Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (48 page)

“She’s beautiful, Philip,” Neos said, and then noticed Philip had carved the goddess’s face differently than the traditional—He gasped. “Oh! It’s …”

Landing at his side, Skyla looked up and immediately recognized the face. “Mother,” she breathed.

“It’s Patra,” Neos said, awestruck. “It’s her. Perfectly her.”

“Oh, Philip.” Skyla was crying now, her elbows high and hands cupped over her mouth just as her mother often did. “My father has to see this … We have to bring him here. Neos, how soon can we return with him?”

Neos considered. His father-in-law, Tychon, wasn’t fond of traveling anymore, but he would absolutely come for this. He loved Patra as much as his first wife, and had helped to make her last sixteen years enjoyable ones. Neither had thought they’d find love again, nor had Tychon expected another child—his only girl.

“Soon. I’ll make it happen. Perhaps just he and I, though.”

Skyla climbed back over to the courtyard and embraced Philip. “Thank you so much for this. She was no goddess or ruler, but she deserves this more than many I can think of. I only lament my inability to follow her path.”

Neos stepped to them and stroked Philip’s back as Philip frowned. “What do you mean? You’re more Steward than any of those ambling the Library’s stacks today.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

Neos held out Patra’s keystone. “We wanted to speak with you about this. We’ve two in our household, and neither of us proper stewards.”

Philip took the keystone from him.

Hello Steward.

The voice conveys knowledge

The scribe preserves a word

A token holds the sum

Of wisdom in perpetuum.

“Yes, it does.” Chills danced up Philip’s body at the sound of Patra’s inner voice.

He smiled and rolled it slowly over, examining the words he’d etched in decades ago. It was Kaleb’s originally, but only for that first week. This was all Patra’s—all
Patra
—a token unlike any other, more valuable than any other. It was a sort of master token. He could get lost in it for years.

He looked at Neos and Skyla, so like her mother. “I think you misjudge the title. You are no less stewards than me.”

“Oh?” Skyla said, nodding to his hands. “It doesn’t conjure her in mine. In my hands, it only recalls her death.”

Philip wished he could show Skyla herself, as a baby, in Patra’s hands.

“And the statue?” Philip said.

Skyla and Neos both glanced back at it.

Skyla swallowed and nodded, pensive. “No, it brings her to life. You brought her back to life.”

He smiled, grateful, and looked at the statue, wondering. The two surviving steward families had already grown so large, was it necessary to leave three keystones out in the world? Perhaps this master token would better serve their objectives in stasis? People moved, but this place would be the hub of stewards for generations. How fortuitous they should bring him Patra’s spirit on the day he completed her body.

He curled his fingers around the keystone and motioned for them to walk with him. “The role of the Steward is to preserve—and grow, when possible—the collection. And as you know, the collection is multifaceted, as is its current home. The three of us—your mother, Kaleb, and I—understood that in the new, less-than-ideal world, there would always be stewards of varying capacity. We prepared the keystones, these
mysteria
, to maintain the least amount of data required to recover all the data. Regardless of capacity, as long as future generations of stewards know that there is
something
to be preserved, those generations of higher capacity will find all they require.”

“All well thought,” Neos said, “but what if one of these ‘lower capacity’ idiots accesses the tomb and celebrates the Great Restoration? Casting the then-‘useless’
mysteria
to the garbage heap? What if all that’s ever recovered are the tomb scrolls, and no one ever bothers to seek out the full collection?”

“You sound just like Kaleb,” Philip mused. “To quote Patra, ‘Every scroll is also a token.’”

Amarna, Egypt – Present Day

Pete plugged in the work lights, but they didn’t turn on. A bar of light shone from the small, unfinished room at the tomb’s far end, but the main chamber remained dark.

Matt stuck his head around the corner, squinting to the bright end of the entrance shaft. He could hear the generator running. “We plugged in?” he called.

“Yes, sir,” Leo called back. “Plugged in.”

“He keeps calling me sir,” Matt said to Pete. “Make him stop.”

“Is the
orange
extension cord plugged in?” Pete shouted. “Not just the green!”

