Stephen Hawking, an extraordinary mortal if ever there was one, has argued that the best evidence that time travel is impossible is that we haven’t met any visitors from the future. Good point. Though I think that anyone visiting the past would scarcely announce their presence, would in fact be much more likely to have access to a range of disguises we couldn’t hope to penetrate. And there are all those Fortean accounts of out-of place artifacts such as chains embedded in anthracite coal seams, certain proof of temporal visitors to the early Cretaceous—or it would be proof, if the artifacts themselves hadn ‘t mysteriously disappeared since, like the famous spark plug that was embedded in a geode. (Although it turned out to be embedded in a lump of mud, not a geode, which sort of deflates the geological anomaly a bit. . .)

 

Who knows? But my money’s on time travel, all the same.  

 

?        ?        ?

 

The Queen in Yellow

Kage Baker

 

 

THE LADY WAITED IN HER MOTORCAR. It was a grand car, the very best and latest of its kind in 1914, a Vauxhall touring convertible with a four-litre engine, very fast. It was painted gold. Until recently the lady would have been waiting on a horse, by choice a palomino Arabian stallion. She preferred her current transportation system, because she did not particularly care for living things. She did admire machines, however. She liked gold, too.

 

Her name was Executive Facilitator for the Near Bast Region Kiu, and the sleek golden motorcar in which she waited was parked on a deserted road in the middle of a particularly ancient and historically significant bit of Nowhere. Not so far behind her, the Nile flowed on through eternity; above her, the white moon swam like a curved reed-boat across the stars, and it and they shed faint soft light on the rippled dunes of the desert and the green garden country. Lady Kiu cared no more about the romance of her surroundings than the Sphinx, who was her junior by several millennia.

 

She did not show her eleven thousand years, almond-eyed beauty that she was. She looked no older than a fairly pampered and carefree twenty-two. Her soul, however, had quite worn away to nothing.

 

Lady Kiu was impatient as she waited. Her perfect nails tapped out a sinister little rhythm on the Vauxhall’s steering wheel. You would think such an ageless, deathless creature would have long since learned to bide her time, and normally Lady Kiu could watch the pointless hours stagger past with perfect sangfroid; but there was something about the man for whom she waited that irritated her unaccountably.

 

*      *      *

 

The man was standing on a ridge and staring, slack jawed, at the beauty of the night. Moon, sand, stars, gardens, the distant gleam of moonlight on the river: he had seen a lot of moons, stars, sand, gardens and rivers in his time, but this was Egypt, after all! And though he too was a deathless, ageless creature, he had never in all his centuries been to Egypt before, and the Romance of the Nile had him breathlessly enchanted.

 

His name was Literature Preservationist Lewis. He was a slight, fair-haired man with the boyish good looks and determined chin of a silent film hero. He was moreover brave, resourceful and terribly earnest about his job, which was one of the things about him that so irritated Lady Kiu.

 

He also tended to get caught up in the moment to such an extent that he failed to check his internal chronometer as often as he ought to, with the result that when he did check it now he started guiltily, and set off at a run through the night. He was able to move far more quickly than a mortal man, but he was still five minutes late for his rendezvous.

 

“Sorry!” he cried aloud, spotting Lady Kiu at last, sullen by moonlight. He slid to a halt and tottered the last few steps to her motorcar, hitching up his jodhpurs.

 

“Sand in your pants?” inquired Lady Kiu, yawning.

 

“Er—actually we’ve all got sand everywhere. We’re roughing it, rather. The professor doesn’t go in for luxuries in the field. I don’t mind, though! He’s really the most astonishing mortal, and I’m used to a bit of hardship—” said Lewis.

 

“How nice. Your report, please.”

 

Lewis cleared his throat and stood straight. “Everything is on schedule and under budget. I guided the fellaheen straight to the shaft entrance without seeming to, you see, quite subtly, and even though it’s been. blocked with debris, the excavation has .been going along famously. At the current speed, I expect we’ll reach the burial chamber exactly at twilight tomorrow.”

 

“Good.” Lady Kiu studied her nails. “And you’re absolutely certain you’ll get the timing right?”

 

“You may rely on me,” Lewis assured her.

 

“You managed to obtain a handcar?”

 

“All I had to do was bribe a railway official! The princess and I will roll into Bani Suwayf in style.”

 

“The mortal trusts you?”

 

“Professor Petrie? I think I’ve managed to impress him.” Lewis hooked his thumbs through his suspenders proudly. “I heard him telling Mr. Brunton what a remarkable fellow I am. ‘Have you noticed that fellow Kensington?’ he said. Petrie impresses me, too. He’s got the most amazing mental abilities—”

 

“Darling, the day any mortal can impress me, I’ll be ready for retirement,” said Lady Kiu, noting in amusement that Lewis started and quivered ever so slightly at her use of the word darling.

 

“I can expect you at Bani Suwayf at midnight tomorrow, then,” she added. “With the merchandise.”

 

“Without fail!”

 

“That’s a good boy. We’ve set you up a nice workroom on the boat, with everything you’ll need for the restoration job. And in your cabin—” she reached out a lazy hand and chucked him under the chin “—there’ll be a bottle of well-iced champagne to celebrate. Won’t that be fun?”

 

Lewis’s eyes widened. Struck mute, he grinned at her foolishly, and she smiled back at him. She expected men to fall in love with her—they always did, after all—but Lewis fell in love with anything beautiful or interesting, and so he wasn’t worth her time. Still, it never hurt to give an underling some incentive.

 

“Until tomorrow,” she said, blowing him a kiss, and with a roar her golden chariot came to life and bore her away toward the Nile.

 

You will find the pyramid of Senuseret II west of the Nile, near Al Fayyum. It is an unassuming little twelfth-dynasty^ affair of limestone and unburned mud brick. It is quite obvious how it was built, so no one ever speculates on how on earth it got there or who built it, or argues morbidly that apocalyptic knowledge is somehow encoded in its modest dimensions.

 

To the south of Senuseret’s pyramid is a cemetery, and on this brilliant day in 1914 it had a certain holiday air. The prevailing breeze brought the fragrance of fields, green leaf and lotus surging up in the brief Egyptian spring. Makeshift huts had been put up all along its outer wall, and Englishmen and Englishwomen sat in the huts and typed reports, or made careful drawings with the finest of crow quills, or fanned flies away from their food and wondered plaintively what that furry stuff was on the tinned pilchards, or fought off another wave of malaria.

 

Within the cemetery walls, several shaft tomb entrances admitted sunlight. In such shade as there was, the Egyptian fellaheen sat sorting through fairly small basketfuls of dig debris, brought to them by brown children from the mouth of another shaft. Lewis, his archaeologist ensemble augmented by a pith helmet today, stood watching them expectantly. His riding boots shone with polish. His jodhpurs were formidable.

