Napoleon's Pyramids (29 page)

Napoleon, impatient at the dirty indignities we were enduring, curtly ordered us back out to the junction where the shaft continued to ascend. He wanted to see the King’s Chamber above.

Now the cramped, dwarflike passageway changed to one for giants. The ascending passage broadened and rose, forming an inclined gallery that climaxed in a corbelled roof almost thirty feet above our heads. Again there were no steps; it was like climbing a slide. Fortunately, guides had fixed a rope. Once more, the stonework was as perfect as it was plain. This section’s height seemed as inexplicable as the dwarf-sized passage before.

Had humans really built this?

An Arab guide held his torch high and pointed at the ceiling. I could see dark clots up there, marring the perfect symmetries, but I didn’t know what they were.

“Bats,” Jomard whispered.

Wings twitched and rustled in the shadows.

“Let’s hurry up,” Napoleon commanded. “I’m hot and half suffocated.” The torch smoke stung.

The gallery was forty-seven meters long, Jomard announced after unreeling a tape, and again had no obvious purpose. Then the climb ended and we had to stoop to advance horizontally again. Finally we entered the pyramid’s biggest room, built a third of the way up the structure’s mass.

This King’s Chamber was a featureless rectangle built of colossal red granite blocks. Again, the simplicity was odd. The roof was flat and the floor and walls barren. There was no sacred book or bird-headed god. The only object was a lidless black granite sarcophagus set at the far end, as empty as the room itself. At about seven feet long, three and a half feet wide, and three feet high, it was too big to have fit through the tight entry we’d just crawled through, and must have been put in place as the pyramid was built. But Napoleon for the first time seemed intrigued, inspecting the rock casket closely.

“How could they have hollowed this out?” he asked.

“The room’s dimensions are also interesting, General,” Jomard said. “I measure thirty-four feet long, seventeen wide. The chamber floor represents a double square.”

“Imagine that,” I said, more mocking than I meant.

“He means its length is twice its width,” Monge explained. “Pythagoras and the Greeks were interested in the harmony of such perfect rectangles.”

“The chamber’s height is half the length of the room’s diagonal,” Jomard added, “or nineteen feet. Gage, help me here and I’ll show you something else. Hold this end of my tape in that corner.”

I did so. Jomard extended his tape diagonally to the opposite wall, exactly halfway along its length. Then, as I held the tape in my corner, he walked his end across the room until what had been a diagonal now lay alongside the wall I occupied. “Voilà!” he cried, his voice echoing in the rock room.

Once more I did not display the anticipated excitement.

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s what we talked about at the pyramid’s summit! The golden number, or golden mean!”

Now I saw it. If you divided this rectangular room into two squares, measured the diagonal of one of those squares, and laid that line on the long side of the chamber, the ratio between that length and what was left was the supposedly magical 1.618.

“You’re saying this room incorporates Fibonacci numbers in the same way the pyramid itself does,” I said, trying to sound casual.

Monge’s eyebrows raised. “Fibonacci numbers? Gage, you’re more of a mathematician than I would have guessed.”

“Oh, I’ve just been picking it up here and there.”

“So what’s the practical use of these dimensions?” Napoleon asked.

“It represents nature,” I ventured.

“And it encodes the Egyptian kingdom’s basic units of measurement,” Jomard said. “In its length and proportions, I think it lays out a system of cubits, just as we might design the metric system into the proportions of a museum.”

“Interesting,” the general said. “Still, to build so much—it’s a puzzle. Or a lens, perhaps, like a lens to focus light.”

“That’s what I feel,” Jomard said. “Any thought you think, any prayer you make, seems amplified by the dimensions of this pyramid. Listen to this.” He began a low hum, then a thrumming chant. The sound echoed weirdly, seeming to vibrate through our bodies. It was like striking a note of music that lingered in the air.

Our general shook his head. “Except that this focuses—what? Electricity?” He turned to me.

If I’d grandly said yes, he probably would have given me a reward. Instead, I looked vacant as an idiot.

“The granite coffer is also interesting,” Jomard said, to fill the awkward silence. “Its interior volume is exactly half its exterior volume. While it seems sized for a man or a casket, I suspect its precise dimensions are no accident.”

