Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (6 page)

       “What?”

       “You know—when they crossed the
Sun’s Anvil in the Nefud, on the way to Akaba.”

       Paul shook his head. “Well they
had camels, if you recall, and to drift off and slip from the saddle was as good
as a death sentence. They knew better than to test the desert by day. Can we
walk twenty miles in a single night? We’d be lucky to make one or two miles an
hour in this terrain.” He paused, searching about them for a moment.

       “Will you
look
at this
place?” Paul had finally taken the time to survey their surroundings. They were
in a wide valley, perhaps two miles across, and rimmed by sheer sandstone
formations that seemed to thrust up from the undulating pink sand of the valley
floor, like behemoths breaking through the swell of the ocean.  The lower base
of some formations was surrounded with a tumbled scatter of granite boulders
and rock. Closer to the walls of the canyon there were more varied rock
formations, well weathered, with near horizontal striations indicating their
obvious sedimentary origins. The rosy sands swept up to the base of these
formations, like waves washing against a ragged coastline. They gave the whole
canyon the impression of a narrow bay, awash in flowing pink sand accented by lighter
drifts of white that seemed to undulate along the lower terrain, like lines of
frothy waves making their way to the shore. Over all, the great mass of Jabal
Rumm rose to the imposing height of some 1500 feet, its sloping top lording
over the canyon with a quiet regard. The valley had an eerie, awesome beauty
about it, much like the Grand Canyon in Arizona, only on a smaller scale.

       “Yes, this is the most beautiful
location on the whole plain of Jordan,” said Nordhausen. “There’s an old fort
out here somewhere, with ruins of a Nabataean Temple nearby.”

       “Naba what?”

       “They were an ancient people who
lived in the region dating back to a thousand years BC. They built Petra, if
you are familiar with that site. It was the center of a quiet little empire that
had settlements hidden all through the region, with secret caches of water and
a strategy of economic trade as their primary means of wielding power. This
particular region was a meeting spot for caravans carrying incense from Arabia
and Persia up to the King’s Road and Petra. The Nabataeans put quite a strangle
hold on the Romans at one time. The temple ruins in this region probably date
from that period, perhaps the 1st century BC. Tourists used to visit them, but
they’ve been largely ignored in recent years. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find
something interesting!”

       “Something interesting? You
going to try and make this an archeological dig? And what about your ship?
Isn’t the
Arabesque
expecting us soon? I must say, Robert, this was one
wild ride.” Paul shielded his eyes as he looked around. “We’re well north of
the main body of the Red Sea here. If we go due west we’ll hit the Gulf of
Akaba. Is that where your ship is waiting?”

       “The ship? Oh, we can forget
about her for the time being. The rendezvous was supposed to be taking place
right now. They’ll only wait a few hours before pulling up anchor and moving
on. I’m afraid our charter on the
Arabesque
will have to be a write-off.
Looks like we’re going to miss our dinner in Port Sudan tomorrow night as well.
Shit! I shelled out fifteen hundred bucks for the charter flight to Cairo.”

       “Cairo?”

       “We couldn’t fly out of Amman,
so I got tickets from Cairo. Thought we’d take a peek at the sphinx while we
were there and—“

       “Stop right there.” Paul held up
a warning hand. “I don’t think I can stand to hear what you had planned for
that
little excursion. Well, get up. We’d better get started. It’s hot as hell out
here.”

       “I’m losing about five thousand
bucks on this fiasco,” Nordhausen continued in his complaint.

       “Serves you right.” Paul rubbed
a bit of salt in the wounds as they started away toward the canyon edge. “Well
then how do you propose to get us home, Robert?”

       Nordhausen flashed him a smile.
“Akaba! We’re going to follow in Lawrence’s footsteps, my friend. It’s the only
settlement with air or sea connections nearby, and I think twenty or thirty
miles should get us there.”

       “Akaba? That’s going to be a
very hard trek.”

       “Well if Old Moses could make it
on his way to the  Wilderness of Zin, then we should do just fine.”

       They were some time making their
way over the rivulets of sand and small islets of crumbling rock. With each
step the imposing formations of the canyon wall grew nearer, and they made
their way to a deeply cloven sector that promised good shelter and shade from
the sun. They were very tired when they reached it, after little more than a
mile, and Paul had great misgivings about the long trek ahead of them to Akaba.
When they reached the folded face of the rock, it was clear that neither one had
any intention of beginning that journey soon.

       “Let’s work our way into this
rock face,” Nordhausen suggested. “The further back we get the cooler it is
likely to be. Some of these fissures reach into the canyon walls for hundreds
of feet or more. They’ve been eroding out for millennium.”

       “That way looks promising.” Paul
pointed at a gaping aperture where two large rock formations met in a
fragmented collision. They climbed up over the large ochre boulders at the base
of the fissure, and saw that the way did indeed wind into the hillside for some
distance. It was just wide enough for two to walk abreast in the beginning, but
the striated walls of smooth russet stone soon began to close in on them, and
they took to single file, with Paul in the lead.  His thin, angular frame had
little difficulty negotiating the narrower spots, though Nordhausen complained
as he squeezed around a turn in the fissure, hoping it would not dead-end on
them.

       It was already much cooler,
which was the only consolation they had from the trek thus far, apart from the
spectacular scenery. It was not long before Paul noticed the fissure beginning
to widen out, opening on a sand drift the led up a gentle hill to the mouth of
a cave.

       Nordhausen hustled up behind him
and was pleased to see the yawning portal ahead of them, wreathed in shadow.
“Come on then,” he said, urging Paul on.  “Are you worried about bears, or
bandits? We’d be lucky to find anything else alive out here for miles—aside
from those bastards on the camels. I wonder who they were?”

