Star of Egypt (10 page)

“I’ll thank you not to giggle at my divine form, madam. So that’s what little Egyptian boys are made of.”

“One more thing,” she said.

“Oh,
no,
” said Slayton. “I think I’ve heard this before.”

“Will you
listen
, please. It’s not what you think. It’s
ren
. Your name.” She grasped his hand across the table. “Whatever your name really is, Ben.”

“Like cats,” Slayton changed the topic, once again reinforcing his awareness of the things going on around him, keeping his
body in perpetual condition yellow—alert, but relaxed.

“Cats are said to have three names: the name by which people call them, the name by which other cats call them, and the private
name that cats call themselves, which no one ever finds out.”

“And which are you, Benjamin? Benjamin Rademacher.” She sounded ill at ease saying it, as though some muse told her it was
not real.

“I’m the man getting us the hell out of here, because you and I have had exactly enough to drink, and we both have frightful
workloads to face tomorrow which must not be compromised.”

“You’re right. But tonight isn’t finished yet, either. I’d be a sad specimen of a woman if I dragged you out and liquored
you up and then spent the night alone, cataloging the various parts and names of various people.” She was still smiling.

“Verily, the road to lunacy.”

“Verily, sir. If you don’t make love to me of a passionate nature, I shall become quite cross with you.” She assumed a stern
expression. “Don’t argue. You’re doing your job. You’re protecting the Seth-Olet exhibit and keeping the members of the tour
happy.”

“Well, since you put it that way…”

In Washington, Shauna Ramsey had wound up with a suite, which to her was a vast improvement over the cramped hotel room she
had shared with Maggie Leiber in Baltimore, or the confined cabin aboard the
Star of Egypt
. She told Slayton so.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but
I’m
pleased,” she said, rolling toward Slayton on the huge king-sized bed. She was luxuriously wound up in the sheet, almost
mummified, her hair in glorious disarray, her body smelling warm and familiar. She pulled herself onto Slayton’s chest and
propped her head on a fist.

“This place is like Haskell’s,” she said. “The service is terrific. Smashing. Etcetera.”

“This is intermission. The show’s not over yet,” Slayton said from the back of his throat.

“Are you going to talk to me now, sir?”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been waiting all evening for you to tell me what on earth is bothering you. Are you going to keep playing diversionary
games, or are you going to let me help you a little bit?”

It did not take Slayton long to ponder her offer. “There is a man, part of your tour. My department—which is not important—wants
him. So far he could be anyone on the tour, but I’m fairly convinced he’s one of those faceless Arab workers.”

Naturally she was interested—she had gotten what she wanted. “Who is he, Ben? What has he done?”

Slayton’s eyes were focused in the darkness somewhere beyond the foot of the vast bed. “He’s an international terrorist. He’s
killed maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred people by himself. He’s been responsible for the deaths of hundreds more. His
students and stunt gangs have murdered thousands in the name of terrorism.

“He came here on the
Star of Egypt
. He got here just in time to supervise the unloading of what I’m sure are smuggled weapons. He has eyes on the President
of the United States, and I am convinced he’ll use the tour to get to the President. I have to find out who he is and stop
him. And so far, not too much luck. But I know he’s here. And I’m going to get him. I hope he’s ready.”

Her expression took on tones of serious shock. “Ben…” The words failed her for a moment. “Good god, I didn’t have any idea…”

“And no, I’m not kidding.”

They remained in silence for a few moments, each assimilating the new patterns of thought. Though Slayton’s new trust in Shauna
was elementary, he was convinced she could offer some tidbit, some inconsistency which would unlock the puzzle for him. Anything
she could call forth was important. The details on the nine components of mortals was a fundamental part of Rashid Haman’s
ancestral past—perhaps he was tapped into that mythology somehow, perhaps he could be predicted, Slayton theorized, along
the lines of genetic vice. Damn it all, this was his own specialty! In a word, his calling was troubleshooting. Defeat from
someone like Haman was unacceptable.

Shauna sensed that what Slayton needed most were details, raw material with which to work, like the background research, or
Wilma’s dockside photography.