“Boxes within boxes,” Monge said. “First this chamber, then the outside of the sarcophagus, then the inside…for what? We have a host of theories, but no one answer I feel is conclusive.”

I looked up. It felt like millions of tons were pressing down toward us, threatening at any moment to obliterate our existence. For a moment I had the illusion the ceiling was descending! But no, I blinked, and the chamber was as before.

“Leave me,” Bonaparte suddenly commanded.

“What?”

“Jomard is right. I feel power here. Don’t you feel it?”

“It feels oppressive and yet alive,” I offered. “Like a grave, and yet you feel light, insubstantial.”

“I want to spend some time in here alone,” the general told us. “I want to see if I can feel the spirit of this dead pharaoh. Perhaps his body is gone but his soul remains. Perhaps Silano and his magic are real. Perhaps I can feel Gage’s electricity. Leave me with an unlit torch in the dark. I’ll come down when I’m ready.”

Monge looked concerned. “Perhaps if one of us remained as guard…”

“No.” He climbed over the lip of the black sarcophagus and lay down, staring at the ceiling. We looked down at him and he smiled slightly. “It’s more comfortable than you might think. The stone is neither too cold nor hot. Nor am I too tall, are you surprised?” He smiled at his little joke. “Not that I plan to remain here forever.”

Jomard looked troubled. “There are accounts of panic…”

“Never question my courage.”

He bowed. “To the contrary, I salute you, my general.”

So we dutifully filed out, each torch in turn disappearing through the low entryway until our commander was left alone in the dark. We worked our way down the Grand Gallery, letting ourselves down by the rope. A bat took flight and flapped down toward us, but an Arab waved a torch and the blind creature veered away from the heat, settling again on the ceiling. By the time we got down to the smaller shaft that led down to the pyramid entrance, I was soaked with sweat.

“I’ll wait for him here,” Jomard said. “The rest of you file outside.”

I needed no encouragement. The day seemed lit with a thousand suns when we finally emerged on the outside of the pyramid’s sand-and-rubble slope, clouds of dust puffing off our now-filthy clothes. My throat was parched, my head aching. We found shade on the east side of the structure and sat to wait, sipping water. The party members who had remained outside had scattered over the ruins. Some were circuiting the other two pyramids. Some had erected little awnings and were having lunch. A few had climbed partway up the structure above us, and others competed to see how high up the pyramid’s side they could hurl a rock.

I mopped my brow, acutely conscious that I seemed no closer to solving the medallion’s mystery. “All this great pile for three little rooms?”

“It doesn’t make sense, does it?” agreed Monge.

“I feel like there’s something obvious we’re not seeing.”

“I’m guessing we’re to see numbers, as Jomard said. It may be a puzzle meant to occupy humankind for centuries.” The mathematician took out paper and began his own calculations.

B
onaparte was absent for a full hour. Finally there was a shout and we went back to meet him. Like us he emerged dirty and blinking, skidding down the rubble to the sand below. But when we ran up I saw he was also unusually pale, his eyes having the unfocused, haunted look of a man emerging from a vivid dream.

“What took you so long?” Monge asked.

“Was it long?”

“An hour, at least.”

“Really? Time disappeared.”

“And?”

“I crossed my arms in the sarcophagus, like those mummies we’ve seen.”

“
Mon dieu,
General.”

“I heard and saw…” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Or did I?” He swayed.

The mathematician grasped his arm to hold him up. “Heard and saw what?”

He blinked. “I had a picture of my life, or I think it was my life. I’m not even sure if it was the future or the past.” He looked around, whether to be evasive or to tease us, I know not.

“What kind of picture?”

“I…it was very strange. I won’t speak of this, I think. I won’t…” Then his eyes fell on me. “Where’s the medallion?” he abruptly demanded.

He took me by surprise. “It’s lost, remember?”

“No. You’re mistaken.” His gray eyes were intent.

“It went down with
L’Orient,
General.”

“No.” He said it with such conviction that we looked at each other uneasily.