       “Probably a small touring
party.”

       “But that fellow I was playing
to—you know, the one with the pith helmet on. He looked European.”

       “Some whacky college professor
on sabbatical—or out to raid the nearest archeological dig site and make off
with national antiquities perhaps?” Paul flashed a smile at his companion to
let him know he would not labor the issue.

       “This looks like a good spot to
camp for the night,” said Nordhausen.

       They were inside the mouth of the cave now, a leaf
shaped feature scored into the rock that climbed some fifty feet over head. The
professor leaned back, staring up at the cathedral of beautifully shaped stone.
Colors of amber and rusty rose swirled along the contours of the cave walls to
meet in a hard line, high above them. The ground was still sandy in places,
with small rocks scattered on the floor of the cave.

       As the professor began to clear
an area to settle in, Paul took a moment to wander about the cave, working his
way deeper into the fissure until he was lost in shadow. A moment later his
voice echoed in the still chamber, resonant with a hint of urgency.
“Nordhausen! Come here. I’ve found something!”

       The professor gave a
disconsolate sigh. “What? My, God, Paul. Let’s get some food going. Get over
here and stop fooling around, will you?”

       “No. You’ve got to
see
this. It’s weird!”

       Robert shook his head, but he
knew his friend well enough. He would have to humor him if he wanted to get a
campfire going any time soon. “All right,” he said. “But what are we eating?”

       He worked his way to the back of
the cave, edging around a few large rocks thrusting up from the ground. He was
hungry, and tired, and in no mood for Paul’s whimsical discoveries. Oddly,
there was a passage at the back of the cave that sloped down at a steep angle.

       “Paul?” The professor squinted
in the deepening gloom. “Where are you?”

       “Down here! Come on, it’s not
far. Just keep following the passage, and keep to the right.”

       Nordhausen pressed on, grumbling
to himself as he went and feeling his way along the smooth rock as the darkness
surrounded him. It was very cool. At least he could take some comfort from
that.  Soon he caught a glimmer of light, and realized that Paul had a small
flashlight with him up ahead. He hurried on.

       “Now what in the hell are you
talking about—“ he stopped short when he saw what Paul was pointing at. There
was a wide pool of water ahead, shimmering with a curious green hue in the
light of Paul’s flashlight.  “What did I tell you!” Nordhausen was exonerated.
“All the water we need. It should be nice and cool! Just what I was hoping for.
Probably one of those Nabatean water caches I was talking about.”

       “Guess again,” said Paul. “It’s
quite warm—almost hot. There must be a hot spring under this area. The ambient
air temperature couldn’t produce this heat.”

       Nordhausen was at his side at
last, stooping to test the temperature with his hand. “Ouch! Why didn’t you
warn me?”

       “You would have tested it for
yourself anyway,” Paul smiled. “But the temperature is not the only odd thing.
Look at this!” Paul flicked off his flashlight and the darkness surrounded them.
A moment later Nordhausen was amazed to see the entire pool of water glowing
softly with an eerie green luminescence.

       “Very strange,” he whispered. “
Is there something in the rock here?”

       “No, I think it’s
bio-luminescence,” said Paul.

       “Bio-luminescence? I thought
that was found mainly in the deep oceans.”

       “It is. But they’ve isolated
some weird bacteria in surface water that has this sort of glow about it. I
read some papers on this last year, in fact. There’s more.” Paul flicked on his
flashlight again and leaned toward Nordhausen. He was showing him a thin
medallion that he wore on a chain about his neck, and even in the yellow cone
of light it, too, had a strange green glow.

       “What’s that?”

       “It’s a radiation dosimeter from
the lab,” said Paul. “I must have forgotten to take it off before I left the
hotel in Amman. Oh, don’t worry, the green indicates safe levels—not much more
than you get from direct sunlight. But there
is
no sunlight here. So,
what’s causing this?”

       “Are you suggesting the water is
radioactive?”

       Paul flicked off the flashlight
and the chamber was effused with the milky green glow again. “Something’s going
on here,” he said. “I wonder if this is an Oklo reaction?”

       “What the devil is an Oklo
reaction?”

       “It’s that paper I was telling
you about. The French discovered it at a mine in Gabon, Africa. They were
mining uranium at Oklo and shipping the stuff off to France when they found
that one of the shipments was very depleted.”

       “Depleted?”

       “Yes. It had a very low
concentration of the
fissionable
isotope U-235, and it caused quite a scare at the time. They thought someone
had managed to extract the isotope illegally.”

       “Extract it? From raw ore? That’s highly
unlikely. They probably just got a bad shipment.”

       “Not exactly,” said Paul, and Nordhausen
sensed that he was about to get a physics lecture. “You see, the concentration
in natural ore is always at a constant level of 0.72 percent. Nature is very
cooperative in that, and it’s actually one of the key tests the Atomic Energy
Security guys make on all shipments. Variation in that isotope is a safe watch
principle to detect tampering.”

       “So what did they find out?”

       “Well, they sent a big inspection team to
Gabon and scoured the Oklo site pretty good. They were convinced that something
was afoot but, to their surprise, they found an odd natural process at work.”

       “Natural process?”

       “Yes. Uranium is soluble in water in the
presence of oxygen, and they found a nice underground stream at Oklo, deep in
the mine.”

       “So the isotope was leeched out by the
water?” Nordhausen was trying to leap ahead to the right stone as he followed
Paul across the stream of his thought.

       “No, it doesn’t work that way. Oh, you might
get a few uranyl ions in the water, but nothing like what they found. In order
to deplete the ore sample to the degree it was degraded the U-235 actually had
to be
consumed
in some way—in a reaction!”

       “How is that possible in a stream bed?” Nordhausen
was not seeing the opposite shore yet.