Almost Complete Short Fiction, page 19
“—and a conservative estimate of three point five generations per century—” Thoth’s fingers were dancing on the pegs. The crystal was covered with hieroglyphics.
“But,” Jesse said, “if it was all a mistake, why are you still here?”
“—allowing a reasonable factor for infertility and infant mortality—”
Anpu shrugged. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
He led the way to an arched doorway at the rear of the chamber. Hathor and Sobek followed behind Jesse. As they left the room Thoth was staring at the crystal and scratching his head with one finger. “That can’t be right,” he muttered.
“At the rear of this tomb,” Anpu explained as they made their way down a long hallway, “is what you might call a portal. Every burial center in Egypt has at least one. It’s—” He stopped and looked back at Jesse. “I can’t really explain it to you. It’s a place where we can pass back and forth between this world and ours. Mortals can’t even see it, let alone penetrate it.”
“Except when they die,” Hathor added, “and we come and get them.”
“Which hasn’t happened for a long time,” Anpu said, nodding. “It’s been almost two thousand of your years since anyone was interred with the necessary procedures. We were really disappointed to find out this was a false alarm. We had hoped the people were returning to the old ways.”
He turned and started walking again. Only a few paces along the corridor, he stopped again. “There,” he said. “You see the problem.”
A huge slab of stone, apparently fallen from the ceiling, totally blocked the passageway. It was as big as a U-Haul trailer.
“It happened just after we arrived,” Anpu said. “Evidently, when the other man drove away, the vibration caused the fall. Of course it must have been badly cracked already.”
“And now you can’t get back? To—wherever you came from?”
Anpu shook his head. “The nearest other portals are off in the Nile valley. I’m not sure we could make the journey.” He looked at the great stone slab and his ears drooped a little. “But we may have to try.”
“Never,” Hathor declared. “That sun, that wind. My skin. No.”
Jesse noticed a strange, impractical-looking contrivance lying on the floor, an assemblage of improvised ropes and levers. He recognized a couple of machine-gun barrels, and twisted-together rifle slings. He said, “What’s this?”
“Something Anpu invented,” Sobek grunted. “He calls it an akh-me. Doesn’t work for shit.”
“It seemed worth a try.” Anpu kicked dispiritedly at the device. He looked at Jesse. “Can you help us? Your grandfather says you know about machinery.”
Jesse studied the barrier. “I don’t know. It’s not in my usual line—” He felt Hathor’s eyes upon him. “Maybe,” he said. “I’ll think about it. Let me sleep on it.”
They went back up the corridor. As they entered the burial chamber Thoth looked up. “It’s right here, I tell you.” He touched a fingertip to the glowing crystal. “There’s no arguing with the numbers. Everyone in the world is a descendant of Ramses the Second.”
At midnight Jesse walked back down to the other tomb to wake Bradley. Anpu walked with him, for no apparent reason but sociability. Halfway down the slope they met Bradley coming the other way, lugging his rifle. “Hey, guy,” he said cheerfully. “Get some sleep, now. I’ll wake you at daybreak.”
He went on up toward the big rock. Anpu chuckled. “Your friend can’t see me. Not if I don’t want him to, anyway.”
“He’s not my friend,” Jesse said, more emphatically than he meant to.
Anpu looked curiously around as they entered the tomb. “I haven’t really taken the time to look at the other tombs around here,” he remarked as Jesse switched on the battery lantern. “This one isn’t bad, actually.”
Jesse leaned his AK-47 against the wall by the door. “Other tombs?”
“Oh, yes. Quite a few nearby—all sealed and hidden, of course. You’d never find them if you didn’t know where to look.”
He leaned forward, examining a hieroglyphic inscription on the wall. Jesse said, “What’s that say, anyway?”
Anpu tilted his head to one side. “A free translation,” he said after a moment, “might be: ‘There once was a goddess named Isis, whose breasts were of different sizes. One was dainty and small, almost no breast at all, but the other was huge and won prizes.’ ”
“Get out of here.”
“All right,” Anpu said. “Have a pleasant night, Jesse.”
