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| An ancient weapon, a modern conspiracy |
“YOU WANT
me to what?”
“Help us
find what appears to be an ancient weapon,” she said.
“Ancient
weapon?”
“I know it
sounds incredible,” the academic said.
“It does,
even in my alternative, parallel universe.”
“Yet,
astonishingly, this is what our authorities have been forced to consider.”
“You’re
going to have to unpack that a bit,” he said.
The man in
the big blue suit, who bulked up the small meeting table, and who sat flanked
by young, careful-faced men, spoke up.
“Very few
of us believe in remote killing, of the kind you’ve been describing, anyway,
but we all believe in remote listening. We have intelligence that something
ancient, called ‘the mother of revenge’
is being levelled against our country from the land of the Nile.”
“Maybe
it’s a pharaonic submarine,” Anson said helpfully.
“Why not?”
Dr Melinda Skilling said with a mocking smile, “some alternative theorists seem
willing to believe that the ancient Egyptians possessed helicopters, fixed-wing
aircraft and armoured tanks, but submarines probably weren’t of much use in the
shallower reaches of the Nile.”
This
Egyptologist could dig in more ways than one, he observed.
He
understood her allusion.
“You mean
those mysterious symbols under a lintel in the Temple of Osiris in Abydos that
seem to show an arsenal of modern weapons?” he said. “I may be alternative, but
I’m not a crank. Nor am I a fan of aliens, or of pyramid and sphinx builders
from Atlantis, although I like the way they exasperate Egyptologists. I’m sure
there’s a more mundane explanation for the symbols and so I’ll leave that to
you.”
“I don’t
do mundane, Anson. I’d rather be working on the exhibition I’m curating than
doing mundane, but the intelligence wires are humming and it’s apparently
alarmed our government enough to request professional advice.”
“Then why ask
me?”
“You’re
special, not only because of your grasp of arcane Egyptian knowledge and
practice, but because of your standpoint. I must confess that mainstream
academics, restrained by what has been termed the ‘agnostic reflex’, are
somewhat in the position of outsiders looking in, careful to keep an objective
distance from Egyptian religion, mystical texts and esoteric practices. You, on
the other hand, are a phenomenologist, one who believes that you must grant
value and credibility to the sacred and engage with it experientially in order
to appreciate it fully. I have a certain sympathy for that position.”
A certain
sympathy. Was she trying to be nice? Perhaps. She’d certainly earned points
from him for her candour.
But the
blunt instrument in the big blue suit didn’t try for points. His words came
down on Anson like a mallet.
“Frankly,
to many people you’re just a wild theorist. And that gives you a lot more
freedom to operate in. Nobody listens to you - and nobody watches you. We can
hide behind you.”
“You
couldn’t.”
