Cycle of Nemesis (16 page)

The thoughts from the flame-twins hurried on, telling me that they could return me to my own time, at the moment of time at which Khamushkei the Undying had first erupted into our lives—for my comrades too, could be reunited. Asking about those unfortunate Baghdad policemen I understood they, too, would be returned to their own accustomed time and place.

I made a small adjustment, asking that we be transferred not to the airplane over the middle east but to the safe familiarity of George Pomfret’s room.

A last look around the Time Vault, a quick glance up those ebony steel steps to the metal curtain hanging in menacing folds over the secrets and horrors beyond, and I was ready. I nodded my head, and I understood the
flam
e-twin*!, Shoshusu and Mummusu, offspring of Khamushkei the Undying and Anklo the Desired, to say thank you—and then the violet shell enveloped me and the world swayed and—
“It’s Bert! Bert! Where the hell have you been?”

“I haven’t quite been there,” I said, looking about at Pomfret’s room, where my globe still showed just split open. “But almost.”

Pomfret seized my hand. Lottie, whose ravishing face showed the red-eyed and lumpy ugliness of fair-skinned women who have been crying, ran over to kiss me. They had been back some time, dispatched by the flame-twins, not understanding why they were here back in their own familiar time. Hall Brennan sat at the table, one hand supporting his head, sunk low, his other hand gripped into a fist and hanging stiffly at the end of his arm, just above the carpet.

Lottie burst into tears again.

Charlie, as ugly as ever, rattled across with a fresh box of tissues.

Pomfret shook his head. I looked about the comfortable room—and I understood.

“Oh, no!” I groped for a chair and sat down.

Remembrance of all I had been through dimmed. So we had saved the world. So we had shut an insatiable monster back in its tomb. But the sacrifice had been demanded and taken. We had paid our price.

Stiffly I stood up and walked across to Brennan. I put a hand on his shoulder. Then I took it away. Presumption in grief nauseates me.

But Brennan looked up. His face was stone.

“You know, Bert?”

I nodded. “We managed to shut Khamushkei the Undying back into his Time Vault,” I told him. “But—”

“That’s good.” He spoke with careful articulation as though a second’s lack of attention would release a gush of words he could not control. “That’s very good. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Hall. You wanted it—for everybody.”

“Is the Time Beast shut up safely this time?” asked George Pomfret.

I shook my head as the phone rang and Charlie answered, to return and say, “There will be an inquest on the body of the girl found in the chest. We are all asked to be there.”

“I’ll be there,” said Hall Brennan. “I want to see her again.”

Somewhere beneath the sands Khamushkei the Undying waits until the strength of the curses fails. Then once more he will try to burst free to ravish the world.

But that will be the problem of the people living here in seven thousand years’ time.

It will, won’t it?