“Those tampered boxes suddenly seem awfully important,” she said. “You’ll see them tomorrow, I suppose.”

“Tonight,” said Slayton. “I think now is the best time for this sort of thing.”

It took her no time at all. “Agreed,” she said, pulling herself up and kissing him again. “We’ll get back to this later.”

She began to bounce off the bed, but Slayton caught her arm in the dark. “Wait a minute.”

“What…?”

“Shhh!” Slayton was scanning the room furiously in the dim light. He pulled her by the arm, back onto the bed, laying his
palm against her in a silent entreaty to stay right where she was as he slowly rose, naked and vulnerable.

She saw him, the bluish glow through the closed curtain illuminating his tight, hard-muscled frame. He took slow and cautious
paces, head darting around at what she imagined might be small noises that perhaps she could not even hear. He was near the
foot of the bed, his arms extended, fingers spread, treading carefully.

What Shauna Ramsey saw next must have looked pretty amazing.

Ben Slayton seemed to shoot up and out, straight up into the air, then flying out sideways, flipping, coming down on his shoulders
a good distance from the bed, and rolling efficiently to a combat crouch some ten feet from the bed. She started to move,
but his voice rang out in the darkness.

“Stay right where you are, Shauna! Don’t move a muscle!”

He smacked the light switches in the far corner of the suite’s bedroom with the heel of his hand, and at once lights blazed
on near the door, on the desk, and beside the bed. At the same time, at the foot of the bed, Shauna saw a flat black, reptilian
snout poke tentatively up. It weaved skittishly, a forked tongue of pale pink underlaid with black mottles, testing the air.

Her jaws cemented together and her entire body tried to shrink back against the headboard. It was a massive effort just to
turn her head because of the trembling that had overcome the muscles in her neck. The thing was close enough for her to discern
the square patterns of scales surrounding its nostrils and the almost imperceptible juncture of its mouth and jaw. The tongue
slithered in and out of the tiny gap below the nostrils. Within that mouth were the fangs, short and lethal.

Slayton cast frantically around for a weapon, an object with which to put distance between himself and the huge snake now
partially on the floor and climbing up the bed. The damned thing was a monster, black as death and fully as big around as
the wine bottle which lay somewhere on the floor to Shauna’s left, now empty.

He tried to seize the desk lamp, but it was bolted to the table. The desk chair was heavy and unwieldly, but there was no
time, and it was the only object at hand. Most of Shauna’s luggage and possessions were unpacked in the adjacent room of the
suite.

He rushed across the room, thinking two things, and fighting to balance them. The swing would be all biceps, he would instinctively
extend his arms full-length no matter how he planned it, since his body was reflexively intimidated by the sheer size of the
creature before him. That, and considering the girth of the thing and the musculature that size implied, the impact of the
chair might not faze it too much.

But it was slithering closer to the terrified Shauna, and that gave him the adrenalin he needed.

Slayton swung the chair in a sweeping arc across the top of the bed. His charge had brought his feet within inches of the
coiled body still on the floor.

He lucked out, clipping the snake’s massive skull with one of the lower chair legs, propelling it partially off the big bed.
Momentum betrayed him, and he followed the heavy chair, losing his balance and falling sideways onto the bed. The mattress
bounced thickly. As he fell, tilted at an angle, he saw the snake’s head rise in mid-air, recovering from the force of the
blow. It began to crank around toward him.

Slayton used what falling momentum he had left to push himself further up on the bed, far enough to grasp Shauna’s arm in
a viselike grip and employ an elementary push-and-pull judo tactic to throw her clear of the bed on the side opposite the
snake. She cried out in pain as her arm was unceremoniously wrenched, but now she was clear, scrambling naked toward the door
connecting the rooms of the suite.

For Slayton, it was too late. If he jumped, his leg would be pegged by a pair of fangs. Was cobra venom the type that turned
your brain to jelly, or the kind that paralyzed your nervous system, suffocating you? It did not matter. The hood was aggressively
extended full-out. The head, like a tank turret, weaved for a good strike position mere feet distant. Slayton could not take
his eyes off the thing.

