The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “You can help us, you can be one of us,” she concluded, “if you will give us your Shadow.”

  He frowned. “What good will that do?”

  Maatkara smiled mysteriously. “That is hard to explain. But if you give us your Shadow, you can help yourself, and us also.”

  Something made him recoil. A man without a shadow—the idea seemed logical, and also, it disturbed him as much as did the picture of being without a leg, or without an arm. And then he asked, “But how can you take a shadow? As long as the sun shines—”

  Maatkara came nearer. “Do not try to understand how it can be done. But if you give away your Shadow, you can help us. Though you will not be one of us, you will not be so separated from us.”

  At the courtyard gate, men were pounding. The bolt yielded, and the intruders burst into the garden, and kicked open the door of the house. Major Crane headed them. His gesture made the others retreat. He said, “Rowan, I don’t like this, following you around, but you’re under observation, and we were worried. I might as well talk to you here, now, as well as any time.”

  Maatkara regarded the major with wide eyes, and tried to intervene. Crane shifted, turning his back toward her, so that he was between her and Rowan.

  “See here, Rowan,” he said, “tossing off a few noggins is really a good idea. A bit of feminine society probably has its place. But the way you’re playing it—listen, there are girls of your own kind.”

  Rowan did not quite know what to say. He was entirely too angry. A surge of fury made his head feel as though he were again in the Libyan Desert, with the khamsin whining, burning, choking, driving men mad, making them pray for a lull, even a lull in which Rommel would come pounding from the west.

  “Why—damn it, sir—this is meddling—in my personal affairs—” That was not quite the thing to say to one’s superior, but Rowan said it.

  Though the major made a grand effort to control himself, his outraged sense of discipline took command. “You might at least be discreet about—about—these native wenches.”

  So Rowan measured the major and cut loose with a punch that would have stopped an armored column. When Crane went glassy-eyed and collapsed, Rowan was surprised.

  And then he saw the men who, hearing the raised voices, had entered the court. They were military police. They had seen him strike his superior officer, and in the course of what was strictly line of duty.

  The enormity of his offense shocked the military police into a moment of stupor, but Rowan was keyed up. Maatkara, it seemed, had vanished during the clash. That was good, too. He darted to the rear, and barred the first door after him; he did this quickly enough to block the rush of the police in khaki.

  His problem now was to outrun them, outwit them. There was only one possible result if he let them catch him…

  CHAPTER 4

  The Greatest of Sins

  Striking an officer in time of peace, even under the most extenuating circumstances, meant being cashiered; in time of war, a firing squad would almost certainly be mandatory. So Rowan moved, and with agility which amazed him. He bounded up a stairway, while the military police were still pounding the door he had barred. By reaching the roof, he could leap to the adjoining building, or into an alley.

  What would follow, he could not even guess. In uniform, he would be conspicuous; civilian police would readily pick him up. Somewhere, in the next few minutes, he had to find a djellab, the ankle length Egyptian outer garment, and improvise a turban.

  He cleared the stairs, and glanced about the room, looking for the flight which led to the roof. He saw it, and then cast about him for some garment, any garment at all to conceal his uniform. And the sounds below told him that he did not have long to look.

  Then he saw Senusert come running from the front. The old man cried, “Just a moment, just a moment! I will fix it. I saw.”

  He turned to a chest, and found a long black cape and a Coptic hat. “Quick, quick!”

  He was wasting words. Rowan did not miss a beat, getting into the somber garment. Senusert snatched his cap, and put on his head the tall Coptic headgear. Then he said, “This way!”

  They raced to the roof. They leaped to the adjoining roof. Rowan flattened out, in the shelter of the parapet, as the soldiers charged to the top of the house which he had just left. He followed the Copt, crawling toward a trap door. Senusert said, as they bolted down the stairs, “Less hurry needed now. Before they search the place, they need Egyptian police. You now have a chance.”

  The Coptic priest rearranged Rowan’s garments. He led the way to a rear court, and after a moment of cautious observation, stepped into an alley which wound in and out among the ancient dwellings; the nearest end was blocked by a wall. Cairo’s thousand years of crazy architecture delayed the army, and helped Rowan. Things moved so fast that he had scarcely time to think of his next refuge, or of the girl he called Maatkara.

  Senusert guided him. By dusk, they had not covered much ground, yet the intricacy of their course gave the effect of miles.

  Meanwhile, hidden Cairo was whispering. Bearded men came into the house where Rowan hid. They brought news. The police, civilian and military, were putting a cordon about the Citadel district. The closer they narrowed the circle, the more difficult for Rowan to escape arrest. And Senusert knew this, so he said, “Get out of town while we can.”

  Coptic cunning, and lifelong knowledge of the city, got Rowan through the lines. But the problem was just beginning. Senusert said, “Outlying villages are far worse than what we have left. There is only one way to save you.”

  “What is that?”

  The priest answered, “Only by giving your shadow can you evade them.”

  And by now, a shadow seemed unimportant.

