The Anubis Gates

by Tim Powers

Though his position must have been painful, the Master uncovered his teeth in a smile as he slowly rotated on the end of the rope. “I can save Rebecca—prevent her from dying. Through the time gaps which I caused to be opened and Darrow discovered. You can help. We’ll prevent them from getting on the motorcycle.”

  The sword clattered onto the roof tiles and Doyle sank to his knees. His face was now level with the Master’s twenty feet away, and he stared in helpless fascination into the old man’s eyes, which seemed to shine with a terribly intense blackness.

  “How… can you know about… Rebecca?” he gasped.

  “Don’t you remember the ka we drew of you, son? The blood that fell into the tub? We grew a duplicate of you from it. It hasn’t been a great deal of use to us as far as getting any consistent and coherent information—it seems to be insane, which might or might not mean that you tend that way—but we have happened to learn, a bit at a time, a lot about you.”

  “This is a bluff,” said Doyle carefully. “You can’t change history. I’ve seen that that’s true. And Rebecca… died.”

  “A ka of her died. It wasn’t the real Rebecca that fell off your motorcycle. We’ll go into the future and get some of her blood, grow a ka, and then switch them at some point, let the ka go die as you remember, and then the real Rebecca can come back here with you and,” the Master smiled again, “change her name to Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy.”

  Ashbless slowly and wonderingly shook his head. I really think I’m going to do it, he thought. I believe I’ll actually reel him in and save him. My God, I thought he was only going to offer me money. “But there’s already an Elizabeth Tichy—somewhere.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Doyle took hold of the rope. Sorry, Tewfik, he thought. Sorry, Byron. Sorry, Miss Tichy. Sorry, Ashbless, but it looks like you live out the rest of your life as a slave of this creature. And sorry, Becca—God knows this isn’t any way you’d have chosen it.

  With a good deal more ease than the doorkeeper, Ashbless drew in a yard of the rope. As he tried to knot it with one hand, he glanced once more at the Master’s face, and the smile on it was not only triumphant, contemptuous and smug, but imbecilic too.

  That glimpse of idiocy in the supposedly all-knowing Master was like cold water on a fevered forehead. Jesus, Doyle thought, was I really going to buy Rebecca back with the death of the Tichy girl, whom I’ve never even met? “No,” he said conversationally. He let go of the rope and it snapped back out with a twang and an evidently agonizing jerk against the Master’s shoulders.

  “You’ll be saving Rebecca’s life, Doyle,” croaked the wincing Master. “And your own sanity—you’re going mad, you know that—and the facilities for the insane aren’t very nice here, remember.”

  Ashbless turned away, snatched up the sword and as he and the Master both screamed he swung it in a hard overhead wood-chopping stroke that not only snapped the taut rope but shattered the blade and a roof tile.

  Still screaming, the Master receded rapidly away, as though he were lying in the bed of an invisible truck that was trying to beat the zero-to-sixty record. Then he was out past the roof edge and picking up more speed, skimming away twenty feet or so above the ground. He was silhouetted against the moon, so Ashbless could see him clearly even in the deepening dusk.

  “Enjoy it in the stinking madhouse, Doyle!” roared a voice from the pit below Ashbless’ feet. “Eating excrement and being buggered by the guards, that’s what’s in store for you, boy! It’s true, Romanelli jumped ahead and looked! And listen, we already rescued Rebecca, Romanelli’s got her, but now that she’s no good for barter I’ll tell you what she can look forward to… “

  As the voice raved on, Ashbless realized that it was the Master speaking through the one wax man that still had a head. The Master himself was just a dot on the face of the moon now, slowly shrinking. After a minute or two the voice from the pit, which was still dilating upon the defilements in store for Rebecca, and how much she’d eventually come to relish them, abruptly choked and ceased. Either the wax speaking apparatus had broken down or the Master was out of range.

  Ashbless shambled back through the hole in the wall and lurched down the stairs. When he reached the ground floor hall he saw someone start out of a dark doorway on his right and then, hearing his approach, scramble back inside; but Ashbless didn’t even look into the room as he passed it.