His right arm scooped up a pillow and thrust it forward just in time to deflect the first strike. Slayton had not seen it
coming—it was so
fast
—but his body could not remain frozen. The serpent gaffed into the pillow and instantly withdrew, resuming its striking stance,
looking for a new opening, like a hungry boxer.

Slayton held the pillow defensively, trying to cover the maximal striking area. When it lanced out again, there was a microsecond
in which Slayton knew the strike was coming, and he reacted instantly. As the head blurred into motion, he managed to swat
it to the left by swinging the pillow.

Like a taut, expensive armature, the head began to rebound, almost arrogantly, convinced of its structural superiority. But
by that time Slayton’s other hand had come into play, one-two, and tossed the sheet over its head as the third strike came,
and the snake, momentarily disoriented, landed near Slayton’s thigh.

He clamped his hand down on the shape under the sheet, fervently hoping he was close enough to the head to avoid it coiling
double and biting his hand. All bets were off.

If he could not maintain a stranglehold on the thrashing head and body, it would be the end.

Holding its head under the sheet, feeling the creature bunch and writhe in his grip, Slayton came to his knees and rolled
off the far side of the bed, dragging the snake with him, stretching its body rigid and straight for a brief second. He thumped
onto the floor. Coils looped over the bed and twined around Slayton’s naked legs as the incredibly powerful thing flopped
around in his grip, which, thanks to the sheet, was losing ground fast.

The empty wine bottle was wedged beneath his leg. He found the neck and yanked it out.

He pushed the shape down to the carpet as the coils cinched tightly around his legs, curling around his groin like a deadly
harness. The bobbing head beneath the sheet moved free as he sacrificed grip for swinging force and brought the butt of the
bottle up and over, smashing it down onto the snake’s head.

The movement caused the bottle to glance off to one side, stunning, but not stopping the reptile.

Slayton slammed the flat of his hand against the shape and bashed it three quick times against the carpet, an animal grunt
escaping him each time. There was a liquid crunch, and the sheet began to darken in his hands. Slayton kept swinging and smashing
until the sound was like someone striking a wet sponge, and then he fell backward, slumping against the wall in the narrow
space between it and the bed, the black coils imprisoning his legs and privates slacking their pressure in death.

His hands were covered with blood, his body glazed with sweat. He lay in the corner, panting, trying to stabilize. The inky
blotches on the sheet expanded and bordered into each other, forming a glowing blossom of red.

Shauna stood petrified, her arms bracketing the door frame. “Ben?
Ben!
”

“Yeah,” Slayton said, voice hoarse, limply waving a hand in the air. His other hand covered his eyes. The blood, thinned by
his sweat, trickled down his face. He could smell it.

Once, with Art Stannard and Gabriel Whitman in Texas, Slayton had played the game known as rattlesnake tag. The. object was
to grab a rattler tossed at you by someone else in the circle, grab it by the tail and swing it around, and then toss it at
someone else. You had to catch it in flight. Skill determined which end of a spinning snake you might grab. The rattlers were
sometimes six feet long.

The dead thing on the floor was well over twelve feet long, and twice as big around as the rattlers Slayton recalled.

He rose unsteadily, pushing the snake away. He weaved, crawled over the surface of the bed, and fell on the floor.

Shauna’s paralysis broke, and she ran to help him.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, in a small voice.

She helped him get to his feet and led him to the bathroom. She wanted to stay as far away from the bed area as possible.
She closed the door, hugging the wall as Slayton gave up his magnificent Haskell’s dinner to the Washington sewer system.
When she heard the sound of water running, she reopened the door. Steam was filling up the bathroom.

He turned and took her in his arms and they held onto each other for a moment. He blew out his breath finally and said, “I
hope that wasn’t a pet of yours, or something.”

The sound she made was half laugh, half sob. She grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and kissed him.

There are no people so life-embracing as those who have faced death together. Slayton and Shauna made fervent love in the
tub, drenching the entire bathroom. And then again.