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CHAPTER
NINE

It was midday and they’d managed to find an unlikely shady spot under a set of palm trees. No water was in sight.

There were forty-nine days left on their trek eastward, if Marty’s vision was to be trusted. His “visions” might be the better word, because he awoke each morning from the same dream, with the same clock counting down to the same encounter with the same enthroned man.

His was a strange face. He wasn’t handsome, with big ears and goggle eyes. He looked worn, like a statue that had once been handsomer, but had melted in the scouring wind.

Marty bit into his radish and savored the spicy sweet flavor of the starchy root vegetable. He’d never been a fan of cooked radishes, but they were refreshing and tasted very different raw. With a texture like a potato’s, it served as a source of calories, vitamins, and liquid.

On the other hand, he’d have given a lot for a cool glass of water.

“Marty, aren’t we now at the point of no return?” Gunther asked with a mouthful of dried impala jerky in his mouth. “It’s been five days, hasn’t it?”

He nodded. “We’ve been keeping a ridiculous pace without really slowing.” He looked over at François, the eldest and least in shape of the group, and the man looked perfectly fine. In fact, he looked healthier now than when they’d started this journey; his chest was still a robust barrel, but his gut had almost entirely melted away. “François, you’re the one with the watch. How many hours a day have we been walking?”

“About sixteen.”

Marty frowned. “Anyone know what the average walking speed is for—”

“Anywhere from three to four miles per hour,” François said curtly. “With a small break during the midday heat, we’re averaging fifteen hours walking time and I’d guess we’re going almost fifty miles in a day.”

“No blisters,” Surjan said.

Marty hadn’t had any, but it hadn’t occurred to him to ask anyone else. He looked around the crew. “Is that true? No one’s had a blister yet?”

Heads shaking.

“No sprains or strains, either. I think we heal too fast,” Surjan said. “My wound melted off my arm in a couple of days.”

Marty had an old trick, from many years of hiking into remote digs, to keep his legs working. He would lie on his back during rest stops, elevating his legs by resting his heels against a boulder or the trunk of a tree. That let blood flow from his legs back into his torso; over the course of a long hike, that kept his legs feeling light and his blood oxygenated.

On this entire walk, he hadn’t felt the need to use his trick even once.

And Marty’s fatigue had gone.

“And we’re in a land in which the Egyptian gods walk in broad daylight,” Gunther said.

Marty felt disquieted, but he didn’t know how to answer. He turned to the east and stared at the never-ending expanse of savannah ahead of them. “Given that I don’t think the Red Sea is more than two hundred miles east of the dig site, and I don’t see any signs of seagulls or water ahead—”

“You were right, then,” Gunther interjected.

Lowanna crunched on her radish and pointed to the east. “If we actually started somewhere near Morocco and are going east at fifty miles a day, that almost sounds like the schedule Marty’s talking about.”

“Marty’s rock formation is only about two thousand miles from the dig site.” François turned to Marty. “Didn’t you say your vision had fifty-four days elapsing, so that should leave forty-nine currently. Right?”

Marty thought of the enthroned man with big ears. He nodded. “I don’t have any better ideas. Do you?”

The crew shook their heads.

Surjan sniffed and turned his head, then pointed east. “I think I smell water.”

“You can smell water?” Gunther asked.

Surjan pursed his lips and shrugged. “Ever since I killed that impala, my senses are working at a new level. I can’t explain it.”

“You as well?” Marty’s eyes widened. “I can’t smell what you’re smelling, but I definitely noticed a huge change after killing that creature.” He hesitated. “I saw a light, after I killed the Seth-person. Did you see one when the impala died?”

“I did.” Surjan’s expression suddenly matched Marty’s look of incredulity. “A light of some kind leaked up from them both, but it was only at the second occurrence that I felt anything strange.”

“When your senses improved?”

Surjan nodded.