“Would you have some water?” Monge asked worriedly.

Napoleon shook his head as if to clear it. “I will not go in there again.”

“But, General, what did you see?” the mathematician pressed.

“We will not speak of this again.”

All of us were uncomfortable. I realized how much the expedition relied on Bonaparte’s precision and energy, now that I’d seen him dazed. He was imperfect as a man and a leader, but so commanding, so dominant in purpose and intellect, that all of us had unconsciously surrendered to him. He was the expedition’s spark and its compass. Without him, none of this would be happening.

The pyramid seemed to be looking down on us mockingly, the perfect peak.

“I must rest,” Napoleon said. “Wine, not water.” He snapped his finger and an aide ran to fetch a flask. Then he turned to me. “What are you doing here?”

Had he lost all his senses? “What?” I was confused by his confusion.

“You came with a medallion and a promise to make sense of this. You’ve claimed to have lost the one and haven’t fulfilled the other. What is it I felt in there? Is it electricity?”

“Possibly, General, but I have no instrument to tell. I’m as baffled as anyone.”

“And I am baffled by you, a suspected murderer and an American, who comes on our expedition and seems to be of no use and yet is everywhere! I’m beginning to not trust you, Gage, and it is not comfortable being a man I don’t trust.”

“General Bonaparte, I have been working to earn your trust, on the battlefield and here! It does no good to make wild guesses. Give me time to work on these theories. Jomard’s ideas are intriguing, but I’ve had no time to evaluate them.”

“Then you will sit here in the sand until you do.” He took the flask and drank.

“What? No! I have studies in Cairo!”

“You’re not to return to Cairo until you can come back and tell me something useful about this pyramid. Not old stories, but what it is for and how it can be harnessed. There’s power here, and I want to know how to tap it.”

“I want nothing less! But how am I to do that?”

“You are a savant, supposedly. Discover it. Use the medallion you pretend to have lost.” Then he stalked away.

Our little group watched him in stupefaction.

“What the devil happened to him in there?” Jomard said.

“I think he hallucinated in the dark,” Monge said. “Lord knows I wouldn’t stay in there alone. Our Corsican has guts.”

“Why did he focus on me?” His antagonism had shaken me.

“Because you were at Abukir,” the mathematician said. “I think the defeat is gnawing on him more than he will admit. Our strategic future is not good.”

“And I’m to camp out here staring at this structure until it is?”

“He’ll forget about you in a day or two.”

“Not that his curiosity isn’t warranted,” Jomard said. “I need to read the ancient sources again. The more I learn of this structure, the more fascinating it seems.”

“And pointless,” I grumbled.

“Is it, Gage?” asked Monge. “There’s far too much precision for pointlessness, I think. Not only too much labor, but too much thought. In doing more calculations just now, another correlation occurred to me. This pyramid is indeed a mathematical plaything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I will need to check my guess against Jomard’s figures, but if we extrapolate the pyramid’s slope to its original peak, a bit higher than it is now, and compare its height to the length of two of its sides, I believe we arrive at one of the most fundamental numbers in all mathematics: pi.”

“Pi?”

“The ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference, Gage, is considered by many cultures to be sacred. It’s about twenty-two parts to seven, or 3.1415…the number has never been completely computed. Still, every culture has tried to come as close as they can. The ancient Egyptians came up with 3.160. The pyramid’s ratio of height to two of its sides appears to come very close to that number.”

“The pyramid stands for pi?”

“It was built, perhaps, to conform to the Egyptian value of that number.”

“But again, why?”

“Once more we butt up against ancient mysteries. But it’s interesting, is it not, that your medallion included a diameter inside a circle? Too bad you lost it. Or did you?”

Interesting? It was a revelation. For weeks I’d been journeying blindly. Now I felt like I knew definitely what the medallion was pointing to: the pyramid behind me.