“Call him sir right back,” Grandma Bubsy said as she shone her flashlight at the stack of large, laminated photos. “Never fails. ‘Need help outside, ma’am?’ ‘No, ma’am, I do not, thank you.’ ‘Any cash back, ma’am?’ ‘No, sir, no cash back, sir.’”

Joss snickered. “Twice in one sentence?”

The main chamber’s lights cracked on, temporarily scorching all eyes in the column-filled cavern.

“Oh yeah,” Grandma went on. “That’s when they look at me sort of pleading, like they don’t know what else to call me. Lady? Miss? Nothing at all? And that’s when I bat the lashes and say ‘just call me Grandma Bubsy, sweetie.’ And they never forget after that. I have five blood grandkids, but you’re one of my hundreds of honoraries.”

Pete went to the tomb’s far end and ran his fingers down the corner. “I’m telling you, man, this was carved out. It’s not a seam.”

“Same in these photos,” Grandma said. “You can see this rusty vein on the wall here continues in the ceiling in this shot. Not one of these is a false wall.”

Leo drifted in from the access shaft, and followed the group into the recently discovered subchamber. “Only had the green cord in.”

Matt felt him staring again, and glanced his way. “Thanks for the lights, sir.”

Leo had shaved his beard, buzzed his hair to Matt’s length, and wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt. “No problem, sir. So … what do we have here? The study?”

Pete pointed to the doorway. “Out there, as we all know, is the unfinished tomb of Ay, a New Kingdom Pharaoh from around the time of Akhenaten. They started building it when he was only a high-ranking advisor, and presumably stopped working on it once he took the throne. His final tomb is in the Valley of the Kings.
That
was unearthed back in 1883. Whereas
this
,” he flailed a hand, “was accessed mere weeks ago, by yours truly … after
herculean
efforts expediting gobs of permits from the Ministry, I might add.”

“You’re appreciated, Pete,” Matt said.

“
I
appreciate you, Pete,” Joss echoed.

Leo chimed in, “You’re apprec-”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” Pete said. “The condescension in here is suffocating. As I was saying, this is where we recovered the 78,000 scrolls you all saw back at the MERC. Now, the esteemed Mr. Turner here claims I’ve missed another false wall that leads to some impossibly vast chamber containing … how many was it? A
kajillion
more scrolls?”

“Give or take,” Matt said. “But you didn’t miss anything in here. It’s through there.”

He pointed out the door, nonchalant.

Pete squinted at him. “All the other walls have been-”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” Matt parroted as they followed him back into the main chamber. He continued forward into the illuminated, unfinished, side room in the opposite corner. “Here,” he declared.

The group took in the tiny space. All the stone surfaces were still rough and unfinished. The back wall hadn’t even been made a wall yet—thick tiers of bedrock led from the middle of the floor, upwards to the end of the ceiling, like stairs for a giant.

“Is this the bottom corner of some huge, hidden pyramid?” Joss said, possibly serious.

“I wish,” Pete replied, “but no. The excavators simply carved out the rock in sections like this. Certainly safer to go from high to low, rather than the reverse, lest one end up chiseling away quite heavy things over their head. So tell me, man, where in here is our mother lode hiding?”

“Now
that
is a seam,” Grandma proclaimed, leaning close and shining her flashlight at the back of the first—and biggest—carved-out block.

Pete glanced her way, and then gaped at the beaming Matt. “You’ve got to be blooming joking …” He dashed forward. “Hand me a torch, someone.”

Leo gave him a flashlight, and Pete examined the rear of the block where it appeared to be still connected to the next tier of granite, all a single slab. “If this is honestly a separate piece, it must weigh close to a ton.”

“Well,” Leo began. “If it was separated and put back specifically to hide a passage or whatever, they’d probably carve out the underside to make it a bit more manageable.”

“But not too manageable,” Grandma added. “This room’s been wide open to archaeologists for, what, a hundred and fifty years?”

“Oh, hello there, my dodgy little beauty,” Pete murmured as his light traced the seam. Giddiness had replaced his skepticism.

“My only question,” Matt said, “is whether Pete has at his disposal the balls to move this thing without first procuring
gobs
of permits.”

Pete scoffed, “What, this? This is rubble. Someone fetch me a bloody prybar and some rope, and I’ll bodge this thing open in no time!”

