Altered America (22 page)

             
But something else, also, something he could not place....
and, in his
heart
—but then he woke up, sweating.  Just like when he'd last dreamed—and more than
just
sweating.

             
He shivered now in his room's air-conditioned cool, remembering something else of his dream this time.  A task she would have him do.

              The first of many...

* * *

              The tasks were not onerous—w
eird
was more like it—but then as August became September with its Autumn Equinox, September-October, October-November, the weirdness outside in Memphis increased as well.  One man, he heard, had even built a boat, but up on the bluffs above the river.  Because, he had said, when the dead rose to meet their Lord—
Abraham's
God, he said, not those of Hut-ka-Ptah—so would the great Mississippi rise with them.

             
And outside, as well, the preachers abounded.  Sometimes even fighting for corners to pass out their leaflets;
physical
violence from these men who would be of God.

             
There was wrestling in the streets, and it was getting nasty—one man he saw bit off another's ear!

             
While for him, well, his tasks were weird too, but only in small ways.  After August's dream, he went to a store that sold sporting equipment and bought a bowstring, took it back to the Pink Palace and passed it over the case of bows he had seen, then brought it to the Pyramid's "Ptah" rooms and rubbed it over the lintels above their doors.

             
Then, another time—this task almost
normal
considering what others around him were doing—he found a store that sold empty gallon jars.  The store was almost out of them—others were hoarding them to fill with water on New Year's Eve, in case the water supply failed the next day—but, for him, it was only a matter of arranging them around the walls of his bedroom, his living room, and kitchen.

             
Whenever he completed a task, always the dream would return, but in the dreams he would be rewarded--never gazing on Sekhmet's face, she always turning it from him when they embraced.  He, at her orders, always with eyes closed when she let him kiss her—but penetrating, inward...  inward...  straight as an arrow from altar to corridor, until, at last, with the temple lamps blown out, he entered
her
chamber...

* * *

              He woke again, with the latest task in mind that he was to perform for her.  Shivering as always, but this time it was already well into the month of December. 

             
Outside, he saw mice—or one mouse, anyway—scampering out through the door of his building. 

             
He wondered—had his neighbor brought it in with his wood?  Mice were like that, he knew, creeping into the narrowest places.

             
As for his latest errand, he went once more to the zoo, tracing his steps back to where the big cats were housed.  Finding a tuft of fur, knowing, somehow, it was that of a lioness, he took it back to the Pyramid—that great metal behemoth with the Pink Palace east and south of it, the Memphis Zoo almost midway between them, describing a line that was curved like a bow's form—and found a place where it could be hidden, not in the Ptah rooms this time but the
Wonders
exhibit area.  It was where the statue of Rameses itself might have stood, had the Pyramid been built in time.

             
Rameses, who would not even have been born a full millennium after the tombs at Giza had been sealed.

             
That night, his task accomplished, he saw her
face
.

             
"Know me now, Henry Todd," Sekhmet purred to him as, slowly, she turned, lifting her wig from a head close-cropped in the Egyptian manner.  Except—
Yeats had it wrong!
—this woman's body was still goddess-formed, but its head was the yellow-furred shape of a lioness.  Yet sleek and smooth, too, no "rough beast's" head, and blending perfectly into its neck muscles.  Cat-like and willowy.  Alluring.  Sinuous.  Kissing him now with his eyes still wide open, his lips also parted.  The tongue that caressed his own wholly a
woman's
tongue.

             
And in his heart he knew, somewhat at least, of what he had not quite realized before, that which he could not place:
Sekhmet's reputation.

             
He, who abhorred violence.  He, who had only gone to watch the wrestling that night six months before—
hating every moment while he was there, hating the
blood
even though he knew it was faked
—because he had just lost the woman he
really
loved—y
et, who loved Sekhmet too!

             
Shivering, he woke. 

             
He tried to call Melissa on the phone, fumbling the number pad.  Swallowing his pride, he tried to call her.  While, outside, Christmas lights flickered and glowed, even during the daytime. 

             
It was the twentieth day of December, five days to Christmas—the birth of a God not even imagined when Sekhmet and Ptah reigned—twelve days to New Year's Day.  Two days before December's full moon and the Winter Solstice, both days together, except he knew somehow that, back in the time of Men-neferu-Meryre—something to do with the Earth's procession—the Solstice might have been two days earlier.

             
The first day of winter, beginning, as the Egyptians reckoned it, the month of
Tybi
.

             
Something there rang a bell.  Something that Sekhmet had told him, but, like that first dream six months ago, something that he could not quite remember.

             
So he tried, once more, to call Melissa, getting a message this time on her machine saying that she was gone for the holidays—visiting friends in California—but would be back January second.  But, if he wished, her roommate would call him back...

