Sub-Sahara Page 3

  ‘What?’ Bob said. ‘The wind got rid of an entire dune and didn’t replace it? That would only work if there was no sand behind it to replace it with.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Phil said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘We won’t know till we get out there.’

  ‘Speaking of which…’ Rebecca said. ‘Anyone checked if we can get out the way we came in?’

  ‘That’s a no,’ Mike answered. ‘I’ve checked, and the antechamber did fill with sand. Our cover over the hole obviously didn’t work.’

  ‘Are we trapped in here?’ someone near the back of the group asked, her voice cracking slightly with fear.

  ‘No. No, of course not,’ Rebecca said instantly, even though she was experiencing a mild bout of panic herself.

  ‘Phil,’ Mike said. ‘How easy was it to chip through the mortar there?’

  ‘It’s softer than it looks. If there’s nothing blocked up against the wall on the other side, we could scratch out enough mortar to kick the stone blocks out. Make a hole big enough to crawl through one at a time.’

  ‘As long as it doesn’t bring the whole wall down above it,’ someone else said.

  ‘A small hole, just wide enough to crawl though, should leave the overall structural integrity intact. I don’t see that we have any other choice, if we can’t go up and out,’ Phil said. ‘Any other suggestions, or should we start digging?’

  Silence.

  ‘Good,’ Rebecca said. ‘We start digging. Mike, you take the first shift on taking out mortar with the metal bar. The rest of us will scoop it away to the other side of the room.’

  ***

  After a couple of hours, everyone had experienced a shift of scratching away mortar to loosen the stones and rocks that made up the rear wall of the tomb. The rotation came back to Phil Cranmer, who managed to poke a series of holes to the outside so that the well was illuminated by another ten shafts of light. Phil pivoted around on his rear to stick his feet into the newly dug hole.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Phil said. ‘The stones are loosening up. I’m going to give them a good kick.’

  ‘Wait, take it slowly,’ Rebecca said. ‘You might bring the whole wall down on us.’

  It was too late. A loud thumping noise reverberated in the hollow chamber as Phil kicked out. ‘Yes!’ he cried as he felt the rocks give way beneath his boots. Grinding and crumbling sounds echoed in the chamber as the last of the rocks gave way and collapsed outwards, filling the room with light.

  Everybody cheered and clapped.

  Phil pivoted onto his stomach and inched forward to stick his head into the hole.

  ‘What can you see, Phil?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘Daylight,’ Phil said. ‘I’m going to crawl out.’

  The others watched his legs disappearing inch by inch into the white void. Once he was fully out, Rebecca knelt by the hole and yelled, ‘What does it look like out there?’

  ‘Um, the sand is all gone,’ Phil yelled from the outside. ‘That’s one thing. The other you won’t believe until you see it.’

  That was enough for Rebecca. She planted herself on her stomach and began inching forward through the hole. When her head appeared on the other side and her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see Phil, but he was looking away from her at something else. The ground dipped away from him, so Rebecca couldn’t see what he was looking at. She finished shuffling out of the hole, got up, and dusted herself off.

  The sand was indeed gone. All around them was light-brown, undulating land. The force of the storm had been so strong and so sustained that it had transported most of the sand northwards, away from them. It was incredible. The archaeologist in her immediately became excited. She walked over to Phil to see what he was looking at, and her jaw dropped.

  The land dipped away from them into a wide valley. Most of the valley was taken up by a prehistoric city.

  In the middle of the city, a large pyramid with smooth silver sides stood gleaming in the sun.

  Chapter 6

  Clearly, the city had been built around the silver pyramid. It was placed in the centre of the valley, and all of the other low-rise stone buildings radiated outwards from it. Eight main streets emanated out from the pyramid, in line with the points on the compass. Small aqueducts moved outwards from the largest buildings surrounding the pyramid and into the rest of the city. The aqueducts connected to street canals, and some appeared to disappear directly into the ground, indicating that the city had once had a direct water source. The circles of buildings closest to the pyramid were two storeys high and made of huge blocks of carved stone. The buildings got smaller as the circles radiated away from the pyramid. The buildings at the edge of the city were small, the size of family dwelling units. They were constructed with small blocks of stone that could easily be moved by a few people.