* * *

For Pete,
“no time”
eventually meant around four hours, but the group had slid the block a full two inches in the first hour, and Leo got the bright idea of sticking the top of his phone in to snap a shot with flash—much to Pete’s chagrin.

“You pop a flash at my scrolls one more time and I’ll have your goddamn Visa canceled,” Pete had warned, and then said in the same growling tone, “Let me see that goddamn picture.”

Everyone’s heads had bunched up around Leo’s phone, and when he zoomed into the dark, grainy shot, there came a mix of gasps and exhales.

By the time the block was finally pulled back enough for human access, they’d already run power cords into the side room and assembled an array of filtered work lights.

Matt insisted Pete be the first down the short flight of steps, and Pete yielded after a full three seconds’ resistance. “No, Matt, it should be you okay I’ll go.”

He brought with him a tripod-mounted pair of lights. His whups and wild laughter reverberated up the compact shaft, and the group filed in after him.

The bedrock ceiling was low, such that Matt and Leo had to stand with their heads cocked slightly to the side, but the secret cavern’s excavators had spared no energy on width or depth. Crosswise, the rectangular room was as wide as a city bus was long, while the side walls stretched off beyond the inhibited lights’ reach.

Save for a thin walking path that ran the outer perimeter, the room’s entire floor was filled with red, cylindrical pottery of varying heights and girth—like cookie jars, buckets, and umbrella stands—all covered with lids.

The group had spread out along the first wall and stared in silence.

“Nobody touch anything,” Pete finally whispered. It seemed right to whisper, as though the collection had slept for so long, it’d be harmful to disturb it.

“You’re not even going to open
one
of them?!” Grandma hushed.

All eyes landed on Pete.

“There are nearly 400,000 scrolls in here, Pete,” Matt said. “You can risk opening one container. Also, they were loaded in order of importance, so those at the far back wall are the ones deemed ‘imperative’ to preserve. The ones here, near the entrance, were the lowest priority—besides the ones you already recovered.”

“Well that should tell you something right there, man!” Pete said, still whispering, letting his arms provide the emphasis. “What was ‘critical’ or ‘important’ to them, isn’t necessarily the same for us now. The fact that we have direct writings from Socrates? Those scrolls were in the stewards’
‘kind of nice to keep’
category! As were all the Theban papyri! For all I know, that stack of jars there contains the only remaining copies of Q. I could open it and it all disintegrates into dust!”

“What’s ‘Q’?” Joss said.

“Hypothetical documents,” Grandma said with vague umbrage. “Basically all the sayings and proverbs of Jesus, but from a date before he was born. Folks trying to discredit him and bring down the church.”

Pete interjected, “Well, that’s not really the point … That is, ascertaining the truth should always be-”

“Now now, kids,” Matt interjected. “Since Pete’s ongoing status and position here are at risk, we need to accept his qualms about opening any of this.”

“Thank you,” Pete said.

“You’re welcome,” Matt said, and kicked over a stack of three jars. They shattered on the floor, revealing among the shards six to ten papyrus rolls each. Pete gawped as if Matt had just punched a baby. “Crazy how after seventeen hundred years, only one stack fell over, right? How lucky is that?”

“You … you …” Pete was losing it.

Matt gently nudged him toward the debris. “You being the expert here, I’d be most comfortable if
you
opened these up first—knowing how to handle them and everything.”

Pete sighed and knelt in front of Matt’s mess, murmuring obscenities. He brushed off the larger pottery fragments, blew away the smaller pieces and dust, and examined the small clay tabs dangling from each.

“Ah … this one should be interesting.” He plucked the topmost scroll from the middle jar’s pile.

“Are those labels?” Joss said. “What’s it say?”

Pete didn’t answer, busy for a few moments flicking, squeezing, poking, and peeling.

Matt replied, “Each papyri was labeled like that so you didn’t have to open it up to know what was inside. Sort of the original book spine.” He turned to Pete. “C’mon, man. We’ve got a plane to catch. Let me see
one
scroll, just one, before I fly home. It’d really mean a lot to me.”

“Okay, okay!” He carefully set down the one in his hand, picking up another. “That one was Athens. You wouldn’t care as much about it. But
this
one …” He untied the string and carefully unrolled it on a clear patch of floor.