The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (34 page)

Do not do this
. Yet he reached into his shirt, and reached inside the money belt and pulled out the half-full vial and opened the cap with his thumb without even consciously deciding to do it.

He poured the elixir on the blackened thing. Poured it into the palm, and over the stiffened fingers.

Nothing.

Was he relieved? Or disappointed? For a moment he didn’t know. He stared at the window, where the pale dawn pushed at the blinds, making tiny seams of brightness. Maybe the sun was needed for the first effect. Though that had not been so when he’d stood in the cave with the priestess. He had felt that powerful alchemy before the sun’s rays touched him. Of course they had strengthened him immeasurably. And without them, he would have gone into the sleep within a few days. But he had not needed them initially.

Well, thank the gods it could not work on an ancient dead thing! Thank the gods the horrid potion had its limits.

He drew out a cheroot now and lighted it, and enjoyed the smoke. He poured a little brandy in the glass and drank it.

Slowly the room lightened around him. He wanted to creep back into Julie’s arms, and lie there. But that could not be done by day, he knew it. And the truth was, he liked young Savarell enough not to deliberately hurt him. And Elliott, of course, he did not want to injure on any count. Very little stood between real friendship with Elliott.

When he heard the first sounds of the others on deck, he capped the vial and slipped it back into his moneybelt. He got up to change his clothes. Then suddenly a sound startled him.

The cabin was now entirely visible in a bluish morning light. For a moment he dared not turn around. Then again he heard that sound!
A scratching
.

He could feel the blood pounding in his temples. At last he wheeled around and stared down at the thing. The hand was alive! The hand was moving. On its back it lay, groping, flexing,
rocking on the desk, and finally it fell over like a great scarab onto its five legs, and scratched at the blotter.

He found himself shrinking back from it in horror. It moved forward on the desk, groping its way, struggling, and then suddenly it moved over the edge and fell to the floor with a thud at his feet.

A prayer in the oldest Egyptian escaped his lips. Gods of the underworld, forgive my blasphemy! Trembling violently, he resolved to pick it up, but he could not bring himself to do it.

Like a madman he looked around the room. The food, the tray of food that was always there for him. There would be a knife. Quickly he found it, a sharp paring knife, and grabbing it he stabbed the hand and thrust it down on the desk, its fingers curling as if reaching for the very blade.

He flattened it with his left hand and then stabbed it again and again, and finally cut the tough leathery flesh and bones into pieces. It was spurting blood, living blood. Ye gods, and the pieces were still moving. They were turning pink, the color of healthy flesh, in the growing light.

He hurried into the little bathroom, gathered up a towel and came back, and scooped all the bloody fragments into it. Then closing the towel over them, he pounded them with the handle of the knife, and then with the heavy base of the lamp, the cord of which he’d ripped from the socket. He could still feel movement in the bloody mass.

He stood there weeping. Oh, Ramses, you fool! Is there no limit to your folly! Then he gathered up the bundle, ignoring the warmth he could feel through the cloth, and went out on the deck and emptied the towel over the dark river.

In an instant the bloody little pieces disappeared. He stood there, bathed in sweat, the bloody towel hanging from his left hand, and then that too he committed to the deep. And the knife as well. And then he settled back against the wall, peering at the far bank of golden sand and the distant hills, still a pale violet in the morning.

The years dissolved. He heard the weeping in the palace. He heard his steward screaming before he had reached the throne room doors and forced them open.

“It’s killing them, my King. They are retching, vomiting it up; they are vomiting blood with it.”

“Gather it all up, burn it!” he’d cried. “Every tree, every bushel of grain! Throw it into the river.”

Folly! Disaster.

But he had been only a man of his time, after all. What had the magicians known of cells and microscopes and true medicine?

Yet he couldn’t stop hearing those cries, cries of hundreds, as they stumbled out of the houses; as they came into the public square before the palace.

“They are dying, my King. It’s the meat. It is poisoning them.”

“Slay the remaining animals.”

“But, my King …”

“Chop them into pieces, do you hear? Throw them into the river!”

He looked down now into the watery depths. Somewhere far upstream, the tiny bits and pieces of the hand still lived. Somewhere deep, deep in the muck and mire, the grain lived. The bits and pieces of those ancient animals lived!

I tell you it is a horrible secret, a secret that could spell the end of the world
.

He went back into his cabin, and bolting the door, he sank down in the chair at the desk, and wept.

It was noon when he came out on deck. Julie was in her favourite chair, reading that ancient history which was so full of lies and gaps it made him laugh. She was scribbling a question in the margin, which of course she would put to him, and he would answer.

“Ah, you’re awake at last,” she said. And then seeing the expression on his face, she asked: “What is it?”

“I’m done with this place. I want to visit the pyramids, the museum, what one must visit. And then I want to be gone from here.”

“Yes, I understand.” She motioned for him to take the chair beside her. “I want to be gone, too,” she said. She gave him a quick, soft kiss on the lips.

“Ah, do that again,” he said. “That comforts me mightily!”

She kissed him twice, slipping her warm fingers around the back of his neck.

“We won’t be in Cairo more than a few days, I promise.”

