The Discovery

Even the shadows across the campsite from the surrounding rocks did little to dispel the sun's early morning heat. The party had risen and taken breakfast, checked their packs, and while Amin stowed the cooking gear and cleaned the site, prepared to set off along what they hoped was a trail indicated on the map. Amin was to remain with the camels and tents while Massam and the professor lead the way, with Sadam, Stone and the two women following. They plodded single file between the jagged rocks, pausing and waiting patiently, in any shade they could find, while the professor made random stops to examine anything he found unusual and interesting.

The trek was slow and monotonous. The heavy packs chafed at their bodies. Small bushes and the occasional desert flower provided the only break in the craggy, bland coloured landscape. Soil was loose under foot, making it a dangerous passage, and Melanie stumbled several times, angry and annoyed at being helped up by Stone, while Oura stood by smiling faintly. After several hours of walking and waiting on the professor, they came to a twenty foot widening in the trail that was filled with wind blown sand, curving slightly for about fifty yards as it ran upward between two sheer cliff faces.

Massam paced methodically around, shoving his long staff into the ground and grunting to himself as he did.

"What is he doing?" Karl turned to Stone, who was leaning against a jut in the wall, watching.

"Ask him."

Karl turned, and with a ruffled sigh, called out to the busy Bedouin, "Are we looking for something particular Massam?"

"This is a wadi. Water used to come through here from the hills above, then it went underground. Right about where you're standing."

"How does he know that?" Melanie asked no one in particular.

"He knows." Oura replied, watching her brother with amusement and pride.

"Is that significant?"

"Yes."

Karl looked at the man for a moment. "Could you tell me why?"

"Because this is where the map's trail leads . . . and ends."

Karl unrolled the paper again and studied it carefully. "I don't see how you can possibly tell from this that the trail ends here?"

Massam walked back to the professor and took the map, "These marks here. They are one of the nomadic tribe's date symbols.

They tell us that this map was made in the year seven twenty-five of your Christian god. This line here tells us that the well at our campsite was discovered in nineteen eighty three by one of those tribes."

Karl perused the markings on the map and shook his head in bewilderment. "How can you tell that from these scribbles? You must have known this the other night!"

"I did. It held no consequence until now."

"No consequence!" Karl flustered, "You're telling me this map is almost two thousand years old for heaven's sake! That alone is a- a-"

My brother is a great student of the unusual nomadic dialects and symbols," Oura interjected proudly, silencing the professor's tirade. "He has great knowledge when it comes to their writings and drawings."

Karl looked at Oura then back at her brother. "Well. Well I uh-"

"I'd trust him if I were you professor," Stone said, coming up to stand beside them, "it's one of the reasons I hired him in the first place."

"Well I had no idea that we were in the company of such a learned guide. But I still don't see- those items back at the camp. They're all two thousand years old?!"

"Seems like."

Massam waved his arm back up the wadi, "There has been no water in this area at least since eighty three. That's why they dug the well."

Stunned by the revelation, and feeling utterly foolish at such an obvious logic, Karl dropped his hands, and with a helpless gesture, waved Massam to proceed with whatever he thought best. The Bedouin nodded with an air of expected deference and resumed with his thoughts. "My belief is that the one who owned this map, followed it to this wadi and . . ." he spread his arms, shrugging, "It is the practice of these people to include any newly discovered information on the maps they carry. Since there seems to be nothing else of importance shown, his search must have ended here somewhere."

"Unless he just hadn't gotten around to it yet," Stone corrected.

"Possibly."

Karl looked about the cliff faces and applied his own knowledge to the possibility that perhaps this might have been a suitable location for an underground tomb many eons ago. If this had become a watercourse, he reasoned, it probably had worn away the less resistant soil, creating this wadi. In which case, they might be standing fifteen or twenty feet below the original surface.

"I'd like to spend some time examining the face of this formation. Maybe you could set up a grid and try some test holes in the sand floor."

"Whatever," Stone agreed, happy to be doing something besides trudging along all day. He dragged a long coil of rope from his pack and anchored one end to a jut of rock, "we can crisscross the wadi with this in a diamond pattern then choose some likely segments to dig in."

Massam stepped away from the group and huddled with Sadam for a moment, sending him scrambling up the side of the gully where he settled himself in a tiny crevice. Giving a wave of approval, Massam returned to the others.

"Is this another case of better to know'?" Melanie chided, directing Oura's attention to Sadam's nest in the rocks.

Oura tilted her head and replied with a calm smile.

Karl chugged off through the soft sand up the wadi, leaving the rest to erect their grid. When the rope ran out, they had tied off an area of about eight yards by the width of the wadi. Each took a shovel, selected a section of the grid and began digging.

"How deep do we go?" Oura asked, tossing away a shovel full of sand.

"Don't throw it like that. Pile it carefully in the next section." Melanie demonstrated her demand with a brisk reprimand. "We don't want to have to dig the same sand over and over." Stone looked up at Oura and winked. She softened her response, secretly enjoying the young man's conspiratorial expression.

"Sorry. Thank you for the hint. But I still would like to know how deep."

"I would say you could go about three feet or so, just watch carefully for anything that differs from the sand. Anything at all."

As the morning wore on, the grid moved gradually up the narrow pass, the previous holes refilled with the sand before the next was begun. Backs aching and interest dulled, they stopped to rest, crowded against the shady side up against the rock wall, and drank thirstily from their canteens. Massam seemed to take very little and his sister not much more while Melanie and Stone slaked their thirst voraciously. After a short rest they continued with the digging, finding the adventure less appealing with each weary shovel full.

"Hey! I think I found something," Oura stopped digging and straightened up, one hand pressing into her aching waist.

"What? Where?" Melanie knelt down and combed away the sand where Oura was working. Her hand struck something hard and she quickly dug around the object, exposing about three inches of its shape. "Looks like a stick or something. Pass me a trowel." The others hovered impatiently over the hole as Melanie dug carefully down the sides of the stick, uncovering more and more.

"What is it? A branch or something?"

"No. It's too straight. And look at the end here. It's smooth and rounded."

"Hey, that looks like the end of my shovel handle," Stone exclaimed, "I bet it's a shovel. Yank it out."

"No!" Melanie pushed his hands away, "You don't just yank things out of a dig site. We have to go further down and see where it ends. But with extreme care, okay?"

"You're the boss," Stone shrugged and gave another wink to Oura, who lost her smile immediately when Massam intercepted the action with a grunt. "I'll uh, go and fetch the professor. He'll want to see this." Stone gave Massam a weak smile and jogged off up the wadi, happy to be away from the glowering Bedouin.

*****

"The camp's empty except for the camels and one Bedouin guard. I can take him easy," Snake Eyes leered, fondling the handle of his dagger.

"Forget it. It's the others we're interested in, and only until we find out what they're up to." Max pulled the skinny Arab back down the slope with him, shoving him down onto the ground. "Nobody does anything except what I tell them. Got it?"

Baddu nodded importantly, giving his young companion a scathing look. "We must indeed discover their purpose first."

Max sneered at the older Arab and hunkered down on a rock, lighting his cigar. What a pair of losers, he thought, one a sociopathic and stupid and the other a one eyed, suck up. It would be a pleasure leaving them out here afterwards. They could accompany one another into their sacred afterlife. He blew a long stream of blue smoke toward the two crouching men.