             
He did not wish that.  He knew her e-mail address, so he e-mailed her instead, hoping that she might still be reading it, even if she was on vacation.  He begged her forgiveness—it was all his fault—but now, he said, something
real
weird had happened.  He wanted to know, in that she had an interest in Egypt, if she knew anything about the goddess Sekhmet. 

             
And then, as an afterthought, he added: 
And what do you know about the Egyptian calendar back then—some month they called Tybi?

* * *

              Then, on New Year's Eve, the eleventh day of Tybi, he received an answer: 
Catching up on my e-mail
, it started.  Then, coyly, it added,
Is Sekhmet your girlfriend now?  You'd better drop her—she's a married woman—and anyway you wouldn't like her.  According to ancient Egyptian legend she once was summoned by Ra, the sun god, to conquer some men who had rebelled against him.  But she so enjoyed the work of killing that she wouldn't stop, until the gods themselves became afraid that she'd destroy the whole human race.  And the only way they finally got her to stop was to trick her, by filling big jugs with pomegranate juice and beer so, when she saw how red it looked, she thought it was blood and drank it down, and got so drunk from it she couldn't kill anymore.  Some New Year's party, huh?

             
Anyhow, about Tybi, that would be this month—New Year's month too—except that their calendar wasn't like ours.  Rather, what they had were like scrolls of lucky and unlucky days, so you'd know when to go out or start new things and stuff.  Sort of like astrology these days, except, as for Tybi, I seem to remember there being a saying—something about an extremely bad luck day—so look, I know we had a fight and all, but I'm glad you got in touch, so maybe you should stay home tonight, okay?  And meantime, if I can find that saying—I'll look for it now—I'll send another e-mail.

             
He
did
stay home, not because of his ex-girlfriend's warning—or even that she seemed to hint that, maybe, they might get back together—but because, when he opened his door, he was spooked by a mouse... and then more than just one mouse, scampering down the hallway rug.

             
The lights were winking out—he saw first on the Internet, then on the TV—in Asia and Russia.  Even in places where there weren't computers.  And Europe in darkness, too, as midnight crept west across the ocean.  To Nova Scotia—the Atlantic Time Zone.  New Brunswick and Newfoundland.  Israel long since in blackness by then, of course, but it was not Bethlehem
this
beast slouched towards.

             
Then on TV the ball in New York's Times Square—Eastern Standard Time!—starting its own slow descent into darkness.  People there panicking.  

             
Then, outside, he heard sounds of screaming too, even through the glass of his bedroom window... and something else, also—the sound of a cat's roar.

             
A lion he'd heard at the zoo.

             
Throwing his drapes back, he peered out the window, at lights winking out in downtown Memphis in its Central Time Zone, not from computer-based loss of power—it wasn't yet time for
that
, not by some minutes yet—but people rioting.  Stones thrown at streetlights, fires breaking out in some of the buildings, while...

             
He saw the
Pyramid
.  As if with preternatural sight, as if not in the distance, but so close that he could almost touch it.  Its sides rough and furry—not stainless steel smoothness, but covered with mice!  Streaming out of its air vents!  Anywhere, everywhere.  Any space they could find!

             
And at his feet, the jugs—the gallon jars he'd bought, lining the walls of his apartment.  Filled now with a red fluid that smelled of fruit juice, but also of beer, and something else as well.

             
His computer blinked once more to brightness with Melissa's message, her final e-mail to him:

             
I found it, Henry.  That thing about Tybi—and it's about
mice
too, just like you said you saw last June when we had that fight over it.  "Hostile, hostile, hostile is the 12th Tybi.  Avoid seeing a mouse on this day; for it is the day when Ra gave the order to Sekhmet."

             
Then the computer winked out, as did the other lights in the city of Men-neferu-Meryre, but he did not need its glowing to see outside.  A river of mice now, coursing the streets below, led by a woman with a lioness-formed
head
, her eyes rolling in blood lust.  But graceful—becoming her.  Curve-formed below the neck, a woman's body, a
goddess's
body, its thin, transparent robe plastered to gore-soaked flesh.  Mice trailing after, to gnaw at the bones of her leavings. 

             
An
army
of mice now!

             
And, far in the east, no mere sandstone Sphinx he, Sekhmet's husband followed.

Thomas Edison Visits Selwood

by Martin T. Ingham

              The stagecoach was packed.  The deluxe carriage wasn't all that spacious, and a dozen passengers with all of their luggage was enough to reach its maximum capacity.  It was only about ten miles from the Yucca Junction train station to Selwood, so the ride was tolerable for those determined to make the trip.

