The Pharaoh Key, page 16
And they, no doubt, were to be the beasts of burden.
Blackbeard shouted and gestured toward the blocks, ropes, and rollers. “Bastard,” said Gideon.
Garza followed the others over. They were shouldering harnesses lined with palm fiber pads. Another man adjusted a net of ropes around a block. Garza, Gideon, and Imogen all took up harnesses alongside the others.
With a shout, Blackbeard waved his coiled whip, then gave it a crack. The group strained against their harnesses and the block inched forward. They slacked, then pulled again, then slacked off, in a rhythm punctuated by Blackbeard’s periodic cracks of the whip.
After an hour of backbreaking work they had finally inched the block to the top of the ramp and fitted it into place. Blackbeard now roared orders to get started on the next block. Garza’s shoulders were already aching from the rough fiber pads.
“Now we know we’re slaves,” Gideon said as they walked back down the ramp. “Do you suppose this is some kind of promotion for good behavior? I preferred digging ditches.”
“This is how the great pyramids were built,” said Imogen, slipping into a harness. “Hasn’t changed in three thousand years.”
“Who do you think it’s for?” Garza asked, gesturing at the half-finished structure.
“Who else but the chief?” said Gideon. “He’s not exactly a spring chicken.”
Blackbeard roared at them, swinging his whip for silence.
“This is getting old really fast,” murmured Gideon as he adjusted his harness.
The whip cracked and they began pulling up another block.
They spent the morning inching blocks up the hill. Finally, with the sun almost at the meridian, Blackbeard called for a rest. A lunch of chickpeas with boiled goat meat was served: far better than their usual fare. Blackbeard retired to a rectangle of shade under a hanging rock and sat down, playing idly with his bracelet of human teeth, which he seemed inordinately fond of. Maybe, Garza speculated idly, it was some symbol of status in the tribe. It wasn’t long before the man went to sleep, snoring loudly. The other guards settled down, resting and watching over their charges.
Garza ate lunch with Gideon and Imogen. They were so tired they hardly spoke. After lunch, Gideon and Imogen dozed under an overhang. Garza, meanwhile, retired to a shady spot with a stray piece of rope and some sticks he’d collected from a pile of discarded rollers. He looked around the flinty ground, found a sharp rock, struck it hard along the edge with another stone, and knapped it to a sharp blade. He unraveled the discarded piece of rope into its individual strands and used them to lash the twigs together, creating a scaffolding. Using the sharp stone, he then carved a crude pulley wheel from rounds cut out of a broken pole lying in the nearby dust, cored it, slid it onto the twigs, and then lashed it to the scaffolding.
“What are you doing?” came a feminine voice. Imogen and Gideon had wandered over and were watching him work. “Haven’t you already slaved enough in the Home of the Dead?”
“The what?”
“The Home of the Dead. That’s what the other coolies call this place.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t know about the rest of you Israelites, but I’m tired of dragging those fucking blocks up a ramp.”
“So what’s this?”
“A demonstration model.”
“Of what?”
“Of how to do it better. I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”
Gideon shook his head. “Once an engineer, always an engineer.”
“Instead of the smart comments, how about some help?”
Garza set them both to work carving more pulley wheels with sharp flakes he knapped out from the flint, which he in turn mounted in series on the scaffolding. He fashioned a crude crane out of sticks that could rotate using two strands of rope. Finally, he passed another strand of rope through the crane and tied it to a sling, threaded it through the pulleys, and attached it to a swatch of headcloth. Into that he put a rock.
“Now pull the string,” Garza said to Gideon. “Carefully.”
Gideon pulled the strand and the pulley apparatus lifted the rock, held in place by the scaffolding and crane.
“Now watch.” Garza maneuvered the crane and it swiveled on its fixed base, carrying the rock.
“Now ease the string down.”
Gideon let the thread slide through his fingers, lowering the rock into a new spot, atop a small mound of sand Garza scraped up.
“You get it?” Garza asked. “Each pulley wheel provides a mechanical advantage. Four wheels reduce the force required to lift something to one-quarter.”
“Physics?” Imogen asked.
“Physics. With a four-wheel pulley system, a thousand-pound block of stone can be lifted with only two hundred fifty pounds of force. No more damn dragging.”
“Yeah, but can we get them to try it?” Gideon asked dubiously.
“Hence the demonstration model.”
From their resting places, the guards had idly watched Garza build the model. There had been no comprehension in their eyes, but it was obvious they were curious.
Now Garza motioned to them to come over. With gestures and broken phrases, he demonstrated the model by lifting and moving the rock several times. Now some of the other workers came over, gaping.