I
reluctantly stayed as ordered to help Jomard and Monge make more measurements of the pyramids, sharing the tent they’d staked a short distance from the Sphinx. After having promised a quick return, I was uneasy being such a distance from Astiza and the medallion, especially with Silano in Cairo. But if I ignored Napoleon’s very public command I risked being arrested. Besides, I felt I was getting closer to the secret. Perhaps the medallion was a map to another passageway in the big heap of stone. Then there was October 21, a date I’d plucked off the lost ancient calendar that might or might not have any accuracy or significance, and was still two months away. I didn’t know how any of this fit together, but maybe the savants would turn up another clue. So I sent a message to Enoch’s house, explaining my predicament and asking that he get word to Yusuf ’s harem of my delay. At least I knew what I should be looking at, I added. I simply lacked clear understanding of what I should be looking for.

My temporary exile from the city was not entirely bad. Enoch’s house was confining and Cairo noisy, while the empty silence of the desert was a respite. A company of soldiers bivouacked in the sand to protect us against roaming Bedouin and Mamelukes, and I told myself that staying here a couple nights might actually be the safest thing for Astiza and Enoch, since my absence should deflect attention from them. Silano had hopefully accepted my story that the medallion was at the bottom of Abukir Bay. I’d not forgotten poor Talma, but proof of his killer, and revenge, would have to wait. In short I pretended, as humans are wont to do, that the worst was for the best.

As I’ve said, there are three large pyramids at Giza, and all three have small passageways and chambers that are empty. Kephren’s pyramid is still covered at its top by the kind of limestone casing that at one time gave all three structures a perfectly smooth, polished white surface. How they must have glistened, like prisms of salt! Using surveying instruments, we calculated that the Great Pyramid, when it came to a precise point, had a height of 480 feet, more than a hundred feet higher than the pinnacle of the cathedral of Amiens, the tallest in France. The Egyptians used only 203 tiers of masonry to reach this prodigious altitude. We measured the slope of its side at fifty-one degrees, precisely that needed to make height and half its circumference equal to both pi and Jomard’s Fibonacci sequence.

Despite this eerie coincidence, the pyramids’ purpose still eluded me. As art they were sublime. For utility, they seemed nonsensical. Here were buildings so smooth when built that no one could stand on them, housing corridors awkward for humans to negotiate, leading to chambers that seemed never to have been occupied, and codifying mathematics that seemed obscure to all but a specialist.

Monge said the whole business probably had something to do with religion. “Five thousand years from now, will people understand the motive behind Notre Dame?”

“You’d better not let the priests hear you say that.”

“Priests are obsolete; science is the new religion. To the ancient Egyptians, religion was their science, and magic an attempt to manipulate what couldn’t be understood. Mankind then advanced from a past in which every tribe and nation had its own groups of gods to one in which many nations worship one god. Still, there are many faiths, each calling the others heretics. Now we have science, based not on faith, but reason and experiment, and centered not on one nation, or pope, or king, but universal law. It doesn’t matter if you are Chinese or German, or speak Arabic or Spanish: science is the same. That’s why it will triumph, and why the Church instinctively feared Galileo. But this structure behind us was built by a particular people with particular beliefs, and we might never rediscover their reasoning because it was based on religious mysticism we can’t comprehend. It would help if we could someday decipher hieroglyphics.”

I couldn’t disagree with this prediction—I was a Franklin man, after all—and yet I had to wonder why science, if so universal, hadn’t swept all before it already. Why were people still religious? Science was clever but cold, explanatory and yet silent on the biggest questions. It answered how but not why, and thus left people yearning. I suspected people of the future
would
understand Notre Dame, just as we understand a Roman temple. And, perhaps, worship and fear in much the same way. The revolutionaries in their rationalist fervor were missing something, I thought, and what was missing was heart, or soul. Did science have room for that, or hopes of an afterlife?

I said none of this, however, simply replying, “What if it’s simpler than that, Doctor Monge? What if the pyramid is simply a tomb?”

“I’ve been thinking about that and it presents a fascinating paradox, Gage. Suppose it was supposed to be, at least principally, a tomb. Its very size creates its own problem, does it not? The more elaborately you build a pyramid to safeguard a mummy, the more you call attention to the mummy’s location. It must have been a dilemma for pharaohs seeking to preserve their remains for all eternity.”

