The Seventh Scroll by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online

absolute age. How are your They chatted for a short while, but Royan was aware of the cost of the call. "Is the Prof in?" she cut it short.
    Professor Percival Dixon was over seventy and should have retired years ago. "Royan, is it really you? My favourite student." She smiled. Even at his age he was still the randy old goat. All the pretty ones were his favourite students.
    "This is an international call, Prof. I just want to know if the offer is still open."
    "My goodness, I thought you said that you couldn't fit us in, whatr
    "Change of circumstances. I'll tell you about it when I see you, if I see you."
    "Of course, we' love to have you come and talk to us.
    When can you manage to get awayr
    "I'll be in England tomorrow."

    'my goodness, that's a bit sudden. Don't know if we can arrange it that quickly."
    "I will be staying with my mother near York. Put me back to Miss Higgins and I will give her the telephone number." He was one of the most brilliant men she knew, but she didn't trust him to write down a telephone number correctly. "I'll call you in a few days' time."
    She hung up and lay back on the bed. She was exhausted and her arm was still hurting, but she tried to lay her plans to cover all eventualities. Two months ago Prof Dixon had invited her to lecture on the discovery and excavation of the tomb of Queen Lostris,. and the discovery of the scrolls. It was that book, of course, and more especially the footnote at the end of it, that had alerted him. Its publication had caused a great deal of interest. They had received enquiries from Egyptologists, both amateur and professional, all around the world, some from as far afield as Tokyo and Nairobi, all of them questioning the authenticity of the novel and the factual basis behind it.
    At the time she had opposed letting a writer of fiction have access to the transcriptions, especially as they had not been completed. She felt that the whole thing had reduced what should have been an important and serious academic subject to the level of popular entertainment, rather like what Spielberg had done to palaeontology with his park full of dinosaurs. In the end her voice had been over-ruled. Even Duraid had sided against her. It had been the money, of course. The department was always short of funds to conduct its less spectacular work. When it came to some grandiose scheme like moving the entire Temple of Abu Simbel to a new site above the flood waters of the Aswan High Dam, then the nations of the world had poured in tens of millions of dollars. However, the day-to'day operational expenses of the department attracted no such support. Their half share of the royalties from River God, for that was the book's title, had financed almost a year of research and exploration, but that was not enough to allay Royan's personal misgivings. The author had taken too many liberties with the facts contained in the scrolls, and had embroidered historical characters with personalities and foibles for which there was not the least evidence. In particular she felt he had portrayed Taita, the ancient scribe, as a braggart and a vainglorious poseur. She resented that.
    in fairness she was forced to concede that the author's brief had been to make the facts as palatable and readable as possible to a wide lay public, and she reluctantly agreed that he had succeeded in doing so. However, all her scientific training revolted against such a popularization of something so unique and wonderful.
    But she sighed and put these thoughts out of her head.
    The damage was done, and thinking about it only served to irritate her. She turned her thoughts to more pressing problems. If she was to do the lecture that the Prof had invited her to deliver, then she would need her slides and these were still at her office in the museum. While she was still working out the best way to get hold of them without fetching them in Person, exhaustion overtook her and she fell asleep, still fully clothed, on top of the