I
NSIDE THE GREAT OBELISK,
Conrad and Yeats stood on a circular platform five feet wide suspended in darkness. Conrad heard a low hum and could feel a greasy draft against his cheek. He flicked on his halogen flashlight. The beam shot out fifty feet before it struck a towering column and in less than a second ricocheted off three other metallic columns that surrounded them. Each bounce intensified the blinding light. Conrad closed his eyes.
“Shut it off!” Yeats shouted, his voice echoing in the darkness.
Conrad, eyes pressed shut, felt for a switch and turned off the halogen lamp. After a minute he blinked but couldn’t shake the blinding afterglow. “Those columns of light,” Yeats said, still rubbing his eyes. “What are they?”
“They’re not made of light,” Conrad said. “They just reflect and magnify any light that hits them. Hold on.” Conrad reached into his pocket and pulled out the Zippo lighter. “This is low wattage. Ready?”
“For you to blind us?”
“It won’t be so bad this time,” Conrad said. “Put your shades on and relax.”
Conrad put on his sunglasses and waited for Yeats to do likewise before Conrad flicked on the lighter. The effect was like a single candle burning in a cavernous cathedral. Surrounding them in the dim light were four glowing, translucent pillars, each about twenty feet in diameter, rising two hundred feet into the darkness above and two hundred feet into the abyss below.
“So here’s your so-called Shrine of the First Sun,” Yeats said, staring straight up.
“It’s like being inside a bronze coffee filter,” Conrad said, looking around and feeling very small. A halo of mist clung to the glowing pillars, which seemed to come together like a funnel at their apex high above. And the air definitely smelled greasy. Conrad looked down and wondered just how deep into the earth this Shrine of the First Sun descended, and how much farther must they go to discover the Secret of First Time. He was in awe of how much there was for him to absorb and painfully aware of the limited time.
“Look at this.” Yeats guided the lighter close to a smooth, shiny pillar. The mirrorlike surface not only seemed to magnify the brightness a hundredfold but also seemed to tremble. “I bet this surface has a reflectance of greater than a hundred percent.”
“That’s significant?”
“The best we’ve been able to come up with is eighty-eight percent using aluminum.”
“These columns aren’t made of aluminum.”
“No.” Yeats ran his hand over the surface of the column. “They’re made of something much lighter.”
“Lighter?” Conrad touched the column. The surface was slick, almost liquid. Yet he could sense some kind of indefinable texture to it. “It feels as soft as a cobweb and as strong as steel. Like some sort of lighter-than-air silk.”
“That’s because the fabric is perforated with holes smaller than the wavelength of light.” Yeats sounded almost excited. “I’d say somewhere between one micron or four hundredths of a mil thick. So what now? Do we go up or down this thing?”
Fabric. That’s just the word he was looking for, Conrad realized. The surprise was that it was Yeats who came up with it. But he was right. These columns were like giant rolls of some thin, lightweight, and mirrorlike fabric so shiny they could be mistaken for the light they so brilliantly reflected.
“Up or down, son?” Yeats repeated.
“Up,” Conrad said, surprising himself. Because in reality he didn’t know. He had never come across anything like this shrine in the ancient pyramid texts of the Egyptians or in the tales of Meso-American
lore. And he couldn’t recall it from any childhood nightmares or memories. Its sole significance, so far as he could tell, was to serve as a live-scale projection of the obelisk he had taken from P4. But somewhere in this obelisk was the so-called Seat of Osiris, the final resting place of the scepter and the Secret of First Time. The only question was whether he would recognize it when he saw it, much less know what to do. “We’re going up.”
And so they were. The platform they were standing on began to lift like an elevator, carrying them up between the columns of light. Conrad looked up to see the columns funnel toward an apex.
“Hang tight,” he said, tense but determined. He realized he had never been more excited about anything in his life.
They must have passed through several levels of compartments, Conrad figured, when he looked up to see a pinprick of light at the end. A minute later they emerged into a cool chamber. Suddenly the platform locked with a thud. Conrad stumbled backward toward the edge of the platform. Yeats caught his arm with a viselike grip.
“End of the line,” he said.
