The Cradle of Life (23 page)

“I could try to compensate on this end,” Bryce said. “Send the tones again.”

“No. The sounds came through this speaker distorted. So either send me the file or I'll bring back the bloody Orb to the manor.”

“Sending it,” Bryce said.

“To be honest, I'm surprised you missed that.”

“Sorry,” he said, looking anything but. He really did look terrible—not that she would ever say such a thing out loud, but perhaps she had been riding him too hard.

When this was over, she would send him on a long, long vacation. With one of those NECs she'd promised him for company.

A soft beeping announced that the file had arrived in her in-box. She picked the phone off the television and used its keypad to first open the file, and then set the tones to play.

Halfway through the playback, Lara realized that in using the phone to open the data, she'd accidentally bumped the Orb to one side, moving it farther from the speaker.

She reached out to push the two closer together—

—and as her fingers touched the Orb, the world around her suddenly changed.

It was as if the Orb was a movie projector, and the ship around her the projection screen. White light blanketed every surface, turning the junk, the elderly couple, the television into a blank screen.

And then that screen exploded with images. A jumble of them, rushing past Lara so quickly they barely registered. An endless black sky, a flash of light, an explosion—

The horror-stricken face of a young girl and then the crinkled face of a dark-skinned, elderly man.

The lid of a box, snapping shut.

A village of primitive-looking people, falling dead at her feet, their faces swollen and black with disease.

Warriors, wearing armor plates, carrying short swords falling, as well.

Darkness again, and then—

She was standing in the middle of a vast grassy plain. African savannah, she realized, but how—

She looked down at the Orb in her hands and tried to reason out what was happening. The tones had activated some kind of image projector, that was clear, but it was ungodly realistic, holographic in detail—technology so far beyond the capability of twenty-first-century civilization as to seem the stuff of science fiction.

And yet…the Orb was two thousand years old. So how on earth had Alexander and the astrologers who passed for his “scientists” managed to do this?

My father told me a story once.

She recalled her words to Calloway and Stevens, in the library back at Croft Manor.

In 2300
B
.
C
.,
an Egyptian pharoah found a place he named the cradle of life; where we, life, began. There he found a box. The box which brought life to earth.

It was the only possible explanation. Bryce was right, after all.

The Orb in her hands, Pandora itself…

They were not of this world.

She tried to step forward then, to see how far the illusion extended, but her feet refused to move. Part of the illusion, as well?

She moved the Orb, then, trying to disrupt the projection.

Instead, the world around her slipped, as if she was actually tilting it with her hands.

She continued to turn the Orb, bringing it around a full rotation. Images slid past—hundreds of flamingos basking on a lakeshore, a herd of elephants trampling the savannah, impossibly green, impossibly leafy patches of jungle, filled with the chattering of a million creatures—one overlapping the other, moving faster and faster.

Lara suddenly realized she was moving through the projected space—it was almost as if she was strapped to the front of an impossibly fast train, hurtling through the African countryside.

And the second she realized that, she realized something else, as well.

The Orb was in control here, not her.

And the Orb had a definite destination in mind.

The savannah flew past. Drifting by her on her right, she saw the snow-capped peaks of Kilimanjaro. She was in Tanzania then—near that country's border with Kenya. A few hundred miles south of Nairobi.

A few hundred miles south of Kosa.

She remembered talking to him as he walked through the halls of the British Embassy—a conversation about the shadow warrior on the floor of the Luna Temple, and the seemingly incongruous inscriptions within written in Ol Maa.

Seemingly incongruous no longer.

She set that knowledge aside, as another mountain appeared, this time directly in front of her. Shrouded in gray clouds, its summit came not to a peak, like Kilimanjaro, but rather ended in a cone. A volcano? She didn't recognize it specifically, but from what she recalled of the geology of this part of Africa, there were a number of active volcanoes in this area.

The savannah came to an abrupt end, became desert. She saw no vegetation, no signs of life anywhere. She drove toward the mountain's summit, up a winding path through a barren, rocky canyon, past strange conical-shaped rock formations.

They reminded her, she realized, of the cone the Orb had rested on within the Luna Temple.

The images slowed. Lara sensed her journey had come to an end.

She stood before one of the cone-shaped formations—bigger than the others she had passed before. And black—a deep, midnight ebony exactly like the cone in the temple.

It exuded a palpable sense of menace.

Pandora
, she thought.
It's right here.

But where was she?

Lara began to turn the Orb in her hands, trying to get a better sense of her location.

A shadow fell upon her then and touched the Orb.

She heard something behind her—a low, rumbling sound, like the sound of lava bubbling in a volcano, only almost musical. Like something alive.