Garza gestured at one of the more alert-looking workers. “You try it. Try it.”
The worker stepped forward and knelt, taking the strand of rope in his hand. He pulled it gingerly, lifting the stone, pushed the swiveling scaffold, and placed it on the small hill of sand. A smile appeared on his face and he nodded, realizing that the stone did indeed move more easily.
Garza gestured at a guard. “You. Try.”
The guard came forward and, looking nervously around, tried it—again with an expression of amazement at this seemingly magical contrivance.
Garza launched into a broken exhortation of words and gestures, explaining that they should built a larger version of the apparatus over the pyramid using the poles and rope lying around to construct the scaffolding, pulleys, and wheels.
Suddenly a roar came from the worksite and the guards jumped as if struck. Blackbeard came swaggering down, his whip out. With a curse he lashed Garza across the shoulder so violently that it knocked him to his knees. Blackbeard brought his massive foot down on the model, stomping and grinding it into the sand and reducing it to a mass of broken sticks.
Garza, seeing his model destroyed, blood streaming from the lash on his shoulder, rose with a furious cry and ran at Blackbeard, who was still occupied in destroying the model. He took a swing and caught the overseer by surprise with a blow to the head; the man went down but quickly surged up in a fury, drawing his dagger and slashing at Garza.
Jumping back, Garza just missed being cut. Blackbeard rushed him, stabbing and slicing while Garza stumbled back, trying to keep out of the way of the blade. Gideon and Imogen immediately tried to come to his aide but the guards turned on them, knocking Gideon down and pinning Imogen, holding them at spearpoint.
Blackbeard drove Garza up against the cliff wall, blocking further retreat. Seeing that his quarry was trapped, a cruel smile broke over his face. He stepped forward and placed the dagger on Garza’s throat, still scabbed from the previous cut. He pressed the point slowly in, and Garza could once again feel the blade bite into his skin. Blackbeard’s breath, reeking of mutton, washed over his face.
“Aghat mu!” the man yelled, pushing the point deeper into Garza’s throat—when a voice rang out.
Blackbeard ignored it. The blood was running more freely now and Garza could feel the blade digging toward his windpipe. The sadist was going to make it slow.
The voice rang out again, much sharper. It was the chief, being carried down the trail in a litter. The bearers stopped at the worksite and the chief stepped out, swept his robes around his shoulder, and spoke angrily a third time to Blackbeard. This time the man hesitated, and then Garza felt the pressure on the knife lessening. Finally, it ceased altogether.
Breathing hard, his face creased with wrath, Blackbeard stepped back. The guards released Gideon and Imogen. With obvious effort, the chieftain came over and, ignoring Blackbeard’s scowling face, spoke to Garza, gesturing with his staff at the ruined pile of sticks. It became evident that the chief had been watching the entire scene play out from the trail overhead. He’d seen the model from a distance, but had no idea why it had generated so much excitement. Now, it seemed, he wanted Garza to rebuild it. The chief pantomimed his way through a long explanation that Garza did not understand, but assumed it meant that he was very old and wanted his tomb completed in a hurry—and judging by the man’s wan and sallow appearance, Garza wasn’t surprised.
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.
Now Gideon moved over to an earthen pot half filled with water and began washing his hands. And himself? He was no engineer like Garza. He didn’t have a green thumb. He was a decent shot with the tribe’s rudimentary bows, but it seemed there were no openings among the hunting packs—or maybe they simply didn’t trust him enough. And he lagged behind in learning the language. So he’d been put back to work at the job he seemed best suited for and which required few linguistic skills: digging latrines.
The flap of the tent shifted and Garza stepped in. While they all ate communally, the lower-ranked members were served first and expected to leave the area of the central plaza before their betters settled in for a meal. Garza, now higher in social status than Gideon, was served later, and Imogen later still.
Garza walked over to his area of the tent and began shrugging off his outerwear, covered in sand and dust from the quarry. “Have a nice day?” he asked.
“Oh, great. Digging ditches is loads of fun.”
“Nice to see you’ve found your niche at last.” Garza sank heavily onto his own bundle of skins.
For a moment, neither spoke. Gideon dried his hands and stepped away from the bowl.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“Not again.”
“It’s high time we began planning our escape.”
Garza rolled his eyes. “We’ve talked about this already. We need to lie low until the tribe accepts us. Lets down their guard a little more. I mean, we just got an upgrade: from cage one point oh to tent one point one.”
“It’s been ten days. Just how much more do you think they’re going to accept us than they already have? That big lummox Mugdol is never going to cozy up to you.” Mugdol, they had learned, was Blackbeard’s name—or as close as they could come to its pronunciation.
