Part II: "BATS In The BURIAL CHAMBER", wherein we cut to the chase and reveal, all too soon, The Professor's identity, although this does not help much.

I'm often asked why he left so suddenly, and I always say I haven't a clue. This was once the truth, although now it feels  more like a lie. But I'm not sure I should spill the bones,(what few I've bagged), because I'm not yet certain they all belong to the same odd specimen.

When Varian's former colleagues ask about his whereabouts, my answer is similiar but untinged by guilt. I do see him occasionally but never in the same place twice, and then he's always "just passing through", making it impossible to know
his hoff or haunts. If he has any.

Such encounters are irregular and rare, maybe every few years, but when he turns up, usually unannounced, he invariably tricks me into learning something new, with startling relevance to my current work. And to a context much larger than my present one that threatens to make sense again of Heaven and Earth and the ways in which human history has been woven between them. (We share a nostalgia for old cosmologies, but also an impatience with terms once used). I also learn a bit more about Varian and why he left, but paradoxically the man himself becomes more mysterious. I fancy that one day, perhaps soon, he will spring on me a total mind-bomb then vanish forever.

Varian's departure had something to do with ancient astronomies, a new line of investigation he was pursuing, and with a certain group or network of people he amiably refers to as "the mob". They may be co-workers, probably archaeologists, but why Varian says so little about their projects is beyond me. And that must be difficult for him, because he's a talker.

He showed up just prior to a Spring Equinox in Ethiopia several years ago where I was doing a field-survey, happily minding my own academic business. (This was a decade after I'd first begun to think of him as the poetic Professor, "Ken Traquair"). The civil war had ended, Mengistu had> been ousted, and I'd jumped at the chance to do some digging in the 'oldest country in the world',
which as well as being the poorest was also one of the least-known. No major excavations had been done there for over twenty years, and very little had been attempted before then.

*  

[March, 1997]

Addis Ababa has a population of two million but from the plane sailing in from Jiddah, just south of Mecca, and from a battered taxi bumping centerward from Bole Airport, most of the city looks like a vast sprawled village, barely contained by barren brown mountains lightly scuffed with patches of ghostly green.

Yet Addis has a Hilton. Our team planned to meet and dine there, and do it up daintily on the penultimate day of our expedition, three months hence. But for now, the orders that reached me from High Command, that is, the travel agency, were to prepare immediately for a morning flight to the borderlands of the far northeast: to the Tigray region, home of fierce rebels, wars, great droughts and famine, and the Queen of Sheba's forgotten capital -- ancient and most sacred Axum, wherein might be found among barely probed ruins: the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, (and other secrets, without doubt darker and more profound).

Getting to Ethiopia wasn't difficult, but once inside -- actually as soon as the plane hit runway asphalt -- I began to realize that my game-plan should have been more flexible. The uneven surface of the airstrip was the first clue. Not being able to locate my travel-agent's emissary amidst the huge crowds, cordoned off and monitored by armed guards, was the next hint.

Why such a crowd at the airport? I have no idea. Maybe the Addis folk just like greeting arrivals, even when the disembarking passengers are complete strangers. On the other hand, maybe the OAS (Organization of African States is having a big meeting today. If so, it was just as well I hadn't booked a room at the Hilton. Not that my budget would have allowed it.

But I'm quick to adapt. I'll phone the agent.. if I can find a telephone.. that works. What does an Ethiopian telephone look like? What does a sign, written in Amharic, indicating a telephone look like? (I should have spent more time studying the modern language rather almost obsolete Ge'ez).

I turn to ask a man wearing something like a uniform, but he responds in gibberish -- an arabesque of deep and dutiful cognizance of a query, but this doesn't help. And despite his apparent heart-felt condolences, in gibberish, I panic..

..just slightly: a small hiccup in a flow of what I hope will become, in tranquil retrospect, unimpeachable events carrying my unthinking body along gently and unerringly to a welcome fate. That is, if the body's orientation can be properly managed, and the current is not broken suddenly by a late-looming rock, or a gun-barrel in my back, tossing this uncertain yet feeling flotsam of a person onto the sandbar of an undeserved and less pleasant destiny.

