The Time Travelers, Volume 2 (34 page)

Dr. Lightner fiddled with some shards of pottery on which undeciphered hieroglyphs awaited his expertise. His thumb stroked letters incised thousands of years ago by a scribe. “If you have fallen in love with the young man, Miss Matthews,” he said bravely, “I will do all within my power to assist you in saving him.”

Camilla dropped the handkerchief and all pretense. How gallant he was! And how she agreed that nothing was more beautiful than one person sacrificing for another. “I have fallen in love with you, sir. But I am in a
position to know that the father is truly evil and to extricate the son I do require your utmost assistance.”

Dr. Lightner wrapped her hand tightly in his and kissed the top of it. “Do you mean that?” he whispered. “That you—that you—” The words were too intimate to be repeated.

Camilla nodded.

“Here is a way out then,” he said. He patted her hair and cheeks, afraid to overstep his rights, but too emotional to keep a correct distance. “The British love war so very deeply. The wars in India have run out, and war in the Sudan may end within days, but luckily, war looms in South Africa. Those Dutchmen down there, Boers they call themselves, are trying to throw the British out. Everybody is happy. There’s nothing like a good fight. I shall suggest young Stratton to my British friends as a cameraman. Off he goes to fight the Dutch. Thousands of miles once more between him and his father. This time we shall see that he uses a false name.”

It was perfect! Strat would be saved. On her way back to America, Camilla would disembark in Spain to give Katie money and news. She would tell the truth about her own foul deeds and then she would find the priest of the convent at the hospital, and tell him the truth also. She would get her religion back if she got nothing else, and once home, she would no longer spy for Mr. Duffie. Somehow she would keep her brothers in school, but not that way.

Maybe I really could sell my first article as Strat sold his first picture, she thought, and from there go on to a
splendid career. I shall be a spinster, but with fewer regrets, for I shall shine on my own.

Dr. Lightner stood. “I shall go then, and see how this may be managed.”

Camilla looked into his face and immediately had more, not fewer, regrets. She did not want to be a spinster. She wanted Archibald Lightner. “And the French?” she said, jumping up. “What about their silly accusation?”

“Please, my dear. Sit back down and rest. The heat tired you.”

“I’m over it,” said Camilla crossly. “How will you handle the French?” She opened the tent flap for him instead of the other way around.

He laughed. “I don’t know yet. First, let’s make sure the young man himself will go along with our plan.”

T
he gold sandal had been set upon the dusty table where Dr. Lightner wrote up his notes in the evening. It seemed to Strat that the slipper actually sang: an ancient high quaver, a golden voice from the past. He touched the delicately incised gold rope under which a girl’s toes had once slid.

Strat’s heart actually stopped. It hit his ribs once, with a huge thrust of energy, and then it ceased to beat.

Annie had worn that sandal
.

Around him, the figures and their speech glazed, as raw umber over oils on a painting. The angry men grew solid and still, fixing themselves as people on paper. There was light and shadow and heat. There was not sound.

A camel train appeared on the horizon, like liquid slowly poured over the sand, long black shadows spilled behind.

And Strat spilled out of the picture, falling and tumbling, like the French boys from the top of the Pyramid. His bones smashed against its rocky sides, and Strat could not understand this, because he was not on the
Pyramid, but on the sand. His skin was laid open by the scrape and assault of the stones. His mind broke apart, thoughts scattered like seed from a clumsy hand.

He spun into the vortex of the past. There were faces with him: hideous, unknown others being wrenched through Time.

And then he hit bottom, and it was stone.

T
he members of Dr. Lightner’s dig were turning in circles in the sand, like dogs deciding whether to lie down. The German scholars and the French attaché were puzzled and embarrassed. They could not produce Strat for Dr. Lightner and Miss Matthews.

“Where did you put your son?” Camilla demanded of Mr. Stratton. “Surely you have not already incarcerated him? It was agreed that he would stay upon his honor.”

Mr. Stratton was bewildered and angry. “He was here a moment ago.”

“He ran,” opined the French attaché.