             
Clarence Davison was used to cramped accommodations.  The past years had seen him traveling in all sorts of tight spaces.  Steamboat cabins, railcar sleeper compartments, and various holes in the wall had been his home on many occasions.  Such was the life of a circuit preacher, spreading the good word to the populace.

             
This latest trip was a break from that hectic life, as he came to see an old friend.

             
It had been many years since Clarence had seen his mentor, the right and moral pastor, Matthew Jameson, and he was hoping for a warm homecoming.  The man was as close to a father as Clarence had in this world, and he hoped to make him proud.  Though, that might prove difficult on some fronts.  Doctrine was a tricky thing, and biblical interpretations had made many a good man split from friends and family.

             
Clarence hoped it would not be an issue.  There was no need for his mentor to know he held differing views.  So long as he kept his mouth shut and didn't make any rash moves, the old man need never know of his views on magic.

             
Looking around inside the coach, Clarence examined the faces of his fellow passengers.  They were a well-groomed bunch, though they all had the scent of their own humanity upon them.  Most of them had been traveling for days, no doubt, and trains weren't noted for their baths.  Clarence wouldn't have noticed the smell, had he not spent the night at Yucca Junction's Nexus Hotel, which provided fine cleaning services.  A good scrubbing and a freshly laundered suit took away the stink off his own body, and let him sense the scent of others.

             
However, the sandy-haired fellow sitting beside him wasn't stinking up the place at all, and there was something strangely familiar about him.  The stern-faced man didn't seem the kind to crack a smile all that often.  He looked about thirty, with smooth hands and a quality suit that identified him as a businessman or educated professional of some sort, which could explain his attention to hygiene.

             
Clarence let his curiosity get the better of him, and he felt the urge to introduce himself.  With a slight adjustment of his body, he managed to present a hand for the other man to shake.  The clean-cut man shook the offered appendage silently with a strong grip.

             
"So, what brings you out to Selwood?" Clarence asked, hoping to get some information out of the silent man.

             
"Business, and an old friend," the man said.

             
"What a coincidence.  It just so happens I'm traveling to see an old friend, myself," Clarence said.

             
"Really?" the man said, disinterested.

             
"Well, more than a friend, actually.  The man practically raised me after my father died.  It'll be good to be back."

             
"Not your first trip to Selwood, then," the man mentioned.

             
"No, I've been here a few times," Clarence replied.  "Though, I mostly grew up in Kansas.  We didn't move out to Nevada until seventy-six.  I only spent a year in Selwood before going back east to college, and haven't been there since."

             
"College?  You wouldn't happen to be wrangling for a job offer, would you?" the man asked suspiciously.

             
"No," Clarence said.  "Why ever would you think that?"

             
A mustached man sitting across from Clarence cleared his throat and caught the young man's attention.  "Hey, buddy, don't you know who this guy is?"

             
"No," Clarence said, adding a questioning look to his reply.

             
"That's Thomas Edison."

             
The name didn't escape Clarence, though at first he thought it must be some sort of joke.  What would one of the world's foremost inventors be doing out here, riding the stagecoach to a town like Selwood?  It might be the Nye County Seat, but it was still something of a backwater.  Famous folks didn't spend weeks on trains and coaches just for a casual visit.

             
"It must be some friend you're visiting," Clarence remarked.

             
"You could say that," Edison said.  "You really had no idea who I was?"

             
"No, sir," Clarence replied, hiding his embarrassment.

             
"Then you're the odd sort of fellow who likes to chat-up strangers," Edison said, looking at him funny.  "There aren't many types of businesses where that comes as a prerequisite."

             
"I guess not, but mine does," Clarence mentioned, regaining a carefree expression.  "I'm a country preacher, spreading the good word."

             
Edison stiffened his lips and shook his head.  "I'm sorry," he replied.

             
"For what?" Clarence asked, feeling the man's disdain like a palpable substance drifting through the air.

             
"Sorry that you've chosen to throw your life away on such nonsense," Edison said, turning his face to the window.

             
The words slapped Clarence like ice water, and they seemed to have a similar effect on a few of the other passengers.  Though none of the others said a word about it, their sour expressions spoke volumes.

             
"Spreading the truth of God is never a waste," Clarence said, unwilling to let the comment go unchallenged.

             
Edison sighed and turned his gaze back from the passing scenery, to study his sudden antagonist.  "The days of biblical superstition are nearing an end.  No educated man can deny the truth of science."

             
"You profess that both are equally exclusive, but they're not," Clarence added quickly.  "Yes, I am an educated man, and thereby I recognize the truth; science is every bit the creation of God.  It is divine will that we seek to further understand His creation through the physical arts, for it serves to bring us closer to Him."

             
"Nonsense," Edison said unwilling to budge.  "How can a rational mind truly believe that a being massive enough to forge this world of ours would in any way resemble our limited human existence, or care about us in the least?"

