The Old Man was waiting outside. Shepley dropped the drums on to the sand. ‘They’re heavy,’ he muttered. Brightening, he added. ‘There must be over five hundred feet here, Doctor. With the bonus, and all the others as well — ‘He took the Old Man’s arm. ‘Come on, let’s get into the next one.’
The Old Man disengaged himself, watching the sputtering persona in the pavilion, the blue light from the dead man’s suit pulsing across the sand like a soundless lightning storm.
‘Wait a minute, lad, don’t run away with yourself.’ As Shepley began to slide off through the sand, sending further falls down the slope, he added in a firmer voice ‘And stop moving all that sand around! These tombs have been hidden for ten thousand years. Don’t undo all the good work, or the wardens will find them the first time they go past.’
‘Or Traxel,’ Shepley said, sobering quickly. He glanced around the lake below, searching the shadows among the tombs in case anyone was watching them, waiting to seize the treasure.
Three
The Old Man left him at the door of the next pavilion, reluctant to watch the tomb being stripped of the last vestige of its already meagre claim to immortality.
‘This will be our last one tonight,’ he told Shepley. ‘You’ll never hide all these tapes from Bridges and Traxel.’
The furnishings of the tomb differed from that of the previous one. Sombre black marble panels covered the walls, inscribed with strange gold-leaf hieroglyphs, and the inlays in the floor represented stylized astrological symbols, at once eerie and obscure. Shepley leaned against the altar, watching the cone of light reach out towards him from the chancel as the curtains parted. The predominant colours were gold and carmine, mingled with a vivid powdery copper that gradually resolved itself into the huge, harp-like head-dress of a reclining woman. She lay in the centre of what seemed to be a sphere of softly luminous gas, inclined against a massive black catafalque, from the sides of which flared two enormous heraldic wings. The woman’s copper hair was swept straight back from her forehead, some five or six feet long, and merged with the plumage of the wings, giving her an impression of tremendous contained speed, like a goddess arrested in a moment of flight on a cornice of some great temple-city of the dead.
Her eyes stared forward expressionlessly at Shepley. Her arms and shoulders were bare, and the white skin, like compacted snow, had a brilliant surface sheen, the reflected light glaring against the black base of the catafalque and the long sheath-like gown that swept around her hips to the floor. Her face, like an exquisite porcelain mask, was tilted upward slightly, the half-closed eyes suggesting that the woman was asleep or dreaming. No background had been provided for the image, but the bowl of luminescence invested the persona with immense power and mystery.
Shepley heard the Old Man shuffle up behind him.
‘Who is she, Doctor? A princess?’
The Old Man shook his head slowly. ‘You can only guess. I don’t know. There are strange treasures in these tombs. Get on with it, we’d best be going.’
Shepley hesitated. He started to walk towards the woman on the catafalque, and then felt the enormous upward surge of her flight, the pressure of all the past centuries carried before her brought to a sudden focus in front of him, holding him back like a physical barrier.
‘Doctor!’ He reached the door just behind the Old Man. ‘We’ll leave this one, there’s no hurry!’
The Old Man examined his face shrewdly in the moonlight, the brilliant colours of the persona flickering across Shepley’s youthful cheeks. ‘I know how you feel, lad, but remember, the woman doesn’t exist, any more than a painting. You’ll have to come back for her soon.’
Shepley nodded quickly. ‘I know, but some other night. There’s something uncanny about this tomb.’ He closed the doors behind them, and immediately the huge cone of light shrank back into the chancel, sucking the woman and the catafalque into the darkness. The wind swept across the dunes, throwing a fine spray of sand on to the half-buried cupolas, sighing among the wrecked tombs.
The Old Man made his way down to the mono-rail, and waited for Shepley as he worked for the next hour, slowly covering each of the tombs.
On the Old Man’s recommendation he gave Traxel only one of the canisters, containing about 500 feet of tape. As prophesied, the timewardens had been out in force in the Sea of Newton, and two members of another gang had been caught red-handed. Bridges was in foul temper, but Traxel, as ever self-contained, seemed unworried at the wasted evening.
Straddling the desk in the tilting ballroom, he examined the drum with interest, complimenting Shepley on his initiative. ‘Excellent, Shepley. I’m glad you joined us now. Do you mind telling me where you found this?’
Shepley shrugged vaguely, began to mumble something about a secret basement in one of the gutted tombs nearby, but the Old Man cut in: ‘Don’t broadcast it everywhere! Traxel, you shouldn’t ask questions like that — he’s got his own living to earn.’
Traxel smiled, sphinx-like. ‘Right again, Doctor.’ He tapped the smooth untarnished case. ‘In mint condition, and a 15th Dynasty too.’
‘Tenth!’ Shepley claimed indignantly, frightened that Traxel might try to pocket the bonus. The Old Man cursed, and Traxel’s eyes gleamed.
‘Tenth, is it? I didn’t realize there were any 10th Dynasty tombs still intact. You surprise me, Shepley. Obviously you have concealed talents.’
Luckily he seemed to assume that the Old Man had been hoarding the tape for years.
Face down in a shallow hollow at the edge of the ridge, Shepley watched the white-hulled sand-car of the timewardens shunt through the darkness by the old cantonment. Directly below him jutted the spires of the newly discovered tomb-bed, invisible against the dark background of the ridge. The two wardens in the sand-car were more interested in the old tombs; they had spotted the gyro-car lying on its side by the mono-rail, and guessed that the gangs had been working the ruins over again. One of them stood on the running board, flicking a torch into the gutted pavilions. Crossing the mono-rail, the car moved off slowly across the lake to the north-west, a low pall of dust settling behind it.
For a few moments Shepley lay quietly in the slack darkness, watching the gullies and ravines that led into the lake, then slid down among the pavilions. Brushing away the sand to reveal a square wooden plank, he slipped below it into the portico.
As the golden image of the enchantress loomed out of the black-walled chance! to greet him, the great reptilian wings unfurling around her, he stood behind one of the columns in the nave, fascinated by her strange deathless beauty. At times her luminous face seemed almost repellent, but he had nonetheless seized on the faint possibility of her resurrection.
Each night he came, stealing into the tomb where she had lain for ten thousand years, unable to bring himself to interrupt her. The long copper hair streamed behind her like an entrained time-wind, her angled body in flight between two infinitely distant universes, where archetypal beings of superhuman stature glimmered fitfully in their own self-generated light.
Two days later Bridges discovered the remainder of the drums.
‘Traxel! Traxel!’ he bellowed, racing across the inner courtyard from the entrance to one of the disused bunkers. He bounded into the ballroom and slammed the metal cans on to the computer which Traxel was programming. ‘Take a look at these — more Tenths! The whole place is crawling with them!’
Traxel weighed the cans idly in his hands, glancing across at Shepley and the Old Man, on lookout duty by the window. ‘Interesting. Where did you find them?’