“I’ve thought of another dilemma as well,” I replied. “The pharaoh hopes to be undisturbed for eternity. Yet the perfect crime is one that no one realizes has occurred. If you wanted to rob the tomb of your master, what better way than to do it just before it is sealed up, because once it is, no one can discover the theft! If this is a tomb, it relied on the faithfulness of those closing it. Who could the pharaoh trust?”

“Unproven belief again!” Monge laughed.

Mentally, I reviewed what I knew about the medallion. A bisected circle: a symbol, perhaps, for pi. A map of the constellation containing the ancient polar star in its upper half. A symbol for water below. Hash marks arranged in a delta like a pyramid. Perhaps the water was the Nile, and the marks represented the Great Pyramid, but why not etch a simple triangle? Enoch had said that the emblem seemed incomplete, but where to find the rest? The shaft of Min, in some long-lost temple? It seemed a joke. I tried to think like Franklin, but I was not his match. He could toy with thunderbolts one day and found a new nation the next. Could the pyramids have attracted lightning and converted it into power? Was the entire pyramid some kind of Leyden jar? I hadn’t heard a roll of thunder or seen a drop of rain since we’d arrived in Egypt.

Monge left to join Bonaparte for the official christening of the new Institute of Egypt. There the savants were at work on everything from devising ways to ferment alcohol or bake bread (with sunflower stalks, since Egypt lacked adequate wood) to cataloguing Egypt’s wildlife. Conte had set up a workshop to replace equipment, such as printing presses, that had been lost with the destruction of the fleet at Abukir. He was the kind of tinkerer who could make anything from anything. Jomard and I lingered in the pinks and gold of the desert, laboriously unreeling tapes, pitching aside rubble, and measuring angles with surveying staffs. Three days and nights we spent, watching the stars wheel around the tips of the pyramids and debating what the monuments might be for.

By morning of the fourth day, bored with the meticulous work and inconclusive speculation, I wandered to a viewpoint overlooking Cairo across the river. There I saw a curious sight. Conte had apparently manufactured enough hydrogen to inflate a balloon. The coated silk bag looked to be about forty feet in diameter, its top half covered with a net from which ropes extended downward to hold a wicker basket. It hovered on its tether a hundred feet off the ground, drawing a small crowd. I studied it through Jomard’s telescope. All those watching appeared to be Europeans.

So far the Arabs had displayed little wonder about Western technology. They seemed to regard us as a temporary intrusion of clever infidels, obsessed with mechanical tricks and careless with our souls. I’d earlier enlisted Conte’s help to make a cranked friction generator for a store of electricity in what Franklin had called a battery, and was invited by the savants to give a mild shock to some of Cairo’s mullahs. The Egyptians gamely joined hands, I jolted the first with a charge from my Leyden jar, and they all jumped in turn as the current passed through them, provoking great consternation and laughter. But after their initial surprise they seemed more amused than awed. Electricity was cheap magic, good for nothing but parlor games.

It was while watching the balloon that I noticed a long column of French soldiers issue from Cairo’s southern gate. Their regularity was a marked contrast to the mobs of merchants and camel drovers who clustered around the city’s entrances. The soldiers tramped in a line of blue and white, regimental banners limp in the hot air. On and on the ranks came, a glittering file undulating like a millipede, until it seemed a full division. Some of the force was mounted, and more horses pulled two small field guns.

I called to Jomard and he joined me, focusing the spyglass. “It is General Desaix, off to chase the elusive Murad Bey,” he said. “His troops are going to explore and conquer an upper Egypt that few Europeans have ever seen.”

“So the war isn’t over.”

He laughed. “We’re talking about Bonaparte! War will never be over for him.” He continued to study the column, dust drifting ahead of the soldiers as if to announce their coming. I could imagine them good-naturedly cursing it, their mouths full of grit. “I think I see your old friend as well.”

“Old friend?”

“Here, look for yourself.”

Near the column’s head was a man in turban and robes with half a dozen Bedouin riding as bodyguard. One of his henchmen held a parasol above his head. I could see the slim rapier bouncing on his hip and the fine black stallion he’d purchased in Cairo: Silano. Someone smaller rode by his side, swathed in robes. A personal servant, perhaps.