Suddenly the fact that she couldn't move, couldn't turn her body even an inch while holding the Orb, was no longer a curiousity.

It was downright scary.

The shadow covered her entirely.

The sound grew louder.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lara saw movement.

Move the Orb, she thought. Then you'll see it. But she didn't want to see it. She wanted to run.

Too late, though. It was upon her.

 

Bryce actually thought Lara was going to scream.

He had never seen her so scared before—scared at all, for that matter, and he'd seen her in a lot of fairly terrifying situations. Like that time with Gunderson and the Mai Tufari in Chango, or the ants in that Purepecha tomb in Tzintzantzun—she'd been cool as ice then. Cracking jokes, while he'd been sweating bullets. And he'd certainly never seen her actually turn white before.

Something quite extraordinary had obviously happened.

All at once, she let go of the Orb and staggered backward.

“Lara? Are you all right?”

She looked straight at the camera lens. Bryce had her, head-and-shoulders view, on the main console monitor.

“Africa. It's in Africa! Somewhere past Kilimanjaro!”

“Pandora?”

“Yes, Pandora. Of course Pandora.”

Bryce sighed.

He wished she hadn't told him that.

“That's great, Lara,” he said, in what he hoped was a convincingly enthusiastic tone.

“I'm half a day away. How long will it take Reiss to put his computers back together? He's mapped the Orb completely—he might be able to get Pandora's location, as well.”

For a number of reasons, Bryce wasn't sure how to respond to that.

“Hmm. Err. Twenty-four hours at the fastest, I'd say.”

She looked down at her watch and nodded.

“Then that's what we'll assume. Get in touch with Kosa. Tell him to pick up my car and meet me north of his village.”

She cut the line then and the screen went dark.

Sean, who'd been leaning over the console, gun pointed directly at Bryce's head during the entire conversation, shook his head and smiled.

“Bit faster than twenty-four hours, I'd say.”

“Indeed. I should expect we'll be in Africa before Lady Croft. Though we'll have to wait for her to lead us to Pandora.” Reiss, who'd been hanging back in the trailer entrance, turned to one of the guards standing over Hillary (who had remained silent throughout Lara's call, pressing an icepack to the large black-and-blue mark on his forehead), and spoke. “Tell Mr. Garner to have the Gulfstream fueled and ready to leave within the hour.”

The man nodded and left the trailer.

The doctor turned back to Bryce.

“Now all we need is for you to call this Kosa fellow—whoever he is—and arrange for him to pick up Lady Croft. We don't want her aware that anything is out of the ordinary. Do we?”

Bryce sighed. What could he do? From the moment Reiss and his entourage had arrived at the manor in the middle of the night, they'd shown a willingness to use force to get what they wanted.

Hence, the ruins of his copter simulator in the manor's control room.

And the bruise on Hillary's face.

It was all his fault, anyway, Bryce decided, for having constructed the digicam in such a way that the transceiver signal could be traced back to its source. Bad design. The next revision would incorporate a completely different architecture.

Assuming, that is, he got the chance to build it.

He looked over at Hillary, then at Reiss.

“All right,” he said. “I'll make the call.”

 

Terry had a nasty cut on his wrist.

He was going to have to get it attended to soon, although he was certainly better off than Davos, who really should have known better than to ignore Terry's shouts for help, and who certainly shouldn't have stood there, laughing at him naked and chained to the bunk, while Croft made her getaway.

In retrospect, of course, it would have made more sense for Terry not to explode the way he had (and he really didn't care to dwell on the late Captain Davos, or his unfortunate crew), because it had taken several long, frustrating hours for him to get the second Zodiac in the water. He had an easier time tracking her to Taipei, thanks to the transceiver he'd stuck on her pack when looking at the Orb.

But she'd gone out of range by the time he reached the harbor.

Fortunately, she'd left her Zodiac anchored in front of an old junk, and it didn't take more than a few moments of polite conversation with the old couple who owned the boat to ascertain where she had gone after leaving them.

Africa.

Terry smiled. He'd pick up the signal there, then.

And—he guessed—have a good shot at Pandora, in the bargain.

Kosa had done something to the Jeep. Lara saw that right away, though she couldn't figure out what that something was as yet.

She punched in his number on her sat phone.

“Kosa. I'm here.”

“Lara? What do you mean? Where is here?” He sounded confused—she could understand why. She watched the Jeep swerve and barely miss going off the road entirely. That would have been a mess.

Ah. She knew what was different about the vehicle now.

“You cleaned my Jeep.”

“I know how you like your equipment. But where are you? I can't see you.”

