The Time Travelers, Volume 2 (26 page)

Perhaps she really could be a reporter. Then there would be one true thing in her life. She would not entirely be a tissue of lies. “You and I were never introduced,” she said. “I must have your name for my article so that you may receive credit for finding the shaft. I am Miss Camilla Matthews, newspaper reporter from Kansas.”

“Really?” he said with interest. “Tell me about Kansas.”

Camilla had never been west of New York City, so her answers lacked validity, but Strat repeated her words carefully. He would probably carry them around all his life.

“This has been a lovely night,” he said then. “Allow
me to escort you to the tent that Dr. Lightner has arranged for you, Miss Matthews.”

“I still do not know your name, sir.”

“You need not use my name in your article, Miss Matthews.”

She was astonished. “This discovery could be your future.”

He shook his head, not interested in his future.

“What shall I call you then, since I am to stay at your camp for some time?” She extended her hand, firmly and in a masculine fashion, so he would not become confused and think she wanted to lean on him.

“People call me Strat,” he said finally.

The son of the man who had murdered her father shook Camilla’s hand.

III
 
Time to Fear

R
eeds as thick as Annie’s wrist, but unnaturally shaped in triangles—like no plant on earth she had ever heard of—towered around and above her. Lacy fronds and leaves closed out the sky. Fat roots fondled the mud in which they grew, and the mud caught her toes and sucked at her heels.

Birds shrieked. Water lapped. A cloud of purple dragonflies needled past and a frog vaulted out of the water, its wet skin brushing her ankle.

Annie had never known such heat. Sweat poured off her, soaking through her clothes. A white-winged heron rose languidly in front of her, as if half-asleep; as if all creatures, herself included, could not fully waken in this heat.

Gripping the heavy stems—trunks, almost—of the reeds, she tried to find her way out. Out of what? she thought, trying not to sink into terror as she was sinking into mud. Into what?

Leaves as hot as if they had been fried slapped her in the face. The air was so thick with moisture that no
matter how deeply she breathed, she failed to find enough oxygen.

“Strat!” she screamed, for he must be here. The only reason Time had hurled her here—wherever she was—was to find Strat.

Nobody answered.

Huge rotting plants rimmed the edges of deep water. She could find no land, no solid earth. To break through these reeds would take a machete. The clothing bought in hope of an adventure was drenched and stinking and the wonderful shoes full of mud and probably leeches, even now sucking on the bottoms of her feet.

In front of her, the water turned gray, developed slick spots and heaved. Two bulging eyes stared at Annie. A pink mouth as large as a trash can opened up and the beast bellowed, its fat teeth as big as her palm.

When it sank back down, a wave lashed up and soaked Annie to the knees.

A hippopotamus. Not the sweet little blue pottery hippo sold in the museum shop. The real thing. The real hideous and dangerous thing.

Annie thrashed around, screaming for help.

Any help. Any people, from any time.

But only the hippo returned to stare at her.

T
he boy named Lockwood Stratton had never had a fainting spell, nor ever been dizzy, nor ever needed glasses.

Now he seemed to be struggling with all three.

His fingers shivered over the white tablecloth. He concentrated on figuring the tip and putting the bills down. What he had just seen—or not seen—was strange, but more strange was that he had come to the museum at all.

He had no interest in his family background. Any mention of ancestors and he fell asleep or left the room, moaning. And yet when he had read the article about the Egyptian exhibition (he, who never read anything, not even his assignments!), he thought: My ancestor was the photographer at that dig.

His mother would have been thrilled that her son was having a cultural moment.

His father would have been astonished that he even remembered from whom he was descended.

But he had not told them. He had come into the city
alone. Nobody did that. What fun was it to be alone in New York?

Well, I’m not alone now, he said to himself.

He and this Annie Lockwood would go back upstairs and finish seeing the special exhibition. How amazing that she and he shared a name and a history.

“Well, let’s head on back,” he said cheerfully, although he was not cheerful. He was still shaken by the way she had—but it was impossible. He had not seen that, because it hadn’t happened.

“We still have half the exhibition to look at,” he told her.

Nobody answered.

In fact, when he forced himself to raise his eyes from the tablecloth and look around, nobody was there. Not Annie, not the couple arguing at the next table, not even a waiter. The restaurant was empty and quiet. He walked uneasily toward the exit. He saw Annie Lockwood nowhere. She was distinctive, with that falling black hair.

She’s got to be right here, he told himself. Waiting for me in the hall.

But she wasn’t.

He saw the sign for the ladies’ room, so he sat on a bench with some other men and waited patiently. But she didn’t come out.

Great. I’ve lost her. Maybe she lost me, too, and she’s gone back to the exhibition looking for me.

So he trooped back up the Grand Staircase, but she was not there.

He was embarrassed by how upset he was. Had she fallen into his life, full of delight and stories and lovely dark hair he yearned to touch, and he was so boring she just got up and left?

Although what he had seen was not exactly getting up and leaving.

He circled the special exhibition, pausing at the photograph under which he and this Annie Lockwood had met. The photograph seemed different. As if somebody had been added, or subtracted.

Impossible, he said to himself, shaking off a return of the dizziness that had struck in the restaurant.

He heard Annie scream for help, and he swerved, eyes wide open, to see where it had come from, but the room was empty, except for a guard who stared at him with a strange heavy-lidded antique look.

She went downstairs to the regular Egyptian collection, he told himself. I’ll find her at the Temple of Dendur, sitting by the reflecting pool.