  * * * *

  Rowan was not surprised when, finally getting into the open, his guide took him west of the Nile, and into one of the subterranean places which, stripped of all their loot, had no longer anything of interest.

  He went down into a dusty darkness; ghost fires, wavering and vague, outlined his guide. Bit by bit, he could pick out the sculpted and painted figures of men who had lived forty centuries previous. Time, archeologists, and prowling Arabs had scarred and defaced what had once been sacred to the dead. An empty sarcophagus of red granite yawned.

  Yet the place was not vacant. Though he could see them but dimly, Rowan could nonetheless perceive the hierophants of old Egypt. Their figures wavered, blended into each other, then separated again, so that he could not even guess how many there were. Senusert whispered, “That is the vagueness and fluidity of the astral world. You are not yet in tune. Do not worry.”

  Out of the half luminous shapes which undulated in the gloom, he picked a woman: but by now, he was beyond guessing whether this was the Maatkara whose fatal kisses had brought him to this pass, or whether she was the Coptic girl he had called Maatkara for lack of a better name.

  The other figures vanished, and Rowan wondered what had become of Senusert. Suddenly, he had the feeling that in this darkness of mummy dust and antiquity, he was alone with a woman whose beauty was a dream more gripping than any reality. As the loveliness of that face and form solidified before his eyes, Rowan knew that he could do without his guide.

  She came to him, head high; her smile and her splendid eyes were clear now, and her figure was half visible through her filmy garments.

  “Are you,” he groped, “Maatkara—which Maatkara—you look different—and still—the same?”

  “Names are few,” she murmured, coming nearer. “But we are many. Trust me, do not fear me, and you will know and learn.”

  A familiar fragrance filled the vault. Yet he was not quite sure that he had a familiar figure in his arms, or that his arms actually enclosed anything but an idea.

  For a moment, he wondered when a bugle would blow and awaken him.

  An
d then he remembered that if ever again he heard a bugle, it would be the sound of trumpeters playing a march for him as he went to the firing squad.

  She seemed to sense his dismay, and whispered, “There is a way. You did your best for us, and you failed, as we failed. More than ever, the barbarians shell our tombs, and each day, more of us lose all hope of rising to greet the dawn. But there is a way for you.”

  “A way to what?”

  She sighed. And in the silence which followed, Rowan was gripped by a sadness such as he had never known before. Whatever the cost, he had to save himself for the day when Maatkara became arm filling and substantial.

  “A way to what?” he repeated.

  “To me. There are seven parts of a living body. You know them, I told you, back there. But until you give us your shadow, you live on one plane and we’re on another, and there is something between us, so that we see each other—that our senses meet each other as through a dense mist.”

  He began to remember. “My shadow?”

  “Give your shadow, and be one of us.”

  “Of you—but you’re dead!”

  Oddly, he could understand Maatkara; he was not aware of any difference in language. One Maatkara he had not understood at all; another had labored in stilted English. But now, there was not any language, or else, he and she spoke the same.

  “Oh, I’ve been dead for more centuries than you could count, and I’ve lived for more years than you could imagine. There isn’t so much difference between being dead and alive. There is no completeness until the final day. I can’t touch things of earth, you can’t touch things on which the Gods have breathed, each is handicapped.”

  “But I’m not dead—not yet. And you are. One of you are.”

  “And so you’re afraid to give the shadow which will keep them from ever finding you? Afraid to give that bit which exists only by day, when by giving it you can know me by night, and always?”

  He had not so loved life that duty in the combat lines had appalled him; his aversion to duty had come mainly from a sense of injustice. He, a technical expert, sent to do what any fool could do. Yet now that he faced one who did not live, he had a fear of yielding even his shadow.

  Maatkara said, “But you won’t die. You can’t die until the day ordained for you. By giving your shadow, you won’t become less real—but I shall be more real—more real than any woman you have ever imagined. And you’ll live—I swear—”

  She spoke words which his mind could not understand, yet they did register; deeply within him, at the bottom of depths whose very existence he had not thus far suspected. He had to believe Maatkara. She swore by things which made falsehood impossible. There was a phrase, “…in the face of the gods, the greatest sin is a lie…”

  Maatkara had taken the ultimate oath, and he had to believe.

  So he said, “Then let them have my shadow…”

  “You believe me, and you mean what you say?”

  He repeated, “Take my shadow, and let me cross the border.”

  He had scarcely spoken when a biting chill stabbed him, and he whirled in a darkness all shot with flame: and then, a curious lightness buoyed him. Yet all that was about and near him became definite and solid. The plaster on the walls showed no cracks, nor were any parts of the painted figures missing.

  Nor was any of Maatkara missing…there was no longer any emptiness in his arms, and for the first time, his mouth pressed against lips, and not a vision…

  “They cannot ever see you,” Maatkara murmured, when she finally sank back to her heels. “Egypt is yours, Egypt by day and by night, and there is no more flight and no more hiding.”

  He could not account for the sudden even light, the brilliance which came from no discernible source, but he did not try. He followed Maatkara down a passageway, and into what was like buildings which rose above the ground.