“He couldn’t have,” objected the Yale assistant. “He must be here. We’ll help you look, Miss Matthews.”

But nobody could find Strat. There was not a trace of him.

“He has fled,” said Dr. Lightner sadly.

“Proof of guilt!” said Hiram Stratton gladly.

“Strat said he would put himself under house arrest,”
said Camilla through stiff lips. “He will be back by dark. He gave his word, and I accept that.”

Oh, Strat, she thought, if you are not back …

No man here will forgive you for breaking your word. Even Dr. Lightner may refuse to help you after all.

A
bove Strat spread a sky vast and dark, pierced by a thousand stars and a sliver of moon. Torches burned in tall posts, illuminating pyramid, pillar and stone.

He stood exactly where he had been standing in another time, fifty feet from the causeway. He had arrived at the beginning, when Khufu’s Pyramid was perfect. It was a ghost, or he was.

Strat’s breath came in shallow spurts, as if he were afraid of antique air. Slowly his lungs returned, his legs and strength, and he could feel again the sweet beating of his heart.

He was surrounded by temples and mastabas and monuments he could not identify because they did not exist in 1899. He could not see the Sphinx. The causeway, mostly destroyed or buried in his time, was lined with statues, covered by awnings and scented by flowers in massive pots.

He became aware of a steady, rhythmic tapping. He turned and looked toward the Nile. The sound of feet marching, he decided; guards, perhaps, walking back
and forth during their night watch. Partially visible through the tall pillars of an open temple, motionless in the water of a lagoon that had vanished long before Strat’s time, lay a large and well-lit boat. Although he judged the hour to be very late, there was a good deal of activity on its deck.

It seemed best not to attract attention. Strat stayed well away from the torchlight.

First he would examine the Pyramid. He had climbed it, photographed it, fallen in love with it—but only its core. Think of seeing it as Khufu’s architects had planned! Strat was astonished to see a wall around the Pyramid, with the obvious intent of preventing visitors from scaling the monument. The year 1899 had its advantages after all; you need not just stand at the bottom and stare up.

Suddenly he saw the Sphinx. It existed, not half-broken, but half-carved.

O mystery of mysteries, thought Strat reverently. You are a creation of man, and that man must be Khufu!

He was startled by a sudden clatter and some sharply issued orders.

In ancient Egyptian! He was thrilled. He strained to hear, for nobody in 1899 knew how to pronounce the words so painstakingly translated from hieroglyphs.

A phalanx of soldiers was forming near the lagoon. They marched through the temple, pivoted sharply and turned onto the causeway. Their boots and the shafts of their spears slammed against the pavement. Strat drew
deeper in the shadows. There were not many soldiers, and yet the sound they made was the sound of many: the relentless echo of men who would show no mercy and give no quarter … men not unlike his own father.

The procession was both beautiful and threatening. In the midst of the soldiers was carried a huge litter. Strat could not see the occupant, but he recognized the tall crown from tomb paintings: the headgear of the Lord of the Two Lands.

Pharaoh
.

The man was so motionless in his litter that Strat decided this was a representation of the Lord of the Two Lands, and not the king himself.

All too aware of his khaki-colored trousers and shirt, Strat dropped down into the sand, that he might cast no shadow. The sand was cold, having no capacity to hold heat. The desert that had failed to roast a man by day tried to freeze him by night. Strat shivered. Farther out in the sand, a high vicious yapping began.

A pack of wild dogs? No, he thought, this is Egypt.
Jackals
.

The jackals were much too close and far too interested. Also not unlike his father.

Next in the procession came men who seemed neither soldier nor priest, another litter and more soldiers.

Fearful of discovery, Strat inched backward over the sand, although moving into range of the jackals did not seem wise either. But the parade stopped well away from him. They did not pause in front of one of the
temples or mastabas or baby pyramids. They gathered, it seemed to Strat, around a shadowy circle in the causeway itself.

He squinted to see better, and writhed in the sand for a better angle. It looked like a manhole, like a—

Strat was embarrassed. This was ancient Egypt. There was no room for confusion under these circumstances. It must be a tomb entrance.

