The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 65

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"Yesterday, while you were busy building the gantry, I was able to

decipher most of the rest of the "spring" face of the stele." She moved

her notebook so that he was able to overlook the pages she had opened.

"These are my preliminary notes. You will see where I have inserted a

number of question marks - here and here, for instance. That is where I

am uncertain of the translation, or where Taita has used a new and

strange symbol. I will have to give more time and consideration to those

later."

I follow you," he said, and she went on.

"These sections that I have highlighted with green are quotations from

the standard version of the Book of the Dead. Take this one here: "The

universe is drawn in circles, the disc of the sun- god, Ra. The life of

man is a circle that begins in the womb and ends in the tomb. The circle

of the chariot wheel foreshadows the death of the serpent that it

crushes beneath its rim. "Yes, I recognize the quotation," he said.

"On the other hand, these parts of the text that I have highlighted in

yellow are original Taita writings, or at least are not quotations from

the Book of the Dead or any other source that I am aware of This

paragraph here in particular is the one that I wanted to bring to your

attention."

She traced a section with her forefinger as she read it aloud, "'The

daughter of the goddess has conceived. She has been impregnated by the

one who is without seed. She has begotten her own twin sister. The fetus

lies forever -coiled in her own womb. Her twin shall never be born. She

will never see the light of day. She will five for ever in the darkness.

In the womb of the sister her bridegroom claims her in eternal marriage.

The unborn twin becomes the bride of the god, who was a man Their

destinies are intertwined. They shall live for ever. They Sul not

perish."'

She looked up from the notebook. "When I first read it, I was satisfied

that the daughter of the goddess was the Dandera river, as we had

already agreed. I was also pretty sure that the god that was once a man

must be Pharaoh.

Mamose was only deified on his ascension to the throne of Egypt. Before

that he was a man."

Nicholas nodded. !The seedless one is obviously Taita himself. He makes

repeated references to the fact that he was a eunuch. But now,' he

suggested, "if you have some new ideas about the mysterious twin sister,

let's hear them."

The twin of the river would most likely be a branch, or a fork of the

stream, wouldn't it?"

"Ah, I see what you are driving at, You are suggesting that the

sink-hole is the twin. Down there in the gorge it will never see the

Llight of day. Taita, the seedless one, claims paternity, So he is

telling us that he is the architect."

"Exactly, and he has married the twin of the river to Pharaoh Mamose for

all eternity. Putting that all together, I have come to the conclusion

that we will never find the location of Pharaoh Mamose's tomb until we

explore thoroughly that sink-hole that nearly drowned you."

"How do you suggest we do that?" he asked, and she shrugged.

"I am not the engineer, Nicky. I leave that to you to arrange. All I

know is that Taita devised some way of doing it - not only of getting

there but of working down there. If our interpretation of the stele is

correct, then he carried out extensive mining operations at the bottom

of the pool.

If he could do it, then there is no reason why you can't do it also."

"Ah!" he dernurred. "Taita was a genius. He says so repeatedly. I am

just an old plodder."

"I have got all my bets on you, Nicky. You won't let me down, will you?"

There was no call for intensive bushcraft to follow this spoor. His

quarry had taken very few anti-tracking precautions. Quite openly they

were following the main trail down the Abbay gorge, heading directly

westwards towards the Sudanese border.

Mek Nimmur was on his way back to his own stronghold.

Boris estimated that he had between fifteen and twenty men with him. It

was difficult to be certain, for the tracks on the pathway overlapped

each other, and of course he would have scouts on the'point ahead of him

and sweeping his flanks. There would also be a rear guard dragging the

trail behind him.

They were making good time, but such a large party would not be able to

outpace a single pursuer. He was sure he was gaining on them. He

reckoned that he had started four hours behind them, but judging by

recent signs he was now less than two hours adrift.

Without breaking his trot, he stooped to pick thing up from the path. As

he ran on he examined it. It was a twig, the soft tip shoot of a

kusagga-sagga plant that grew beside the track. One of the men ahead of

him had brushed against it as he passed, and snapped it off the main

branch. It gave Boris a fairly accurate gauge of how far he was behind.

Even in the heat of the gorge, the tender shoot had barely begun to

wilt. He was even closer than he had estimated.

He slowed down., a little as he considered his next move. He knew this

part of the valley fairly well. The previous year he had hunted over

much of this terrain with an American client, who had been looking for a

trophy Walia ibex. They had spent almost a month combing these same

gullies and wooded ravines before they had brought down a huge old ram,

black with age and carrying a pair of curled, back-sweeping horns that

ranked as the tenth largest ever in the Rowland Ward record book.

He knew that two or three miles ahead the Nile began another oxbow loop

out to the south, and that it then doubled back upon itself. The main

trail followed the river, because a series of sheer and formidable

cliffs guarded the high groupd in the centre of the loop of the river.

It was, however, possible to cut the corner. Boris had'done it before,

while following the wounded ibex.

The American hunter had not killed cleanly his bullet had struck the ram

too far back, missing the heartlung cavity and piercing the gut. The

stricken wild goat had taken to the high ground, following one of its

secret paths up amongst the crags. Boris and the American had followed

it up and over the mountain. Boris remembered how dangerous and

treacherous the path had been, but when it descended the far side of the

mountain it had cut off nearly ten miles.

If he could find the beginning of the goat path again, there was every

chance that he would be able to get ahead of Mek Nimmur and be lying in

wait for him on the far side. That would give him an enormous advantage.

The guerrilla leader would be expecting pursuit, not ambush.

He would be covering his back trail, and it was highly unlikely that

Boris would be able to slip past the rear guard without alerting his

intended victims. On the other hand, once he was ahead of them he would

be in control. Then he could choose his own killing ground.

As the trail and the main flow of the Nile started to turn away towards

the south, he kept watching the high ground above it, seeking a familiar

landmark. He had not gone another half-mile before he found it. Here

there was a break in the line of dark cliffs, a heavily forested

reentrant, that cut into the wall of basalt.

He stopped and mopped the sweat from his face and neck. "Too much

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