Marty scanned the group. “Has anyone else experienced this kind of new level, or unusual perceptiveness, while we’ve been here?”

The group shook their heads.

“Let’s all share whatever it is we experience. It could be important.” Marty breathed in deeply and didn’t detect anything in the air. He gathered his things and stood. “Well, it’s time for us to get moving, anyway.” He smiled at Surjan. “Let’s test your nose.”


Marty breathed in the scent of something in the air . . . his mind wanted to call it green, but it was grasslike in nature and maybe he was catching a whiff of what Surjan had detected.

“It’s that way.” Surjan jogged toward a rocky outcropping about a mile away.

As they got closer to the rocky formation, he now knew what Surjan had meant with regard to the scent of water. At this distance it filled his nostrils with smells that reminded him of slick algae-covered rocks. It was like being at the ocean shore but without the salty tang.

A fringe of palm and olive trees clustered around the rock. More importantly, Marty saw the glint of sun reflecting off water. “Surjan, from now on, we trust your nose.”

The group picked up its pace. What unfolded in front of them was a shade-covered lake bordered with trees.

“Nobody drink the water yet,” Lowanna called in a loud voice. “This isn’t like the river, which was moving and had been filtered through sand, clay, and rocks. Trust me, none of you wants to get diarrhea from the standing water. Let’s heat it first.”

Marty pointed to Kareem. “Can you start a—wait a minute.” He turned to Lowanna with a puzzled expression. “How do you plan on heating water?”

Lowanna scanned the shore and pointed at a fallen log, “Surjan, help me drag this thing up onto the grass.”

Marty watched as Surjan walked into the water and helped shove a five-foot section of log to the shore.

Surjan, Kareem, and Lowanna together quickly rolled a section of an olive tree trunk up onto the grass.

“These are cultivated olives,” Surjan said, examining a branch of a living tree as he passed. “Not well tended in recent years, maybe. But humans have lived here once.”

Someone has lived here once,” François muttered.

Kareem gathered dried grasses and smaller sticks to start a fire while Lowanna began scraping the rotten bark from the tree. She turned to Gunther and motioned toward the shore. “Can you collect a bunch of fist-sized rocks? We’ll heat those up on the fire that Kareem makes and then use them to purify the water.”

Gunther nodded and walked over to the shore, and Surjan looked at what Lowanna was doing with a perplexed expression. “I don’t understand. What are you doing to the—”

“Surjan”—Lowanna motioned for the tall man—“just come here and help me dig into this log.”

“Fine,” Surjan said. “But then I’m setting up a khazi. I know you’re all grown-ups and don’t need to hear this, but no relieving yourselves near the water.”

Marty walked over to the cliff face. It was about thirty feet tall, not perfectly vertical but leaning back at a steep angle, and its edge ran from east to west. It looked like a fault line where a section of the earth had been shoved upward some time long ago.

It was strange to see, since to the best of his knowledge, there weren’t any active fault lines anywhere in the Sahara.

As he walked along the shadowy bottom of the cliff, he spotted what resembled small steps cut into the rocky wall. A person with really excellent balance, he estimated, could walk straight up the face using just his feet. A person with reasonably good balance could go on all fours comfortably.

Moving back for a better view, he visually followed the cuts in the rock up to what seemed to be a crack in the cliff’s face. Most of the crew was busy working with Lowanna on her water purification project, but Gunther was knocking sand out of his boots.

“Gunther!” Marty called. “Come join me. Or at least watch.”

Gunther joined him. “The buddy system, eh?”

“It’s what Mrs. Jones taught me in fourth grade,” Marty said, and started up the rock.

Only the front half of his foot fit on the cuts into the cliff, so he was careful about his balance, leaned forward to use his hands, and slowly walked up the face of the cliff.

As he got higher, what he’d thought was a crack actually turned into an entrance to a cave. It looked like a crack from down below because instead of being an opening you could walk straight into, it required Marty to walk sideways into the entrance that ran almost parallel to the cliff face.