 

Beside him stood a mortal man, burned dark by the sun, who wore mismatched native slippers without socks, patched knickerbocker trousers, a dirty shirt that had lost its buttons, and a flat cap that had also seen better days. He was white-haired and gray-bearded but had a blunt powerful form; he also had an unnervingly intense stare, fixed not on the fellaheen but on Lewis.

 

William Matthew Flinders Petrie was sixty years old. He had laid down the first rules of true archaeology, and that made him very nearly a patron saint for people who invested in history as much as Lewis’s masters did.

 

Though invested is not, perhaps, the correct word for the way the Company got its money.

 

Lewis never thought about that part of it much, to avoid being depressed. He had always been taught that depression was a very bad thing for an immortal, and the secret to happiness was to keep busy, preferably by following orders. And life could be so interesting! For example, one got to rub elbows with famous mortals like Flinders Petrie.

 

“So you think this grave hasn’t been robbed? You have an intuition about this, have you?” Petrie said.

 

“Oh, yes, Professor,” said Lewis. “I get them now and then. And after all, theft is a haphazard business, isn’t it? How systematic or careful can a looter be? I’d be awfully surprised if they hadn’t missed something.”

 

“Interesting,” said Flinders Petrie.

 

“What is, sir?”

 

“Your opinion on thieves. Have you known many?”

 

Actually Lewis had worked with thieves his entire life, in a manner of speaking. But remembering that he was supposed to be a youthful volunteer on his first visit to Egypt (which was half true, after all), he blushed and said “Well—no, sir, I haven’t, in fact.”

 

“They have infinite patience, as a rule,” Petrie told him. “.You’d be astonished at how methodical they are. The successful ones, at least. They take all manner of precautions. Get up to all sorts of tricks. Sometimes an archaeologist can learn from them.”

 

“Ah! Such as wearing a costume to gain access to a forbidden shrine?” Lewis inquired eagerly. “I have heard, sir, that you yourself convinced certain tribesmen you were mad by wearing, er, some rather outlandish things—”

 

“The pink underwear story, yes.” Petrie gave a slight smile. “Yes, it sometimes pays very well if people think you’re a harmless fool. They’ll let you in anywhere.”

 

As Lewis prepared to say something suitably naive in response, children came streaming from the mouth of the shaft like chattering swallows. A moment later an Egyptian followed them and walked swiftly to Petrie, before whom he bowed and said:

 

“Sir, you will want to come see now.”

 

Petrie nodded once, giving Lewis a sidelong glance.

 

“What did I tell you?” said Lewis, beaming.

 

“What indeed?” said Petrie. “Come along then, boy, and let’s see if your instincts are as good as you think they are.”

 

The mouth of the shaft had been blocked, as all the others there had been blocked, with centuries of mud and debris from flood runoff, and it was hard as red cement and had taken days of labor to clear in tiny increments. But the way was now clear to the entrance of the tomb chamber itself, where a mere window had been chiseled through into stifling darkness. A Qufti waiting with a lantern held it up and through the hole, flattening himself against the wall as Petrie rushed forward to peer inside.

 

“Good God!” cried Petrie, and his voice cracked in excitement. “Is the lid intact? Look at the thing, it hasn’t been touched! But how can that be?” He thrust himself through, head and shoulders, in his effort to see better, and the Qufti holding the lamp attempted to make himself even flatter, without success, as Petrie’s body wedged his arm firmly into the remaining four inches of window space and caused him to utter a faint involuntary cry of pain.

 

“Sorry. Oh, bugger all—” Petrie pulled backward and stripped off his shirt. Then he kicked off his slippers, tossed his cap down on top of them, and yanked open his trousers. The sole remaining fly button hit the wall with the force of a bullet, but was ignored as he dropped his pants and jumped free, naked as Adam.

 

“Your trowel, sir,” said the Qufti, offering it with his good arm as he drew back.

 

“Thank you, Ali.” Petrie took the trowel, draped his shirt over the windowledge, and vaulted up and through with amazing energy for a man of his years, so that Lewis and Ali endured no more than a few seconds of averting their eyes as his bottom and then legs and feet vanished into stygian blackness.

 

“Er—what a remarkable man,” observed Lewis.

 

The Qufti just nodded, rubbing his arm.

 

“GIVE ME THE LAMP!” ordered Petrie, appearing in the hole for a moment. “And keep the others out of here for the present, do you understand? I want.a clear field.” He turned on Lewis a glare keen enough to cut through limestone. “Well? Don’t you want to see your astonishing discovery, Mr. Kensington? I’d have thought you’d have been beside yourself to be the first in!”

 

“Well—ah—I’m certain I couldn’t hope to learn as much from it as you would, Professor,” said Lewis.

 

Petrie laughed grimly. “I wonder. Never mind, boy, grab a trowel and crawl through. And don’t be an old maid! It’s a sweatbath in here.”

 

“Yes, sir,” said Lewis, racing for the mouth of the shaft, and for all his embarrassment and reluctance there was still a little gleeful voice at the back of his mind singing: I’m on a real Egyptian archaeological dig with Flinders Petrie! The Father of Archaeology! Gosh!

 

In the end he compromised by stripping down to his drawers, and though Petrie set him to the inglorious task of whittling away at the window to enlarge the chamber’s access while he himself worked at clearing the granite sarcophagus, Lewis spent a wonderful afternoon. His sense of rapport with the Master in his Element kept him diverted from the fact that he was an undersized cyborg wearing nothing but a pair of striped drawers, chipping fecklessly at fossilized mud while sweat dripped.from the end of his nose, one drop precisely every 43.3 seconds, or that he was trapped in a small hot enclosed space with an elderly mortal who had certain intestinal problems.

 

The great man’s vocal utterances were limited to grunts of effort and growls of surprise, with the occasional “Hold the damned light over here a moment, can’t you?” But Lewis, in all the luxury of close proximity and uninterrupted except for having to pass the debris-basket out the hole on a regular basis, was learning a great deal by scanning Petrie as he worked.

 

He was not learning the sort of things he had expected to learn, however.

 

For example, his visual recordings of Petrie were not going to be as edifying as he’d hoped: the Master in his Element appeared nothing like a stately cross between Moses and Indiana Jones, as depicted in the twenty-fourth century. He resembled a naked lunatic trying to tunnel out of an asylum. That didn’t matter, though, in light of the fascinating data Lewis was picking up as he scanned Petrie’s brain activity.

 

It looked like a lightning storm, especially through the frontal lobes. There were connections being made that were not ordinarily made in a mortal mind. Patterns in data were instantly grasped and analyzed, fundamental organizational relationships perceived that mortals did not, as a rule, perceive, and jumps of logic of dazzling clarity followed. Lewis was enchanted. He watched the cerebral fireworks display, noted the slight depression in one temple and pondered the possibility of early brain trauma rerouting Petrie’s neural connections in some marvelous inexplicable way . . .

 

“I must say, sir, this is a great honor for me,” said Lewis hesitantly. “Meeting and actually working with a man of your extraordinary ability.”