Conrad paused to get his bearings. It felt cramped up here compared to the soaring spaces below. Their voices had stopped echoing, and the air felt cooler. Conrad removed his sunglasses and switched on his halogen lamp. This time there was no blinding reflection. The beam stabbed out and bathed the nearest wall in light.
A quick survey revealed one corridor on either side of them. Conrad entered the corridor to their right.
“This way,” he said, his impatience hanging thick in the air, pushing them forward.
“Now how would you know?”
“According to you, I’m an Atlantean, remember?”
Conrad led him along the dark tunnel for a minute. At the end was a cryptlike door, about six feet tall. Next to it was a square pad much like the one at the outside entrance. Conrad focused his light on the door. Carved into its metallic surface were unusual engravings that at first defied comprehension. Only when Conrad ran his fingers across them did their meaning register.
“It’s a constellation,” he said flatly.
Yeats nodded. “That star right there is Sirius.”
“The goddess Isis in her astral form.” Conrad placed his hand on the cold metallic door, overcome with awe. His throat constricted and his heart beat faster. He could barely manage a whisper. “We found the queen’s crypt.”
“I was looking for the king’s.” Yeats sounded detached, businesslike. “How much you want to bet we’ll find that bastard Osiris down the opposite corridor?”
And the Seat of Osiris and the Secret of First Time, Conrad thought, when he saw a red dot on the back of his hand and spun around. Yeats was pointing his AK-47 at the door, the laser-sighting on.
Conrad jumped back. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You’re going to open this door so we can see if the bitch is still in there.”
Conrad, his pulse pounding, put his hand on the square pad, and he could feel a surge of energy. He pulled his hand back and the door slid open. A cool mist escaped from the chamber.
“You didn’t even need the obelisk for that,” Yeats said, almost in awe.
“Maybe once you use it, the system remembers,” Conrad said.
“Or maybe your ID is already in the system.”
They stepped through the cloud and into the small chamber. The red beam from Yeats’s laser sight crisscrossed the cell and locked onto an intricate alcove of some kind. It was contoured for a human being no taller than two meters. Based on the shape, it was clearly a woman. She had two arms, two legs, ten fingers and ten toes, and an hourglass figure.
“Mama.” Conrad looked at the display and let out a whistle. “Are you happy now, Yeats? You’ve met the enemy and she looks like us. Maybe it’s not just me. Maybe we’re all Atlanteans.”
“Let’s hope not. Not unless you want us to suffer the same fate. Now let’s check out Papa.”
Down the hall, the door to the Osiris crypt bore the markings of the Orion constellation on its surface. And this time Conrad didn’t hesitate. He put his hand on the door and it split open. Again, a fine cool mist escaped. Yeats climbed through with his AK-47 with Conrad close behind. Conrad shined his light up on the far wall and caught his breath.
“Say hello to Daddy, Conrad,” said Yeats.
This crypt was clearly contoured for a vertically standing creature that stood much taller than a human. Inside was an impressive harness or exoskeleton that appeared as mysteriously complex as the being it was designed for. A translucent bandolier crisscrossed the center ring and boasted an awesome array of instruments, gear, and, perhaps, weapons.
“Holy God,” Conrad murmured.
“Not so holy if Mother Earth is right,” Yeats said. “This one’s about three meters high.”
Conrad flicked on the Zippo and held it close to the edge of the harness. Whatever it was made of was fireproof and perhaps even indestructible for all intents and purposes. But it clearly supplied its bearer with only partial protection. Judging by the size of it, Conrad could only assume the rest of such a creature required little else.
Creature, he thought. Is that what his true father was? Is that what he was? He had more in common with the man next to him than whatever creature used that harness.
“There is no way in hell I’m related to the thing that belongs here,” Conrad told Yeats. “It would have shown up in my DNA tests or something.”
“If Serena is right and the Atlanteans are the so-called sons of God from Genesis,” Yeats said, “then your biological father was a generation or two removed from the first coupling and more or less human.”
“More or less human?” Conrad repeated. “That sounds even more—”
“Show me the goddamn Seat of Osiris, son. We’re running out of time.”
Conrad nodded. “It’s got to be somewhere in here, closer than we think,” he said. “If we split up, we’ll double our coverage in half the time.”
