What he hadn’t said was that she had repeated the last question she had asked him, and he had told her the truth. That while he did have feelings for her, part of his heart was still elsewhere, even though he didn’t want it to be. He asked for time to sort it out, and she refused to see him again.
“It has a certain archaic charm. I thought you’d appreciate it.”
“It’s my kind of place.”
“And Jax? Have you heard from him?”
“Not since Cairo,” Grey said. “He left about ten minutes after you did. I have news about Stefan, though.”
“Oh?”
“I called his company to relay the news. According to them, they cut off his funding for the Lazarus Project months ago, and he never called from New York. Oh, and he doesn’t have a son.”
Viktor’s mouth compressed, and then his features softened. “He talked about you on the way to the desert. He genuinely cared for you. I think he wanted your approval.”
“So do lots of sociopaths. He put all our lives in danger. He used us, Viktor. He used me.”
Viktor didn’t respond.
“He was no different than Al-Miri’s followers. How are normal people drawn into a cult like that? The Juju cult at least I understood. It was a derivation of an ancient religion, it had history behind it. But this was all so… bizarre.”
“The ranks of a cult are typically filled with the vulnerable. Those who see the world as a threatening place. Al-Miri recruited the deformed, the crippled, the lost—perhaps he thought he could cure them, perhaps he offered them hope.”
“And the scientists? “
“What scientist would not be compelled to study such a thing as Al-Miri claimed to possess? You saw what happened to Stefan, and even Veronica. The cult of eternal life needs no prompt. Its potential members are anyone who has a fear of dying. If these men do in fact believe Al-Miri holds the key, even the potential key, to immortality, then are you surprised at the nature of the organization?”
“But the violence,” Grey mumbled. “I don’t understand that. What turns normal people into killers? Nomti, maybe he wasn’t normal, but the others?”
Viktor shrugged. “It’s called double-talk, in cult speak: an action, such as taking a life, which may be otherwise abhorrent, but which adherents find perfectly acceptable in certain circumstances. Perhaps Al-Miri’s men believe Al-Miri will bring eternal life to the human race, and the killing of a few to preserve that goal is justified in their minds. Perhaps it’s purely selfish. Their mindset is an indication of isolation in a belief system, whether the cult is religious or nationalistic in nature: the conviction that one has chosen the right path, that one is fulfilling one’s patriotic duty or upholding the tenets of one’s religion. It is the rare human being who is able to step outside of his own milieu, out of his own belief system, and make a clear choice.”
They drank in silence, until Viktor said, “Did the doctors mention anything about Veronica’s recovery?”
“They wanted to know what gunshot wound we were talking about. They also found extremely high levels of antioxidants in her blood.”
Viktor’s eyebrows raised.
Grey said, “What do you think it was?”
“I think something extraordinary existed in that cavern. Whether it was manufactured by Al-Miri’s company, or an anomaly of nature, or something from legend… I suppose we’ll never know, unless Al-Miri decides one day to make it public. I plan to keep an eye on him.”
“Do you think it was the elixir of life?”
“That’s the damning beauty of myth, Grey. You never know for certain when it merges with reality. The interpretation is yours to make.”
“Would you want it, if you could have it? Eternal life?”
“Eternal anything is a curse.”
“I’ve thought about it quite a bit over the last few weeks,” Grey said. “I’ve heard Veronica and Stefan preach about the science of biology, I’ve heard about cruel Mother Nature and the emptiness of the universe.” He took a drink. “But we also have these… transcendental urges, I guess you could say. There’s something inside us, beyond biology, that wants something more. I don’t know what that is, or what exactly it wants, but I don’t think it’s more of this. I think it’s something else.”
“You have done some thinking.”
“I think death makes us human, is part of being human. It gives weight to our actions. It provides a boundary. And whatever comes next, comes next. I’ve struggled with Stefan’s decisions, tried to justify his actions.”
“And your conclusion?”
“I think he just missed the point.”