 

“Nothing to do with ability, boy,” replied Petrie, giving him a stare over the edge of the sarcophagus. “It’s simply a matter of paying attention to details. That’s all it is. Most of the people out here in the old days were nothing more than damned looters. Go at it with a pick and blasting powder! Find the gold! Didn’t care tuppence for the fact that they were crumbling history under their bloody boots.”

 

“Like the library of Mendes,” said Lewis, with bitter feeling.

 

“You remember that, do you?” Petrie cocked a shaggy eyebrow at him. “Remarkable; that was back in ‘92. You can’t have been more than an infant at the time.”

 

“Well, er, yes, but my father read about it in the Times, you see,” temporized Lewis. “And he talked about it for years, and he shared your indignation, if I may say so. That would have been Naville, wouldn’t it, who found all those rooms filled with ancient papyri, and was so ham-fisted he destroyed most of them in the excavation!” His vengeful trowel stabbed clay and sent a chip whizzing into the darkness.

 

“So he did,” said Petrie, picking up the chip and squinting at it briefly before setting it in the debris basket. “I called him a vandal and he very nearly called me out. Said it was ridiculous to expect an archaeologist to note the placement of items uncovered in a dig, as though one were to note where the raisins were in a plum pudding! Mark that metaphor, you see, that’s all an excavation meant to him: Dig your spoon in and gobble away! Never a thought for learning anything about what he was digging up.”

 

“And meanwhile who knew what was being lost?” Lewis mourned. “Plays. Poetry. Textbooks. Histories.”

 

Petrie considered him a long moment before speaking again, and Lewis was once more aware of the bright storm in the old man’s head.

 

“We can never know,” Petrie said. “Damn him and everyone like him. How can we ever know the truth about the past? Historians lie; time wrecks everything. But if you’re careful, boy, if you’re methodical, if you measure and record and look for the bloody boring little details, like potsherds, and learn what they mean—you can get the dead to speak again, out of their ashes. That’s worth more than all the gold and amulets in the world, that’s the work of my life. That’s what I was born for. Nothing matters except my work.”

 

“I know exactly what you mean!” said Lewis.

 

“Do you?” said Petrie quietly.

 

They worked on in silence for a while after that.

 

At some point in the long afternoon the auroral splendor of Petrie’s mind grew particularly bright, and he cried out, “What the deuce?”

 

“Oh, have you found something, Professor?” Lewis stood and peered at the area of the sarcophagus that had just been cleared. There were hieroglyphics deep-cut in the pink granite. “The Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet? Oh, my, surely that’s a very good sign.”

 

And then he almost exclaimed aloud, because Petrie’s mind became like a glowing sun, such a magnificence of cerebration that Lewis felt humbled. But Petrie merely looked at him, and said flatly:

 

“Perhaps it is. It’s damned unusual, anyway. Never seen a seal quite like that on the outer sarcophagus before.”

 

“Really?” Lewis felt a little shiver of warning. “Do you think it’s significant?”

 

“Yes,” said Petrie. “I’m sure it is.”

 

“How exciting,” said Lewis cautiously, and turned back to chipping away at the wall.

 

By twilight, when the first blessed coolness rose in salt mist from the canals, it was still hot and stinking in the tomb. Lewis wiped his face with the back of his hand, leaving a steak of red mud above one eye, and said casually, “I suppose we’d better stop for today.”

 

“Absolutely not,” said Petrie. “I’ve very nearly cleared the lid. Another forty-five minutes’ work ought to do it. Don’t you want to see Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet, boy?” He grinned ferociously at Lewis.

 

“More than anything, sir,” said Lewis, truthfully. “But do you really want to rush a discovery of this importance? I’d much rather get a good night’s sleep, wouldn’t you, and start fresh tomorrow?”

 

Petrie was silent a moment, eyeing him. “I suppose so,” he said at last. “Very well. Though, of course, someone ought to sleep in here tonight. Standing guard, you know.”

 

“Allow me to volunteer!” said Lewis, doing his best to look frightfully keen. “Please, sir, it would be an honor.”

 

“As you like.” Petrie stroked his beard. “I’ll have supper and your bedroll sent out to you. Will that suit?”

 

It suited Lewis very well indeed, and two hours later he was stretched out in his blankets on the lid of the sarcophagus, listening to the sounds of the camp in its rituals as it gradually retired for the night.

 

He found it comforting, because it was much more like the sound of mortals retiring for the night the way they had over the centuries when he had been getting used to them: the low murmur of a story being told, the cry of a dreaming child, the scrape of a campfire being banked. Modern rooms were sealed against sound, and nights had become less human. In London, you might hear distant waterworks or steam pipes, or the tinny clamor of a radio or a phonograph, or the creak of furniture. You might hear electricity, if it had been laid on, humming through the walls. Humanity was sealing itself away in tidy boxes.

 

“But,” he said to himself aloud, looking up at the ceiling of the tomb, “they used to do that, too, didn’t they? Though not while they were still alive.” He sat up cautiously and groped for his lantern. “At least not intentionally.”

 

He lit the lantern and set to work at once, chiseling away at the last layer of mud sealing the lid of the sarcophagus. It went much more quickly when you didn’t have to carefully collect every single chip and pass it out through the entrance in a basket, and Lewis felt certain qualms about the debris he was scattering everywhere.

 

“But we’ll leave the professor a treat to make up for it, won’t we Princess?” he muttered. “And, after all, history can’t be changed.”

 

Five minutes later he had freed enough of the lid to be able to toss the trowel aside and prize an edge up, and he yanked the granite slab free as though it were so much balsa wood.

 

“Wow!” he said, although he had known what he would see.

 

There was a mummy case reposing there, smiling up through a layer of grime as though it had been expecting him, and in a manner of speaking it had been. It represented a lady bound all in golden cerements, and painted about her shoulders was a feathered cape in every shade of lemon and amber, set here and there with painted representations of topazes and citrines. Her features closely resembled Lady Kiu’s, save that there was a warmth and life in her eyes missing from the living eyes of Lady Kiu.

 

Under the dust, the whole case gleamed with a thick coat of varnish of glasslike smoothness and transparency. An analysis of its chemical structure would have startled scientists, if there had been any with electron microscopes or spectrographs in 1914. Lewis couldn’t resist reaching down to stroke along the side where the case was sealed, and could feel no seam or join at all. It would take a diamond-edged saw to get the box open, but that was all right; it had served its purpose.

 

The chest at the top of the tomb had had no such treatment, and it had fallen to pieces where it stood, splitting open under the sheer mass of the treasure it contained: a crown of burnished gold, two golden pectorals inlaid with precious stones, coiled necklaces, armlets, collars, boudoir items, beadwork in amethyst, in carnelian, turquoise, lapis lazuli, obsidian, ivory.

 

“Let’s get this mess out of the way, shall we?” said Lewis, and, reaching in, he picked up as much of the treasure as he could in one grab and dumped it unceremoniously into a recess in the wall at one side. Beads scattered and rolled here and there, but he ignored them. It was just so much jewelry, after all, and he was fixed and focused on his objective as only a cyborg can be.