Pharaoh’s litter was set down. Soldiers assisted Pharaoh out of it. They removed his crown and he himself swung off his cape. So he was real. His chest was as hung with medals and ribbons and sashes as any British officer bound for war. He was spectacular.

There were prayers, with hands held up to the sky; there was anointing with oil; there was sharing of the cup.

From the second litter, two girls in white gowns were brought forward. One knelt, kissed the ground, and sang from a kneeling position. The cool high notes of her psalm rang between the vast stones, echoing in the night air. Was she a priestess? A daughter or wife of Khufu?

Strat knew the name of Khufu’s mother, Hetepheres; he was sure he could hear those syllables in the girl’s song. Now he recognized the notes. It was the song of the gold sandal, when he had held it in his hands.

As the ceremony went on, ropes were rigged. Two rock slabs were hauled across the sand, each perhaps four feet across and six or eight inches thick. Heavy, but nothing compared to the two-ton stones that made up
the Pyramid. Many baskets, also containing something very heavy, were carried up.

The second girl sang nothing and did nothing, but stood motionless. She wore so much gold that she herself was scarcely visible.

Now Khufu himself spoke, and even the jackals were silent as Pharaoh expanded his voice, and his orders filled the City of the Dead.

The singer was lifted into a sort of basket on ropes and lowered gently into the tomb. The girl wrapped in gold was put into the next basket and also lowered. Torches dipped forward, in fascination or reverence. There was a great spill of light and the second girl was no longer shadow under jewels. Strat could see her features and her eyes.

It was Annie.

He had hardly begun rejoicing at the marvelous ways of Time—the miraculous conjunction of souls—the perfect meeting soon to occur in the perfect place—when the next lowering into the shaft occurred.

It was not a priest or a soldier who went down. It was the first rock-hewn slab.

Promptly, the second slab was lowered over the first, and the men began a great and dreadful warbling. They hooted like robed birds gone mad, bowing and nodding to the earth. Then, one by one, man by man, they emptied the baskets down the shaft. Sand and rock and pebble.

Filling it.

A
nnie and Renifer were in a small room with a large bed. The pile of soft pillows awaited. So did death. It was a parody of a slumber party. But they had not dressed Annie for a party. They had dressed her for eternity.

She did not speak to Renifer and Renifer did not speak to her, because they shared no language and because there was nothing to say.

Annie took off the magnificent necklace, the crown, the thick bracelets, the anklets and amulets. She laid them in a row at the foot of the bed. Gold was beautiful, but you could not, in fact, take it with you. When she slithered out of the netted gown, its bright beads tumbled onto the floor, tangled beyond hope. She slid out of the gold sandals but when her bare feet touched the stone floor, she couldn’t stand it. There might be spiders or beetles or rats down here. So she kept the sandals on and fingered the pleats in her stiff white undergown.

Time, you vicious spirit. How could you do this to me? Renifer’s torch will burn out. We will sit in the dark while we suffocate.

Annie had contemplated death, of course. All thinking people contemplate death. Her own age was particularly fascinated with it. Whenever they had a poetry assignment, half the kids wrote about death. But none of them ever expected to sit inside their own tomb with lots of time to consider the future of their own dead body.

I am going to become a mummy, she thought.

Annie had read that the Egyptians had not really needed to mummify their dead; the desert would do it for them. Egypt was so dry that bodies behaved like autumn leaves, turning color and turning crispy.

The torch had burned down too low for Renifer to hold it anymore. She set the bit of flaming wood against the stone sarcophagus, where it burned brightly, casting shadows along the incised hieroglyphs. The ceiling was quite high. Annie watched the smoke rise. Perhaps she should breathe deeply and get it over with.

It was uncommon for an American to feel helpless. Annie’s generation and country did not believe in that kind of thing. If you had character and intelligence, you did not permit yourself to be helpless. You solved everything.

Annie would not solve this.

She would not solve thirst, hunger, fear or rage. She would not teach Renifer to speak English, so they could mourn together. She would not dismantle the tomb from the inside, nor tug away granite slabs as large as picnic tables and then empty the shaft so she could climb up.