  The stone buildings of the low-rise city were impressive, reminiscent of large Inca, Aztec, or Angkorian finds, and the archaeologists had been to all of the great cities of the ancient cultures. Yet the new stone city was hardly registering at all. What took their breath away was the silver pyramid. It was not its scale, as it was approximately a third smaller than the great pyramid of Giza in Egypt; it was the metallic-looking casing that enclosed it.

  ‘Do you think that’s really silver?’ Rebecca asked breathlessly as she moved to stand next to Phil.

  ‘We won’t know until we get closer,’ Phil replied. ‘It certainly looks it, though it may be polished or painted casing stones. But I’ve never seen polished stone reflect the sun like that. Look closer; there appears to be something else on or around the pyramid—some blocks near the top are surrounded by a thin lattice structure.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Rebecca said, squinting. ‘What the hell are we looking at?’ She was more confused than at any time in her professional life.

  ‘The others are coming out,’ Phil said.

  ‘Yes…’ She waved at him vaguely with her hand, her eyes transfixed by the city. ‘Do you want to…can you go help…’

  Phil glared at her before stomping off to start pulling the rest of the team, one by one, through the hole.

  Rebecca kept inching forward, craning to see more detail; she started looking at each section in turn, trying to map it all in her mind.

  She was snapped out of her reverie by a scream behind her. Her head snapped round, and she saw a group of people clustered around the hole. Rebecca was confused. She could not see the hole.

  The hole was gone.

  She sprinted back to the group. Some were still yelling. Others were clawing frantically at the rubble with their bare hands.

  ‘Bob! Bob!’ people were yelling.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, grabbing Tina, who was closest, by the arm.

  ‘Bob…’ Tina said. ‘He was crawling through…the wall collapsed on him.’

  Rebecca shoved Tina out of the way and pushed to the front. Mike and three of the other men were digging feverishly at the collapsed rock and mortar. There was no more room for anyone else to dig. The others crowded around in shock, watching the unfolding drama.

  Three upturned fingers appeared out of the fragments of stone. The men dug frantically to reveal a grey hand and wrist. Mike immediately placed two fingers on the wrist.

  ‘No pulse,’ he said. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘No,’ one of the men said. He continued the assault on the rubble with his hands.

  ‘Give it up, Dave,’ Mike said, putting a hand on Dave’s shoulder. ‘He’s gone. If there’s no pulse now, that won’t change by the time we dig him out properly.’

  Dave stopped, and all three men who had been digging suddenly slumped down, breathing heavily from the exertion.

  ‘Good God,’ Tina said. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Mike panted. ‘Nothing we can do. We may as well leave his body there. Otherwise, we’re pulling it out to lie in the sun.’

  ‘Is anyone else still in t
here?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘No,’ Mike said. ‘He was the last out. Insisted on it. Don’t know why.’

  Rebecca looked around. Everyone else was accounted for, but all of their equipment and remaining supplies were sealed inside.

  Chapter 7

  ‘God,’ Tina said, shaking. ‘I sat next to Bob an hour ago…’

  ‘I know,’ Phil said, putting his arm around her. ‘I know…’

  ‘Now what?’ Dave said. ‘What do we do now? Stay here? Go into the valley?’

  ‘We should stay here,’ Mike said. ‘This is our last known location for when they send rescue. I’ve just tried my satellite phone. Can’t get through—’

  ‘Me either. Can’t get through for some reason,’ Dave said, still fiddling with the phone in his hand.

  ‘So,’ Mike said, ‘the landscape may have changed, but the GPS coordinates are the same. We should stay right here.’

  ‘How is rescue going to get to us in any reasonable time?’ Rebecca said. ‘If this is what the storm did in Southern Niger, imagine what everything south of us looks like. There’s no help coming from there.’