But around the next corner I see a phone, and when the voice at Ghion Travel responds in words I understand, my toes curl groundward and I know I've touched down.

*

A thousand dogs barked and howled until dawn. My first night in Addis has been like Whitehorse in February and trying to get some shut-eye before the start of the Yukon Quest, wishing wearily for morning when the huskies would mush out of town, sledding north along the frozen river towards the Arctic Circle and well out of ear-shot. But these city hounds weren't going anywhere soon. They sounded more hungry than excited, more fretful than frisky, and I was a long way from the freshly fallen snows of the Yukon. No dog here had ever stuck a nose in the cold white stuff, let alone run hundreds of miles while working off belly-fulls of grayling.

And it is just as obvious, at six in the morning as the cool haze of the East African highlands thins out in the almost empty parking-lot of the Hotel Selassie, that as many local humans had ever thrown a snowball.

From my window I see the changing of the guard: two lean elders with shoulder-slung rifles, who shiver in greatcoats that almost reach their boots, exchanging with numb fingers a precious cigarette, grinning in Amharic and likely cussing their frigid lot.

The temperature must have fallen by the end of the last watch more than a degree below sixty (F).

I budge the window open after a night shut against the canine din, but even at full tilt -- as far as old hinges allow -- the opening to air outside does not stir with any inward waft,  and I, in my underwear, stand there drawing in dawn by deeply purposed inhalations, marvel at bright blue-flower trees and, by gosh, the silence of the dogs.

*

Due to "a slight delay" the flight from Addis to Axum, where the chief part of my work will be done, has been re-scheduled to "afternoon". So before leaving I make sure that I visit the National Museum. Perhaps the palaeontologist in charge of early hominids will be there and available for a chat.

Donald Johanssen's "Lucy" is no longer in the sky with diamonds. Her small brown bones are laid flat across a sparse layer of sand in a display case among other glass boxes of bones and stones.   Ethiopian resources are scant, and the famed remains of this midget australopithecine look spare and vulnerable in their final resting place, with only a worn filing-card taped to thin glass to commemorate her exhumation.

Armed guards linger and float by lush flower-beds outside the museum in a late-morning haze of traffic fumes and dust. The guards would search me when I left, as they had when I came, with a brusqueness that seemed lethally tame.

After viewing Lucy's bones, I turn to go into an adjacent room and so abrupt is my intention that I almost collide with someone. He's a short, slight man of disciplined and energetic demeanor, dressed in an elegant, dark, and well-tailored suit, who is, luckily, more alert than I, and much more a gentleman.

He defers to my clumsiness with a nod and a smile and apologizes for surprising me.

"Doctor Beyene?" I presume.

(I'd come across this name quite by accident, in an article I'd read last week, but would have forgotten it if my travel agent's name had not been the same. Although kinship was unlikely since, as my taxi-driver had explained, Ethiopians don't often use transferrable surnames).

"Yes?" he said tentatively, "I am.."

Without thinking or introducing myself, because I am as amazed as he is that I know his name, I blurt, with as much conspiratorial politeness as I can muster:

"Where are The Tools?"

"Sir?"

"You know, the discovery that was  announced last month -- 'the Oldest Stone Tools Ever Found', two-and-a-half million years old".

"Ah! They are in the repository", he said, pointing to an open side-door and a small building beyond. "But you can't see them now. Not without proper clearance and.. ahh.. academic purpose. Yes?"

I could ask him how long that would take, but I have a plane to catch and know his reply would be a shrug, accompanied perhaps by a reluctant estimate of a month or more. So I don't, and content myself with other questions, hoping to reveal mutual interests and persuade him, despite my unexplained haste and blunt eagerness, to share a few moments; and I am not disappointed.