“Good riddance.”

“I envy him,” Jomard said. “What discoveries they’ll make!”

Had Silano given up his quest for the medallion? Or gone to look for its missing piece in Enoch’s southern temple? I picked out Bin Sadr as well. He was leading the Bedouin bodyguard, rocking easily on the back of a camel while holding his staff.

Had I avoided them? Or were they escaping me?

I looked again at the smaller, shrouded figure and felt disquiet. Had I been too obedient, lingering at the pyramids too long? Who was that riding at Silano’s side?

I knew of him,
she had confirmed.

And she had never explained what, precisely, that meant.

I snapped the telescope shut. “I have to get back to Cairo.”

“You can’t go, by Bonaparte’s orders. We need a compelling hypothesis first.”

But something disastrous had happened in my absence, I feared, and I realized that by staying out so long, I’d unconsciously been putting off the task of tackling the medallion and avenging Talma. My procrastination may have been fatal. “I’m an American savant, not a French private. To hell with his orders.”

“He could have you shot!”

But I was already running down the slope, past the Sphinx, toward Cairo.

T
he city seemed more ominous on my return. Even as Desaix’s division had emptied some houses of French troops, thousands of inhabitants who’d fled after the Battle of the Pyramids were returning. Cairo was emerging from postinvasion shock into being the center of Egypt again. As the city grew more crowded, the inhabitants regained their urban confidence. They carried themselves as if the city still belonged to them, not us, and their numbers dwarfed ours. While French soldiers could still cause pedestrians to scatter as they rode racing donkeys or marched on patrol, there was less scuttling out of the way of lone foreigners such as myself. As I hurried through the narrow lanes I was bumped and jostled for the first time. Again I was reminded of the oddities of electricity, that strange prickling in the air after the parlor experiments that women found so erotic. Now Cairo seemed electric with tension. News of the defeat at Abukir Bay had reached everyone, and no longer did the Franks seem invincible. Yes, we were dangling on a rope all right, and I could see it beginning to fray.

Compared to the bustle of adjacent lanes, the street at Enoch’s house seemed far too quiet. Where was everyone? The home’s façade looked much as I’d left it, its face as unreadable as that of the Egyptians. Yet when I got near I sensed something was amiss. The door wasn’t tight against its frame, and I spied the bright yellow of splintered wood. I glanced around. Eyes watched me, I sensed, but I could see no one.

When I pounded on the entry it gave slightly. “
Salaam
.” My greeting’s echo was answered by the buzzing of flies. I pushed, as if shoving against someone holding the door on the other side, and finally it yielded enough that I could squeeze in. It was then I saw the obstruction. Enoch’s gigantic Negro servant, Mustafa, was lying dead against the door, his face shattered by a pistol shot. The house had the sickeningly sweet scent of recent death.

I looked at a window. Its wooden screen had been shattered by intruders.

I went on, room by room. Where were the other servants? There were spatters and streaks of blood everywhere, as if bodies had been dragged after battle and butchery. Tables had been toppled, tapestries ripped down, cushions overthrown and cut. The invaders had been looking for something, and I knew what it was. My absence had saved no one. Why hadn’t I insisted that Enoch hide, instead of staying with his books? Why had I thought my absence and that of the medallion would protect him? At length I came to the antiquities room, some of its statuary broken and its caskets overthrown, and then the stairs to the musty library. Its door had been staved in. Beyond was dark, but the library stank of fire. Heartsick, I found a candle and descended.

The cellar was a smoky shambles. Shelves had been toppled. Books and scrolls lay heaped like piles of autumn leaves, their half-burned contents still smoldering. At first I thought this room was empty of life too, but then someone groaned. Paper rustled and a hand came up from the litter, fingers painfully curled, like an avalanche victim reaching from snow. I grasped it, only to elicit a howl of pain. I dropped the swollen digits and shoveled blackened papers aside. There was poor Enoch, sprawled on a pile of smoldering books. He was badly scorched, his clothes half-gone, and his chest and arms roasted. He’d thrown himself onto a bonfire of literature.