 

“Now, Princess,” he said, giggling slightly as he leaned down to lift the mummy case from its dais, “Shall we dance? You and I? I’m quite a good dancer. I can two-step like nobody’s business. Oh, you’ll like it out in the world again! I’ll take you on a railway ride, though not first-class accommodations I’m afraid—” He set the case, which was as big as he was, down while he considered how best to get it through the opening.

 

“But that’ll be all right, because then we’ll go for a sail down the Nile, and that will be much nicer. Quite like old times, eh?” Deciding the time for neatness had passed, he simply aimed a series of kicks and punches at certain spots on the wall. He did not seem to exert much force, but the wall cracked in a dozen places and toppled outward into the tomb shaft.

 

“Literature Preservationist Lewis, super-cyborg!” he gloated, striking an attitude, and then froze with an expression of dismay on his face.

 

Flinders Petrie stood in the shaft without, just at the edge of the lamplight. He was surveying the wreckage of the wall with leonine fury, and the fact that he was wearing a pink singlet, pink ballet tutu and pink ribboned slippers did nothing to detract from the terror of his anger. Nor did the rifle he was aiming at Lewis’s head.

 

“Come out of there, you little bastard,” he said. “Look at the mess you’ve made!”

 

“I’m sorry!” said Lewis.

 

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be,” the old mortal told him. “I knew you were a damned marauder from the moment I laid eyes on you.” He settled the rifle more securely on his shoulder. “Though I couldn’t fathom the rest of it. What’s a super-cyborg? What the hell are you, eh?”

 

Lewis raced mentally through possible believable answers, and decided on:

 

“I’m afraid you’re right. I’m a thief; I was paid a lot of money by a certain French count to bring back antiquities for his collection. The Comte de la, er, Cyborg. He ordered me to infiltrate your expedition, because everyone knows you’re the best—”

 

“Ballocks,” said Petrie. “I mean what are you?”

 

Lewis blinked at him. “What?” he repeated.

 

“What kind of thing are you? You’re no human creature, that much is obvious,” said Petrie.

 

“It is?” In spite of his horror, Lewis was fascinated. He scanned Petrie’s brain activity and found it a roiling wasps’ nest of sparks.

 

“It is to me, boy,” said Petrie. “Mosquitoes won’t bite you, for one thing. You speak like an actor on the stage, for another. You move like a machine, mathematically exact. I’ve timed the things you do.”

 

“What kinds of things?” Lewis asked, delighted.

 

“Blinking once every thirty seconds precisely, for example,” said Flinders Petrie. “Except in moments when you’re pretending to be surprised, as you were just now. But there’s not much that surprises you, is there? You knew about this shaft, you very nearly dragged Ali to this spot and showed him where to dig. It was so we’d do all the work for you, wasn’t it? And then you’d make off with whatever was inside.”

 

“Well, I’m afraid I—”

 

“You’re not afraid. Your pupils aren’t dilating as a man’s would,” said Petrie relentlessly. “You haven’t changed color, and you’re breathing in perfect mechanical rhythm.” But his own hand shook slightly as he pulled back the hammer on the rifle. “You’re some kind of brilliantly complicated automaton, though I’m damned if I can think who made you.”

 

“That’s an insane idea, you know,” said Lewis, gauging how much space there was between Petrie and the side of the shaft. “People will think you’re mad as a hatter if you tell anyone.”

 

Petrie actually chuckled. “Do I look like a man who cares if people think I’m mad?” he said. He cut a bizarre little jete, pink slippers flashing. “It’s bloody useful, in fact, to be taken for a lunatic. Why d’you think I keep this ensemble in my kit? If I blew your head off this minute, dressed as I happen to be, I should certainly be acquitted of murder on grounds of insanity. Wouldn’t you think so?”

 

“You are absolutely the most astonishing mortal I have ever met,” said Lewis sincerely.

 

“And you’re not mortal, obviously. What would I see if I fired this gun, Mr. Kensington? Bits of clockwork flying apart? Magnetic ichor? Who made you? Why? I want to know! What are you for?”

 

“Please don’t shoot!” cried Lewis. “I was born as mortal as you are! If a bullet hit me I’d bleed and feel an awful lot of pain, but I wouldn’t die. I can never die.” Inspiration struck him. “Think about the Book of the Dead. All the mummies you’ve unearthed, Professor, think of all the priests and embalmers who worked over them, trying to follow instructions they barely understood. What were they trying to do?”

 

“Guarantee that men would live forever,” said Petrie, with perhaps just an edge of the fury taken off his voice.

 

“Exactly! They were trying to approximate something they knew about, but couldn’t ever really achieve, because they didn’t have the complete instructions. My masters, on the other hand, truly can make a man immortal.”

 

“Your masters?” Petrie narrowed his eyes. “So you’re a slave. And who are your masters, boy?”

 

“I’m not a slave!” said Lewis heatedly. “I’m more of an—an employee on long-term contract. And my masters are a terribly wise and powerful lot of scientists and businessmen.”

 

“Freemasons, by any chance? Rosicrucians?”

 

“Certainly not.” Lewis sniffed.

 

“Well, they’re not so clever as they think they are,” said Petrie. “I saw through you easily enough. ‘Sit-Hathor-Yunet,’ you said when you saw that cartouche, without a moment’s hesitation. And you’d said you couldn’t read hieroglyphics!”

 

Lewis winced. “I did slip there, didn’t I? Oh, dear. I wasn’t really designed for this kind of mission.”

 

“You weren’t, eh?”

 

“I’m just a literature preservationist. Scrolls and codices are more my line of work,” Lewis admitted. “I was only going to handle the restoration job. But my Facilitator—Facilitators are the clever ones, you see, they’re designed to be really good at passing themselves off as mortal, one of them would never make the mistakes I did—my Facilitator pointed out that a woman would be out of place in a camp like this, doing all sorts of dirty and dangerous work, and that I’d arouse much less suspicion than she would. She said she was sure I could handle a job like this.” He looked up at Petrie in a certain amount of embarrassment.

 

Petrie laughed. “Then you’ve been rather a fool, haven’t you? You’re that much of a man, at least.”

 

Lewis edged slightly forward and the barrel of the rifle swung to cover him.

 

“Stop there!” said Petrie. “And you can just put Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet down too, cleverdick.”

 

“Er—I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Lewis. “She was the whole point of my mission, you see. Can’t I have her? You wouldn’t learn anything useful from her, I can promise you.”

 

“There’s something odd about her, too, isn’t there?” demanded Petrie. “I knew it! Everything about the bloody burial was queer from the first.”

 

“Suppose, a long time ago, you had something valuable that you needed to put away for the benefit of generations to come, Professor. You’d want to hide it somewhere safe, wouldn’t you?” Lewis said. “And where better than sealed in a tomb you knew wouldn’t be opened until a certain day in the year 1914?”

