by Jerry Dubs
***
Before Maya could even ask the question, Imhotep knew what she would say. He knew the argument they would have and he knew how it would end and he knew it could change his life forever.
He felt as if he were paddling a kayak that unexpectedly had entered a white, crashing, rock-strewn stretch of rapids. He would work furiously, but the force of the water would take him where it wanted and this life that he once believed he guided, would soon be beyond his control.
They had left Taki’s dinner, Imhotep carrying his whimpering daughter through the darkening paths, his mind trying to calculate how long Prince Nebmakhet had been ill before the king had called him to the palace.
Once home, Meryt had taken her daughter in her arms and laid her cheek against the girl’s feverish head. Closing her eyes, she prayed to Re, the god she had served under Hetephernebti when Imhotep had first met her.
Imhotep sat beside her for a restless moment and then went to their bedroom to retrieve the small statue of Bes, the dwarf god who protected mothers and children. His hand squeezing the wooden statue in frustrated anger, he carried the god to Meryt and gently sat it on the bench beside her.
He thought angrily of the many, many deaths of newborns and young children that he had witnessed. No family was untouched by the early deaths.
As Meryt chanted and prayed and sang for her daughter, Imhotep mentally organized the chain of events that would soon unfold. Leaning down he kissed Meryt’s head and ran out the door, headed back to Paneb’s house where he would ask his friend to send a message to Ahmes, asking the young man to race back to Ineb-Hedj.
***
Seventeen years earlier, when he had entered the Two Lands through a false door in a dusty, seldom-visited tomb near the Step Pyramid, Tim Hope had marked the entrance with a toothpick from his Swiss army knife.
The doorway, one of several cut into the tomb for the dead man’s ka to use, was meant to be painted with a series of hieroglyphs that called for the doorway to open for all of eternity. However the aging priest who painted them had made a mistake; drawing symbols that called instead for the door to open after a hundred lifetimes.
Entering from the other side of the doorway, Tim had traveled back in time the length of a hundred lifetimes. After Tim had entered the Two Lands, the priest had revisited the tomb and seen his mistake. He had corrected the hieroglyphs, destroying the accidental time portal, but not before Ahmes, then an eight-year-old apprentice to his father, Paneb, who was chief artist in the necropolis, had copied the incorrect symbols.
Imhotep had used them once before to send Diane, the other surviving time traveler, back to her time.
He hoped the symbols would work once again.
Otherwise his daughter would die.
Into the Tomb
Imhotep studied the symbols, their wet, black paint glistening in the torchlight. Beside him Ahmes coughed softly.
Looking at the rough papyrus and then up to the lintel above the false door, Imhotep carefully compared the hieroglyphs. “You haven’t become ill?” he asked Ahmes, his eyes still moving from papyrus to stone.
“No, Lord Imhotep,” the young man answered. “It’s the smoke from the torch. At Zau I paint outdoors and I don’t tolerate the smoke well any longer.”
“I’m sorry,” Imhotep said, carefully rolling the parchment and tying it with a linen string. “I’ve heard how marvelous your paintings are in Zau. When I return, Meryt and I will come for a visit. If King Sekhemkhet allows me to travel,” he added under his breath.
He handed the papyrus to Ahmes and took his daughter from the artist’s arms. “Everything looks perfect,” he said, nodding at the papyrus. “I know I asked you to destroy that papyrus but I’m grateful that you hid it instead.”
He smiled at his friend.
Twenty-five-years old, Ahmes was just over five feet tall, average for the men of his time. He had a broad face with large, almost feminine, brown eyes that blazed with intelligence and confidence, yet he projected an unworldly air of innocence. In other ways he looked like any other healthy man in the Two Lands – dark skin hidden only by a white, coarse linen loincloth, a narrow waist, short sturdy legs, a decorative armlet around his right arm, bare feet, clean-shaven face. Only his hair was different. Adopting the custom of the priestess Merneith, he did not shave his head, allowing a short, thick forest of tight, black curls to grow there.
“You haven’t been tempted?” Imhotep asked, glancing at the hieroglyph-covered papyrus.
“To leave the Two Lands?” Ahmes said. “No, there is so much to do here. And my family is here, my friends ... ”
“And Merneith,” Imhotep said with a smile.
“Yes,” Ahmes agreed, naively oblivious to the romantic suggestion in Imhotep’s voice. “She is a wonderful patron. I can paint whatever I want, wherever I want, anytime I want. She likes the style of my painting and we’ve talked about ways to paint her and her wbt-priestesses so that the colors remain on their bodies.” Ahmes realized he was talking without stopping to breathe.
“I’m sorry ... ” he started to say.
“No, no,” Imhotep said, interrupting him. “I envy your enthusiasm. And, Ahmes, I thank you for staying in the Two Lands and for helping me.”
Maya moaned lightly in her sleep.
“I should go,” Imhotep said, looking down at his daughter.
With his free hand he tugged at the shoulder of the galabia he was wearing. Designed from his drawings, it looked as much like one of the traditional Egyptian robes as Imhotep could remember. Sati, who had sewn the garment in one hurried night, said that the sleeves looked ridiculous but that she admired the wide, blue stripes.