  When he got outside he glanced around. The horses had suffered the same disintegrative fate as Mustapha’s sons, so Ashbless set out, barefoot, to walk the five and a half miles to the Harbor of Boolak. His boat didn’t leave until dawn, so it didn’t matter that he walked very slowly, pausing every few steps to glance fearfully up at the rising full moon.

  A few minutes after Ashbless had shambled away out of sight a wild-eyed, dirty, bearded face peeked out of the doorway and blinked at the darkening funeral plain.

  “See what you’ve done, Darrow?” the man was muttering. “Perfectly safe, you said! I remember you saying it—’It is perfectly safe, Doyle.’ Hell, you might as well have let Treff come along. He couldn’t have made things any worse. I’ve got to get back to the river, see if I can’t swim back up to when everything was all right.”

  And the Ashbless ka tiptoed out into the evening air and stood looking around uncertainly, for he couldn’t exactly recall where the river was or what it was called, though he did know he’d seen a number of branches of it. Then he remembered that one could get to it anywhere, so he chose a direction at random and strode away, a jerky but confident smile on his face.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Sisters, weave the web of death;

  Sisters, cease, the work is done.”

  —Thomas Gray

  Once again he was trying to find his way out of the maze of fog-choked alleys; and though Darrow—in the dream he could never remember his new name—had groped several miles through the snaky, doubling-back and sometimes simply dead end lanes and alleys, he still hadn’t come to a street wide enough to wheel a cart through, much less the broad, well-trafficked pavement of Leadenhall Street. Finally he stopped, and heard, as he always did at this point in the dream, a slow, irregular knocking somewhere in the thick fog overhead; and then a second or two later a shuffling of footsteps nearby.

  “Hello,” he said timidly; then, more confidently, “hello there! Perhaps you can help me find my way.”

  The footsteps rasped closer across the fog-damp grittiness of the cobblestones, and a dark blur in the fog became recognizable as a ragged man.

  As always, Darrow recoiled in mind-numbing fear when he realized it was Brendan Doyle. “Jesus, Doyle,” he screamed, “I’m sorry, stay away please, oh God…” He’d have run back up the alley, but his legs wouldn’t move.

  Doyle smiled and pointed upward, into the fog.

  Helplessly, Darrow looked up—and then put his entire soul into a shriek so loud that it woke him.

  He crouched motionless on the bed until, with considerable relief, he recognized the furniture in the dim room, and realized he was in his own bed. Once again it had just been a dream. His hand darted out, seized the neck of the brandy decanter on the bedside table, tipped the thing upside-down to expel the glass stopper, and then he righted it and brought it to his lips.

  The door to Claire’s room snapped open and she hurried across the room toward Dundee’s bed, frowning sleepily through her disordered hair. “What in hell is the matter, Jacob?”

  “Muscle cramp… (gulp)… in my back.” He clanked the decanter back down on the table.

  “You and your muscle cramps!” She sat down on the bed. “I’m your wife, Jacob, you don’t have to lie to me. I know it’s a nightmare. You always yell, ‘I’m sorry, Doyle!’ when you come crashing awake. Go ahead and tell me about it—who’s Doyle? Did he have something to do with you getting so wealthy?”

  Dundee took a breath, then let it out. “It’s just muscle cramps, Claire. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

  She pursed her lips. “Is the cramp gone
now?”

  Dundee groped for the stopper and poked it back into the decanter neck. “Yes. You can go back to bed.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. “Maybe I’ll stay here with you for a little while.”

  “I don’t think—” he began hastily, but was interrupted by a knock at the hall door.

  A muffled voice asked, “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Yes, Joe, no problem,” Dundee called. “Just couldn’t sleep.”

  “I could bring you a cup of rum coffee if you’d like, sir.”

  “No thank you, Joe, I—” Dundee hesitated, glanced at his wife, then said, “Thank you, Joe, yes, that might help.”

  Footsteps receded away down the carpeted hall, and Claire stood up.

  Knowing she wouldn’t take him up on it now, Dundee raised his eyebrows and said, “I thought you were going to stay here for a bit.”