Intriguing finds are still being made near the Red Sea in the Afar Triangle and deadly Danakil wastelands. The bones of Australopithecus ramidus, about 4.4 million years old, and therefore almost a million years older than "Lucy", are still a hot topic despite being shadowed by the more recent news about the 'Oldest Tools'.

*

I was flying again and settled, despite the shift to a mode of transport that stands hairs on end -- a two-dozen seater with things in its cabin that shouldn't be hanging loose. This really old stuff is not my specialty, I mused, but every passing year accumulates more evidence that does seem to support Ethiopia's claim to being not only the Cradle of Humanity but also the crucible of her technology.

Ethiopia's location is apt. It lies at the head of the massive geological fault that created the Rift Valley and sundered Africa sinuously from the Gulf of Aden to the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania -- from the lowest land on Earth, the Dankil Depression, to the highest point in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro -- and thither unto the cascade called Victoria, the great fall of water which lies in the wild southern hub of the continent, where Stanley found Livingstone.

The Abyssinian 'Mountains of the Moon' seem like a winged brain on a spinal serpent arisen from the heart of darkness, and with this image vividly in mind, I pondered the neuroscience transpiring in Sudbury at Michael Persinger's lab on the Laurentian Shield; and how magnetic fields that leak from deep cracks in our planet's crust can affect mood, experience, beliefs, even our identity. Which led me to conclude that the Earth energies of Africa must have played a key role in evolving human consciousness.

Recent history, not evolution is my immediate concern, but human origins are a heady brew, a rich coffee into which I might pour some modern mellowing cream. If I could find some.

Creameries are scarce despite the ubiquity of coffee. (The region of Kafa may have been the bean's primal turf, but natives regard any substance that would lighten their 'cafe noir' with some suspicion).

The history of Ethiopia is known only in outline and much of it remains legendary and unscrutinized. This, our team wanted to change. A few deft strokes of shovel and pick would obviously not suffice but, the visa situation being troublesome, such finesse would be necessary for this foray. And so to that end, during the limited time made available, the plan was that we'd converge at Axum as soon after the rains as possible, then fan out from there so that each of us could do a quick scour of a different part of the country, then meet again before our various departures.  

But I reached Axum a few days early. It could be the most interesting location, and I wanted time to look around before everyone else arrived.

The Yeha is a sparsely appointed but recently built and fairly comfortable hotel on the hillside overlooking the small town. It was turned into a hospital during the recent civil war, but now it was quiet, with very few quests, and I would enjoy the luxury of having time to poke around castles and caves, menhirs and palaces, and the grassy ruins of the oldest Christian temple in Africa, St Mary of Sion, during the day while the absence of noctural distractions promised perfection for undisturbed study, some writing, and starlit meditation.

*

During the following afternoon, on the way back down from a hike to the  summit of  the hill behind the hotel, I came at last to the crest of a lower rise and glimpsed again the great plain that sweeps south and west from Axum. Another short trek and I'd see the Yeha and maybe the town itself. But then I met Varian.

I didn't recognise him at first, and our encounter was anticlimatic. Yet his timing was impeccable, because it was Saint Patrick's Day and his grandmother had been Irish. The snake I caught him trying to banish from Tigray, however, was just a bothersome tree-branch, hiding in the ruins of a stone chapel that I'd missed on my way up.

"Just happened to be passing through", he claimed -- a tourist with a group, organized by an exotic tours agency in Bristol, apparently. I did in fact see, earlier in the day, a sleek white van bearing a U.K. logo speeding dustily out of town to the airport. But with 'Jack' one just never knows. He often seems to be playing games, or not trying hard enough to hide a secret agenda -- his own, or someone else's.

Later, when I checked his hotel, the Sion, the register showed that he'd written beside his name, in the column under "Company or Organization": "The League of Seventh Suns". A new one on me!