“You’ll paint over this as soon as I am through. Then come back tomorrow and repaint the hieroglyphs, and again the next night. If I haven’t returned, wait until the next full moon, then try again for three nights,” Imhotep said.
Ahmes bowed his head in formal acknowledgment of the command. Then looking up he smiled and said, “Yes, Lord Imhotep.”
“I’m sorry, Ahmes. I know we went over this a dozen times ... ”
“A hundred times,” Ahmes interrupted. “None of us wants you to be stranded in your land and Taki would put scorpions in my dinner if I failed to follow your instructions.”
“Scorpions,” Imhotep smiled. “You remember the scorpion that stung your sister, don’t you? From the first night I was here. You were wonderful that night, Ahmes. You and your father, your whole family, you all were so kind and helped me so much. My life would have been so different if you hadn’t helped me so much ...”
Ahmes coughed again. “Lord Imhotep, this doorway will open or it won’t. If it opens tonight, then it will open again to allow you to return.”
Imhotep, who knew that he was stalling, nodded. Maya cried again, squirming and breathing heavily.
Although she was small for a two-year-old, Imhotep thought that otherwise she had developed properly: she was walking, talking and imitating her mother’s actions. She played with other children without hesitation or fear. Imhotep remembered watching her one day as she played in the shallow water of the canal that ran from the river to the fields outside Ineb-Hedj. She had fallen face down in the water while trying to pick up a snail and, righting herself before he could get to her, she had emerged with a face full of mud, but laughing instead of crying.
His heart broke at the idea of her being gone forever.
Although he knew that he had to try to get her medical help, he had a foreboding that some kind of calamity was waiting on the other side of the false door, that the lives of everyone he loved somehow would be changed forever when he disturbed the air of the tomb that lay beyond this wall.
Placing his free hand on the stone wall, Imhotep turned to Ahmes. Lit by the flickering torch, the young man’s eyes were sparkling with excitement.
“I’m afraid, Ahmes. I’m so afraid,” Imhotep confessed as he leaned his weight into the false door.
Th
ere was a grating sound and the stone door began to give way.
SECTION FOUR
TOMB
OF THE TIME TRAVELER
2027
Saqqara, Egypt
Saqqara
The light from Ahmes’ torch on the other side of the wall was squeezed into darkness as Imhotep, leaning against his side of the stone wall, pressed the portal shut. He stayed there a minute, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and straining to hear the sound of Ahmes covering the symbols on the other side of the wall.
A minute passed, then another.
Maya whimpered and Imhotep realized that there was absolutely no light in the tomb for his eyes to adjust to. He closed his eyes, concentrating on remembering the layout of this part of the tomb. There had been a sarcophagus in the center of the room.
Brian’s sarcophagus, he thought.
Suddenly he realized that something was terribly wrong. There was a long pathway from the entrance to the anteroom where Ahmes had painted the symbols above the false doorway. The hallway leaving the anteroom turned left, bent to the right and continued to the burial chamber, where Imhotep was now standing. If Imhotep turned to his left he should be able to follow the passageway and end up back in the anteroom with Ahmes.
Light from Ahmes' torch should be reflecting off the wall, he thought.
He shook his head.
No, he realized, the hallway to my left, in the future, had been blocked by debris. Its roof had fallen sometime during its five thousand years and hidden the rest of the hallway, the antechamber and the entrance tunnel.
The lack of light meant that the debris must be there now, once more blocking the other part of the tomb, and so he was in the future. The inscriptions had worked. His fear had been groundless.
Breathing deeply to calm himself, Imhotep placed a hand on the tomb wall and, shuffling his feet, followed the wall to the intersection of the next wall. His toe hit something. Barefoot, he explored the obstacle with his toes. It was a cable. Yes, he remembered, there had been dust-covered, abandoned spotlights in opposite corners of the room.
He stepped over the cable and felt his foot encounter another cable, and another and another. He had a sudden fear that he was in the wrong tomb, but that couldn’t be. He reminded himself that seventeen years had passed and it was unlikely that the tomb had remained as he remembered it.
Perhaps they are restoring the paintings, he thought.
He followed the next wall and found the doorway that led to the treasure chamber. Ducking through it, he smiled ruefully as he remembered hitting his head against the doorway the first time he had passed through it.
Feeling in front of himself with his feet and with one waving hand he walked slowly and carefully through the total darkness. Soon he found the narrow spiral staircase that wound to the top of the plateau.
He followed it, one hand cradling his daughter, the other gripping the newel tightly. Halfway up the steps he realized that his hand was gripping not only the central post, but a cable that was taped to the side of it. That hadn’t been there before.
A worry that he had somehow changed the future began to creep over him.
He took a deep breath and kept climbing. Exhaling he remembered that when he had first arrived in ancient Egypt that he had thought the air was fresher, that it tasted less foul, less used.
He closed his eyes briefly as he focused. The air did have an odor now, there was an unmistakable heaviness to it and a burnt smell, and more than a hint of grease.
Imhotep imagined that it smelled of war and fire and bombs and factories and fear. But, he told himself, it also smells of space rockets and electricity and hospitals and a million other advances. That’s why I’m here.