  Claire’s mouth was a straight line. “You know how I feel about Joe.” She strode back into her own room and closed the door.

  Dundee stood up, clawed the hair back from his forehead and crossed to the window. He pulled the curtain aside and stared down at the broad curve of St. James Street, the uniformly elegant housefronts all palely lit in amber by the flickering street lights. The sky was less black toward the east—it would be dawn soon, a clear Sunday in March.

  Yes, my dear, he thought bleakly, I do know how you feel about Joe. But I certainly can’t explain to you why I need to support him and keep him around. I wish to hell he’d get a new body, though, so I could tell you I fired him and hired this new guy—but he likes Maturo’s body, and I don’t dare try to force him. After all, he’s going to be my partner long, long after you’ve died of old age, my dear… after I’ve taken the best of our sons, and then our grandsons, and then great-grandsons, getting richer and buying more and more during my successive stays in each descendant’s body, until by the time 1983 rolls around again I will be the secret owner of all the world’s important corporations. I’ll own whole cities—whole countries. And after 1983, when old J. Cochran Darrow disappears, I’ll be able to come out of hiding, step out from behind the screen of corporate links and overlaps and figureheads and front men, and I’ll damn well no exaggeration rule the goddamn world.

  If I can keep Joe happy.

  So you see, my poor bride of two months—during which time I still haven’t been able to consummate the marriage and set to work on the second generation of the Dundee line—you’re replaceable. Joe’s not.

  The richest man in London sighed, let the curtain fall back across the window and sat down on the bed to wait for his rum coffee.

  In the pantry Joe the butler had climbed up onto the counter—for though he’d been able to touch the ground without pain ever since he ceased practicing high level magic nine years ago, he seemed to be able to think better when slightly elevated—and he was slowly sifting his fingers through a bowl of gray-green powder.

  I’ve learned a great deal from the nervous young master, he thought. I’ve learned that having a lot of money is more fun than not having a lot of money, and that once you’ve got it, it tends to grow all by itself, like a fire.

  He’s got a lot of it. And he’s got a truly beautiful young wife who may as well be his sister, and who hates the way old Joe looks at her… though it seems to me somebody ought to look at her, aye, and do more than look. She’ll turn to vinegar in the cask if she’s not tapped.

  Yessir, young Dundee, thought Joe, you’d still be a dying old man if it weren’t for me—and what do I get in return for setting you up? Employment as a butler. It’s not fair as it stands right now. Things aren’t balanced. But I’ve got a solution to everyone’s problems right here in this bowl. Miss Claire’s handsome young husband will become much more affectionate, and poor old butler Joe will commit suicide. Everybody will be happy.

  Except, of course, the one who’s in Joe’s body when it hits the pavement.

  He reached up to a shelf, took down a jar of ground cinnamon, and shook a lot of it over the powder in the bowl. He put the jar down and stirred the mixture with his fingers, then tapped it all into a big mug, added a hearty slug of rum, and then hopped to the floor, lifted the now ready pot of coffee and filled the mug with the steaming black brew.

  He stirred it with a spoon as he walked down the hall and up the stairs. When he rapped quietly at Dundee’s door, Dundee told him to come in and set it on the table. Joe did, and then stepped back respectfully.

  Dundee seemed preoccupied, and a faint frown rippled his unlined brow. “You ever notice, Joe,” he asked, mechanically picking up the mug, “that it always takes a little more trouble to get something than the thing was really worth?”

  Joe considered it. “Better than taking a lot of trouble and getting nothing.”

  Dundee sipped the coffee. He didn’t seem to have heard Joe. “There’s so much weariness and fatigue in it all. For every action there is an equal… stupefaction. No, that might be bearable—it’s greater than the action. What’s in this?”

  “Cinnamon. If you don’t like it I could make another cup without.”

  “No, it’s all right.” Dundee stirred it with the spoon and took another sip.

  Joe waited for a while, but Dundee didn’t seem to have any further instructions, so he left the room and closed the door quietly.

  * * *

  “Hey, Snapp? That you?”