As Marty scooted his way into the opening, he realized that it wasn’t a true cave, but a short natural fissure in the cliff face. It only went in about ten feet, but at the end of the ten-foot corridor he spotted a lidded ceramic container.

Someone had been here.

“Marty!” Gunther called.

“Come on up!” Marty answered.

But the pot wasn’t what drew his focus. Marty found himself staring at the inner side of the rock wall about a foot from his face. A series of lines was scratched into the rock and as he backed away, trying to get a better look, the lines began to take the shape of a rudimentary map.

It showed various paths, but there were no hieroglyphs or language that Marty could make sense of. He turned his head and his eyes widened as he spotted an infinity symbol on a box.

Marty dug the silver-colored medallion out of his pocket and stared at it. Could the map be referring to more of these things? Or did the medallion and the map both refer to something else?

Nature almost never had a single instance of anything. It was more like cockroaches—if you saw one, there were at least one hundred somewhere nearby. Marty felt his hair stand on end as he wondered if this world was filled with copies of Seth running around everywhere.

They hadn’t seen anyone yet other than that monster, but someone had clearly once occupied this oasis. Humans? Seth-people? His stomach gurgled with concern as he stared at the useless map. He had no bearings, no idea where he was, and no way to use any of the information on the map.

Gunther climbed in through the crack. “Invigorating,” he said. “I feel like a boy again.”

Marty scooted deeper into the corridor to make room. He stepped on a loose rock and one of his feet shot out from under him. As his grip inadvertently tightened around the medallion, a red beam flared to life, briefly painting a long line along the map.

Marty landed sitting on sand amid loose rocks. The light blinked off and Marty stared at the medallion, wondering what the hell happened.

He squeezed the medallion again. Nothing.

“What in the world is that thing?” Gunter asked. “And this map?”

“I don’t know,” Marty said, “but if that’s a map to where to find more of those Seth-people, I don’t want to go to where X marks the spot.”

Marty stood and examined the rest of the chasm. No more maps or other markings in the stone, no further evidence of occupation.

“Marty! Where are you? Gunther?”

It was François’s voice.

Gunther turned, leaned out slightly, and waved. “Coming right out!”

“What?” François called back.

Marty walked to the back of the hidden alcove and lifted the lid to the ceramic pot. It came away easily; the pot was filled with grain. He slowly edged his way back out of the fissure and followed Gunther out.

When he stepped back into the sunlight, Gunther was near the base of the cliff again. Marty saw several of his crewmates watching him.

François stood at the base of the cliff and yelled up at him, “How in the world did you get up there?”

Marty shifted the vase, which weighed about thirty pounds, and began carefully navigating the carved stairs downward. He leaned a little more on his knees this time, and found it helped him keep his balance.

François’s eyes were huge as he watched Marty slowly descend the treacherous steps. “You’re crazy. I can barely even see those sorry excuses for steps and you’re climbing them by feel while holding something in your hands?”

Marty grinned. “It’s not that hard if you—”

The ceramic vase suddenly broken open from the pressure of his one-armed embrace, sending grain, shards of ceramic, and Marty sliding to the ground.

By some miracle, Marty managed to land on his feet, but not without consequences.

His left forearm burned. Gunther raced to him and clamped his bleeding wound closed with his hands and yelled, “Someone get me something to bind his cut with!”

With the sound of his heartbeat thundering in his head, Marty stared at his bleeding arm. “Gunther, what’s going on with your hands?”

The man was tightly gripping both sides of his sliced forearm so that the edges of the wound stayed closed, but in the shadows under the cliff’s edge, Gunther’s hands were radiating white light.

Marty felt a warm sensation pouring into his forearm. Not the warmth of his own blood, but warmth like you’d feel from a hot water bottle.

Gunther yelled and let go of Marty’s arm.