I did say that I caught him, as if red-handed, in the act of being stupid, but this turn of phrase captures only my first reaction. I'm sure you'd think the same if, being drawn to the figure of an elderly gentleman fiercely brandishing his camera tripod aloft, you saw that the object of his vehemence was a stick in the grass. And I did pass comment to him about the right and wrong way to make good photographs, but once I saw who this clown was, I began to doubt my presumptions.

Maybe he'd seen me coming and hammed up an Occasion for my benefit. He does love the dramatic tableau, moreso when it contains an element of the absurd. But then again, after he wished me "a happy Paddy's Day", I could see what Varian might really have been doing -- simply positioning his camera for a long shot of the obelisks in the valley below.

*

An East African sunbird alights on rocky ground nearby. It's beautiful, like a magpie minus the long tail: pure black on top and white underneath, but with an ovoid breast-patch of bright scarlet.

"By now, you've probably checked out King Ramhai's tomb?", Varian is asking as he folds his tripod after quietly finishing his work.

"As a matter of fact I was down there yesterday morning," I reply.

The 2nd century burial complex, consisting of 12 subterranean vaults, (the same number of chapels in St Mary's, built about a century later), was discovered near the obelisks only a couple of decades ago, but the revolution which began almost immediately afterward had forced Neville Chittick to abandon his excavations.

"So what do you make of it? The king's sarcophagus, I mean."

Varian can hardly mean anything else. The vaults are completely empty, except for bats, having been robbed many centuries ago. The huge granite-block walls are barren of decor. But in one chamber there is a lone prone stone, a bit longer and bigger than a human body, resting on several supports that keep it about a foot above the bedrock floor and which allow inspection of the object's underside. Tapping the stone reveals that it is hollow, so the logical assumption is that it's the king's sealed coffin. Except that no crack or seal can be discerned.

"If things can be worked out with the powers that be in Addis, I guess we could bring in some sonics and other sensing gear. But in the end, we'd probably just have to crack'er open. Carefully of course."

"But maybe it's not a coffin. Might it not just be a hollow stone? Like a thunder-egg or amethyst geode?"

"Not likely, Jack. Not in rock like that. This is a pretty far-fetched notion, even for a guy like you!"

"Well, how'd they do that, eh? No sign of the seal! Totally clean and smooth. You know what I think, don't you? They teleported the king into that hollow rock so that he'd remain inaccessible and inviolate forever. He might even have been alive when they did it. In fact, he might STILL be alive. I bet he is. And you're going to crack him open!?"

"Jack! Are you serious? The seal is good, very good, but we'll find it, even figure out how they did it, and find a bunch of bones inside. But I hope there's more than that -- clothing and implements for example. We know so little about what was going on two thousand years ago when the Axumite empire was sprouting, and it will be a major find whatever's inside."

"Uh-huh. Sure. But did you notice what was carved at the ends of the sarcophagus?"  

"I did. A simple, basic, equal-arm cross."

"Not just any cross, though. A Templar cross: the 'croix pattee', with flared arms."

"So?"

"Ramhai was a pre-Christian ruler. His obelisk was capped by Sun and Moon symbols in silver and gold. Later, the first Christian king, Ezana, who by the way erected the last obelisk, topped his with a cross."

"What are you saying, Jack? That the cross on the coffin was carved later? Well, that's impossible. It's embossed. The symbol stands out from the surface of the stone. It must have been carved when the coffin was made."

"Exactly. And X marks the spot, as on any pirate's treasure-map or Plutonic closet-door, and probably on Pandora's Box as well. Some cases are best left closed. That's how they keep their energy. If there's no mystery, then there's no juice or power. Open it and you get a blast, but then you're left, if you survive, with nothing. Only regret and deflation."

"Since when have you been anti-discovery, Jack? This isn't like you! Explore the world you said. Hide not the light you said. Storm the gates of Heaven!"

"'Of Heaven', I said. But I'm not sure you, or anyone connected with this caper, has the 'wight stuff'. If you know what I mean. Look what happened right after this complex was dug out. All hell broke loose. Chittick, it has to be said, brought down a three thousand-year-old dynasty, and the octogenarian Lion-of-Judah Selassie was driven unceremoniously from his palace in a Volkswagen to be quietly snuffed in the suburbs. Can you imagine the consequences for the world if you broke open the king's stone itself?"