  ‘Crap, you’re right,’ Dave said. ‘Any help will go straight for the major population centres. Who’s going to divert resources to pick up nine people in the desert?’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘Help will have to come from our own teams…from Europe.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mike said. ‘And when they do get here, they’re going to come to our last known location—here. I know you want to go down into the city, Rebecca, but for the good of the group, we should stay here.’

  Rebecca threw her hands in the air. ‘And survive on what, Mike? It’s going to take at least twenty-four hours for help to get here, and what do we survive on?’ She pointed at the sealed hole where the tips of Bob’s fingers were visible under the collapsed wall. ‘Last time I checked, all our food and water were sealed in there. So you want us to just stand in the desert sun for two days?’

  ‘We could dig back in,’ someone else suggested.

  ‘No,’ Phil said. ‘Not keen on that idea. That wall collapsed when we dug a small hole. It’s not stable enough to dig a bigger one, and we have nothing to brace it up with.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘And if we’re unsuccessful in getting in, then we would have spent more energy than we can afford, right before we freeze in the desert night.’

  ‘So what’s the alternative?’ Mike asked, his voice rising. He pointed at the city. ‘You want us to go into a ruin down there that could also be completely unstable after the storm has gone through it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rebecca said. ‘It seems a much better option to me. We’ll have some protection from the wind, better shelter for the night, and a much better chance of finding water than we will staying up here on an exposed plain.’

  A few people nodded in agreement.

  ‘This whole expedition’s shot to hell,’ Rebecca said. ‘We’re in a very perilous situation. We don’t have time to spend debating every point.’ She looked directly at Mike. ‘So let’s put it to a vote. I’m going down there to have a look around the greatest discovery since Tutankhamun’s tomb. At least I can do that before I die out here. Now, who’s coming with me?’ She shot her hand into the air. Six other hands slowly rose.

  ‘Fine,’ Mike said. ‘We should at least stay together.’

  ‘Good,’ Rebecca said. ‘Let’s start walking.’

  Chapter 8

  As they walked down towards the valley floor, Rebecca decided to try to get people’s minds off the death of Bob and their predicament by inviting theories on what they were looking at.

  ‘I’ll start,’ Rebecca said. ‘The Sahara is desert now, but it wasn’t always. There have been at least two major tectonic-plate realignments in the earth’s history as well as it tilting on its axis. This city could have flourished in a more temperate climate and then been moved to this latitude, where the sands overtook it, and it was abandoned.’

  ‘But it’s just so…big,’ Tina said. ‘How could there be no evidence of it?’

  ‘Well,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that as well. The simple answer is that no one has yet bothered to dig randomly in the middle of the Sahara, where the great dunes are. I mean, why would you? We’ve always been fixated on excavating known or visible sites. We only started digging what we thought was the well once part of it was visible. As long as the city stayed buried, no one was going to look here until it eventually got mapped by infrared satellite.’

  ‘Yeah, stacks up,’ Phil said, walking next to Rebecca. ‘A ruined city, I buy; but what about that silver pyramid? I mean, look at it. Just incredible.’

  ‘That, I can’t explain,’ Rebecca said. ‘Other than the usual assumption that it was a hugely important religious or royal focal point. Anyone else? Tina?’

  Tina finally seemed to have recovered some of her colour. ‘I can see even from this distance there are some similarities to ancient Egyptian design,’ she said. ‘It’s not Egyptian, don’t get me wrong, but I can see echoes in the structures. The place could be linked to ancient Egypt by language, gods, architecture, culture, and hieroglyphics. Maybe like Rebecca said, the civilisation was abruptly uprooted, had to move north into Egypt, and gave rise to the ancient Egyptian civilisations we know of today. Pretty radical and groundbreaking, whatever we find.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Rebecca said, stifling an excited smile.