“A few days! Can we not take a motor car and see these things, or better yet, simply take the train to the coast and be done with it!”

She looked down. She sighed. “Ramses,” she said. “You have to forgive me. But Alex, he wants badly to see the opera in Cairo. And so does Elliott. I more or less promised we would.…”

He groaned.

“And you see, I want to tell them farewell there. That I’m not going home to England. And … well, I need the time.” She studied his face. “Please?”

“Of course,” he said. “This opera. This is a new thing? Something I should see, perhaps.”

“Yes!” she said. “Well, it’s an Egyptian story. But it was written by an Italian fifty years ago and especially for the British Opera House in Cairo. I think you’ll like it.”

“Many instruments.”

“Yes.” She laughed. “And many voices!”

“All right. I give in.” He bent forward, kissing her cheek, and then her throat. “And then you are mine, my beauty—mine alone?”

“Yes, on my soul,” she whispered.

That night when he declined to go ashore at Luxor again, the Earl asked him if his trip to Egypt had been a success, if he had found what he wanted.

“I think I did,” he said, scarcely looking up from his book of maps and countries. “I think I found the future.”

HIS HAD been a Mameluke house, a little palace of sorts, and Henry liked it well enough though he wasn’t entirely sure what a Mameluke was except they had once been rulers of Egypt.

Well, they could have it, as far as he was concerned. But for the moment he was enjoying himself and had been for days, and in this little house crammed with Eastern exotica and big comfortable old pieces of Victorian furniture, he had just about everything he wanted.

Malenka kept him fed on delicious spiced dishes that for some reason he craved when he was sick from drink, and which enticed him even when he was very drunk and all other food tasted like gruel to him.

And she kept him in booze, taking his winnings into British Cairo and coming back with his favourite gin, Scotch, and brandy.

And his winnings had been good for a straight ten days, as he kept the card game going from noon until late into the evening. So easy to bluff these Americans who thought all British were sissies. The Frenchman he had to watch; that son of a bitch was mean. But he didn’t cheat. And he paid his debts in full, though where such a disreputable man got the money Henry couldn’t imagine.

At night, he and Malenka made love in the big Victorian bed, which she loved; she thought that was very high class, that bed, with its mahogany headboard and yards of mosquito netting. So
let her have her little dreams. For the moment, he loved her. He didn’t care if he never laid eyes on Daisy Banker again. In fact, he had more or less made up his mind that he wasn’t going back to England.

As soon as Julie and her escorts arrived, he was heading on to America. It had even occurred to him that his father might go for that idea, might settle an income on him with the understanding that he stay over there, in New York, or even in California.

San Francisco, now that was a city that had an allure for him. They’d almost completely rebuilt it since the earthquake. And he had a feeling he might do well out there, away from all that he had come to loathe in England. If he could take Malenka with him, that wouldn’t be half-bad either. And out there in California, who would give a damn that her skin was darker than his?

Her skin. He loved Malenka’s skin. Smoky, hot Malenka. A few times he’d ventured out of this cluttered little house and gone to see her dance at the European club. He liked it. Who knows? Maybe she might be a celebrity in California, with him managing her, of course. That might bring in a little money, and what woman wouldn’t want to leave this filthy hellhole of a city for America? She was already learning English from the gramophone, playing records she had bought in the British sector on her own.

It made him laugh to hear her repeating the inane phrases: “May I offer you some sugar? May I offer you some cream?” She spoke well enough as it was. And she was clever about money, that was obvious. Or she wouldn’t have managed to keep this house, after her half-breed brother left it to her.

Trouble was his father had to be handled carefully. That was why he hadn’t left Cairo already. Because his father had to believe he was still with Julie, and looking after her, and all that utter rot. He’d cabled his father for more money days ago, with some silly message that Julie was quite all right. But surely he did not have to follow her back to London. That was preposterous. He had to work something out.

Of course there was no rush to leave here, really. The game was going splendidly for the eleventh day.

And it had been some time since he’d set foot out of doors, except of course to take his breakfast in the courtyard. He liked the courtyard. He liked the world being completely shut out. He
liked the little pond, and the tile, and even that screeching parrot of Malenka’s, that African grey—the ugliest bird he’d ever seen—wasn’t entirely uninteresting.

The whole place had a lush, overblown quality that appealed to him. Late at night he’d wake up dying of thirst, find his bottle and sit in the front room, amid all the tapestried pillows, listening to the gramophone play the records of
Aïda
. He’d blur his eyes and all the colours around him would run together.

This was exactly what he wanted life to be. The game; the drink; the utter seclusion. And a warm, voluptuous woman who’d strip off her clothes when he snapped his fingers.

He made her dress in her costumes about the house. He liked to see her shining flat belly and her mounded breasts over the gaudy purple satin. He liked the big cheap earrings she wore, and her fine hair, oh, very fine, he liked to see that down her back so that he could grab a handful of it, and tug her gently towards him.

Ah, she was the perfect woman for him. She had his shirts done, and his clothes pressed, and saw to it his tobacco never ran out. She brought him magazines and papers when he asked for them.

But he didn’t care much for that anymore. The outside world didn’t exist. Except for dreams of San Francisco.