When he was gone Jesse looked around briefly and then picked up the battery lantern and went down the corridor to the rear chamber. The air felt cooler there and the floor was cleaner. He took a gray military blanket from a stack in one corner and made himself a pallet on the floor, rolling up another blanket for a pillow. Lying down and switching off the lantern, he wondered if he would be able to sleep in this place; but he did, almost immediately, and without dreams.
When he awoke—he didn’t know how long he had been asleep; later, he thought it couldn’t have been long—it was with the distinct feeling that he was no longer alone in the burial chamber. That might have been because somebody was trying to take his clothes off.
He said, “Wha,” and fumbled for the battery lantern and switched it on.
Hathor was crouching over him, tugging at the waistband of his pants. “You must help me,” she said urgently. “I don’t understand these strange garments.”
Jesse blinked and shook his head. “Well, that is, ah—”
“Don’t worry, chooch,” said the voice in his left ear. “She’s not out to steal your soul or anything like that. She just wants to get laid. It’s been a long time since she did it with anybody who wasn’t at least a couple thousand years old.”
Hathor was now yanking his shoes off. Jesse skinned his sweaty T-shirt up over his head and reached to undo his belt buckle. Grandfather’s voice said, “I’ll leave you two alone now.”
As Jesse got rid of his briefs—wishing he’d worn a better pair—Hathor rose to her feet and undid a clasp at her shoulder, letting the white gown fall away, leaving her naked except for wide gold bracelets on her wrists. “I shall give you love,” she announced. “I shall serve you a feast of divine pleasure.”
Throbbingly ithyphallic, Jesse watched as she put a foot on either side of him. The horns, he decided, weren’t so bad once you got over the first shock of seeing them. In fact they were kind of sexy.
She knelt, straddling him. “Yes,” she said, bending forward, mashing those astonishing breasts against his chest, “impale me with the burning spear of your desire.” Clasping with arms and thighs, she rolled onto her back, pulling him on top of her, heels spurring him. “Oh, fill my loins with your mighty obelisk,” she cried, “come into me with the Nile of your passion. Do me like a hot baboon, big boy!”
Well, Jesse thought, you always did like horny women with big ones. . . .
He awoke again to disturbing dreams of Vietnam; sounds of gunfire and rotors rattled in his ears. The room was still dark but his watch showed almost eight o’clock. Hastily he dressed, pausing as he felt the bracelet on his right wrist. Hathor’s. She must have put it there as he slept. Memories of the night came rushing back, and he stood for a moment grinning foolishly to himself.
Then he heard it again, faint but unmistakable: a rapid snapping, like popcorn in a microwave.
He jerked his shoes on, not bothering with socks, and ran down the corridor to the front chamber. He was halfway across the room, going for the gun he had left there, when a man appeared in the doorway: no more than a vague dark shape in the poor light that came down the entrance corridor, but Jesse knew immediately that it wasn’t Bradley. He saw a dull glint that had to be a gun barrel.
Without hesitation he threw his arms in the air as high as they would go. “Don’t shoot!” he yelled, wishing he knew how to say it in Arabic. “See? No gun. Salaam aleykum,” he added somewhat desperately. “Friendly Indian. Okay?”
The gun swung his way and his insides went loose. But either the man got the idea or, more likely, he realized it wasn’t a good idea to fire shots inside a room full of munitions. A harsh voice hawked up several syllables in what sounded like Arabic, and then, in a loud shout, “Nolan! No-lan!”
An answering shout came from outside. The man jerked his weapon at Jesse and said, “Yalla. You come. Quick.”
He backed slowly up the corridor, keeping Jesse covered. Jesse followed, hands still in the air, sphincter clenched. The sunlight blinded him as he reached the foot of the stone steps and he stumbled, and was yelled at. At the top of the steps the gunman said, “Stop.”
Jesse stopped, blinking against the glare, trying to focus on the three backlit figures standing before him. A big booming voice, American by accent and cadence, said, “Well, what have we got here? Speak English, fella?”
Jesse thought about replying in Cherokee, just to confuse matters, but he didn’t think that would do any good. He nodded. “Sure.”