"Good grief! Have you gone off your medication, or what?"

"I think you know, Buddy Boy, that it's not easy to find a single malt of any calibre, let alone a Talisker, anywhere here in THESE highlands."

"Great pizza though, at the Addis Hilton, I hear".

"Yeah, the Italians never really left their Abyssinia, did they?"

We begin to pick our way down the dry, cobble- terraced hillside towards the Yeha Hotel. At least that's my goal, because I'm staying there and it's lunchtime. A bit of old goat-meat and banana juice might help me feel better. I'm irked. Varian doesn't usually do this to me. He's more likely to finesse me into an interesting situation than bowl me over with apocalyptic suggestions and arcane innuendoes. But his reference to 'wights' kindles a memory..

"When was it, Jack, that you got me playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons? It must have been a summer between university terms, but there weren't many 'betweens'.  I usually took courses right through to mid-August."

"You mean that Tolkien game? That was eleven years ago. You were doing surveys in the Klondike, within sight of.. King Solomon's Dome, wasn't it?"

"Oh yeah, but that's just where we bunked. Near Dawson. The digs were much further south."  

A scene came back to me: the game-board of Middle Earth. I'd met a barrow wight, a tomb-guarding wraith. My dice-roll was a bust and I was oblivioned in mid-game.

Varian cackled.

"See ya!" he waved, as he diverged from my route through the Yeha's inner courtyard, made for the gate, and descent into the town below.

"What? Do you have to go so soon? Come on up for some lunch."

"Sorree, Buddy Boy. I'm already late for an appointment. Catch you later, okay?"

"How can you have an 'appointment'.. in these parts, for petesake? Come for lunch!"

*

One warm April evening, a month later, a letter was awaiting me at the hotel-desk when I returned my key for the day. It was a thin envelope from Boston and had no return address, but I knew who'd sent it.

Inside, there was just one sheet of paper, a map of the world with several lines arcing out in a global butterfly pattern from a place in Canada to converge near Australia. On the blank back of this map, Varian had scrawled a note:

"This, my friend, is an astrological Local Space Map. Study it.

PS: Pluto enters Capricorn eleven years from now.

PPS: The UN says Canada is the best country in the world and that Ethiopia's the worst. If the poles switch, you're in deep donut batter.

== JV/KT (L7S)"

*

[October 1999]

So that, in a very queer nutshell, is how I was introduced to astro-geography, or at least to the facet of it known as Local Space, and I have spent many a lamplit evening since, trying to figure out what it means. Or what Jack meant. But he left such a twisted pastiche of hints and banana-skins that, despite some glimmerings of insight, I still feel stranded, as if stuck at the entrance of a vast labyrinth which I'm no longer sure I wish to probe, with a wicked thunderstorm approaching.

Jack's mad alarm about a 'mummy's curse' was, of course, sham dramatics. He could not have meant it literally. It's just his way of grabbing attention, holding our feet to the fire, as it were.

We are scheduled to start onsite work again next year, but our plans are now jeopardized by another local war, this time with Eritrea. And the situation could get worse. The missile attack by the United States on Khartoum, in neighbouring Sudan, was most disturbing.

This has prompted us to consider other options more seriously. We have been given the green light, for example, to investigate Viking remains found on Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic, and Ms. Burmley, (our esteemed but not entirely practical colleague), insists we should try to crack open an (alleged) pirate's chest under Oak Island in Nova Scotia -- if we can inveigle the new syndicate that controls the key properties to let us have a go at it --  and not upset the oceanographic institute at Wood's Hole, nor Don ('Raise the Titanic') Ballard, who also have a stake in these matters.

But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that such escapades would only result, at best, in a cute booby prize. And if we can't get back to Axum soon, a much greater boon may be forfeit.