Grey withdrew into his thoughts. He found himself confronted with sudden images from his childhood, the abuse by his father, the tragic death of his mother, his social isolation that had never really gone away. He jumped forward to the splotched palette of his world travels, to violence and war and poverty and the terrible things men to do each other. To the terrible things he had done, to his own justifications according to what
he
believed. He saw Nya’s beautiful liquid eyes, he saw the unspeakable things that had happened to her at Great Zimbabwe, he saw the murky end of their relationship. Jax and Stefan flew by, birds of uncertain color, and then his mind fluttered and rested on Veronica, her buoyant spirit, the clever things she would say, how she laughed at his somberness.
All of this
, he thought,
all of us: the saintly and the damned, the genetic mutations and the flawless, the sparkling stars of society and the forlorn crust of the world, forgotten, doomed and legion. We have this ineffable gift of life, and we will never understand it. But we are here, we are alive, we are eternal for every minute of every day.
J
ax watched the grainy canvas of the desert zip past the convoy of jeeps as they moved deeper into the wasteland. They were only a few minutes outside Siwa, but Jax’s lips had already pursed with satisfaction.
He reached back and felt the top of his head, where his hair covered the tiny scar from the implant device.
It was time to tie up a few loose threads.
A month had passed. Enough time for Jax to assemble his team, and enough time for Al-Miri to relax his guard, although Jax wasn’t too concerned about the guard part. Twelve highly trained mercenaries, armed with the finest weapons that dirty money can buy, versus a handful of scientists and a front line of freaks.
No contest.
Veronica said Stefan had disabled the source device, but Jax had seen how much he could trust Stefan. And if Jax happened to stumble upon a certain basin of remarkable green liquid, then all the better.
Fifteen minutes later a sudden heaviness imbued the air. At first he attributed it to a blast of exhaust, but it lingered. He frowned and turned to the guide he’d brought from Cairo. He tried to find the guide they’d used the last time, but his phone had been disconnected, and inquiries in Cairo revealed that he hadn’t been seen since his last trip to Siwa. Jax suspected Al-Miri had tied up a few loose threads himself.
During the escape, Jax had paid attention to the compass. He knew the general direction and how long it took to get to Al-Miri’s compound. He had also noticed an unusual sandstone formation, a three-pronged hill that had reminded him of a giant fork, within a mile of the place. It may take a bit of looking, but he had confidence they’d find the complex eventually.
Jax saw the guide’s eyes widen at the same time Jax noticed tiny specks of brown coalescing in the air around the jeep. The guard pointed into the distance and screamed over the roar of the engines, using his entire body to produce a single frantic word.
“
Sim-ooooom!
“
Jax whirled in the direction of the outstretched finger. He saw, in the distance, a gigantic cloud of blurred air obscuring the horizon. The guide screamed more instructions, and the phalanx of jeeps spun and then raced in the opposite direction, back towards Siwa. Jax put on his goggles and hunkered into the jeep.
They reached the oasis minutes ahead of the storm. Jax watched from the safety of a shelter as the mile-high colossus engulfed the tiny settlement. It buffeted the town for hours, and stayed in the desert for days.
During the sandstorm Jax approached the guard about another attempt at the expedition. The guide shrugged. “We can try, but it is no good. Now the desert is a new thing.”
• • •
A prolonged rumble shook the cavern floor. Al-Miri stopped mid-chant, his followers cast nervous glances around their subterranean cathedral. Tiny ripples broke the surface of the tranquil pool.
The tremors subsided, and Al-Miri returned to his flock. Earthquakes were a risk in this area of the desert, but Nu would never allow such a thing to threaten the sanctity of the cavern.
He spoke the next few words of the prayer, and the earth buckled. A mammoth tremor shook the cavern like a child shakes a rattle: violently and without rhythm. Al-Miri’s face crumbled as he heard the collapse of the complex above, his hidden temple crashing to the desert floor.
Whole sections of the ceiling broke apart and tumbled down. One of the tunnels leading out of the cavern caved in, the whirling dust and debris an angered djinn. Al-Miri spun and saw the same thing happen to the other three tunnels.