  Jacky looked around. A stocky little dark-haired man sprinted lightly up to her from the other side of the street.

  “Who’s that?” asked Jacky, not sounding interested.

  “Humphrey Bogart, remember? Adelbert Chinnie, Doyle.” The man grinned excitedly. “I’ve been walking up and down this damn street for an hour, trying to find you.”

  “What for?”

  “My body—my real body—I’ve found it! The fellow that’s in it has grown a little moustache and he dresses and walks different, but it’s me!”

  Jacky sighed. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Humphrey. The body-switching man was caught and killed three months ago. So even if this person you’ve found really is in your old body—which is damned unlikely; he’d never fail twice in a row to kill the discarded host—there’s no conceivable way you can switch with him. There’s nobody around anymore that knows how to do the trick.” She shook her head wearily. “Sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me … “

  The grin had fallen from Chinnie’s face. “He’s dead? Did—did you kill him? God damn it, you promised me—”

  “No, I didn’t kill him. A crowd in an East End pub did. I heard about it next day.” She started to walk on.

  “Wait a moment,” said Chinnie desperately. “You heard about it, you say. Have many people heard about it?”

  Jacky stopped and said, with exaggerated patience, “Yes. Everybody—except you.”

  “Right!” said Chinnie, beginning to get excited again. “If I was the body-switching man I’d do the same thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Listen, I went looking for depilatory shops, remember I said I would? Places where they take hair off so it won’t grow back. And I learned that there was one in Leadenhall Street where the people really could do it, something to do with electricity. The place closed down last October, but that doesn’t mean the process was lost. Hell, the body-changer might have bought the place. Anyway, if I was him, and now had the option of being able to stay in a body without turning into an orang-outang, why, I’d let myself be recognized, and caught, and then just as I was falling through the gallows trap, I’d switch into another body. Let ‘em all think they’d killed me so they’d call off the hunt.”

  Jacky slowly walked back to where Chinnie stood. “Right,” she said softly, “I like it so far. But what’s all this about your old body? He’d already moved on out of it—when he was hanged he was a skinny old man.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he put someone else in my body just to hold it while he went off to get killed, and then he switc
hed back into it. Or maybe—yes—maybe he’s placing wealthy but elderly people in young bodies for tremendous fees. Or maybe any number of things. It’s getting hold of the hair-killing trick that made it all possible.”

  “This person in your old body,” Jacky said, “what’s he doing? How’s he situated?”

  “He’s living high. Offices in Jermyn Street, big house in St. James with servants and everything.”

  Jacky nodded, feeling the old excitement building in her again. “That fits well enough with your idea. It could be an old man that paid Dog-Face Joe to make him young and healthy again—or it could be Joe himself. Let’s go have a look at that house in St. James.”

  * * *

  “Why, but,” sputtered the disconcerted doorman, “you said, sir, that it would be an hour at least before you’d be needing the carriage. Yustin’s just gone off in it for a spot of supper. Ought certainly to be back in a—”

  “Yustin’s fired,” rasped Dundee harshly, his face looking, in the lamplight, as drawn and pinched as an old man’s. He strode away down the sidewalk, the heels of his elegant boots locking against the cobbles like the works of an old clock.

  “Sir!” the doorman called after him. “It’s late to be walking unaccompanied! If you’d wait a few minutes—”

  “I’ll be all right,” Dundee answered without pausing or turning around. He reached inside his coat and touched the butt of one of the pair of miniature pocket pistols he’d had specially made for him by the Haymarket gunsmith Joseph Egg. Though no bigger than a bulldog pipe with the stem pulled out, each of the guns fired a .35 caliber ball from a charge detonated by a thing Dundee called a percussion cap, which he’d diagrammed for the fascinated gunsmith.

  On a sudden impulse he turned left a block sooner than he usually did. I’ll walk halfway down this block, he thought, and then cross to St. James through the service alley. I’ll come out just across the street from my house, and if that loafer I’ve seen hanging about is still there I’ll shake an explanation out of him—and if he tries any funny business he’ll be the first man in history to be killed by a percussion cap pistol.