The Testimony of James Henry Hancock
I cannot say for how many hours I have wandered through the interminable rooms and galleries of this library, searching for a way to get out. The only changes I can discern are in the nature of the books on the shelves, and the patterns in the carpet. I have no idea now of the direction of the room where I last saw Hermione nor even the level upon which I could find it.
This library extends in an endless nexus, mocking my resolution. Only rarely do stairs offer a way up or a way down. I must fight the desperation that is growing inside me, a growing panic that I am now finding it hard to suppress. But now. Over there! Look! In a gallery that is identical to all the others I have been passing through, I can see another shaft of white banisters rising from the floor like a silent miracle! Two flights - look, count them with me as I climb! - one, and onto the landing , and up the steps, three four, five - two - and here before me is a landing that leads - into a gallery that looks to be identical to those I have been passing through.
I woke a short while ago to a recollection of extreme cold and hunger and the smell of crocusses. The unexpected sight of yellow crocusses in the snow. How curious. A smell of crocusses. But even now the memory is fading like a dream when one awakens out of sleep, when one knows that the dream has been long but one can cling only to a small fragment, a last moment perhaps. Or a moment within the dream whose memory lingers when all else is gone. My only relief comes in the bright moments I spend at the devices that are scattered through these galleries like a silent solace, like mocking tempters, putting the thought into my mind that they may be the only escape from this endless library! I can, for example, remember a bronze axe, from a gallery some time ago. A bronze axehead with a design of a honey bee and three interconnecting spirals, and fond memories of a land far over the sea. It was a final moment; a bronze axehead, a honey bee, interconnecting spirals, good luck for an uncertain voyage into an unknown future.
A long while ago – how long? I cannot tell you how long! Why do you ask? I hear you ask and I cannot tell you! Why do you ask these senseless questions? A long while ago I came upon gallery after gallery, all filled with cases of engines and all sorts of mechanisms. I wandered, enchanted through each, looking at the displays and reading the explanations. In one was a device for mixing air with liquid fuel. In another was the device which takes this mixture and burns it in an enclosed space against a cylinder, to obtain movement. There was a whole gallery devoted to the machines which contained these engines. And another gallery of similar vehicles, where the plastic and leather, chrome and aluminium gave way to other, unfamiliar materials. Some galleries were totally incomprehensible to me. I wondered where these vehicles exist at the surface, as somewhere they obviously must. It was as though they were all here in cold storage, waiting to be resurrected. Intrigued, and excited, I ran through the galleries hoping to encounter some even more exceptional technology that might prove to offer a way of escape, but came upon only a continuation of the library.
I can find no way of reaching the plain that lies above me. As I move through this library now, searching for a lift that will take me to the surface and into a world that I will recognise, all I can find are a continuation of galleries and rooms, all filled with books. Each of them is a biography and every gallery is identical to the last. But no. Not quite. I must not lie. But neither can I say for how many hours I have wandered through the innumerable rooms and galleries of this library, and until now I have been able to recognise the language in the volumes around me. But for how long this will continue, I cannot say. Already there are signs. Unfamiliar words. A strange dialect emerging.
But wait! I can see another shaft of white banisters rising up beside a narrow stairway. Flights of stairs – look how eagerly I climb up them, three, four! Five! Five flights of stairs and I am already exhausted as I pause, at the top, to gather my breath, and see, before me, a broad space full, of plants and foliage and statues, and not a book in sight. A large stairway ascends, a stairway much larger than the one I have just climbed, a broad stairway and there are people to my left in a hall full of devices that extends away from me in a constellation of bright specks of light receding into the distance. I feel so tired suddenly that I must sit and rest for a moment. Then I shall ascend the staircase and find my way out.
·
Ariadne held the offering in a silver bowl. She had entered the Mortuary Temple from its western entrance, via the main road from the city and found the coolness of its dark interiors very pleasing. Taking a winding route that seemed far from optimum but obligatory nonetheless, Ariadne at last entered the central court and, finding the atmosphere hot and oppressive, crossed quickly and descended a flight of stairs that led down towards a hall of collonades. Crossing a landing above the last flight of stairs, she passed a colourful fresco depicting an underwater scene of molluscs, seaweed and crabs fencing with one another. Around her, the dead lived on, entombed in their sarcophogi as though bathing in bathtubs, feeding upon the offerings given to them.