He screamed orders at his men. Everyone ran for the two narrow staircases that led to the exit. When the lead men reached the halfway point, the entire cavern lurched, and three of the men tumbled from the stairs and lay twitching on the rock floor far below.
The remaining men gained the top, and when they replaced a few of the lanterns that had fallen but had not been crushed, fear reached around Al-Miri’s neck with both hands and began to squeeze. The tunnel leading to the complex, the only exit, was blocked by a wall of rubble.
The earth ended its fury with a few final shudders and then returned, once again, into a sleeping giant.
A stunned silence. The men stared at Al-Miri, and then at their prison. Some dropped to the ground, some began to wail, and Al-Miri cast his eyes towards the blocked tunnel leading to his wife, and then downward, to the bottom of the depression. Miraculously, the pool was untouched. It shimmered below him as it always had, a perfect emerald circle.
The irony of the situation, the promise of eternal life at the bottom of the cavern and the day’s worth of trapped air in the rest of it, caused him to break into a maddened cackle.
A final thought caused Al-Miri to end his laughter and gaze in wonder first at the cavern, then at the secret heavens far above. He thought how, when he had first excavated this cavern, it had looked exactly as it did right now.
• • •
Veronica held the half-written article in her hands.
The Elixir of Life Found! Immortality Flows in the Land of Pharaohs
. She closed her cell phone, her eyes never leaving the page, and let the phone drop onto her sofa. Jax had just returned her email with a phone call, of course from some untraceable satellite phone.
A giant sandstorm, worst of the century, according to the Bedouins. Her research had added more color: sandstorms in the Sahara are the most devastating in the world. They can reach a mile high, are visible from space, and they rewrite geography.
She’d seen it on the news and made her own inquiries, but she wanted a firsthand account. She had guessed what Jax planned to do, which he confirmed. He had searched the desert for days after the storm.
Al-Miri’s complex had disappeared.
There can be no front-page article worldwide when there is no proof. Maybe some speculative Internet journal would publish it, one of those conspiracy websites no one admits to browsing. Maybe she could mount a decade-long expedition into the desert, if she were independently wealthy. She put her head in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut.
It wasn’t just an article.
Veronica had her blood tested while in the hospital. It had been loaded with extraordinarily high levels of telomerase, phenacyldimethylthiazolium chloride, and antioxidants. Both the doctors and Veronica were stunned, until the levels gradually returned to normal over the next few weeks. They tried to preserve the samples, but they couldn’t stop the degeneration of the anti-aging substances. The doctors attributed the brief spike to an anomalous reaction to trauma.
Her proof had become a burning piece of paper, crumbling between her fingers, ashes disappearing into the wind.
That was why Al-Miri couldn’t cure his wife, she thought with a shudder. Too much at one time was deadly, and it didn’t have a cumulative effect. He couldn’t use enough of the elixir to drive back the cancer, only enough to keep her in a permanent vegetative state. It was enough to drive anyone mad.
She went to the bedroom window. She’d learned something on her adventure, something about which she’d been wrong. She learned there was one thing in life over which nature had no control, something that stood apart from biological purpose. It was something that, if she could have it, would make the loss of her story acceptable. It might even make it laughable, a petty thing.
Unfortunately, love was also the one thing in life more mysterious and indomitable than nature.
She no longer blamed Dominic Grey for not loving her. On the contrary: now she understood him.
She returned to the living room, selected one of the gorgeous Melnik reds from the case of Bulgarian wine in her closet, poured herself a glass, and flopped onto her couch. She reached for the cookbook on the coffee table. After she selected a nice curry recipe and got a little tipsy, she could pop in that French language CD while she cooked.
She had some catching up on life to do.
• • •
Brother Alexander waited until silence canvassed the monastery. He crept through the courtyard with the small package clutched in his arms, the tiniest splinter of moon for a nightlight, then slipped into the forest behind the chapel. He had waited the promised three months, and he feared the worst. Stefan was a troubled soul, one who had always tried to unravel the tangled skein of fate. He had never learned that the path of fate, like life, can never be mapped. It can only be walked.