“Then you can hold on to this.”
Yeats tossed over the Scepter of Osiris, which Conrad caught in one hand. The thing was practically vibrating with raw energy.
“Now switch your headset to our backup frequency,” Yeats said. “It’s marked with that little blue tape on the back. Blue is for backup.”
“I get it. I get it.” Conrad switched to frequency B. “Check.”
“Check.”
For a minute or two Conrad could hear Yeats’s gravelly voice in his right ear as they continued exploring. But it didn’t take long for Yeats to move out of range. By the time Conrad was satisfied he had explored every surface of the top story of the obelisk and returned to the central platform, Yeats had disappeared. Conrad was alone and disappointed. He had found nothing and wondered where Yeats went and what he had found.
Conrad stood there on the platform, inside the top chamber of the obelisk, and pondered the alien nature of the obelisk’s interior. For all its strangeness there was something about this place that persuaded him to believe he had been here before. Or somewhere like here. An inner urge prompted him to look up at the ceiling. Something about it had bothered him. Now as he flashed his light on it he could see what he had missed before: a small square pad, just like the earlier one.
There was one more, hidden chamber above him, he realized with a surge of excitement.
It was also two meters beyond his reach.
Conrad managed to use the control lever to nudge the platform up half a level, careful not to squash himself against the ceiling, and placed his hand on the square pad. Suddenly the outer ring of some sort of hatch appeared before it split open to reveal another chamber above him with a cathedral ceiling—clearly the very top chamber of the shrine.
Conrad rode the platform up to the top level. His light scanned the chamber, revealing a large high-backed seat that lay horizontally on a kind of altar and pointed to the apex of the cathedral ceiling overhead.
Eureka, Conrad thought. The Seat of Osiris.
“Yes!” Conrad exclaimed out loud. He fumbled anxiously for his radio. “Yeats, I found it.”
But there was no response. Where the hell was he?
“Yeats.” The silence was eerie, unsettling.
He cranked his ear full of static until it hurt and still he heard nothing. So he switched it off. He wondered what Yeats could be up
to, if he was OK. He felt a sick knot forming in his stomach. Well, he couldn’t wait.
Slowly he circled the empty chair and surveyed the scene. His flashlight showed nothing else in the chamber. No artifacts, markings, or any evidence this room had ever been used before. But it all felt very familiar.
It was as if he had stepped into an ancient hieroglyph come to life. Ancient Egyptian reliefs of Osiris often showed the Lord of Eternity sitting in his chair and wearing his Atef crown, like the one inside the Seti I Temple at Abydos. Conrad also recalled the Man in the Serpent sculpture from the ancient Olmec site of La Venta, Mexico, which depicted a man seated inside a mechanical-looking device much like the chair before him. Then there was the sarcophagus lid inside the Temple of the Inscriptions at the Mayan site of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. That, too, revealed a mechanical design involving a man who appeared to be seated inside some kind of device.
Yes, he had been here before, he thought, feeling sweat begin to bead on his forehead. His hands felt heavy and clammy. Only this time the chair was real, the very Seat of Osiris. And so was the small altarlike base next to it, clearly the receptacle for the Scepter of Osiris. The only thing left to the imagination was for him to take the scepter, sit in that seat, and behold the Secret of First Time.
Conrad ran his hand over the smooth contours of the chair. It was like an empty eggshell. Conrad pressed the surface, felt it bend to his touch. He wanted to sit in it. But he remembered what had happened with the scepter in P4 and paused.
This time was different, he rationalized. The first time was a mistake. He knew that all too well. This time he was trying to correct that mistake, and if he didn’t try, billions of lives could perish. Yes, he concluded, whatever his own shortcomings, however unworthy, he had to sit in the chair, if not for himself, then for humanity.
Conrad slipped into the Seat of Osiris, inserted the Scepter of Osiris into its receptacle, and looked straight up at the pyramidlike ceiling. This is interesting, he thought, feeling like one of his students on the Nazca Lines tour, waiting for some great revelation to materialize that never does.
“Sure, Conrad,” he said out loud, just to hear the sound of
his voice. “You’ve finally made something of yourself. You’ve self-actualized yourself and become your astral projection. You are the Sun King.”