"Smith, Wilbur - Egyptian 02 - Seventh Scroll" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

They ate the simple meat on the terrace together, dates and olives and
unleavened bread and goat's milk cheese. It was dark when they finished,
but the desert stars were bright as candles.

"Royan, -my flower." He reached across the table and touched her hand.
"It is time to begin work." He stood up from the table and led the way
to his study that opened out on to the terrace.

Royan Al Simma went directly to the tall steel safe against the far wall
and tumbled the combination. The safe was out of place in this room,
amongst the old books and scrolls, amongst the ancient statues and
artefacts and grave goods that were the collection of his lifetime.

When the heavy steel door swung open, Royan stood back for a moment. She
always felt this prickle of awe whenever she first looked upon this
relic of the ages, even after an interval of only a few short hours.
"The seventh scroll," she whispered, and steeled herself to touch it. It
was nearly four thousand years old, written by a genius out of time with
history, a man who had been dust for all these millennia, but whom she
had come to know and respect as she did her own husband. His words were
eternal, and they spoke to her clearly from beyond the grave, from the
fields of paradise, from the presence of the great trinity, Osiris and
Isis and Horus, in whom he had believed so devoutly. As devoutly as she
believed in another more recent Trinity.

She carried the scroll to the long table at which Duraid, her husband,
was already at work. He looked up as she laid it on the tabletop before
him, and for a moment she saw the same mystical mood in his eyes that
had affected her. He always wanted the scroll there on the table, even
when there was no real call for it. He had the photographs and the
microfilm to work with. It was as though he needed the unseen presence
of the ancient author close to him as he studied the texts.

Then he threw off the mood and was the dispassionate scientist once
more. "Your eyes are better than mine, my flower," he said. "What do you
make of this character?"

She leaned over his shoulder and studied the hieroglyph on the
photograph of the scroll that he pointed out to her. She puzzled over
the character for a moment before she took the magnifying glass from
Duraid's hand and peered through it again.

"It looks as though Taita has thrown in another cryptogram of his own
creation just to bedevil us." She spoke of the ancient author as though
he were a dear, but sometimes exasperating, friend who still lived and
breathed, and played tricks upon them.

"We'll just have to puzzle it out, then," Duraid declared with obvious
relish. He loved the ancient game. It was his life's work.