 

“So you’ve got one of Mr. Wells’s time machines, have you?” Petrie speculated. “Is that how you know the future? What’s the princess, then? Is she another of your kind?”

 

“No! You can’t really make an immortal like this,” said Lewis in disgust, waving a hand at the mummy case.

 

“Then how is it done? I want to know!”

 

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Professor.”

 

“You will, by God.” Petrie cocked the rifle again.

 

“Oh, sir, does it have to come to this?” Lewis pleaded. “Just let me go. I’ve left you the nicest little cache of loot in payment, really a remarkable find—”

 

He gestured at the jewelry he had dumped into the recess behind the sarcophagus. Petrie glanced at it, and his gaze stayed on the gold in spite of his intention, only a second longer than he had planned; but that was enough time for Lewis, who fled past him like a wraith in the night.

 

He was a hundred meters away by the time the bullet whizzed past his ear, bowling over Ali and the other fellaheen in his passage. He’d have been farther if not for the aerodynamic drag that the mummy case exerted. Gasping, he lifted it over his head like an ant with a particularly valuable grain of barley and ran, making for the railway line.

 

“Damn!” he groaned, as he sprinted on, hearing the shots and outcry in his wake. “My clothes!”

 

They were still sitting in a tidily folded heap in the shaft, where he’d meant to put them on prior to exiting stealthily. Can’t be helped, he thought to himself. Perhaps I won’t be too conspicuous?

 

Lewis had a stitch in his side by the time he reached the railway line, and set the mummy case down while he cast about for the hut in which he’d hidden his handcar. Ah! There it was. He flung open the makeshift door and stared blankly into the darkness for a moment before the sound of approaching gunfire rammed the fact home: someone had stolen the handcar. He tried looking by infrared, but the result was the same. No handcar.

 

He lost another few seconds biting his knuckles as the pursuit grew nearer, until he distinguished Petrie’s voice, louder than the others and titanic in its wrath. Dismayed, Lewis grabbed up the mummy case again and ran for his immortal life, through the lurid scarlet night of Egypt by infrared.

 

A frightened cyborg can go pretty far and pretty fast before running out of breath, so Lewis had got well out of the sound of pursuit before he had to stop and set down the mummy case again. Wheezing, he collapsed on it and regarded the flat open field in which he found himself.

 

“I hope you won’t mind, Princess,” he said. “There’s been a slight change in plan. In fact, the plan has gone completely out the window. You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the railway ride anyway. Don’t worry; I’ll get you to the Nile somehow. What am I going to do, though?”

 

He peered across a distance of several miles to a pinprick of light a mortal couldn’t have seen.

 

“There’s a camp fire over there,” he said. “Do you suppose they have camels, Princess? Do you suppose I could persuade them to loan me a camel? Not that I’m particularly good at persuading mortals to do things. That’s in a Facilitator’s programming. Not something a lowly little Preserver drone is expected to be any good at.”

 

A certain shade of resentment came into his voice.

 

“Do you suppose the professor was right, Princess? Did Lady Kiu take advantage of me? Did she send me in on a job for which I wasn’t programmed simply because she didn’t want to bother with it herself?”

 

He sat there a moment in silence on the mummy case, fuming.

 

“You know, Princess, I think she did. Mrs. Petrie did plenty of crawling about in the shafts. So did Winifred Brunton. Granted, they were English. All the same ...” Lewis looked up at the infinite stars. “Can it be I’ve been played for a fool?”

 

The infinite stars looked down on him and pursed their lips.

 

“I’ll bet she weasels out of sleeping with me, too,” he sighed. “Darn it. Well, Princess, you wait here. I’m going to see if I can borrow a camel.”

 

He rose to his feet, hitched up his drawers and strode away through the darkness with a purposeful air.

 

Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet smiled up at the sky and waited. It was all she knew how to do. She didn’t mind.

 

After a while a darkness detached itself from the greater darkness and loomed up against the stars, to become the silhouette of Lewis, proudly mounted on the back of a camel.

 

“Here we are!” he cried cheerily. “Can you believe it, Princess, there was a runaway camel wandering loose through the fields? What a stroke of luck for us! I hate stealing things from mortals.”

 

He reined it in, bade it sit, and jumped down.

 

“Because, you see, the professor was wrong about me. I steal things

 

for mortals. Actually it isn’t even stealing. I’m a Preserver. It’s what I do

 

and I’m proud of it. It really is the best work in the world, Princess. Travel to exotic lands, meetings with famous people ...” He scooped her up and vaulted back on the camel’s hump. “Dodging bullets when they decide you’re a tomb robber... oh, well. Hut-hut! Up and at ‘em, boy!”

 

The camel unfolded upward with a bellow of protest. It had been content to carry Lewis, who if he did not smell quite right had at least a proper human shape; but something about the princess spooked it badly, and it decided to run away.

 

It set off at a dead run. The little creature on its back yelled and yanked on its reins, but the great black thwartwise oblong thing back up there was still following it no matter how fast it ran, and so the camel just kept running. It ran toward the smell of water, as being the only possible attraction in the fathomless night. It galloped over packed and arid hardpan, through fields of cotton, through groves of apricot trees. Lewis experienced every change in terrain intimately, and was vainly trying to spit out a mouthful of apricot leaves when the camel found water, and stopped abruptly at the edge of a canal. Lewis, and Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet, did not stop.

 

The black earth and the bright stars reversed, not once but several times, and then it was all darkness as Lewis landed with a splash in the canal, though with great presence of mind kept his grip on the mummy case. Down they went, and then the buoyancy of the sealed case pulled them upward again, and Lewis gulped in a lungful of air and scanned frantically for crocodiles.

 

“Whew!” he said, finding none. He noted also that the tidal flow was taking them Nileward at a leisurely pace, and, settling himself firmly atop Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet, he began to paddle energetically.

 

“Well, call me Ishmael! My apologies, Princess, but needs must and all that sort of thing. We’ll be out of this in no time, you’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy the new experience. I take it you’ve never been body-surfing before?” He began to giggle at the idea of bodysurfing and couldn’t control himself, laughing so hard that he nearly fell off. “Whoops! No, no, you headstrong girl! This way!”

 

Leeches floated up eagerly from the black depths, sensing a meal; just as the mosquitoes had, they came into contact with the minute electromagnetic field surrounding Lewis’s skin and changed their minds in a hurry.

 

About the time that Lewis spotted the lights of Bani Suwayf in the distance, he also identified a pair of crocodiles a kilometer off. Crocodiles take rather more than an electromagnetic field to discourage and so, splashing hastily to the side of the canal, Lewis pushed the mummy case out and scrambled after it. He paused only a moment to let the water stream from his ballooning drawers before picking up the case and resuming his journey by land.

