The winds are peculiar in that region. Twice, they cleared the clouds away so that the Egyptians could see, briefly, the upper portion of the tower. Without the direct rays of the sun, in the gloomy twilight of reflection from the skies, they could see only a dark bulk. But it was enough. There was an object out there, a vast object. Not necessarily a manmade object, since we don't know if the owners and operators of this planet are human. But it was an artifact; it was too smoothly cylindrical to be anything else. Though, at that distance, it could have been a spire of rock, I suppose.
But here's another clincher. Several hours later the Egyptians saw an object rise up from the clouds around the tower. It was round, and for them to see it from where they stood, it must have been enormous. When it got far up, it reflected light from the never setting sun. Then it rose so high it became invisible.
That really excited me. I said, "That tower could be the headquarters, the home base, of Whomever is behind all this?"
"That's what Frisco and I think."
The Egyptians had become fond of Djehuti. Despite his ogreish appearance, he had a good heart, and he liked to joke. He wasn't above making puns in Egyptian, which shows a considerable intelligence on his part. Humankind is unique in the animal kingdom; it's the only species that can pun. Homo agnominatio? I don't know. My Latin gets weaker by the day. If I could find an ancient Roman or a Latin scholar I'd take a refresher course.
Back to Paheri's tale. And Djehuti. If it hadn't been for his gorillan strength, the Egyptians wouldn't have gotten as far as they did. So they said some prayers over him and pushed on down the path.
The narrow ledge inclined, generally, at a 45-degree angle and was slippery with moisture. It was just wide enough for one man to walk along, his shoulder brushing the cliff. There were several narrowings where they had to face the cliff and slide along it, their chests against the rock, their heels hanging over the edge, their fingers clutching every tiny roughness.
Halfway down, Akhenaten almost fell off. He'd stumbled in the fog over a skeleton. Yes, a skeleton, undoubtedly the one who'd abandoned the grail. None of his bones seemed to be broken, so they guessed that he had died of starvation. The Pharaoh said a prayer over the bones and cast them into the sea. After a while they came to the end of the path. This was at sea level. They despaired then, but Akhenaten grabbed hold of an outcropping with one hand and with a torch in his other hand looked around the projection.
On the other side was an opening, the mouth of a cave. He eased around the outcropping, the sea up to his knees, his feet on the underwater continuation of the ledge. His torch showed him a smooth rock floor that slanted upward at a 30-degree angle. The others followed him without mishap.
Akhenaten in the lead, they walked up the slope. Their hearts beat hard, their skins were cold, their teeth chattered. One man-our Paheri-was so scared that he had nervous diarrhoea:
Was this the entrance to the hall of the gods? Was jackal-headed Anubis waiting to conduct them to the great judge who would balance their good deeds against the bad?
It was then that Paheri got to thinking about the mean and unjust things he'd done, his pettinesses and cruelties, his greed and treachery. For a moment he refused to go on. But when the others kept walking, and the darkness began to press in on him, he resumed walking-though at a distance behind them.
The cave became a tunnel, the rock walls evidently worked by tools. It began curving gently and then, after a hundred meters, it entered a very large circular chamber. This was lit by nine black metal lamps on tall tripods. The lamps were ball shaped, and they burned with a cold, steady light.
There were several things in the chamber to astonish them. The nearest, though, was another skeleton. Like the other, it was still clothed. The right arm was fully extended as if it had been reaching out for something. Beside it was a grail. At the moment, they didn't examine the bones, but I'll describe it now. It was the skeleton of a female, and the skull and some still unrotted patches of hair showed that it was a Negress's.
She had probably died of starvation. That was tragically ironic, since she had died a few meters from food.
After her companion had died, she'd gone on, probably crawling part of the way, summoning enough strength to stand up and edge around the very narrow places. Then, with salvation in sight, she had died.
I wonder who she was? What drove her to take that perilous journey? How many of her party died or turned back before they got through the vast cave through which the waves of the polar sea rush out? How did they get past the hairy, big-nosed colossi? What was her name, and why was she so fiercely determined to drive on into the heart of darkness?
Perhaps she may have left a message inside her grail. However, its lid was closed, and so only she could open it. Anyway, it's very unlikely that the Egyptians could have read her writing. This was before the Chancers spread Esperanto around the world. Furthermore, billions who can speak this language don't know how to read it.
The Egyptians said a prayer over the bones and then silently inspected the largest objects in the chamber, metal boats. There were eleven, some large, some small, all in low, metal V-shaped supports open at both ends.
There were also supplies of food. They didn't know that at first, since they'd never seen plastic cans. But diagrams on plastic sheets indicated how to open them, which they did. They contained beef, bread, and vegetables. They ate heartily, and then they slept for a long time, being very fatigued from their journey.
But they felt that the gods (in Akhenaten's view. The God) had provided for them. A path had been prepared for them, though it had not been an easy one. The road to immortality had never been easy, and only the virtuous and hardy would traverse it. Perhaps Djehuti had sinned in some way and so had been hurled from the ledge by the gods.
There were diagrams, how-to-do-it sketches using signs, in the boats. They studied these and then carried one of the large boats through the tunnel. It could hold thirty people, but four people could lift it easily or one strong man could drag it. It was shoved under the ledge into the sea, which was moderately rough, and the party got into it. There was a small control board by the wheel. Though he was a Pharaoh and so above work of any kind, Akhenaten nevertheless took over the controls. Following the diagrammed instructions, he punched a button on the board. A screen lit up, and a bright orange outline of the tower appeared on it. He punched another button, and the boat moved of its own accord outward into the sea.
Everybody was scared, of course, though their leader did not show it. Yet they felt that they were in the right place and were welcome-in a sense. The boat they likened to the barge in which, in their religion, the dead journeyed across the waters of the Other World, Amenti.
(Amenti comes from Ament, a goddess whose name meant "the Westerner." She wore a feather, as did the Libyans, the people to the west of Egypt. She may have been a Libyan goddess borrowed by the Egyptians. A feather was also the sign or hieroglyph for the word "Western." In later times, "the West" meant the Land of the Dead, and Ament became the goddess of the country of the dead. She it was who welcomed them at the gate of the Other World. She proffered them bread and water and, if they ate it, they became "friends of the gods.")
Naturally, the food they'd found in the cave reminded them of this, just as the boat was an analog of the barge used by the dead in the Other World. The Egyptians, like many people, had been upset, not to mention outraged, when they woke from death upon The Riverworld. This was not what the priests had said would happen to them after death. Yet, there were parallels here, physical analogs, to the promised land. Also, that there was a River was comforting. They had always been a riparian folk, living close to the Nile. And now they had been guided by a divine being to the heart of the Other World.