Maya stirred in his arms and he renewed his climb.
At the top of the stairs he found himself in the same small mudbrick shed that he remembered. The door was open and he remembered with a sudden burst of adrenaline that the door had been shut and guarded before. He had forgotten that. What if it had been closed and locked now?
He felt himself start to sweat.
I have no real plan, he thought. I don’t know what I’m doing.
He was sure that fear for his daughter’s health had driven him to make a horrible mistake.
He thought for a moment of climbing back down the steps and waiting by the false doorway until the next night when Ahmes would paint the symbols on the other side and he could return to his home.
But he knew he couldn’t; Maya needed modern medical care.
Holding his breath he listened for the cough of a guard or the gentle scuff of shoes in sand. He sniffed the air for the smell of a lit cigarette. But there were no sounds or smells.
Finally he dared to put his face through the doorway.
Everything looked the same and everything was different.
***
The small shed was surrounded by a high, cyclone fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. There had been no fence before.
And instead of the wandering footpath through loose sand, that he remembered, now there was a wide, paved road leading from the tomb toward the distant parking lot.
Somehow this insignificant tomb has become valuable, he thought.
Instinctively, Imhotep crouched, trying to present as small a profile as he could.
Huddled against the wall he listened as his eyes took in the area. There were no car lights, no flashlights moving in the distant darkness, no sound of motors running or guards talking. No sounds at all.
Stepping out from the building, he approached the fence. He reached out to touch it and then, worrying that it might be electrified, he pulled his hand back quickly.
He walked the interior perimeter of the fence looking for the gate. When he found it he stopped moving and closed his eyes in despair. The gate was chained shut. There were no fences like this in the Two Lands, there were no chains securing doors, no locks.
As he stared at the metal links a sense of doom settled on him like a vulture alighting on a dead tree.
Maya started to cry. Imhotep rocked her in his arms and bent his head down to kiss her forehead. She felt more feverish. He had to do something.
Straightening up, he approached the chained gate.
He tentatively touched the chain and then jerked his finger back. There was no electric shock. Gathering his courage he grabbed and tugged at the chain. To his amazement, the chain gave way, the links clinking past the gate post and gathering speed like a runaway train.
Rattling through the gate the chain fell to a coiled heap on the sand.
Imhotep pushed the gate open and stepped out onto the paved path. His foot struck something and looking down he saw a padlock, its U-shaped shackle cut. Quickly he looked up and scanned the area. Still no movement, no lights, no sound.
Wishing that he had chosen the darkness of a new moon instead of light of the full moon he held Maya with both arms and began to run down the path.
***
The path led to the parking lot.
Imhotep waited for a minute there, looking again for guards. There were no cars and no sign of guards.
In ancient Egypt he would have only a moderate walk to Ineb-Hedj and his home. Here, in this time, the same walk would take him to the outskirts of Memphis, a long-dead town that was home to a small museum and little else.
Cairo was off to the north. He thought that it was half an hour, perhaps forty-five minutes away by car. He didn’t know how long it would take to walk there, but he had no choice; he was prepared to walk for as long as it took.
Leaving the parking lot, he followed the road, walking beside it on the softer sand. Just beyond the parking lot entrance he saw a car stopped with its flashers on and car trunk lid raised. Someone was kneeling beside the rear wheel.
He stopped and watched.
The person noticed him and stood and turned toward him.
Imhotep saw that it was a woman. She was slim, dressed in dark slacks and a patterned
blouse. Her head was covered with a dark headscarf. She was holding a tire iron in her left hand, a light colored cloth wrapped around it to keep grease from her hand. In the darkness he couldn’t see her face.
“As-salam alaykum,” she called across the distance that separated them.
Imhotep paused. The little Arabic he had learned seventeen years ago was lost to him now and he doubted if the woman would understand ancient Egyptian.
“Hello,” he called back. “I don’t speak Arabic. Except shukran, I remember that.”
The woman laughed, a friendly, breathy chortle that reassured Imhotep. “That’s OK. I speak English. And ‘thank you’ is a good phrase to remember.”
Imhotep walked toward her. “Can I help you?” he asked. “Do you have a flat tire?”
“Not anymore,” she answered. “I just finished changing it. Is that your baby?” she asked.
Imhotep nodded. “Yes, my daughter. But she isn’t really a baby anymore. She’s two years old, almost three. She’s just a little small for her age.”
The woman looked at Imhotep with a small, happy grin. Her eyes, like Ahmes’ had been, were alive with excitement.
Everyone is enjoying this but me, Imhotep thought. I need to relax.
The woman walked to her car trunk and laid the tire iron in it. “And you were taking her for a walk in the middle of the night?” she asked, keeping her back to him so that he wouldn’t see her smile.
Imhotep didn’t know how to answer; he hadn’t been expecting to see anyone until he was farther along on the road to Cairo where he could say an earlier ride had dropped him off.
“Perhaps you are lost?” the woman suggested, closing the trunk and turning back to Imhotep.
“Yes, I’m lost,” Imhotep said. “And she is ill. That’s why I’m out with her. I need a doctor.”