 

“We’re almost there, Princess, and we’re not even late!” he said happily, as he trudged along. “I’ll have a thing or two to say to Lady Kiu, though, won’t 1? Let’s see ... Ahem! Madam, I feel I have no choice but to protest your... mmm. Lady Kiu, this is a painful thing for me to say, but... no. Kiu, old girl, I don’t think you quite ... that is, I... I mean, you . . . right.”

 

He sighed, and marched on.

 

Bani Suwayf was a small town in 1914, but it had a railway station and a resident population of Europeans. One of them, M. Heurtebise, was a minor functionary in a minor bureau having to do with granting minor permits of various kinds to other Europeans, and he deeply resented the smallness of his place in the order of things. He took it out on his wife, his servants, his pets, and once a week he also took it out on a person whom he paid for the trouble and who was therefore philosophical about his nocturnal visits.

 

He was returning from one of these visits—it had not lasted long-in his motorcar, and was just rounding the corner of the main street as Lewis entered it from the little track leading from the canal. He looked up, aghast, when the bug-eyed lights caught and displayed him: a muddy and sweating figure wearing only striped drawers, balancing a mummy case on his head.

 

“Stop!” cried M. Heurtebise on impulse, hitting his chauffeur on the shoulder with his cane. “Thief!” he added, because it seemed like a good bet, and he pulled out a revolver and brandished it at Lewis.

 

Lewis, who had used up a lot of energy on his flit from Professor Petrie, decided the hell with it and stopped. He set down the mummy case very carefully, held up his hands in a classic don’t-shoot gesture, and vanished.

 

“Where did he go?” exclaimed M. Heurtebise. When no answer was forthcoming from the night, he struck his chauffeur again and ordered, “Get out and look for him, Ahmed, you fool!”

 

Ahmed gritted his teeth, but got out of the car and looked around. He looked up the street; he looked down the street. He looked everywhere but under the motorcar, where Lewis had insinuated himself into the undercarriage as cunningly as an alien monster.

 

“He is not to be found, sir,” Ahmed told M. Heurtebise.

 

“I can see that, you imbecile. But he has left an antiquity in the roadway!”

 

Ahmed prodded Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet with his foot. “So he has, sir.”

 

Muttering to himself, M. Heurtebise got out of the motorcar. He strode over to the mummy case and his eyes widened as he noted the excellence of its condition and its obvious value.

 

“This has clearly been stolen,” he said. “It is our duty to confiscate it. We will notify the proper authorities in the morning. Put it into the car, Ahmed.”

 

Ahmed bent and attempted to lift it.

 

“It is too heavy, sir,” he said. “We must do it together.”

 

Mr. Heurtebise considered striking him for his insolence, but then reflected that if the mummy case was heavy, it was possibly full of treasure, and therefore the issue of prime importance was to get it out of the street and into his possession. So between them, he and Ahmed lifted the case and set it on end in the back seat. They got back in the motorcar and drove on the short distance to M. Heurtebise’s villa.

 

When they pulled into the courtyard and got out, Ahmed opened the door to the ground-floor office and they carried the mummy case inside. M. Heurtebise opened the Venetian blinds to admit light from the courtyard lantern, and he directed Ahmed to set Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet on two cane chairs.

 

The office was a comfortable room in the European style, with a banked fire in the hearth, leather overstuffed chairs with a small table and lamp between them, and a formidable desk with a row of pigeonholes above it. There was also a large cage in one corner, covered with canvas sacking. As Ahmed pushed the two chairs closer together, a hoarse metallic voice began to exclaim from beneath the cover. It said something very rude and then repeated it eighteen times.

 

“Silence!” hissed M. Heurtebise. “Bad parrot! BAD PARROT!”

 

He took his cane and hammered on the side of the cage, creating such a racket Ahmed winced and put his hands over his ears. A stunned silence followed. M. Heurtebise nodded in satisfaction. “That’s the only way to teach him, by the devil.”

 

“May I go now, sir?”

 

“Go.” M. Heurtebise waved him away. They left the study, and Ahmed drove the motorcar into what had formerly been the stables. Here he got out, closed the great door and locked it, and went off to the servants’ quarters. M. Heurtebise paused only long enough to lock the office door, and then climbed the outer stair to his apartments on the second floor.

 

Alone in the darkness, Lewis uninsinuated himself from the under-chassis and fell groaning to the floor. He was now smeared with black grease in addition to being muddy and wet. He lay there a moment and finally crawled out from under the motorcar. He got to his feet, staggered to the door and rattled it.

 

He was locked in. He shrugged and looked around for a suitable tool.

 

*      *      *

 

In the office, however, something else was just discovering that it was not locked in.

 

In his enthusiasm, M. Heurtebise had beaten on the bars of the cage with such force that he had shaken the cage’s latchhook loose, though with the cover being in place he had not noticed this. However, the cage’s inhabitant noticed, once its little ears had stopped ringing. It cocked a bright eye and then slid down the bars to the cage door. Thrusting its beak through the bars, it levered the latch the rest of the way open. It pushed its head against the bars and the door opened partway. There was a rustle, a thump, and then a parrot dropped between the cage cover and the bars to the floor. It ruffled its feathers and looked around.

 

It was an African Grey, all silver-and-ashes except for its scarlet tail.

 

“Oh, my,” it said. “You bad boy, what do you think you’re doing?”

 

It waddled across the tile floor like a clockwork toy, looking up at the long slanting bars of light coming in from the courtyard.

 

“Oh, la la! You bad boy bad boy!” it said, and beat its wings and flew to the top of the window-frame rail. Laughing evilly to itself, it reached down with its powerful little beak and snipped the topmost Venetian blind in half with one bite. The slat having parted with a pleasing crunch, the parrot then made its way along the rail to the cord and rappelled down it, stopping at each blind and methodically biting through, until the whole assembly hung in ruins.

 

The parrot swung from the end of the cord by its feet a moment, twirling happily, and then launched itself at the desk.

 

“Whee! Oh, stop that at once, you wicked creature! Stop that now! Do you hear? Do you hear?”

 

It made straight for the neat stack of pencils and bit them each in half too; then pulled out the pens and did the same. As though tidying its work area, it threw the pieces over the edge of the desk, one after another, and for good measure plucked the inkwell out of its recess and pitched that over too. The inkwell hit the floor with a crash and the ink fountained out, spattering the tiles. The parrot watched this appreciatively, tilting its head.

 

“As God is my witness,” it commented, “if you don’t be quiet NOW I will wring your neck! I mean it! Stop that this instant!”

 

It turned and eyed the pigeonholes. Reaching into the nearest it pulled out M. Heurtebise’s morning correspondence, dragged it to the edge and, with a decisive toss of its head, chucked it over the side too. The envelopes smacked into the mess already there, and spread and drifted. The parrot peered into the other pigeonholes and poked through them, murmuring, “Wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked . . . tra la la.”

 

Finding nothing else of interest on the desk, it backed out of the last pigeonhole, gave a little fluttering hop and landed on the nearest of the armchairs. It strutted to and fro on the smooth leather surface a moment before lifting its tail grandly and liquidly.

