weight drive

him under.

Sliding head-first down the submerged wall, he reached down, groping for

the next niche below the surface. He found it, and used it to accelerate

his dive, pulling himself on downwards.

He found the second niche below that, and pulled himself on downwards.

The niches were about six feet apart – a nautical fathom. Using them as

a measure, he was able to calculate his progress accurately.

Swimming on downwards, he found another niche, then another. Four rows

of niches, twenty-four feet below the surface. His ears were popping and

squeaking as the pressure squeezed the air out of his Eustachian tubes.

He kept on downwards and found the fifth row of niches. Now the air in

his lungs was compressing to almost half its surface volume, and as his

buoyancy decreased so his descent became easier and more rapid.

His eyes were wide open, but the waters below him were dark and turbid.

He could make out only the surface of the wall directly in front of his

face. He saw the sixth niche appear ahead of him and he grasped it, then

hesitated.

"Thirty-six feet of depth already, and no sign yet of bottom he

thought. There had been a time, when he was spearfishing competitively

with the army team, that he could free-dive to sixty feet and stay at

that depth for a full minute. But he had been younger then and in peak

physical condition.

"Just one more niche," he promised himself, "and then back up to the

surface." His chest was beginning to throb and burn with the need to

breathe, but he pulled hard on his handhold and shot down. He saw the

vague shape of the seventh niche appear out of the murk below him'

"They go right to the bottom," he realized with amazeMent. "How on'earth

did Taita do it? They had no diving equipment." He grasped the niche and

hovered there for a moment, undecided if he should risk going further.

He knew he was almost at his physical limit. Already he was hunting for

air, his chest beginning to convulse involuntarily.

"What about one more for the hell of it!" He was beginning to feel

light-headed, and a strange glow of euphoria came over him. He

recognized the danger signs, and looked down at his own body. Through

the murk he saw that his skin was wrinkled and folded by the pressure of

water. There were over two atmospheres'weight bearing down upon him,

crushing in his chest. His brain was becoming starved of oxygen, and he

felt reckless and invulnerable.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends," he thought drunkenly, and

went on down.

"Number eight, and the doctor's at the gate." He felt the eighth niche

under his fingers. He was thinking in gibberish now: "Number eight, and

I'll have her on a plate." He turned to go up again, and his feet

touched bottom. -Fifty feet deep," he realized even through his fuddled

state.

"I have left it too late. Got to get back. Got to breathe." He was

bracing himself to push off from the bottom when something grabbed his

legs and dragged him hard against the rock wall.

ctopus!" he thought, remembering the line from Taita's stele, "Her

vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king."

He tried to kick out, but his legs were bound as if by the arms of a sea

monster; some cold, insidious embrace held him captive. "Taita's

octopus. My oath! He meant it literally. It's got me."

He was pinned against the wall, crushed, helpless.

Terror seized him, and the rush of it through his blood flushed away the

hallucinations of his oxygen-impoverished brain. He realized what had

happened to him.

"No octopus. This is water pressure." He had experienced the same

phenomenon once before. On an army training exercise, while diving near

the inlet to the turbines of the generators in Loch Arran, his buddy

diver who was roped to him had drifted into their terrible suction. His

companion had been sucked against the grille of the intake and his body

had been crushed so that the splinters of his ribs had been driven

through the flesh of his chest and had come out through the black

neoprene rubber of his suit like daggers.

Nicholas had narrowly escaped the same fate. The fact that he was a few

feet to one side of his buddy had meant that he escaped the full brunt

of the rush of water into the turbine intake. Nevertheless, one of his

legs was broken, and it had taken the strength of two other army divers

to prise him out of the grip of the current.

This time he was at the limit of his air, and there was no other diver

to assist him. He was being sucked into a narrow opening in the rock,

the mouth of an underwater tunnel, a subaqueous shaft that bored into

the rock wall.

His upper body was free of the baleful influence of the rushing flood,

but his legs were being drawn inexorably into it. He was aware that the

surrounds of the opening were sharply demarcated, as straight and as

square as a lintel hewn by a mason. He was being dragged over and around

this lintel. Spreading out his arms, he resisted with all his strength,

but his hooked fingers slid over the polished, slimy surface of the

rock.

"This is the big one," he thought. "This is the one punch that you can't

duck." He hooked his fingers, and felt his nails tear and break as they

rasped against the rock.

Then suddenly they locked into the last niche in the wall above the

sink-hole which was sucking him under.

Now at least he had an anchor point. With both hands he clung to the

niche, and fought the pull of the water. He fought it with all his

remaining strength and all his heart, but he was near the end of his

store of both. He strained until he felt the muscles in both arms

popping, until the sinews in his neck stood out in steely cords and he

felt something in his head must burst. But he had halted the insidious

slide of his body into the sink-hole.

"One more," he thought. "Just one more try." And he knew that was all he

had left within him. His air was all used up, and so were his courage

and his resolve. His mind swirled, and dark shapes clouded his vision.