             
"You say God doesn't love us?"

             
"I say that we are less than ants compared to such an entity, and to think
it
cares for us more than that is childish fantasy, at best."

             
It was not something Clarence had expected to hear, though he'd run into a few such unbelievers over the years.  There were always men who thought more of themselves, or less of God, to suit their own beliefs.  The philosophies of Marx and Darwin were setting unholy trends within educated circles... but to hear it from someone as bright and progressive as Thomas Edison?  It was enough to shake anyone's faith in mankind.

             
There was no sense arguing any further.  A man of Edison's stature was not likely to bend to the brief pontifications of a young preacher.  Still, Clarence wasn't going to lay down in defeat.  He was a soldier of Christ, and felt called to action.

             
"I'm sorry," Clarence said.

             
"For what?" Edison asked.

             
"That your genius has led you to such an empty existence," Clarence replied.

             
A few of the spectators in the coach smirked at the slight, as Edison glared over at the young man seated next to him.  Clarence maintained a cold, calculating look, feeling this wasn't a time to crack.  This was a test, for certain, and one the Lord most certainly wouldn't let him fail.

             
After studying Clarence's face for a long period of silence, Edison smiled.  He seemed on the verge of laughter, but he never got that far.  Eventually, after grinning and fighting back chuckles, he said, "My life is anything but empty.  I have a wife and children, a company that is on the cutting edge of societal evolution.  I am advancing and improving human civilization unlike anyone else before me, and I really want for nothing.  How can that be called empty?"

             
Clarence ignored the boastful retort and continued to pursue a purchase in the man's soul.  "Material wealth is meaningless without spiritual salvation.  As it says in Matthew, '
what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'
  You can't take it with you."

             
"That's assuming I'm going anywhere," Edison rebutted.  "But, even assuming that wild improbability, what does the hereafter matter now, to those of us who are stuck in the here and now?  I see it as a much better thing to improve the lives of the living than concern myself with the affairs of the dead.  That is my most prevalent concern, and no amount of preaching will turn me away from the ways of progress."

             
Following his lecturing reply, Edison relaxed and stared straight ahead, seeming satisfied with himself.  The conversation came to an end as abruptly as it had begun, leaving the many passengers of the stagecoach in varying degrees of discomfort and annoyance.  When it became apparent that the debate was truly over, the people regained their usual, dispassionate expressions, as they waited to arrive at their destination.

             
Clarence felt he had done all he could for the man, and didn't regret the exchange.  Uncomfortable as it may have been, he knew he'd sowed his seeds this day—if not in Edison, then in the other passengers in the cramped confines.  It felt good to witness, in any circumstance.

             
Despite the heated exchange, Clarence still felt a hint of admiration for Thomas Edison, knowing the man was doing God's work, whether he knew it or not.  Truly, the advancement of science and knowledge was the greatest purpose any man could hope to have, and the chosen vessels for such discovery held many faces.   Edison was truly a man of innovation, worthy of respect above and beyond his flawed humanity.

* * *

              A small crowd was gathered at the Grayson Stage Company on the northern edge of Selwood.  Three coaches were arriving from Yucca Junction, and the welcoming committee was as diverse as the passengers.  A few wives were around to greet their husbands, and a number of businessmen were there to shake hands with their traveling colleagues.  Besides the people with legitimate reasons for being there, a small enclave of onlookers had shown up to lay eyes on a most noted man of merit.

             
Thomas Edison stepped out of the stagecoach and avoided eye contact with the pack of greeters.  He was getting used to the celebrity, as word of his technological wonders continued to spread.  There wasn't a town in America that didn't know his name, and he appreciated the fame.  It was good for business.

             
Meeting the masses wasn't his initial goal on this visit, however.  That could wait a few hours.  What he really wanted—after stretching his legs—was to find the man who had brought him out west to begin with.

             
Scanning the crowd, Edison spotted the man he'd come to see.  The slim, unassuming fellow with thinning hair and a pair of spectacles raised a hand in greeting as the famed inventor approached.

             
"Henry!" Edison shouted, shaking hands with Selwood's senior telegraph operator.  "Henry Currant, it's been too long."

             
"I suppose so, Mr. Edison," Henry replied as the handshake ended.

             
"Is that any way to greet an old friend?  Do me the courtesy of calling me by my first name, at least."

             
"Of course, Thomas," Henry said, seeming a sight intimidated.

             
"What's the matter?" Edison asked.  "Aren't you glad to see me?"

             
"I suppose," Henry said.  "It's been a while, and a lot has changed over the years."

             
"Things may have changed, but not between us," Edison said, straightening up.  "Let's go somewhere more private.  We have a lot of catching up to do."