 

“Allons, enfants de la patrie—eee—eee!” it sang. “La la la!”

 

The parrot looked across the gulf of space at Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet, but she presented no opportunities nor anything it might get hold of. It contented itself with worrying at an upholstered chair-button. Snip! That was the way to do it. The parrot noticed there were several other buttons within reach on the chair’s back, and crying “Ooooh! Ha ha ha,” it carefully removed every one in sight.

 

Biting neat triangular holes in the upholstery with which to pull itself up, it scaled the chair’s arm and stepped out on the lamp table.

 

“You’re a naughty boy and you don’t get a treat,” it declared, looking speculatively up at the lamp, which had a number of jet beads pendent from its green glass shade. Straining on tiptoe, it caught one and gave it a good pull. The lamp tilted, tottered and fell to the floor, where it broke and rolled, pouring forth a long curved spill of kerosene. It came to rest in the hearth.

 

“Oh, my,” said the parrot. It looked at the broken lamp with one eye and then with the other. “Oh, what have you done now? Bad! Too bad!”

 

With a soft whoosh flames bloomed in the hearth. They leaped high as the lamp tinkled and shattered further, throwing bits out into the room. The parrot ducked and drew back, then stared again as the inevitable tongue of blue flame advanced over its kerosene road across the floor, right to M. Heurtebise’s scattered correspondence and the cane chairs whereon reposed Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet.

 

“Oooh!” said the parrot brightly. “Oooh, la la la!”

 

 

 

Lewis had been carefully sliding the stable bolt out of its recess in tiny increments, nudging it along with an old putty knife he had slipped between the planking. He had only another inch to go when he heard the breaking glass, the roar of flames.

 

‘Tikes!” he said, and gave up on any effort to be polite. He punched his fist through the door, opened the bolt, dragged the door to one side* and scrambled out. In horror he saw the flames dancing within the office, heard the mortals upstairs begin to shout.

 

He was across the courtyard in less than the blink of an eye, and yanked the office door off its hinges.

 

“Good evening,” said the parrot as it walked out and past him, its little claws going tick tick tick on the flagstones. Lewis gaped down at it before looking up to see the first flames rising around Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet.

 

He was never certain afterward just what he did next, but what he was doing immediately after that was running down the street with the mummy case once again balanced on his head, in some pain as his hair smoldered. He heard the rattle of a motorcar overtaking him, and Lady Kiu slammed on the brakes.

 

“You’re late,” she said. Lewis tossed Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet into the back seat of the Vauxhall and dove in headfirst after her, not quite getting all the way in before Lady Kiu let out the clutch, downshifted, stepped on the gas again and they sped away.

 

“I’m sorry!” Lewis said, when he was right side up again. “All sorts of things went wrong—most unexpectedly—and—”

 

“You idiot, you’ve gotten grease on the seats,” snarled Lady Kiu.

 

“Well, I’m sorry it isn’t attar of roses, but I’ve had a slightly challenging time!” Lewis replied indignantly, clenching his fists.

 

“Don’t you dare to address an Executive Facilitator in that manner, you miserable little drone—”

 

“Oh, yeah? I’ve got pretty good programming for a drone, your Ladyship. I can perform all kinds of tasks a Facilitator is supposed to do herself!”

 

“Really? I can tell you one thing you won’t be doing—”

 

“Oh, as though I was ever going to get to do that anyway—”

 

They careened around a corner and pulled up at the waterfront, where Lady Kiu’s yacht was even now on the point of casting off. The Vauxhail’s headlights caught in long beams three burly security techs, waiting by the gangway. They ran forward and two of them seized the mummy case to muscle it aboard. The third, in the uniform of a chauffeur, came to attention and saluted. Lady Kiu flung open the door and stepped out on the running board, as the motor idled.

 

“Take that to the laboratory cabin immediately! We’re leaving at once. You, Galba, take the Vauxhall. Meet us in Alexandria. I want the slime cleaned off the upholstery by the time I see it again. That includes you, Lewis. Move!”

 

“Oh, bugger o—” said Lewis as he climbed from the back seat, his words interrupted as he found himself staring down a rifle barrel.

 

“Where’s the damned mummy case?” said Flinders Petrie.

 

“How’d you get here?” asked Lewis, too astonished to say anything else.

 

“Railway handcar,” said Flinders Petrie, grinning unpleasantly. “The fellaheen found one hidden away the other day and I thought to myself, I’ll just bet somebody’s planning to use this to get to the Nile with stolen loot. So I confiscated the thing. Threw a spanner into your plans, did it?” He had apparently traveled in his pink ballet ensemble, though he’d sensibly put on boots for the journey; his slippers hung around his neck by their ribbons, like a dancer in a painting by Degas. Nor had he come alone; behind him stood Ali and several of the other fellaheen, and they were carrying clubs.

 

“Look, I’m sorry, but you must have realized by now the sarcophagus was a fake!” said Lewis. “What in Jove’s name do you want?”

 

“It may be a fake, but it’s a three-thousand-year-old fake, and I want to know how it was done,” said Petrie imperturbably. “I’m still wearing my insanity defense; so you’d best start talking.”

 

“What is this?” Lady Kiu strode around the motorcar and stopped, looking at the scene in some amusement and much contempt. “Lewis, don’t tell me you’ve broken the heart of an elderly transvestite.”

 

Petrie lifted his head to glare at her, and then his eyes widened.

 

“You’re the woman on the mummy case!” he said.

 

Lewis groaned.

 

“And it’s a smart monkey, too,” said Kiu coolly. She began to walk forward again, but slowly. “Too bad for it.”

 

Lewis scrambled to get in front of her.

 

“Now—let’s be civilized about this, can’t we?” he begged. “Professor, please, go home!”

 

Even Petrie had backed up a step at the look on Kiu’s face, and Ali and the others were murmuring prayers and making signs to ward off evil. Then Petrie dug in his heels.

 

“No!” he said. “No, by God! I won’t stand for this! My life’s work has been deciphering the truth about the past. I’ve had to dig through layers of trash for it, I’ve had to fight the whole time against damned thieves; but if creatures like you have been meddling in history, planting lies—then how am I to know what the truth really is? How can I know that any of it means anything?”

 

“None of it means anything at all, mortal,” said Kiu. “Your life’s work is pointless. There’s not a wall you can uncover that hasn’t got a lie inscribed on it somewhere.”

 

“Stop it, Kiu! Why should we be at odds, Professor?” Lewis said. “My masters could do a lot for you, you know, if you worked for them. Money. Hints about the best places to dig. All you’ll have to do is keep your mouth shut about this embarrassing little incident, you see? The Company could use a genius like you!”

 

“You’re trying to bribe the monkeys? That’s so foolish, Lewis,” said Kiu. “They’re never satisfied with the morsel they’re given. Better to silence them at the outset. Galba, kill the servants first.”

 

Galba, watching in shock from the other side of the motorcar, licked his lips.