  ‘All human life started in central Africa, with tribes eventually migrating north,’ Mike said, finally joining the conversation. ‘So, it’s possible one tribe stopped when they found their paradise on earth, right? They find a hidden, fertile, and temperate valley and settle there for millennia. Think of the other fantastic city states suddenly wiped out by cataclysmic disaster.’

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ Dave said, dragging his feet in the dust.

  ‘We all are,’ Mike said. ‘So get your mind onto something else. Where was I? Oh yes, if you look at the valley, it’s pretty deep compared with the surrounding landscape. It could have maintained its own microecosystem, a bit like “the lost world” type of idea. All land around it could have turned to desert, but not inside the valley if they had an abundant water source, which the aqueducts show they did. It could have been a paradise with an advanced culture worshipping whatever is in that pyramid.’

  A short silence prevailed as everybody digested the theories.

  ‘Okay, any final ones?’ Rebecca asked.

  One of the interns on the expedition piped up. ‘I’ve got one. This place could be the inspiration for the Garden of Eden from the Bible, and the forbidden fruit and tree of knowledge could be the object at the centre of the pyramid. Moses and his people were descended from Adam. When it went bad, Moses led the people to somewhere better.’

  ‘Okay, that last one may be a bit of a stretch, but let’s not write off anything at this point,’ Rebecca said.

  The city was getting steadily closer.

  Phil waved both his hands to get attention. ‘You’re all focussing on the wrong things,’ he said, hardly able to contain himself. ‘In the middle of the city is a gleaming silver pyramid. If it is, indeed, silver, how was it possible for these ancient humans to create such a structure? Silver wasn’t refined and coined to produce money until around 700 BC by the Lydians. It only reached mass-production scale under the Romans. So how the hell did they get this much silver and turn it into massive flat sheets to create a pyramid?’

  Phil pointed at the pyramid. ‘We need to get straight down there to see if it’s silver.’ He started walking away from the group.

  ‘Hey,’ Rebecca said. ‘I agree, but let’s all stick together at this point.’ She quickened her pace to catch up with him, and the rest of the group soon followed.

  The group was moving down the hill as one again. All of the faces were constantly flicking around the different parts of the city, looking for new details.

  After they had walked for ten minutes, the detail on the pyramid b
ecame clearer.

  ‘Rebecca,’ Phil said. ‘Can you see what those blocks are near the top of the pyramid? What would you say those look like?’

  Rebecca squinted, trying to extend her focus. ‘I can’t be sure; from here they look like shipping containers.’

  ‘That’s exactly what they are—intermodal shipping containers, held up near the top of the pyramid by tubular steel scaffolding.’

  ‘But, but…’ Rebecca’s words trailed off.

  ‘Exactly,’ Phil said. ‘Twentieth-century technology.’

  The whole group had stopped walking now. A few of the others had also spotted the shipping containers and the scaffolding as it came into better view. The group was abuzz with what the new information meant.

  ‘That means someone else was here,’ Dave said. ‘There could be some food or water in there!’

  ‘There’s shelter, at least,’ someone else said.

  ‘We’re saved,’ one of the interns said.

  People were breathing sighs of relief and giving reassuring pats on the back all round.

  ‘Now it doesn’t make sense,’ Rebecca said. ‘We’ve got shipping containers attached to refined silver in a prehistoric city…’

  ‘That scaffolding means we can climb up the pyramid. Get up close. Maybe those containers are there because someone has been here in the more recent past…and they found a way in.’ Phil started rummaging around in the deep pockets of his bulky cargo shorts and pulled out his satellite phone. At least half of the archaeologists were carrying the more recent satellite phones, which were similar in size to a regular mobile phone. Different institutions and individuals had funded the group, and the better-funded people had their own phones. As soon as Phil pulled his out, at least three others quickly got their phones out and started dialling or typing messages. It was clear from the frenzied typing and talking that connections to the outside world had been restored.

  It hit Rebecca that she had not yet informed anyone that they had survived the storm. She’d been too engrossed in the city. But that was not to say others had not already done so and sent messages off about the discovery…