The glow vanished. Surjan raced forward with a long cut strip of someone’s undershirt, dampened.

Gunther grabbed it and also Marty’s wrist, and then stared at Marty’s arm. “How the hell . . . ?”

Marty’s forearm was a bloody mess, but as Gunther wiped the blood from the wound, it became evident that the edges of the injury had stuck together. The wound was still visible, but it was stitched shut—albeit sans stitches.

“I wish we had some alcohol or something.” Gunther began wrapping Marty’s arm with the strip of cloth.

Marty whispered, “Did you see what I saw? The glow?”

Gunther furrowed his brow and nodded. “We’re in the Twilight Zone.”

“The old TV show?” Marty asked.

“These are grains of wheat!” François started picking up fingerfuls of the spilled grain and putting it in the intact upside-down pot lid. “I can grind this and make flatbread.”

“You said jack-of-all-trades of science and engineering,” Surjan pointed out. “Not arts and crafts.”

“If you want to eat my bread,” François said, “you’re going to have to be nicer to me.”

Gunther tied off the end of the bandage and worried over Marty’s arm. “By some miracle, it doesn’t look like it’s bleeding anymore.”

“It actually feels fine.” Marty patted his friend’s shoulder. He’d known the man for over two decades and seeing this mother-hen side of him come out wasn’t a surprise. He motioned toward the log and said, “Let’s go see how the water situation is coming.”


Marty was impressed at how quickly Lowanna and Surjan had managed to dig a boxlike channel into the wood and fill it with a few gallons of water using her freshly woven baskets. The baskets leaked, but they were good enough to transport water the dozen or so feet from the shore to the partially hollowed-out log.

The wood-sculpting made him think of Carlos and Pedro. Had Pedro’s wife given birth yet? Had the customer ever come by to collect the dining room set and pay for it?

Did those questions, really, even make sense?

He shook his head vigorously.

Now the entire team watched as Lowanna completed the operation.

Lowanna approached the large campfire with two sturdy sticks. She held them like chopsticks and with very little fumbling managed to pick up a heated rock, rushed over to the log, and dropped it into the water.

A sudden burst of steam whooshed up from the water as Lowanna hurried between the campfire and the log, repeatedly adding hot stones to the water.

After several trips, she paused to check on her handiwork. Marty saw steam rising from the water and asked, “Is this to get rid of whatever nastiness might be in the water?”

Lowanna nodded. “I’m most worried about giardia. The last thing anyone needs in a desert climate is to be losing water because they get a nasty case of diarrhea.”

“Don’t you need to boil the water for that?”

“No.” Lowanna dumped another set of rocks into the water with minimal splash and maximal steam. “We just need to get the water up to about fifty-four degrees Celsius—one hundred and twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit—for about ten minutes. That’ll take care of any live bugs and cysts that are in the water.”

“Brilliant,” Surjan said.

Marty smiled.

This motley crew seemed to have a reasonable set of survival skills. He liked to imagine that he would have thought about raising the temperature of the water, thus disinfecting it and making it safe for them to drink, but it was great that he didn’t need to.

“You know, I accidentally made the Seth-like person’s, uh, laser-amulet go off again,” he said, thinking out loud. “I wonder if it could be used to do something useful. Like heat water.”

“We should experiment,” François said.

“I’m not sure I feel comfortable doing that,” Marty said.

“I’m not sure I feel comfortable with Marty doing that, either.” Gunther grinned.

François held out his hand. “Give it to me. As the non-technophobe in the party and, I will bet you anything, the owner of the best tech toys, I am clearly the one who should be doing the experimenting.”

Marty shrugged and handed over the amulet. François immediately set himself to probing at the bronze medallion with his fingers.

Marty touched his bandaged forearm. As he pressed lightly on the wound, he couldn’t feel the injury.

He successfully wiggled his fingers on his left arm and wondered if Gunther was right.

Maybe they really were in the Twilight Zone.


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