“Don't worry. I can see you…just keep going straight.”

Kosa was driving south from Nairobi, on a dirt road that ran parallel to the Namanga highway, some thirty-two kilometers north of the Kenya–Tanzania border.

Lara was about a three hundred meters off the ground, paralleling his course, several hours and several thousand kilometers away from Taipei, courtesy of MI6 aerial transport. She was thoroughly sick of air travel and looked forward to being safely on the ground.

She pulled down on the straps of her parachute, adjusting her angle of descent.

“Keep your speed steady,” she told Kosa.

“Right. I'm switching to cruise control.”

About thirty seconds and a half-dozen tugs of her landing straps later, Lara set down gently in the backseat of her Jeep. She cut away the chute and it flew off in the distance behind them.

Kosa slid over to the passenger seat and she climbed in front and grabbed the wheel.

The two of them embraced.

“I don't suppose you considered a more normal means of getting here?”

She adjusted the seat, then shook her head. “No time.”

And she told him about Reiss, and Pandora, and what the Orb had shown her.

After she finished talking, Kosa was silent a long while.

“How long do we have before Reiss finds this place?”

“Hours, if we're lucky.”

He shook his head. “Worse than I thought.”

“I don't understand.”

“I feared this,” he said. “When you sent me the fax. When I saw the box.”

She slammed on the brakes. “You knew about Pandora? And you didn't tell me?”

“You are my friend, Lara, but—” he hesitated. “You are an outsider here. And there are things that are not spoken of to outsiders.”

“I see,” she said tightly.

“You have no call to be angry with me. Had I known about Reiss, I would have told you everything. But as a matter of archaeological curiosity—no. Do you not understand what this box is—what it contains?” He shook his head again. “There are some things that are not meant to be found.”

His words—an echo of Gus Petraki's, of Alexander's—struck her like a dash of cold water in the face.

“I'm beginning to think you might be right about that,” she said.

They drove on in silence.

 

They stopped to eat and refuel the Jeep just before crossing the border into Tanzania. Lara tried the manor, but was unable to reach either Hillary or Bryce. Strange. Perhaps Bryce was sleeping off whatever strange mood had come over him earlier in the day. As for Hillary…

It was very, very out of character for him not to answer the phone.

Perhaps he needed a vacation, as well.

Once in Tanzania, the scenery started to look very familiar to Lara indeed. They were driving along the same route the Orb had shown her—there was Kilimanjaro, off in the distance, and to their left a huge soda lake with hundreds of flamingos baking in the sun. Jungle, and savannah, and then looming before them…

A mountain, shrouded in clouds.

“Kosa. We've never been here, have we?”

“No.” He turned in his seat to face her. “That's the mountain you saw, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“It is Ol Doinyo Lengai—the mountain of God.”

“The box is there somewhere. We have to stop Reiss from getting it, Kosa. You understand that, don't you?”

“I do.” He nodded. “There is a tribe that makes a home on it. They might help us.”

“Might?”

Kosa nodded. “When you see them, you will understand.”

Ol Doinyo Lengai, it turned out, was an active volcano. One that had erupted as recently as 1983, so the entrance was clearly marked with danger signs, warning of possible seismic activity.

“In many ways, this is the last bit of pristine wilderness on the continent,” Kosa said. “Tanzania is not as popular a tourist attraction as my country, so there is not as much pressure for development.”

Lara nodded as they walked through a cloud bank. She hadn't realized they were that high up already.

And then she realized they weren't.

“This is all smoke…”

Kosa nodded. “To keep the tribe hidden from outsiders.”

It got thicker and thicker as they climbed. She stumbled over an outcropping of rock and made it a point to keep her gaze focused on the path ahead of her to avoid a repeat performance.

“We're here,” Kosa said suddenly.

Lara looked up and saw only thick smoke. She must have misheard him.
Turn
here, he must have said, and she stepped up behind him.

But Kosa had indeed stopped walking.

“I will be a moment. Stay in this exact spot.”

He moved away from her and it was only then that she looked up and realized she hadn't misheard him at all.

They were in the middle of the village.

Not ten feet to her right, a group of figures, barely visible through the mist, were gathered around a bonfire, feeding wood to the flames. There was another group three meters beyond them. She turned and saw another fire directly behind her and another one to her left.

A man stepped forward out of the blinding white mist.

He was tall and thin, dressed in a plain brown, one-piece toga. Maasai, Lara thought at first, just like Kosa.

Then he moved closer and she saw his face.

There were markings carved in his skin—elegant, decorative patterns that were at once strange and yet completely familiar to her, and a second later she knew why.

They were undeniably reminiscent of the etchings on the surface of the Orb.

