Sweating and inwardly cursing his own temper, Garza wiped away the blood from the wound in his neck. He nodded in agreement and went to work building another model as quickly as he could. When Gideon and Imogen went to help the chief waved them off, the gold watch glittering on his bony wrist, leaving Garza to construct it alone.
In forty minutes it was done. Garza demonstrated with the small rock, and then the chief knelt and tried the apparatus himself, raising and lowering the rock by the thread. The delight and amazement on his face were evident. He stood and, with a loud voice, ordered the workers and guards to construct a working version of the pulley. To Garza’s surprise, the chief put him in charge of the detail.
With the slaves all working together, and the sharp bronze daggers of the guards to carve pulley wheels, and the fashioning of bronze pins to act as pulley axles, the work proceeded quickly. As they erected the scaffolding over the half-built pyramid and its adjacent pile of cut blocks, Garza could see Blackbeard standing off to one side, motionless, hand on his dagger, staring at him with an expression of pure hatred on his face.
“You better watch out for that one,” Gideon said quietly.
“You’re not kidding. The bastard’s tried to cut my throat three times now.”
By late afternoon, as the alpenglow painted the surrounding peaks, the contraption was finished and ready to be tested. Garza realized he was nervous. Normally, as with any engineering project, he would have done the math, run the bearing loads and structural members through computer programs to make sure everything would hold. In this case he’d been forced to make do with estimates. The most critical component, he knew, was the weight of the blocks. He’d measured them at roughly two feet by two by six, making twenty-four cubic feet of sandstone. Stone, as any building engineer knew, weighed about a hundred fifty pounds per square foot, which gave each block a mass of thirty-six hundred pounds. His six-pulley, three-rope block-and-tackle system meant that two hundred pounds of lift would need to be applied on a rope manned by two workers. With this design, it would only take six men to raise a thirty-six-hundred-pound block of stone. Or so he calculated. Because of poor tolerances and lousy building materials, friction would add a few hundred more pounds, for a total load of two tons. He was pretty sure of the ropes—they were well made and strong. The big question was whether the jerry-rigged scaffolding and crane would hold up.
But the moment of truth had come. The chief, standing nearby, was leaning on his staff and waiting with an eager expression. Garza now directed the workers to fix a net of ropes around a block, preparing to lift it. Additional ropes were threaded through the pulley apparatus, and still more were attached to a lever arm built to swing the dangling block into position over the pyramid.
Gideon stood next to him. “You sure this is going to work?”
“No.”
“They’ll probably cut off our heads if it doesn’t,” said Imogen.
“Anything’s better than dragging those stones the rest of our lives,” Garza said.
He took a deep breath and gestured for the six workers to pull. They had practiced with the rebuilt model and knew what to do. With a creaking sound and a flexing of the scaffolding, the stone block rose into the air. The chief watched intently.
When the block was at the right height, dangling free, Garza waved his arm and the workers controlling the crane swiveled it above the pyramid. With another order, Garza called for the workers to let it down carefully, watching as it was slowly adjusted into place.
It worked perfectly.
“Khehat! Khehat!” The chief came over excitedly and grasped Garza’s shoulders, enveloping him in a bear hug. “Khehat!”
When he was finally released, Garza leaned over to Imogen and murmured: “What does khehat mean? Builder? Friend? Man of genius?”
“I think it means ‘undertaker.’”
29
GIDEON STEPPED INTO the tent, walked over to the ragged bundle of skins that served as his bed, and collapsed on it with a sigh. His fingernails were encrusted with mud, and his fingertips were greasy from handling goat meat—his hosts had not yet discovered such amenities as knives and forks—but he was too tired to care. He’d do his ablutions after he’d rested.
The past several days had passed in a blur—a backbreaking blur. After Garza’s success with his pulley apparatus, the chieftain had elevated him to what was essentially foreman of the job, a development that had annoyed Blackbeard no end. As a further reward, the three had been moved from their cage to this roomier and far more pleasant tent. Their security had also been relaxed, although Gideon noticed their tent was situated on the far side of the settlement, away from the ravine that alone led out to freedom. They had been given free movement, with two warnings: They were not to go back to the mist oasis on the eastern side of the mountain, and they were warned away from a valley some miles to the west, which seemed to be a “place of demons” or some claptrap along those lines.
He sat up now and began rubbing his back. While the tribe was apparently an autocracy—the chieftain ruled with an iron fist; the crone was his Rasputin; and the young woman, perhaps the chief’s wife, was a very powerful and respected adviser in her own right—there was a complex system of merit- and seniority-based layers to it that he was still figuring out. Age was held in great reverence, and everyone moved aside when an older person came down a trail. This was especially true of the crone and the four old priests in white or saffron robes that she commanded. Men and women were treated equally, it seemed: the best hunters went out daily with spears to hunt game, regardless of gender. Everyone worked at something, and there was obviously an attempt to assign members of the tribe duties to which they were best suited. Imogen, for example—after offering some suggestions on how soil cultivation could be improved—had now been assigned gardening duties. But she also spent a fair amount of time with the crone. Imogen was a quick study when it came to language, and the old woman peppered her with questions about the outside world and the almost mythical “English” she was apparently enamored of. These last few days, Imogen could often be seen sitting by the old woman’s side, on the chief’s ledge overlooking the settlement, conversing in a halted fashion. This had helped the three of them learn a little more about how the tribe functioned and what rules it lived by. It had also ultimately explained the mystery of how the crone—who, Imogen had told them, was named Lillaya—learned her fragments of English. As a child, she had wandered away from a scouting party, gotten lost in the desert, and was ultimately picked up by nomadic Arab bandits. For several months she had traveled with them as a slave, until a young English adventurer—or so Imogen understood—who’d been accompanying the band took pity on her. He’d speak to her in the evenings and try to communicate. One night, when their travels had taken them near the mountains, he pretended to have an epileptic fit, creating a diversionary uproar and allowing her to escape and find her way home. Hence her fragments of English; hence her fascination with the world beyond the canyon—and hence Garza’s magical Rolex, which the chieftain always wore proudly. The Englishman had owned an identical watch. This unlikely combination was apparently what had saved them from the pit.