He could see all right now. The man who had found him stood four or five feet away, a dark, skinny little bastard dressed in desert camo, like the snakebite victim they had buried yesterday. A face that was mostly nose and bad teeth stared unpleasantly at Jesse from the shade of a sand-tan headcloth. To his left stood another who was virtually his twin in build, ugliness, and attitude. Both men held AK-47s, pointed at Jesse’s belt buckle.
It was the third man, the one who had just spoken, who got and held Jesse’s attention. He wore the same unmarked camo-and-headcloth outfit as the others, but if he was an Arab Jesse was Princess Leia. He was taller than Jesse, six feet at least, with broad shoulders and a big beefy face. A rifle dangled casually from his right hand.
“Nolan,” Jesse said without thinking.
The big man fixed him with bright blue eyes. “Do we know each other?”
“Everybody’s heard of you.” Shovel a little, never hurts. “All the pilots around this part of the world, anyway.”
“Pilots? Ah.” Nolan nodded. “You’ll be the one who piled up that Hughes, down yonder beyond the ridge.”
Before Jesse could reply a fourth man came down the slope, feet sliding in the loose rocks and sand. “Hey, Nolan,” he began, and then stopped, seeing Jesse. “What the hell?” he said. “Who’s this?”
“One of your professional colleagues,” Nolan told him. “Apparently he was flying that Hughes.”
The new arrival was about Jesse’s height and rather slight of build, with small sharp pretty-boy features. He wore light-blue coveralls and a baseball cap. His hands were empty but a shoulder-holstered pistol bulged beneath his left armpit.
“No shit?” The accent was Southern. “How’d you do that, man?”
“Engine failure,” Jesse said.
Looking past the Southerner, Jesse saw that there was another helicopter sitting on the ground on the far right side of the rise. He could just see the tail and part of the main rotor. It looked like a French Alouette but he wasn’t sure.
What he couldn’t see, anywhere, was Bradley. That might be good. Probably it wasn’t.
Nolan said, “Well, I wish you’d had it somewhere else. That wreck is liable to draw all sorts of attention. Can’t believe it hasn’t been spotted already.” He gave Jesse a speculative look. “Just what were you doing around here, anyway?”
Jesse shrugged. “Flying this guy around.” Play it dumb, that shouldn’t be much of a reach. “He said he was an archaeologist.”
The pilot, if that was what he was, laughed. Nolan grimaced. “Maybe he should have been. He wasn’t worth a damn at what he was trying to do.”
“Is he all right?” Jesse asked innocently.
“Not so you’d notice,” the pilot said. “In fact he’s pretty damn dead.”
“He tried to ambush us,” Nolan told Jesse. “It was a stupid business. The odds were impossible and he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.”
Jesse felt sick. He hadn’t liked Bradley but still . . . why hadn’t the damn fool called him when he saw the helicopter coming? Maybe he had. Maybe he hadn’t realized how little Jesse could hear, down in that tomb. Or maybe he’d just decided he was John Wayne.
One of the gunmen said something in Arabic. Nolan said, “He wants to know if you buried the man who was here.”
Jesse nodded. “We didn’t kill him. Looked like a snake got him.”
“We know,” Nolan said. “It’s why we’re here. That worthless punk who was with him took off and tried to make the border, only he happened to run into some of our people. They interrogated him and sent a message. I came at first light.”
He jerked his head at the Arab who had spoken. “Gamal only wanted to thank you for burying his cousin. Don’t be misled.. He’ll kill you just as quickly if you make a mistake.”
“So,” the pilot said, “what now?”
“Shut the place down,” Nolan said. “We’ve got to assume it’s been compromised. Why else would a CIA agent be sniffing around?’’ He rubbed his chin and sighed. “God, what a mess. . . . I’ll take Gamal and Zaal and set some charges.”
“Going to blow it all up?” The pilot sounded slightly shocked.
“Yes. Damn shame, after all the effort and risk that went into bringing all that material here. But it’s not as if there weren’t plenty where it came from.” He looked at Jesse. “You better keep an eye on this joker till we’re done.”
The pilot nodded and reached for his pistol. “Gonna take him back with us?”
“Oh, sure,” Nolan said. “Major Hamid can ask him some questions—”
Suddenly the man called Gamal let out a high excited screech and grabbed Jesse’s right arm. “Shoof, shoof!” he cried. “No-lan, shoof!”