P
ankh poled the little skiff through the papyrus reeds while Renifer sang. Fat pads of lotus swirled by, while brick-red swallows dipped and swerved in their quest for bugs. The hoopoe, a bird Renifer loved beyond all others, followed them, jumping from one papyrus frond to the next. Once she saw the snout of a crocodile, and, distantly, she heard the shrieks of baboons.

Renifer had had the servants put together a picnic basket and she fed Pankh dates and they drank sweet fig juice from the same bowl. She offered him cold duck and he nibbled the meat right down to her fingers. They dipped bread in salted oil and shared a block of cheese.

Twice he kissed her, and the reed boat trembled as they fought for balance, both physical and emotional. He was so handsome. When she looked at Pankh, she could think of nothing but marriage and the joy it would bring. Father, however, had lost his joy in the coming event. He was quiet. He was, in fact, fearful.

What could it mean?

Marriage must not be entered into lightly. She must
be sure of Pankh, and he of her. So Renifer said to him, “We must talk of important things.”

He had to laugh at the idea that girls had important things in their lives. He poled into the swamp until the papyrus towered above them, six and eight and ten feet of strong triangular stalks, the wide flat heads darkening the sun.

“You are the most beautiful girl in Egypt,” said Pankh. “I am all that is important to you. I will give you everything.”

“But what I want, Pankh, is the truth. Tell me what is between you and Father.”

“That is between men, Renifer. Men make choices in life. Your father has made his. He will live with them or he will die with them. It is not your place to consider truth or lack of truth. It is your place to obey. Yesterday you obeyed your father; from now on, you will obey me.”

Renifer had stopped listening to him. She was watching the most amazing terrifying thing she had ever seen. A spirit was materializing before her. First there was mist. Then shape. Then color and movement.

It was a
ka
.

Renifer had known all her life, and worshiped the fact, that the
ka
returned one day to the body. That was why it was necessary to save the corpse. Without a body, no
ka
could find its way home. But she and Pankh were deep within a jungle of papyrus. There could be no body buried here. The
ka
was lost.

Renifer could think of nothing more dreadful. She
prayed that the
ka
would depart without touching them. Its shape was thickening now, and taking on human form, creating its own body, here in the papyrus! Renifer gazed in awe and terror.

Pankh, realizing he had lost his audience, turned to look where she looked.

“It’s a lost
ka
,” whispered Renifer, so frightened she could not think what god to call upon.

But the
ka
saw them and cried out.

“Hetepheres,” whispered Pankh. He fell to his knees and the reed boat, fortunately stable and hard to sink, shuddered under the weight of his collapse.

How could it be the
ka
of Hetepheres? wondered Renifer. Why would the name Hetepheres even enter Pankh’s mind? She has been dead for a year. Besides, the queen was buried so well and so richly. If ever a
ka
had a good place to return to, it is the queen’s tomb.

“Go home!” Pankh yelled at the
ka
. “Get away from us!”

But if it were a
ka
, it did not appear Egyptian. It came closer, and the tears it wept were real tears. It smelled bad, as foreigners did.

Renifer decided to treat it as she would a sacred animal—an ibis, or a cow dedicated to Hathor. The first thing was to feed it. She held out a date in the palm of her hand and in her other hand, a cup of fig juice, although it was doubtful that a creature so primitive would know how to drink from a cup, any more than a cow would.

But the creature seized the cup, drinking noisily, and
then bit down hard on the date. It seemed astonished that the date contained a pit and spat the whole thing out. Renifer gave the creature bread instead, and it consumed the bread like a wild dog. Then it stood panting and whimpering.

Pankh had calmed down. “I don’t think it’s a
ka
,” he said. “Maybe a slave girl in the dress of her native land? She has run away, perhaps, and is trying to hide in the papyrus swamp.”

How frightening to be lost here! Papyrus was delicate with arching fronds, forming hieroglyphics of their own against the brown Nile and the blue sky. But millions of them … mile upon mile of them … and they interlaced like prison walls. Feet sank into mud and roots clung to ankles and crocodiles sprang out of dark water. No wonder the poor thing was frightened.

Its clothing was stranger than Renifer had seen even in the slave bazaar. Egyptians did not normally have slaves. Their servants were not sold in streets. Slaves were prisoners of war, and came from distant places that must be thrashed until they understood Egyptian superiority.

But Pankh was correct about the creature being female, and probably also that it was foreign, for its skin was as pale as bleached linen. It looked unhealthy to Renifer. Its hair was very long and must be very hot.

The creature tried to grab the pole with which Pankh pushed the little boat through the reeds but he jerked it out of her reach. “Pankh!” said Renifer severely. “We have to rescue her.”

“No, we don’t. It isn’t a pet,” said Pankh. “Don’t touch it.”

Renifer paid no attention to him. “It’s all right,” called Renifer, reaching toward the creature. “You may get in the boat with us. I’m going to take you home and bathe you. Don’t be afraid. We won’t leave you in the swamp.”

Renifer held out her arms and the girl came, and Renifer felt its heartbeat, the heat of its skin and the wet of its tears.

Pankh kept the boat pole between himself and the pale creature. “Her skin is the color of a worm from under a rock,” he said in distaste. “Perhaps that’s the color of a returning spirit.”

“Now, Pankh. You just said she was an escaping slave. She cannot be both.” Renifer coaxed the girl to sit in the bottom of the boat. She picked out a sweet pastry and the creature ate it, but refused the beer, which looked fine to Renifer, although maybe it needed to be strained again. Nile beer was rather thick. “The gods have sent her to us, Pankh. They even made you cry out the name of Hetepheres. She is not a
ka
, but perhaps sent by the queen’s
ka
! I cannot imagine the purpose. But soon the gods will reveal all. Our task will be made clear to us.”