  Nor did he have any misgivings, nor any premonition when she said, a long time thereafter, “And in the end, you will help us now as you were not able to help us then…”

  He had no misgivings, because his eyes were full of Maatkara…

  CHAPTER 5

  No Shadow

  For a while, down in that vault which mimicked an Egyptian palace, Rowan enjoyed his escape from injustice. The people of the shadow land did not eat nor drink in the sense that Rowan did; they took symbolic freshment from the images of foodstuffs. Senusert, bringing him groceries from the material plane, explained this very plausibly, though there were various loopholes and contradictions which the old man evaded.

  Maatkara, for instance, though she did not eat, was nonetheless substantial enough for kisses distinctly on the earth-plane of existence.

  Yet it was disconcerting when, at times, Rowan’s contact with those beyond the border seemed to slip, and Maatkara vanished, leaving him half way between the seen and unseen. Worse than that, however, was being out of touch with the world he knew. Lovely though Maatkara was, he began to sense that an undiluted diet of Egyptian loveliness was unbalanced: or so he explained his vague but ever increasing uneasiness and discontent.

  He blamed it on the other inhabitants of the astral world. He had nothing in common with them. Though he could follow their interminable conversations, he would have much preferred a deck of cards and a chance to beat the Chinaman.

  They had funerals on the brain. They wrangled about embalming technique. They debated the XVIII Dynasty versus the XVI. They split hairs four ways in predicting what Osiris, King of Gods, would do and say on the day of judgment. It was an eternal round of shop talk, by a people who had made a cult of After-Death, rather than of the life before death. It seemed that an ancient Egyptian started almost at birth to prepare himself for a grand burial, for better and more elaborate ceremonies. And while foresight had its merits, the concentration of necropolitan discussions began to grate and jar.

  Even Maatkara, a notable exception, forgot herself, one night as they sat in the moonlight which filtered down into the vault. She was especially fascinating; her long lashes fluttered, and there was ecstasy in her sigh when she tilted back her lovely head, and pillowed it against his shoulder.

  “Darling,” she murmured, “I wish I could be sure—”

  The beauty of her upturned face made him forget his discontent. Her voice thrilled him anew. “Yes, sweetheart?”

  Her dropping lids rose, and her smile blossomed as she looked up. “I wish,” she resumed, “I could be sure you’d have as nice a funeral as Uncle Maku.”

  He stopped kissing her. She was pained and puzzled…

  When she left him, he growled to himself, “These blasted funeral-minded Egyptians!”

  He began to see himself as never before: he knew now that he had been sorry for himself, up there at the front, because he had thought that an engineer with a string of degrees should not be wasted as a bomb-target; that without doubt someone had to squat in a trench of blistering sand and curse the khamsin, but Joe Doakes could do the job, there were plenty of Joes anyway.

  He began to think of Private Higgins, somewhere beneath a little white cross. Whether in heaven or hell, it was a cinch that Higgins was not mooning around about the way the embalmer had skimped on linen, and chiseled on amulets.

  * * * *

  When old Senusert came in, one night, with canned goods, cigarettes, razor blades, and other odds and ends, Rowan thought it was time for a showdown. He said, “I’ve had a nice rest. But these people are driving me dizzy. You said once, or someone said, Lord, I don’t know who said what these days, that in time I could help you people. What’s been happening, and where’s that radio you were going to get me?”

  Senusert smiled that tomb-painting smile. “Be patient, my son. All will be worked out in time.”

  “What’s happening in Cairo?”

  “They are looking for you.”

  “Who the de
vil is this girl? The one from the courtyard, or the one nobody believed I saw?”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “Well, to blazes with it all! I know the language now, I want to go back to Cairo, I’ll take my chances.”

  Senusert smiled some more. He yawned a little. “I hope you like your cigarettes,” he said, and went up into the desert.

  Rowan opened a can of meat loaf. But the talk of funerals, and Amen-Hotep’s coronation spoiled his appetite. Maatkara was one of the group. It was worse than tuning in on a handful of middle-aged dames discussing operations, or the improper conversation someone had made in a cocktail lounge…

  Rowan rose. He said, aloud, and in English, “When I am dead, I want to stay dead.”

  He headed for the stairs, and stepped out into the bitter moonlight of the desert. Far overhead, a plane droned; a flight of planes, westward bound. The khamsin had long since subsided; though the sands were hot, the breeze was chilly. He took a long, deep breath, and it dizzied him. He looked back at the black mouth of the crypt from which he had come.

  “I’m as bad as they are. I’ve been so afraid to die that I didn’t take any time out to live.”

  He started for the Nile.

  Each step invigorated him. The further he went from safety and a cozy tomb, the stronger he felt. To hell with safety! The swirling sand, the khamsin, the dive bombings, the artillery—messy, but better than the safety of a tomb!

  His thoughts and the air made him drunk. His feet tramped on clouds, his head brushed the stars. He said to the silence, “I’ll surrender. I’ll tell ’em I was wacky when I slugged the major. Either they’ll believe me or they won’t. Either they’ll shoot me, or ship me back home.”