The other Arab joined in, shouting and squawking, pushing for a better look. Nolan barked something short and pungent and both men fell silent. Then everybody stood and stared at the gold band on Jesse’s wrist.
Nolan took the arm away from Gamal and bent his head, studying the bracelet closely. “Where did you get this?” he asked softly.
Jesse said, “Well, there was this old Egyptian lady—”
Nolan sighed again, straightened, and hit Jesse hard in the stomach with his fist. Jesse doubled up and fell to his knees, retching and fighting for air. “Now,” Nolan said patiently, “stop being silly and tell me where you got that bracelet. Did you find it around here?”
Unable to speak, Jesse nodded. The pilot said, “What’s going on, Nolan?”
“Look at it,” Nolan said. “That gold, that workmanship. You’ve never seen anything like it outside the museum in Cairo.”
“Old, huh?” The pilot whistled, like Bradley. “Worth money?”
“Worth a great deal, even by itself. If there’s more around here—”
“God damn,” the pilot said. “All right, bud. Where’d you find it?”
Still on his knees, clutching his midriff and trying to breathe, Jesse looked past the two renegades and up the slope. A dark prick-eared head had popped up out of the hole in the fist-shaped rock. Silhouetted against the bright sky, Anpu looked even more like that cartoon coyote.
“If Gamal and Zaal have to get it out of you,” Nolan said, “you won’t like it.”
Anpu wiggled his ears. A skinny arm came up and waved. Anpu pointed with exaggerated motions at the backs of Nolan and his men. Then he jabbed his finger downwards, toward the rock. He grinned and disappeared.
Jesse raised a hand. “Okay,” he said weakly. “Let me up. I’ll show you.”
He got to his feet and started up the slope. “Be careful,” Nolan warned, falling in behind him. “This better not be a trick.”
Up by the rock outcrop Jesse stopped. The pilot said, “Shit, there ain’t anything here.”
“Over here.” Jesse showed them the hole. Nolan bent down and felt around with one hand. His eyebrows went up. “It goes down to this tomb,” Jesse said. “Lots of interesting stuff down there.”
“I’ll be damned.” Nolan’s voice was almost a whisper. “Ray, have you got a flashlight?”
“Sure.” The pilot unclipped a small black cylinder from his belt and passed it over. “Not real big, but she’s brighter than she looks.”
“Come on, then.” Nolan handed his AK-47 to the man called Zaal. He stepped into the shaft and began working his way downward. When he had vanished from sight the pilot, looking very dubious, climbed down after him.
That left Jesse and the two Arabs, who were still eyeing him and fingering their weapons. He stood still and didn’t eye back. Inside his head he was trying to replay the climb down the shaft. By now they should be about halfway down. Now Nolan would have reached the bend in the tunnel. Big as he was, he’d have a tight time of it. Now he should be almost there. Now—
The scream that came up the shaft was like nothing Jesse had ever heard. Or ever wanted to hear again, but almost immediately there was another one just like it.
Both Arabs made exclamations of surprise. Zaal ran over, still clutching his own AK-47 and Nolan’s, and stared down the shaft. Gamal simply stood there with his mouth open and his eyes huge.
That was about as good as it was likely to get. Jesse put his hands together in a double fist and clubbed Gamal as hard as he could on the side of the neck. The AK-47 came loose easily as Gamal’s fingers went limp. Jesse turned and put a long burst into Zaal, who seemed to have gotten confused to find himself holding two rifles. He swung the AK-47 back and shot Gamal in the chest a couple of times, just in case he hadn’t hit him hard enough. Then he went and looked down the tunnel, keeping the gun ready but not expecting to have to use it.
Sure enough, Anpu stuck his head out of the hole. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Well,” he said, seeing the two bodies, “not bad. Your grandfather said you could take care of yourself.”
Some muffled nightmare sounds floated up the shaft. Anpu cocked his head and winced. “That Sobek,” he murmured. “Good at what he does, but so crude. . . .”
He looked at Jesse and cleared his throat. “I realize this isn’t a good time,” he said apologetically, “but about that matter we discussed—?”