Lara became aware of voices behind her. She turned and saw Kosa talking to a man dressed in robes far more elaborate than any of the others were wearing. The village leader, no doubt.

He was angry, almost shouting—Kosa was trying to calm him down, reason with him. Both men pointed in Lara's direction several times—she was no doubt the focal point of their argument.

Time for her to get directly involved, then.

She pulled the Orb from her pack, and suddenly, the entire village got very, very quiet.

Kosa walked quickly to her side.

“I'm not sure that was the wisest move,” he whispered.

The village leader walked up to her, as well, and began speaking. Kosa translated the words as fast as they were spoken.

“He says to leave this object and go. Never speak of it. To trespass on the cradle of life is to risk flooding the—”

Lara cut him off. “Men are coming for the box.”

The leader's mouth dropped open and his eyes clouded with anger.

Clearly he wasn't used to being interrupted.

“Tell him,” Lara said to Kosa.

He repeated her words in their dialect to the leader. The entire village listened. A wave of murmuring—fearful murmuring—swept through the crowd.

When Kosa finished, the leader's reply was abrupt and angry.

“He says the gods forbid you to speak of the box.”

Lara took a step forward of her own then and met the leader's gaze.

“These men are not like me. They won't look at the box with fear or respect,” she began, and then nodded to Kosa, who started translating as she spoke. “They will open it. They want to use it. Now, I am sorry if I have to disturb your gods to keep this from happening, but I will do whatever I must.”

This time, when Kosa finished talking, the crowd was silent.

The village leader studied Lara intently. Judging her.

Then he folded his legs beneath him and sat. He looked up at Lara and Kosa and motioned for them to do the same.

Kosa translated as he began talking.

“Do you truly, truly understand what you are doing? Are you truly prepared for what you will learn? Some secrets must remain secrets. These are very heavy burdens, very lonely burdens. If you find the box, you will have to bear those burdens in solitude. Are you prepared to do that?”

Lara looked into his eyes and nodded.

“You must speak the affirmation,” Kosa said, and gave the words to her. She pronounced them the best she could—African languages had never been a specialty of hers.

The leader nodded, satisfied, then began to talk again.

“He's going to give us ten men,” Kosa translated. “They will take us to the cradle of life. To the box.”

“Thank him,” Lara said.

Kosa did. The leader stared at her then, and began speaking again.

“He warns that no one who has gone looking for the box has come back. He says the land beyond the canyon belongs to the shadow guardians. They do not sleep, they never rest. To them sky and earth are meaningless. They move like a wind. Anything that walks their land will die.”

Lara's gaze darted to Kosa and she thought of the figure on the floor of the Luna Temple. And then she remembered something else—the presence she'd felt hovering over her, the last few seconds of her journey with the Orb. Something dark, and deadly, something that had scared her so much she couldn't even bear to look at it. Now, at least, she could put a name to that fear.

Shadow guardian.

“What are they?” Lara asked. “Where did they come from?”

Kosa repeated the question. The leader looked puzzled a moment, then spoke.

“He says they came with life,” Kosa translated. The leader pointed to the sky. “From up there.”

Lara fell silent then, realizing any further questions were academic.

 

Ten minutes later, they were on the move again—Lara, Kosa, and ten warriors from the village, all of them armed with spears and shields. Lara wanted to phone up MI6 and have them airlift in a case of AK-47s. This was the twenty-first century, after all.

Then she reconsidered.

Who knew what weapons—if any—would work against shadow guardians?

Just outside the village proper, the jungle thickened, becoming a curtain of thick, green vegetation. Their progress slowed. Some of the warriors passed their spears to others and pulled out machetes. They began hacking their way through the forest. Lara joined in, glad to have something to do to take her mind off what lay ahead. Pandora—what she might have to face off against to protect the box from Reiss.

She fought her way through a particularly dense patch of brush and emerged into a bare patch of forest. Ol Doinyo Lengai—the mountain of God—was suddenly visible through the trees.

Lara stopped in her tracks and stared. The angle, the distance to the summit…she'd been this way before. With the Orb.

Kosa and one of the tribesmen stepped up next to her.

“Take a break,” he suggested, misunderstanding why she'd stopped. “Let me go first.”

“No, I'm not tired.” She pointed to the summit. “It's just that we're getting closer.”

The tribesman frowned, then spoke to Kosa.

“He said you're right,” Kosa told her. “The cradle of life lies near the summit. He wants to know how you knew?”

“Tell him I had help.” Lara reached behind her then and brought out the Orb. A flight of birds in the trees ahead of them suddenly squawked and flew past, startled by the sudden movement.