From somewhere deep inside himself he drew out the last reserves, and

pulled until the darkness in his head exploded in sheets of bright

colours, shooting stars and Catherine wheels that dazzled him. But he

kept on pulling.

He felt his legs coming out of it, the grip of the waters weakening, and

he pulled once more with strength that he had never realized he

possessed.

Then suddenly he was free and shooting towards the surface, but it was

too late. The darkness filled his head and in his ears was a sound like

the roaring of the waterfall in the abyss. He was drowning. He was all

used up. He had no knowledge of where he was, how much further he had to

go to the surface, but he knew only that he was not going to make it. He

was finished.

When he came out through the surface, he did not know that he had done

so, and he did not have enough strength left to lift his face out of the

water and to breathe.

He wallowed the're like a waterlogged carcass, face down and dying. Then

he felt Royan's fingers lock into the hair in the back of his head, and

the cold air on his face as she lifted it clear.

"Nicky!" she screamed at him. "Breathe, "Nicky, breathe!'

He opened his mouth and let out a spray of water and saliva and stale

air, and then gagged and gasped.

"You're still alive! Oh, thank God. You were down for so long. I thought

you had drowned."

As he coughed and fought for air and his senses returned, he realized in

a vague way that she must have dropped out of the sting seat and come to

his aid.

"You were under for so long. I could not believe it." She held his head

up, clinging with her free hand to the niche in the wall. "You are going

to be all right now. I have got you. just take it easy for a while. It's

going to be all right." It was amazing how much her voice encouraged

him.

The air tasted good and sweet and he felt his strength slowly returning.

"We have to get you up," she told him. "A few minutes more to get

yourself together, and then I will help you into the sling."

She swam with him across to the dangling sling and signalled to the men

at the top of the cliff to lower it into the water. Then she held the

folds of canvas open so that he could slip his legs into them.

"Are you all right, Nicky?" she demanded anxiously.

"Hang on until you get to the top." She placed his hands on the side

ropes of the harness. "Hold tight!'

"Can't leave you down here," he blurted groggily.

"I'll be fine," she assured him. "Just have Aly send the seat down again

for me."

When he was halfway up he looked down and saw her head bobbing in the

dark waters. She looked very small and lonely, and her face pate and

pathetic.

"Guts!" His voice was so weak and hoarse that he did not recognize it.

"You've got real guts." But already he was too high for the words to

carry down to her.

When they had got Royan safely up out of the ravine, Nicholas ordered

Aly to dismantle the gantry and hide the sections in the thorn scrub.

From the helicopter it would be highly visible and he did not wish to

stir Jake Helm's curiosity.

He was in no shape to give the men a hand, but lay in the shade of one

of the Thorn trees with Royan tending to him. He was dismayed to find

how much his near-drowning had taken out of him. He had a blinding

headache, caused by oxygen starvation. His chest was very painful and

stabbed him every time he breathed: in his struggles he must have torn

or sprained something.

He was impressed with Royan's forbearance. She made no attempt to

question him about his discoveries in the bottom of the gorge, and

seemed genuinely more concerned with his well being than with the

progress of their exploration.

When she helped him to his feet and they started back towards camp, he

moved like an old man, lame and stiff. Every muscle and sinew in his

body ached. He knew that the lactic acid and nitrogen that had built up

in his tissues would take some time to be reabsorbed and dispersed.

Once they reached camp Royan led him to his hut and fussed over him as

she settled him under the mosquito net.

By this time he was feeling a lot better, but he neglected to inform her

of this fact. It was pleasant to have a woman caring for him again. She

brought him a couple of aspirin tablets and a steaming mug of tea, stiff

with sugar. He was putting it on a little when he asked weakly for a

second mugful.

Sitting beside his bed, she solicitously watched him drink it. "Better?"

she asked, when he had finished.

"The odds are two to one that I Will survive," he told her, and she

smiled.

"I can see that you are better. Your cheek is showing again. You gave me

an awful scare, you know."

"Anything to get your attention."

"Now that we have decided that you will live, tell me what happened.

What sort of trouble did you run into down there in the pool?"

"What you really want to know is what I found down there. Am I correct?"

"That too, she admitted.

Then he told her everything that he had discovered and how he had been

caught in the inflow of the underwater sink-hole. She listened without

interruption, and even when he had finished speaking she said nothing

for a while, but frowned with concentrated thought.

At last she looked up at him. "You mean that Taita was able to take

those stone niches right down to the very bottom of the pool, fifty feet

below the surface? and when he nodded, she was silent again. Then she

said, "How on earth did he accomplish that? What are your thoughts on

the subject?" -Tour thousand years ago the water level may have been

lower. There may have been a drought year when the river dried up, and

enabled him to get in there. How am I doing?"

"Not a bad try," she admitted, "but then why go to all the trouble of

building a scaffold? Why not just use the dry river bed as an access?

Then again, surely the attraction of the spot for Taita was the river.