 

“Lady, I—”

 

“It’s forbidden, Galba. Kiu, you can’t kill them!” Lewis protested. “You know history can’t be changed!”

 

“It can’t be changed, but it can be forgotten,” said Kiu. “Fact efface-ment, we Facilitators call it.” She looked critically at Petrie. “Mortal brains are so fragile, Lewis. Especially all those tiny blood vessels . . . especially in an old man. If I were to provoke just the right hemorrhage in a critical spot, he might become . . . quite confused.”

 

She reached out her hand toward Petrie, smiling.

 

“No! Stop! God Apollo, Kiu, please don’t damage his mind!” Lewis cried. “Haven’t you scanned him yet? Can’t you see? He’s unique, he’s irreplaceable, you mustn’t do this!”

 

Lady Kiu rolled her eyes.

 

“Lewis, darling,” she said in tones of barely-controlled exasperation, “How many ages will it take you to learn that not one of the wretched little creatures is irreplaceable? Or unique? Nothing is.”

 

“That’s a damned lie,” said Flinders Petrie, from the bottom of his soul, and took aim at her throat with the rifle, though his hands were trembling so badly it was doubtful he’d have hit her.

 

“OH!” cried Lewis suddenly, in a theatrical voice. “Oh, Lady, look out, he’ll damage you!” He launched himself at Kiu and bore her backward. Before she had recovered from her shock and begun to claw at him they were both teetering on the edge of the pier, and then they had gone over into the Nile with a splash. Galba ran to see what was happening in the water. He glanced over his shoulder at the mortals, and then made a conscious choice not to notice what they did. Killing wasn’t in his job description, nor was taking the blame for a bad field decision.

 

Petrie looked at the Vauxhall, still idling.

 

“Khaled, you know how to work these machines, don’t you?”

 

“Yes, sir.” Needing no other hint, Khaled vaulted into the driver’s seat. Ali and another Qufti lifted Petrie between them, as gently as though he were made of eggshell, and set him beside Khaled in the front. The rest of them piled into the back or jumped onto the running boards. Khaled swung the motorcar around and sped off into the ancient night, under the ancient moon, while behind them crocodiles scrambled hastily onto the banks of the ancient Nile. Like Galba, they knew when to stay out of a fight.

 

But as he rode along Petrie stiffened in his seat, for he heard a voice—or perhaps it would be more correct to say that he felt a voice, drifting into his mind from the ether, hanging before his internal eye like a smoke signal.

 

. . . we’ll be in touch, mortal. . .

 

He looked over his shoulder, and shivered.

 

“Khaled, drive faster.”

 

*       *       *

 

The stars were fading and the yacht was well downriver by the time Lewis was sitting in the laboratory cabin, completing the last pass along Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet’s case with a whirring saw. On the floor by his chair, a silver bucket of melted ice slopped gently to and fro with the motion of the river, and the champagne bottle in it rolled and floated.

 

Lady Kiu stood watching him. Both of them wore bathrobes. Lady Kiu merely looked damp and furious, but Lewis looked damp and battered. There were red lines healing on his arms where claw marks had recently been, and one of his eyes was still a little puffy and discolored, suggesting that an hour or two ago he had had a remarkable shiner. Some of his hair seemed to have gone missing, as well. But he was smiling as he heard a crack and then the faint hiss of decompression. The mummy case’s inner seal gave way.

 

“Perfect,” he said, and set down the saw, and with quick skilled hands lifted the lid of the case.

 

“Look! It’s a remarkable body of work!” he chortled. Lady Kiu merely curled her lip, but there was a certain satisfaction in her gaze as she regarded the occupant of the mummy case.

 

On first glance it appeared to be a mummy, neatly wrapped in linen strips white as cream. It was, however, a great deal of rolled papyrus, cunningly laid out to approximate a human form.

 

Lewis reached in with a tiny, sharp pair of scissors and snipped here and there. He lifted out a single scroll, sealed in wax, and looked at the inscription.

 

“The complete text of the Story qf Sinuhe,” he murmured. “Oh, my. And what’s this one? The Book of the Sea People, gosh! And here’s the Great Lament for Tammuz, and . . . this is the True Story qf Enkiddu, and this one appears to be—wait—ah! This is your prize. The Book of the Forces that Repel Matter.”

 

He held up a thick scroll bound twice with a golden band, and Lady Kiu snatched it from him. She looked at it hungrily.

 

“You’ll do the stabilization on this one first,” she ordered, handing it back to him. “It’s the most important. The rest is nothing but rubbish.”

 

“My predecessor doesn’t seem to have thought so,” remarked Lewis. “What a lovely haul! The Hymns to the God Osiris, the Hot Fish Book (racy stuff, that), the Story the Silk Merchants Told Menes. And look here! Opinions of all Peoples on the Creation of the World!”

 

“Manetho was a pointless little drone, too,” said Kiu. “It doesn’t matter; we’ll find private buyers for that stuff. But you’ll have the scroll on antigravity ready to go by the time we reach Alexandria, do you hear me? Averill will be waiting there and it’s got to go straight to Philadelphia with him.”

 

“Yes, Great Queen,” said Lewis, looking dreamily over the scrolls, “Care for a glass of champagne to celebrate?”

 

“Go to hell,” she told him, and stalked to the doorway. There she paused, and turned; all the witchery of charm she had learned in eleven millennia was in her smile, if not in her dead and implacable eyes.

 

“But don’t worry about the mission report, Lewis darling. There won’t be a word of criticism about your performance,” she said silkily. “You’re still such a juvenile, it wouldn’t be fair. There was a time when the mortals impressed me, too. There will come a time when you’re older, and wiser, and you’ll be just as bored with them as I am now. Trust me on this.”

 

She took two paces back and leaned from the waist, bending over him, and ran a negligent hand through his hair. She put her lips close to his ear and whispered:

 

“And when you’re dead inside, like me, Lewis dear, and not until then—you’ll be free. But you won’t care anymore.”

 

She kissed him and, rising, made her exit.

 

Alone, Lewis sat staring after her a moment before shrugging resolutely.

 

He opened the champagne and poured his solitary glass. His hair was already beginning to grow back, and the retina of his left eye had almost completely reattached. And, look! There was the rising sun streaming in through the blinds, and green papyrus waved on the river bank, and pyramids and crocodiles were all over the place. The ancient Nile! The romance of Egypt!

 

He had even been shot at by Flinders Petrie.

 

Lewis sipped his champagne and selected a scroll from the cache. Not The Book of the Forces that Repel Matter; that was all very fascinating in its way, and would in time guarantee that Americans would rediscover antigravity (once they got around to deciphering a certain scroll, long forgotten in a museum basement), but it wasn’t his idea of treasure.

 

He took out the Story qf Sinuhe and opened it, marveling at its state of preservation. Settling back in his chair, he drank more champagne and gradually lost himself in the first known novel. He savored the words of mortal men. The Nile bore him away.