Leaving the honey on a table in a dim space upon one wall of which was a fresco of dolphins and fishes, Ariadne ascended a wooden flight of stairs through a dark passageway and made her way past a succession of small rooms until she came to a shrine of Dionysus. In the center of the room was a pillar and against one of the walls was a huge double axe. A shield in the shape of a large figure of eight hung behind it. There are but two divinities, she thought to herself. Mother Earth and Dionysus. She remembered the earthenware container in the basement room that she had left the offering in and checked to make sure that her feet were bare. The floor she was standing on was tiled in the same soft gypsum that much of the Temple was paved in and she could scratch lines in it with her fingernail. In the basement level of the western wing of the Temple, hundreds of mummies lay in jars placed upon this same soft stone. The embalmed corpse that lay inside the sarcophagus she had just visited, in the room with the dolphins, had been there for many years now. On an impulse, Ariadne crossed the central court once more and returned to the shrine of Dionysus with a jug of fresh milk, which she placed on the floor beside the pillar as an offering. On one of the walls was a fresco of a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Dionysus. Ariadne lit a lamp, and said a prayer.
·
The Testimony of James Henry Hancock
I remember the son of a painter of Dier-el-medina, a boy named Hay. At the time of the great famine in his village, he followed his father into the Ramasseum with all the other tomb builders of the Valley of the Kings, to try to coerce the authorities into releasing the food quotas that were their due. During this puzzling day, this boy became separated from his father, who stood arguing by the Temple's grain stores and bakeries, and he spent a long time walking up and down the rows of papyrus scrolls that adorned the aisles of the library. Being the son of a tomb-painter, he had learnt to read, and amongst the inventories and laws, communications with the gods, attendance registers, medical diagnoses, hymns to the gods, spells, letters from administrative officials, letters from foreign dignitaries, 'old writings of the tomb', histories, temple accounts and other dry archives, was a small text that puzzled him beyond all measure. Freely paraphased, it read—'Amenhotep, son of Hapu, while worshipping at the shrine of Imhotep, architect of the great step-pyramid at Sequara that has stood for the last twelve hundred years, became convinced that Amenophis III, the living Horus, son of Osiris, would shortly die and become Osiris in the vault of the stars.'
This boy could not understand how a son could become his father, and it puzzled him beyond measure. And he could not understand why, if the living Horus, son of Osiris, was to ascend to the stars and become Osiris again, at his death, why he, Hay, the son of his esteemed father, was preparing for a lifetime's work in the Valley of the Kings, to provide an oppulent tomb for the living Horus, Pharoah Rameses III, which would be filled with treasure to furnish and sustain his afterlife.
And much later he found himself with the following document in his hands:
'Pharaoh Amenophis III, the living Horus, son of Osiris, by the divine insight of Amon-Ra, with whom he has communicated, is able to reveal the secret name of his advisor, Amenhotep, son of Hapu, which he will do, unless his valued and trusted advisor, Amenhotep, will reveal to him the form of the gods.'
I cannot believe that my Pharaoh has offered me such a thinly veiled threat. That he should even think of such a thing reveals such naivety in him. I tell him that my name is Amenhotep, son of Hapu. My secret name - is Gym. I alone know this. But I can reveal to him the form of the gods if that is what he wants. Have I not already built for my Pharaoh a great mortuary temple, a temple much grander than the hovel of a Palace in which he keeps himself and his wives...
·
Jim freed his head and turned to a figure seated beside him who had only just removed his own device. 'Pharaoh!' he cried. 'Look around you and see the gods!' All around were figures sitting and rising and sitting again, moving in a dissatisfied, desultory way from location to location. Jim suddenly had the most fearful suspicion that if he remained any longer he would see himself rise from one of these devices, so he got up and made his way quickly out of the hall to the foot of the broad staircase, desperate to find a way out. He climbed the stairs into a labyrinth of wide galleries containing exotic plants and marble statues, poised in gesture as though waiting to be reanimated.
Jim discovered a much smaller stairwell and quickly ascended a few more flights, happy to be climbing, curious to see where they lead, passing floor after floor of the most beautiful galleries of foliage and marble statuary. At the very top he found himself in a gallery containing photographs and statues and plants, pausing in deep storage as though hoping to be given new life in the plains above.
CONFRONT YOURSELF - This Way.
At the far end of the gallery was a flight of steps up into another. The space was filled with plants and in its centre was a beautiful pool, fed by the trickling urgency of water streaming from a fountain. Jim cupped his hands and drank. 'THE POOL OF NARCISSUS'.
Reflected in this pool were the marble statues around the hall and the photographs; figures, portraits, the low dark halls of devices with speckled lights and all the people sitting at them, moving in them; suddenly he could see Ariadne and Carl and Robert and Kelvin and Hermione and it was as though the entire library was reflected suddenly in the water and Jim could see everything he had ever seen, reflected in this pool, as though his life was flashing before his eyes and something began to expand inside his head and it stretched and grew and it had caught him unawares, stretching and stretching and growing and expanding and he tried to fight it but it was as though he was tied to its surface, being pulled into a thousand pieces and he tried to enclose it in a steel box, to enclose it, to move away from it into the starry blackness of space, but he was too weak, too late, it was too strong, it burst through the steel and held him in its inflating vastness, rushing and stretching, stretching – the water...